Tag Archives: bad night

Saturday 22nd July 2023 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, I’ve spent much of the afternoon asleep. Going to the shops this morning was, once again, far too much for me.

It might have helped if I’d had a decent night’s sleep but apart from going to bed later than I would have liked, I had to get up in the middle of the night for a reason that anyone of my age would tell you.

A few years ago that was quite a normal thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d put it all behind me a long time ago.

When the alarm went off I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus and I had a struggle to leave my stinking pit before the second alarm.

But once I’d organised myself (which takes much longer these days than it ought) Caliburn and I headed out to the shops.

There was a parking space at the front of Noz so I could go there without a struggle. Mind you, I needn’t have bothered because there wasn’t anything interesting. I bought a couple more of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets and a couple more packets of digestives. I think that I have all of those now.

LeClerc didn’t come up with anything out of the ordinary. There was some falafel on offer, 350 grammes for €3:09 so I bought a box of those for the freezer seeing as the stocks are running down.

Back here I had my cheese on toast for brunch and then ended up yet again with another mug of very cold coffee after several hours flat out on the chair in the office.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. There were some people outside a courtroom who had some kind of tube with a candle in it. The idea was that as they took a brick out of the wall of this building and pushed this tube with a candle through the home they could somehow hear the proceedings of what was going on on the inside. They managed to remove the brick by putting 2 screws in it, twisting it round and pulling and then inserted the tube. It went into the room and was disguised by a window shutter on the inside that was folded back. There was me and someone else in there being tried for something or other. In all probability we were going to be found guilty. The penalty for this was death, which we knew very well Many people thought that we might just be transported but we were convinced that we were going to die. The one guy with me had some plans of his own and I also had some plans. I was going to have a way to sneak out of this prison one night before we would be moved away. I ended up at my friend’s in the Bourgogne on New Years Eve. He, his wife and I had a little party. He brought me a few items of food that he’d made himself and we were settling down to have a really nice evening. After everyone went to bed I took the opportunity to take his car and drive off and disappear, hopefully making good my escape.

Later on I had to go into work. As my brother was around I brought him with me. There was a group of us who were going. We reached the Place Madou. I explained to him that it was extremely complicated to manoeuvre around here and it’ll be even worse on the way back because of the one-way system against us. We crossed over the road and I had to look for the side street. Some of the people with me went off down the side street without any problem. For some reason I had a mental blank and couldn’t think where the side street was. I tried 3 or 4 back entries to shops etc. Suddenly I remembered where it was. I shouted at my brother to come but he was too busy looking himself. He wouldn’t come for a minute. In the end I started to go and he began to follow me. We bumped into our friends again who were waiting for us around the corner wondering what on earth had been the matter and what had been going on with us.

I was also on the radio last night. We’d been doing a series of programmes. One of them was about different pet foods. It turned out that the pet food we recommended was being run down. You couldn’t find it any more in the shops. I went to a grocer’s to try to find it. There was also something to do with someone asking why were we advertising events so far away when we don’t tell anyone anything about things in the area. I answered that that’s because people in the area don’t tell us about their events. Someone asked about a special offer for soup that was available at the local supermarket. I was in the supermarket at the time so we had a look around and found the offer but it had expired 2 years ago. There was a woman working in the supermarket who worked for the radio who I asked to do something. I gave her the information to collate but she was just sitting there at her desk not doing anything. She told me that she was waiting for bits and pieces but I couldn’t understand that because she didn’t actually need anything. I’d given her everything that she needed and I was beginning to become extremely frustrated by all of this

Rosemary rang me up too and we had another one of our mega-chats. It’s been a while since we have had a good chat. It’s quite funny really. We can talk for hours on the telephone but we don’t actually say all that much.

There wasn’t much time to spend on my trip to Canada. I managed to write some stuff but once more I was side-tracked. In 1848 Bishop Feild (and that’s not a spelling mistake) of St John’s in Newfoundland decided to go to visit the coasts of Labrador.

There’s no record that I can find of a priest having visited there before and it was really only about 20 years or so after the first settlers had made their home there. He kept a diary of his visit, which is really probably the earliest erudite account of “liveyer” or settler life out on the Labrador coast, and I managed to track down a copy of it.

Consequently I’ve been immersed in its pages. It’s full of all kinds of interesting anecdotes, including reports of the first marriage ceremonies carried out on the Labrador coast.

“Nine couples were married, and one couple rejected, because the man, as it appeared, had lived with another woman, whom he had deserted, or turned off… He is an Englishman from Devonshire—no credit, I fear, to his country or Church.”.

Tea was one of the breaded quorn fillets with chips and salad, delicious as ever and properly cooked too.

So seeing as I’m exhausted I’m going to dictate the radio notes now that it’s quiet, and I’ll sleep until I awaken. There’s nothing to do tomorrow so if necessary I can even catch up with my beauty sleep. And having looked in the mirror just recently, I certainly need it.

Thursday 13th July 2023 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I …

… call a much better football match.

In the Europa League Penybont who finished 3rd in the Welsh Premier League last season were playing Santa Coloma from Andorra.

Santa Coloma were the obvious favourites with 4 Andorran internationals in their side and their football was quite attractive but Penybont were full of grit and determination. What Santa Coloma had in skill, Penybont matched them toe to toe with a more physical style and never ever looked second-best even for a moment.

The match was played in a fiercely competitive but totally fair manner, which makes a big change, and the final score of 1-1 was about right.

Considering that these two teams are quite low down the club rankings in the overall scheme of things, it was an excellent advert for European football and it’s a shame that one of these clubs will be eliminated after the second leg in Andorra next week.

At least the football makes up for my rather depressing night. For practically the whole of the night I was wracked with attacks of cramp, and in both my legs too. That was what I call miserable.

However I must have gone to sleep at some point because there’s some stuff on the dictaphone and also because when the alarm went off I was miles away in the next world somewhere and it was quite a shock to be awoken.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages, first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. I was reading a story in a newspaper or magazine about a Welsh pirate. While I was doing so I dropped a toilet roll. It fell down towards the deck of the boat but I couldn’t catch it. I began to look for it but couldn’t see it. Every time that I seemed to be within touching distance of it, it moved position and went further away again. I thought to myself that this is stupid. Here I am reading something complicated like this from the 16th Century without any problems at all but I can’t manage to control an errant toilet roll on board the ship on which I’m travelling.

I’d been round to the home of a friend from school but I’m sure it was actually the home of someone else. We were going to be doing something but it turned out that there was a football match on the TV. He had it on so I settled down to watch it. I could see that he was frustrated but I wasn’t sure what were his actual plans. he hadn’t really suggested anything. Everything was really going wrong apart from feeling a kind of atmosphere coming from him. He’d asked me to go down to the shops to buy some stamps which I had but while he was sulking he’d gone out for a while and come back. Then he started to stick some stamps on these envelopes. I said that I didn’t realise that he’d been out to buy them himself because he didn’t think that I’d bought them so I produced them. I had the feeling that this whole evening was going totally wrong from start to finish. It was one of those evenings that I wanted to be over as quickly as possible and we can start again some other time.

Then there was something about having some complimentary tickets on the railway. There was a special series of Bank Holidays and I had these complimentary tickets. The railways were working anyway so I thought that I’d go down to the ticket barrier to see one of their clerks there to see whether he knew anyone going through who might want to buy them from me. When I arrived there all of the barriers these days were automated. There was no-one to whom I could talk about my complimentary tickets for these four days of special Bank Holiday.

Next thing was to finish off the notes for the radio programme. I forgot yesterday to do the ones that I’d planned to do then so I ended up doing two lots this morning and that’s that, all ready for dictating. I might even do that tomorrow.

The rest of the time was spent revising for my lesson today. That actually went quite well too so I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting better or whether it’s because I haven’t had time to forget anything yet. Tomorrow is the last day and then there’s a couple of weeks off before I undertake this mega-course.

And if I don’t know it by the end of that, then I never will.

Yesterday, I mentioned that we have fallen behind with what we were supposed to be doing, and I’ve found out how we’re going to be catching up. He asked us to do a mountain of work after the lesson ended. That took up the remainder of the afternoon.

With the football being on, I ended up with an early tea. Fried rice with some of those Chinses thingies that I bought from Noz a few weeks ago. They were quite nice, although nothing particular to write home about. It makes a different meal, and it was done quite quickly too which was just as well.

And there was a change in my habits for tea. I vowed when I moved here that I would only eat my meal sitting at the table in the dining room. Try to be a little civilised for a change. But today it was on a tray on my knee at the computer watching the football. Maybe I should have had pie and chips.

Tomorrow I was going to nip out early and go for a quick run into town for a little shopping. But it’s a Bank Holiday here, the shops are closed and there are no buses. That’s upset my plans.

So sausage, beans and chips, I reckon. That should make a nice change. But I’m beginning to run low on proper, real baked beans. I shall have to organise some supplies from somewhere. Anyone fancy a little run out?

Monday 10th July 2023 – THE FIRST DAY …

… of our Summer School passed so quickly that I didn’t even notice. I can’t even say whether it was a success or a failure because we didn’t even have time to think.

There were 10 of us in our class. One of them I know from a previous weekend school but the others are complete strangers. No-one from my own class. I haven’t even met the tutor before.

We spent a lot of time talking about Llewellyn Morris Humphreys, one of the associates of Al Capone and who was believed to be responsible for the St Valentine’s Day massacre.

The lesson finished at 15:30 today, basically because we ran out of things to do. Our tutor was clearly not expecting us to accomplish so much.

And that was just as well because I was exhausted. As expected, I had had a miserable night and ended up taking another painkiller – which is not at all like me but I didn’t really have much choice and I wanted to go to sleep.

When the alarm went off though, I was flat out in bed and had a struggle to leave the bed. And after the nurse came round to inject me I prepared for the Welsh lesson today. But with having a teflon brain, nothing whatever is sticking.

When the lesson was over I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, because I had been out and about. I was on board a ship going across the Channel. There was a Charity Shop on board but I had to wait until the ship had set sail before I could go to inspect it. It wasn’t particularly much good but I bought a couple of books and 3 or 4 CDs. It came to £31:00. I had a rummage through my pockets but suddenly realised that I had the money in my coat pocket that was on my chair so I went and fetched it. The woman explained that it was expensive. I said “never mind” because there was some stuff in there that I really wanted – a Groundhogs LP and “Dreams” by Klaus Schultze and a few other things. I was quite happy. My real reason for being on board the ship was that I wanted to speak to one of the officers about something that I was trying to do. I was told that he might be on this particular sailing so I’d come on board to see him. It was my plan that as soon as we were in mid-Channel to go along and buttonhole him. Once I’d bought my stuff from the Charity Shop that was where I was heading next but I didn’t know if he would be on board or not. It would be just a case of knocking on the door and finding out.

Later on I had a job to do so I was collecting up all my tools. I’d already been to do the job once but couldn’t find anything of the tools that I needed so I’d collected everything together. before I went to do it again I just made sure that I had what I needed. I could only find the big charger for the heavy duty battery-powered drill. I couldn’t find the drill or any of the batteries or any of the accessories. I was turning everything upside down trying to find them because they ought to be there. They were there half an hour ago. I couldn’t find them at all. I checked but as far as I could see no-one else had borrowed them for anything so I was completely bewildered as to how I’d become separated from them again. Not finding my tools was something that was making this job last 100 times longer than it ought to be.

With plenty of unexpected free time on my hands I ended up repairing the hard drive that failed so spectacularly a couple of weeks ago. After several hours of wandering around in the disk operating software I managed to make it fire up.

And I managed to find the fault too. It’s actually on a part of the drive that was being used to house the operating system so by running the drive as a slave rather than a master, I can make it run after a fashion. There’s a vacant slot in the array drive so I’ve fitted it in there where I can access the data.

It does have a tendency to go to sleep if it’s not being used so I have to start it again but that’s not very important. I can cope with that as long as I can make it work somehow.

While I was at it, I managed to reactivate another old hard drive. This one is a 1TB one that was last used in March 2021 so I’m now trying to think where this one came from. It’s certainly one of mine because I recognise the disk structure and the data but I can’t remember it at all.

With an hour or so to spare I made a start on the next radio programme and I’ll be working on that for half an hour or so every day until it’s complete.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, a frozen one out of the freezer. I cooked it for 20 minutes at 160°C in the air fryer and it cooked it to perfection.

So now I’m going to bed. And with my leg still suffering from the stabbing pains I don’t know whether I’ll be able to sleep yet again. It’s really rather annoying because these days, the way things are, if it’s not one thing it’s another and I’m rapidly becoming fed up of this.

Thursday 15th June 2023 – IF I EVER LAY …

… my hands on whoever rang my doorbell at some stupid time of the morning, like 04:00 or something like that, they won’t ever do it again.

What made matter worse was that despite what I’d said yesterday, I didn’t go to bed until quite late. Much later than usual in fact.

And when I did, I couldn’t sleep for ages afterwards. And then we had all that nonsense.

At least, I thought that it was the doorbell because that’s exactly what it sounded like. But there was always the possibility that I’d dreamt it. I’m not ruling that out.

And strange as it may seem, I was up early too. When the alarm went off I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for my clothes. That was something I hadn’t done for a good few days.

After the medication I had another slow start to the day and it wasn’t until I’d had my mid-morning coffee and fruit bun that I was able to start work – that is, when I wasn’t curled up asleep on the chair.

And by the time that I knocked off I was in Paradise River poring over the diaries of George Cartwright, who in 1775 was the first European known to have visited the area and ” sent the people on shore to build the wharf on a point which I named Paradise”.

However what intrigues me is Carl Rafn’s “Antiquities Americanae” from 1846. I’ve been poring over them as well.

Rafn was the first scholar to take seriously the Norse Sagas of the visits to Vinland and his translations refer to a visit by Thorvald to an area and who was so pleased with this place, that he exclaimed “This is beautiful and here I should like well to fix my dwelling”

Thorvald describes in great detail the area where he is and it corresponds pretty much with what I see on a map when I look at Sandwich Bay. In fact, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was near there I went out in a small boat to look at the geographical features along the coast there.

Rafn though made several miscalculations and ended up putting the Norse ashore in Massachusetts, something that confused people for 70 years.

Firstly, he calculated the distance that a Norse longboat would sail in an hour, multiplied that by 24 and then by the number of days to arrive at their destination.

However, in my opinion, it’s out of the question that, experienced sailors as they were, they would have sailed into unfamiliar waters and kept going through the hours of darkness. They would almost certainly have heaved to until daylight.

Secondly, Rafn calculated the distances based on the speed of a longboat. However the Sagas state that they bought a boat from a trader who put in to Erik the Red’s camp at Brattahlid.

It wasn’t until they carried out some excavations at Roskilde in the early 1960s that they came across a Norse trading vessel, or Knǿrr and that has completely different sailing characteristics

The physiotherapist came round this afternoon and had me walking up and down the stairs. And it’s difficult, that’s for sure. Nothing like as good as it was two weeks ago and that’s a real disappointment. I thought that I was making decent progress until that latest fall.

But still, no matter how bad I’m feeling, there are always people worse off than me.

With him coming I went and had a shower. And while I was at it I went one better than Dave Crosby. probably because I had the ‘flu for Christmas and it was increasing my paranoia. Sill, I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year – I feel like I owe it to someone.

This evening I was stuck for an idea for tea. But having a rummage around I came across some vegan bolognaise sauce with soya mince that I’d completely forgotten. The expiry date on the jar was about 100 years ago but in for a penny in for a pound and it was actually quite nice.

There’s half a jar left so I’ll have that next week with some more pasta and veg.

But a tragedy here – I’ve run out of brussels sprouts now after all of that pile I bought and froze at Christmas. I mustn’t forget to buy some more at the weekend, but I have a feeling that ready-frozen ones might have to do.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. Whenever whoever it was rang my doorbell, if that’s what it was, I was in Canada again, down at the end of a headland looking out to sea where there was another island. There was some kind of pond there. We’d measured it and it was 10kms across and ever so deep. There were all kinds of grids around, all marked with yellow paint as if there was something going to happen to them. There was talk about this island joining up with the part of Canada where we were. That would have happened much earlier had there not decided to be a vote on it. We made some kind of remark about how people complained that it was democratic where we were and not democratic on the island yet the agreement to unite had been taken by the mainland without any kind of vote at all yet the people on the island had been allowed to have a vote on it. We thought that to be extremely ironic.

Later on I was doing something for some kind of investigation. We had to go to Edinburgh so I went on the back of someone’s motorcycle. When we arrived in Edinburgh I couldn’t remember my way. Nothing in Edinburgh looked like anything that I ever knew. We became confused at a road junction on this motorbike and ended up on the pavement trying to work out our way. There were all kinds of people hanging around. The driver of the motorbike said “put your feet up on the pedals and hang on tight. These people don’t look very safe to me”. We set off still going the wrong way and came to an old house. We went in but couldn’t find what we wanted and lost our way again. We ended up back in a Government library with all kinds of old documents. We described this house to someone. he came up with several suggestions and showed us photos but none seemed to resemble this particular house, situated set back from the road on a corner by a railway line with a statue in front. While we were there we started to go through their records for something else. I found loads of interesting things like squardrom flying books from World War I. The papers we wanted we couldn’t find. They kept bringing us files telling us that these were the correct ones but none of the references matched. But I was having a whale of a time going through here reading all the old notebooks, pencils and Court reporters’ books. I thought that I could have moved in and lived here with all of this but none of this was actually finding the information that they wanted. He kept on coming up with stuff that he said was the correct reference but when I looked at it, it was nothing like the information that we wanted.

So now I really am going to bed. But I’ll change the bedding first now that I’m all clean and tidy. It’ll be nice to have some clean bedding. I really ought to change it more often than I do. Usually it walks into the linen basket on its own so I need to organise myself better than I do.

But not much hope of that. As Guildenstern said in “Hamlet” “dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream”

But as an anonymous writer once said about the father of George Cartwright whom we discussed earlier,
He had a genius for encountering difficulties

Wednesday 14th June 2023 – AHHH WELL!

Just in case yo were wondering, last night was very much like the previous couple of nights. And today was like the last couple of days where I’ve spent a great deal of time flat out on my chair.

When the alarm went off this morning, I was dead to the world again and it took me a couple of minutes to leave the bed

But I think that that was about the only time that I was asleep because you’ve absolutely no idea of the miles that I travelled during the night. We’ve had a few where we’ve logged the miles but this one will be up there with the best of them.

I started out in Labrador last night sorting out some food, trying to make up some burgers from bits and pieces that I had lying around that I could cook in the air fryer. When I looked in the air fryer there was a load of breaded fish-type fillet things in there and a load of other food lying around too. I thought to myself that if I don’t put that lot into a fridge or a freezer or something it’s all going to have to be thrown away.

And then back in Newfoundland again. My mother had gone away for a few days and left the kids behind. She’d given us a few tasks to do but we hadn’t been particularly diligent in doing them. For a start, all the plastic bottles and jars were still in the container under the sink. When she came back I hastily rearranged it so that it didn’t look quite so obvious. She began to have an enquiry into why things weren’t done. She became quite obnoxious and short-tempered about it. I was beyond caring at this particular point so I snapped back and called her a lot of names that weren’t particularly polite under any circumstances. We had this enormous slanging match that went on with her shouting, trying to keep me quiet and me hurling vulgar gratuitous abuse

And yet again where there was some kind of director of a Holiday Camp in Newfoundland who was something of a megalomaniac and was trying to build up his own evil empire. he was converting all the camps of the children in his care and using the money to buy weapons etc. He was bankrupting the community but wasn’t intending to let up on anything. They took him to court, some of the people, because they’d noticed that he had applied for control of a couple more accounts of the children in his care. This led to a huge Court case and he was prevented fromopening, holding or operating any furhter bank accounts. But no-one believed that he would be able to respect the court order and everyone was preparing for the worst

There was another disreputable financier somewhere. He was giving the while finance system a really bad name. He had his office in a big building in New York. It was a couple of floors underneath in the same building of where the President of that weird American company was where I worked. Everyone was quite surprised that knowing this man’s proclivities that they were in the same building and not quite some considerable distance away. I was talking to someone about the system of finances, saying about this network of corruption and so on and they replied “things can only get better from here on” but I wasn’t convinced at all. I thought that there was plenty of time and plenty of room for everything to go worse.

Then there was an incident at a football match. We’d arrived early and took our seats, sitting there waiting for everything to happen. The game was a while off starting so we stood up to stretch our legs when a couple of well-known footballers came along and sat in our seats. We told them to clear off. This led to some considerable argument about how they should have seats because of who they are and what they’d contributed to the game etc. I said “that has nothing to do with it. My friend and I are taxi drivers and we contribute an enormous amount to society too, but at least we had the sense to book our seats early for this game”. If they wanted seats they should have done the same. It led to quite a long argument. It wasn’t until that guy’s dog went to sit on my seat while I was standing up and I grabbed hold of the dog. In the end these two footballers wandered away muttering curses and things like that under their breaths

After that it was Friday lunchtime and I had to leave work to go to run some errands and then pick up a bike because I had to cycle somewhere for the weekend for a meeting or party or something. I had my bedding with me so I had to sort the bedding out and wrap it into a pillow case then I could prepare to go. On the way out there was a question of an old car that I’d bought, a big 14hp Vauxhall from the 1930s. It had been stolen and recovered, and I’d bought it. Since then I’d decided that I was going to sell it so I had to collect all the photos up and many of the photos were taken by the previous owner. Then I wasn’t sure whether wherever I’d left the car for the moment was going to let me sell it from there or whether I needed to talk to them first. Then there was a story about the policmen who had to go to give chase to someone. They pulled out of their yard and it was like the Keystone Cops watching them drive through these narrow streets running pedestrians over and hitting vehicles coming the other way. Eventually they came across their chief superintendent who was also in a car. They had a collision with him but he sent them on their way. It turned out that it was a fleet of bikes that were leaving work. The issue was all these bikes riding on the wrong side of the road.

Back in this dream later and I came into Shavington to look for this car. The first thing that I noticed when I reached Gresty was that the whole road realignment had changed. It took me a few minutes to collect my bearings. Where the Cheshire Cheese pub had been had been flattened. It was just a demolition site full of weeds. I drove up and down the road trying to find this house but suddenly realised that it would have made things much easier if I’d had the house number with me so I could simply have gone and knocked on the door. No house in the street resembled what I’d seen in the photographs so I was beginning to think that I’d probably be better off going home, finding the number of the house and coming back again. That would probably be much quicker.

It’s hardly surprising that I was thoroughly exhausted after all that.

Nevertheless I struggled to my feet and went for my medication. And after that it took me a while to get going. For a couple of hours I couldn’t do all that much.

Once I started work though I’ve been looking for stuff about someone called John Osborn Williams.

Born in Cardiff into the timber trade, he came to Canada in the early years of the 20th Century and saw the opportunities. Despite having been bankrupted in the past he played on the innocence of the Newfoundland Government and ended up with a large timber concession on the Labrador coast at the height of the Depression.

With there being no official schooling in Labrador (it was a British colony until 1949) many people down the coast were illiterate and had had no contact with the outside world and so they were prey to Williams and his enterprise. For almost 15 years he drove them as a slave driver would and exploited them ruthlessly, all for 25 cents an hour which they had to spend in the company shop.

What’s strange about this though, or maybe it isn’t, is that opinions about him are “varied”. Some people see him as nothing more than a dyed-in-the-wool villain whereas others see him as some kind of victim of a wicked conspiracy.

The cleaner came round today as usual. She gave me some good news about our neighbour who had the bad fall a few weeks ago. Although it’s unlikely that she’ll ever fully recover she’s managed to set foot outside the building for a couple of occasions, with some help. In fact she’s probably doing better than me right now

There were too many leftovers today to use with some of my curry and naan bread. I was going to simply lengthen it with a small potato and make a curry like that but I had another idea.

What I did was to tip a few kidney beans in it and turned it into a chili. And it was quite nice too. I shall remember that for another time. It makes a nice change to vary the diet every so often.

It’s a shame that I spent so much of the day crashed out as I had so much to do. I probably won’t be able to sleep now but I’ll have a try all the same.

Tomorrow the physio should be coming, if he decides to put in an appearance. I’ll have to have a shower too so that I’ll smell nice. I don’t know what to have for tea tomorrow as yet but I’ll worry about that at the appropriate time. Right now I just want to go to bed.

Saturday 10th June 2023 – I WAS IN …

… the middle of the local elections in Crewe. It had just been announced that Labour had lost control when the alarm went off so I’ll never find out who it is that’s the new council now.

Yes, another night that was as it is supposed to be, with me sleeping right the way through until the alarm went off

Not that you would have noticed of course, because it took me an age to go off to sleep last night. It looks as if I can’t win, doesn’t it?

But anyway I staggered out of bed when the alarm went off and began to organise myself ready for the morning. I had the medication but for some reason or other I forgot to check my mails and messages.

That’s something that I always do when I’m … errr … walking the parapet in the morning. I probably forgot to do that too, I reckon.

After doing a little work on the computer I went out ready for the shops.

At the door I bumped into first one neighbour and then almost immediately another one, and so I was late getting away.

LeClerc was my only destination today. I didn’t fancy trying my luck at Noz, or anywhere else for that matter. Even so, it was a very ungainly stagger across the car park to find a shopping trolley.

There wasn’t anything on special offer but nevertheless it was an expensive shop. I’m running out of flour, stuff like that and a few other things that would rack up the bill

We had quite a laugh at the checkout though. On eof the other cashiers came up to mine for something and called her “mum”.
“Mum?” I asked
“Yes” she replied.
“That’s strange” I replied. “Usually it’s sons who follow in the footsteps of their fathers”.

Back here I dragged the shopping upstairs and made breakfast while I put away everything.

This afternoon I’ve been bashing on with Canada 2017.

So far I’ve made it to Sainte-Barbe and crossed over to Blanc Sablon in Québec on the last time that I shall ever sail on the ancient MV Apollo.

Right now Strider, STRAWBERRY MOOSE are high-tailing it for the border ready to cross over into Labrador and by the time you read this, we’ll probably be there.

But we’re going to be stuck there for a while. On that particular day there were no fewer than 105 photos and I have to write notes for each of them. That will take some doing.

And that’s only a part of what went on that year in Labrador. We went out on a couple of boats into uncharted waters to visit abandoned settlements, visited several abandoned cemeteries, searched for several graves of the early Labrador explorers and drove around a resettled Inuit community.

Yes, I’ve made good progress so far but it’s all going to grind down to a very slow crawl as a fight my way through all of this.

But we’ve had another bad attack of nostalgia yet again and I really must stop doing this.

Several years ago, while I was sitting in a café in Brussels, a girl walked in who was the absolute spitting image, as alike as two peas in a pod, as a girl who sometimes comes along with me on a few of my little nocturnal rambles. I was so surprised that I dropped my coffee cup on the floor.

But here on board the Apollo there was another one. This one was on her way to “Labby”, so she told me, by which she presumably meant Labrador City. But the resemblance was totally uncanny.

That was part of what I was doing today and right at that moment round on the playlist came Warren Zevon and his RED-HAIRED GIRL IN THE RED SILK DRESS

While we’re on the subject of nocturnal rambles … “well, one of us is” – ed … there was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night, local elections notwithstanding. I was in Newfoundland last night with a boy and girl. I was supposed to be together with this girl but somehow I’d gone off somewhere and those two had paired up without telling me. When I came back she began to talk to me without realising who I was and told me a few things that I didn’t really want to hear. She was surprised and shocked when she saw that it was me. I was surprised and shocked to hear the things that she was saying about me

Later on I realised that I’d made a mistake and I wanted Ron and Harry back. They had images or statues of them on sale at 10/6 each. I bought one each. I thought that that was a very cheap price to pay for the friendship that they’ve been bringing me

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I have, that I’ve been dreaming an awful lot about pre-decimal currency just recently. That is what I call weird.

And then I was walking around Brussels and met one of my ex-girlfriends. I’d seen her before but was trying to keep out of her way because our relationship didn’t end very well but there she was. She seemed quite pleased to see me. She asked about Roxanne although of course she wasn’t Roxanne’s mother. We had a friendly chat which considering the way our relationship ended was something of a surprise to me.

And that reminded me of something interesting that happened in Brussels years ago. I’d gone off for a meeting and Nerina had gone for a walk. My meeting finished early so I went for a walk afterwards and we collided with each other in a street nowhere near where we were supposed to be, quite by accident. I was and still am convinced that Nerina was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter with a black cat and magic wand somewhere.

However she wasn’t impressed when we went to buy a new broom to sweep the path. “Don’t bother to wrap it” I told the assistant. “She’ll fly it home”

Poor Nerina. Looking back on things, I actually feel sorry that she had to put up with me.

Am I getting all nostalgic again?

Tea tonight was chips and salad and some of those vegan nugget things. Nice they are too. That was a good buy from Noz a few weeks ago.

So now I’m going to push on up the Labrador coast and see how far I can get before I fall asleep. It’s all making me so nostalgic though. Labrador was a place about which I’d read in all these adventure stories when I was a kid and I always wanted to go there.

It took me until 2010 when I took Liz’s daughter Kathryn to University in Canada before I made it to Labrador for the first time, as soon as they opened the trail over the Eagle Plateau, and since then I just can’t keep away.

What I should have done os to have gone to live there, and a long time ago too but when I enquired, I was over the age limit. Services out there are practically non-existent and the last thing that they want is older, inactive people moving in there who would end up being a drain on the resources.

The flight to the cities is even more profound in those places as kids leave to go to University and never come back, and the collapse on the cod fisheries has put everyone else out of work and so there’s no prospects for anyone’s future.

Richard Hakluyt, the 16th Century geographer wrote in his “Principal Navigations” of a voyage to Newfoundland where “the cod were in largeness and quantitie … that they stayed our shipss”

Whatever went wrong?

Friday 9th June 2023 – I HAVEN’T ‘ARF …

… done a lot today. And I don’t know where all this energy has come from.

It certainly didn’t come from any rest that I might have had because I didn’t have very much of that. I spent most of the night tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable

Even worse, there was nothing on the dictaphone. That was really disappointing. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have said in the past … “and on more than one occasion too” – ed … that what goes on during the night is usually much more exciting than anything that ever happens to me during the day.

However, when the alarm went off I was deep in the depths of sleep and once more, it took quite an effort to raise myself from the dead.

After the meds and checking the mails and messages I sat down to work.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Friday is usually the day that I walk into town for a little shopping. But not today because I really didn’t feel very much at all like it.

So what have I been doing today then?

I’ve been in Newfoundland again on my Canada 2017 journey. This morning I was hunting down stuff about the first commercial transatlantic flights with the Sikorsky S42; Boeing 314 Clipper and the Short Empire flying boats.

And then discussing the submarine and aircraft battles off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Another name cropped up too – that of Sidney Cotton, inventor of the Sidcot flying suit in World War I and the guy who was responsible for the first aerial surveys of Newfoundland.

And in the late 1930s when he was joyriding in his aeroplane over Central Europe with his succession of teenage female “friends”, it transpired when Frederick Winterbottom published the memoirs of MI6 in 1974 that Cotton was secretly taking aerial photographs of every German military installation he could find.

As an aside, Winterbottom’s book is one of the most interesting that i’ve ever read. It was he who told the world about Turing and Ultra, and explained that the reason why its existence was never disclosed until then was that one country, believed to be Albania, was still using it thinking that it was unbreakable.

This afternoon I’ve been clambering over the wreckage of a 440-tonne steamer in the Strait of Belle Isle. There are plenty of wrecks along that coast and on our travels we’ve seen plenty.

They could never take away the scrap because there were no roads in that part of the world until comparatively recently. Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t actually become part of Canada until 1949. Prior to that they were a British colony and starved of resources just like any other colony.

The most interesting wreck on that coast that we saw though is that of HMS Raleigh. That was a cruiser that ran aground at Point Amour in 1922 and sat on the rocks for 4 years as a hazard. In the end they decided to remove it by force and calculated how much explosive they would need to break it into pieces and remove it by sea.

However they forgot about the ammunition still on board and as a result there are bits of her scattered all over the cliffs and the grass on top

That was where I met that lady who looked at the car I’d come in and asked me“have you just driven around the Trans-Labrador Highway in THA?”

And I replied “It’s not the car that counts, it’s the driver. And for my next journey I’m going to cross the Atlantic on a motor bike.”

However, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock will tell you, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

The physiotherapist came to see me this afternoon. He’s spoken to the nerve specialist whom I’m to see in a few days time. And it is as I suspected – that the problems are more-than-likely caused by the cancer that is slowly eating its way through my body and there’s not much that anyone can do about it.

And so I’ll just have to grin and bear it

Tea tonight was sausage, beans and chips. And what started that off was when I was going through my notes about Canada 2017, I spent that particular night in a wooden hut on a hillside where there was a microwave, and I had some potatoes, sausage and beans in the back of Strider to I treated myself. And that set my mouth a-watering.

Most of that trip was spent with the slow cooker and porridge for breakfast, whatever I could find for lunch, and pasta, a tin of mixed vey and a tin of soup also in the slow cooker in the evening. Slow cookers don’t draw much current so an inverter wired into Strider’s alternator heated up the cooker when needed.

Tomorrow I’m going to be brave, even though I don’t feel like it, and go to see what is about in the shops. I’ll just go to LeClerc I reckon, not to Noz as I don’t want to fall over on the car park again.

And then I’ll carry on with my notes. If I keep going like this I should be across the Strait of Belle Isle on the elderly MV Apollo, which is now beneath the waves in the Gulf of St Lawrence, but I’ll be somewhere up the coast of Labrador.

If I’m lucky

Sunday 4th June 2023 – THAT WAS A HORRIBLE …

… night last night. I don’t think that I went off to sleep for a moment.

My left leg was hurting all the way through the night and I just couldn’t make myself comfortable.

So much so that I was wide awake at 08:00 and out of bed by 08:30 and when was the last time that that ever happened on a Sunday?

After the medication and the mails and messages I spent much of the day working on my Canada 2017 journey. I’ve now spent a week at my niece’s house, done some work on Strider and now I’m on my way for the Bay of Fundy to pick up Strider’s insurance.

That’s something that I won’t have to worry about in the future because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Strider is up for sale. There’s no point in having him sitting rusting away at the end of my niece’s drive when someone else can make use of him.

Liz came onto the internet too. Her grand-daughter is into ballet and is off shortly to Portugal to perform. She’s appeared in a couple of videos just recently so Liz sent me the links to watch.

Tonight’s pizza was another masterpiece. I seem to have this off to quite a fine art now and that’s really good. I’m not sure how I can improve on how they are turning out at the moment.

What helped today though was that the oven was stinking hot when the pizza went in. I’d run out of fruit buns at the end of the week so I made a batch this afternoon and they look quite good. I’ll tell you tomorrow about how they taste.

There’s a little room in the freezer now to put the spare ones. While I was ferreting about in there I found a plastic container with some soup in it. Carrot and ginger it was, and I remember making that and how good it was.

And notice the use of the past tense. The soup no longer exists and it was just as delicious as I remembered it. It made a nice change from cheese on toast at lunchtime.

Despite what I said just now, I must have gone to sleep at some point during the night because there was some stuff on the dictaphone. I started off in the Air Force in World War I. My aeroplane had been attacked and I’d been killed. I was still somehow going through the lines of a song trying to work out the lyrics and have the tune fitted into them because it wasn’t as straightforward as it might have seemed.

Then I was in the mountains of Central Europe last night with a couple of other people. We’d been climbing these rocks and were having to move this wood about, these very long tree trunks. At times it was extremely difficult and complicated on these rocks. More than once we almost dropped them into the valley down below. When we reached a place where we could relax I was talking about cars. Someone knew where there was a certain type of car for sale but it was in Bulgaria. he translated the advert for me. I mentioned that I’d be interested in paying so much for it. In Bulgaria he said that’s an “anhorse”. I had to be very careful not to confuse it with “anhorst” and a few others that meant different sums. he coached me through it and then wrote it down. I looked at samples of his writing. There was writing of other people there. Some of it was really close together but very tall. He talked about whose that was. We agreed to make an appointment to see the vehicle but now we had to retrace our steps back the way we’d come with these two enormous tree trunks which was really difficult. We almost dropped them again in the same place. One of the other people suggested that he go in front so that he could hold them from the front while I held them at the back and we slid them along. How he was going to go to the front past me and these tree trunks was another big complicated issue. There was also a young girl there too but I can’t remember what she was doing or why she was there.

And then very early on Sunday morning I was heading into Crewe Town Centre to do something about this leg. I’d gone over the bridge in Flag Lane ready to turn into Delamere Street and they both came round the corner, my father eating some chips. I grabbed a chip and said that I hadn’t had any this weekend. I asked how they were and they asked how I was. We had a little chat really about nothing very much in particular

Shortly I’m going to bed – nice and early too. I’m absolutely whacked and I’ve already fallen asleep once or twice today sitting on my chair. I’m hoping to have a really good sleep tonight. I’m certainly tired enough but things never work out quite like that, do they?

Saturday 3rd June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… really bad fall today.

And this one is the worst that I’ve had. Even worse than the one on the boat coming back from Jersey last summer.

And not only that, it’s much more worrying too. usually what happens is that all of a sudden there’s no sensation at all in my right leg and when I put my foot down I simply fall over gently as if there’s no leg there.

However today, it was the left leg, my good (or maybe I should say less bad) leg, there was a stabbing pain all the way up my left leg and I had a really heavy fall.

It happened on the car park at Noz and I wasn’t able to stand up afterwards. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to Caliburn and lean on him to help me up.

Right now, I can’t move without being on crutches and each time I try to stand up or put my leg in an unusual position the pain comes back.

It’s not a “broken leg” type of pain but definitely a muscle or nerve issue. I’ll have to wait until the physio next comes to see me and have a chat with him. In the meantime I’ll be taking it easy

Not that I took it easy during the night. I stayed up until I finished the notes for the day in Canada 2017 on which I’d been working so that I could go to bed with a clean slate.

But once more, we seem to be back in the “tossing and turning during the night” stages. I thought that we’d got over all of that, but apparently not.

When the alarm went off this morning I was fast asleep again and it was a struggle to beat the second alarm.

There were a few things that I needed to do before setting out and then Caliburn and I went out to the shops.

And today I didn’t buy a thing at Noz. It really was a waste of time going and had I known how it would turn out I wouldn’t have gone at all.

At LeClerc I bought everything that I needed (although I bet that I’ve forgotten something) and then went to the appliances department in a separate building to buy a gas cylinder for my sodastream

Back here I had a fight with the freezer to fit in the beans that I’d bought and then settled down with my coffee and cheese on toast.

Regrettably, I crashed out for a while too. That’s becoming a habit, it seems, whenever I go out and about.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was a passenger on a coach trip with a young girl, someone like my youngest sister. We were in like a ballroom place sitting down talking. There were all kinds of things happening. We’d left the room for some reason but when we returned the band was just striking up a waltz. I grabbed hold of whoever I was with and we waltzed into the room. We were the only couple on the dance floor. my friend from Germany was there so she took her husband and they began to dance. We began to have a ballroom dance-type of thing. My partner wasn’t particularly good but I was able to guide her around somewhat. It began to be a nice pleasant evening.

Later on there was a family, something like the Lyons (as in “Life of Lyons”) family who lived at 222 some street or other. One of their children had to go to the radio centre to introduce a radio show. I went to pick him up. First of all I was surprised. I was expecting mansions, all this kind of thing but they were just modern terraced houses in a big square. I drove around and found the house. What was interesting here was that there was no front door. The living room overflowed into a common area. The doors behind went into the kitchens and bedrooms. I could hear the children talking in there. I recognised the voices so I went and knocked on the door leading to the back and they began to come out.

At that moment though I had a horrible attack of cramp in my left calf and that awoke me so I’ll never know how that would have ended..

Finally I had to go to a Tax Office last night to take all my papers. The first thing that I had to do was to take a plastic bag in which to put everything. There was a big pile of them. I took one that implied that I was Moroccan. I don’t know why I did that. I put all my papers in and had to join this queue. There were probably 20 clerks sitting at a long desk. You just went to stand at the desk and one of them would talk to you. I handed all the papers of my employment to her. I was marked down as “leaving definitively”. I had to hand in another certificate to the guy sitting next to this girl. He looked at it and said “we already have these. You didn’t need to bring this”. I replied “I bring everything anyway”. he began to go through all my paperwork with the girl. he asked me “do you have any more income with the Commonwealth?”. I replied “no”.

The rest of the day has been spent feeling sorry for myself and writing up the notes for the next day’s walk (in the days when I could walk) around Québec.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that years ago I wrote something about THE CHEMIN DU ROY from Montreal to Québec. I started from Repentigny because I wasn’t sure of the route out of Montreal but over time I traced the route and so I was on foot from the centre of the town out as far as the Jacques Cartier Bridge and a little bit futher east.

And one thing that I’ve often wondered. In North America most of the landmarks are named for the first European who actually saw them. I always wondered what Jacques Cartier must have said when he sailed up the St Lawrence to what in those days was the Iroquois settlement of Hochelaga in 1535 and saw that massive bridge.

There was a burger that had been in the fridge for a while and when I inspected it this evening I decided that the best thing to do with it would be to file it under CS. Consequently I had a further fight with the freezer and put one of the two remaining lasagne slices in there to keep

The other one, I ate tonight with a vegan salad and it was all extremely delicious. I’m really impressed with that lasagne, that’s for sure.

Not so impressed with my health though. It seems that I only have to think about going back to the Land of my Great Grandfather and I have a bad fall, just like last year.

However that time, I ignored it and went all the same, and look how that turned out. I think that my body is trying to tell me something.

What I’ll do for now is to carry on around the Port of Montreal ship-spotting and when things quieten down, dictate some radio notes that I’ve prepared.

No alarm tomorrow. I’ll have a good lie-in. But I have to be a-baking though. I’ve run out of fruit buns. No idea where I’m going to put the ones that need to be stored though. We’re back to where we were ages ago with not even the hint of a place to put stuff

Well, it’ll all work out somehow. It usually does. I just wish that I would.

Monday 22nd May 2023 – WHEN I AWOKE …

… this morning, I was actually fully clothed flat out on top of the bed. I’ve no idea what happened there but I must have been really tired.

However not so tired that I didn’t get up early. Once more, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

Yes, that was one strange night.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I started work. And by the time I finished at tea-time, I’d finished two radio programmes.

Had things been different they would have been finished a lot earlier too but there were plenty of interruptions.

Firstly, the nurse came round and gave me my fortnightly injection. It’s supposed to perk me up and keep me going for another two weeks but it doesn’t feel like it. The effects of the product are definitely not working as well as they did at first and wearing off quicker.

They’ve already increased the dose from 40mg to 60 mg and I suppose that the next step will be to have the injections every 10 days instead of every 14.

The “release and retained” lists for the clubs in the Welsh pyramid were released today as well – 9 days early and already, players are on the move around. Consequently I’ve had to start to update my lists earlier than usual.

And then someone with whom I wanted to have a word came on line so we were chatting for some considerable time too.

Going back to the radio programme, when I was in France during my schooldays I met a Swiss bassist called Walter Fröhlich. He was one of the bassists who, along with Felix Pappalardi and Gerry McAvoy, inspired me to play bass in the days before I heard “Quadrophenia”. Wandering around in the depths of my back-up drive I came across one of the songs on which Fröhlich played so of course I had to include it in one of the programmes.

All in all, I accomplished a lot today although it doesn’t much look like it.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta and vegetables. Yes, pasta. I said I would, and there was some nice spicy tomato sauce to go with it too.

There was the dictaphone too. I had my own apartment in Granville somewhere last night. It wasn’t by the sea at all but in the St Nicolas area. I’d spoken to Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves) about coming round but she was with another guy and said “the two of us would come round”. She put her boyfriend on the phone and he spoke to me. We agreed to meet up at 20:45. He asked what the weather was like because it was pouring down with rain. I said that it’s really wet under foot but not waterlogged or anything like that so it’s OK to move around. He replied “yes but the big difficulty is that Percy Penguin is the same height as you so we’d end up with 3 of us on my motor bike”. My response was “that’s OK. We can go out in Caliburn. I decided that the best thing was for me to go round at 21:00 and pick them both up. They were living here in this building at the time so I thought that it would be nice for Caliburn and me to come back.

And later on I was at a strange kind of roundabout or road junction somewhere. To negotiate it was extremely complicated and I ended up flattening a couple of trees that had been planted because of the way that some vehicles had been parked on it. A car and I merged in together on this junction but the other driver felt that he should have had priority although there wasn’t a road sign anywhere. It certainly wasn’t clear. When I stopped he left his car and came to start an argument. I explained the situation as I’d seen it but he carried on and on and on. I said “look, something happened there and something wasn’t correct but it doesn’t make any difference. No-one had any problems. The vehicles didn’t touch each other” but he still carried on. I went on saying “if you become upset like this every time you see something happen that’s not what you think is correct then I’m surprised that you ever get anywhere”. But so it continued.

The interesting thing about it was that all of this took place in French.

So I’ll be off to bed in a minute. There’s a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to do some revision and be ready to go. But I don’t feel like it. In fact I don’t feel much like anything right now. But I dunno. It’ll all work out in Boomland, as T2 told us back in 1970. And that reminds me – where the heck is my copy of that? I haven’t seen that around for absolute ages.

Saturday 6th May 2023 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… why I went to the shops this morning in the rain. It wasn’t as if I needed very much at all and it ended up being one of the cheapest shopping days that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.

For all the good I did, I may as well have stayed in bed, but that wasn’t anything that was going to work because despite not going to bed until midnight last night, I was up and about yet again before the alarm went off after another night spent with a great deal of tossing and turning.

Anyway, after the medication and checking my mails and messages I had a shower and then set the washing machine off with a load of dirty clothes while I went to the shops.

Noz came up with some vegan chocolate and some almond milk, and LeClerc had nothing whatever of any interest. In theory I could have done without anything that I bought today.

Back here I had a coffee and some cheese on toast, and then came in here to vegetate seeing as I’ve already done my weekend’s work.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, slightly more coherent than the previous day’s rubbish. I was writing a report on a Welsh football match that I’d seen. One of the teams that was playing was Barry Town. I remember dictating that there was no need for the opposition striker to head the ball exactly where he did, straight into the hands of the Barry keeper. he had the whole of the goal at which to aim. That’s all that I remember of this particular dream.

And then later on I’d gone to the bank last night to organise things about my new property. I had a pile of paperwork with me. I was standing in the queue waiting to be served but people who worked there were just coming along picking people out of the queue with whom to deal regardless of any order. I was left standing there while everyone else was served. I grabbed hold of one of these people and asked “how come he’s being served before me?”. She just looked at me and said “I don’t know” and carried on taking this other guy off somewhere to sit. I was standing there totally amazed at this, and it all seemed so real as well.

This afternoon I’ve been planning. If things really are going to take longer than I hope about moving house, I need to set a few things in motion. My microwave oven is way beyond its last legs and needs replacing as a matter of urgency. And then it might be an idea to assemble my kitchen cabinets anyway. We shall have to see about that.

There was football on the internet later. The second of the playoff semi-finals between Cardiff Metropolitan and Haverfordwest. And surprisingly, it was Haverfordwest who won the match despite finishing 3 places lower than the Met and playing on their ground.

They had New Zealand international goalkeeper Zak Turner to thank for their win. He impressed me the last time that I saw him, and today he saved a penalty and then made a brilliant stop in a one-on-one with Stuart Jones in the final minutes of the game.

In the penalty shootout he saved a couple of penalties too and when much-travelled former Swindon Town striker Elliott Dugan scored the winner the large away contingent erupted.

But seriously, it was a disappointing match as both teams were afraid to commit themselves, and Haverfordwest will have to play much better than this against Newtown if they want to get back into Europe for the first time since their UEFA cup adventure in 2004.

Tea tonight was the last of those little quinoa burgers with some chips and salad. A nice salad too and I’m getting so much better at this.

So now I’m going to dictate the radio notes that I wrote the other day and then I’m off to bed. I’m hoping for a nice lie-in tomorrow but it’s unlikely that I’ll have one, if the last few days have been anything to go by.

Friday 5th May 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a slightly better day today. Towards the end of the afternoon I started to feel a little more like it and actually managed to do some work.

Not that I was expecting to of course, because we had another depressing night. I was rather later than intended going to bed, and then although I was asleep quite early on I awoke a couple of times. Once at 06:30 when I couldn’t go back to sleep so by the time that the alarm went off at 07:00 I was up and about already.

Well, sort-of. I wouldn’t have said that I was wide awake.

Something that I’ve done today that I haven’t done for quite some considerable time was to have some breakfast. Over the past year or so I’ve been cutting down considerably on what I’ve been eating as I’m not as mobile as I once was.

Desserts and breakfast were the two things that were struck off my list but this morning I’m not sure why but I went for a bowl of cornflakes.

That actually led to a late lunch of my fruit bun and fru it. It did me good to wait for a while before eating. I’ll get to my target weight yet.

This afternoon I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was with a couple of people last night. We were planning on going somewhere in Wales. I was going t drive and take these 2 other people with me, a man and wife, but the wife insisted that we went via Reading instead of via Chester. I said that that was stupid because it’s hundreds of miles out of our way. She explained that she knew the way via Reading. I said that I knew the way via Chester. I lived in Chester (which I did, between 1972 and 1974) and I travelled through Chester dozens of times. She was absolutely adamant. This led to the most surprising argument etc. She was really in a fury. In the end her husband said “look, let’s go with you. I’ll persuade her and talk to her”. In the end they agreed to go with me but she said “he’s not having anything when he arrives”. I thought that at this stage I couldn’t really be bothered. We set out. When we were in Chester fuelling up at a petrol station I asked “what time did I say that we’d be in Chester?”. Someone replied “09:35” so I asked “what time is it now?”. It was 09:36. I said “it just goes to show, doesn’t it?”. On the way back we came to a road junction on the Calveley Straight. I turned left and found myself going back to Chester. I thought “God, here we go. She’s going to go off”. Everyone else thought it quite funny. We had to find somewhere to do a U-turn. There was a house with a large drive up ahead but I was going too fast. I ended up on the lawn and it was wet and slippery. I said “for God’s sake don’t let the car stop now”. But we did stop and slid up to the edge of the lawn. We all had to exit the car and lift it up over the edge onto the driveway so that we could drive away again. We were then in a garage of some description, all having to tidy it up. It seemed that the more we tidied it the more rubbish we found. In the end we were just brushing stuff into bins and bags etc. I had one guy brush a whole load of nails and tacks into a big plastic bag.

There was something else later about a debate as to whose car we would go in. In the end we agreed to go in mine so we all piled into it. It was when we had to be fully clothed to be outside. I remember thinking how lucky we were to be mainly together. On the way home my partner’s husband had died so she wanted to go that way to see him. I explained how they made the shine on but she wasn’t in the least bit interested. I said “but you’ll be finding out soon about this once you qualify” but no-one paid much attention …. and at this point I fell asleep. I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating but at this point in this dream (which was actually in places a meaningless jumble of indistinct words) there was dead silence followed by me snoring.

Finally, I was in work last night in an office, and this is a recurring dream, isn’t it? For some reason I just wasn’t accomplishing anything – rather like my life at the moment as it happens. I couldn’t concentrate. In the end I gave it up as a bad job. It was coffee break so I went to the coffee room. There was some kind of party there with lots of food. It took me ages to get a coffee by which time most of the food had gone. I picked up something to eat and sat down. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I knew, the room was empty, everyone had gone and all of the food had been taken away. I had to redress myself quickly. I couldn’t find my clothes at first, then I couldn’t find how to switch off the TV. For some reason the remote control wasn’t working. In the end I left it and walked to the head of the stairs. I leapt over the handrail and dropped down onto the floor below. Then I couldn’t remember where my office was. I had a pnaic attack at that moment. I walked down the corridor and someone nearly ran me over with a trolley. A guy smiled at me so he obviously knew who I was. I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t remember who. I eventually found my way back to my office where the people weren’t really concentrating. They were singing at their desks etc. It was all extremely weird. I thought “I’m just not getting anything done at all. I can’t concentrate. I’ll have to sit down, put my head down and work, maybe work all the way through my lunch break to make up for the time that I’ve wasted so far this morning”.

The rest of the day was spent finishing off the notes that I started the other day for a forthcoming radio programme. There wasn’t much to do but finding the motivation was the big issue here. Anyway, that’s all done and dusted and I’ll dictate them late tomorrow night when it’s all quiet.

Tea tonight was a salad with chips and some of those miniature vegan sausage rolls, the latter two cooked in the air fryer. And there’s definitely something wrong with my palette because they didn’t taste as they normally do either.

And then we had the football. The first of two semi-finals that shall eventually decide who’ll accompany TNS, Connahs Quay Nomads and Penybont into Europe. After their mauling at the weekend Y Bala were hoping to gain some consolation and we had quite an exciting match against Y Drenewydd.

The latter were the better team but Bala never stopped running and pushed them all the way. The big difference was that a coupke of shots from Y Drenewydd that hit the woodwork found their way into the back of the Bala net, whereas a couple of shots hitting the Drenewydd woodwork went out for goal kicks.

4-2 to Drenewydd was the final score and although they deserve their win, the scoreline was rather flattering. The winners will go on to play the winners of Saturday’s match between Cardiff Metro and Haverfordwest.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I have one or two more things to do and then I’m off to bed. Shopping in the morning and I don’t need much as I’m off to Leuven on Wednesday. Here’s hoping that I feel better.

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

… a happy star wars day today. May the Fourth be with you.

It’s certainly been with someone, because it hasn’t been with me at all. I don’t know why but I seem to have gone several paces backwards today.

It was another one of these usual nights that started off with a disaster. Every night before I go to bed I back up my computer.

There’s a powerful memory stick in one of the back ports and I use the search option to identify all of the files that I’ve used during the day and copy them onto the memory stick “just in case”.

So there I was using the “search all files saved today” function and all of a sudden it came up with “no files found”. That’s of course nonsense because I’ve spent much of the day working on the computer.

Three or four attempts came up with the same result, but then all of a sudden the light went on in my brain. In the time it had taken (a mere few milliseconds) to actually start and then finish the search it had passed midnight. So “today” was now “yesterday” and I wasn’t searching that. In the couple of milliseconds that had been “today” I hadn’t used any files.

From all of the foregoing you’ll gather that I had a late night. But even so, coupled with all of the usual difficulties that I’ve been having about sleeping, I was still up and about before the alarm went off at 07:00.

When I say “up and about”, I mean in the figurative sense. The body was there but the mind certainly wasn’t and I can’t think of a single thing that I did during the morning. I just sat and vegetated.

At lunchtime though I went and had a shower in the hope that that would revive me (it didn’t) and then I walked into town. And I hadn’t gone 20 yards from my doorstep before my right leg collapsed again. Luckily I had my crutches to hand otherwise we might have had a nasty accident.

It gave out again a bit further on as I headed down the hill and this is extremely discouraging news. I’m off to Leuven next Wednesday and this is not the time for my leg to be breaking down.

At the letting agent’s I introduced myself and gave them the necessary paperwork and discussed my plans. They shall make further enquiries and get back to me. But it’s not going to be as quick as I was expecting or hoping. Not to worry though. The news that they were able to give me was encouraging from my own point of view.

It was a bright sunny day when I set out so of course I went without a coat. And so as you might expect, it was raining when I returned. Only for a while tough. It soon brightened up again.

Still warm though, so the sight of two elderly tourists wandering around in thermal bubble-jackets, woolly hats and scarves was rather bewildering.

Back here I had some hot chocolate and more of my coffee biscuits and then transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. And for a start I had awoken again right in the middle of a dream only for it all to completely evaporate away the moment that I awoke. This is all very depressing and disappointment because I want to know who it is on whom I’m missing out.

Later I’d gone out for a run in a wood in an old quarry. I was running around there when my brother appeared (yet again). For a while he was with me but I accelerated a little and left him behind. When it came to going back home I started to race and I was quite some distance in front. I pounded up a steep gravel bank to the top, only to find that he had caught up with me somehow. He said something like “oh I’m going to catch you up”. I replied “no you aren’t”. He asked why and I replied “I’m going to go ‘BOOOH” to you” which of course I did. he was so startled that he fell down in this quarry all the way to the bottom again. I could have carried on had I wanted but I stopped to see how he was. Then we carried on back towards home talking about football and things like that.

And then I was with a girl from University last night. We were talking a bit about old times, then I forget most of what happened after that. But later I stepped back into this dream and she was running a newspaper or some kind of similar office. I’d started to do some volunteer work for her. I turned up in the afternoon after lunch. She was doling out the work to different people. She gave me a couple of pieces, one of which was some information about someone who lived in a certain building in the City of London. At first I didn’t recognise the name of the building – then I did because it was the building where my aunt used to live but had changed names. I knew that there was a pretty disreputable guy who lived there. This was asking all kinds about him. She wanted someone to research it. That’s why she asked me to do it. There was more stuff too, a little more complicated. I was reading this memo that had come. It was a simple straightforward memo by the looks of things. I suddenly had a kind-of Writer’s Block. I couldn’t think of how I was going to reply to it. Then I began to worry thinking that I don’t have much time as it is. I can’t afford to spend this time sitting here staring at this and not actually doing anything about it.

I also had a phone call to make. It was really early in the morning. Another friend of mine from University (and I wish that I’d noted who he was) was in a Court case. He’d said something about something or other. I’d sent him a message asking him if he needed me to do anything for him – to find anything. But late last night as I was going to, I noticed that he’d replied and said “no” so this morning very early as soon as I awoke I phoned him and had a very quiet word with him to wish him luck and making sure that there had been no new developments overnight that needed me to do something on his behalf.

Finally, coming into Paris, I was with a couple of good friends. We were driving. The first thing that I noticed was that at the slip road at the side of the motorway there were a couple of motor bikes that looked as if they’d had an accident and were blocking the road. A little further back there was a car and someone was moving a pile of cones so that the car could join the main motorway rather than carry on along the small road. Then there was a whole pile of motorcycles that looked as if they’d been flattened by something and cars that were parked any old how. It all looked as if they’d been disturbed by a hurricane or tornado or something. As we dropped down the hill into the city we could see everything in the distance. There was what looked like a huge gorilla walking around in a park quite some distance away. We could make it out with the naked eye. We all stopped and had a look. Just then our car performed a 360° pirouette then carried on driving.

After all of that I … errr … reclined for a while.

Tea tonight was one of those curried vegan burgers with some curried fried rice. And for some reason it didn’t taste as nice as my food has been doing just recently. In fact, thinking about it, yesterday’s meal didn’t taste as good as it might have done either. I wonder if I’m sickening for something.

Like I said just now, this is really not the time for me to go breaking down.

But break down I did because when I came back in here after tea, I crashed out yet again. This really is too bad.

Things are going to have to improve at some point soon, I hope, because all of this is getting on my nerves as you can imagine. I’m not looking forward to my trip next week if I can’t do better than this.

But one thing is certain after what I learnt today, and that is that I’m not going anywhere without my crutches. Not on your Nellus Secundus

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 – SOME STUPID PSEUDO-JOURNALIST …

… is telling me that the events that took place in Wrexham over the weekend are the most important things to have happened in Welsh football “for decades”.

So a club’s promotion from the fifth to the fourth tier of a foreign football league is more important than the country getting to the semi finals of the European Cup …checks notes … seven years ago, or getting to the World Cup just recently?

To be honest, I’m finding this hysteria and sycophanty to have reached the levels of total absurdity and insanity, and I’m totally astonished to see all these supposedly well-informed people blindly leaping aboard any old passing bandwagon. They have totally lost touch with reality.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s talk about more exciting things. Like the night that I had last night, for example.

It was another late night and yet another where I took ages to go off to sleep. And I awoke in the middle of events and took ages to go back to sleep again. But I must have done at some point because when the alarm went off, I was stark out and it was something of a battle to leave the bed.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages and so on, I set to work.

And I was at it for ages but it was all well worthwhile because I now have a biscuit tin full off rather overdone coffee, orange and almond biscuits.

Somewhat on the strong side unfortunately (note – put less coffee in next time) and rather overdone (must buy a new oven) but nevertheless, here we are. I tried a few with my afternoon hot chocolate and I’m still alive so I suppose they are OK.

As well as all of that I made a batch of dough for my naan bread and some more dough for the next round of pizzas. The naan dough didn’t rise at all but the pizza dough went up like a lift. I wonder why the difference. It’s the same flour.

And while I was at it I finished off that big bag of flour that I bought a while ago. A good job I bought another one the other week.

While the cleaner was here cleaning up, I carried on with the notes for the next radio programme and they are well over halfway through. I’ll finish them off over the next couple of days and dictate them through the night on Saturday when it’s quiet. With all of the baking done already I’ll have nothing to do on Sunday so I can edit and assemble the radio programme

After she left I had my hot chocolate and biscuits and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was a passenger on a double-decker bus last night going from South Wales up to the North going through all these little by-ways, country lanes and alongside canal towpaths, disrupting football matches etc. I ended up driving it at some point. It took 1 hour 20 minutes. There was a big campaign for 3 buses to go across Wales to link up bits of the country. They would all meet and interchange in the centre. Somewhere along the route I stopped and went to a chip shop. The people with me had written down an order, I think that it was for 2 chicken and chips or something and I was going to buy something else with chips. When I was finally served the guy told me “there’s something over there already cooked”. I said “I’ll tell you what I want and you can see what you can do”. But he took the paper from me which was an old order that had been printed out with the new order written in biro on the blank side. I thought to myself “this is going to end up in a right mess and confusion now he’s doing this”.

And later there was a game of football going on between 2 villages. I went along as a spectator. I was chatting to a couple of the guys on one team. They went 1-0 down almost straight away from the kick-off so I decided that I’d give them some coaching from the touchline. There was 1 lad who was really quick. I had him do a beautiful diagonal pass and run on for the return. He got in right behind the defence and hit the post. On another occasion he missed an open goal in pretty much the same fashion. 30 seconds later he scored one and 30 seconds later scored a second, all the time with me standing on the touchline telling him what to do. It looked quite straightforward and simple for me. Then I thought to myself “now we’re 2 minutes into the game, he’s hit the post, missed a sitter and scored twice. I’d better go to sit down and shut up before I’m accused of ruining the game.

It reminds me of a game that I saw years ago when Pionsat’s 3rd XI was playing somewhere. They had a young lad playing centre-forward who was completely out of his depth but trying very hard. When Pionsat won a penalty and the centre-back went to take it I shouted at the lad to follow it in. Sure enough he did, and sure enough, the keeper spilled it and he had a simple tap-in. No-one was more pleased than he was.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, and the naan bread wasn’t as good as the previous batch. That first batch must have been “beginner’s luck” but I’ll persevere. I’m sure that I’m on the right track somewhere and it’s just a case of fine-tuning everything until I arrive at where I want to be. We won’t be discouraged.

So I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have my appointment with the house agent about doing something about my new apartment and to see where I stand. In the meantime I’ll read up about Peter Rachman and see if I can find out a few tips. He was, of course, a stateless person and with me having no right to vote in any country in the World right now, we have more than just a few things in common.

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 – TODAY WAS A …

… day that I really want to forget.

Not that there was all that much to forget because it was what I would call a very short day today.

Last night however was a lot longer. Bright sunlight streaming in through the windows, birds chirping around outside and kids on their way to school and I hadn’t gone to bed yet. 07:10 and I was still up and about.

That’ll teach me to have an unscheduled lie-in on a Monday morning.

It was some time later than that that I finally went off to bed, with the alarm set for 13:00 just in case I happened to fall asleep deeper than I was expecting.

However that was a waste of time because although I did end up going to sleep at some point it was only for a couple of hours. I was back awake again at 10:00 and at 12:00 I’d given up any thought whatever of going off to sleep. And that was that.

After what might have been a breakfast or was probably more like a lunch, I had a listen to the dictaphone. There was something going on while I was asleep certainly but when I awoke it completely evaporated and I couldn’t remember anything at all about it. I certainly knew that I’d been away somewhere.

Next step was to listen to the radio programme that I was to send off for broadcasting this coming weekend.

It was one that I’d prepared last September before going off on my voyage to eternity, one of the batch when something must have happened to the tone controls because there was just far too much bass on it and it sounded really muffled.

Having spent a while trying to edit it, I gave up and redid it. It sounds much better now.

There was an interruption when the physiotherapist called. He had a look at my right leg, checked on my exercises and then that was that. he wasn’t here long. But I wasn’t happy when he went into my bedroom to grab a pillow. I don’t like people wandering around in my apartment like that.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, all very nice and tasty. There’s not a lot left over for a curry tomorrow night so I might have to lengthen it out with a potato or something.

And while we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m having to have a bake-in. I’ve run out of my delicious chocolate biscuits, run out of naan bread, and I also used the last of the pizza bases on Sunday too.

Nice as my chocolate biscuits were, I’ll have to think of a new type of biscuit to make. I should have bought some fresh ginger at the weekend but there’s always some sort of stuff lying around that I can use as flavouring in a regular 4/8/10 mixture.

But the naan bread will be interesting. I shall have fun with another batch of those.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bad night

Saturday 22nd July 2023 – AS YOU MIGHT …

Thursday 13th July 2023 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I …

Monday 10th July 2023 – THE FIRST DAY …

Thursday 15th June 2023 – IF I EVER LAY …

Wednesday 14th June 2023 – AHHH WELL!

Saturday 10th June 2023 – I WAS IN …

Friday 9th June 2023 – I HAVEN’T ‘ARF …

Sunday 4th June 2023 – THAT WAS A HORRIBLE …

Saturday 3rd June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Monday 22nd May 2023 – WHEN I AWOKE …

Saturday 6th May 2023 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

Friday 5th May 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 – SOME STUPID PSEUDO-JOURNALIST …

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 – TODAY WAS A …

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