Tag Archives: eric hall

Saturday 16th August 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… horrible day at dialysis where even more things went wrong than on the last horrible day that I had had. And add to that the fact that the nurse who dealt with me was the one who doesn’t like me all that much, it could hardly be any worse than it was.

However, it was brewing up like that last night. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was off my food last night – a sure sign that I was sickening for something. Once more, it was quite late when I went to bed and I didn’t take long to go to sleep.

However, I awoke at 04:10 and couldn’t go back to sleep at all for quite a while. I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed at one point, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I must have gone back to sleep again.

That’s twice just recently that I’ve been awoken by the alarm. I hope that it’s not becoming a habit because I enjoy my early mornings, even if I am dog-tired by the end of the day. I must have a think about this.

It took a while to summon up the morale and the energy to go into the bathroom to have a wash and a shave too, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went for my medication.

While I was in the kitchen, I could see the sun rise over the roof of the church. A tiny, bright-red disc, nothing like its usual morning appearance. Some say that it’s another Sahara sandstorm and the smoke from the wildfires in Spain that are causing the problem.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I can’t remember too much about this dream but I was living on one of these housing estates in Crewe. I’d discussed with someone the idea of going round to see them one afternoon. As the afternoon came round, I thought that I’d take a cake with me but I didn’t have a cake tin so I put a message on the internet to ask if anyone could lend some cake tins to me. There were one or two answers so I called for a taxi, and the taxi took me to one of the addresses. When I began to talk to this woman at this address about cake boxes, she shook her head in bewilderment. She had no idea about what I was discussing, and after five minutes it became quite evident that I had the wrong address and that I’d come here instead of whee I ought to be going. Eventually, after quite some time, I managed to work out that I could borrow a cake tin. The old lady who lived there was reasonably nice in the end although she had been somewhat brusque and sharp at first. I climbed back into the taxi to be rushed over to the next football ground accompanied by a beep from the driver and a hand-wave from the woman. I was thinking that well at least I had my cake for this afternoon so it’s not a bad thing.

It was part of my big plan to bake a cake or two, and a few other things for when my friends come to help me move but unfortunately, first of all, I’m feeling far from well and secondly, what with dialysis, chemotherapy and the like all happening next week, when am I going to have the time?

The nurse was very late this morning. He’s just back from his holidays so I suppose he wanted a lie-in. So I had to wait quite a while before I could make breakfast.

Having finished Daniel Gooch yesterday, I’ve started a new book today – Montagu Sharp’s MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES. It’s a comparatively modern book for me, written in 1856.

It has all the air of being quite interesting … "you’ve said that before about others" – ed … and at the moment, we are discussing the sharpened wooden stakes that were found in the River Thames, presumably to guard the British ford crossing the river at Brentford.

After breakfast, I came back in here and carried on packing a few more boxes ready to be moved downstairs. The more I can do, the better while I’m still in the mood and in the health to do it.

And then, I went a-playing with this radio soundtrack that I’ve been preparing. After much binding in the marsh etc, I’ve managed to fix one of the joins that was annoying me. It’s now much better than it was. There are still one or two more to fix, and I suspect that they might give me even more trouble.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches and then we went downstairs to see how the plumber was doing. He’s made a really impressive job of the bathroom, and the shower looks beautiful, as far as it has gone. He seems to think that it will be all finished by Monday afternoon, which will be wonderful if it is.

There will still be a few other jobs to do, but I’ll contact the kitchen fitter and see what he thinks about his availability

This morning, I had awoken with a pain in my chest. I mentioned yesterday that I reckoned that I was sickening for something. But at dialysis, I made the huge mistake of telling them.

The preparations for the dialysis shuddered to a dramatic halt, I was given an electromyogramme and they took a blood sample, that needed to be analysed. "It’ll only take twenty minutes" they assured me. And when the blood pressure dropped to 7.0, then they really did go into a panic.

These twenty minutes turned out to be one hour and forty minutes and by that time, I was seething with rage. I’m afraid that I left the doctor and the nurse in absolutely no doubt about how I felt, and now the nurse likes me even less than before

Having arrived early at dialysis, it was 18:45 when the session finally ended and they unplugged me, and I was totally past caring.

If I have learned anything from today’s disaster, that is that next time they ask me how I am, I shall say that everything is perfect. I’m not being messed around like this again.

Another decision that I have made is that this trip to Paris will be my last. If they want me to continue with chemotherapy, it will have to be done in a local hospital or, the absolute limit, Rennes. I’m fed up with being a slave of the medical service.

Back here, there was a reception committee awaiting me – my cleaner, my friend from Munich and the Hound of the Baskervilles. It says something for my friends that they are prepared to make a 2400 km round trip just for a few days to help me move house. No-one could ask for better friends.

My friend had a guided visit of the new apartment and he thinks that it’s wonderful too. I really am pleased with it and I hope that it all works as well as it looks. With a little luck, I might even be in there on Monday when I return from dialysis. It would be wonderful if I could.

Tea was something of an ad-hoc scratch affair as I wasn’t up to doing much, and then I staggered in here to write my notes. I really am finished tonight and I shall be glad to climb into bed, where I shall sleep for ever, I reckon.

But seeing as we have been talking about showers … "well, one of us has" – ed … in one of these hostels of the kind where I stayed in Leuven, a girl went down to see the manager.
"It’s the man in the room next door" she said. "He’s doing rude things to himself in the shower."
So the manager went up to her room, had a look round, and said "I can’t see anything, miss."
"Well, " said the girl "if you put this chair onto the table just here and then climb ap to the top, you’ll be able to see him if you stare closely through the air brick up there in the wall."

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Friday 15th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I stood up and left a table with food on my plate?

Usually, I’m pretty good at working out how much I feel like eating but that certainly wasn’t the case tonight. Even when I tried to force myself to eat, it didn’t seem to make any difference, and I ended up wasting quite a pile of food.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that if I’m off my food, or don’t feel like eating, it means that I’m on the verge of having another illness. So what’s going to happen next? And more importantly, when?

For all I know, it might have happened last night, I suppose. Once more, I’ve no idea why but it seemed to take an eternity to finish off everything that I have to do before I go to bed. And while it wasn’t midnight when I finally crawled under the covers, it wasn’t very far off.

Once in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly and remember nothing at all until about 05:40 when I awoke. No danger of sleeping in until the alarm this morning.

It took a good few minutes to summon up the energy and the courage to leave the bed, and then I went for a good wash and the morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night. I was doing something at dialysis last night. This time, it was under the supervision of some builder and interior designer who had us all wearing some kind of uniform that was managed by the park service. The park service came along and dressed us once each day etc so it was some kind of average prices, dandelion somebody and someone else, and we all had to look our best and behave our best because of the status of the society tailed off into a mass of incoherent mumbling.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that even though I’m asleep when I dictate my notes, there’s usually always some kind of vague recollection of the events when I’m transcribing them. Occasionally though, there is absolutely no recollection whatsoever, and this is one of the latter. I really don’t know what this is all about.

Later on, a whole group of us had gone to Chester on some kind of office trip. We’d arranged to meet everyone outside Buyrite. The coach stopped and dropped us off on the way in to Chester. I knew where Buyrite was, and we’d been dropped off at the wrong roundabout so we had to walk down to where the correct roundabout was. We went down through into the pedestrian maze under the roundabout and came out on the top. This was where there was a Saturday market with all kinds of handbags and everything like that. One of my friends there bought himself a new briefcase because his old one had split and the one that he’d used to replace it wasn’t big enough. We saw a strange thing happening. That was a woman driving a car with a small girl of about seven or eight running after it, crying and screaming, shouting “Daddy”. We were looking at this and wondering what on earth was happening, whether the woman had decided to abandon her child or something like that, we really didn’t know.

After I ran away from home, I spent two very happy years living in Chester. I hated my job and was glad to leave, but I loved the city and the people and wish that there had been a way by which I could have stayed. But the part of that dream about the child – that’s the thing that would prey on my mind. I hate to see children treated badly. It seems to me that children often have a very raw deal at the hands of adults.

There had been a couple of parcel deliveries just recently, mainly of stuff for downstairs, but there were a few things that belong up here so I had some fun unpacking them and playing with my new toys. I ought to treat myself more often.

Isabelle the Nurse bounced in as usual, all bright and cheerful which is no surprise, seeing as it’s her last day for a fortnight. Tomorrow, she’s off to the Alps. But today she dealt with my legs, wished everyone a pleasant fortnight, wish my furniture removal team good luck, and then bounced out.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

And by the time that I’d finished, there was no more to read. It didn’t take long to demolish that book.

On 10th July 1869 "We saw a very curious effect of mirage this morning. A large ship on the horizon was upside down, sailing on her mast-head, and her hull up in the clouds ;"

That’s an effect called a fata morgana – caused by the differences in air density as you look across, say, a large body of water. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have witnessed a few of them ourselves, such as here ON THE ST LAWRENCE RIVER in 2012.

Later on in the book, he’s having a moan about the workmen, who are "earning so much in wages that they will only work three or four days a week, and then only do part work.", wishing "may God avert so sad an evil to this country,". Meanwhile, in other news, he mentions a page or two earlier that "the half-yearly meeting of the Great Western was held on the 2Qth February, and we were able to pay a good dividend of 5 per cent. ." and that "the shareholders passed a resolution, giving me 5000 guineas, in very complimentary terms"

“Sauce for the goose” is a phrase that went through my mind at that moment.

There’s quite a profound comment that he makes a while later when he retires from his seat as an MP in the House of Commons. "I have taken no part in any of the debates, and have been a silent member. It would be a great advantage to business if there were a greater number who followed my example.", sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.

For several years, he was a director of the company that laid several telegraph cables across the Atlantic, and actually sailed on three of the trips. The experience on board these sailings led to him changing his opinion about several important matters. On the first expedition, in 1865, he notes that "as the insulation of this cable has gradually improved as it was put into deep water, until it is now twelve times better than the contract standard, a cheaper material might be used in the outer coatings of the core, and the whole cable be laid at a much less cost."

However, having lost several cables to the depths over the next four years, he tells us in 1869 that "there is much discussion just now as to laying light, and therefore cheap, cables. I do not think they could be laid across the Atlantic. You need a cable of considerable strength, as difficulties are sure to occur. A light cable would be, in my opinion, sure to break; and I doubt whether in great depths it could be picked up, as it would be impossible to tell when the grapnel had hold of it. If the experiment is tried, I will certainly take no share in the work."

Once I was back in here, I began to work seriously on this soundtrack for the next radio programme. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to be able to produce it, as it seemed to have far too many bits and pieces missing, with big holes everywhere.

However, by the time that I knocked off for tea, I’d managed to produce 58 or so minutes of fairly seamless soundtrack music. It wasn’t easy, not by any means, and there were times when I was tearing out my hair. But now it merely needs a couple of tiny tweaks and then I can write the notes.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff, and we spent a happy hour beginning to pack away my office ready for moving. We really only scratched the surface of it today but at least it’s a start. If I pack a few boxes every day, it will soon be done, I hope.

Tea tonight was breaded nuggets and chips with salad but as I said earlier, I wasn’t hungry and left a pile of food on my plate. And with chemotherapy looming on Tuesday and Wednesday, this is telling me all kinds of bad omens … "oPERSONS" – ed …

Anyway, now I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. But before I go, another player from the JD Cymru League has been called up for international duty by his country. Abdul Sharif of Connah’s Quay Nomads will be flying out to Somalia to participate in their World Cup qualifying matches in early September. That’s not a surprise following his impressive performance the other day against Colwyn Bay.

But seeing as we have been talking about the early days of telegraphy … "well, one of us has" – ed … a team was engaged to erect telegraph poles from London to Lizard Point to connect up with the cable coming from Valentia in Ireland.
At the end of the first day, the foreman calls over the erector from Crewe and asks him "how many telegraph poles did you erect today?"
"Two" replied the erector from Crewe.
"That’s no good" said the foreman. "Most of the other guys can erect ten or twelve."
"That’s as maybe" said the erector from Crewe "but look how far out of the ground they leave them!"

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Thursday 14th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day at dialysis that was! Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and it wasn’t until 19:45 that I finally made it back here.

It had all gone wrong a long time before that, though. Once more, another night where I failed miserably to beat my curfew time of 23:00, mainly due to prevarication and lack of motivation, and I really need to do something about that. Over the last eighteen months or so I seem to have lost the will and there’s nothing that I can do that seems to recapture it.

At least, once I go to bed, I don’t stay awake for long. I’m away quite quickly, which is at least an improvement on how things used to be. But in some kind of weird compensation, I seem to awaken quite early and quite easily.

It was 02:45 when I awoke for the first time, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at first. I reckoned at one stage that I may as well leave the bed and do something constructive, but as I was trying to summon up the energy, I must have gone back to sleep.

And then a strange thing happened. For the first time since I don’t know when, I was still asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29. I must have been really tired last night, because I was completely out of it all at that moment.

It took a good few minutes for me to gather up my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, but I still managed to beat the second alarm – but only just.

After a good scrub up and the morning medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d gone to Paris for the weekend. On the Sunday morning I awoke and went down to the metro station to buy a metro pass. I then set out for a little walk. I walked down alongside the River Seine for a while and then decided to catch the metro. I climbed onto the metro and headed south along the river. I suddenly then had a horrible sensation that I’d left my keys in the metro station when I bought my ticket. So what was I going to do? I had to leave the metro and then run all the way back, all the way down the banks of the Seine, all the way to the metro station where I had been. I remember thinking that I don’t have my crutches here. How am I doing this? When I reached the metro station, I had to climb into my car and drive out into the suburbs or something. I drove out, and it was quite a fast drive with people not really obeying the speed limit at all. When I reached where I was supposed to be, I found that everyone from work had assembled there. One of the people gave me my suit that was in one of these plastic suit cover things on a hanger. I mentioned to him about my keys so he opened the plastic suit container thing and pulled out my keys. Of course I was extremely relieved about this and I thanked him, but then everyone began to take the mickey out of me. Although I knew that it was done in good nature, I wasn’t really in the kind of mood to be teased at that moment again. It was more a great big sigh of relief.

These days I seem to spend a lot of time wandering around without my crutches. If only it were true! But why would I be walking around Paris? That’s something that I certainly can’t do these days, not that I would want to, because Paris isn’t my favourite European city. The last time that I had a good walk around Paris was about three years ago with a certain young lady who figures every now and again in these pages. I don’t know why my colleagues from work would be there either, but that’s another story.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual, and as well as dealing with my legs, she removed the plaster from my catheter, without giving me an opportunity to express my opinion on the matter. She’s probably right to do so, but it’s still going to be uncomfortable for me if I see it.

Once she’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve been treated to a very lengthy and involved discussion about fishing in 2400 fathoms (14400 feet) of sea with a couple of grappling hooks for the broken end of a transatlantic telegraph cable so that they could haul it up, splice a new length in it and lay it as a second cable from Valencia to Heart’s Content.

He also spends some time talking about the shipping that went past them as they fished for the cable. And in those days, there was so much marine traffic and so many different companies sailing the Atlantic. When we sailed the Atlantic in 2019, we met just one ship after leaving the Orkney Islands behind us until we were in the Davis Strait off the west coast of Greenland.

After breakfast, I did some more packing for a while and then came back in here to begin work on the next radio programme. And just five minutes convinced me that this is going to be a real mess. I’ll be lucky to salvage anything at all out of it.

And seeing as we have been talking about the radio, don’t forget that this weekend features my series of Woodstock programmes. I hope that you’ll all listen to it, even if you can’t understand French. After all, it took ages to prepare and involved an enormous amount of research. I was really happy about how it all turned out.

You can hear the broadcasts HERE at 21:00 Central European Time, 20:00 UK Time and 15:00 Toronto Time on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and even download them for later perusal.

My cleaner turned up a little later than usual to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then we went downstairs where I had a good chat with the plumber. Judging by what remains to be done, it looks as if he might be finished by Monday night if he works tomorrow, which is a Bank Holiday around here.

The taxi was late arriving but the driver put her foot down and we weren’t too late arriving in Avranches. But the doctor wanted to inspect the fitting in my arm, and then the nurse found that one of the patches had missed the fitting so it hurt like Hades, and the needle that goes in there missed the fitting too, so they were talking about doing it again. But wiser counsel prevailed and they fitted a “Y” branch on the one that was working.

They also found that I’d gained quite a lot of weight this last couple of days and so I had to stay for four hours. And to add insult to injury, they put me in the bed that is the most uncomfortable.

Having arrived at 13:45, it was 14:45 when the treatment actually began. And as I said earlier, s late as 19:45 when I returned home.

We had a quick look in to see where the plumber had reached this afternoon. He had made good progress while I was at dialysis. The plasterboard walling is all done and he’s applied the first layer of jointing compound. He has everything that he needs to repair the floor and to tile everywhere. It’s looking really impressive and will look even better when it’s finished

Coming back upstairs was a nightmare, and shan’t I be glad to no longer have to do it? I was exhausted and it took me a good half hour to recover enough breath to make a quick tea. Nothing exotic at all – I wasn’t in the mood.

So I’m off to bed now, wondering if I’ll have another sleep like last night or whether I’ll be back to the “four hours per night” lark.

But seeing as we have been talking about shipping … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina and I met a couple of people on a ferry once and had a really interesting chat with them.
"My husband is a sea-captain" said the woman. "He works for Cunard."
"My husband runs a taxi business" replied Nerina. "He puts a great deal of effort and energy into his work too."

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Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… will see me installed downstairs, if all goes according to plan. It won’t be everything down there of course – just the essentials like the bed, the office and the kitchen. That’s the important part of everything. The rest will arrive when it arrives.

But it won’t be without its vicissitudes though. I’ve had the “summons” to attend hospital on Tuesday next week for chemotherapy, staying over until Wednesday afternoon. And it’s to Paris again. It seems that my plea to be treated at Rennes has fallen on deaf ears.

Something else that has fallen on deaf ears – my own this time – is my plea to be in bed by 23:00. Once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out

For no good reason, except that yesterday I appear to have written WAR AND PEACE instead of the usual notes, and that must have taken an age. And by the time that It’d taken the stats and backed up the computers, it was probably closer to 00:30 than anything else.

That’s not the worst of it. I was wide-awake at 01:50. So wide-awake that I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed. However, second thoughts prevailed and I curled up under the covers again, where eventually I managed to go back to sleep.

Not for long though, because I had one of these dramatic awakenings at – would you believe – 04:10.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and so round about 05:00 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in the bathroom having a good wash, having already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And not dictated them once, but twice. I made something of a pig’s ear of the first attempts and it was easier to start again.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in dialysis, but we were allowed to be up and about while we were being pumped around. There was one guy there who had a tablecloth over the top of his table and it looked as if he was baking. He was weighing out certain quantities of this and certain quantities of that. The guy who was in charge of supervising the dialysis section told him basically to stop doing that and to concentrate on being dialysed. However, the guy didn’t listen and carried on so the guy in charge began to make a few sarcastic remarks, such as “it looks as if you are making the tea for your mother” etc. In the end, the guy said that he was passing the time making this whatever it was and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever he likes during the period of dialysis provided that he doesn’t upset or disturb the other people. It looked as if the guy in charge was going to have some kind of argument, but the first guy said “if you had been here a couple of hours earlier, you would have seen three women here from the other group making folders for different purposes. At that point, I stuck my hand up and said that if everyone were allowed to do all kinds of different things and people could do all kinds of different things during dialysis, I think that the period of dialysis would pass so much quicker than it seems to do at the moment”. The guy in charge wasn’t very impressed. He just put his head down and just totally ignored everything after that

Dialysis is quite literally the bane of my life. It really is three and a half hours wasted each time because there is nothing that one can do. We lie in bed, not allowed to move in case we disturb something, and no exercise of any value, nor any entertainment other than a TV is provided.

One thing about which I have been badgering them is to provide things like pedicures, bed-yoga sessions so that we could profit from the time that we are there, but that seems to have fallen on stony ground too.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood this morning. Only three more days and then she’s off on holiday for a fortnight. That’s good news for her, but not so good for those of us remaining behind because we have her oppo for two weeks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve had our first meeting with Dr Dionysus Lardner. He was the Magnus Pyke of his day, one of the very first people to take science out of the laboratories and put it on the breakfast table in the ordinary home.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t always accurate in the events that he predicted. He told a tribunal hearing once that if the brakes failed on a heavily laden train going down a slope, it could reach speeds of 120 mph. Gooch and his boss, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had to remind him that there are such things as friction and wind resistance, and these would slow the train down considerably.

He also predicted that the larger the steamship, the more fuel it would need, and there wouldn’t be the space on board for all the coal, failing to understand that if you double the breadth and width of something, you increase the volume fourfold.

Try it yourself – for example, if you have two metres width and two metres length, at one metre high, you have four cubic metres of space. But if you double the length and width, i.e. four metres width and four metres length, at one metre high you have a volume of sixteen cubic metres.

And so there’s plenty of room for extra coal.

Further along in the book, I stumbled upon one of my favourite quotes. Gooch talks about the early days of railway operation, saying "When I look back upon that time, it is a marvel to me that we escaped serious accidents. It was no uncommon thing to take an engine out on the line to look for a late train that was expected, and many times have I seen the train coming and reversed the engine, and ran back out of its way as quickly as I could. What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now ?"

Yes, "What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now?" How many times have I said that when reminiscing about my adolescence and young adulthood?

We have however reached the interesting part of the book. He’s off on the Great Eastern laying the telegraph cables along the sea bed from Valencia in Ireland to Heart’s Content on the island of Newfoundland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED HEART’S CONTENT ON OUR MEGA-VOYAGE AROUND NORTH AMERICA IN 2017 when I went to say goodbye to all of my friends in Canada and the USA. Who would have thought that I’d still be here eight years later, defying all the odds

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated and despite several interruptions, they are all now finished and the radio programmes assembled. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the next one.

Seeing as we have been talking about interruptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the first one was the man who came to repair the electric door opening device. In a fit of pique and bad temper, I sent a somewhat … errr … intemperate mail to the building’s management team and, to my surprise, they reacted.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff too, and that included putting me in the shower. Do you realise? That was the last time that I’ll have to clamber into the bath to have a shower. Te next shower that I have will be in my shower downstairs.

That is, if the plumber extricates his digit. He’s not the fastest of workers and he’s not going to have this finished by the time I come home from Paris. Mind you, he seems to be making a very thorough and solid job of everything.

Sadly, I also crashed out today, which is no surprise seeing how little sleep I’ve been having just recently. It was the hospital that awoke me, telling me the news about chemotherapy. And it was tough trying to follow the conversation, seeing that I was still somewhere up in the clouds.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry. One of the best that I have ever made, I reckon. And now I’m off to bed for a really good sleep ready for a good afternoon at dialysis. There’s nothing like optimism, is there?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my pleas falling on deaf ears … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the situation to my niece in Canada, with whom I have been talking today.
"That’s no surprise" She said. "The rest of the family thinks that you are a miserable pleader – or something like that, anyway."

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Tuesday 12th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… some visitors around here this morning, which is always very nice.

However, can you imagine how embarrassing it is when you make coffee for three and suddenly realise that, due to the slow moving-house process that has already seen a pile of stuff move downstairs over the last ten days or so, you only have two coffee mugs up here?

Yes, Bane of Britain strikes again, doesn’t he?

It was something of a “Bane of Britain” night last night too. I’ve no idea what exactly happened but I was still eating my evening meal at about 21:45, and there is no particular reason for it being so late.

Consequently, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out yet again, with a good few minutes before I actually crawled into bed.

Not that I stayed there too long either. At 02:10 exactly I awoke with a streaming head-cold of most embarrassing proportions and I had to leave the bed to find a roll of kitchen paper. Ordinary paper tissues did not suffice.

Nothing seemed to calm it down either. In the end, I smothered my chest and the lower part of my face with some eucalyptus vapour rub, wishing that I had some Olbas Oil handy.

Eventually, I managed to go back to sleep, where I remained until … errr … 05:20. And this time, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep. After about half an hour of trying, I gave it up as a bad job and, clutching my roll of kitchen paper tightly to my chest … "this is becoming ridiculous" – ed … I staggered off into the bathroom.

The medication was next, and then I staggered back into here to listen to the dictaphone, thinking to my self that I’d be lucky if there was anything on it after such a short night.

However, you never know your luck. Not that it was an awful lot but there was something last night about being in bed and looking at one of the walls in my hospital ward. It was tiled, with tiles that were 30cms by 60cms laid horizontally. They were laid one directly above the other directly above the other rather than staggered with half a tile over the top of one and half a tile over the top of that. You can hardly see the join above the tiles but you could see where the door into the room was – that was right on the edge of some of the tiles.

No prizes for guessing to which subjects of recent discussion this relates. And the tiles are indeed 30cms by 60cms. Whether they will be laid horizontally or vertically, or in straight vertical lines or as overlapping tiles depends very much on the plumber. I have given no instructions. Incidentally, where the builders of 1998 have built, the joints are an absolutely disgraceful mess but when we found some of the original wall, all 1,200mm thick of solid Grès de Chausey granite, you could indeed barely see the very neat and precise joints made by the builders of 1668.

Having done that, I started to think about the radio programmes that I want to finish today. There’s one where I need to rewrite the notes because the ones that I wrote and dictated at the end of last week aren’t long enough, and then there are the notes to finish for the one that comes afterwards.

However, Isabelle the Nurse arrived just in time to interrupt the proceedings. We had a little chat while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

This morning, I finished THE OLD ROAD. Belloc has now arrived at Canterbury and was in the cathedral in time to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Thomas A Beckett.

The book was extremely interesting, that’s for sure, but Belloc didn’t really go into his subject very deeply. He barely scratched the surface of many of the places of interest that he passed along the way, and his description of the route itself was somewhat brief. I would have liked to have seen much more, but then again, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am famous for never writing just one word when a hundred would do the job just as well … "quite!" – ed …

The value of the book lay in its anecdotes, just as did John Stow’s, but I’m sure that Belloc had many more up his sleeve that he could have imparted to us.

Before he finished though, there were a couple more points of interest that caught my eye.

He wrote "I came to wish that all history should be based upon legend. For the history of learned men is like a number of separate points set down very rare upon a great empty space, but the historic memories of the people are like a picture. They are one body whose distortion one can correct, but the mass of which is usually sound in stuff, and always in spirit."

This is, of course, the theory of Laurence Gomme whose book FOLKLORE AS A HISTORICAL SCIENCE we read back in March. It’s also something that, while I don’t necessarily agree completely with Belloc and Gomme, I would consider to be an excellent starting point, and would use scientific means of unravelling history as a tool to investigate the folk theories, rather than as a means unto themselves.

The second point is his remark that "I thought I should be like the men who lifted the last veil in the ritual of the hidden goddess, and having lifted it found there was nothing beyond, and that all the scheme was a cheat ; or like what those must feel at the approach of death who say there is nothing in death but an end and no transition."

We all know that feeling of extreme disappointment when we end up after many years of toil with exactly what we wanted, only to find out that it wasn’t what we needed, or that it didn’t live up to expectations, and we wonder why we went to all that trouble.

The next book on the list is THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

He was the Chairman for many years of the Great Western Railway during their period of immense prosperity, and I’ve been looking forward to this book for quite a while.

But here we go again. Gooch talks about the loyalty that one should have towards one’s employer, that "you can be relied upon steadily to persevere in the pursuit of their interest, and so identify yourself with them that they can rest assured you are not ever seeking for a change, because you thus might earn a few pounds a year extra.", and "It ought to be every man’s greatest happiness and pride to say, ‘I have been associated with the same men through life.’ And to my mind, nothing speaks stronger against a man than for him, in describing his past life, to go through a long list of changes in his business associations,"

He then proceeds, several pages further on, to recount the enormous list of employers and employments that he had had during his adolescence.

The editor of his diaries tells us that during the “battle of the gauges”, with “God’s Wonderful Railway” trying unsuccessfully to persuade the other companies to adopt their Broad Gauge, Gooch "alludes with justice to the gain which the country reaped from this conflict of the gauges, putting on their mettle, as it did, the engineering giants by whom the conflict was carried on, and leading through their rivalry to improvements in speed, economy, and comfort which might otherwise have been long postponed."

It’s a well-known saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” … "not Frank Zappa" – ed … Technology and science make massive strides during wartime, for example, when the pressure is on everyone to push farther and farther ahead of the enemy as quickly as possible, and when we were discussing the dominance of TNS in Welsh domestic football the other day, I mentioned the dramatic improvement in standards in the JD Cymru League as clubs struggle to catch up.

After breakfast, I sat down at the desk to do some radio stuff but my visitors turned up. The lady who does the curtains brought her husband round. He’s a musician and wanted to see my guitars. As expected, he drooled over my Gibson EB3, which most people do. I sold my soul to buy it back in 1975 and I won’t ever part with it, even though I have been told on more than one occasion to name my own price. I hope that whoever inherits it after me will look after it carefully.

It was interesting to welcome my guests though. The electric door opener doesn’t work – YET AGAIN – so I had to go down the stairs on my own to open the front door, and then somehow work my way back up here without assistance. I could well do without this. I’m trying to cut down the number of times that I go downstairs and back up again.

There was a huge parcel delivery too, but I had warned the plumber and he had managed to intercept it at the door.

Once everyone had gone, I could press on with the radio programmes. The notes are now finished and ready for dictation, which I shall do the next time I have to leave the bed at 02:10.

However, listening to one of the soundtracks, I’ve noticed several imperfections. It looks as if someone has had a go at editing it before it came into my hands. At the end of every track, in the middle of the applause, there are small blank moments of a couple of hundredths of a second and the volume of the succeeding piece of applause is slightly different from the preceding one.

It seems that someone has done a “cut and paste” job on this, even though the running order matches the official set list, and the applause sounds similar and consistent so it’s not several concerts merged together to make up one complete one.

Anyway, I was there for quite some time cutting out the blanks and playing with the volume adjusters to make everything match.

There were several interruptions too. My friend from the UK who is managing my project over there wanted a good chat, and then my cleaner came in unexpectedly.

While she was going through my cupboards the other day sorting out some things to take downstairs, she came across some things of Roxanne’s that were left behind when she and her mother moved away and I can’t bring myself to throw away. After all, she was the only daughter that I ever had, even though it was for only three years.

Time, the damp of the farm and so on have not been kind to them so my cleaner had taken them away so that she could work her magic. She brought them down this evening and she had made a magnificent job of them. I really must take steps from now on to keep them in a better condition than I have been doing.

Thinking about Roxanne later, as I sometimes do, I began to think that I should have had another daughter. I would have been a wonderful father and she would have been spoiled rotten.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg and home-made garlic mayonnaise. And now, later than usual … "again" – ed … I’m off to bed, hoping for a better night than last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the end of the journey not being what we would want it to be … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the story about the team that was sent in search of the very last Giant Prawn of the Galápagos, teetering on the edge of extinction.
When the team returned to the Natural History Club in London, the members crowded round and asked the leader "how did you find it?"
"Mmmmm. Delicious" he replied.

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Monday 11th August 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at this point I usually wail about the lack of excitement and interest etc, but as I have said it before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you are probably as fed up with it as I am, so I shall desist.

Mind you, it’s not really all that much of a surprise because I was still letting it all hang out after midnight last night. For one reason or another, despite my best attempts to be early, it was nothing like. I really don’t know where the time goes these days.

And so in bed after midnight, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. At 04:10 I was wide awake again, which was probably why there was nothing on the dictaphone. You can’t go far in four hours.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. By about 05:15 I gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here, I discovered that there was nothing on the dictaphone, but not to worry because I have plenty to do.

In the living room, I filled all of the boxes that we had emptied on Wednesday so they are now all ready to be taken down and emptied. I also emptied one of the CD racks so that one is now ready to be moved.

Isabelle the Nurse inspected my catheter port and changed the dressing, and then dealt with my legs. She didn’t hang around for long, and I could make breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Our author is at it again with his flowery prose. He wants to talk about the Dissolution of Monasteries. I’m not going to reproduce what he has to say but if you were to look at page 199 you’ll see that he takes well over a page of his book to say "the monasteries were taken into possession of the Crown."

There’s another one of his … errr … rather inexact paragraphs. Talking about the Enclosure Act 1773 and its effect on the road, he says "it has been caught by the enclosures of the great landlords in four places alone : Albury, Denbies, Gatton, and Titsey. It passes, indeed, through the gardens of Merstham House,".

So is it “four places alone”, or is it actually five? Rhetorical hyperbole is one thing, but that which he is writing is something else.

The plumber finally turned up this morning, and we had a lengthy discussion about how I want the job to be done. Today, I found him much more amenable to my ideas than he was the last time that he was here, which is good news. He had also appeared with a trailer and he intended to move the bath, sink and mirror which I had been trying to give away but no-one wanted.

After he went downstairs, I had a few other things to do until my cleaner arrived. We fitted my anaesthetic patches and then took everything downstairs, where we found the plumber busily smashing old tiles off the wall.

We had a chat, and he showed me a few more defects that the builders who had converted this building into apartments in 1998 had done. The standard of workmanship in this place is appalling.

While I was waiting for the taxi, I began to unpack the boxes. But when she arrived, I was whisked down to Avranches at a rapid rate of knots by an impatient and probably very busy driver.

For a change, they had found a comfortable bed for me and I made the most of it because I crashed out completely for an hour or so.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me but didn’t have much to say. She asked me if there was anything that I needed, but I told her that whatever I needed wouldn’t be supplied by the dialysis clinic. One disappointment was that she hadn’t had an opportunity to speak to Paris about transferring my chemotherapy to Rennes.

If I were honest, I have to say that there wasn’t much work done this afternoon. I was far too tired to concentrate.

When the session was over, I had to wait around to be disconnected, so consequently I was no earlier coming home.

Back here, we inspected the work that the plumber had done. It’s quite impressive, it has to be said, but not so the work that we saw underneath that the builders had done in 1998. It really is disgraceful and one of these days, I’ll post a few photos of their efforts.

The climb back up the stairs was awful again, and so my cleaner and I have made a decision. While I am at dialysis on Monday next week, she’ll round up some willing volunteers and move my bed downstairs so that I don’t have to worry about coming back up here when I return.

If she is able to do that, it means just two more climbs up the stairs and my nightmare will be over. Mind you, that’s still two climbs too many. I really wanted to stay down there today – really.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, but I really wasn’t all that hungry. I just wanted to go to bed, and I’m on my way there now.

But seeing as we have been talking about the awful standard of renovations in this building … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a builder’s van that I saw once in Birmingham.
Written on the side was "Gurdeep Singh, builder. You’ve had the cowboys, now here come the Indians."

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Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the Welsh football club TNS. Created out of what used in the good old days to be Oswestry Town FC, and bankrolled to an enormous degree by its extremely wealthy chairman, in the last ten or so years the club has won just about every trophy or prize the Welsh domestic league can offer.

Some say that it’s a bad thing, that they monopolise the Welsh football system, but as it happens, I’m in two minds. I’ve seen the dramatic improvement in playing standards and in facilities in the Welsh pyramid over that period as other clubs struggle desperately to try to keep pace.

It’s also quite good for the morale when some lesser football team manages to scrape a win against them and their supporters collapse in a delirium of delight.

Last season, TNS became the first ever Welsh domestic club to qualify for the group stages of a European club competition and against all the odds, they managed even to win one of the group games to ensure that they didn’t finish bottom.

However, the success has gone to their heads. With the 5,000,000€ prize money, they have gone out and bought a raft of top-class professionals who really have no place in this league, and they kicked a pile of their journeymen professionals into touch.

Victims of their own hype, they had a dismal pre-season as their new stars struggle to adapt to the physical nature of lower league competition, and having predicted another successful European campaign, they failed embarrassingly to progress beyond the first round of the competitions in which they played.

Today, the JD Cymru League season began, and they were at home to Llansawel, a team that struggled near the bottom all last season and one of the clubs heavily tipped for relegation this season.

And if you want to see how the game progressed, HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS. You don’t need to be a football fan to enjoy them. TNS are in the green and white.

Just two weeks ago, I wrote an article for a football magazine in which I said "having seen TNS’s performances to date, it’s a certainty that several optimistic managers will be searching desperately for some rapid wingers to exploit the cracks over the top and round the sides of the TNS defence". In this game, you have a perfect example of a manager doing just that – and doing it in spades too. THE KEYSTONE COPS have nothing on the TNS defence.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night was another … well … not exactly “early” night, but I was in bed by 23:00, having once more dashed through everything at another uncomfortable rate of knots.

It goes without saying that I awoke quite early – at about 04:10 this morning. But this tile I was determined to go back to sleep and to my surprise, I actually succeeded, only to awaken at 06:29 precisely.

That’s the time that the alarm is set to sound on six days of the week. Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm is set for 07:59 so in theory I could have tried to go back to sleep yet again, but instead, I decided to raise myself from the Dead.

In the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication, followed by coming back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And who had come with me too, because TOTGA appeared in a dream last night. I was in Crewe, sorting out some food, jars of all kinds of things, tomato sauce etc that we’d collected. I was going to put them into Gainsborough Road. However, one of the jars had leaked so I’d had to clean it. My friend told me to knock before I went in, made sure that the tenants knew that I was there etc. I decided in the end that I didn’t really want to go because being inside that house again would dismay me. By this time, TOTGA had appeared and we were due to go back to Normandy, the three of us. First of all, I wanted to telephone an old school friend. TOTGA knew who he was and she said that he hed been ill, he had depression and all of that kind of thing. As I picked up the ‘phone, I suddenly forgot his number, so I just dialled a number at random and then hung up, saying that there was no answer. Then we decided that we’d ring up Rosemary to see if she fancied a quick visit before we went back. I couldn’t think of Rosemary’s ‘phone number then. Eventually, I managed it so I ‘phoned up and we had a chat. I asked her if she fancied a quick visit and she was really surprised. She wondered where we were and what we were doing, so we agreed to go down there. By this time, some people from the street had come past. They recognised me and came for a chat. TOTGA knew who they were because her aunt had a shop in the street and she had served in there on several occasions. They wanted to be introduced to her of course but she was teasing them with little suggestive hints from back from when she was a kid and worked in the shop. They were scratching their heads trying to think who she was. She thought that it was rather amusing so we left it at that. By this time, we were standing on the edge of a river that ran through a little gorge with a stone arch bridge over it in the background. We were all chatting, and then we decided that we’d better shoot off and visit Rosemary quickly otherwise we’ll be going home without seeing her.

It’s been ages since TOTGA has been around during the night. I thought that she had gone for good, just as Castor seems to have done and The Vanilla Queen did quite a while ago. But it really does make a change to see a dream full of nice people and no member of my family coming along to throw a spanner into the works.

Curiously though, when we were moving jars and bottles and so on downstairs, there was one jar where the top had worked loose and the contents had leaked

Later on, I was somewhere in Africa with a group of people in one of our old Fordson E83W vans. I was trying to find some paper on which to write some notes about a job that I had just completed but the only paper in the van was wet, soggy and mainly had other people’s calculations on it. I couldn’t find a big piece at all. By now I was running behind the van that was driving so I made a signal to the driver to stop. I opened the back door and my notebook was in the back. I rescued my notebook and waved on the van to start off again. Once it was going, I closed the door and carried on running behind it.

We did have a couple of E83W vans when we were kids. The first one was one of the early ones, KLG93, which my motor traders’ handbook tells me was registered in October 1937, and one of the last ones, XVT772, registered in January 1957. And you might think that walking behind one would be ridiculous, with an 1172cc side-value engine, a three-speed crash box and a downrated gearing on the rear axle, these vans would struggle to see 35 mph flat out. In fact, I have very vague memories of all of us having to get out and walk behind one once because it didn’t have enough power, fully loaded, to climb Shooter’s Hill in Blackheath, and when I mentioned it to my parents as I grew older, I was told that my memories were correct.

Isabelle the Nurse was back to her usual routine and back on time. We had a brief chat about one of my neighbours who is now in an Old Folks’ Home and she dealt with my legs, and then she cleared off as quickly as she came in.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, we left our author arguing with the police, having been detained to “help them with their enquiries” and he, in a show of innocence, "of I know not what crime"

Today, however, things become a whole lot clearer. In order to cross a river, "my companion and I clambered down the hill, stole a boat which lay moored to the bank, and with a walking-stick for an oar painfully traversed the river Wey. When we had landed, we heard, from the further bank, a woman, the owner of the boat, protesting with great violence."

Later on, "with Margery Wood it reaches the 700-feet line, runs by what I fear was a private path through a newly-enclosed piece of property. We remembered to spare the garden, but we permitted ourselves a trespass upon this outer hollow trench in the wood which marked our way."

All that I can say is that if those events are samples of his habitual attitude and behaviour, I’m surprised that he hasn’t been arrested a long time before the previous day.

After I had finished breakfast, I came back in here to watch Stranraer lose at home to Edinburgh City, and then I had things to do.

It seems that no-one is interested in the furniture that I have for sale or that I’m trying to give away, so I rekindled my long-dormant on-line auction account. That took much longer than it did in the past, and putting your articles on-line is much more complicated than I remember it.

So after a great deal of huffing and puffing, I managed eventually to list everything that needs selling on. But probably there won’t be anyone from there interested either. It seems that selling on-line isn’t the thing that it was twenty years ago. But then, the internet is nothing like the community that it used to be back in those days either.

After lunch, I had a relax for a while before the TNS v Llansawel game, and then at the final whistle I went to make the bread for next week and the pizza for tonight.

Rosemary rang me for a chat while I was baking, but I couldn’t stay long because there was yet more football. Colwyn Bay, newly promoted to the JD Cymru Premier League, were at home to Connah’s Quay Nomads in front of a massive crown of over 1500 people.

Last time Colwyn Bay were in the JD Cymru Premier League, they didn’t last long. This time though, they have signed a whole raft of experienced players and they looked a much more formidable outfit. They went toe-to-toe with the Nomads for the entire 90 minutes and the 1-1 scoreline was quite a fair reflection of the game.

Almost immediately after the final whistle, the telephone rang. It was one of my former girlfriends from school years ago, with whom I’m still in touch. She’ll be in France in late September, so would I like a visit?

Now that’s a silly question. I don’t have enough visits, and so anyone can visit me at any time they like. If she would like to come, she’d be more than welcome, and so would anyone else (except of course, my immediate family)

Tonight’s pizza was excellent and I shall have to make more like that. There’s already been an order from my fiend from Munich when he arrives here next weekend.

That’s right, next weekend. That’s when my house move begins. Just four more climbs back up the stairs. I can’t wait for the torment to be over.

But right now, it’s over for tonight because I’m off to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about TNS’s laughable performance against Llansawel this afternoon … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a boxing match that I saw years ago where one of the contestants had been very quickly and very badly beaten.
The commentator was doing his best to console him, saying "Never mind. If you hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight."

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Saturday 9th August 2025 – TODAY’S DIALYSIS SESSION …

… was slightly less painful than that of Thursday. Not by much though, it has to be said. I’m still quite dissatisfied as to how things are developing with all of this but there doesn’t seem to be very much that I, or anyone else for that matter, can do about it.

What probably didn’t help was that I was in a bad mood, and I was also desperately tired. I’d had another bad night last night.

At first though, it looked as if it was going to be quite good. I’d finished tea early and for some reason (maybe because I was rather more focused than usual) I didn’t take all that long to write up my notes.

By the time that I’d taken the statistics and backed up the computer it was only 22:30 and how nice it was to be in bed at that time for a change. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

However, it wasn’t to last. Round about 03:10 I awoke, and that was that. I couldn’t go back to sleep again. There I lay, vegetating in bed until about 05:00 when I gave it up as a bad job.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. And that was after dictating the radio notes that I’d written the other day, and I’d already begun to edit them too.

After I’d washed and taken the morning’s medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night I was having my bath changed for a shower. My care assistant was a young girl. I was living in some kind of apartment in one of these big United States plantation houses of the Nineteenth Century, a type of thing like that, made of wood, very light. The bath was one of these freestanding units on feet, but I was having it taken out to be replaced by a shower. They hadn’t actually started work yet but this girl and I were discussing it. She was looking out of the window saying how she would love to be able to go out there and sit down in the sun, and abandon her job and the people for whom she was caring. Then she calmed down a little and said that when the shower room is done, there would be plenty of room in the bathroom. She could sit in there and admire the weather and the view because it was bound to be really nice in there in the sun.

There’s quite a bit in there that is relevant to what is going on in my life right now. And I have had that very same conversation, or one very much like it, with someone just recently. I’m surprised that it’s preying on my mind though.

Later on, I must have stepped back into that dream. My cleaner said that she wanted to go to sit out in the sun but I told her that when the bathroom had been finished it would be lovely in there and there would be much more room to move about. She could sit in the bathroom which would be just as pleasant, in order to admire the views

There is actually no window in my bathroom so you won’t be able to see very much outside. But there will be plenty of room in there, once I can find someone to take away the old bath that’s still in there. It’s advertised on the internet as to be taken away for free but as yet, there are no takers.

Isabelle the Nurse was late again … "although nothing like as late as yesterday" – ed … and as well as dealing with my legs, she had a look at the catheter in my chest and changed the dressing. And that made me squirm just to think about it.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Yesterday, I mentioned that his flamboyant style of writing was irritating me. But it’s not just his style of writing. What do you make of these two sentences, quite literally one immediately after the other? "The Old Road, as the reader has already seen, never during its course turns a sharp corner. It has to do so at Canterbury because it has been following a course upon the north bank of the Stour,".

He goes on to say "The Old Road falls, as we shall see, into Watling Street, a mile before the city, and enters the ecclesiastical capital by a sharp corner, comparable to the sharp corner at Headbourne Worthy in the exit from Winchester.".

Personally, I don’t know what it was that he was drinking but I could do with a drink of it myself.

There are however a few moments of extreme levity. After spending the night sleeping in an inn at Alresford, "next morning before daybreak, when we had satisfied the police who had arrested us upon suspicion of I know not what crime, we took the hill again and rejoined the Old Road."

After breakfast, I came in here and edited the radio notes right the way through to the end. And here I had a disaster. I was convinced that I had edited the music and had that been the case, I would have been just seven seconds over. However, it turned out that I hadn’t, and I was 48 seconds under when I had finished.

Not even I can pad out that much time, so I began to rewrite them.

Not that I progressed very far though, because my cleaner came along to fit my anaesthetic patches and to serve up a disgusting drink.

When I was ready, we went downstairs and began to unpack the boxes that I had packed the other day that my cleaner took down. She began to fill the CD and DVD shelves while I carried on sorting out the kitchen with the things that had come down.

The driver who came to pick me up was a couple of minutes late today and by that time I’d almost finished what I was doing. We had a quick drive down to Avranches in the beautiful August sunshine.

At the dialysis centre, we had another problem. They wanted to put me in the bed on which the mattress had collapsed, so I dug my heels in. Today though, the team on duty in the room consisted of Julie the Cook and Océane, and they swapped the bed over for another empty one.

Not that that one was all that much better either. I mustn’t be assembled correctly or something like that. What with the pain in my arm from the connection and the pain in my hip from the bed, by the time that the session finished, I was in a right old mess. I’d managed a sleep at first, but not for long. And in the end I had to abandon work as I was in too much agony to carry on.

The taxi was already waiting when the session finished, but it took the girls a good fifteen minutes to come to deal with me when my machine timed out, so I was no earlier coming home than I might otherwise have been.

My cleaner and I stayed downstairs for twenty minutes finishing off what we had started earlier and we also sorted out a few more things too. Now we have plenty more boxes for me to fill ready for Monday.

Just four more trips back up the stairs before I’m down there for good. And that’s just as well because I had a real struggle on the stairs tonight and I won’t be able to do it at all very soon. My cleaner has said that for her Friday session, she’ll work downstairs and have the place looking fine for when the removal begins, which was nice of her.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet, and now I’m off to bed because I’m thoroughly wasted and I just want to sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the police … "well, one of us has" – ed … Percy Penguin once asked me "are you a policeman?"
"No, I’m not, petal" I replied. "Why do you ask?"
"Every time that I see your name in the local newspaper" she said "it’s always about you helping the police with their enquiries."

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Friday 8th August 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

That is not, however, a surprise. When you are in bed just before 23:00 … "for once" – ed … but awaken at about 01:30 and just lie there vegetating without being able to go back properly to sleep, you don’t have all that much time to go travelling.

That’s right – for once, I was in bed by 23:00 and that doesn’t happen all that often, much to my regret. Tea hadn’t taken very long to make and it was soon over, so I could come back here to write my notes, take the statistics and back up the computer.

And as it happens, I could have been finished even earlier had I applied myself more diligently to my work but as usual, I was sidetracked here and there during the evening.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing whatsoever until I awoke. And being awake, I did my very best to go back to sleep but somehow I couldn’t doze off again. I simply lay there in bed, drifting occasionally into a kind of semi-consciousness but still being aware of my surroundings, and then drifting back out again.

Round about 06:00, I gave up the struggle and took to my feet. I went into the bathroom and had a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but as I said just now, there was nothing on there from the night.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I find that extremely disappointing. These days, the only excitement that I seem to have is whatever takes place during the night. The rest of my existence is a boring, humdrum tour around these four walls with the occasional delight of dialysis and the odd trip to Paris for chemotherapy.

There was plenty to do this morning, such as to watch the highlights of Forfar Athletic v Stranraer and a couple of other matches too, and then the weekly summary from Stranraer as the club prepares for the match against Edinburgh City on Saturday.

Isabelle the Nurse was horribly late today. She forgot yesterday to tell me that she was going to undertake her morning round today in the reverse direction, due to one of her later patients having an early medical appointment.

After she left, I could make breakfast and then read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

It’s a book that is beginning to annoy me and I’ve only just started to read it. It’s his flowery prose, where he takes several lengthy paragraphs to express an idea that he could put down in a dozen words, that’s the problem. I mean – look at this as a way of expressing “the passage of 120 years” – "From just before its opening till a generation after its close, from the final conquests of the Normans to the reign of St.Louis, from the organising plan of Gregory vii. to the domination of Innocent in., from the first doubts of the barbaric schools to the united system of the Summa, from the first troubled raising of the round arch in tiers that attempted the effect of height to the full revelation of Notre Dame—in that 120 years or more moved a process such as even our own time has not seen."

It’s not only that either. His curt dismissal of the pre-Roman British civilisation as "savages" and "barbaric" when in Neolithic and Iron Age times we had classic pottery, jewellery, the smelting of iron (in the later period) and an agricultural system that was not surpassed until the early days of the Agricultural Revolution, is totally unsustainable.

He writes "Letters, geography, common history, glass, and the use of half the metals were forgotten. Not tU the Latin reconquest in the eleventh century was the evil overcome and an organisation at last regained.", but while the first sentence is only partially correct – letters, geography, common history and glass had been restored for several centuries by 1066 – the “reconquest” of which he speaks was not “Latin” at all. He should be reminded that the Duke of Normandy and his followers were in fact for the most part fourth-generation Norse who had occupied Normandy following the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Épée in 911.

Another thing that he mentions is "the rudest and most remote of our ancestors,". It made me wonder what on earth they must have been doing in their remote isolation.

But returning to our road for the moment, he goes on to talk about "Chalk is viscous and spongy when it is wet. It is never so marshy as to lose all impression made upon it. It is never so hard as to resist the wearing down of feet and of vehicles. Moreover, those who are acquainted with chalk countries must have noticed how a road is not only naturally cut into the soil by usage, but forms of itself a kind of embankment upon a hillside from the plastic nature of the soil.". Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WHEN WE WERE IN WYOMING looking for the emigrant trail of the 1840s towards Oregon and California, we saw some really good examples of trail ruts in chalk.

After breakfast, there was work to do. I went right through the kitchen a second time, sorting out what I won’t now need for a couple of weeks, and packed it all away in these plastic boxes that I have. Having done that, I then began to pack away the crockery, carrying on until I ran out of boxes.

There was time after that to write two important letters. One concerns a shareholding that I bought in 1977 and about which I had completely forgotten until a chance remark had jogged my memory. And before any of you lot says anything, it’s a tiny proportion of the total shares and the company has never ever paid a dividend. The purchase was more in the nature of a charitable donation.

The second letter will heave an enormous shark into a very small swimming pool. There are several matters that are annoying me, spinning around in my head, and yesterday I reached the limit of my patience with one of them. Consequently I wrote a letter to the Director General of the organisation concerned and I was … errr … unrestrained. There will be some fall-out about this, without a doubt.

Having done that, the next task was to persuade the printer to work. For some reason, it was proving to be extremely recalcitrant. It took a good while, including cleaning the print heads on no fewer than four attempts to persuade it. But in the end it managed to squeeze out a couple of fair letters.

Whatever it is, I don’t know but I never seem to have much luck with printers.

My disgusting drink break was thus later than usual and it didn’t take long to drink. However, I wasn’t long back in here before my cleaner came up to do her stuff.

She stuck me under the shower, due to the fact that I’d missed out on Wednesday, and then we sorted out some more things to go downstairs. She ended up taking the boxes downstairs, as well as some of the CD racks, Tomorrow, I’ll go downstairs and put everything away while I’m waiting for the taxi, and when I come back if the taxi comes early again.

After she left, I finished the radio programme on which I’d been working and then made a start on the next one. The music has been sorted out and the notes almost finished. It won’t take long to do and then I can crack on and do another one while I’m in the mood.

Tea tonight was miniature vegan nuggets with a salad and air-fried chips, with some more of that nice mayonnaise that I made on Tuesday.

So right now, I’m off to have an early night. There’s football to watch in the morning and plenty of other things simmering away in the background. I don’t know from where all of this work has appeared.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Norse ancestors of William the Conqueror … "well, one of us has" – ed … when Prince Rollo sailed up the Seine to besiege Paris, he had difficulty controlling his fleet of longboats.
Consequently, he installed a gong on each of his ships. One bang signified "go to port" – two bangs signified "go to starboard" – and three bangs signified "go full ahead."
That system is the basis of the modern system of remote communication that was popularised in the Nineteenth Century and was called "Norse Code." And that’s why every Norse raid was dreaded because of its series of gong bangs.

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Thursday 7th August 2025 – I AM IN …

… total agony after the dialysis session today.

For a change, the taxi was early today. And not just five minutes either but a good half an hour early. But then came the bad news. There were over three litres of water to extract today (which explains why I have been so tired) so they made me stay for four hours. And in the bed where the mattress has collapsed right where I put my left hip so all through the session, I was in complete and utter pain.

It had all the air of being a good day too, unfortunately.

Last night, I was late yet again, despite not hanging around all that much. I think that it was down to the fact that tea took so long to make that I didn’t begin to write my notes until much later that usual. I could well have done without that.

Once in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly although I do have some vague memory of being awake at about 01:30. However, I went back to sleep again and there I stayed until about 06:05.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to gather myself together before I fell out of bed, and then I staggered off into the bathroom, and then the kitchen for my morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams where I was working in the office but I didn’t really care. I was letting all the work build up but I didn’t really care because I was planning on retiring, just walking away and leaving it all. I’d said that a couple of weeks ago but it was now three weeks later, everything was still there and I was still there and I hadn’t said that I was going. We were discussing some particular file that needed work doing on it. I had been helping a colleague out with a few things while he was away but when he came back there was still this particular file that needed attention. I said “never mind, bring it to me. Let me have a look at it and I’ll deal with it. I’m sure that I can find the time”. In the meantime, he was somewhere around and there was some kind of programme about houses. It showed this weird kind of semi-detached pair of bungalows. It turned out that it was fabricated out of an old London single-decker bus from 100 or so years ago. I seem to remember that in Shavington there was another bungalow that was exactly the same. It said that in this particular first one if you were to look closely you could see the shape of the bus but I had a really good look and I couldn’t see the shape of the bus at all in it.

We’ve had quite a few of these dreams in the past where I’ve abandoned all idea of working as I prepare for my retirement and then never actually retiring. There has to be something significant in this, I suppose. But the dream about bungalows being basically converted buses is nothing new, although it’s usually old abandoned railway carriages that are the most popular. There are some good examples HERE but as far as I know, there were none in Shavington.

Last night, there was a plan by Stoke City to have a big festival of football because they had reached an important milestone in their age so they began to organise this festival. They asked members of Crewe Alexandra if they could help. It turned out that when someone from Crewe was giving the matter some thought, it turned out that it was 100 years since the formation of Crewe’s first team. So instead, they began to organise a festival of their own and that it would be bigger and better and more important than the one that was being organised by Stoke City.

If they want to celebrate the 100 years of Crewe Alexandra’s first team, they are rather late. The club was founded in 1877 and played its first competitive match in December of that year.

There was another dream that took place in the hilly country where it had rained almost non-stop for several weeks. All of the ground above a village had become waterlogged and slowly a small depression had appeared in the hillside. This was immediately cordoned off and a guard was mounted on it. Slowly, the depression increased in size. Eventually the news filtered out that it was a burial chamber from when the village had first become occupied in the 1830s and people were warned to keep well away. But as the rain continued and the depression increased in size, slowly the earth was washed away and people began to see the old coffins. I was keeping well away because I didn’t want to see a decaying corpse or a skeleton.

Part of this dream seems to relate to Penrhiwceiber maybe, when we were talking about the desertion of the Welsh countryside as people flocked to the mines and the heavy industry. But the rest – the coffins, skeletons and all of that – could easily have its parallel from when we were in Greenland and climbed up to a cave near Uummannaq where a few years earlier, several mummified Inuit bodies had been found. When we were in the interior of the country later, scrambling over the tundra we came across a hitherto-undiscovered stone chamber burial with the skeleton still present, visible through a small gap in the stones. Of course, it’s very bad form to disrespect the Inuit dead in this way, but at first we had no idea what it was. We thought that it might have been a food cache or a collapsed fox trap.

Isabelle was late again this morning. The town was heaving with people, with it being the annual brocante. Some of the streets were closed off to vehicles and with the mayor’s wonderful new road system, the diversion took the cars miles out of their way.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Hilaire Belloc’s THE OLD ROAD.

It hasn’t taken me long to start nit-picking, that’s for sure. He tells us that "the Romans invented frontiers", which must have come as a dreadful surprise to the Chinese who started 400 years previously to build what eventually became the Great Wall of China, and also to the Neolithic and Iron Age settlers of Britain whose border dykes and earthworks we discussed at length several months ago.

He also tells us that "the south always conquered the north,", another comment that must have come as a surprise to King Penda of Mercia and Kind Aethelhere of the East Anglians, who were soundly beaten by Oswu of Northumbria, and Penda lost half of his kingdom.

One interesting comment that he makes concerns the Normandy coast between the Cotentin and the Seine estuary. He notes that it "gave an opportunity for the early ships to creep under the protection of a windward shore.". That was something that was used to full advantage in June 1944.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programme that I had started yesterday, spending probably more time looking for the notes that I’d written that doing anything else. I was so carried away that I forgot to note the time and ended up being quite late.

My cleaner was quite late too so we had something of a rush, but when I was ready, she helped me downstairs to the new apartment. There were some things that I wanted to do. However, as I said earlier, the taxi came far too early and I hadn’t done a thing.

The taxi had to drop off another passenger – a young lady – somewhere out in the wild at the back of Sartilly and the driver spent more time chatting her up than he did concentrating on the road, and it was a most unpleasant drive. Apart from that, he was all accelerator and brake which is not the way to drive a diesel car.

However, at least with these new Social Security regulations about shared travel, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

At Avranches, we were way too early so I had to hang around. Then I was weighed and found to be considerably over my dry weight and the machine’s capacity so I had to stay for four hours. And then they put me in the bed with the collapsed mattress so I was in total agony throughout the whole four-hour session.

First though, I crashed out. For some reason (probably because of the water retention issue) I was exhausted and couldn’t keep awake. The pain soon brought me round, though, and in the end it became so bad that I was obliged to stop work as I couldn’t concentrate.

Eventually I was let loose and the boss of the drivers brought me home.

Once more, it was a very difficult climb back up here, and I’m not sure whether I can cope with the five that remain before I move downstairs.

Tea was a vegan burger with pasta and tomato sauce, simple but delicious, and now I’m off to bed for a good sleep ready to crack on with work tomorrow if I can and there aren’t too many interruptions.

But seeing as we have been talking about it raining non-stop, in that village in the Welsh mountains … "well, one of us has" – ed … the rain increased and the floods began. Everyone evacuated except the vicar. When someone in a boat urged him to climb in, he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
A couple of hours later the church is flooded and he’s standing on the roof, when another boat came past. The occupants urged him to climb in but he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
A couple more hours later and he’s standing on the top of the steeple as the floods lap around his feet. Another boat came by and the occupants urged him to climb in but he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
However, ten minutes later he’s swept away.
In the queue at the Pearly Gates he met St Peter, to whom he expresses his dismay. "I don’t understand it" he said. "I put my faith in the Lord that he would save me, and he let me down."
"What do you mean ‘let you down’?" roared St Peter. "He did send three boats to rescue you."

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Wednesday 6th August 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this afternoon that I haven’t done for several weeks. That is, I have crashed out in my chair.

It might have been only for fifteen minutes but nevertheless, you have no idea how disappointing it is to have done so.

What was worse was that it was one of those moments where I didn’t realise that I’d crashed out until I awoke. I had not the slightest idea that I was on the verge of going. The only reason that I knew that it was for fifteen minutes was because I had just started listening to a concert soundtrack and when I awoke, I was just about fifteen minutes in. Otherwise, it could have been fifteen hours or even fifteen years and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

It wasn’t as if I was tired either. Admittedly, I didn’t go to bed until a little after 23:30 but I slept right the way through until all of 05:50 and these days, that’s a very long time for me.

It could, and should have been much earlier than that but as usual, I was carried away by all kinds of irrelevancies that distracted me from what I was supposed to be doing and I couldn’t press on with the important tasks at hand.

When I eventually found my way to bed, I wasn’t in the least bit tired. I imagined that I would be awake for quite a while but I didn’t hold out for very long at all and I was soon deep in the arms of Morpheus.

Awakening was another one of these sudden jolts upright. It was still dark so I was surprised to see that it was as late as it was. The nights are drawing in quite rapidly already. Gone are the days when it was becoming light at 04:00.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to haul myself out of bed and head into the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. Last night I was with Percy Penguin. I was in Canada preparing to go back to Europe but for some reason it took me an age to pack my things. Percy Penguin was sorry to see me go. My brother was preparing to leave too. We were struggling to have everything done when suddenly the bus put in an appearance so we had to rush. I found myself outside the gates of the garden with my suitcase and had to shout to the bus to tell him to wait for me for two minutes until I caught him up. Then I realised that again that I wasn’t on my crutches and I had my suitcase and my rucksack but by now the gates were closed and I couldn’t go back in, and the bus was there to take me to the airport, I’d forgotten the sandwiches that I had just made and I could see that this was going to be some kind of catastrophe. Then I heard that, with my brother deciding not to come, Percy penguin was trying to find her way out to catch the bus and come along. While this was all going on, we were listening to some kind of radio programme that was being prepared. It sounded totally crazy to me but it turned out to be a broadcast of the Goon Show. They were talking there about someone who had been responsible for a lot of Britain’s landscape and had designed the last foam rubber road and the last patchwork quilt field. I didn’t know what was happening with all of this.

It’s nice to see Percy Penguin back in my dreams. It’s years since I’ve seen her and a good while since she last came to see me during the night. She doesn’t figure in my dreams half as often as she deserves, seeing as she helped me through some very dark times all those years ago. But here we go again with my family and not only that, with Canada, without my crutches and another panic attack too. This dream is obviously telling me something and I wish that I knew just what it was.

Later on, I had a pick-up to do for someone at 20:30. I was quite early so I went to the village hall or whatever it was at 20:00 because I noticed a few people hanging around there. When I went in, a rock group was taking to the stage. I recognised it as being the modern equivalent of Man with John Mckenzie playing guitar. I didn’t recognise the bassist but he said that he had been with the group for twenty years so I assumed that it was Josh Ace, son of Martin. They began to play and it was a really good concert. There weren’t all that many people there but it was enjoyable all the same and I began to regret very much that I had this job to do at 20:30 because I could have stayed there all night.

By the way, I’ve added in the name of John McKenzie because during the night, I couldn’t think of it. He was the bassist with Man for a while but last night, he was playing a six-string guitar with Josh Ace, a guitarist, on bass, a black Rickenbacker 4000-series. At least, I think that it was Josh Ace. He was tall, well, built and with red hair and a beard. I met his parents, Martin and Georgina, when they were in Hanley years and years ago playing with their group, The Flying Aces. I seem to remember that they had Richard Treece, ex Help Yourself, also on guitar but I can’t for the life of me remember who the drummer was.

However, I do remember once in the early 90s driving halfway across Europe to a village hall somewhere because I’d heard that Man were playing there. It was a tiny village hall, just like the one in the dream, but the band was a totally different band of the same name and their music was … errr … disappointing.

Isabelle the nurse breezed into the apartment to sort out my legs and feet. She didn’t stop long, and I could press on with making my breakfast and reading some more of MY BOOK.

We’re reaching the end of the book so our author is summing up his work to date. But one thing that I have noticed is that despite the passage of time, there is very little that has changed.

He tells us, for example, that Londoners "be natural subjects, a part of the commons of this realm, and are by birth for the most part a mixture of all countries", very much like the London of today.

Another subject that is very topical today is what is considered to be the drain of wealth from beyond the M25 into the capital. Stow tells us that back in the last 16th Century there were"men which charge London with the loss and decay of many (or most) of the ancient cities, corporate towns and markets of this realm."

A third thing that he mentions is that one of"the only inconveniences of London" is "the immoderate drinking."

As you can see from the above, in the four centuries since Stow wrote his book, nothing whatever has changed.

However, I did have a smile when I read what he had to say about certain privileges of the Londoners being revoked by the King and only reinstated on payment of a heavy fine. He states various reasons why this should have taken place, such as that the citizens "misbehaved themselves in point of government and justice" but concludes by saying "to speak the plain truth, the princes have taken hold of small matters and coined good sums of money out of them."

But seeing as we have been talking about concluding … "well, one of us has" – ed … the book is now, regrettably, concluded. I found it a fascinating book and really enjoyed reading it too. Tomorrow we’ll be starting on Hilaire Belloc’s THE OLD ROAD – the story of the old Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Thomas a Beckett’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Back in here, I had the important task of going all the way through the list of what I need for the apartment downstairs, such as curtains, internet cables and the like. When my cleaner arrived to do her stuff, we went through it again and I sent it off. The stuff will start arriving on Friday and then we can crack on.

In the meantime, I’ve had some more disappointing news. One of my friends who was down to help me move has had a bad fall and dislocated his shoulder, so he’s had to withdraw. It seems that people are dropping like flies when I try to round them up.

This other plumber turned up this afternoon to inspect that work that needs doing. First of all, he couldn’t do half of the work but after a lengthy discussion, he went away and he’s now found a tiler who will fit the false wall and tile it. So if this plumber who is supposed to start on Monday fails to turn up, we may well have a Plan B.

In between everything else, I was writing the notes for the next radio programme and they are almost complete. And I could have finished them too had I not had that unfortunate doze off. Ahh well!

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry, and how I enjoyed it too. It really was one of the best that I have ever made.

So late again, I am off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. And when I come back, there will only be five more trips after that back up the stairs – assuming that there will still be people alive and kicking to help me move. At the rate that people are dropping out, it’s most unlikely that there will be anyone left.

But seeing as we have been talking about falling asleep … "well, one of us has" – ed … I think that if I were to die, that’s just how I would like to go. Just like this afternoon. All of a sudden, with no warning, no notice, nothing at all. Peacefully and quietly, just like my paternal grandfather.
Not yelling, screaming and panicking like the passengers in his minibus.

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Tuesday 5th August 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning at 06:29, I was already sitting at my desk working.

In fact, I’d already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day, decided that I didn’t like how they turned out, deleted them and dictated them a second time.

That’s the kind of thing that you can do when you awaken at 05:10 and leave the bed at 05:20.

It wasn’t as if I’d had an early night last night either. After tea, I came back in here and dillied and dallied as usual these days, exhausted as I was after dialysis. I completely lost track of time and by the time that I realised what time it was and put my head down to work, it was far too late to do anything about it.

Eventually though, I finished my notes, took the statistics and backed up the computer, and then wandered off to bed.

For a change, it was a restless night. I must have awoken three or four times during the night, not that I remember too much about it. But at 05:10, as I said just now, I was awake and couldn’t go back to sleep.

With it being nice and quiet outside in the street, this was the opportunity to attack the notes and dictate them. And then delete them and dictate them a second time because the first attempt sounded as it I had been dictating with my head in a metal bucket.

When the alarm went off, I went off for a good wash and to take my medication. Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

My brother and I found ourselves back at home last night but there had been an enormous load of changes. We didn’t understand any of it because our mother had totally changed the system of supplies and we didn’t know exactly where we were. When we began to look through everything, we could see that there were some deficiencies so we went into the rear living room to have a further look in there. My mother was most aggressive when we began to ask about certain things and chased us away. We began to go through the pantry where there were all kinds of different kinds of food there, all these special types of food that had points with them for prizes etc. There was one set that had points for individual presents rather than out of a catalogue. We just didn’t understand why all of this had been bought. My brother wasn’t being very careful. He was dropping tins over the floor and I was picking them up to put them back. In the end I was stressed out so I just picked up a tin of luncheon meat off the floor and threw it at him, telling him to be more careful. He didn’t really appreciate that. There was all of this going on to our food supplies, what we had in stock in the kitchen which was nothing at all like what we were used to having

So here we go again. No matter what happens, I don’t seem to be able to separate myself from my family during the night. Apart from my niece in Canada, during normal waking hours, I haven’t wasted a minute’s thought about my family for decades. But during the night, when I’m trying my best to think about Castor, Zero and TOTGA, along comes my family to push me out of my stride and I wish that they wouldn’t.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t mind Nerina coming along during the night because I did invite her to share my life, for better or worse (and she will probably think that it was more of the latter) and in any case, you can’t live with someone for nine years and not like them, but the others can push off.

The description of my mother as “aggressive” was certainly very apposite. She lived in her own little World and only very rarely did she make contact with the World in which the rest of us lived. She had had all kinds of torments when she was younger which explains a lot, but it didn’t make life easier for the rest of us.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed … I shall have to stop being in such an introspective mood and look more outward, even if that’s not possible until I’m downstairs (two weeks to go).

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to deal with my legs so I told her of my encounter with Emilie the Cute Consultant, whom she knows.

Isabelle also thinks that going to Paris is too much for me and is wearing me down. She’s seen how I am when I return and notices a great difference. She thinks that I’ll still be very ill when I return from Rennes if they keep on giving me this second product. She reckons (and so does everyone else) that the biggest difference will come when I don’t have twenty-five stone steps to climb every time I come back from a medical appointment.

And seeing as we have been discussing medical appointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Centre de Réeducation has contacted me. They would like me to go for an assessment interview on 26th September.

The letter contains a note “pre-admission” so it looks as if they are lining me up for another thirty sessions of treatment. Not that the first course of thirty did me much good, but I’m hoping that with the chemotherapy, something might happen that will make my lot a little easier.

After Isabelle left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we have been reading an endless list of mayors and aldermen of the City of London, with his acid remarks about some of them.

There’s nothing exciting from that point of view, although some of the actions of the mayors that John Stow highlights are quite interesting.

Two that spring to mind are firstly, in 1352 the mayor "procured an act of parliament that no known whore should wear any hood or attire on her head, except red or striped cloth of divers colours."

Secondly, in 1472 the mayor "Sir William Hampton punished strumpets and caused stocks to be set in every ward to punish vagabonds."

The stocks clearly didn’t act as the necessary deterrent because in 1503, the mayor, Sir William Capell "caused a cage in every ward to be set for the punishing of vagabonds.".

Back in here, I had some more furniture to put up for sale, and that involved taking photos and measurements.

Once they were online, I had two offers straight away but after some time spent in intense negotiations, I worked out that these were some kind of phishing attack for my bank account details so I abandoned the discussion. One of the site owners also came to the same conclusion because one of my correspondents was pulled from the site.

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with the radio programme, that is, when I’ve not been having a disgusting drink break. The programme is now finished and it sounds quite good except where there is the “blip” where the speed changes and I had to do my best to adjust it. I can hear the change, but I doubt if anyone else can.

Tea tonight was a taco roll and as I had run out of mayonnaise, I had to make some more. The wine vinegar is downstairs and the only vinegar up here, apart from the malt vinegar, was some balsamic vinegar. It certainly gives the mayonnaise a different taste and it’s not unpleasant at all.

So right now, I’m off to bed, later than I would like, but that’s what comes of having to stop and make mayonnaise and then wash up all of the oily, greasy machinery. Tomorrow it’s shower day so we shall see how we go. Someone wants to come to look round to see the plumbing job so that will keep me out of mischief for a while.

But seeing as we have been talking about my mother’s cooking … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a girlfriend from school who came round to our house one evening.
My mother made everyone a hot drink and then a couple of hours later, she asked if we wanted another one.
My girlfriend hesitated. "If that just now was coffee, " she said "could I have tea, please? But if it was tea, could I have a coffee?"

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Monday 4th August 2025 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again:

Sitting here all morning fuming because the plumber hadn’t shown up, I eventually decided to re-read the message that he had sent me at the beginning of last week.

And sure enough, there in black and white, is written “a week on Monday” – i.e. the 11th August.

Here I am, having been fretting all day for nothing at all.

Even worse, in the mad rush to order what I needed and ended up with what I could buy at short notice rather than what I would like, it turns out that I had plenty of time to shop around and make an online order. Still, it’s too late to fret about it now.

And seeing as we have been talking about it being too late … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was too late last night when I finally went to bed last night. After my marathon lie-in on Sunday, I wasn’t all that tired, which is no surprise

Mind you, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed, flat out, until all of … errr … 04:10.

At that point I could easily have left the bed but I decided once more to loiter around for a while. The next thing that I knew, it was 05:45 and so at that point I decided to leave the bed. Not that I managed it straight away – it took me a good few minutes to summon up the courage to leave the bed.

The first thing that I did was to go back to yesterday’s entry and add in the dictaphone notes that I had forgotten to include last night.

After a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went to sort out the medication and then I came back in here to find out what was on the dictaphone from the night. I was in an apartment in the rue de Villedieu. Looking out of the window I could see someone going past with a pile of books and records so I wondered what was happening. As I opened the door, a paper that had been on my desk blew out and I had to run after it but the faster I ran, the faster it blew in front of me. It took me quite a while, up to the hospital roundabout in fact, before I was able to catch it and stamp on it. By this time, the people with all these books and records had disappeared. I was chatting to a friend about this and we had no idea of what was going on. A few days later, I was walking down by the old cemetery and in the corner at the bottom where all of the records of the cemetery and the burials of the town had been kept, it was now an office for an auto-electrical company. I was wandering around a little more and came across a guy who used to supply sand into the cemetery. I asked him if he knew what was happening. He replied that the books and records department had been closed in May. I thought that this was the reason why the books and records had been moved, but to where have they gone? No-one at all seemed to know. They had disappeared off the face of the earth. I thought that if the company had closed down, that might be the reason why there was no football on Sunday morning, maybe because the commentators who accessed all of the records for their broadcasts, they had decided to move on too although it would be extremely unlikely.

This reminds me of an incident in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1992 where the disposal of a pile of records led to an extremely unfortunate crisis that had still not resolved itself when I left for the European mainland. It was one of those events that would have the most enormous repercussions but we’ll leave it at that, for fear of incriminating certain people.

Later on, I stepped back into that dream. We were talking about the ancient martial art of Terzhik which involved a way of entering through the window of some kind of sacred or special place. This is what had started off on this series of dreams by thinking that I had seen someone coming through the window into the records office. However, I didn’t spend long dreaming of this because I awoke with a start again halfway through.

As for any martial art called Terzhik, I doubt very much that there is such a thing. But people coming in through the window is a concern that I need to address when I’m on the ground floor, knowing how suddenly and how profoundly I can crash out.

While we were tidying up, my cleaner came across a video that I hadn’t seen. It talked about the Welsh migrations during the Industrial Revolution when hundreds of thousands of people left their homes on the farms and in the mountains to go to work in the coal mines and in the big cities. I hadn’t seen this before so I sat down to watch it. It was extremely interesting, talking about the lines of emigration up the Conwy valley and places like that. It went on to talk about the migrations from the South to the North in 1913 when the Wrexham coal mines open – that would seem to be when my grandmother moved from Penrhiwceiber in South Wales up to Wrexham. It showed all kinds of interesting things like the contemporary carriages and the rock-strew routes that they used to take, how their carriages were broken down along the way and had to be repaired so a whole new breed of carriage repairers had to be set up in mid-Wales. It talked about the cemeteries being vacated, bodies being removed and being found just about everywhere because there was no possible way to bury them anywhere else. It was just reaching the interesting part when I awoke.

Rural depopulation is something that has been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution but in Wales, with the dramatic rise of heavy industry, the process was much more intense and many villages lost a huge amount of their population. In 1871, Penrhiwceiber wasn’t even listed in the census, yet in 1909 there were over 4,000 people working in the coal mines there As for the roads in mid-Wales, they are not much better than those that I saw in my dream. The problem in a lack of investment – neither the Welsh Assembly nor Central Government believes that there’s anything north of the “Heads of the Valleys” except sheep and druids.

There was another part of a dream somewhere but I can’t remember where it fitted in, but I’d gone for a walk and had gone almost as far as Nantwich before I realised that I had set out without my crutches. I wondered how that was possible and, more importantly, once I realised, how was I going to return home?

Wherever this fits in, I have no idea. But it’s not the first time that I’ve dreamed that I’ve been walking without my crutches. But I’d love to know how I returned home once I’d realised.

Isabelle was late this morning and she didn’t stay long, just enough time to sort out my legs and then she was away. I could then make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author has pressed on today and is now discussing the chronology of the Bishops of London.

He has quite a few comments to make about some of the Bishops, but he reserves his most incendiary vitriol for Eustachius de Fauconbridge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who was made bishop in 1221. He says that while Fauconbridge "was giving Holy orders, a great tempest of wind and rain annoyed so many who came thither whereof it was gathered how highly God was displeased with such as came to receive orders, to the end that they might live a more easy life of the stipend appointed to the churchmen, giving themselves to banqueting, and so with unclean and filthy bodies (but more unclean souls) presume to minister unto God, the author of purity and cleanness."

Back in here, still fuming over the non-arrival of the plumber (I hadn’t re-read the message at this point) I drafted an advert onto one of these Chamber of Commerce sites to see if I couldn’t find another one.

While I was at it, I put some more things online for sale and, in the case of the old bathroom fittings, to give away. There is still plenty more to be sold.

When my cleaner had finished applying my anaesthetic patches, we collected some more things together, photographed another piece of furniture, and then took downstairs the things that we had assembled.

Once I was down there, I put things away, mainly in the new bathroom unit, and then began to rearrange and reorder the food in the kitchen cabinets. There’s now much more space in there, which is good.

When it was 13:00 we went outside in the sun to await the taxi, but it was half an hour late. Not that I was complaining, because it was a gorgeous afternoon and I was enjoying the fresh air.

There was another passenger in the car and the driver spent all of the time talking to her. No-one said a word to me. I settled down in the back of the car and had a nice rest.

At dialysis I was put in a small room with three other people. It was a nice, comfortable bed with nice surroundings so I didn’t do much this afternoon. I simply relaxed and enjoyed the nice view.

And who should come to chat to me but Emilie the Cute Consultant. We discussed the issues about chemotherapy, and an in-depth discussion it was too. In the end she promised to ring Paris to explain in greater detail the issues that I’m having, and suggest that I go to Rennes for any subsequent treatment. It would be lovely if she could persuade them

With being late arriving, I was late leaving but we made good time on the way home. Back here, we measured the windows in the apartment downstairs so that I could order some curtains, and my faithful cleaner has struck lucky. Some of the shelves in the fridge here are broken and I would have to order some new ones as replacements before I go, but someone has dumped over in the rubbish bay a fridge the same size as mine and she was able to rescue a couple of shelves, which is wonderful.

It was another long, weary climb up here and I had to sit down for twenty minutes to recover before I could make tea.

We’re back in our usual routine as of today, with stuffed pepper, and enough stuffing left over for a couple of days. It’s only a small mix of stuffing too, but I’m really not in all that much of a mood to eat a great deal right now.

So tomorrow, there is plenty to do so I’m going to go to bed, late as it is. And here’s hoping for a good sleep because despite the events of Sunday morning, I really need it.

But seeing as we have been talking about the cemetery here in Granville … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone from Crewe came here years ago and was astonished by the number of graves in it for such a small town.
"Do people die here often then?" he asked the gravedigger.
"Ohh no!" replied the gravedigger. "Only the once."

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Sunday 3rd August 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this morning that I have not done for several months, and it took me completely by surprise.

This morning, I awoke early as usual after a dialysis session – 03:10 in fact. But that’s far too early to be showing a leg, even if I am accustomed to some very early mornings these days, and so I decided that I would curl up underneath the quilt and see if I couldn’t go back to sleep for a short while.

And sleep I did. When I awoke, the sun was streaming in through the bedroom window, the birds were singing, and a glance at the time showed that it was actually 07:37. How long is it since I’ve been in bed at that time of the morning (illness excepted, of course)?

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either. I’d finished all of my notes by 22:15, so the timestamp tells me, and after taking the stats and carrying out the back-up of the computer, it was 22:30 when I crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long for me to go to sleep.

On a Sunday, I plan to have a lie-in and so the alarm is set for 08:00 but since dialysis began seriously, I don’t think that I’ve ever actually stayed in bed until then, a far cry from when I had no visiting nurse in the morning, no alarm call and sometimes I’d stay in bed until after midday.

Had it been a normal day with an alarm at 06:29, lying in bed like this would have been classed as an abject failure, but on a Sunday it would be classed as an early start. However, I’m not going to note it as such because it’s disappointing.

Despite it being late, it still took me a few minutes to rise to my feet, and then I wandered off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the medication.

There wasn’t a lot of time for me to do anything much before Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She’d told me that she would be late because of the annual book sale in the walled town but she had the wrong date and it’s not until the 16th of August so in fact there was nothing to interrupt her passage and she was early.

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

Our author is still in Westminster and has gone to the Great hall, where he describes in great detail the origins of the King’s Bench, the system of Courts and Judges that lasted until about 1875. Initially, it followed the King around on his Royal Circuits, trying cases that had arisen since its last visit and which later settled in the Great Hall, with only a part of the Court followed the King.

He tells us that "King Edward IV, in the year 1462, in Michaelmas term" because the Court had four terms, Hillary, Easter, Trinity and Michaelmas "sat in the King’s Bench three days together, in the open court, to understand how his laws were ministered and executed."

Another thing that he mentions is "a cloister of curious workmanship" built by Doctor John Chambers, the King’s physician. How I would have liked to see that!

He’s being continually surprised by the meals and banquets that are being served up, as am I, I have to admit. He tells us of John Mansell, the King’s Councillor, who organised a banquet for "The Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, Edward, the King’s son, earls, barons, knights, the Bishop of London and divers citizens." His house turned out to be far too small and he had to erect "tents and pavillions" and "there was such a multitude that seven hundred messes of meat did not serve for the first dinner."

There’s also mention of another huge banquet with an enormous quantity of food and "sundry wines and plenteous wise" that went on through the night and ended with "the king and queen being conveyed with great lights into the palace."

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was in Canada last night, round at my niece’s. Everyone had gone out and left me on my own for a while. By now, it was almost teatime and I was feeling hungry but it was very difficult to know what to eat. In the end I had a scavenge around and found some noodles and some powdered soy sauce which I thought would probably do for now. Then I found that I couldn’t open any of the tins or bottles. By now my niece and her husband were back and they were watching me as I tried to saw off with a sharp knife the bands that hold things like knives in their sheaths etc to try to have some kitchen utensils. My niece asked me if I wanted something else so I replied that I’d made a start on this so it would do. My niece’s husband asked me if I wanted to listen to any music. I asked him what he had and he read out a whole list of CDs so I mentioned one or two, so he gave them to me. However, he didn’t tell me where to switch them on, where the CD player was. So I was standing there with these useless utensils in one hand and a useless couple of CDs in the other hand and this strange concoction of food on the plaque de cuisson.

So here we go again. I’m feeling nostalgic for Canada again. That’s something that I shall have to chase out of my mind and accept that it’s never going to happen again. However, I did actually find a packet of noodles when I was tidying the kitchen the other day. Apart from the indecision, which seems to happen a lot in my dreams, I can’t fit the rest in with anything else.

Nerina and I had moved house, and we were thinking of adopting a cat. We went to the local animal shelter and the person there listened to our story and offered us a female cat and her five new-born kittens. Much as I liked cats, I thought that that was far too much and so did Nerina but the guy was doing his best to persuade us, saying that all food will be provided etc, but we were still not keen at all on this idea of having this kind of cat family in the house.

Anyone who has ever looked after a cat will know that you don’t actually choose a cat – a cat chooses you. You’ll have an idea about the kind of cat that you would like and go to a refuge to find one but you’ll always come back with completely the opposite of what you would have liked. Your ideal cat would be there, but it would take one look at you and slink off into a dark corner but another cat will cling to your legs and won’t let go.

There was also something about being in Virlet but I can’t remember anything about it now.

After that, I had a very slow start to the day and didn’t do very much at all for quite a while. I had hoped to see the Forfar v Stranraer football match but for some reason, the stream didn’t come online this morning and it’s still not appeared. I’ve no idea why not either because usually, the camera team is quite reliable.

Once I’d decided to start work, I carried on with the radio programme that I’d started the other day. All of the music is now remixed and apart from in one or two places where we had issues setting tone and amending the speed of a couple of tracks, it’s come out quite well and I’m quite happy.

The notes have also been written ready for dictation but I shan’t dictate them immediately because I’m not convinced that they are long enough and they will need reworking.

There’s also a photograph of STRAWBERRY MOOSE doing the rounds of the internet in Granville right now.

The estate agent who came round a couple of weeks ago took a couple of photos of the place and these are being used to advertise my apartment here as available to let, and His Nibs is prominently featured, sitting in the middle of the bed.

In case you are wondering why I’m not posting the link, well, let’s just say that it does not show my apartment in the best of lights. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that tidiness is not my particular forte.

There were the usual breaks in the afternoon for disgusting drinks and also for baking. I needed more bread and a base for my pizza so I dealt with that this afternoon.

The loaf is slightly heavier today, but the pizza base was perfect and it tasted delicious. However, I’m not sure why, but I’ve suddenly developed a craving for Cheshire Cheese. It’s a shame that I can no longer eat it. Since I went onto this vegan diet in 1992 when my pancreas ceased to function, cheese is the one thing that I miss.

So right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …
. Do you realise that there are at most only seven more trips up the stairs after dialysis and then I shall be installed downstairs and shan’t have to worry any more?

And if the plumber, who is coming tomorrow, extricates his digit, there might be even fewer than that. As long as my bed, my desk and my kitchen stuff are down there and the water is connected, I shall cope as best as I can. I really have to move downstairs as quickly as I can because the stairs are finishing me off.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about banquets … "well, one of us has" – ed … some friends of mine once went to a big banquet in Spain where the dish of honour was the … errr … cojones of the bull that was killed in the corrida that morning.
However, at this particular banquet, the main dish was … errr … rather small
"what’s happened here?" asked one of my friends
"Well you see, señor" replied the waiter "the bull, he doesn’t always lose."

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Saturday 2nd August 2025 – TODAY’S DIALYSIS SESSION …

… was totally horrible.

Not so much the session but the aftermath. I was totally drained, totally exhausted and I felt as if the end of the World had come. When BILBO BAGGINS said "I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.", I knew exactly what he meant.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a particularly early start either. Although it was quite late by the time I finished my notes, the stats and the back-up, I slept all the way right through without moving until 06:20 – nine minutes before the alarm.

living room n°6 place d'armes granville manche normandy franceSo while you admire a couple of photos of my freshly-painted living room, once more in a colour rather brighter than that which I had chosen, and with the curtain rail over the door in the wrong place, I shall tell you about my day.

When I awoke, I really was feeling rotten but a Herculean effort saw me sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off at 06:29

But it didn’t galvanise me into action though. It classes as an early start because I was out of bed and with my feet in contact with the floor when the alarm went off, but that’s how it stayed for a good fifteen minutes.

living room kitchen n°6 place d'armes granville manche normandy franceEventually, I managed to drag myself in some kind of undignified fashion into the bathroom where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and I also hand-washed some clothes. With not having many clothes, I try to keep on top of things when I can.

In the kitchen, I dealt with the medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Jordan Davies had left Greenock Morton last night and had signed for a football club in Wales. His arrival was heralded by the club and they made a big issue out of it with headlines in the local paper etc. However, when he was on his way to the football ground to be greeted by the chairman etc, he was involved in a car crash and was killed. That was really the end of all of that. All of the celebrations were cancelled and it ended up being something of a really damp squib of an affair.

It’s no surprise that they would have cancelled the celebrations after that. However, this dream is a combination of two different things.

Actually, Jordan Davies has left Greenock Morton and yesterday he signed for Colwyn Bay AFC in the JD Cymru League. But the part about death in transit refers to Emiliano Sala, whose aeroplane crashed as he was flying from Nantes to play for Cardiff City in 2019.

Isabelle the Nurse came in a little later to deal with my injection, the last in this series, and to sort out my legs. There are all kinds of events taking place in the town tomorrow so she told me that she has no idea what time she will arrive.

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

We’re still in Westminster, discussing inter alia the enormous list of famous and important people buried in Westminster Abbey.

But it’s John Stow’s little personal remarks that are so interesting and amusing. When he is talking about the raising of funds to rebuilt St Margaret’s Church, he tells us about King Henry III banning all trade in merchandise for fifteen days, which the citizens were obliged to redeem by paying the King two thousand pounds of silver because of the King "devising how to extort money from the citizens of London."

That’s nothing compared to his remarks concerning the revised works of Geoffrey Chaucer which were "twice increased through mine own painful labours" and "again beautified with notes by me." Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that if it weren’t for my own overwhelming modesty, I would be perfect, but not even I would write quite like that.

Still, if you have a trumpet, you may as well blow it.

As a matter of a more serious nature, he talks about the Great London Floods of 1236 and 1242. In the former flood, the Palace of Westminster was flooded and "men did row with wherries in the midst of the hall, being forced to ride to their chambers.". In the latter, "in the great hall of Westminster men took their horses because the water ran over it."

Back in here, I had some things to find to take downstairs and then I sorted out the photos from Thursday (which you have seen just now) and do it quickly too because my cleaner was coming early.

After she’d fitted my anaesthetic patches we measured all of the furniture in the living room, took one of the CD and DVD columns with us, and went downstairs with some masking tape to mark on the floor exactly where all of the furniture will go in the living room downstairs.

That’s important because the Saturday and the Monday afternoon, I’ll have dialysis and then on the Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be having chemotherapy in Paris so anyone who will be here to help me will need to know where to put everything if I’m not here.

The chief driver of the taxi company turned up to collect me, and he was early too so it’s just as well that I was ready.

We arrived at Avranches much earlier than planned, and so as usual I had to wait an age to be seen and plugged it. At least, I had good company because Alexi looked after me today.

At first, I was really drowsy, due in no small measure to the fact that my blood pressure dropped to 7.7/5.6, which is about the lowest that it has been.

Once I’d recovered, I spent most of the afternoon trying to find a series of books called “The Paston Letters” – a book containing all of the correspondence issued by the Paston family in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century.

These six volumes are extremely important because firstly, they give an eyewitness report of the Wars of the Roses, as seen by the ordinary man in the street who suffered so much, and secondly, they cover the period of the evolution of the English language from Medieval English to Early Modern English and the official codification and standardisation of the language following the invention of William Caxton’s printing press.

As usual, having arrived early, I was late being disconnected and then I had to wait ten minutes for the taxi. Even then, the driver had another passenger to drop off at Brehal up the coast and she wanted to take him first, which annoyed me greatly but there wasn’t much that I could do about it.

Consequently, I was just as late coming home as I might otherwise have been had I left here late.

Climbing the stairs in my weakened state was awful and when I made it into here I had to sit down for half an hour to recover before I could make tea.

So a baked potato, vegan salad and breadcrumbed quorn slice later, I’m off to bed, totally wasted after all of my exertions. I really need to be downstairs as quickly as possible because I can’t keep on going like this. It’s awful.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the floods … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time of the Great Flood of Crewe a while back.
When the Municipal Buildings were flooded, they decided that they would take advantage of the situation and play a game of water polo.
"Was it a success?" I asked.
"Not really" came the reply. "Most of the horses drowned."

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