Tag Archives: hospital

Thursday 27th March 2025 – I HOPE THAT NO-ONE …

… panicked after reading my previous message.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the Summer when I was in hospital at Avranches I had one of those collapses that I had quite frequently at home during that period, and awoke to find a group of panicking nurses and doctors around my bedside. They reckoned that it was a diabetic coma.

And so this afternoon, there I was in my bed at the dialysis centre, working away on the travelling laptop, when I began to shake and feel nauseous. That was exactly how I felt when my pancreatic issues began in 1991 and I thought “surely not again! As if I don’t have enough to worry about!”.

A few minutes later I had an enormous wave of fatigue, the room began to spin around and a haze descended across my vision. I blinked my eyes to clear my vision and when I opened them, my bed had been positioned flat instead of upright, the foot of the bed had been raised up and every member of the medical staff in the centre, including Emilie the Cute Consultant, was flapping around my bed.

Apparently I’d gone into another coma and had been out of my tree for about ten minutes.

It’s actually probably the best sleep that I’ve had for several days because last night it was another 02:30 finish, waiting for my algorithm to finish (and it did finish this time, too).

Being in bed is one thing. Going to sleep is quite a different thing entirely and I’m not sure that I slept for very long at all. When the alarm went off it was a very weary me who staggered to my feet and crawled off to the bathroom for a wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but as I expected, there was nothing on it. You can’t dream if you don’t go to sleep (well, you can but that’s another story too).

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning. She’s noticed that the oedemas on my legs have returned to a very slight degree. That’s bad news because it means that they’ll be turning the dialysis machine up to pump out more water.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still exploring stone circles and avenues in Devon and Cornwall and checking their alignment.

He considers that many of these circles are aligned to witness the rising or setting of the star Arcturus, the fourth-brightest star in the sky after Sirius, Canopus and Alpha Centauri, all four of which also figure prominently in the alignment of prehistoric structures throughout the World.

One thing that he hasn’t done, which would be an interesting project, would be to go back to our book on folklore and plot the worship of Arcturus in different time periods and different cultures to see if there’s any relation between them and the waves of migration across Europe in prehistoric times. It wouldn’t surprise me if something interesting turned up.

Back in here I had plenty of things to do and I was right in the middle of them when I noticed that it was after 12:00 and the taxi will be here shortly so I’d better make a move. I’d sorted everything out and was almost ready when my cleaner arrived in a state of breathlessness to fit my anaesthetic patches.

It was the “boss” who came to pick me up. We had someone else in the car too and he drove us all the way to Avranches where he dropped me off and carried on with his other passenger.

At the centre I was one of the first to arrive and they treated me with an ice-pack while they waited for “the doctor” to come to look at my fitting with the x-ray machine.

“The doctor” turned out to be Emilie the Cute Consultant who examined my implant closely, recommended that in future they inject elsewhere and even marked my skin for future reference so that my cleaner will know where to put the patches. She photographed it and gave me a copy for future reference.

Plugging me in the old places wasn’t as painful as it has been, thanks to the ice pack, and I leaned the good news that the time has been reduced to three and a half hours. After that, i could crack on with work.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came back for a chat later – about my health unfortunately. She was with me for about twenty minutes talking about all kinds of things and more good news is that I can dispense with two more lots of tablets. She’s not really all that happy about reducing my time but “we’ll give it a go and we’ll see”.

She did discuss with me all kinds of options, including psychiatric care. "But you don’t need that, do you? You don’t suffer from depression or anything". All of the different characters who live inside my head roared with laughter at that and told me that I ought to be nominated for an Oscar.

And then we had the drama. All kinds of people running around in a panic. Apparently I was just sitting there, totally unresponsive, eyes wide-open in a kind-of cataleptic daze. They honestly thought that I’d died. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however that we’ve talked previously about these cataleptic dazes that I sometimes have

Interestingly, my blood pressure was at 8.0 and it won’t go much lower than that without serious consequences so they abandoned the dialysis session. I still had to stay lying down for an hour or so before I could sit up. They were not happy at all.

So that looks as if it might be the end of the three-and-a-half hour experiment which is a shame. My heart can’t withstand the force of the machine, although the machine has run faster than that in the past.

A very groggy me staggered to the taxi and back here, I came upstairs, flung off my shoes and went straight to bed, fully clothed. And there I stayed until after midnight when I arose to type out my notes.

Now I’m going back to bed where I shall sleep until my name becomes Epic van Winkle and who cares about anything else?

But that little discussion with Emilie the Cute Consultant reminded me of one of the SAINT TRINIANS films when a riot in the school was taxing the patience of the headmistress who had taken over from Alastair Sim.
"I have a feeling that very shortly I shall be the only one around here who can actually produce a certificate to prove my sanity !"

Monday 24th March 2025 – THAT WAS QUITE …

… a shambles this afternoon. Not the dialysis itself exactly, but everything else that surrounded it. Roll on the day that this new centre opens in Granville when all of this will (hopefully) be a thing of the past, although I bet that it won’t be.

Going to bed early is also a thing of the past these days. After I finished dictating my notes I had the backing-up to perform and then one thing led to another. And until you start, you have no idea how many other things there are. Considering that there was nothing really planned for after the notes, I took an awfully long time doing it.

Once n bed though I was soon asleep but once again, not for long. This time I was actually too hot in bed with my old fleece but I wasn’t going to take it off because I knew full well that i’d only wake up an hour later and put it back on.

At about 05:00 we had another phantom alarm that awoke me bolt-upright and I took some convincing to go back to bed. I found out later that it was a message that someone had posted. So that time, it was easily explained, and I wish that there was an explanation as straightforward as that for all of the other times.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was deep in the arms of Morpheus. However, I threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed quite rapidly. Going to the bathroom was quite something else, however.

After a good wash and scrub up in case I see Emilie the Cute Consultant, I went into the kitchen to take my medication, along with the last of the home-made orange juice, and then I cut up my nice cake and put it in a box in the fridge before the nurse could put his sticky hands all over it.

And if the crumbs are anything to go by, it will be totally wicked.

By the way, seeing as we are on the subject of my cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … if you noted down the recipe earlier, you’ll need to note it down again because it’s changed slightly. I forgot something.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was away somewhere on a course from work and there were quite a few of us. We were in this kind-of complex that was consisting of small single rooms formed into some kind of terrace outside in a small park. We each had a little room. I was coming back from doing something and it was dark. I suddenly realised that I couldn’t remember my room number. I walked up and down this particular row of terraces hearing my radio programme being broadcast on the radio but that didn’t give me any help. I just could not remember my room. In the end I walked back to the office, went in, put on the light and had a look for my number, which was n°315. While I was in there, someone else came in and had a look around the office and went outside. He went to one of the cabins at this end of the complex which were on stilts and you needed steps to go up to them. This guy went to one of the cabins and I heard the discussion, one of them saying that a girl had cleaned his windows for him. He said the name of her but I can’t remember but it was a girl whom I knew. This guy came back down the steps again. I asked him what was the problem. He said that he was looking for a newspaper with the football results in from tonight. I asked him why he didn’t look at the football results on the internet but he became quite aggressive about that and said that he didn’t want to take on board another website to go with the others that he had, which I thought was one of the craziest things that I’d heard.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall all kinds of things that would make anyone realise that crazy things appear quite regularly during my nocturnal rambles. There’s nothing new about that. And as for the complex where I was during the night, I’ve been here before and I can see it quite clearly, but I’ve no idea where it is. It’s row after row of white single-storey buildings rather like the HORSA huts that were installed in schools after the 1944 Education Act raised the school leaving age from 14 to 15. We had some at our school – the old Science block, the Woodworking room and the school canteen.

The nurse had a lot to say today but nothing of any relevance, and once he left, I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK

Today, we’re back on the Astronomy lessons, discussing the Tropical Year, the one that everyone recognises with 365.24219 days in it, the time the Sun takes to return to the same position relative to the seasons of the calendar year.

However, there is also what is called the “Sidereal Year”. This is the year relating to the time that the Earth takes to complete one full orbit around the Sun, and line up again in the same position with the same stars that were there at the start of the cycle. Although the stars are said to be in “precession” – meaning that they are moving very slowly to the West relative to the position of the Earth – apparently it’s the Earth’s axis that is slowly changing. The sidereal year is actually 20 minutes or so longer than the Tropical Year.

This will explain why there is so much coal to be found in the Antarctic – many millions of years ago the position of the earth would have been such that the Antarctic would have been in a temperate forest zone.

We are also discussing the Antikythera computer. It was only found a couple of years before Lockyer wrote his book and so it was even more of a puzzle then that it still is today. However he makes some very educated guesses as to what it might be and quite a few of his remarks have been confirmed subsequently.

He considers that it might be a device for measuring the precession of the stars as an aid to seagoing navigation. Modern thought certainly considers it to be for that purpose but not for use at sea. It’s suggested that it was part of a shipment of freight being taken from the workshops of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in Rhodes (he is known to have considered the very problems that the mechanism can predict, and the ship carried a load of other Rhodian produce) and the calendar details are in the Corinthian calendar, indicating therefore the likely destination of the ship

Back in here I sorted out a few things and then attacked the rest of my Welsh homework. And now all of that is finished and ready for a final check tomorrow before I send it off.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my patches and then I had to wait around for the taxi.

On the way to Avranches we had to pick up someone else at the hospital to take home down there, and despite the visit we arrived bang on time at the dialysis centre.

Unfortunately, so did six other people and I was last in the queue. However a Nursing Auxiliary brought me an ice-pack and I put it on my arm while I waited.

Eventually, I was plugged in. And with the ice-pack, it wasn’t as painful as it might have been. But it was still hours late.

And I had a visit this afternoon. Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see how I was. And although our chat was strictly professional, she did smile, which is certainly a change from just recently.
"Is there anything that you need?" she asked
"Actually, there is" I replied. "But I don’t think that the hospital will provide it."

One thing that I did though was to ask her that, in view of the fact that my water retention is less than it was before, whether they might reduce my dialysis time. She asked how long and I replied "much as I love you, reduce it to as short a time as possible.". She’ll “think about it” and look at my tests.

They came and took several measures with their electronic machine and, rather ominously, a form to fill in about my final directives “if necessary”.

Once I was unplugged and ready to leave, I was told that I would have to wait ten minutes for someone else to bring back. That ten minutes turned out to be half an hour, consequently it was 19:25 when I finally returned home and I can well do without that. My cleaner was fed up of waiting, but not half as fed up as I was.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, and I seem to have gone rather berserk with the stuffing today. I shall be eating that for the rest of the month, I reckon.

Now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to back everything up and go to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subjects of Space, the stars and planets … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was someone once abducted by aliens and promised a trip around the Galaxy to see the stars and the planets.
Just as he was settling down to enjoy the trip a voice boomed out on the tannoy system near his head. "you’re not going anywhere, young man, until you’ve tidied your room, taken out the rubbish and brought your coffee mugs to the kitchen"
"What a strange thing to say" I told him. "What on earth was that all about?"
"You wouldn’t believe it" he replied. "Only I could be abducted by aliens and somehow end up on board the Mother Ship"

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… freezing cold night last night when I had to leave the comfort of my stinking pit to put on my dressing gown and go back to bed. I’ve no idea what’s happening here but as I said yesterday, it’s completely the opposite of how things were even a week ago.

At least it wasn’t quite such a late night as it was the previous night. After midnight, I was still letting it all hang out, but not for long and I was glad to see the inside of my bed, where I fell asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though, because I froze again. And after awakening a couple of times I gave up and put in the dressing gown, and then went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I sat bolt upright and was out of bed in an instant. I’m not sure why because I certainly didn’t feel like it. It was another uncomfortable stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis – a wash and a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there, not that it makes any difference because she doesn’t love me any more.

There was also some washing to do, including the bedding from last week that my cleaner changed. And as you might already have guessed, there’s still some washing left to do that I couldn’t fit into the machine

In the kitchen I had some things to do. There were six oranges that were definitely looking the worse for wear so I whizzed them up in my whizzer and filtered out the juice.

There’s a load of whizzed-up pulp now so what I plan to do is to make an orange, ginger and coconut oilcake and put all of the orange pulp in it. It might not work but if it does, it will certainly be different

The nurse came round and told me a few of the details about the funeral yesterday. He also asked for my medical card, that I don’t have, so he searched through the apartment too and couldn’t find it. I did tell him….

For breakfast I had some diluted fresh orange juice and some of my home-made apple and kiwi purée with my porridge and toast made of home-made bread. And it was all beautiful too. That’s what I call a good breakfast.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK. Our astronomy lessons are continuing and we’re still discussing different New Years, but we’re now coming round to the more practical aspects of what we have learned so far.

He’s come up with some surprising facts, including the fact that there are many similarities of religious and cultural practices between the Ancient Egyptians and some of the contemporary races of Central America. I wonder if this book is where Thor Heyerdahl found his ideas that led him on his adventures in papyrus and balsawood rafts

Going back to the story about various New Years, of which there are more than just a few scattered around the globe, the English New Year was the 25th March until 1752, and it still is for Income Tax purposes, although with the change of calendar, also in 1752 when England lost 11 days to bring it into alignment with everywhere else, The Income Tax New Year is 6th April these days.

Back in here I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe from last night. There was something going on about one of the earliest airports and airfields in Wales, created in the early 20th Century by someone who was wandering around there looking for something special. He came across a very flat piece of land that people were using from which to fly some kind of primitive machines. He was immediately captivated by this and went back to London to create the idea of having the first airport in Wales based on this particular site in the hills.

And if someone could find a flat place in the Welsh hills big enough to build an airport they will be doing well.

There was also an article that I saw in something that I’d written about Granville being the site of one of the very first ports for armed reconnaissance in the New World. But as I looked at it I saw that it was a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent. I wondered whether it had been a dream that I’d written down some time or other in the past without thinking about it and had come across it again. It certainly made no sense, but on the other hand it was a lot of truth in what I’d written.

As it happens, unlikely though it might seem, there was a famous corsair authorised by the French Government who sailed out of Granville, Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley, whose statue is just down the road from here. But “a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent” – my dreams “certainly made no sense”. Perish the thought, hey?

And later still, I went out around Brussels with Zero’s father. We’d come past one of the supermarkets so I suggested that we go there and do some shopping for me while we are out. Eventually we found a car park after several wrong turnings but I didn’t have my disabled car badge and there was nowhere to park really close to the supermarket door so I had to stagger all the way over to the supermarket. We found a parking place right outside but for some reason he didn’t go to fetch the car. We went to go in but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my crutches. I was finding it extremely difficult to move. I could see that this is going to be extremely difficult if I didn’t have my crutches with me to be able to move about in the supermarket, or anywhere for that matter.

Zero’s father? But no Zero. That’s a disappointment. And how I would like to be able to stagger somewhere without my crutches, difficult or not. However, I recognise this supermarket. It’s one that I’ve been to in Canada in the pouring rain, but I can’t remember where it is now, apart from the fact that it’s in Québec.

Back in here I had a few things to do and I was in the middle thereof when I was interrupted by my cleaner who had come to fit my patches. And while she was here I went to answer my telephone and there in the pouch inside the case was my medical card. However it managed to find its way there I really don’t know.

The taxi at lunchtime was driven by a very garrulous driver and we had an interesting chat all the way to Avranches.

At Avrenches they put an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and then went to connect me up. And while it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as some have in the recent past.

No-one bothered me at all today so I watched the highlights of last night’s football, carried out a few tasks that have been meaning to do, and then cut up a few sound-bytes. But the travelling laptop is not the quickest machine in the World and it takes forever.

After they unplugged me it was the same taxi driver who brought me home and we had another interesting chat coming home. My cleaner was waiting for me and we went through the medication and made a list of what I need, seeing as we now have a medical card to take to the Pharmacy.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, salad and one of the breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, seeing as I have now run out of baps for my vegan burgers. Maybe I ought to experiment and make some myself

So now I have radio notes to dictate and then I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow there will be the notes to edit and my orange, ginger and coconut cake to make. I’ve some pizza dough left for tomorrow night and I’m using up the bread that is in the freezer right now to make some space.

But seeing as we have been talking about Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not very well-known that he and his corsairs sailed occasionally with a group of pirates.
One day, in company with the pirates, his corsairs came across a British ship that, after a spirited fight, they managed to seize.
They rounded up all the British crew and upon doing a headcount, found that there were two missing, so the pirates and corsairs searched the ship for them and eventually dragged them out of hiding.
Later on, back in London the two men were interviewed by the Admiralty about their capture.
"How was it that you were captured?" said the First Sea Lord to the first one.
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the pirates"
"And you?" he asked the other one
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the … errr … other ruffians"

Thursday 20th March 2025 – A GREAT BIG …

… thanks to Julie the Cook who reunited me with the power cable for the travelling laptop this afternoon. Consequently, it’s all systems go again and I can go back to reading MY NEW BOOK. It’s been a very long few days without any reading matter at mealtime.

However, despite the absence of anything to read and consequently finishing my meals early, it was still a frightfully late night last night, even later than usual. In fact it was after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. What started off as listening to thirty-one and a half minutes or so of NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE – arguably the greatest jamband music track ever recorded, Felix Pappalardi (Cream’s producer and later murdered by his wife) on bass, and things just snowballed from there.

It was freezing during the night too. I forget how many times I awoke shivering in bed. And that’s a shame because having a nice clean bed in which to sleep, thanks to my faithful cleaner, I was hoping to spend many comfortable hours in it, but it wasn’t to be.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and it was a very weary, bedraggled me who staggered to his feet and off into the bathroom for a wash and shave.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And what a lovely surprise! Zero was there last night. I was round at her home. We all decided that we were going to go somewhere so it was a question of piling into the car. I imagined that i’d be sitting in the back seat with her so I was quite looking forward to the trip but when I reached the car she was sitting on the front passenger seat next to her father and I was obviously intended to go to sit on the seat at the back. But her mother and someone else there, they were teasing Zero terribly and I was really disappointed and annoyed to see it. In fact, I said something and finished by saying “at the end of the day, if you are fed up, you can come and sit on the back seat next to me” but I awoke before the dream became interesting.

Castor and even TOTGA may well have fallen off the edge of the nocturnal World but it’s lovely to see Zero again. I wish that she would make more appearances these days in whatever I’m up to during the night. However I shall refrain from mentioning fairies and the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in case my remarks are misconstrued. However, my subconscious is keeping me out of any suggestion of mischief again by keeping us apart. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether all of these nights where my family has intervened just as I am about to Get The Girl isn’t actually my subconscious sending out warning signals to me. It’s usually pretty good like that in real life so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were to do that in the nocturnal World.

At 08:15 I went to prepare myself for the taxi to arrive, in the absence of the nurse, and he appeared out of the woodwork just as I had finished putting on my second sock. So he went home with a flea in his ear.

Now that I’ve been to the opticians, I realise why it is that I didn’t understand where it was. It’s been so long since I’ve been out and about that where the optical clinic is, it was a shop the last time I saw it.

They gave me all kinds of tests, including squirting air into my eyes, and the result is that while my eyesight is not exactly what it should be and glasses could be prescribed if I wanted, they aren’t going to make too much of a difference. That’s good news in a way because I had laser surgery on my eyes in 1997 and whatever they did is still holding up

That was a very interesting situation, that. I was driving my boss back from Luxembourg when a small stone thrown up by a lorry on the other carriageway came through my open window and hit me in the eye. Without thinking, I rubbed it of course.

The cornea was damaged and needed surgery, and because it was an industrial accident the surgery was covered 100%. So just repair the damage, or go the whole hog in both eyes?

After my eyes had healed and I went back to work, the first job was to take the lorry down to Vienna. I really used to get out and about in those days.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr .. apartment I had a late breakfast with still no book as yet, and then came back in here. There wasn’t much time for anything because it was already late and my cleaner came along to fit my patches.

The taxi was early again but there was someone else to pick up and drop off on the way so I wasn’t all that early.

After Julie the Cook found my cable for me, she plugged me in to my machine, and it was back to the old painful moments again.

The dietician came to see me today and asked me about the food that i’m eating. She seems to be surprised at how little I am eating – I thought that I was eating quite a lot. She recommends that as of now I take two disgusting drinks every day because my protein level is falling rapidly.

But having talked at great length about my vegan diet, she asked me "which snack do you take from the trolley in mid-afternoon with your coffee?"
My reply was "which one of them is vegan?"
"Ohh yes"

And I really despair of modern humanity. Who needs a calculator to be able to work out that if you drink about 2 litres of milk a week, roughly how much do you drink per day? And if you eat 600 grammes of bread per week, what’s your daily intake?

After she left I had plenty of things to do, like update the travelling laptop and begin to hack a few very long sound-bytes into some more manageable sizes ready to edit one of these days. I’m trying to cope with all of the work outstanding while I’m at dialysis but it just seems to be making more

Another thing that I did was to have a look through Amazon and see what I would like to have in the kitchen of my new apartment – fittings and the like. I didn’t treat myself to a Christmas or birthday present because I want to spend the money to make my kitchen nice and easy in which to work.

The taxi was waiting to take me (and my travelling laptop power lead) back home and I was here for about 18:45. And then we had a panic because my medical card is not in my wallet where it ought to be. And that’s the trouble. Everything has to have its place and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. I shall have to turn the place upside-down tomorrow.

Tea tonight was the last of my vegan pies with steamed veg. Last week’s veg was something of a disappointment so instead of the microwave steamer I used the electric steamer and that worked so much better.

It’s only a low wattage thing but I used that down on the farm when there was an excess charge in the batteries and it worked really well. I used to have an enamel one that sits on the stove and I made good use of that in winter, but I gave that to Ingrid as a present for helping me pack the van when I moved to Leuven in 2016.

I had my book to read tonight at long last, and we have been discussing Anaximander. He was one of the earliest founders of modern geometry and geography and was one of the earliest people to realise that because of the rotation of the sun, the planets and the stars around the sky, the earth is actually in the centre of the universe with sky all around it rather than being a flat disk with the sky only above it.

However, his theory that the earth was a cylinder with humanity on the flat bit at the top was rather wide of the mark. It was apparent even in those days that the earth was round.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I’m Woodstocking tomorrow and hoping to find my medical card, wherever that may be.

Seeing as we have been talking about Anaximander and his theories … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "how many Londoners does it take to change a lightbulb"
"I don’t know" she replied. "How many does it take?"
"Only one" I replied. "They just hold the lightbulb up and wait for the World to turn around them"

Monday 17TH March 2025 – SOMEONE I KNOW ..

… IS GOING THE RIGHT WAY FOR A SMACKED BOTTOM AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.

She’ll know all about it though when I see her next. When I took the travelling laptop out of my bag when I arrived home from dialysis, "where’s the power lead?". One of the nurses had packed my bag for me while I was being weighed, hadn’t she?

It goes without saying that it’s my own fault for not checking but even so, I have every right to be annoyed by it. If I have another power lead for it around here, then all well and good but I’m not convinced that I have. I shall have to turn out a cupboard or two tomorrow morning.

It’s strange really that all these little things that come along seem to have such a dramatic effect. It’s like that old kiddies’ poem FOR WANT OF A NAIL.

The dramatic effect that relates to going to bed early is that it has been abandoned. It was another 00:30 night last night when I suppose, had I exerted myself, I could have been in bed much earlier. But after I’d finished writing my notes and backing up the computer I loitered around for a while, not really doing all that much.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I lay without moving until the alarm went off. I was away on my travels at that point but everything immediately evaporated.

Anyway, I was out of bed quite quickly for a change and then headed off to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up, a shave and a wash of the undies so that I’m all clean for dialysis this afternoon

In the kitchen I remembered to take my medicine this morning, seeing as I had apparently forgotten yesterday – both lots – and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. I fell asleep as soon as I went to bed and was dreaming about doing some 3D modelling with people and objects but when I awoke a little later it had all disappeared.

Not that I remember awakening, as I mentioned earlier. I hope that whatever it was, it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA, Zero or Moonchild.

And then I was somewhere in some village and had to put a huge flower pot outside on the street corner. Having manoeuvred it outside, the only way that I could manoeuvre it down the street was by going underneath it, raising up part of the roof with the back of my head and walking with the flower pot pivoting on the ground on just one part of the circle of the base. And so I set off like that. There were a few other people in the street. There was one woman putting the rubbish out, another one putting something else out, some kind of street furniture that she put out in front of the house opposite across the road. I carried on walking with this flower pot thing in a peculiar hunched-up position. I came to the restaurant on the corner and a little girl disappeared inside. I had a look in the window but couldn’t see her. After I dropped off the trousers to this …fell asleep here… I took a piece of cloth that was similar, I suppose, to what she was wearing and I forget what I did with it. I went into the restaurant. There was a girl whom I knew there who was sitting talking to another girl whom I also knew. I wondered what they were talking about

There aren’t half some strange goings-on when I’m asleep, that’s for sure. That particular dream seems to relate to nothing at all. But there’s too much of this falling asleep and dreams evaporating. I really do hope that I’m not missing anything exciting.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up earlier than usual today. Seeing as it’s her final day before her rest I had half-expected her to be snowed under with blood tests and injections before her oppo takes over tomorrow.

She brought me some very bad news about another patient of hers with whom I have travelled to dialysis. He won’t be going there again, unfortunately. That’s two of my fellow passengers who have disappeared and I’ve only been going six months. It’s the fate that awaits every single one of us, I suppose.

After she left I made breakfast and BEGAN TO read MY NEW BOOK.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or so ago we read THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY by Sir Norman Lockyer, in which he discusses the alignment of Egyptian temples and pyramids with the stars, the moon and the sun.

His follow-up book applies the same principles to Stonehenge and other early British monuments and it sounds as if it’s going to be totally fascinating.

So far though, we’re having a basic lesson in the principles of astronomy, to set the scene, and that’s interesting too. So much so that I checked the book list and noticed that he had written a book called ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY. It goes without saying that I’ve tracked down a copy and downloaded it to my reading list for later perusal.

Back in here I did half of my homework for my Welsh lesson. I’ll do the other half next week. It couldn’t be finished off today because it involves something that we are going to be doing in class tomorrow.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and we chatted for a while before she wandered off again. I waited for the taxi which was late today.

It was a chatty female driver who had taken me before and we had an entertaining drive down to Avranches. Several of us arrived at the same time and so I had to wait.

Coupling up was relatively painless today and then I was left alone for quite a while. I could revise my Welsh, update the computer from the back-up and I can’t remember what I did after that. It can’t have been important.

What interrupted my train of thought was a whole list of items. My cleaner contacted me to say that they won’t serve me with any more patches. The clinic has changed it to cream only. And so I had a dispute with the doctor about that and he rewrote my prescription.

The nurse brought me some papers for the optician’s on Thursday morning and then my machine began to play up

Other news is that they have reset my target weight and I’m now going to be (hopefully) 1kg lighter, and that suits me fine. It seems that the water retention is still there but my underlying weight is reducing. In fact I’m only 1.5kg above my “non-athletic weight” these days if I could lose the water.

After I’d been uncoupled I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi and a very taciturn driver brought me home. This was when I discovered the problem with the travelling laptop cable.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now it’s bedtime ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow.

But seeing as we are talking about packing … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me about the visit of the auditors to the parachute-packing company.
He was going through the books and asked "in which account do you note the parachutes that have been returned due to incorrect packing?"
"We don’t" said the cashier. "I’ve worked here for forty years and in all that time no-one has ever brought one back to say that it didn’t work correctly."

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 13th March 2025 – THERE HAS BEEN SNOW …

… up the road in Caen earlier today, so someone said. I don’t imagine that there was very much at all, but even so, it’s a sign that winter is still with us, despite the glorious week that we had at Carnaval.

It was certainly freezing last night. My cleaner mentioned that there was ice everywhere quite early on and when Isabelle the Nurse came round, it was a mere 2°c, despite the sunshine.

Not that I felt any of it, because I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep. I finally managed to drop off into the Land of Nod, even though it was another late night last night. I managed to catch Colwyn Bay come from behind to beat Caersws and to watch Gresford Athletics really good run of form over the last few weeks come to a shuddering halt against Cegidfa.

But at least it wasn’t as late as the previous one though. I was in bed by 00:30 which was about an hour earlier. And I remember almost nothing of what happened during the night – just a vague memory of changing the batteries in the dictaphone, so there must be something on there from the night.

Despite actually managing to sleep, it was a very weary Yours Truly who struggled out from underneath the sheets and into the light, beating the second alarm by not very much at all.

And after a good scrub up it’s Dialysis Day) and a stop in the kitchen for the medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone. I was doing something with a 3D character when the bed collapsed underneath me. I had a panic attack at that point because I couldn’t pick myself up off the floor and couldn’t stand up again. When I was dictating that the batteries in the dictaphone went flat so it’s not been my night at all

And apart from that moment about changing the batteries in the dictaphone I remember nothing at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again, flying in and flying out again. She apologised for being late today because one of her clients had mislaid his medication. And for that reason,when I finally move downstairs, all of my medication will be in one box on one shelf and nowhere else.

While we’re on the subject of moving downstairs … "well, one of us is" – ed … I forgot, to my shame, to mention yesterday that I’d had a chat with Alison. How could I forget to mention that? Anyway, it looks as if our intrepid band of travellers will be descending on me some time in August. That will be lovely.

Breakfast was next, and then MY NEW BOOK. Today, our talk on “cohabiting customs” has taken us into the realm of migration.

He makes some very interesting points too. He reckons that as in most mammal groups, there may well have been a dominant male who kept the females to himself and when teen boys reached sexual maturity they were expelled from the group.

If one man had five women, then it means of course that four men had none. And the only way that they would obtain a mate was either by overpowering the senior male and seizing some of his, or else roaming afield to raid a neighbouring group. If a strong group of wandering males encountered a weaker group, they would seize the females and the men of that group would either be killed or would flee.

That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Samuel Hearne’s first-nation Canadians, on their way back from their trip, came across a weaker band, seized all of the women and girls and … well … Samuel Hearne didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … book, the fleeing men would start off the next cycle, roaming afield until they in turn found a weaker band und so weiter

He draws a parallel between this scenario and the fact that it seems to be always the weaker, more impoverished and less-technologically-advanced groups who seem to exist in the worst and poorest environments.

There are pages and pages of this – in my opinion far more than there needs to be, and I can’t help thinking that our author must have been a bundle of fun to have around at parties.

After breakfast I began to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated on Saturday night but I didn’t manage to go very far because I was distracted. And in any case my cleaner appeared, earlier than usual.

It’s a good job that she did too because my 12:30 taxi to dialysis turned out to be a 12:05 ambulance on its way back to Avranches, and so we had the pantomime of me trying to climb into the back. With no power in my legs, I have to sit on the floor and heave myself up with my arms. God alone only knows what will happen when this paralysis spreads into my arms.

First in again though at dialysis, so early that I had to wait around. But when they did let me in I was first in and first to be coupled up. With the anaesthetic not having had long enough to act, I spent five minutes with an icepack wrapped around my arm but it didn’t seem to do very much good and I certainly felt it.

Apart from the coffee coming round, no-one at all interrupted me and I managed to accomplish a pile of work today. I wish that it would be like that all the time.

The guy who seems to run the show came to pick me up tonight and with another passenger on board, we came to Granville. My cleaner was there waiting for me and it really was nice to be back here by 18:30. I wish that it would be like that every trip. And who knows? When they set up the centre at Granville, whenever that may be, I may well be home before then.

Tea tonight was one of my pies with steamed veg and gravy. Potatoes, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, a little of each. And my pie was delicious. But I really have gone too far overboard with all this cabbage. It’ll still be here long after I’ve gone.

But I’ll be gone in a moment- off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … we had some fun in the centre this afternoon.
One of the nurses was going to couple up a female patient, and she was saying "now just relax, Julie. It’s only a little job this with the two needles. It’s not difficult and it won’t hurt, Julie, and it’ll be all over in a matter of seconds and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief"
"But my name’s not Julie" said the patient
"I know" said the nurse "but mine is"

Monday 10th March 2025 – I HAVE RECEIVED …

… a rather disturbing communication today from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

At first I thought that it might have been Castor who had finally caught up with me but it’s much more disturbing than concerning anything that might (or might not) have occurred on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my place in Canada is actually on the frontier with the USA – quite literally, because my southern boundary is actually the international border between Canada and the USA. This letter tells me that if I "see or hear any suspicious activity at or near the border, to telephone …" and gives me a freephone number to use.

Obviously the Canadian authorities are taking Trump’s sabre-rattling quite seriously and who can blame them? It’s bad enough having a bunch of paranoiacs living next door to you but when the head of the family is someone who is in my opinion clearly insane, it must be extremely worrying.

Seeing Trump’s rants about Canadians, Mexicans and all kinds of other people, I am reminded of the outpourings from Nazi Germany reviling the Jews and the Poles in the 1930s and I have begun to wonder, a long time before this, whether Putin and Trump have done a deal to divide the World between them – Putin in Europe and Trump in America. If so, the Americans are going to learn the hard way that if you lie down with dogs, you’ll inevitably end up with fleas. Putin is much more clever than Trump.

But anyway, at a certain moment I decided that I would leave the politics out of my writings, but sometimes it really is unavoidable.

Going to bed late seems to be unavoidable too these days. After 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed after a long day’s work. I was asleep quite quickly too and only awoke once or twice during the night.

When the alarm went off it took me a minute or two to gather my wits, which is surprising seeing how few I have these days, and then I staggered of into the bathroom. I had a wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, and then I had some washing to do. I must make myself and my clothes look pretty.

After the medication I came back in here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back at the family home in Vine Tree Avenue having a wrestling match with another kid. all of a sudden I felt another person join in. Of course, both my hands were occupied with the first kid so I couldn’t do anything about the second one starting. After a minute or two I felt “this other person means this!”. The first person disengaged and cleared off but the second person continued to grab me around the neck etc. After a while it spoke and I recognised it as someone from OUSA. I thought “what have I done to you to merit this?”. She came up with some kind of nebulous response that didn’t mean a thing and pressed home her attack. In the end I refused to retaliate and tried to wriggle myself free. After a couple of minutes she said “well I suppose you have other things to do, have you?”. I thought to myself “not really but I can find something”. She disengaged and in a minute or two she left. I thought “what on earth was that all about?”. I went into the living room or other room. My grandfather was there but I didn’t see him but it was his dog and our collie was there. I began to stroke them both. Our collie was old and blind so I talked to her to let her know that it was me but the two dogs were there in our living room and I just continued to stroke them for a while before I went to look for my shoes to go outside.

It’s not difficult to understand why anyone from OUSA would want to strangle me. I was definitely not “flavour of the month” back in those days but then again far too many people took far too many things far too seriously. But what on earth is my grandfather (or, at least, his dog) doing in my dreams? He (the grandfather, and probably the dog too) has been dead for almost 50 years.

The nurse actually had something interesting to discuss today. We were talking about one of the local football clubs that I used to go to see in the days when I could get out and about. Apparently he used to play for them years ago and will even turn out today when they are short of players.

Then it was breakfast and MY NEW BOOK time. Today we are starting to come to the meat of the matter.

He tells us that "analysis of each custom, rite, or belief will show it to consist of three distinct parts, which I would distinguish by the following names :-
1. The formula.
2. The purpose.
3. The penalty or result."
And that there are usually several ancillary elements too.

What he intends to do is to make a table, say, from 1 to 10 and then from, say, A-Z. Then to select folk tales from all over the World and fit each one horizontally into the table, with common principal parts in the same numbered column and common ancillary elements in the lettered column.

He’ll then to read down the columns to identify common themes in various different folk tales and see if he can identify common folk tales that have changed over the centuries.

It’s going to be an absolutely fascinating thing to try to do and I’m looking forward to seeing him do it and what might be his results.

As a matter of fact, it has a special appeal to me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when this project about dreams started, it was the aim of the student undertaking this project to see whether or not dreams had common threads running through them and whether or not several over a long period could actually be tied together like episodes of a soap opera. We’ve seen enough over the years to identify many common threads but I’m wondering if I ought to go back and set up a table like Laurence Gomme has.

Back in here I was unzipping files until my cleaner arrived, and I witnessed her have meltdown when she realised that they had given her the wrong medication at the pharmacy.

The taxi was late arriving and then we still had to go to pick up someone along the way. Consequently I was last in the queue and had to wait for ages for them to deal with me.

They checked my heart today and I still have it, which is good news. It means that I’ve not turned into a Tory yet. They also gave my feet an examination and I noticed that the nurse put on rubber gloves before she touched my socks.

Last in means last out and we had to bring someone else home too. And then we had an accident. The car in front overshot his turning, stopped and then reversed backwards without looking, straight into the front of our car. Luckily, the damage was minimal and after what can be best described as “a frank exchange of views” the drivers exchanged details and we drove on.

All the time, I was thinking that it was a shame that it wasn’t my favourite taxi driver taking me home. I would have loved to have seen the fireworks.

It was 19:35 when I staggered in here. I didn’t feel much like making tea but I had a stuffed pepper all the same. And now I’ll be off to bed in a moment.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was talking the other week about studying while I am in dialysis. While I was uploading stuff to the computer I came across a programming language called “Python”.

It’s a useful little program for writing little scripts for batch processing so I uploaded it back at the farm when I was doing some work in 3D. Today at dialysis I downloaded the most recent version as well as the clip libraries and I reckon that I might see what I can do with it. It’ll keep me out of mischief.

But while we’re on the subject of snakes … "well, one of us is" – ed … someone once caught a snake and asked me what type it was
"How long is it?" I asked
"It’s just about 3.14159 feet long" he replied
"Oh yes" I replied. "What you have there is a pi-thon"

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday 3rd March 2025 – THAT WAS MUCH …

… less painful today in the dialysis centre. In fact, it was just the normal amount of pain and after last Saturday, it was something of a relief. I certainly wasn’t expecting or hoping for another afternoon like that one.

It had taken me quite a while to psyche myself up for the trip today, trying to put off for as long as possible going to bed in the hope that today wouldn’t actually come round. Eventually though, even later than usual, I made it into bed.

For a change, especially during Carnaval week, I slept all the way through until the alarm went off. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, but then again, it’s not as if it was a long time last night.

It was still quite a desperate struggle to rise up from the bed before the second alarm but I did manage it. Then into the bathroom for a wash and even a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there today.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was preparing for dialysis and two of the girls from the local area were helping me make myself ready. One of them asked me how I was going to behave at dialysis in order to keep out of mischief. I simply took her in my arms and embraced her, and gave her a huge kiss, something that took her completely by surprise and she was helpless to recover. Her friend thought that it was funny and quite laughed, making some kind of comment or two about the situation and how unlikely it was to take place for real. I was much more interested in the reaction of the other one.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if I’m dreaming about dialysis it really is the beginning of the end. When I’m not there I want to relax and not have to worry about it, and if it’s appearing during the night and affecting my dream patterns, which as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my only form of escapism these days, then it’s destroying the last little pleasure that I have left. What did I say just now about “psyching myself up” for dialysis?

But misbehaving in the dialysis centre – chance would be a fine thing. I can laugh and joke with the nurses there, right enough, but I bet that they know how to deal with patients when the rough stuff starts. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you can tell how much a patient is liked by the nurses by how they put the needles in, and it’s painful enough without them seeking any revenge for anything.

The nurse was early today but still later than yesterday which is good news. He was only here for two minutes and then off out again and that’s fine by me. I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

In fact, it’s the last of my book and I’m not sorry about that. I would have enjoyed reading it under normal circumstances but being an old book the pages are worn and discoloured and it’s very difficult to make out the print. It’s definitely one of the Gutenberg Project’s failures. So I wonder what the reading list has in store for me tomorrow

Back in here, I’ve been chatting to the people at the radio and they have agreed to my suggestion that the weekend of 15th-17th August will be a “Woodstock Weekend”.

Friday night’s programme will be the introduction plus what happened on the Friday

Saturday’s will be about what happened on the Saturday

Sunday’s will be about what happened on the Sunday plus the “after Woodstock” details.

So now that its official, I’d better motivate myself and do it. On my travels around I’ve heard dozens of anecdotes and I’ll need to verify them as much as I can and even find a pile more. And then track down some music from some of the more obscure bands who played there, including the band that opened the “practice Woodstock” concert a week earlier when they tested the stage and the sound system.

After I’d sorted that out, I made up a “cheat sheet” for my Welsh, seeing as we have a revision week coming up quite soon. We’re back in class tomorrow so I can’t leave it for too long before I sort myself out.

My cleaner breezed in to fit my patches and the taxi came for me even before she had left.

There were three passengers in there today and I’m certainly having my money’s worth, seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed as we comply faithfully with the new rules and regulations concerning the combining of transport.

For a change, I was almost first to arrive at dialysis and I actually was the first to be connected up. That’s good news because first in, first out and I’ll go with that.

The doctor (not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant) came to see me today and I told him that I was keen to reduce my hours. He wasn’t very happy about the idea but after a long chat he agreed to at least make a series of examinations to see if the toxins are being extracted sufficiently to enable them to consider it.

Apart from that, I revised my Welsh again and then performed some housekeeping on the computer, tidying up some of the directories, merging duplicate files and the like.

After they uncoupled me I was so early that I had to wait five minutes for my taxi, and it was really nice to be back home while it was still light

Also very nice was my leek soup, with some potatoes and veg decanted into it and accompanied by fresh bread. It made a very pleasant change from the usual food, but I’m still not all that hungry

So my Welsh lessons start up again tomorrow and I need to be on form so I’ll crawl off to bed right now.

But as we are talking about misbehaviour in hospitals … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of an incident in the legendary INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY
The chief surgeon looked at the report card that Gordon Harker had filled in and said to the nurse "I know Dr Toomey’s face but I can’t place it. Is he familiar to you?"
"Huh!" said the nurse. "Very!"

Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 27th February 2025 – ANOTHER PAINFUL SESSION …

… in the dialysis centre today. And not just because of the needles either but because the stabbing pain in my foot started up again mid-session.

"Would you like a doliprane?" aske the nurse. Had it not been one of my favourite nurses I would have shown her where to put the doliprane, but I managed to restrain myself. I’m becoming quite good at that.

Not so good at going to bed though. Just as I was about to hit the hay a concert of 10,000 Maniacs that I’d done in the good old “Radio Anglais” days came around on the playlist. So that was me, well-gone for ninety-five minutes. Yes, there are many things more interesting than sleeping.

As it happened I didn’t go straight to sleep either. I tossed and turned for quite a while and at one stage thought that I wasn’t going to manage to drop off at all. But when the alarm went off I was definitely asleep, even though it had been a turbulent night.

At that moment I was discussing Tranmere Rovers with a friend of mine. I’d heard that Tranmere had signed a new goalkeeper and I asked him about it. He came out with a name but I couldn’t find it. I wondered whether it might have been someone with a similar name. We had a team-sheet for one of their next game and looked at the changes in the squad over the last week. There must have been about fifty new players signed. “This is surprising”. He asked about one or two. I said that it seems to be that they are going for quantity not quality and that is quite probably the wrong way round. We were chatting about that when the alarm went off.

That’s a familiar story. During the close season almost two years ago, in the run-up to the European matches Connah’s Quay Nomads had enough players to be able to put out two completely different teams each half in a warm-up game against Stranraer. However, as events subsequently proved, quantity is no substitute for quality and if they had signed five really decent players for the budget of ten run-of-the-mill ones, they would have done so much better.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, followed by a shave. And then into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. That’s twice during the night that I’ve reached for the dictaphone and the dream has evaporated right out from underneath me. But for the second one I have the image of a very small girl still engraved in my mind but I don’t know what she was doing or where she fitted in to this but she was there impressed on my mind even though the rest of the dream and the one before it have totally disappeared.

That’s becoming a rather far-too-familiar tale of woe these days and I wish that it wasn’t. I put it down to old age myself. It’s really sad how my memory is deteriorating.

Later on, a local farmer in Sandbach had written to the local Country magazine to write about the projects for his farm and what he was planning to do on increasing his investment etc in order to reap greater dividends. He explained that it was necessary to do that to keep ahead of the programme and to keep his agriculture on the move. In actual fact he’d been reading dozens of these farming magazines and decided to make a change in the way he operates his cattle and try something to be done in a different way. This was going to require a lot of investments and he was making a start on doing it right now.

It wasn’t actually Sandbach but Shavington. I can still see the place where it all happened … "your memory’s not that bad then" – ed … and it was by the Sugar Loaf in Crewe Road where I used to catch the bus to go to school. Not that I caught the bus for all that long because once I had built a decent(ish) pushbike I used to cycle to school

Finally I was going somewhere in a car. There was a long queue of traffic going through a tunnel. We were having to wait in this queue, and then a few vehicles in front began to move but the one immediately in front of me didn’t move. I had a look and there were two people beneath it. I wondered what they were doing. Someone behind me klaxoned so I explained to him. Then these two people began to push their car out of the way, apologised and said that their car won’t start. I replied “it’s not any problem” and carried on. A little further on I came across a couple of older motorcyclists. One of them, the woman, was telling me that now that they had retired they had bought a motorcycle to travel about but I watched the man try to climb on but he couldn’t lift his leg high enough to climb up onto the motorbike. He was there for about 10 minutes making an effort.

So after the previous night, there I was last night going for a ride in a car. Without Zero unfortunately. It would be too much, I suppose, to expect her to come along twice in succession but I can live in hope. However that “couldn’t get his leg over” is very reminiscent of the famous moment between “Johnners” and “Aggers” LIVE ON THE BBC.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and breezed out again in a flurry, stopping just about long enough to read my health card as tomorrow is her last day in this month and so she’ll be very busy. And then she’s Carnavalling.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’ve been discussing Civil War military emplacements today, not that there are so many still extant. Tomorrow we’ll be starting on the earliest traces of industry and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve discussed this before. I’m interested to see what is his opinion of the wiping out of the industrial base upon the arrival of the Saxons.

Next stop was back in the bathroom where I went one better than David Crosby, presumably because I’d had the ‘flu for Christmas and I’m paranoid when I look in the mirror and see a police car. However, I didn’t give in an inch to fear and sorted out the sheep-shearer.

Back in here I carried on with my proto-Woodstock programme and wrote a few more notes but it’s not going as quickly as I would like. I shall have to finish it tomorrow regardless otherwise I’ll be doing it for ever and I have other things to do.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi to arrive.

Today we had another new driver and I had to help her find a way out of here. It’s more complicated than usual today as all of the motor homes arrive ready for Carnaval. She was late arriving but she had her foot down for much of the way. It’s much easier now that yet another radar has gone up in flames. That’s three now in the area.

Last in at the hospital though, so last to be connected up. Despite all of the people milling around in there today, no-one came to disturb me except to bring me the coffee, and that suits me fine. I revised my Welsh and then chopped up a sound-track of a Canadian group who had appeared once at a Hawkfest

Unplugging me was about as painful as plugging me in, and the nurse reckons that I ought to try the anaesthetic cream for once and see what good that does. It has to be worth a try. I can’t go on like this.

One of my favourite drivers came to pick me up to take me home – the Belgian girl with the twins. We had a good chat on the way home but of course, late in means late out. It was a very weary me who struggled up the Twenty-Five Steps.

Tea tonight was steamed veg, vegan sausage and vegan cheese sauce. No pudding though because I’m still not hungry. My appetite has really diminished just now. All of the stuff that I didn’t eat at Christmas and said that I’d eat on my birthday will still be there next year, I reckon. I’m not sure if I will be.

So I’m off to bed now, ready for a work-in tomorrow and I shall keep at it until I’m finished. There’s a football match tomorrow night but I’m going to miss it and watch it at dialysis on Saturday – I may as well make good use of the time.

But seeing as we have been talking about old age and memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my cleaner the other day "two things happen to you when you reach my age"
"What are they?" she asked
"The first one is that you forget absolutely everything"
"What’s the second thing?" she asked.
"I don’t know" I replied. "I’ve forgotten"

Monday 24th February 2025 – THEY SENT THE …

… minibus for me again today to bring me home.

It is a free service, I’m well-aware of that, but it’s even more complicated and difficult for me than climbing into an ambulance. Next time I see the driver who thinks that he runs the show I’ll have to have a word with him about it and see what they can do.

My faithful cleaner said that seeing as it’s my birthday today, given the amount of money that I help put into the owner’s pocket, they should have sent a Rolls Royce for me.

That’s right people, another year older and deeper in debt. Seeing the start of another year that, back in the summer, I honestly never thought that I would see. I was in all seriousness preparing my funeral.

Thank you all once again for your unwavering support over the last twelve months. It means a great deal to me to receive your messages, those of you who write to me. Why don’t some of you others drop me a line too?

So last night it was another late night going to bed – just about midnight in fact, and I could have done with being in bed a couple of hours earlier, that’s for sure.

As it was, it was another turbulent night just like a few of the others just recently, and the tempest that began at 04:00 and started to rattle a sign on this building with a noise that awoke me and stopped me going back to sleep was all that I needed.

It goes without saying that when the alarm went off I was already up and about. And I even remembered to shave and to change my clothes too just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there today.

After I’d taken the medication I went to have a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was at dialysis last night lying in my bed watching a couple of the nurses working. One of them was Julie the Cook. She seemed to spend most of her time folding up sheets and putting them away in a cupboard which I’ve no idea why

That’s something else that I could do without. It’s bad enough having to go there during the daytime, never mind during the time when I’m supposed to be relaxing.

There was also something going on where I was discussing the rules of inheritance with someone, leaving money to the first-born which I suppose makes sense if it’s something like a farm but I can’t see what other reason it makes for anything else

This relates to a conversation that I’d had with Rosemary the other day. Inheritance Tax is a hot topic in the UK at the moment but I can’t see why it’s a worry to anyone over here. And then, when you are dead and Inheritance tax is applied to your wealth, you are in no position to worry about it.

Finally I was in Paris with a couple of people and they had been giving me the run-around so we set out to go to Lille or to Leuven or somewhere. When we arrived in the railway station I managed to give them the slip and abandon them. Walking around, I came to the shopping centre which was up 25 flights of stone stairs. There was a large flight of stairs that went up from the street but if you went round the corner into the forecourt of the railway station there was a flight of stairs there which weren’t so many which I hadn’t noticed until today so I set out to work out how easy it was to go up these because there were fewer of them. I did my trick of hauling myself up with my arms. Everyone was watching me and a few people walking up quicker than me were looking at me. I reached the top where there was a convenient handrail for me to pull myself up right outside the door of the flower shop there. I could see the flowers, I could see the shop assistants and everything selling. For some reason or other I was doing something with the coins in my pocket but I don’t know why. But when I’d made it up to the top of the stairs I was really unsteady on my feet and thought for a minute that I’d end up falling backwards all the way down again.

Twenty-five stairs is a familiar number, isn’t it? And having to haul myself up them three times per week at least is something that I won’t ever forget even when (if) I am living downstairs and no longer have to do it.

The nurse was in and out in a flash today. He’s off on his break now for a few days so I suppose that he doesn’t want to hang around. I could make breakfast and continue to read MY BOOK

Today we are discussing contemporary earthworks and he finds a great deal of amusement in some of his colleagues having mis-identified some contemporary slit trench for a Neolithic burial pit. I shall be waiting with bated breath for the omelette sur le visage moment.

Seeing as it’s my birthday today I emulated my namesake the mathematician and did three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing for a couple of hours. I just stirred a few papers round with no great urgency and spoke to several friends on the internet, who had contacted me to wish me well, which was nice of them.

My cleaner, who had popped in earlier for the list of medication, came back with some of the supplies and to fit my anaesthetic patches. Then I had to await the taxi.

Late again leaving, the other passenger in the car was even later so we had to drop him off first, right across town at the Clinic. So I was very late arriving for dialysis.

Not only that but there were six other people who had arrived simultaneously and I was as usual the last. Then we had to run through a handwashing demonstration to waste even more time.

Plugging in was slightly less painful than normal, and then I reviewed my Welsh, although there’s no lesson tomorrow as it’s half-term.

The doctor in charge came to see me. There’s no real indication of anything that might be causing these sweats, so he said.

He did have two items of good news for me and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Firstly, this new dialysis centre in Granville is all systems go and will be open within a year. Secondly, as things stand I would be one of the patients to be transferred there. So that will save me about four hours per week.

While he was there, I tried to negotiate a reduction in hours. My weight seems to be stable right now compared to how it was, so I wondered if instead of reducing the machine’s power they could reduce the hours that I have to spend.

His reply was that it’s not as easy as that but he’ll check the analysis and see what it says.

While I was there I had a video chat with my niece, her husband and one of her daughters in Canada. That was a lovely surprise, one of the many highlights of my day.

When they finally threw me out we had the pantomime with the minibus but I managed to enter it in a slightly more dignified way than the other day. Leaving it is still the same old circus though.

It was a very exhausted me who made it into my apartment and now that I’ve had my stuffed pepper and written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted. I have all these goodwill messages to answer but that will be tomorrow. I can’t keep my eyes open.

But seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told be "I have a completely irrational fear of negative numbers"
"So what do you do?" I asked him. "Is it a serious problem?"
"It’s extremely serious" he said. "So much so that I’ll stop at nothing to avoid them."

Saturday 22nd February 2025 – I WAS BACK …

… here early this evening which made a lovely change. Mainly because I set out earlier to the dialysis centre. The taxi was well in advance. At least the driver sent me a message to say he would be here early, which is always a good idea.

Unfortunately though, I couldn’t emulate that last night going to bed. That night or two where I really cracked on and had things done early seems to be just an unexpected flash in the pan and I can’t repeat that, much as I would like to.

By the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I needed to do it was well after 23:00 and even later by the time I went to sleep in my nice clean bedding, having found the pillow case that had somehow gone missing from the wash the other week.

It was a turbulent night of the kind that I had when I was going through that cycle a few weeks ago and it was a very weary, bedraggled me that crawled out from under the covers when the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I remembered the sample that they need at the dialysis centre but forgot to shave and change my clothes for fresh ones. Emilie the Cute Consultant won’t be too impressed with me if she’s there today

The kitchen was next, and all of the medication. There’s a lot less than there used to be when I was going through that crisis six months ago, but it’s still an impressive quantity all the same. I wish that I could turn back the clock before my kidneys gave out and I was on just four per day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night as well. I fell asleep quite quickly and found myself in the doctor’s discussing phallic symbols with him, I’m not sure exactly why but I wasn’t asleep very long and that’s hardly surprising.

Strangely enough I can’t remember dictating that – or even being awake at all at that particular moment. I thought that I would have remembered something about phallic symbols if it had been going on in my head. It’s not the kind of thing that you forget.

And then Nerina came round to my place of work last night. There was some kind of talk about a Trade Union meeting taking place in Manchester where the Trade Union Executive Committee was having its quarterly meeting. Someone was giving an account. They were talking about how they completed so much work, how it was sometimes quite emotional and how wen everyone went out into breakout rooms the observers were shared out between the rooms so that they could go to see. This person who had been on the Monday was extremely impressed. I was sitting tight up in a corner with Nerina. She turned and whispered to me in my ear “next time we ought to go to see this meeting”. I asked her if she really wanted to go because it was not something to which she had shown any particular interest before, but she was quite adamant about it so I decided that I’d make a few enquiries and see how we could go there. But I was actually with her and the two of us were so close together and so tight up in the corner.

That’s the kind of dream that brought back a few happy memories of former times. As for Trades Unions, I served on the Executive Committee of the Students’ Union at University and held a few other posts as well, such as Chair of the branch of students of Northern Europe. Those were the days after I’d taken early retirement from work and was looking for something to do. However I went back to work later, first covering for someone on maternity leave at General Electric’s training school in Brussels and then at that weird American company where I met Alison

And then it was my birthday so I had invited a lot of people round to my apartment, mostly friends from the University. They were all ages and they really were a bizarre bunch. Then at the end of the night I settled down in the armchair to go to sleep. Liz who was there as well, she settled down in the other armchair to go to sleep. Various other people settled down in all kinds of various other settees and chairs and prepared to spend the night. First thing was that I had to get up to go to the bathroom and come back down again. Liz came with me but she disappeared off somewhere. Gradually one by one other people began to disappear too. I began to wonder where they were going. There was a group of two people sitting on the sofa who suddenly began to awaken and eat chocolates again. A third person went along to sit on the sofa and join in with them. I asked them “is the party starting up again?”.

“That” Liz (not “this” Liz) has featured in several dreams just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. In a fortnight’s time it will be sixteen years since she died. She came from the North-East of England and served on the same University committees as I did. As she couldn’t drive, she used to travel with me from one meeting to the next. Back in 2006 we were on our way from a meeting of the Disabled Students in Bristol to another meeting in Gosforth when we stopped for a meal in a pub near Oswestry, when into the dining room came the very same girlfriend from school with whom I was chatting yesterday. And despite it being 35 years later, you could have put her in her school uniform and she would have looked exactly the same as she did back then at school

Finally, In that dream … "which dream?" – ed … there was a moment when I was in the office. I was wandering around outside in all of the buildings that were there. I came across a woman who was walking around. I was the only person in the office at that time so I wondered who she was. She wondered who I was too so I told her which building I was in and asked her if she knew which one it was. She said that “it’s the one right down there at the entrance” so I imagined that she did. I ended up walking down a corridor where I saw someone else. Then I came into my room where everyone else was. I sat down on the sofa and then had to stand up, but suddenly realised that I couldn’t stand up sitting on the sofa. I had to go through all kinds of strange manoeuvres like leaning my back against the wall trying to push up with my ankles so that I was in an upright position in order that I might be able to stand up and move

That is actually my big fear – falling over, because I can’t pick myself back upright again if I do. When I fell over in an Underground station in Montréal in 2022 a couple of passers-by had to pick me up. It was difficult then, and I have even less control over my muscles today than I did back then. As for the “office”, the image that I have in my head is the hospital in Paris, which is in fact a collection of individual buildings on a campus.

There was more to it that all of that too, but you don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse was later than usual today and didn’t hang around at all. He didn’t even have time to ring the doorbell from downstairs to warn me that he was here. He was in and out in a matter of seconds.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I could make breakfast and carry on reading MY BOOK

Today we are discussing medieval fishponds and the delights of catching, cooking and eating a nice fresh bream “in its jacket”. In my opinion, he’s welcome to it. Even when I used to eat fish, oily, pungent fish like that was not to my taste at all.

Back in here I sorted out the bills that I needed to pay, dealt with all of that, and then finished off my Welsh homework so that I could have a day off to relax on Monday.

Some time round about then I had the ‘phone call from the driver who is going to take me to Avranches. Would it be OK to come round fifteen minutes earlier?

“No problem” I replied. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish (in theory) and I sent a brief note to my cleaner.

Just as I finished my homework she put in an appearance. Perfect timing, that. She sorted out my anaesthetic patches and then I had to wait for the taxi.

We had to pick up that woman who lives at the back of the dialysis centre and we arrived at the centre at about 13:05 which was rather early, because they don’t open the doors until 13:15.

For a change I was second to be dealt with, which suited me fine. I could settle down and watch the football.

A real bottom-of-the-table clash between Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd, and it looked it too. Y Drenewydd were quite poor but Aberystwyth were dreadful and on this form they’ll find the second tier rather tough going. They look like a team that is already resigned to its fate.

The manager, interviewed afterwards, didn’t pull any punches about his team’s lack of fight but the problem lies with the club. Four years ago they had quite a strong team but a whole raft of players left and the ones who have come in haven’t been able to replace the quality and it’s been downhill ever since.

Unfortunately I fell asleep after that for a few minutes and then carried on tidying up and updating the travelling laptop.

Early in, early out which is good news and I was back here by 18:45, and I wish that I could do that every trip instead of some of these ridiculously late returns home that we have had.

Tea was a burger on a bap, some red-hot chili burgers that I found in the freezer. Certainly different, and quite enjoyable, especially with baked potato and vegan salad, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And it’s the first time in well over a week that I’ve felt like eating a proper meal.

So now I have things to dictate and then I’m off to bed. Loads of editing tomorrow, bread making and probably a few other things too, if I feel like it. But that’s not always obvious at this time of night.

But seeing as we have been talking about that meal in that pub near Oswestry … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told a little joke and the ex let out a sigh.
"Ohh Eric" she said. "You told me that joke when we were at school!"
"Yes that’s as may be" I replied. "I don’t change the material. I just change the audience"
"That’s why Eric likes travelling with me" said “that” Liz. "I have such a dreadful memory that he tells me a joke one day, then tells me again the next day and because I’ve already forgotten it I hear it again for the first time and laugh once more."

Thursday 20th February 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… the other day when I prophesied how I would be feeling today after dialysis. Not only have I gone back to square one, I have fallen off the edge of the board. I can’t be doing with too many more of these dialysis sessions.

However, I have to carry on for the rest of my life and if it goes like this for much longer, that won’t be too far away.

Last night I was in bed rather later than previous, but not at an unreasonable hour. It was before midnight, at least. However we were back at the awakening shortly after midnight and staying awake for several hours.

And even if I did manage to go back to sleep, I was awake again at about 05:50 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about. No point in staying in bed when I have things to do.

We had the usual routine of bathroom and kitchen, and then back here, the dictaphone was next.

There was a group of us singing that Supertramp song “Schooldays” while there was a radio presenter talking about presenting the song, about what was actually behind it. A couple of people who were with us were quite young and obviously wouldn’t have remembered the song when it came out originally but this was one of those things where I was quite young too so it must have been the first time that I heard it. It was one of these anthem-type singers and there was a couple of other people there too but I can’t remember very much about what they were doing.

SCHOOLDAYS is actually a song by Gentle Giant, but let’s not be carried away by the minutiae. It’s impressive that I could even remember the song seeing as it’s one of the Gentle Giant songs that I can live without.

There were then two girls had stowed away in an aeroplane. They had been arrested and imprisoned there while the ‘plane took off to fly them home. There was a problem there with one of the engines on the ‘plane and the crew was busy doing some work on it in mid-flight. Under cover of the noise that the crew was making to hit this engine with a hammer the girls were chiselling away at the side of the aeroplane to make a hole ready for them to escape when the ‘plane landed. Suddenly the hole gave way and one of the girls was sucked out in the air pressure. She disappeared into nowhere. The other girl was left there just looking at it. She suddenly thought “well perhaps maybe this is the moment for her to escape”. She ended up next falling out of the ‘plane but her clothing was hooked onto a jagged edge and she was there suspended outside the ‘plane, thinking “this is wonderful, I’m flying! How marvellous it is!”. Suddenly her clothing gave way and she cascaded out. She was immediately in a panic about this but realising that there was nothing that she could do she just sat back and admired the view from 30,000 feet. She could see that she was about to hit the water on the edge of the coast just off the beach. The water couldn’t have been very deep. She hit the water and managed to walk away. She was rescued and taken to a local Air Force base where she broke down and had an emotional crisis. She could never concentrate on her career on the Air Force again. She resigned four or five times, her marriage had fallen to pieces with her being in such an emotional state but of course she was lucky to be alive.

Bizarrely, I can see them even now as they fell from the ‘plane. I was a few hundred feet underneath them, looking up. And I can still see the second one as she fell and hit the water. And she wouldn’t walk away from that. The water is a lot harder than you might think, especially if you were to fall from 30,000 feet. I’m not surprised that she had an emotional outburst or two subsequently.

Nerina and I had gone on holiday again, driving around the UK looking at different places. We’d ended up in New York driving around. Then I ended up walking around somewhere. I’d seen an old disused railway line that used to run down to the port so when I was back in New York a couple of years later I went to look for this railway line and began to follow it. I had to cross a street and this street was so, so wide that it took me an age to cross over. There was a lorry coming in the distance and I thought that I would never ever reach the other side in time before the lorry would arrive. It was miles. On the other side I saw a strange-looking building so I went to have a look. As I put my head inside the door a voice said “don’t stand there, come on in”. I couldn’t see anyone who had said anything so I went in. It was like a small community centre with a table tennis table, some comfortable chairs and a couple of annexes. There was a coffee bar so I ordered myself a coffee and went to sit down. Back in the car later on Nerina was feeling tired or something. I was listening to music. She said “you couldn’t put music on your headphones, could you? On the car ‘phone put a track of complete and utter silence so that I could sleep?”. I thought “why not?” so I was busy trying to programme the telephone in the car that it would play the longest possible track which would be called “Silence”.

Crossing this street resembles somewhere where I’ve been in the past, although the road was nothing like as wide as this. I’m wondering if it might have been NEW BERN where the railway does actually run down the centre of the main street. However, in this dream there was a very big green park on the far side of the road.

The nurse was late today. I recon that he was on his bike because he brought his rucksack inside with him. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone so that I could press on.

Breakfast and MY BOOK were next. But as far as the book goes, I didn’t read it for long. I had too much to do and in any case, the events of modern times are not as interesting as what I’ve been reading to date, in my opinion.

Yesterday, I said that I’d catch up on correspondence, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I reckon that I’m as up-to-date as I have been so if you are awaiting a reply and you haven’t had it, let me know. The chances are that I’ve forgotten or overlooked it.

Having dealt with that I pushed on and attacked the Welsh homework. It would be nice if I could finish that before Monday, then I can have Monday morning off which would be a nice change.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and then I had to wait for the taxi. And although it was a little in advance, it made no difference because it was running late for another passenger’s appointment at the clinic on the other side of Avranches so I had the round trip

Dialysis was about as painful as normal, and I had the pleasure of the company of the unsociable doctor today. He’s wondering if I have an infection so they took a blood sample and on Saturday I have to take in …. errr … another type of sample.

The Social Security regulations are beginning to bite too. We have a new patient in dialysis today. He lives out in the sticks and used to go to St-Lô but the Sécu reckons that it’s closer for him to go to Avranches. So here he is.

Late in, I was late out too. It was my usual Saturday evening driver who brought me home, pretty much in silence too. I’m not sure why he’s suddenly gone quiet but these days he doesn’t have much at all to say.

Climbing up here was a struggle, given how I’m feeling. And tea was a handful of pasta and veg in a tomato sauce. I don’t have the morale, the courage or the energy to do much else.

So even though it’s really early, I’m off to bed, hoping that the sleep will do me good and I’ll feel better in the morning. That would really be nice, but I doubt it.

But seeing as we have been talking about archaeology … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once asked me "why are archaeologists so popular on these dating sites?"
"I’ve no idea" I replied
"Its because they spend most of their time dating these ancient and unusual ruins"

EPIC HALL

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