Tag Archives: hospital

Monday 30th August 2024 – IT’S A BANK …

… holiday in the UK today and so in accordance with my usual prior-established principles, I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing.

Usually, that would also mean a lie-in too but these days lie-ins, or lies-in, are a thing of the past. What with the nurse coming round to bother me at 08:30 every morning, unless I want her to get into bed with me, I have to be up and about.

So that means going to bed at a reasonably early time and once more, I failed miserably. It might not have been midnight, but it was a long weary while after my target time of 23:00

With all of the stuff that I have to do before I go to bed, I’m surprised that I actually manage to find the time to go to sleep.

But anyway I did manage to make it into bed and I was asleep quickly enough, ready to join in the (af)fray in the morning.

When the alarm went off, I was flat out fast asleep in bed. And so was the dictaphone. By the looks of things I’d fallen asleep in the middle of dictating a dream and left the machine running. So I apologise once more for doubting you, Percy Pengiun.

After having a good wash I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of conflict between a football club and a group of “Stop Oil” protestors. The “Stop Oil” protestor was eventually arrested and taken to Court where the Judge told him that while he respected the right of everyone to protest, other people also have rights too, including the right to enjoy a peaceful game of football. His rights were no more important than theirs etc. I didn’t get to where the sentence was

That kind of thing surprises me – that I can string together a logical argument while I’m asleep. I just wish that I could do it while I’m awake. But really, these “Stop Oil” protestors are bringing their own movement into disrepute, travelling to demonstrations by aeroplane or car instead of walking or cycling there. And what about the rights of other people, like the right to travel by car?

I was out with some friends. We’d been working in some area so we decided that we’d go to the pub. I was driving and we ended up in this village. I parked the car in the village centre and walked but there was no pub. We went into the local garage to ask the guy there. He knew of someone who was marrying and having a party but that was about everything. He said that he knew of no pub in the village. He had a nice P100 pick-up in there – a black one based on a Mark V Cortina. Someone remembered that there was a pub in the next village so we decided that we’d go there. They ran off. It was my father who got behind the wheel of the car while the others pushed it so that they’d turn it round but they ended up pushing it probably a couple of hundred yards. I had to hobble after them. When I arrived at the car I told them that I’d parked the car where it was because it was convenient for me. I’m not in the state where I can go running after the car that someone is moving around. This kind of thing is going to kill me. They should have a little more consideration for me and my illness. Their response surprised me. They started to complain saying “you mean you have an illness and you don’t know whether it’s eight years or eighty years” and quite a few other things that made me think that they believed that I was malingering. In the end once I’d finally installed myself behind the wheel and finally recovered my breath I turned to them and told them that I’d had enough and was going home. They were free to either carry on, stay here or go back home to Crewe as they wished but I just wanted to go home. I’d had enough

This is rather a familiar story, isn’t it? Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a considerable number of conflicts between my family and me over all kinds of things, many that have spilled over into my nocturnal ramblings. I mean – it’s over 30 years since I removed myself from the sphere of influence of my family so why does it keep on cropping up these days?

So now you understand why football matches at Stranraer are taken quite seriously by the footballers and they refuse to participate in what I call these “distraction” games. There was always the problem with playing with teams like Caledonian Braves and – what’s the other one – Knights of Columbia or whatever they are called, provided that they are quite sensible about it, that they dress like footballers, play like footballers and act like footballers in place of people who want to play politics … fell asleep here …

Funnily enough, I saw a football match the other day involving Caledonian Braves, a team that plays in the Scottish Lowland League. I can’t say that I remember too much about it so I can’t have been impressed

So did I dictate the dream … "no you didn’t" – ed … about – I have porridge here in my mind I’ve no idea why – about the guy who had an emotional breakdown for some reason or other while he was being questioned. No-one really knew and neither did he. He went off to speak to someone to talk about this emotional crisis that he’d had in the middle of one of these interviews.

People having emotional crises in the middle of interviews is always a recipe for disaster. There are never any winners in that scenario.

Isabelle the Nurse was in chat mode again today and had a lot to say about absolutely nothing at all. So much so that she forgot to swipe my health card for the end of the Month and had to come back later in the day to do the paperwork

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of my book. This week’s book is the story of a walk along the Icknield Way in 1906 or some date like that and it’s very interesting.

The author here talks about ley lines without even saying what they are or understanding what they are supposed, according to some people, to do. But he figured out their purpose well enough to be able to make a few comments that attracted later supporters of that theory

And the derision of a few opponents, I shouldn’t wonder.

There was a ‘phone call today too. The surgeon who performed my operation has heard my story about the bill and is outraged. He (via his secretary) was pleading with me to keep the appointment on the 10th of September and he’ll “see what he can do”.

That’s two groups of people now seeing what they can do, but by the looks of things they don’t seem to be doing enough

So having spent the morning sorting out the hospital bookings, this afternoon I’ve been footballing.

My Scottish ground-hopping expeditions took me to Irvine for the local Marymass derby between Irvine Meadow and Irvine Victoria.

It’s a cup match with a difference – the Meadow are about 50 places higher than the Vics in the league and the game was being played at the Meadow’s ground. And so it was odds-on a Meadow victory

But form counts for nothing in the cup and the Vics surprisingly ran out 2-1 victors. And that upset just about everyone except for a band of about 150 Vics supporters in the “away” end who braved the torrential rain to cheer on their team.

My cleaner stuck her head in to bring back the rest of the medication and to take my order for LeClerc’s cheese. And some fresh ginger too. I fancy making a ginger cake.

She sent me a photo later of her ginger plant. She had some ginger once that sprouted roots so she planted it – and it grew. It smells lovely apparently when you rub the leaves.

There were some bills to pay too today. I don’t want to forget those as they are important.

Apart from that, I’ve been radioing. I’ve been organising the folders and carrying on with one of my projects. It’s slow going but it won’t be done at all if I don’t do it

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper – one of the frozen batch. And that reminds me – when I send off my order later this week I’ll need four peppers, not two. Stocks are running low.

So that’s that for now. I’m ready for bed. Back to work tomorrow so I need to find some motivation from somewhere

But talking about the football, I was told a story about the match at Penybont this afternoon where Aberystwyth Town are said to have turned in one of the worst performances by any Welsh Premier team.
Tow lads from Aberystwyth were caught climbing over the fence at the ground at half-time but the police caught them.
"It’s no good, lads. Climbing the fence won’t help you" said one of the coppers. "You’ll just have to climb back again"
"What?" asked one of the boys. "And watch another 45 minutes of that rubbish?"

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of lovely chats on the internet this afternoon.

The first was with one of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee who was so helpful when it came to buying the apartment downstairs

And the second was with a close fried who lives in Newport. He was actually best man at my wedding and we still keep in touch.

However last night, I wasn’t anywhere like in touch with my ideal night-time curfew of 23:00. It was actually after midnight before I finally hit the sack, running as late as I was. The list of things that I have to do before going to bed seems to have grown longer and longer.

But once I was in bed, I didn’t reach all that far into my little mantra before I fell asleep. That’s one good thing – that I’m asleep quite quickly whereas in the olden days I’d be tossing and turning for hours.

There were no stone cutter, no diggers, no nothing going on outside this morning so I slept all the way through until about … errr …. 06:15 when something must have awoken me. And I lay there semi-comatose until the alarm went off at 07:00.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and sorted out some clean clothes. Who knows? I might get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Clinic so I have to look my best.

With clean clothes, it meant that I could give my undies and trousers a scrub in the sink. These days I wear these shell-suit trousers all the time because they wash and dry in no time, which is good news seeing how filthy I can be.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I was doing during the night. I was in Shavington going to catch the bus to Nantwich and for some reason or other decided to walk up to the bus stop at the Elephant and Castle. I set out to walk and on my way I noticed in the distance the Farmer’s Daughter who has figured on these pages once or twice but she had short hair and that suited her head really well. She walked off somewhere and I was debating whether to go to follow her to see where she was going and to see whether I could summon up some kind of excuse to have a good chat. I walked up to where the Elephant and Castle is and put my hand out to turn right even though I was walking on foot. A couple of kids on the pavement, tiny kids who were presumably going to catch the bus to school saw me and waited on the edge of the pavement until I went past. There on the right hand side was an Austin Cambridge but it was “A” registration as in 1983 or 1984 but they stopped making Cambridges in 1967 and any vehicle that was subsequently registered would have had an age-related plate fitted to it, so why was this one carrying the plate of such a recent date. That was a complete mystery that needed to be resolved.

Yes, well I’ll tell you something for nothing and that I would not have been convinced if she wanted to cut her hair. I’m afraid that I’m quite the male chauvinist when it comes to girls’ hair. I think that long hair on girls is absolutely beautiful and it’s a cardinal sin for a girl to set out to disfigure that which nature has blessed her. But I’m impressed that I can remember banal details about car registration numbers and years of manufacture while I’m asleep.

As for The Farmer’s Daughter, there hangs a long tale that might be one of the many recounted at my funeral.

The taxi came bang on time which was nice and another passenger already in there graciously yielded up the front seat – it’s much easier for me to pop in and out of the front.

We set off for Avranches and first had to drop off the other passenger at the hospital, and then take me to the clinic across the road and up the hill.

This is a brand-new building and it does look impressive, although it beats me why they couldn’t have built it onto the existing hospital.

The nurse is there is one who has seen me before and she remembered me, which is rather sad going, I suppose. Once seen …

She asked me a load of questions about my current symptoms, and either she’s excellent at prognostication, the symptoms from which I’m suffering are well-known, she’s a regular reader of this rubbish or else she’s in league with the Devil.

It was interesting when she asked me things like "when you go to sleep in the afternoon, is it a sudden, dramatic sleep with no warning and no realisation that you’ve been asleep?"

You can say that again.

She weighed me again. And having been down past Target Weight 01 and close to Target Weight 02, my current weight is depressing to say the least.

She took off all of my bandages and dressings and commented about how well the surgery was looking. "Would I like to see?"

And so I told her to clear off and put a dressing on it, and it took her a while to do it. I think that she was hoping that I’d catch sight of it.

She’s formally forbidden me to wrap a dressing around the arm – just leave the plaster on it. And she’s going to ‘phone up the nurse and give her instructions. And so I’m suspicious.

But some good has come out of this meeting. I told her of my woes at the private clinic. She was horrified. Being a terminally ill patient, I’m entitled to 100% of my healthcare covered by the State. She showed me the paper that she has which confirms it.

The Private Clinic had no right to make me pay even a penny. So she’s asked to see a copy of the receipt and she’ll take it up with the Hospital’s Welfare Department

After she’d taken a blood sample she threw me out and the taxi brought me home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me up the stairs and into my apartment.

She seems to think that I’m moving better than I did previously, and how I wish that it were true

Not having had anything to eat or drink as yet, I sat down to breakfast. And couldn’t move for a while afterwards, so when the nurse came round to deal with me later, the place was a tip with breakfast dishes everywhere.

After she left, I had some ‘phone calls to make.

The President of the Residents’ Committee is returning on Sunday so we had a good that about this and that.

It included the latest news about our neighbour, currently residing in the hospital. Things are not looking to bright for her future and we may have seen the last of her in this building

Once we had hung up I made a drink and then ‘phoned a friend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned a project that I might be starting at some point.

It’s had a couple of false starts and deciding that it can’t go on for ever and can’t be delayed much longer, I have decided to go in a different direction.

This actually means calling for help. After all, the key to success has been knowing where to stop and when to seek the advice of experts, and if you have friends who can be depended up to help you in this respect, then so much the better.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is at the end of a chat that lasted a Rosemaryesque one hour and 15 minutes, I was a long way further down the road than I was after several months of prevaricating

Tea tonight was pie and veg, the last slice which was a shame because it was so nice. And it was followed by apple turnover and soya cream

Yes, my air fryer is great for warming up slices of pie and apple turnovers.

So now I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good sleep, and I mustn’t forget to wash my shorts in the morning. I forgot last week. Why I wash them on Saturdays is because with not going to bed until later, they have longer to dry.

But before I go to bed, let me tell you about the Clinic at Avranches and the guy in the next cubicle to me.
He works in the quarry down the road and wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way when they detonated some explosive.
"And it’s badly damaged my … errr … ummm …" he said, groping for the polite word.
"Rectum?" asked the nurse, helpfully
"Well" said the man "in all honesty it’s not done ’em much good"

Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

"things could be worse!"

And so I smiled. And sure enough, things were worse.

It’s difficult to believe just how things are unravelling here right at the moment. Getting ready for bed last night after finishing my notes, I fell over.

It was another one of these “falling over backwards” things like I had in the kitchen the other day. This time though it was in the bedroom.

What is hard to believe and it’s true all the same, that despite all of the rubbish, mess, guitars and everything that clutter up this place, I actually hit the ground on my back without hitting anything on the way down. And the chances of that happening must have been extremely remote, to say the least.

It took me about half an hour to make it to my feet. Some kind of weird gyration from a sitting position into being able to crawl onto the bed with the aid of a well-stuffed suitcase as some kind of half-way step

But what a state to get into. I had visions of pulling the quilt down and sleeping on top of the carpet until Isabelle the nurse would rescue me in the morning.

However I struggled back upright, finished what I had to do and then rather happily crawled into bed with a sigh of relief.

After all of the exertions I was totally surprised to be wide awake at about 06:15 and I was actually up and about before the alarm went off

This morning I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave and change of clothes if I’m going out. And then waiting for Isabelle the nurse, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my taxis last night. We had a town, we had a plot of land so we decided that we’d set up something there and run the taxis from it. I had a nice little garage and a couple of cars but while I was talking about setting up everything I awoke in the middle of it and lost all of the momentum in the dream that I was having which was a shame

Not really a shame. I might have enjoyed running a taxi business 40 years ago but the gloss soon wore off and I wouldn’t go back to doing it again, not even during a dream, thank you very much.

And then I was expecting to slip into the estate of a relative of mine who was dying. What was important about this was that there had been another relative who had died under mysterious circumstances abroad and his body had been in a deep-freeze for years while people argued about where he was to go and what he was to do etc. I suspected that the British Coroner was unwilling to accept the body because he’d have to perform a post-mortem on it. There had been this huge campaign for years to bring this person’s body and that of several other people in similar circumstances, to bring them home and lay them to rest. The first thing that I did when I inherited the estate was to contact some firm of undertakers and make arrangements for this body to be brought back to the UK. I was expecting to be besieged by the Press and by news reporters but no-one actually came to visit me last night about this. The only person who set foot on my premises was my brother and I didn’t really know what he wanted. It was certainly nothing to do with this particular thing but after all the fuss and bother that had been made when the relative who died had refused to repatriate the relative from abroad, the fact that I issued repatriation instructions immediately that I took over the estate and that passed unnoticed, it was totally bizarre.

My greatest wish is that no-one repatriates me to the UK. I own a burial plot in the cemetery at Ixelles in Brussels where Marianne is interred but I don’t want to go there either. I want to be put in a natural cemetery and a tree planted on top of me. That’s how I shall live for ever – being absorbed into the roots of a tree that will grow and grow.

Finally I was living at home and wanted a bath so I stuck my head in the bathroom. My little sister was in the bath and my two younger brothers were drying themselves so I thought “never mind – I’ll have a bath again”. I went off to do something or other. On the way back I heard some noise in the bathroom so I went to see. Now my sister had left the bath so I thought “ahh, here’s a bath full of water free”. My brother said “the shower by the way is totally useless but the bath is wonderful” so I thought “I’m really looking forward to getting into the bath at last and having a good wash. I certainly need one”.

Ahhh the good old days – all in the bath, oldest first while the water is hotter. If we are lucky there might be a bit of hot water left in the baby burco water boiler – careful not to scald yourself when you pour it into the bucket and tip it into the bath.

All the smaller kids in the bath together. “ohh look, a bubble-bath” – yes, it was baked beans on toast for tea

Apart from the fact that I don’t have two brothers, anyone who goes on about “the good old days” will receive a smack in the mouth. There was nothing whatever that was good about them.

Isabelle was late coming. There’s all kinds of chaos going on all over the place this morning apparently. She didn’t wait around long because she was in a hurry so she cleared off quickly and I had a rather late breakfast.

The taxi was late coming too. All of their computing system and radio control has broken down and they are driving around with pencil and notepad with a list of jobs. Just like back in the 1960s before radio control in fact. Nothing seems to be working this morning.

They were all working at the Nephrology Clinic – at least, the people who saw me were. Unfortunately Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there to soothe my fevered brow but her sidekick was and I told him my tale of woe about being held to ransom at the clinic down the road.

He had the decency to be upset and apologetic, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to set even one foot ever again in that maudit établissement

And it turned out that while Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there, she’d been talking about me to the others and some of my little secrets are now in the public domain.

Still, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s NOT being talked about. It’s nice to know that Emilie the Cute Consultant thinks that I’m worth talking about.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … Nephrology Clinic, the consultant there admired the work that my cleaner and Isabelle the nurse had done. He considered that I’m lucky in having such good and attentive people around me.

There’s localised swelling but the wound itself is healing, it’s not septic and he’s pleased with the progress.

He can’t explain the panic the other night because there were no obvious signs. If we hadn’t imagined it, which I assured him that we hadn’t, he reckoned that my little team of helpers had resolved everything on the spot in the nick of time.

While I was waiting for my taxi back his secretary went off in search of an orange juice. And just as she came back with apple juice, the taxi arrived.

On getting in I texted my cleaner to say that we were on our way back, only for him to announce that we had other pick-ups.

So eventually with a full car of passengers we headed back to Granville. The driver asked if he could practise his English on the way home so we had a very interesting chat on the way home

Back here I had a salad for lunch and then came in here where I promptly crashed out. And how. I was dead to the World. I hadn’t even noticed that my cleaner had been and gone.

Rosemary rang me for a chat and it must have been a very strange chat at first as I struggled to awaken.

After she’d finished I had my hot chocolate and then made a loaf of bread. While that was proofing i made some naan dough

And then I could finally have the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to to, catching up with radio stuff. I should have finished off that radio programme today but what with one thing and another I didn’t.

So don’t forget, Saturday night, my Hawkfest at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time, 15:00 Toronto time.

But thinking of all of the kids in the bath together reminds me of the noble Lord being attended to at his bath by his manservant, Wibble.
Suddenly the noble Lord breaks wind in the water. And the manservant dashes off and comes back with a hot water bottle.
"Why have you brought that?" asked the noble Lord
"You asked for it, My Lord" said Wibble
"I asked for it?"
"Yes, my Lord" replied Wibble. "I heard you clearly. You said ‘what about a water bottle, Wibble’ "

Wednesday 17th July 2024 – I CAN’T BELIEVE …

… the nerve, or cheek of some people.

Highway robbery at the point of a pistol is a fairly common phenomenon, but highway robbery at the point of a card reader is something else again.

But anyway, more of that anon. Retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Where was I?

Ohh yes, finishing off my bread and carrot purée and going to bed.

But not to sleep, unfortunately. It was a long, long night listening to my neighbour snoring away and waiting for the inevitable 06:00 stampede as the nightshift dashes to finish off its tasks before the day shift comes on at 07:00.

They gave me a diabetes check and it went off the scale, so no orange juice for me which was a shame. But I’m convinced that their reader must be wrong. How could it be off the scale when I’ve had next-to-nothing to eat for 36 hours?

After breakfast (which included jam despite the diabetes check) a doctor came to see me. She didn’t have much to say for herself but I managed to winkle out of her that I’d be leaving at 10:30

With that news I contacted my faithful cleaner but she told me that she wouldn’t be home until 13:00. And so I asked the staff here if I could postpone my departure but I was told in no uncertain terms to sod off and like it.

With that news I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night while I was waiting. Some doctor here was looking for an e-mail about my health but he’d filed it away somewhere on line and when he’d gone to fetch it back it had disappeared so he was found rounding up all of his colleagues to come and look, to see whether any of them could help to try to find out how to fetch it back

That sounds about right for “cloud” storage systems. Everyone else can access the document except the person who posted it there. I’m afraid that I still favour the old traditional method of copying to USB key. There’s one plugged into this computer into which I back up every night, and there’s a “travelling key” on my keyring that I use for moving documents about between the big desktop machine and the portable that I take with me when I go anywhere.

And then Zero had come to see me during the night. She was in something of a bad mood, saying that she had to go to see the physiotherapist a week on Monday. Her step-father insisted, so I wanted to find out why. She told me that it was to fetch the results, the “results” she said in inverted commas, so I imagined that it was something to do with an incident that had happened a couple of weeks earlier in respect of which a complaint had been lodged. I thought that this was going to be the decisive moment but for some reason or other she was clearly not happy at all about having to go and I couldn’t understand why

How lovely to see Zero again after all this time. Wasn’t it nice of her to come to see me? But it wasn’t very nice to see an unhappy Zero, that’s for sure. I much prefer the lovely smiling face, puffy cheeks, green flashing eyes and all those miles of vibrant red hair. But a “step-father”? What’s become of her real dad? That’s worth a story all by itself. I wonder if I’ll have part two of this episode any time soon.

While all of this was going on, someone from the admin office came to see me and asked about my Health Insurance. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t have the State insurance system. I have a private health insurance paid for by the European Commission so I gave them the form and also a copy of the form that they can use to seek direct billing.

The above is quite important, as you’ll see as the story unfolds.

The taxi turned up for me bang on time so we went to the Admissions Office to collect the paperwork for leaving, and this was where I was “held up” with the card reader

"That’s One thousand five hundred and seventy two Euros and 68 cents please"

"You have my Health Insurance details there" I said "and a form to apply for direct billing"

"It’s an assurance that I don’t recognise" (like, the European Union and she doesn’t recognise it) "so you’ll have to pay"

She was totally and utterly intransigent, apart from being too utterly bone-idle to scan my documents and send them off.

So eventually I made it home and as the taxi driver was helping me up the 25 Steps the phone rang. It was Isabelle the nurse. She’d heard that I was back on the loose and would I like my legs seeing to?

A cheerful word and a smiling face is always welcome so I told her to come round. By the time she arrived, so had I and she was able to sort me out.

She wasn’t impressed with what the hospital want her to do. She didn’t think that it was her job but with a good grace (which was nice to find someone with good grace after this morning) she agreed to do it.

She needed a lot of equipment and material so she wrote herself out a prescription and said she’ll leave it at the pharmacy. My faithful cleaner can pick up the articles this afternoon.

When my cleaner came round later we went through the medication, worked out what we were short of, and she went down into town to do the business. Poor thing – she had a struggle to come back with all of the supplies for the nurse. She’ll have to bring some back tomorrow, bless her.

So in my nice clean kitchen I made a taco roll for tea with rice and veg. It should be “leftover curry” night tomorrow but it’s also football so it’ll be pasta and veg, with the curry on Friday. It’ll probably walk out of the fridge on its own by then.

So having washed my puttees tonight, I’m going to bed nice and early, still fuming about today’s events but hoping that if I’m lucky Zero will come to console me. Good news is hard to find and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But going back to the hospital, my room-mate had a rather bad habit of … errr … breaking wind. And it was quite embarrassing at times.
At one moment, whilst being examined, poked and prodded by a doctor he let out an extremely loud raspberry
Obviously, to save his embarrassment, the doctor turned to his nurse and said "stop that, nurse!"
"Certainly, doctor" she replied. "Which way did it go?"

Tuesday 16th July 2024 = I’M STILL ALIVE …

… but in indescribable agony I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this. In fact, one way or another I’ve not had a very good day today.

Just like last night actually. Once more it was a very late night, not that I was bothered because if I’m tired I can sleep at the hospital. I won’t have much else to do there.

Nevertheless I slept right through until the alarm went off at 07:00 with just the odd bit of tossing and turning here and there

But as the alarm sounded I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, completely forgetting that I’m supposed to be using this special shampoo detergent stuff.

While I was waiting for the nurse to arrive I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I went during the night. This competition is now coming down to a knock-out between clubs rather than based on a league performance. There aren’t too many clubs or teams left and newspaper reporters are interviewing. They are astonished at how much has been spent but someone seems to think that it’s worth every penny and brings an enormous amount of revenue from advertising. And everyone doing this would have a team of his own racing in these races considering that it would put his town on the map. There were several other chairmen who thought it important that their team climbed onto the world stage and played this type of event for the attraction of the World all looking on and making sure that they did all their best

Where that came from, I don’t know. But it certainly seems to be true. I remember when Llandudno surprisingly won the Welsh Cup and qualified for Europe, the town council sponsored the club’s shirts for the European games and paid the travelling expenses of the club simply for the reason that the club’s presence on the European stage would attract enough tourists to the town to make it a financially viable proposition. And who am I to argue with Llandudno Town Council?

What I found was that there were too many small, tiny shopkeepers or market traders standing on this market each selling very high turnover goods which meant that there was no speciality or anything like that. It was all pretty much the same. There was nothing to choose between any of them. Where you bought your magazine from was by random and it made no difference. They weren’t sufficiently skilled in the products that they were selling. One of the shopkeepers was trying to market some kind of typing course but admitted that he hadn’t managed to work it himself . He had no idea how he could actually make it work but was still trying his best to sell it on to members of the public. I thought to myself that people with just one or two racks of magazines in a place like this just aren’t going to make any difference whatsoever. It needs one or possibly two major sellers to come in to reorganise it with a much wider range of goods and know much more about their product and generally go out to sell the stuff instead of being haphazard, hoping that someone would come along and buy it. I thought that it was very depressing and dismal that they were just sitting back letting the World roll by. They should have been out there selling their wares. But definitely half a dozen people with one magazine rack each trying to make a living in a place like this was never going to be a possibility. It just needed one or maybe two major players who could go for the variety of product and go all-out to try to grab hold of the passing trade.

So as well as fighting wars and inventing machinery in my sleep, I’m now running some kind of Cost Accounting and Business Planning service. I’ve definitely been doing something wrong all these years if I can think of all of these exciting and satisfying ways of earning a living while I’m asleep. The sad part about it is that not only am I asleep while all of this is going on, so are my clients. If they were awake and paying me good money for my services and advice, I’d clean up.

There was also something about a friend of mine asking me why some other friends of ours who had been in France as long as we had, hadn’t succeeded in accumulating more resources. She pointed out to her house, the holiday cottage and so on that they had managed to accumulate without too much effort and wondered why they hadn’t managed to do the same.

And that’s true too. In the Auvergne you can have as much property as you like. The place is littered with all kinds of tiny farms that are abandoned and available for next to nothing. The mechanisation of agriculture in France after World War II and the industrialisation of the country led to a flight of all the young people to the towns. All the old people died off and the houses were simply left to abandon.

The nurse came and did her best to cheer me up which was nice, seeing as I’d lost yet another clip for my puttees. I was expecting an argument. She’s given me a few tips about the hospital and then wished me luck.

No breakfast for me this morning. I have to be without food so instead I checked over my packing and made sure that I had everything that I needed. This requirement about “medication in the original boxes” is ridiculous, especially just for one night’s stay.

Next was to make some sandwiches because, without doubt, the food, if in fact I receive anything, is going to be rubbish. And if I’m without food all morning, I’ll be needing something.

Back in here I had a few letters to write and things like that but I was taken by surprise by the taxi that turned up a good 20 minutes early and I was nothing like ready. Nevertheless, we went with what we had.

It was a lovely drive down to Avranches and how I enjoyed smelling the open countryside for the first time since I don’t know when. It’s a shame that there wasn’t more of it.

It’s the Polyclinic, not the hospital, where I’m going. And finding my room was rather complicated as we turned up at the lunch hour. Eventually someone directed us to my room, which it seems I’m going to be sharing.

A nurse checked me in and asked me a load of questions, most of which I answered wrongly. She had to fetch an electric razor to shave my arm – what did I know about doing it – and then she wandered off.

They gave me a load of paper clothes to wear and once I’d changed, they wheeled me away in a wheelchair as far as surgery where they put me on a trolley and took me into a corner of the room.

While I was waiting, I fell asleep. I was dreaming that I was dreaming and dictating the dream into my dictaphone but someone snatched the dictaphone from me, threw it onto the bed and wheeled me off somewhere. There I was for hours hoping that at least they would be able to take me back to wherever it was that the dictaphone had landed and that it had been switched off so that the batteries hadn’t gone flat

It was another panic attack but with everything that’s going on right now, that’s not a surprise. I’m surprised that I’ve not had more of them just recently.

They moved the bed across the room (waking me up). “Hold out your arm” said someone, so I did.

Next thing that I remember, it was a couple of hours later, there was a big white plaster on my arm and a pain going all the way up into my shoulder. But at least the worst is over (I think) and it was done exactly as I would have liked it – no fuss, no explanation, no nothing. Knock me out and get on with it.

They took me back to my room and put me to bed where I slept for an hour or two before gradually coming back round into the Land of the Living

And then I had to hassle them for my meal. They seemed quite reluctant to bring it, although I can’t see why. I made sure that I had plenty of bread for my soup and my main course of carrot purée (and that’s it), thinking that I’m glad that I made my butties. I’ll need those if things don’t buck up.

One of the nurses asked about the pain. It’s been increasing all the time as the anaesthetic has worn off. When I mentioned it to a nurse she came back immediately with some Doliprane. Which I refused, of course. The whole of France is awash with Doliprane.

Seriously though, if you have a pain, it’s for a reason. And if you hide or mask that pain and put effort on joints that really need time to relax and recover, you can do more harm than good

So gritting my teeth, I went to bed.

And my arm in a sling reminds me of the well known Austrian who invented the brassiere, Otto Titsling

Wednesday 3rd July 2024 – "A GENERAL ANAESTHETIC …"

"… for just a few cuts in a couple of veins? Certainly not! You’ll have a local anaesthetic for a half-hour operation like this!" (… and like it!) and there was no arguing with the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie

Here was a woman who means business – at least, I think that’s what she was meaning. If you think that my accent is bad you want to hear hers. She comes from a Spanish/Portuguese environment I reckon and I could hardly understand a word that she said at times.

A few other times I understood clearly enough. "They have you down for an overnight stay too. Why is that?"
"PLease miss" I felt like saying, "I live on my own". I replied "There’s no-one looking after me."
"Well, don’t you have a friend where you can go? Isn’t there a neighbour who will take you in?"

Well, as it happens, there is a neighbour who will take me in but I’ll be lucky to come out alive. Do you remember the case of Kirk Anderson, the Manacled Mormon who claimed that Joyce McKinney had chained him to her bed and then had her wicked way with him? We’ll be back reliving those events again.

At least, not all of them. And it won’t be a doctor that I’ll need to see. His job is to heal the sick. I’d need the assistance of a medium or a spiritualist to help me raise the dead.

But seriously just for a moment, I was lucky to leave the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie’s lair alive and I’m having a horrible feeling about this business on the 16th. I’ve mentioned before … "and on several occasions too" – ed … the rather brusque business-like attitude and manner that seems to exist in the hospitals around here.

Never was it more in evidence than today.

Nothing else very much business-like about today unfortunately.

Last night was another late night which was a shame followed once again by being wide awake at 03:15, lying there with streaming nose and eyes and feeling absolutely lousy.

It was at about 06:00 when I gave up the fight and arose from my stinking pit. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already washed, dried and sitting at my desk working.

The nurse was late today. Apparently my neighbour had had a bad fall and when the nurse arrived there she was sprawled al over the floor. He had to pick her up, dust her off and start her all over again.

He’s trying to encourage her to go into a Home for the elderly and infirm and it’s not a bad idea, except for the fact that robbing a person of their autonomy is often sentencing them to death. I know people mean well when they go to, say, take the tops off your yoghurt for you or cut up your meal for you, but it really is humiliating.

On that note, he did what he could to put my neighbour back on her feet and then came down here to see what damage he could do to me.

And as it happens, I didn’t need much from anyone else. I could create enough damage on my own. He sorted out my legs with my puttees and then pointed out the shortage of supplies. Not that it did much good because he was gone before I could take it all in.

After breakfast I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing there from the night which was a surprise because there was a lot of stuff that I can’t remember now about the confusing aspects of going to hospital – is it better to take one form of recovery or take another form, what was wrong with each one? How would I return home? How things would be complicated and how things would be managed. That drifted on through some kind of wartime scenario but it was all to do with my ill-health. Unfortunately I can’t really remember all that much of it now which is a shame but I definitely recall being torn desperately in two directions with no clear path to guide me – and there’s a lot of truth in a feeling like that right at the moment. I’m currently being pulled in every direction save that in which I think that I ought to be going.

Today I’ve been working on a new project. One of the greatest live albums ever celebrates its birthday soon and although the album is actually quite short, the whole concert lasted for just over two hours, the event was recorded (well, obviously) in its entirety and I have found, tucked away in a few various recesses here and there, a copy of the recording!

It contains the songs that are well-known from the published work of course, but also plenty of others and loads of interesting and illuminating dialogue between the musicians that has never seen the light of day.

We shall be having a great deal of fun with this broadcast when it hits the air.

There’s also been a cookery master-class going on too. I’ve been teaching everyone in my little travel group to make naan bread, seeing as almost everyone seemed to be planning on making a curry.

My cleaner came and went early today as I had to be ready by 16:00 for the taxi to take me to see the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie.

We were late arriving, due to problems on the road with all the traffic, however that meant that I didn’t have to wait long.

With the kind of glance that would curdle milk at 100 paces she enticed me into her lair and then the interrogation began. I felt like at any moment the bright light and thumbscrews would be out but eventually she threw me out, satisfied that another helpless victim has been ensnared.

The taxi brought me back here where my loyal cleaner helped me up the stairs, God bless her! Ho nice it was to see a friendly face.

And her help was welcomed too because I’d have never managed the 25 Steps on my own.

On that subject, I might not have to face them for much longer. Although there’s 11 months left on the lease of the tenant in my apartment downstairs, I’ve issued instructions to the letting agents to start proceedings to make sure that the lease isn’t automatically renewed, as most leases are.

Here in France, tenants have a great many rights and things have to be done “by the book” So it’s worth paying someone to do it correctly. But I bet that there’s yet another banana skin somewhere lurking around.

Up here i made tea – a leftover curry with naan bread and it really was delicious. I could eat that all over again. But not right now as I’m off to bed. Next Wednesday will come round soon enough

Talking about anaesthetics however reminds me of the time that Idi Amin went to the dentist’s. The dentist worked out what he needed, laid out all the tools and drills and went to his fridge from which he pulled a hypodermic needle
"What are you doing?" asked a panic-stricken Amin
"There’s no need to worry" said the dentist. "I’m going to give you a local anaesthetic."
So Amin left his chair, picked up the dentist and began to beat him to a pulp.
When he’d finished, he turned to the dentist’s assistant and said "NOT local! American! OK?"

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

The anaesthetist “wants to see me” and has set aside 16:45 on Wednesday 3rd July for the purpose.

And then the operation will take place on 16th July. I shall be there overnight because given my opinions of hospital, operations, blood and gore as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have elected for the “General anaesthetic” rather than the local anaesthetic.

There’s no way in this World that I’ll be lying there watching a local anaesthetic slowly wear off and catching sight of what is going on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures in Castle Anthrax a few years ago where they turned up unannounced in my room, whisked me and my bed off to the cellar clamped a gas mask over my face, said “smell this” and the next thing that I knew, it was four hours later and I’d had a surgical operation.

Even today, I still don’t know what they did, and that suits me fine. If all operations went like that, I’d have more of them. But this modern 21st-Century society where I have to be informed of each step and each procedure in graphic detail and formally agree to them.
"But it’s your right!" they wail.
But what about MY right not to want to know? No-one cares about my rights.

As long as the operation is in the morning. TNS are playing in the Champions’ League that evening. That time in Castle Anthrax I missed Newtown v Caernarfon

Meanwhile, abandoning another good rant for the moment, last night was again horribly late by the time that I went to bed. I just don’t seem to be able to make the time go any slower

Yes, when we were kids, our six weeks of summer holiday used to last for ever. Now six weeks goes in the blinking of an eye.

And once in bed, I didn’t need much rocking yet again. It’s lovely and warm and comfortable in there, just me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE tucked up tight.

Not so comfortable that I didn’t awaken before the alarm went off. When I awoke at about 06:00 I made some kind of comment and I’m certain that I had some kind of reply from someone sleeping in the next bed about life in the RAF. Of course, then then kind of thing evaporated and I realised that it really was 06:30 and I really was awake in my own bed with my own things

And that was weird too. It really did sound as if there was someone else in the room. And it wasn’t His Nibs either. If only he could talk, he would have a few tales that he could tell that would be worth a good few bob to anyone who might be interested.

He could tell me a few tales too of when he’s been let loose on his own in the company of ladies of the opposite sex.

But returning to the dream, I’ve no idea what was happening there.

I also have a vague impression of walking through Shavington en route for somewhere else, just using one crutch and feeling quite confident about it too

If only I could walk with one crutch. I used to be able to do that up until about 9 months ago but how my mobility has reduced over that period of time. There are times when I’m hard-pushed to walk with two these days.

Just to prove that I can do it when I really try, I pushed myself out of bed before the alarm went off. Only by five minutes, it has to be said, but five minutes is five minutes and they all count.

After a good wash and scrub up I loitered around for a while transcribing the dictaphone (such as they were) until the nurse came round.

When he arrived I told him about the prescription to which he readily agreed, and then he cleared off without writing one out. I hope that he does it back at the office and drops it off in the morning.

Once he’d finally gone I made breakfast – porridge and toast with orange juice and strong coffee. And believe me, I needed it.

There wasn’t much time to revise or review my Welsh before the lesson started, and having missed a week, Bane of Britain revised the wrong module. But it makes no difference because I’m rubbish whether I revise or not.

And having given the matter serious thought, as well as studying next year as normal, I’m definitely going to retake this year in an evening class with another provider because I’ve missed so much of it with hospital and all of that, and I don’t want to embarrass Coleg Cambria by doing it with them.

The difficulty is finding a provider who offers “North Welsh”.

For the southern dialect there are more courses than you can shake a stick at. It’s not too much of a problem because my grandmother came from down south even though she lived most of her life up in the north-east so I’m used to hearing both dialects. But I’m definitely a “North-id”. Bangor University is affiliated to the “LearnWelsh” programme so they might have something.

After the end of the lesson, when we all went our separate ways for the summer holidays, I changed the habits of a lifetime and had a sandwich seeing as I won’t be having my mid-afternoon snack.

And then I made myself ready for my trip to Avranches.

The trip down there was the first time that I’d felt tired? but I soon livened up when I couldn’t get out of my chair and everyone in the building had to rally round and help. Fancy a hospital waiting room with no arms on their chairs!

Anyway, the surgeon played ball, which was nice. He understood my fears, mumbled his way through what he was supposed to say, didn’t say anything else and asked if I agreed with what he’d just said.

How could I do anything else?

Next step will be the anaesthetist. He wants to “see me” – I suppose, in the same way that the executioner looks over the condemned man. I’m already feeling rather uncomfortable and we haven’t started yet.

We had a full car going home – it seems as if we went to every medical establishment in Avranches on some sort of Cook’s Tour to pick up everyone heading to this neck of the woods.

Back here I was first out, and my faithful cleaner helped me up the steps, standing behind me lifting up my foot with hers.

This can’t go on much longer. I don’t have the force to keep on dragging myself up the handrail, and neither does she, I suspect. I can only see an unpleasant future of doom and gloom if this carries on. And if I have dialysis, I’ll be doing it three times per week at least.

Once I was home I sat down – and crashed out. I was dead to the World.

Only 20 minutes late starting tea. At least it was taco roll with rice so it didn’t need much preparation.

As for me, neither do I. I’ll be in bed before you know it and there I intend to stay until my name changes to Rip van Epic. I am totally wasted after this afternoon – and I have to do it tomorrow too. That’s when I go to see Emilie the cute consultant’s sidekick.

But as I said, I’m off to bed to reflect on the events of the day and mull over the words of the surgeon – at least, the words that I understood.
"I’ve listened to you for fifteen minutes" I told him "but I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not" he replied "but you’re certainly better-informed."

Tuesday 18th June 2024 – ON OUR WAY …

… home, going home where lovers roam.

Yes, unfortunately I can’t welcome you to the Pleasuredome yet – that’s another year away once the tenant downstairs clears off, but I can certainly welcome you to an apartment that I have never ever seen in all my life before.

Not only is the apartment spotlessly clean, and by that I mean my office and bedroom too, everything in sight has been washed to death including all the bedding and I have a lovely clean bed in which to climb later this evening.

My cleaner has worked miracles to have this place ready for me and I’m beyond speechless at the efforts that she’s made for me.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the solidarity that I have encountered in this building has made coming to live here all worthwhile.

A shame that the hospital couldn’t have joined in the fun. Like most French public functions it’s “duty before everything else” and most of the staff had a tendency to be rather brusque but nevertheless, in unguarded moments they could all (well, mostly) be good fun and apart from the dreadful stuff that passed for food, I enjoyed my stay.

Well, most of it, anyway.

And for a change, I actually enjoyed last night. I had a good sleep for once. Although I wasn’t in bed until long after midnight, I slept right the way through until 06:00 without awakening when I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse.

And would you believe, well, I’m sure you would because you’ve been following these pages long enough, someone chose that moment to come in to tell me that they wanted to take a blood sample.

"Come back in five minutes" I grunted.

Ten minutes later we had the 06:15 whirlwind through the ward. I gave blood and just about everything else. Surprisingly they didn’t ask for a diabetes sample – I suppose that they’ll “get that from the blood test” – but they gave me a totally unsolicited glass of orange juice all the same.

Having gulped that down, I settled down under the covers again and was totally dead to the World until the next round of awakening at 08:15. That two hours or however long it was was the deepest sleep that I have ever had, I’m sure of that.

With that procedure out of the way, breakfast came round. And once I’d polished that off I nipped into the bathroom where, sitting astride the you-know-what, I had my last hospital shower.

And remembering what happened the other week in Paris, I didn’t wash my clothes. I don’t want to be lugging soaking wet clothes halfway around Normandy.

After the shower I had a visit from the medical staff. All of my medication has changed and I noticed with a wry smile that in some cases we’re back to where we were a couple of years ago.

And a real surprise was that the chief of the dieticians came to see me today to excuse herself and her team. Nothing I can say or do will change the Byzantine nature of things in the French Public Service so I listened politely and thanked them for coming, but I must admit that it was through gritted teeth.

As well as all of that, there are several appointments in the immediate future and a couple of tasks for the nursing staff who come to the apartment every morning. I’m definitely going to be having my money’s worth.

What was sad that it wasn’t Emilie the cute consultant who came to say “goodbye”. She sent a sidekick to blast me off into Eternity today and I was really disappointed at that.

And so it went on for several hours, people preparing me and then unpreparing me for departure so in the end I gave up and went to sleep in my chair.

Eventually an ambulance arrived and the ambulanciers strapped me to a stretcher and loaded me into the back of their vehicle. And there I was, hoping for a rather discreet and unobtrusive return.

My cleaner bless her was waiting downstairs to help me up here but the guys put me in a chair and carried me up. It’s a good job that I’d lost all that weight.

Once inside the place, while I was being overwhelmed by the kindness, my cleaner was going through my prescription, restoring to the shelves medicaments that had been discarded in the past, withdrawing medicaments that had only just been prescribed and then she sallied forth into town to have the new prescription made up, and presumably to arrange a lorry to bring it all back.

While she was away I had some hummus and biscottes along with a mug of hot chocolate. New stuff fresh from the bottle – you should have seen how bloated the stuff was in the fridge that I’d left when I went in.

When my cleaner came back, she had half the stuff. The rest will be here over the next few days. But we both came to the conclusion that the amount of stuff here now is overwhelming and I am going to need help to sort myself out with this medication otherwise we’ll be having a tragedy.

What I shall probably have to do is to involve the visiting nurse in all of this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. That was when we just realised that there would be quite a lot more than just rape back at our base so we decided to hurry back from the end of this mission and take up some kind of armed guard although we expected that if our armies were defeated we’d all be disarmed anyway in which case if would be very pot luck as to what happened and what people had to suffer before the end of the war was announced.

Quite a gruesome subject, I know, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post something like this but it actually has some kind of basis in fact. A prison camp containing prisoners of all nations was overrun by the Russians in Eastern Europe and the prisoners were released. Many of the prisoners remained in some kind of orderly cohesion but the Russian prisoners went berserk and began to commit all kinds of atrocities. A delegation from a local village came to the camp and pleaded with the British officer in charge to send a platoon of British prisoners to protect the inhabitants of the village from the depredations of the Russians. The irony of the situation was not lost on the British prisoners – defending their enemies from their allies – and it was definitely a premonition of the times five years hence.

Tea tonight was my long-anticipated pasta with vegetables and melted cheese, along with a burger from the European Burger Mountain in my fridge. And you’ve no idea just how delicious it was. It made the waiting all worthwhile.

Well, perhaps not.

So now I’m going to curl up in my luxurious clean bed and if it wasn’t for the nurse in the morning, I wouldn’t be leaving it for a week.

At least there will be no bed-baths. There was a strange, foreign nurse on the ward this morning giving bed-baths. With one guy she folded down his nightgown to his waist and said "first I wash as far as possible"
Then she rolled up his nightgown, began to wash his legs and said "next I wash as far as possible"
And finally, with a flourish, she ripped off his gown and said "and now I wash possible"

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

… from Paris, and in one piece too which makes a major change.

And I’ve learned a lot too, which also makes a change, but very little of it about what is going on, for the simple reason that I’m not convinced that the hospital knows all that much about things.

Not that that’s any surprise. It’s pretty difficult when you are dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure and everything has to be done by trial and error, crossing of fingers, and hoping that something somewhere will work a miracle.

Instead though, I’ve been shown a whole new way through Paris – a way that’s almost totally devoid of traffic – and Ill remember this for if, by any luck, a miracle happens and I can come here again under my own steam. However, I am not optimistic.

Just as last night I wasn’t optimistic about having a good night’s sleep. I never seem to manage one in normal circumstances and there’s even less chance when I have a journey the next day. It’s always the case and I’ve never worked out why.

Going to bed long after midnight doesn’t help matters much, but I’m at the stage where I’m past caring. As I said yesterday, whenever that was, I’ve long-since lost all track of time here.

Whatever the contretemps was last night when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still continuing so I thought that it was probably a better idea to keep well clear rather than sticking my oar into a controversial situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and I left them to it.

For a change I was asleep quite quickly but as usual kept on awakening which put me off my stroke.

There was the 06:15 blitz through the ward and even though I had my alarm set for 07:00 I was awakened unceremoniously at 06:25. Diabetes check below the limit but I was refused my supplementary orange juice. "Your breakfast will be here in a moment".

When I protested I was told to sod off. What a way to start the day!

However, she was right. Breakfast WAS served soon. Too soon in fact because the bread hadn’t arrived and I had to have biscottes.

The taxi driver came early and I wasn’t finished in the bathroom so he had to wait. But when I emerged I was shoved into a wheelchair and pushed off, clutching my crutches and the packed lunch that the nurse handed me.

There was “some issue” about my packed lunch. When it turned up it was ham and cheese sandwiches, absolutely ideal for a vegan I don’t think. And so for the first time ever in my life I have had bread sandwiches – two slices of bread with … a slice of bread in between.

The driver has run me around before. He’s a nice enough guy and a good driver but doesn’t have much to say for himself. Nether did I today so it was a fairly quiet drive and I slept for some of the way.

Astonishingly, we weren’t held up at all anywhere and sailed all the way through. A four-hour trip took just over three hours today.

Even more surprisingly, I was seen straight away by the specialist.

The lumbar puncture and the electric shock examinations from the other week when I was here as an in-patient don’t show any significant deterioration. But they don’t show any significant improvement either, which he found disappointing.

Consequently he’s going to change my chemotherapy tablet, the one that costs a King’s ransom for some other tablet.

There’s also the suspicion – only a suspicion, mind you – that there’s something else causing this creeping paralysis. He reckons that the amount of drugs pumped into me ought to have had a reaction. Consequently he wants to carry out a Biopsy of my nervous system. This will involve the stay of a few days in September.

Well, why not? What do I have to lose? Only my appetite with the food that’s on offer there.

But seriously, if I’m going to be poked and prodded around and used as a guinea-pig, I may as well make it worth my while and go the whole hog.

There was a blood sample that needed to be taken so I staggered off there where they had several goes at finding a vein and, on staggering out, staggered right into my driver who was passing down the corridor.

"Do you want time to eat your lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks" I replied, having seen what was in my food parcel "Let’s go straight back"

So having taken a different way home, at least as far as the suburbs of Paris, we were back here at 16:15 where the nursing staff, sincerely and unprompted, expressed their dismay at my lunch. "The hospital needs to make more of an effort". Someone fetched me an apple, for which I was grateful.

It’s been confirmed that I am going home tomorrow. "You could have gone home tonight but we didn’t want you to go home to a cold apartment and have the effort of cooking for yourself after the exertion of your trip to Paris" said Emilie the cute consultant who came to see me.

And you ought to be proud of me. I actually did refrain from offering her my front-door key and telling her warm up the place and put the supper on the stove.

But she did come to see me to find out how things went and she photographed the relevant info from Paris. She wished me luck on the next stage of my adventure with my health issues and by the time our conversation finished, I wasn’t really sure who was chatting up whom.

Yes, I’d quite happily massage her clavicles any time of the day or night, whether she asks or not.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been out entertaining our parents in the RAF station.. When they came back there were three bats entangled in the barbed wire. We tried to laugh it off but in reality what had happened was that a couple of Lancaster trainers had one into the barbed wire too. Two of our students were killed. We tried to laugh it off as some kind of nothing much or not very important but from where we were we gradually prepared ourselves for flying operations and gradually tried to keep in shape etc ready to leave and set off. But we had the funeral and then we had to check the barbed wire in the camp and the guards. The guard was shaken up but I dunno I suppose that was what happened.

That’s rather a garbled account of something that I can’t really understand. The barbed wire from last night seems to be there but I’ve no idea about the rest of it Funerals on Air Force bases were commonplace following crashes and the like when trainees were overwhelmed by the equipment and machines that they ere operating and people who witnesses these accidents went to extraordinary lengths and took extraordinary measures to put the images of what they had seen behind them..

While I was on a field exercise I came across a guy living in a hut in the mountains. He was living in deplorable circumstances but I’ve no idea why. I had him arrested and taken back to base. It turned out that he was in fact someone who had been conscripted years ago but had fled. His whole life had been living in this cabin and he had learned so much in his two years of isolation. He taught it all to us, even down to eating possum Without him, our Air Force careers would have been so much tougher because he taught us to survive, and to survive on next-to-nothing. When we were prisoners that was just how it was – survive on what you had and don’t think about anything else

That reminds me of when I lived down on the farm and at a meeting once I was chatting to two British guys who were discussing “this strange British guy who lives like a hermit up in the mountains and no-one ever sees” and it took me a full fifteen minutes to work out that they were talking about me. I’d fit the description in this dream quite happily except that I’d draw the line at eating possum of course. The “deplorable conditions” would fit nicely though.

So anyway, home tomorrow it is. At least, if I can climb the steps up to my apartment. I’m not optimistic because I’ve been practising and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

And that bit about “dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure” brought a wry smile to my face. It reminded me of the Summer School for one of my University modules back 20-odd years ago where a group of us on a Science awareness course managed to club our heads together in the laboratory and discovered a cure for which there was no known disease.

Sunday 16th June 2024 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… all that much more today than I did yesterday.

Quite possibly because I was catching up on my sleep from last night. It was another late night, probably the latest of all just recently. As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … time has gone out of the window in this place.

Hours, days, weeks – I haven’t a clue where I am really and as we know judging by recent events, neither has the hospital. One of these days our two eccentric circles will correspond, only for them to fall apart again.

Tomorrow anyway, we seem to agree on one thing, and that is that I’m going to Paris. However it now seems, judging by a text message that I’ve had that my appointment has been advanced to 11:05 from 12:30.

Clearly, Paris should be joining in this group of eccentric circular timespans because there is no way in this World that I’m going to be there for then. My taxi isn’t picking me up until 08:30 and it’s about a 4-hour drive. I keep on telling them in Paris that with all the best will in the World I can’t respond to last-minute additions or changes, with all of the logistical difficulties that are involved, especially when I only receive the notification on a Sunday when the taxi office is closed.

So it’s going to be 12:30 whether they like it or not, and if it’s too late so they have to cancel, then that’s too bad. With this latest round of hospital treatment here, I obviously have other fish to fry at the moment and we’ll worry about my cancer treatment at another moment.

Anyway, I was having a good read of all of these notes and things last night, completely lost track of time and ended up crawling shamefully into bed long after everyone else and hoping that no-one noticed.

It was pretty much useless though; I don’t know what time it was but it sounds as if they are dismantling a factory outside my bedroom door. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard so much racket inside a hospital as what’s going on at the moment and going to sleep was pretty impossible for quite a while.

But go to sleep I did eventually, hoping for a night like last night but no such luck. We had the 06:15 whirlwind and blitz though our rooms, and the 08:00 diabetes test. 0.79 mine was today, just on the limit for orange juice. The nurse didn’t think it worth it but I wasn’t going to miss out on extra orange juice. Ohh no!

Breakfast was late today which was a shame because I was starving. And the coffee was cold so they must have been held up somewhere which is not a surprise because firstly there’s a new guy on the ward who seems to need a lot of people buzzing around him judging by his tone of voice and secondly, there was much more movement than usual of people in beds coming and going, pushed by the orderlies but having to be positioned and so on by the auxiliaries

After breakfast I had a good scrub and then watched a film – INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY, the second film of the trilogy. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’ve downloaded a good few of these films onto my laptop for when I’m on my travels and bored in a hotel. I’ll never tire of Gordon Harker

And watch for the young girl at the piano right at the start of the film. She appears in tiny cameo roles in quite a few films of this nature during this period, and I still haven’t worked out why.

The doctor from yesterday came round to see how I was, so I had to pause the film. She seems now to agree that it is in fact Tuesday that I do go home, which is good news, but there’s still plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this respect.

More good news is that she weighed me. There are two target weights that I try to reach. The first is my “inactive” weight when I’m not running or keeping fit, and the second is my “active” weight when I am. And the weighing machine tells me that, fully clothed, I’m now below my inactive weight heading for my active weight target.

She of course thinks that it’s this water retention issue sorting itself out but I put it down to the starvation rations in this place.

The Creatine level is stable – at … err … 440. She told me that that was good news but I told her that it would be better news if it were stable at 270 where it was before all of this performance began or even stable at below 100 where it’s supposed to be. What’s this “300 is a critical level” thing all about?

Her reply was that I seem to be coping really well with the limitations and it would have been a different matter entirely had my body not responded to the shock treatment that they gave me when I came in.

After she left I carried on watching my film. Lunch was late too, but for a change I received everything that I was supposed to. Things are definitely looking up in that respect

This afternoon I watched another film, BEHIND GREEN LIGHTS, a cheesy detective thriller from 1946 with William Gargan and Carole Landis who are both actors far too good for this sort of script. Nevertheless, for passing an idle 90 minutes, there have been worse ideas than watching this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too which was a surprise. Amongst the people taken by surprise by our sudden movement was a certain Frenchman who was standing in the middle of where we pitched our tents shaking his head found by the military police wondering where we’d all gone. Apparently he used to come here every evening for reasons like … and was able to skip past the guards on the perimeter until he made it to the centre of the camp and whoever was billeted here

And then, it seems, I had a very similar dream later on. Similar, but in more detail and our mysterious man’s nationality had changed. Apparently the departure of 131 Squadron for the UK was so rapid that amongst the items left behind on the abandoned airfield in North Africa and recovered by a Recovery Unit was a young, immaculately dressed Italian man. Apparently he had been in the habit every might of climbing the barbed wire perimeter defences totally unobserved so that he could visit his “friend”, for whatever purpose one can only imagine. The departure had been so sudden that the airman hadn’t had the time to communicate the fact, and there was the Italian man, having climbed the barbed wire defences once more, face to face with an Irate Recovery Squad Officer.

For the record, 131 Squadron was a bomber squadron in World War I and a fighter squadron in World War II, yet I was convinced that I was discussing a bomber squadron which makes sense, with all this stuff that I’ve been reading. The squadron never served in North Africa anyway. In World War II it served in England, Wales and India, flying Spitfires and, later, Thunderbolts.

The rest of the day has been spent either working on more radio stuff or else reading more notes. Anything to keep out of mischief.

Tomorrow then, I’m off to Paris. What happens next, we’ll find out when we arrive. Apparently I’ll be given a picnic for midday by the hospital but that will remain to be seen. If the journey goes OK they’ll throw me out of here on Tuesday and I’ll resume the battle with just the Visiting Nurses keeping an eye on me, not that they did that too well just now.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I contracted this cancer back in 2015, the advice that every medical professional in Castle Anthrax gave me was to “save your strength for the struggle that lies ahead” and left me in no doubt that it would be a struggle. So despite all of the setbacks that we have had, the battle will go on.

First, though, I’ll go to see what the fight down the corridor is all about. But not before I mention that the story about Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the Australian airman yesterday reminded me of something else. I think that it was Percy Penguin, bless her, who told me about the time that the Queen Mother visited the Home where she worked.
There was one old lady who clearly no longer had both paddles in the water who objected to the fuss being made, and expressed herself in “forthright” terms.
"Don’t you know who I am?" said the Queen Mother indignantly
"No dear" said the old woman "but ask the matron. She’ll tell you"

Tuesday 28th May 2024 – “YOU ARE REQUESTED …

… to come for an appointment at the hospital at Avranches on Friday morning at 09:00. Ohhh – and bring your overnight things”.

Things are moving faster than I even expected and it’s rather important because this weekend I have friends coming over from Germany to visit me. I bet that they didn’t expect to come to visit me in a hospital bed.

But yet more visits? More visits this year than I’ve had in all the other years combined since I’ve been living here. Anyone would think that I’m dying or something.

Last night I actually felt like dying. I’d done all that I could to have an early night and then the fates conspired against me, one thing led to another, and once you begin you’ve no idea how many other things there are. As a result I was late into bed once more.

However I actually found it a little easier to crawl into bed last night and turning over through the pain barrier into the only position in which it’s possible at the moment to be comfortable was nothing like as painful as it has been

My legs were well inside the bed too which meant that I didn’t fall out once which was an improvement on the previous night. Nevertheless I was awake a long time before the alarm went off and wandering around the bathroom when it finally did ring.

No blood test today for some reason. He’s going to do it tomorrow, which probably means that I won’t have my injection of the Last Resort until Thursday, if it’s not too late by then

But I do wish that he’d stop moaning. Things may well not be pleasant for him around here right now, but imagine how they are for me. Don’t you think that I’d change things if I could?

After he left I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There wasn’t actually anything on it but that’s not to say that I didn’t go anywhere.

In fact I had the greatest memory of another one of those really long dreams that I’m sifting through my head before I dictate them, just like the other night. This was a lengthy newspaper article that I was writing about how unjust it is to blame goalkeepers for their errors on the field. A keeper who lets a shot roll in under his body has no more lost the game for his club than the centre-forward who misses a sitter. Yet you see plenty of “goalkeeper error” videos but very rarely a “centre forward error” one.

What started this. I suppose, was a game that I saw the other day between Annan Athletic Under 17s and Threave Rovers Under 17s when the Annan keeper was yellow-carded for “deliberate handball” giving away a freekick that led to a goal by Threave Rovers. The game was being played on a sports centre pitch where there were five different sets of markings and he simply carried the ball out to the wrong set of lines. So what I was doing in my sleep was going through lists of games where a keeper had made a mistake and conceded a bad goal and a striker had missed a sitter in front of goal, and comparing who was blamed for the defeat.

Of course, each time that I thought that I’d had my list ready to dictate I remembered something else and had to start my list again. But I was awake before I could do that.

Coffee and delicious flapjack were next, then back in here I didn’t do all that much for a while.

A ring on the doorbell, a real one this times, jogged me into action. It was the doctor. He took one look at me and almost collapsed with shock.

He gave me a good going-over and reckoned that I ought to have a spell in hospital – “and not just a couple of days either”. He’d “have a word with the nephrology professor” at Avranches about me

So after he left I began to bring my medical file up-to-date, weeding out all of the time-expired stuff and adding in the new stuff. You’ve no idea how much has changed over the past few weeks.

My prescription – I’d given than to the nurse this morning. I had to print off another one along with yet more paperwork.

In the middle of all of this the hospital at Avranches rang up with the convoquation. So here we go.

Firstly, I had to book the taxi to take me. Secondly, I had to tell Paris where I was going just in case I can’t make their appointment on the 10th of June.

The doctor’s office rang me back later too “there’s another medicament …” so I had to contact my poor cleaner. And having one hospital take me off the Burinex for something else, Avranches has now put me back on the Burinex. And that’s just as well because I never had these problems when I was taking that.

In the middle of all of this I’d been doing some radio stuff. I’d started by choosing some music for another programme but with the news that I had, I verified three more programmes and sent them off. I told you that it’s a good idea to have a few prepared in advance.

At long last I could go for tea – a taco roll with rice and veg. Totally delicious as usual. I really do like my boring meals. They are totally different from what I’ll be eating in a few days time. I hope that some of you will be sending me food parcels.

But that’s for another time. I’m living from day to day here – in fact, from minute to minute. Getting into bed is the next challenge

The hospital should be fun – in the sense of interaction with others. I don’t see enough people, stranded as I am in my apartment. I know that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having told me that I need to get out more.

But it’s going to be a struggle for them at Avranches. Last time I was there I heard more than one nurse say, as I was climbing into the taxi to take me home "if he comes back, I’m leaving!"

Monday 27th May 2024 – IT’S BEEN LIKE …

… Euston Station in here with all of the various comings and goings. And not just physically either. The telephone has been burning a hole in my hand too judging by the number of calls that it’s had to handle.

From dawn until dusk things have never been quiet, always with something happening and I really am at the stage of wondering “why?”

Last night though was rather quiet. After I’d finished my notes, late as it might have been, I didn’t hang around but fell onto the bed quite quickly. Actually making myself comfortable under the quilt was something else completely but never mind. “Agonising” or “painful” are quite appropriate words to use here.

And things went fairly well during the night until about 05:30 when my right leg fell out of bed.

“Why didn’t you put it back in bed?” I hear you say. But I did, even if it did take me half an hour to do it. And if you think that I am joking I promise you that I’m not. You’ve no idea what kind of state I’m in.

And once it was back in bed it didn’t last long and at 06:30 it fell out again. This time, no matter how I tried I couldn’t get it back into bed. At 06:50 I gave up the struggle and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse

The nurse came round later and took my blood sample. It was the most clean, painless blood sample that I have ever had taken too and it’s a shame that she’s now finished until next week.

After she left I came back in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes.. I was in Berlin last night. The old West German government was trying to persuade some woman, the wife of some West German minister to murder some political rival by poisoning him. They had some information on her and would use it if she failed to carry out their demand. Instead, she killed him in a different fashion which puzzled everyone. No-one could understand who had done it and why. There was a big investigation and she ended up in Court to answer questions. She told the Court everything about her involvement with the attempted poisoning but nothing whatever about the shooting to make it appear that she had a perfect alibi for whenever the killing had taken place with regard to this other person.

It’s years since I was in West Berlin. It was the case where this kind of thing happened only too frequently. The people, were living under the shadow of the East so time was short, and fun, deceit and intrigue was the name of the game. I encountered just as much “surveillance” there as I did in Minsk and Moscow in the days of the Iron Curtain There were all kinds of murky goings-on in West Berlin.

Having almost fell out of bed, I finally managed it at about 05:30 when my right leg hit the floor dramatically and awoke me. I was thinking at the time of a song, a new wave song that was going round in my head and which I’ve subsequently forgotten. A Jeep, like a Japanese four-wheel drive pickup thing in Canada being involved in a bit of road rage and doing a U-turn through a parking lot to go back onto the road and chase after the people who had upset him which was when I fell out of bed

And as if there’s ever any road rage in Canada. The only time I ever encountered people blowing their horns was near me when I was driving. Canada – even parts of rural Québec – is one of the most laid-back places on earth.

While I was sitting on the edge of the bed I fell asleep. Leicester City lost one of their young midfield players who went to play for Plymouth Argyle. The fee was £60,000 and Leicester were upset because they thought that it was more. The guy who replaced him in Leicester’s team had a really bad injury and was carried off the field. There wasn’t really anyone on their bench to replace him so they were even more incensed.

Having typed out my dictaphone notes I went for my morning coffee and new flapjack, which is quite delicious but a little dry. I shall have to increase the amount of honey that I use, I reckon. But I am very impressed with it – almost as much as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

The phone rang immediately afterwards. It was the hospital wondering how I was.

When I’d finished telling them of my grief they told me to contact my GP and tell him everything, which I promised to do. However back in here I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I knew, it was 14:06.

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I wrote out my letter as promised and sent a message to my faithful cleaner to see if she would deliver it.

Then I received an e-mail from the hospital – “here’s a new prescription changing a few things …” so I printed it out and send another note to my cleaner.

The doctor’s surgery was next to call. The hospital had contacted them. The blood test must be done again – I don’t think that they can believe some of the figures (and neither could I when I saw it) so she’ll see the nurse, but there’s a new medication that I have to take – she’ll send the prescription direct to the pharmacie

So I sent another message to my cleaner.

The blood test results turned up next.

The red blood cells have now dropped to 8.4 – just 0.4 above the critical limit. No wonder I’m feeling wretched right now. We’re back on the injections as of Wednesday then.

If that’s not enough, remember when the Creatinite had risen to 310 and caused them to summon me urgently to the hospital for emergency treatment? It’s now at 336, a figure which apparently won’t support life.

My cleaner turned up and I gave her everything. And bless her! She seemed to think that it was so important that she sailed off like a galleon down into town without even stopping for breath.

And guess what? Remember the anti-potassium stuff that was giving me all of these hallucinations? Here it is again

The cleaner and I spent a good while going through all of my medication. Even the nurse thinks that it’s too much and I can’t say that I disagree. But there’s piles of it – two new ones as of now and I wonder how many more after this next blood test tomorrow.

Finally, a cruise company rang me to see if I wanted to go on a little voyage around the World, one of my plans from a few years ago put on hold during the lockdown.

And I still managed to find time to finish off all of the radio notes too, would you believe?

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper – the last one unless I can get in another stock before next Monday. Delicious as usual and plenty of stuffing remaining.

So now I’m off to bed if I can manage to make it into bed without falling out again.

What delights will tomorrow bring? I shudder to think. As if the news of today isn’t enough to be going on with.

But I can’t help thinking that has inspired this cruise company to contact me? I suppose it’s the local community all getting together to tell me to go away and clear off..

Wednesday 24th April 2024 – THAT WAS AN …

… adventure!

Right now I’m back home sitting in my favourite chair and you’ve no idea just how grateful I am. It was the last thing that I expected today but as Paul Peña wrote and Steve Miller sang, YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH HELL BEFORE YOU GET TO HEAVEN

Last night though, after I’d finished my notes etc I went straight to bed and spent a very pleasant hour or so listening to “Alquin” on the computer. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is one of my favourite albums of all time, especially since I met the group, a band from Delft in the Netherlands, in a dingy damp cellar underneath an old hotel in Crewe in 1975.

It was something of a disturbed, turbulent night. I can’t recall too many interruptions from the staff but there’s a huge pile of stuff on the dictaphone that you will discover as you read on.

By 08:00 I was wide awake and as no-one had come past by 08:30 to awaken me, bring me breakfast, take a blood sample etc, I left the bed, did what I had to do and then washed my clothes.

Just as I was hanging up the sodden rags to dry out, the doctor came in and handed me my leaving pouch.
"Am I leaving then?" I asked
"Ohh" she replied. "Hasn’t anyone told you? Anyway, your taxi will be here at 13:00"
What a shame she hadn’t come 5 minutes earlier when my clothes were still dry

She went through the documents with me and made sure that I understood everything.

And then I went through my requirements, including the fact that she needs to apply to the Securité Sociale. for another series of authorisations, but I don’t think that she understood. That’s important of course, so I’ll ring up the taxi company and have them involved in the proceedings.

"By the way" she added "You have a consultation at ‘Imagerie’ at 10:30" so bang goes my idea of a shower. It’s a good job though that I had a good wash and changed my clothes.

At 10:00 the driver turned up to take me to “Imagerie” and off we set.

When we arrived I was told that they wanted to take a few scans of my heart so I had to strip off, clad myself in some paper overalls and then lie flat out on a bed while they clamped all kinds of strange devices to me and pumped me full of some kind of fluid.

Once I was ready they passed me through one of these Stargate time-tunnel things, back and forth for half an hour or more, taking all kinds of strange photos while the machine made all kinds of strange noises and I had to do all kinds of breathing exercises

Eventually they dragged me out and with my head spinning and body shaking (and it still is, even now) I went and dressed ready for the ride back.

And whose stupid idea was it to take my blood pressure as soon as I’d come back from all of that?

Batman and Robin weren’t on duty today – I must have scared them off – so another young nurse came in to ask me "we need to have your room ready for another arrival at 13:00. Would you mind waiting in the waiting room?"

So that’s why they want me gone. "Well, if it’s a nice young lady, I don’t mind sharing the room" I replied but she told me to clear off.

They brought me my lunch to the waiting room – bulghour with chicken followed by pork and courgettes. The peaches with almonds for dessert were nice though.

The taxi was booked for 13:00 so of course he turned up at 14:40. With the A13 being closed it’s total chaos in the outskirts of Paris right now.

Once in the car we had to go on a TRAVERSÉE DE PARIS, with no Bourvil to carry my suitcase, to another hospital to pick up another passenger. The trip across the city was a nightmare and finding the correct entrance was something else too.

And then there were “parking issues” while the driver went in search of his passenger.

Eventually we set off for home, going a very tortuous way via Rungis and Versailles to avoid the queues on a journey that seemed to take for ever and after a pitstop near Caen, we had first to go to Bréhal to drop off passenger number 2. We eventually arrived back here at 19:45.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me which was lovely. She helped me up the stairs (and I needed it too) and into my room, where she went through the papers and took what she needed for the chemist. I had an energy drink – and I needed that too.

There was one jar of vegan pesto remaining and I’d saved it for some special occasion or other. “Now” seemed like a special occasion so I made a big dish of pasta with assorted vegetables and smothered it all with half the jar.

And it was delicious too.

So this is all that I’m doing. I’m totally wasted and I’m going to bed. With luck I’ll have a really good sleep ready to face Isabelle the nurse tomorrow morning

As for the dictaphone notes, there are quite a few of these. I was with my brother (so I was right) and we were having to go to Shavington. We set out to walk but it was really late at night. Our parents had gone to Sandbach but we wondered why. They were supposed to be doing something but we reckoned that it was really an excuse for a party and a drink. As we walked it was the biggest moon that we had ever seen. There was only probably about a tenth of it that was bright but we could make out the shape of the rest of it above the horizon. It was absolutely enormous. As we walked we looked at the houses and the Christmas lights. We wondered whether one of them was actually on fire because of the way the lights were working. Then we cut off to Shavington down that track that I take frequently in my dreams, a long, narrow track, but I’ve not been down it for a while but at one time I’d go down it once per week. As we started to go down there – we’d gone maybe a quarter of a mile – we noticed someone leading some horses. My brother made some offensive remark about me being unwilling to spend any money. It seemed that his idea would be to hire a couple of these horses and go to Shavington on horseback to save having to walk. I thought that there’s nowhere to leave the horses, you can’t just tie them up in the street like in a Western. You’re going to need someone to hold them while we were at the doctor’s. It’s all going to be just far too complicated to even think about hiring a couple of horses to go there and come back.

That’s a track down which I’ve walked, or skied, or climbed on many occasions during the night and I’ve no idea why it keeps on cropping up like this. I’ve no idea if it exists in real life and I’ve certainly never encountered it for real as far as I’m aware.

Later on I was with a girl and her sister. There was some kind of event going on in the village but it was really poorly attended. There were very few people there. There were two beer tents and most of the people with me, because we were a large group, preferred one tent but I thought that the beer in the second was much better. I tended to patronise that one. In the end I managed to persuade people that that one was best and they came over. They were wondering how everything worked so I explained that I bet that he was really disappointed with the attendance. I explained that when I used to put on rock concerts I’d hire a complete bar and just buy the beer etc but I needed about 80 or 90 people to make a profit at the bar and that rarely happened. They were surprised by that. In the end we set out to walk home. I’d sold everything that I had in rural France except for one plot of land where I had four Cortinas parked. My friend’s sister was planning on moving too. I had my old J4 so she told me that when we reached her house, to back it into the drive and do something useful but I’d no idea what she meant by that and what her plans were. There was a big house for sale with lovely gardens that had been empty for years. We were admiring that on the way back. My friend said that she’d enquired about buying it but it needed more money than she had. We carried on walking and talking back to my friend’s sister’s house but I’d still no idea about what was going on and there were only a few more hours left before the end of the day. if she was planning on moving today she was leaving it extremely late because we’re never going to fit everything of hers into my J4 van.

Cortinas as usual, and my old J4 van has started to make regular appearances just recently too which is bizarre. But it’s true about the bar. We could rent the bar and staff for free if the turnover was over a certain amount but the owner needed a guaranteed minimum to cover his expenses and that had to be made up by the hirer if there was a shortfall

And then I was watching two girls, one of them a ward of mine, fighting over a boyfriend using broadswords. It was an extremely tame affair with the two of them jabbing at each other. Most of the wounds with broadswords according to modern autopsy were like overarm slashes down onto the head yet these were just poking at each other. The ward of mine asked permission to go out with this boy. I gave it because I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t but the other girl was extremely upset. This led to the fight.

And overarm slashes being the common cause of death in medieval fights with broadswords. I was impressed that I could remember anatomical details like that during a dream.

There had been some dispute between two men over something too. One had gone into a second-hand shop, changed his clothes and hid in the shop in the hope of escape of his pursuer but that didn’t work. They had a fight too. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I was walking through Crewe planning on going for an ice cream with my brother’s wife (as if that would ever be likely to happen) when I bumped into a guy who told me that he was going to Birmingham for the best ice cream in the UK. I knew this guy from somewhere but I couldn’t think where so I decided to go with him. We dashed to pick up my brother’s wife but she wasn’t in so we headed for the railway station. I boarded the train with this guy and went to see the conductor about buying a seat but my friend told me that there were no seats available on this train. It was completely full. I had to reluctantly disembark and go back to my original plans.

There was something else but I only remember a small part of this. I was with a guy who was going across the Channel on a ferry so I thought that I’d go with him. We went in his car, drove to the ferry terminal and joined the queue but we couldn’t understand why all these people were standing around so strangely. We suddenly realised that each person was about twelve feet apart from the one in front and behind. That was how their cars were going to be parked on the ferry. There were no cars there though, just the people standing in position. We had to go to the back of the queue then walk twelve paces behind the person who was there and then stand and wait around. God knows what was happening to the vehicles because there were none about at all. Everyone else kept on turning up, people having fun in the ferns and bracken that were all around this car park. It really was the strangest thing that I’ve ever encountered, all of us just standing there twelve feet apart in our own little family groups etc and not a car in sight.

So after transcribing all of that I’ll probably go back to sleep again.

While I’m doing that, I can reflect on my conversation with the photographer as I left the Stargate
"Did you manage to find my heart?" I asked
"Yes I did" she replied
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative after all"

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And if you read on, you’ll find out what and why. I’ve not had a very good day.

Anyway, last night after everything had finished I sat down and READ A BOOK about an American sailor and his family, including his 6 year old daughter, captured in the South Pacific in 1917 by a German sea-going raider and who spent 10 months as prisoner on board before being shipwrecked off the coast of Denmark.

After that I settled down, fully dressed because I was freezing, under the covers and that was that.

A few times during the night I was awoken by a few comings and goings but for some reason or other I was so tired that I was back asleep almost immediately and ended up not awakening until they came to take my blood sample at about 09:15.

Actually it was the little student nurse who came on her own so I told her that if I leave here alive she’ll have earned her diploma. Anyway, she managed to find some blood. I still have some left, apparently.

Once she’d gone I went for a wash and brush up as best as I could and then a driver came to collect me. It was the rock music fan who has taken me before so we had a good chat before he dropped me off at Neurology.

While I was waiting for my appointment I had a good chat with the receptionist and another patient and saw several photos of cats and dogs before being ushered into the room where the examination was due to take place.

It was the doctor who had seen me before on two occasions. He and his sidekick gave me the electric shock tests to my arms and legs and I was right – there is a further deterioration. So no surprise there. We had a good chat and now he’s gone away to think about a Plan B.

The same driver came to pick me up for my next appointment but that’s not until tomorrow so he brought me back here.

While I was eating lunch a doctor came to slap a freezing patch on my lower back and we all know what that means. She took an age to find the correct position so I asked her "can’t you see the scars from the previous attempts?"

When she told me that she could, I told her that they ought to paint an “X marks the spot” or even a target in the correct place.

A short while later, Batman and Robin, the young ward nurse and her little student who follows her around like a shadow, came to prepare me.

It was the little student who drew the short straw and had to hold me down and I bet she wished that she hadn’t when the doctor missed her aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve.

Eventually, but not soon enough by any means, the torment was over and I could go to lie down. “You’ll just need to be flat out for an hour” but she was joking. After an hour or so a nurse came round to make sure that I was still alive and to take my blood pressure, with predictable results. But in fact it was several hours before I crawled out of bed, and then only for a particular reason too.

Once I’d settled down in my chair I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s are now on line and then I started on today’s. I was going to start at a new school but the morning that I was due to go I had a ‘phone call that began speaking in Welsh. It was a young girl saying that she was glad to go back to live in Easingwold. I couldn’t understand who it was but the conversation became more and more intimate until in the end, I had to go, I said plenty of encouraging words and finished with “I love you” but I had no idea who this person was at all. Absolutely none. I arrived at the new school but couldn’t find out how anything worked, the system of how lessons were organised etc. In the end I stumbled across a lesson from one of my class so I asked the teacher where all the other lessons for our year were being held. He gave some kind of nebulous speech abut how I should have looked at the newspaper. Of course I knew nothing about this. I found a copy of the newspaper but didn’t understand it. In the end I found some kind of paper print-out with the details on it. It was headed with the most extraordinary offensive message that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. I thought it totally astonishing that they’d pin this on the wall. I couldn’t find any paper then. Every piece of paper on which I tried to write, I was making no impression with a ball-point pen. The writing was just not sticking as if it had one of these shiny surfaces. I kept on coming across paper that had already been used, carbon copies of the ‘phone call that I’d had earlier in the day from that girl etc, but nothing that I could do would be able to reproduce anything on any kind of piece of paper. It was just so frustrating because I wanted to crack on and organise myself as this was just not working at all.

Then this conversation that I’d had in the morning had completely shaken me. I didn’t have a clue who on earth it was to whom I was speaking and I really wish that I knew because it had all the air of being something really interesting. The only Welsh-speaking girl I knew at school was only in passing and it certainly wasn’t her so who on earth was it?

Then we had a boisterous kind of office party where everything was going out of control. The sad part about it was that these were all middle-aged people. The boss there had picked on someone else’s wife and was making life really uncomfortable for them. They were trying to work out a moment in which to disappear such as when the boss went to the toilet but they’d brought the PA with them so putting that into the car in the space of a couple of minutes was going to be complicated. There were all kinds of things like this. Some woman was making some very plain and clear hints that she wanted to dance etc with me but of course I was having absolutely none of this and sat stoically at my seat in the dining room watching the events unfold, taking absolutely no notice of any of the extremely broad hints that she was dropping. All in all it was an extremely sad evening watching these people behaving like this

There have been more than a few parties like this where everyone makes a fool of themselves and I note that I even made a remark about it while I was asleep, which shows you just what I think about it all.

Then I was going through the videotapes looking for a blank one but came across a football match that took place years ago that I hadn’t seen. It involved one of these obscure South American republics playing in similar colours to Portugal and who had qualified unexpectedly for the World Cup after beating a selection of prize teams from other parts of the World to make it to the finals. I’d obviously taped their opening match but I couldn’t remember how it went or what the score was so instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing I put on this videotape and settled down to watch them. I got as far as watching them come out onto the pitch before I awoke. I’d no idea who their opponents were in this particular game.

And despite what I said the other night, Castor put in a very brief appearance last night. And wasn’t it nice to see her? We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR rearranging the dining arrangements. I was passing the cutlery and crockery and glassware from one table to the next. There was the final piece that I picked up to take round to the other table and who should be sitting there but Castor? She was talking to someone else about their life, I suppose. She was saying that she was born into a policeman’s family. I’ll tell you that that didn’t ‘arf ring a few alarm bells with me finding out that she was the progeny of a policeman’s couple.

But even if it were true and I had known, nothing of what happened back then would have changed for a minute. As I said at the time, I would have accepted any consequence. And as Joni Mitchell sang, YOU KNOW I’D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW BUT FOR THE WORK THAT I’VE TAKEN ON

And fancy the dream stopping there! I suppose that it was the shock that awoke me.

While I was asleep in the afternoon I was going for a walk. I had all of the four cats coming with me, following in my footsteps, climbing and jumping over each other as they used to do etc. There were a few members of my family with me. I had to take some money out to pay for something or other, housekeeping or whatever. I needed €60:00. I walked as far as the cash machine but when I went to look through my wallet I couldn’t find the bank card that I usually used. In the end, looking through everything I found a selection of other bank cards but I wasn’t sure which ones would work and which ones wouldn’t. There was one from the bank in Belgium so I put that in the cash machine. It seemed to read the card because it asked for the PIN. I typed in the usual number and that seemed to accept it but that was as far as I reached in the dream.

Tea tonight was salmon lasagne with creamed spinach so some horse trading was undertaken but I’m not doing too well for food which is a shame, but not unexpected.

So right now I’m off to bed to try to recapture Castor and to hope that they try to check my blood pressure at calmer moments.

But while the little student was preparing me for my lumbar puncture I asked her why doctors always wear masks
"Is it to do with infection?" she asked.
"Not at all" I replied. "It’s in case the procedure goes all wrong. Then they can’t identify the guilty party"

Monday 22nd April 2024 – MEANWHILE, HERE IN …

… The Land Of Grey And Pink, or Ice-Station Zebra as it ought to be called, I’m tucked up in bed in the cold awaiting my doom.

And also awaiting my evening meal, but that’s another story.

Last night after everything finished I hauled myself off to bed quite early and tried my best to settle down to sleep but as usual these days it didn’t quite work out like that. However later on I must have managed to drop off because there’s some stuff on the dictaphone. I was with a girl. She had a big box of something or other. It was a case of having to pass it through a hatch. Going up and down this hatch with this box was extremely complicated. One day I happened to find it in the way so I asked how come I found it in the way. It suddenly occurred to me afterwards that I must have pushed it in behind me then moved it round, then somehow managed to work my way round past it as I passed through the hatchway. Once I’d worked out exactly how I’d done it, it became a lot easier to go up and down past. It was less of an inconvenience. What actually happened was by leaving it at the bottom of this hatch I couldn’t actually close off the draught-proofing. I had to sit and think to try to work out exactly how I was going to do that. Then she told me that it was a packet that the Post needed to collect and send away, in which case it’ll be out of the way. I couldn’t thus understand the problem but she explained that if she left it outside it was raining and the package would be wet. I hoped that the Post Office would come quickly because this is proving to be so complicated. It doesn’t need to be this complicated at all. The quicker we can resolve this issue the better it would be for everyone.

I was at one of these Alternative Technology meetings last night too. It was a big meeting discussing the manufacture of some kind of alcohol for fuel. I had to go along to add the oats to it but of course I had no idea how to do it. There was a huge retort stand with everything being heated by a bunsen burner. It all looked quite complicated. They said “add the oats” so I had to ask the meeting how to do it. The answer was quite simply “just stuff it down one of the holes into the test tube”, no preparation, no cleaning, no nothing. I thought “if that’s how they want it doing, that’s how I’m going to do it. If they want it doing before the full meeting I’d simply do it the best that I could”.

As seems to be usual when I’m keyed up for something important like this I was awake and out of bed before the alarm went off and I took the opportunity to wash my puttees and my nightclothes so that everything will be nice and clean and ready for me when I come back home, if I ever do.

And that’s not like me either, is it?

What else isn’t like me is that I had MY BAGS ARE PACKED AND READY TO GO, as Peter, Paul and Mary would have sung, so I just had to wait around for the driver to come to collect me.

Bang on 07:00 she turned up as well, my favourite taxi driver, so we were going to be in for an exciting trip. Anything to relieve the boredom.

She had a couple of errands to perform around the town on the way and then we hit the highway.

The journey was quiet to start with but being stuck behind a dithering driver at the péage seemed to switch her on and the running commentary began for the rest of the trip.

That was just as well – I couldn’t stand the quiet.

The autoroute that we usually take into Paris is closed at the moment so we had to go another way.

That led to all kinds of confusion but luckily she was rather more restrained than last time and when we ended up in the wrong lane we simply went with the flow this time instead of performing some kind of dramatic U-turn as you might see on American “cops and robbers” TV.

We were ages late in arriving which is no surprise given the conditions, and once I was registered in I was shown up to my deep-freeze on the second floor where I dived fully-clothed under the bedclothes. And where I still am.

The nurse threw a bottle of water at me which was just as well after my marathon fast, and then we had the pantomime about fitting a catheter in my arm.

They offered to let the little student nurse do it, poor thing. I did admire their optimism. And we gradually went up and up the respective grades. At one time there were no fewer than 6 nurses of different ranks in the hierarchy standing around my bed until in the end someone let out a cry of joy.

My lunch (an omelette) that had been growing cold on a side table was then brought over to me and no sooner did I have my fork stuck into the accompanying salad when the doctor appeared. It’s all just one more distraction.

While I was trying to doze off after lunch the whole world and his wife came in to interrupt me just as I was starting on some kind of dream of something to do with wartime. No sooner had it started under way when everyone came in and it immediately disappeared which was a shame.

The nurses did a few more things before clearing off and I crashed out yet again.

The funny thing about all of this was that no sooner had I set foot in my room that they went to check my blood pressure.
"Blimey! That’s high!" said the nurse.
Well, of course it is. I’ve just come 360 kms with my favourite taxi driver
"I’ll come back in an hour to check it again"
So she came back to do it again immediately after 6 nurses had just finished poking and prodding me – with predictable results.

So now that I’ve had my meal I’m going to try to go to sleep again, this time until morning. And hope that I have some better results than of late.

They’ve offered me a sleeping pill but I’ve turned it down. It’s like the young girl who, on her wedding night, propped herself on a chair by the window
"Aren’t you … errr … coming to bed?" asked her husband
"Ohh no" she replied. "My mummy told me that this would be the most exciting night of my life and I’m not going to miss a minute of it"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: hospital

Monday 30th August 2024 – IT’S A BANK …

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

Wednesday 17th July 2024 – I CAN’T BELIEVE …

Tuesday 16th July 2024 = I’M STILL ALIVE …

Wednesday 3rd July 2024 – "A GENERAL ANAESTHETIC …"

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

Tuesday 18th June 2024 – ON OUR WAY …

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

Sunday 16th June 2024 – I’VE NOT DONE …

Tuesday 28th May 2024 – “YOU ARE REQUESTED …

Monday 27th May 2024 – IT’S BEEN LIKE …

Wednesday 24th April 2024 – THAT WAS AN …

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

Monday 22nd April 2024 – MEANWHILE, HERE IN …

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