Tag Archives: football

Saturday 21st January 2023 – MY EXCITING LIFE …

… reached its apogee today

there I was this afternoon in the kitchen having a wonderful time cleaning and defrosting the fridge. And it needed it too. I’d had one and a half kilos of carrots in there and they took some finding in all of the frost and ice.

There was some interesting stuff in there too – such as some vegan cream with a best-by date of October 2018. They went straight into the waste bin along with some other stuff and there’s actually some room in there now.

And even though I put the carrots in the freezer in the bathroom, there’s still some room there too. It won’t be long before everything is empty and then I can start again. Mind you, I’ve said that before about the freezer and I’ve not reached that point yet.

The kitchen looks a bit of a mess though, but that’s no surprise. I can’t work like I used to and have to go and sit down for an hour and recover after about 10 minutes of work.

And I’d had a better night last night too. Although it took me a while to go to sleep, I wasn’t disturbed as much as I have been in the recent past.

Just a few trips out and about during the night. I was with my mother at a house somewhere in Shavington. There had been a party and we had been tidying it up. It was in the most appalling mess after the party, glasses and food etc everywhere. I sat down to do the washing up which took me ages but eventually I did it. The whole of the work surface where I had the glasses was like a lake. We then decided that we really wanted to tidy up something else. After a while one thing that we realised that we hadn’t seen was the cat. We called this cat but it didn’t come so we carried on doing other things. Some time in mid-afternoon we saw it outside the window so we went to fetch it. It was shaking. The first thing that went through our mind was that it obviously hasn’t had anything to eat for a while so it’s probably starving. We took it into the kitchen and gave it a handful of cat biscuits but it didn’t seem all that keen on eating them. It wanted attention for something or other. It was still shaking but wasn’t all that interested in eating the cat biscuits so we wondered what was the matter with the cat

And then I was going to Canada on a plane. Before that was a meeting that I had to attend and it over-ran by hours. There was only half an hour left for me to catch my plane by the time the meeting finished. I had to enter the lift at the airport but everything was going wrong. She was calling out floors and stopping the lift but no-one was alighting. I was thinking that I would just be later and later as this goes on. I’m never ever going to recover my suitcase and catch the flight or even have time to make arrangements to catch another one going on the same day. I’m going to be in all kinds of difficulty if I miss this plane.

Finally I was at work. One of my colleagues was like Jon Pertwee, always being involved in schemes and blaming everyone else when they all went wrong. Something had happened at work and he said “it was Eric who did that”. By this time I was fed up for a start so I hit him so hard that he reeled right down the end of the room. I went after him but everyone else stopped me. I went back to my desk. On my way back I walked past my old garden which I had now given to my mother. I’d planted a couple of fruit bushes a couple of years ago. I had never done much with them but I noticed now that the fruit on them was enormous and it wasn’t summer yet. They weren’t ripe. The bushes had groaning under the weight of the fruit and it looked as if it was going to be a really bumper year for the crop.

And so I spent much of the night with members of my family. I wish that I knew why. I can’t seem to shift them out of my subconscious mind and replace them with people whom I’d be so much happier to see.

Such as Liz and Rosemary, for example. When I switched on the computer I found that Liz was on line so we had a chat for about an hour or so to catch up with each others’ latest news. We both have a lot going on right now and we haven’t spoken for a week or so.

And no sooner had Liz gone off than Rosemary rang me for a chat for a while.

Apart from chatting to Liz and Rosemary I didn’t really do an awful lot this morning. I had a wander through cyberspace looking for new things that I’m going to need in the near future and make a little list. But finding what I want at a price that I can afford and which will do what I want to do isn’t very easy.

And then this afternoon I cleaned and defrosted the fridge. It’s amazing how much ice the fridge will make when my back is turned.

There was football on the internet later. A basement clash between Aberystwyth and Caernarfon Town. They have both been struggling for the last couple of months and Aberystwyth have been sucked into a relegation scrap down at the bottom. Caernarfon, for all their midfield stars who would grace any Welsh Premier League Club, have a wobbly defence and have no-one at all in attack,

Aberystwyth were the better side and eventually rattled up a 2-goal lead. And they could have had a couple more quite easily too. Caernarfon didn’t really mount a shot on goal until Rhys Alun Williams scored what will easily be THE GOAL OF THE SEASON to pull one back for a late consolation.

Tea was a burger on a bun with baked potato and salad. My meals are definitely improving even though I don’t have what it takes to go and do a proper load of shopping. However when I’m out and about on Tuesday I might do a lap around Lidl, LeClerc and the Bio shop to stock up with stuff that I need.

And as I’m feeling better and Caliburn is going in to be fixed, I might actually start again to go to the shops every now and again to see what I can do. I have to start up again some time.

But having already almost crashed out twice this evening I’m going to go to bed and I’ll worry about the shops some other time. I’m more worried right now about having a good sleep and a lie-in although if past history has anything to go by, I’ll be lucky.

Saturday 14th January 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… rather quiet day today.

Despite everything that I said yesterday about going out for a walk today, it’s been pouring down with rain all day and so I’ve not set foot out of the building at all.

However, I have set foot outside the apartment, and a couple of times too. Round about 17:00 we had a series of power cuts in the building and I had to go downstairs to see what was happening. Mind you, someone beat me to it each time so I may just as well have stayed in here.

When I awoke this morning, I was in agony. My knees were hurting in a couple of places, presumably as a result of my efforts yesterday. However, once I was actually up and about and moving around, not only did the pain ease up but I could move around a little easier too. I think that it did me some good to go for a walk yesterday and I wish that the weather would brighten up a little so that I could go for another one.

Apart from that I’ve had a very quiet day today. All I’ve done is to pair up the music and write a few notes for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. I might even do some more tomorrow but I have other fish to fry, like making some fruit buns. I was going to make a loaf but I’ll do that later in the week, I reckon, if I have time. I can’t believe how busy my week is going to be next week.

There was football on the Internet this afternoon too, Llanelli third in the Second Division at home to Connah’s Quay Nomads, second in the First Division in a Welsh Cup match. There was only ever going to be one winner in this game but hats off to Llanelli who made the Nomads work hard and kept them down to just 2 goals.

And how different might things have been had Llanelli scored the penalty that they were given in the second half when they were just 1-0 down?

But it goes to show how wide the gulf is between the First and Second Division, as Airbus UK Broughton and Pontypridd United are finding this season after having been promoted at the end of last season.

Tea tonight was some of those small burgers with baked potato and a salad. I’m really getting the hang of these salads now and not only do they taste nice, they look nice too with lettuce, tomato, mushroom, sweet corn and vegan mayonnaise.

Later on, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I pulled up at this huge, expensive hotel. I was in something big like a Rolls-Royce. There was all kinds of confusion where you park the cars. I had to shout at someone who was continually getting in my way while I was trying to park. Then I had to walk into the reception and fillin a card. It asked for my father’s details and my mother’s details too but the writing was so small that there wasn’t any space to write the answers so I just wrote anything down. Nothing of it was accurate which was just as well because my writing was so small that you couldn’t read it anyway. I was thinking to myself that it would have been far simpler to have handed over at least a passport of my father because my mother was dead. At some point it occurred to me that instead of giving my mother’s details I was giving them Aunt Mary’s details. I don’t know what was happening about that.

And later on I’d gone on a walking tour again with some people camping in the forest and going for a walk along this path. The first morning that we awoke the guy in charge said that we were going to rehearse one of the longer routes that we’d be taking. We started off by the tents. He told me that I didn’t need to come if I didn’t want to but I was there so I said that I would. He was very pernickety about his equipment and about his ownership of all kinds of maps and everything with him and photos, how we would align himself when he was walking through the forest – walk towards this cabin then off towards this rock etc which I thought was probably overdoing everything. We eventually started and I ended up with 2 girls whom I didn’t know. We were in this sports ground, an old type of pre-Taylor-Report football ground type of thing. We ended up in a queue. They said that they wanted a bun or something and did I want one? I replied “no” because there was nothing there that I could eat. But when they came away from this queue they had cups of tea etc with them. I thought that if I knew that they were going to have a drink I’d have had a coffee. Then we had to go to find a place to sit down but there was all this grass seed blowing around everywhere. You couldn’t really sit down because it would all be in your drink etc.

It looks as if I have the subject of holidays running around in my subconscious mind right now. But I can forget all about them until at least I’m mobile again. I can’t go anywhere right now as I am.

However, that’s for later. Right now I’m going to bed as I reckon that i’ve had enough of today. Tomorrow is another day and next week is another week. With an appointment basically every day next week, I need to extricate my digit.

Saturday 7th January 2023 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done for quite a while, and that was that I went back to bed this morning.

Not that I’m really surprised because despite going to bed after midnight, I was wide awake at 04:30 and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end I gave it up as a bad job and made a start on the day.

Something else that I did that I haven’t done for quite some time was to have some breakfast. Not really a surprise given my really early start. A bowl of cornflakes and soya milk went down really nicely at that time of the morning.

A little later Liz was on the internet so we had a little chat for a short while too. It’s nice to keep in touch with good friends.

Round about 10:00 I could feel myself drifting away and spent a few minutes trying to fight off the wave of sleep but in the end I gave it up and hit the sack. It goes without saying that a short while later I had a phone call. It was one of the neighbours asking me if I needed anything from the shops. But having had a good shopping session on-line yesterday, there wasn’t anything that I needed.

It was round about 13:00 when I awoke again and after some toast and coffee I watched the football on the internet. Penybont swept aside a poor Caernarfon side 5-1. I’m not sure what has happened to Caernarfon but for a team that over the last couple of seasons has been so competitive, this season they have gone right off the boil.

That really is a surprise because although their defence hasn’t been up to all that much for a while, they have a very talented midfield that can usually carry the attack to the opposition but the fire seems to have gone out.

One of the things on the shopping list yesterday was 1.5kg of carrots. They have been washed, diced and blanched and are now sitting in the freezer quietly freezing. Well, actually in the freezer compartment of the fridge because the freezer itself is full to overflowing. Despite everything that has come out of it this last year or so, there is still no room.

At least there is plenty of stuff in there right now, including frozen vegetables because I had another salad for tea with my baked potato and vegan burgers. It was a good plan to treat myself to a salad this weekend as part of my order.

But with a little luck there will be some more room in there by the end of the weekend as a lump of pizza dough will go and some fruit buns will be taken out too. I’ll probably find something else to fill it though.

During the night, even though I didn’t have much sleep, still went on a voyage here and there. I was with my Greek friend. We were in Crewe making a curry. We had a little room in this factory complex where we lived. We had this curry going and it was simmering away, on “very low” so we planned on going to bed and letting it simmer away through the night. Just as I was getting into bed the alarm went off at the factory as if an intruder had come onto the premises. I looked out of the window but couldn’t see anything. Eventually I could hear one or two people walking towards the gate, like security staff. When my friend awoke I told her about this. We had a bit of a laugh about this security system. But this curry was all starting to go wrong. It was simmering away and looking really nice but it kept on rising up in the pan even on the lowest heat and threatening to overflow everywhere. She became quite angry. I was quite disappointed, particularly as some curry had gone on her clothes. She said that she would coat all my clothes in curry and see how I liked it but after a couple of minutes of this she started to smile and pat me on the shoulder as if either she wasn’t being serious or if the crisis had passed and we were friends again.

Even though I’d had a good sleep later in the morning and another one … errr … at some point in the evening, I didn’t go anywhere else.

But even if it is early, I’m going now, and that is to bed. Despite all the sleep that I’ve had I’m feeling pretty exhausted and miserable and a good sleep will do me good. A nice lie-in if I’m lucky, followed by a nice, strong coffee and I might feel better. I wish that I could find some energy from somewhere to sort myself out because nothing is being done right now. Everything is just too much of an effort.

Friday 30th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

… out and about this evening socialising.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s something going on in the background here in this building that might burst out into the open at some point in the future. Consequently I’ve been out to see one or two people in the building for a meal and for a good chinwag while we work out a cunning plan.

It certainly pays dividends to have the right people on your side at moments like this because you end up on the inside track when it’s all filtering through. But how things develop, we shall have to see because there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

One of the slips was that I nearly didn’t make it. When it was time for me to go I was actually asleep on the chair in the office and I had quite a job to drag myself out and upstairs.

Not that you would have thought so because I was in no rush this morning to leave my bed. WHen the alarm(s) went off I could hear the howling gale roaring around outside. And so in the words of the old song, REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLINGS SPENT, MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED.

It was actually about 09:00 when I finally did leave the bed and for a change I had no pangs of guilt whatsoever. It’s clearly getting to me, this strange mood in which I find myself.

First things first – I had to do the finances for the end of the year to see how I stand. And to my surprise, I can actually afford my little project without making too much of a special effort.

And no-one is more surprised than me. When I embarked on this plan back in early November while I was lying in hospital I thought that I might be pushing out the boat a little too far but apparently not. So let’s get on with it. Unfortunately it doesn’t really depend on me – I’ve done all that I can for the moment and I’m waiting on others to extricate their digits.

When the streets had quietened down for lunchtime, I went out for a play in the pouring rain with Caliburn. He struggled into life again so I took him for another good run, but it’s still not made starting any easier. It sounds to me as if the starter motor must be on its way out. I’ve put the spare battery on charge and at some point I’ll swap them over to see whether that improves things.

In case you are wondering (which I’m sure you are) I’m not going far in Caliburn in busy times because with having no force in my right leg, braking is proving to be something of an issue. I’m having to leave plenty of space in front of me just in case an emergency arises

This afternoon I’ve had to register with URSSAF, the body that deals with minor self-employed people. My “cleaner” (and how embarrassing is it for me to admit that I have one?) is actually employed under these regulations and so I have to pay URSSAF for her services and they deal with all of the paperwork and any tax liability for all of her clients.

There’s some good news about this too (and it’s been a long time since I’ve had any) and that is that because I’m over 65 and suffering from a serious illness, I can actually claim part of my payments to be offset against my income tax. The French Social Security system is certainly up to the mark.

Although it had taken me ages to go off to sleep last night, I must have fallen asleep at some point because there was this huge, long rambling dream about me being in Crewe with STRAWBERRY MOOSE, my three sisters and all their kids and dozens of cats etc. I even ended up at a couple of their houses. I’ve no idea what was going on there but it was one of these things that went on for just about ever.

And then I’d been on my travels later on last night. I bumped into Claude and his daughter and her kids. It turned out that there had been some kind of water fair near where I’d been living and they’d been to see it that morning. They’d even bought some boats and had been sailing around on the canal. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t gone, never mind not seen them. One of the things that was taking place was the throwing of some kind of mechanic’s tool like a set of Stilsons and embedding it in a door. This had all finished but I was throwing one or two things about and having some good results. I felt a shame that I’d missed the early part of this where it had been competitive and I might have had a good score. In the end after much messing around someone gave me a set of Stilsons to try. I threw it and it bounced off the door into the canal. I had to go to fish it out. Eventually I had to leave. It was like leaving one of these spaghetti western type of things with the plains and the shot in the distance, riding on a horse across the plains up the side of a hill into the mountains and disappearing out of the shot.

When the alarm went off for the first time I was with Beth I used to know from my time on the Scottish borders trying to relax her for an interview that she was due to take. I would have loved to know how all of this unfolded.

When I came back from my evening out I watched the football. Y Drenewydd were playing Aberystwyth and the least said about this the better as Aberystwyth were simply swept aside. It was really no contest and how the score was only 1-0 at half-time was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

But 10 minutes of madness shortly after the restart saw Y Drenewydd rattle in 4 more goals and they scored a sixh later in the game that was the result of some of the worst defending that I have ever seen in my life. Aberystwyth scored a goal out of nothing in the dying minutes of the game but the game was long-since finished by then.

Tomorrow I’m having a little shopping done for me. Some mushrooms and peppers ready for my meals next week but that’s about it. Walking around today, I seemed to be moving a little easier and I might have been tempted to have another go on the bus into town had it not been a day when we might have the crowds out in the streets doing their shopping for the New Year.

And i’ll try to make an effort to haul myself out of bed at some reasonable time too, except that its already much later than it ought to be. I’m going to have to organise myself much better than this.

Monday 26th December 2022 – WELL THAT WAS A …

… waste of a morning.

It’s not every Bank Holiday where I set an alarm to awaken me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but today it was something of a necessity because the physiotherapist was due to come round at 09:00 or so.

But where he got to I really don’t know because he never actually came here and I could have had an extra couple of hours in bed. It would have been much more comfortable than the hour or so that I spent curled up asleep on the chair.

It’s not really a surprise though that I crashed out because I didn’t go to bed until after midnight (I was too buy letting it all hang out, I suppose) and I was wide awake at 07:00.

Some stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night. I can’t remember very much about the first one but I was off on my travels again. I should have gone by car but I ended up walking but that’s all that I remember about that

Later I was working on my old Cortinas. I had the blue one and the green one somewhere and I wanted to finish things. I had the engine out and everything. When Nerina came home I asked her if she knew where I could find a rotisserie from, where I could drive the cars in and tilt them up and down to weld them while I was standing up rather than lying on my back underneath. She couldn’t see the advantages of this even though her mother worked buying and selling garage equipment but the advantages of that for me were evident. Of course my father was involved as well. We all went out of the house and got into one of my Cortinas to go somewhere. This discussion about this rotisserie went on and on and on.

As it happens, a rotisserie was high on my list when I was thinking about equipping my garage to rebuild the cars in there. I’d seen a home-made one where the pivots simply bot into the chassis where the bunmpers would normally fasten and you can spin cars round so you can weld on them standing up. When I used to weld cars back in the 80s, I’ve done far more than my fair share of lying on my back welding up underneath a car.

But all of that was a very long time ago.

This morning I didn’t do anything at all except sleep, and I didn’t really do all that much more this afternoon. Certainly not a radio programme.

There has been a ‘phone call though. I mentioned a few days ago that I have a project on the go that if it actually comes off it would be a fantastic coup. And judging by the ‘phone call and the mail that I had to follow it up, it looks as if it actually might heppen too.

There’s a lot of water that needs to flow under the bridge though, and it won’t happen overnight , but things are certainly moving forward.

Tea tonight was another slice of pie with vegetables and gravy and it is certainly impressive. There’s plenty more that’s gone into the freezer for sometime in the future and it seems to me that the quicker I try to empty the freezer, the quicker I end up filling it again. Emptying the freezer is rather the reverse of Cleaning the Augean stables.

Perhaps I should also have mentioned the football this afternoon. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint.

Played in a hurricane on a swamp, it was always going to be the kind of game where the ball in the air would be blown out of the ground so you would keep it on the floor and it would stick in the mud. Not a game for the purists and a rather sad throwback to how things used to be in the league 20 years ago before the money from the national side’s cup runs was ploughed back into a dramatic upgrade of facilities.

Even though Akpa-Akpro had a fantastic effort well-saved by Andy Firth early in the game, there was only ever going to be one team in this game and it was all a question of time.

Nevertheless it took the Nomads long enough to break down the Flint defence and the two late goals that the Nomads scored were no more than they deserved.

But the Nomads need to do much better than this if they want to push TNS closer for the title. There is nothing much wrong with their defence particularly since they signed Andy Firth from Glasgow Rangers to stand between the sticks, but the lack of firepower up front has been a worrying factor for several years. The only time they ever mounted a serious challenge was when they had Jamie Insall up front but those days have long-since gone too.

And so have I too. I’ve gone to bed ready to make a new start tomorrow. I have a couple of things to do and I need a good sleep to do it but I’m still not as well as I have been. I’ve been going downhill dramatically for quite a while and I’m not able to pull myself back up.

Friday 23rd December 2022 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… miserable, depressing, dismal day today.

This is probably the worst that I’ve had for years. Not only did I fail dismally to beat the second alarm, I have spent most of the day curled up on my seat not moving, and even asleep for considerable periods.

The fact is that moving is so much effort. That’s part of the problem. Instead of things easing up the more I walk, things seem to be deteriorating. Being in an awkward position with my right leg, I now have aches in my right foot that weren’t there before.

And when I try to ease the knee joint, I just have a pain in my back. So I’ve no idea what’s happening here.

And just walking around is becoming pretty much impossible. I may well have treated myself to a shopping trolley but I wonder if I’m going to have the opportunity to use it.

Having said yesterday how much of a better night I’d had and how much I was looking forward to another one, it goes without saying that last night was quite miserable and is probably the reason why I was so exhausted.

Although I was asleep early, I wasn’t asleep for long and spent several hours later tossing and turning around trying to make myself comfortable – without any appreciable degree of success. It ws for that reason that I wasn’t rushed to leave the bed this morning, although any excuse will probably do.

As for work and the like, all I’ve done today is to have a shower, cut my hair (the first time since late September) and ice my sponge cake. The icing didn’t work particularly well, but then again it never really does. I don’t have the hang of doing the icing. However with having let the cake cool down overnight, at least the icing didn’t go all over the place and slide off.

The chemist came as well and brought me a couple more injections. With there being an increased doze, the price has gone through the roof.

Tea tonight was pasta with falafel and it was quite delicious as usual. The freezer is slowly thinning out and if I’m not careful I might even be able to fit these frozen carrots in there instead of leaving them in the ridge’s freezer compartment. I’m really going to have to buy a different, bigger freezer.

Next plan was to type out the dictaphone notes. I was somewhere in Europe planning on travelling. It was the mdweek sometime and there were a few people loitering around who were travelling too. We ended up standing by a bus stop somewhere in the street. Far below us, lower down in the street, a door opened and a train came through. I said to these people that if they want to catch a train they were standing in the wrong place. This is a bus station. We all picked up our things and moved a bit further down the hill where this other group of people were waiting. There was a huge crowd there. This train pulled in and I swarmed on board. I couldn’t see any of these other people so I wondered if they were all having some kind of fun at my expense or whether they were still going by bus regardless or something. I felt that I was the only one of this group of people who had been together at the beginning who had actually boarded. Someone else said something and I realised that a girl and her daughter had boarded the train too. The train set off and I was having to stand going to Montreal, that I had to stand until 23:00 tomorrow. For some reason we ended up around a Council estate in Crewe, the Brookhouse Drive estate, on foot. We were heading towards another bus stop. I was taking this girl and her daughter. I knew all the short cuts so I was taking them through these short cuts on this council estate. She said “we’ll get well ahead of all the others by the time we reach the bus stop”. We were having to go somewhere like Wybunbury or Audlem or Market Drayton. I couldn’t remember the times of the buses but I thought that even if there wasn’t a direct bus we could take a bus from here that would take us to Nantwich and then work our way on from that way to see how we could progress. But I was certain that we’d make progress and quite rapidly too going like this.

Later on I stepped right back into this dream again. We’d been on this train and I alighted at some point with this woman and her daughter. We were walking towards the bus stop to catch the bus to go the rest of the way. I remember hoping that my leg would hold out because I was starting to have these pains and cramps in my right leg again, the type that I have been having. I thought that this isn’t really the time to go down with a cramp like this when we are in between bus stops in a rush to catch the bus to take us further on.

And then I can’t remember very much about this but there was a woman who had run down some animal or something. She was extremely distraught. Some of my friends from Canada were in it but I don’t know why or what they were doing

Finally we had football. Y Fflint v Caernarfon. Y Fflint are on a woeful run despite having looked really good at the start of the season. They took the lead early in the game but gradually Caernarfon pulled themselves back into the game and equalised after 55 minutes.

But what a different story it might have been had the two stonewall penalties that I would have awarded to Y Fflint had been awarded by the referee. In fact I was convinced that there were times when I was convinced that the referee was officiating at a different game to the one that I was watching.

With 20 minutes to go, a couple of substitutions on either side ignited the game and we were treated to a really exciting spell of football as the game swung from one end to the other. A deciding goal was well on the cards but it was all a case of who would score it as either team looked quite likely.

Y Fflint’s centre forward from the Cote d’Ivoire had missed a couple of good chances and when another of his attempts was well-blocked by Josh Tibbetts in the Caernarfon’s goal just as we came up to injury time, I thought “here we go again” but Akpa-Akpro stuck out a foot and just about managed to divert it back to the far post where Larnell Cole sidefooted it into the net.

So justice was done because Y Fflint were in my opinion the better side and deserved something from the game, especially after some of the decisions that went again them.

Tomorrow I have to summon up some energy and tidy up as I’m expecting visitors. I’ve no idea how I’m going to do this after the past couple of days but I’ll have to do my best. Let’s hope that my best is good enough.

Friday 16th December 2022 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I’m very probably going to regret doing, but I can’t go on like this much longer. Going downstairs took me an absolute age yet again, nothing on my body is freeing off and nothing is becoming any easier. And to give you an idea of how hard I tried, I’ve done 15% of my daily activity today.

And it’s been a very long time since I’ve done anything like that.

So what I have done today is that I have bitten the bullet – and if it comes off it will be for the largest sum of money that I have ever spent at one go in my life. And that’s not like me go go around spending any money, is it?

You’ll have to wait for a while to find out what it is because nothing is ever completed, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, until the ink is dry on the paper. But if we ever do reach that stage, then believe me, you lot will be the first to know.

We were a long way away from there though this morning.

It was another early night and for a change I managed to fall asleep quite quickly. But round about 01:45 I awoke and that was that for at least an hour and a half. And I know that because I checked.

Consequently when the alarm went off I was dead to the world once more and it was only the need to visit the bathroom that saw me beat the second alarm.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone and a welcome return for TOTGA who put in an appearance during the night. As I said yesterday, it’s been a long time since she paid me a visit during the night so it was very pleasant to see her again. I was on my way home down the Boulevard Lecampion and I saw her going past on the far side of the street. I stopped outside my apartment which was actually in Boulevard Lecampion, went into my building and started to unload my car, leaving the door open so that she could go past and see, which she did. She came over to talk about something or other. Alison was there and saw her, not saying anything at the time but after the conversation had finished and I’d gone upstairs she asked if that was TOTGA. I replied “yes”. She said “she’s only my age but yes! She was obviously appoving of whatever it was she approved. Something then was happening and I had to go out somewhere in the evening. Of course as soon as it was the case that I had to run this errand I dashed off outside because I was hoping that I could get to go to somwhere like Halifax and have a really nice evening meal and then come back. The times of trains made it extremely difficult for that. I reached the bus station just as a bus for Stockport pulled in. I thought that I could at least go to Stockport and have an Indian meal but that pulled through and drove round onto the other side of the bus station and I wouldn’t have time to walk over there before it would drive off again. I was sitting there then wondering what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to go to the office but that closed at 20:00. If I set off even then I wouldn’t be there for 20:00 so it seemed rather pointless in the end actually going out because there wasn’t really anywhere I could actually go that was of any real interest to me at that particular moment.

And later, I was keeping shop somewhere in an old industrial town. I’d had a Press Release that some camping gear and exploive equipment had been found on an industrial estate at the back of an arms manufacturer and one or two other places like that. I was busy writing out a note to display in my shop when some guy walked in. I asked him if he could hang on for a minute while I wrote out my sign and he made some comment. Then he asked for the “big gasket” for a tractor. We eventually found out what tractor it was but he was being extremely vague about the gasket. I had to run through all of the gaskets with him and talk to him about them and what he might find where, everything, to try to satisfy myself exactly what gasket he’d want. To make things worse I hadn’t taken over this shop long. There was a pile of gaskets of all sorts and I hadn’t had time to go through them and find out to what they related. There was probably one in this pile somewhere but heaven alone knows which one it was.

Once I was up and about it took me, as you might expect, a good while to come round to my senses which, seeing how few I have these days, is rather remarkable. But I eventually struggled to some form of life and even managed to make some bread dough because I’m right out of bread.

And then I had a phone call. A few weeks ago I’d heaved a stone into a rather large pool and the ripples were still rolloing outwards. Nevertheless I was surprised to receive the call and it ended up being something of a considerable amount of horse-trading that took quite a while.

So now we’ll see what happens.

The weather had warmed up dramatically today and we were in the balmy semi-tropical realms of 5°C. Caliburn once more struggled to life and wo I went on another one of these 20km runabouts in the hope of pumping some life into the battery. I don’t know whether or not he would have started again had I stopped at the shops – I didn’t want to tempt fate.

But I have managed to work out a way of getting onto the pavement by the bus stop so at a push I might be able to board the bus. Now if only I could walk we might be back in business in this respect too.

Back here I had another ‘phone call to make. If you’ve experienced any difficulty getting into this site just recently, there has been a major server change that involves a new mainframe host and there’s always a lag between changing the DNS settings and them actually taking effect. So that will explain that.

And that phone call took much longer than it ought to have done too, but for reasons which you really don’t want to know. I certainly didn’t.

After tea, we had football on the internet. In the Welsh Premier League most of the matches were postponed because of the freezing weather in Wales, including the featured match, but there was one match taking place, conveniently just down the road from “Sgorio” headquarters in Cardiff.

We had Cardiff Metro v Haverfordwest in minus 2°C and everyone, including the referee, was feeling the cold. The Met went one goal up early one through a penalty but honestly neither side looked as if they could hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument.

In fact the commentator made the point that in the Met’s last 6 home goames, they have scored 4 goals, namely – own goal – penalty – penalty – penalty- and only three of their players have actually had their names on the scoresheet all season.

And how cruel is your luck? Former Hull boss Tony Pennock finally managed to find his team’s on/off switch with 5 minutes to go and they sprang into life, only to be undone again by a breakaway down the whole length of the field with just 30 seconds remaining on the clock.

A 2-0 defeat was something of an exaggeration.

But I’m off to bed now anyway. I have to think of several cunning plans to raise a few quid here and there. I shall probably end up selling my body on Boots Corner. Not like the lady who tried it once and came home with £19:10.
“Who gave you the 10p?” asked her husband.
“Why, all of them” she replied.

Sunday 11th December 2022 – I’M EXHAUSTED …

… and it’s not as if I’ve done anything either today. I’m on 3% of my daily target, having staggered a mere 200 metres all day.

And as I said yesterday, I haven’t put my sooty foot outside the door either.

Being up and about at 09:45 is already something on a Sunday but it’s even more astonishing considerind that I didn’t go to bed until 02:00 or thereabouts. Actually I was in bed before midnight, having crashed out in my chair, but once I’d lain down, all thoughts of sleep had disappeared.

The computer was doing something so I had left it, but with all thoughts of sleep gone, I raised myself from the dead and finished it off properly.

There were several trips down the corridor too, and Brain of Britain had left the alarm switched on at 06:00 as well, so all in all last night was a mess.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too, and much of it was the same. This time I can tell you all about it. I dreamed that I was married and that my wife and I had been away for a while. When we came back we found that my mother had actually divorced my father and married the father of my bride.

And as it happened I didn’t just dream this once but I dreamt this two other times as well during different stages of the night

There was something in there too at one point during the night about the buses on which I’d been travelling just recently. Someone was marshalling the buses. It involved them going round a roundabout somwhere and disappearing off up one of the exits. On the one occasion when I was doing it on my own it meant that one of the buses had to come back from that exit so there was a kind-of marshall there who was standing there in the middle of the road stopping it coming back on the roundabout. I couldn’t work out what that was all about either

When I finally aroused myself from the dead I had a few things to do here and there, such as tidying up in here, sorting out some papers and sending off a few e-mails. There’s a mountain of correspondence that has built up that needs my attention and I’m a long way from dealing with it all so my apologies in advance.

There was also a bill that need paying and I couldn’t leave that any longer.

After lunch I had to sort out the music for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. Things need to get back to normal. It’s going to be a “special” so I had to choose the music and remix it, as well as pairing it all off.

There was even time to write out half of the notes too. I’m getting ahead of myself again, and I should think so too. Things have been running to seed a little as a result of all of my exertions over this last … errr … 11 weeks.

We also had a break for the football – Y Drenewydd v Hwlffordd in the Welsh Premier League. Considering the glacial weather conditions it was quite an exciting match played with a considerable amounnt of skill and was another one of these games that was a good advert for the league.

Henry Jones, who has featured in these pages quite often, was pulling the strings in the midfield for Hwlffordd but his team-mates couldn’t match his skill of endeavour. They did however have plenty of the ball, hit the post once and had several good chances to score on other occasions.

Y Drenewydd scored two which was rather flattering I suppose really, and their opening goal WAS SUBLIME.

All in all, it was nice to see a couple of mid-table teams let the ball do most of the work, a style of which I happen to appreciate. If I were to manage a football team, the emphasis would be on the quick passing game.

One or two of my friends have been in the habit of mocking me due to the amount of tinned food that I have here. However I did a quick inventory and found that at a puch I can keep going with tinned ‘basics” for at least a fortnight. There’s a lot to be said for a good supply of tinned food, as I knew that there would be.

Tonight though, it was pasta in spicy tomato sauce with frozen veg and a couple of small, breadcrumbed soya burgers. That will keep me out of mischief for a while. And while we’re on the subject of frozen food, this is an opportunity for me to thin out the stocks in there a bit too.

There is always the possibility of having a home delivery, but it costs €10:00, there’s nothing like the choice of foods, and what there is is much more expensive than trying to buy it over the counter. But it’s an avenue to explore, I reckon, if things go badly and I can’t get out. But I draw the line at paying €2:49 for a kilo of fresh, dirty carrots when 2kgs of washed fresh carrots costs €1:29. They don’t ‘arf stoke it up.

But for the moment I’ve put the spare battery for Caliburn on charge overnight. If I can enlist some aid to take the battery downstairs, I can swap it over. And then I’ll just have to worry about climbing into the cab.

However, that’s for another day. I need to concentrate on things that are of more immediate concern, like the radio programme. I need to be up at 06:00 so I suppose that I’d better go to bed.

Friday 2nd December 2022 – THE SOCIAL SERVICES …

… lady came to see me this afternoon, with a student trailing along behind her.

“Is it Thursday already” I asked innocently. Nothing like knocking them out of their stride. But then again, if they say that they’ll see me on Thursday then what do they expect?

Their plan apparently is that they can send me home in an ambulance and my health insurance would pay 80% of the costs.

“So what has happened about this physiotherapy at Pellemberg?”

“Ohh that’s another department looking into that”.

In other words we have a couple of different departments looking into different things and consequently working against, if not competing against, each other. I shall have to scotch this straight away before it’s gone too far.

But the idea that I’m too ill to go home under my own steam so they have to send me home in an ambulance is a horrendous idea. What happens next when I have to fend for myself with no after-care?

If anything signifies the beginning of the end then this is it, isn’t it? If I need an ambulance to go home, how on earth am I supposed to be well enough to come back?

And come back I have to as well. Not only do I have an appointment on 6th December, there are several more on 2nd January and then another on 13th March.

As I expected, the story about my breathing issues is going to run and run. And as I don’t have much longer to live, I may as well not bother. I told the Social Services person that I may as well stay at home and let nature run its course.

We talked about euthanasia but I don’t think that she took me seriously. But as for me, I’m in … errr … deadly earnest.

Especially after last night. Having gone to sleep at something like 22:00 I was awake again at 23:15 complete with headphones, listening to the radio. I switched everything off and lay there trying to sleep for several hours, watching the clock go round and round.

Eventually after several hours I must have fallen asleep because the alarm went off at 06:30 and awoke me. And having slowly come to my senses (which takes much longer these days than it ought given the amount of senses that I don’t have these days) I prepared to face the day.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone. I just dreamt that the whole floor here had been whitewashed even when I awoke and wanted to go to the bathroom I still didn’t leave my bed for a good few minutes thinking that it had been whitewashed and someone would come in very shortly and give me some instructions. It took me a whole 5 minutes to be able to pluck up whatever was necessary in order to put my feet on the floor and to find out that it was still the same old floor that it had been the last time I’d got up to go to the bathroom.

It really was quite amazing.

Nothing much happened for a while and eventually I fell asleep again. I was however shaken awake on a couple of occasions, most noticeably by someone who wanted to take me to an echography.

No schoolgirl around this time but I had a nice long wait in the cold and draughty corridor until I was seen. And then some technician poured all over me with the machine thing.

When she let me go I had another wait until someone came to fetch me. Back here my lunchtime meal was already served up. We had different Quornburgers for lunch and they were quite appetising.

The nurses came along shortly afterwards and they gave me an infusion of antibiotics. And immediately afterwards the Social Services people turned up.

So here they are, talking about releasing me from hospital with one hand and giving me an intravenous drip with the other hand. What on earth is really going on with all of this?

Later on in the evening there was football. Pontypridd v Cardiff Metropolitan.

Cardiff played some really nice football but lacked a cutting edge up front as they have done for the last couple of seasons. Pontypridd, second from bottom, played like it and offered even less but nevertheless it really did look as if anyone was going to score it would be a Pontyridd breakaway against the run of play.

However, a hopeful, aimless cross from the Met into the Pontypridd penalty area and a wild slash from a defender took it out of the hands of the Ponty keeper and that, dear reader, was that.

The match was rather like how I feel like now. A desperate rearguard action combined with a few moments of brilliance, only to be brought down by something completely out of my control.

So what do I do now? A taxi back home is not the answer but if it’s the only game in town I’m not sure what is.

Saturday 19th November 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about it being a quiet day today because almost nothing has happened today.

It was quiet through the night as well. I hardly remember anything at all. There was a moment when I went for a walk down the corridor for the usual reasons that any man of my age will know, and that’s about that.

I awoke at about 02:30 and had the impression that I’d been somewhere or doing something in a dream but unfortunately there was no recollection of where or what it was at all. There was nothing in my mind about what I was doing.

And later I can’t remember too much about this but there were 3 of us in a car. We’d been talking to someone and when we were about to set off the girl who was driving dropped her gloves. She leaned out of the car to try to pick them but she couldn’t manage it. She went back and forward in the car trying very hard to rescue them without leaving the car. In the end we set off and found ourselves in a part of Glasgow that was in very poor condition. Several houses had their slates ripped off and you could see daylight through the windows. The pub was the same. Roaming around the streets were tatty kids. We drove somewhere and someone pointed out a chapel that someone had visited. It was famous for some reason in the 18th century for Methodist missionaries etc. There was a garage that was also famous for a similar kind of reason presumably in the days before it became a garage

Another thing of note was that it was a very slow morning. I didn’t stir at all after that until the alarm went off. And even so, it still didn’t galvanise me into action.

What did get me going was the arrival of all of the nurses with the medication and all of the measuring devices:

The doctor put in an appearance too before breakfast and asked me how I was. I told her that it was too early to say and I haven’t even had a coffee. Strangely though, she didn’t sit on the edge of the bed next to me like she normally does That’s rather sad.

There were three meals today and I had to be shaken awake to eat them; The soya yoghurt for breakfast was there as was the soya dessert for the evening meal. There was a kiwi as well with my evening meal but in accordance with our agreement I eschewed it

The nurses had to awaken me for a few other tasks I’m definitely having my money’s worth of sleep right now.

There was football on the internet this evening too Penybont v TNS.

There’s no doubt that TNS are a mile better than anyone else in this league and play the ball around amongst themselves far better than the rest of the league and that was evident today.

However the team from Bridgend defended resolutely and while they never ever looked like scoring they kept TNS away from the goal and it ended 0-0.

In the middle of the second half the student nurse came to give me my medication so I let her listen to the language of my grandmother.

So that’s it really. A peaceful day and I’m likely to have the same tomorrow. So that calls for an early night. I have to build up my strength.

Saturday 12th November 2022 – WITH IT BEING …

… Saturday today it’s been very quiet.

No examinations or specialists or technicians around in the hospital over the weekend so I’ve spent most of my time in my bed here in my room.

One person who did put in an appearance was the young female doctor who has been following my case to a certain degree. She’d seen the letter that I had written the other day.

She asked what had happened so I explained and she was full of profuse apologies. I reassured her that she had no reason to apologise as what had happened was nothing whatever to do with her and she had played no role in the events that took place on that shameful afternoon.

But anyway, last night I had another deep comfortable sleep right through until the alarm went off at 06:30.

There’s some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. There was a woman in Stoke on Trent, a young woman who worked on the buses and was known for being something of a flighty piece. She was a single mother and had a new partner which weemed to be a weekly thing. One morning she just didn’t turn up for work at all. There was all kinds of speculation about whether she’d had a row with this new lover and had thrown him out or, more to the point, had he done away with her. There was talk about sending someone round to her address to see whether her house was riddled with flies or similar as an indication of a dead body being present. Why they hadn’t sent anyone before this I really don’t know.

Someone in a railway carriage on a train who basically had a rerun of the Foxcote railway accident about which I’d been reading in the evening prior to going to sleep

After breakfast much of the morning was spent falling asleep and being shaken awake by various nurses, the odd doctor and so on. But there was no washing supplies, towels and clean clothes delivered. Trust it to be at the moment that I’m wearing a bedgown that’s falling apart and that I’ll have to try to wear for yet another day.

After lunch, there was football on the inernet. Despite the news blackout imposed by the Rugby-supporting and sponsoring Welsh media on the domestic football scene, it’s Welsh Cup day today.

The live match was Connah’s Quay Nomads, second in the Welsh Premier League, against Colwyn Bay, currently leading a pack of clubs at the head of the second tier.

The scoreline of 4-0 to the Nomads suggests a very one-sided game but that’s far from the case. Colwyn Bay played some nice, attractive football but couldn’t break through a skilled and experienced Nomads defence. On the other hand the Nomads attacking pair of Mike Hayes and Michael Wilde were just too much of a handful for the Colwyn Bay defence.

Nothing much else has happened today. On the afternoon shift today is a first-year student nurse but despite her inexperience, she has exactly the right kind of touch. She put in all of the eye drops perfectly and the injection that she gave me was painless.

The nurse who was mentoring her asked me how I was feeling after her apprentice had given me the injection so I told them both that I think that I’ll survive. That made them both laugh.

Now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow will be a quiet day again, I hope. I won’t be doing much and I don’t think that they will either.

But of course, anything unexpected can happen. And wouldn’t that be nice?

Saturday 5th November 2022 – IT’S BEEN A …

… really strange kind of day today.

In fact it was the morning that was the strangest part of it because for some reason or other that I can’t explain, I seem to have slept through most of it and for the rest of the morning I certainly wasn’t anywhere on this planet.

When a nurse came by at one point to take my temperature, not only was I deep in the arms of Morpheus, I was off on a really exciting nocturnal voyage but, regrettably, as soon as she finally managed to awaken me, then “strong>PFAFF” – it just disappeared like a balloon that had been popped and I remember not a thing at all about it.

It’s not as if I’d had a bad night either. Even though I didn’t have my sleeping pill yet again last night, I was still away with the fairies at some point before midnight and if there wee any of the usual nocturnal stampedes around the rooms by the nursing staff taking temperatures and blood pressure and so on, I don’t recall anything at all about them coming in here.

By about 03:30 I was awake again and stayed awake for a while, long enough even to eat my early-morning orange, but I ended up going back to sleep again until about 06:00.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this amount of sleep doesn’t sound like a lot compared to how things usually are back at home but it’s not as if I’m actually rushed around off my feet here. I seem to spend almost all of my day either in bed or propped up in a chair.

The duty doctor came to see me this morning too. He wasn’t particularly expansive and didn’t say very much at all. It was difficult to extract any information from him so I gave up after a while. I’m none-the-wiser and I’m certainly not better-informed either.

Apart from everything else, I’ve had a good wash and shave, a nice lengthy chat with Liz and eaten some nice food. I do have to say that for industrial food, this stuff is pretty good.

While I was talking to Liz my “hospital app” on my ‘phone pinged with a message. Apparently I have been given an appointment with the Neurology department here on Thursday late afternoon. So I’m still going to be in Leuven, if not in the hospital itself, until then at least.

And while we’re on the subject, there’s a story going round that among the latest stages of development of the hospital site is a hotel-style accommodation for people who need to stay in the vicinity of the hospital without actually being hospitalised.

It goes without saying that I shall make further enquiries in this respect for the future.

Later on this evening, I saw some football on a very spluttering and cache-y slow internet connection. TNS swept aside a poor Cardiff Metro side 4-0 and Cardiff Metro can count themselves lucky to get “nil”. TNS must have had at least 80% of the play and I can’t recall the Met having a single shot on goal, on target or not.

So tonight I’m going to have another go at going to sleep without a sleeping pill and see how I get on. Tomorrow there will be the usual routine of temperature and blood pressure and eye drops and all of that, and a visit from the housemen, but no tests or examinations until Monday as the lab and scientific staff aren’t at work on the weekend.

But I won’t have my Sunday lie-in though. And I’ll certainly miss that.

Saturday 24th September 2022 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… how to start today. I’ve been trying to think of some significant event that could open up today’s entry with a bang, but I couldn’t really think of anything.

It’s been that kind of day today.

So while you admire a couple of photos of a few light aeroplanes that were flying around this afternoon, I’ll start at the beginning.

When the alarm went off I was in a University lecture and the lecturer was reading out the conditions for a test. The way he calculated the marks to be awarded only led up to 80%. he said “don’t worry. The other 20% will be awarded depending on how well you got on watching a couple of films”. Of course that didn’t seem right to me. he started to give the instructions but I was busy drawing flowers on the whiteboard that I had. he came out with something and I made rather a lame joke about it. Half-way through, the invigilator came in to ask him if he was ready to start. He said “I have them wound up. They are already cracking jokes “. I thought that had I known, I would have cracked a better joke than that.

It wasn’t a very enthusiastic start either.

Although I managed to beat the second alarm, it wasn’t by much. I was still dressing when it went off.

But after I had taken my medication I wandered off for a shower and a general tidy-up.

And then it was time for a quick trip to Lidl. I didn’t want much today because I have something organised later in the week and shan’t need much food – at least as far as LeClerc goes, so there wasn’t much point in going there.

It actually took much longer in Lidl than it might otherwise have done. Only one queue open, and some doddering old woman was having a dispute with the cashier.

She seemed to think that the cashier had failed to charge the reduced price for a short-dated item and nothing that the cashier would do to convince her and it took an age for the matter to be settled. Of course, the cashier isn’t going to print out the receipt and give it to the customer until the bill has been paid.

And when it did come to paying, the old woman had to dig deep in every pocket and bag that she had in order to find the right amount of cash.

There was a lot of words being said by those of us who were stuck in the queue.

So while you admire F-GNNX, a Robin DR400-120 belonging to the aero club at St Brieuc that came to pay us a visit this afternoon, I was eventually finishing my purchases and driving home.

Having sorted out my purchases I came in here to check my mails and messages.

Do you remember the saga of Not My Cat from the other week? A friend of mine was followed home by two kittens yesterday. They came into her house and settled down. She added “despite leaving the front door open they didn’t want to return outside at all”.

Anyone who knows anything about cats will realise that the cats have now adopted their human and that is that.

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

You’ve already read one note from the dictaphone but there was something else too. We were back in the war. The area of Russia where we were living was invaded by the Germans. I’d been caught as being away from my own place when I’d been talking to this girl. I ended up having to work for the Germans but I eventually found my way back home again. There was a second wave of invasions and I was caught yet again away from home so we decided that I’d pretend to be a flatmate of this girl and I’d be having singing lessons. This is how it started. Of course the military came to raid us again. It turned out that the guy who was in charge of the military was the guy who raided the place where we lived the first time so that didn’t work and we were all taken off.

So no TOTGA, no Castor and no Zero last night. But no-one else to disturb me so I ought to be thankful for small mercies.

After lunch I was idly surfing the internet, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … and I came across a live football game – Wales under-19s v Republic of Ireland under-19s.

It was pretty short of skill as you might expect but a couple of players impressed me. I don’t think that anyone would ever get past whover was Ireland’s n°4.

There were a couple of distractions while it was going on, which meant, would you believe (and knowing how things usually pan out with me, you probably would), I missed the two goals that Ireland scored. 2-0 for Ireland, the final score, which rather flattered them, I reckon.

As the final whistle sounded, it was actually bang on time for my afternoon walk so I hopped outside.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a regular feature that runs through these pages is one of photographs of people taking photographs.

Sown on the beach we had some guy posing at the water’s edge with some kind of dog that seemed to be a fashion accessory at his feet while someone else was taking photographs with a mobile ‘phone.

Not exactly what you would call the height of artistic endeavour but it makes some kind of unusual subject.

And just as well too because as far as I could see, they were the only people down there on the beach this afternoon.

And while I was up here by the wall, I was having a look around to see what was going on out to sea.

And look who’s back in the neighbourhood. Right out there in the bay a good few miles offshore is our old friend the Russian sailing ship Shtandart. She’s come back to haunt us.

And I can tell that it’s her for the simple reason that there is no AIS signal from anyone out there in that direction. Had this been any other sailing ship she would have had her AIS transmitter functioning but regular readers of this rubbish know all about her switching hers off.

And look at Jersey in the background. On the extreme right we can even make out one of the offshore Martello Towers but I can’t make out which one it is from here.

That prompted me to take another look at Jersey, without the distractions of Shtandart.

Over on the right we can see the blocks of flats at St Clément. As you’ll see when I finally add the photos from my trip to Jersey there are four fourteen-storey blocks of flats one behind the other on the seafront there and they show up quite clearly.

And then to the left we have various buildings in and around St Helier. It’s not easy to identify which is which because the sunlight is rather bizarre today.

But what I will do is to cadge a lift over to Jersey in Normandy Trader and film a video of the approach when the identity of the buildings will be much clearer.

And while we’re on the subject of Normandy Trader, Nathan her skipper tells me that he came into port on Wednesday while my friends and I were out to pick up those dumpers that we saw at the quayside on Sunday, and then had to come back the following day for more agricultural equipment.

There was some other stuff out and about too this afternoon.

One of the boats was instantly recognisable. I didn’t need the zoom lens on the NIKON D500 to tell who she was.

Sure enough, it’s another one of our regular customers, La Grande Ancre returning from a day’s fishing out at the Ile de Chausey.

The other boats were too far out to have any realistic idea of whom they might be, so I ignored them for the time being and headed off for my walk – or “hop”, more like.

The path along the clifftop was really busy this afternoon. There were quite a few people walking about.

However what had attracted my eye was this large group of people on one of the lawns at the end of the headland by the car park.

While I’d been watching the football earlier, one of the distractions was the noise of motor horns coming from vehicles at the Public Rooms presumably attending a wedding. What looks to have happened now is that all of the guests had adjourned to the lawn to carry out their celebrations in the open air.

They even had a couple of cars parked on there, decorated with flags and the like. You can see one of them over on the right.

It actually wasn’t all that much of a nice day for it, no matter how it looked in the previous photos.

And I’m sure that the guys in the two kayaks down there would be able to confirm it. It was cold to the extent that I had on a sweater, and there was quite a wicked wind blowing – one that was certainly rocking the boat.

This would have been the kind of weather that had I been out there on the water I would have wanted some kind of heating. But it’s never a very good idea to light a fire in a canoe for as you know, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

I’ll get my coat.

What with all of the activity down there this afternoon, once more I’m surprised at the insouciance of some people.

Here we have a big wedding, a pseudo-Spanish galleon, a couple of kayaks, some fishing vessels and several aircraft flying by, all of which in a very strong wind, and here we have someone else sitting in a ringside seat on the bench down by the cabanon vauban and he is far more preoccupied by something else.

Maybe it’s his telephone, maybe it’s a good book, but there’s that much other stuff happening that I would have thought that he might have taken more of an interest in it.

Especially as just a minute or two later, La Grande Ancre goes sailing … “dieseling” – ed … part.

When I’d seen her earlier, she seemed to be pretty-much loaded up and I was really interested to see what she might have been carrying.

So here she is, and just look at all that shellfish. and not even a single seagull launching a dive-bombing raid for a free lunch.

It certainly must be profitable out there on the Ile de Chausey with all of that on its way back to the Fish Processing Plant, so I hope that they don’t hit any rough seas otherwise all that lot will come sliding off.

having seen la Grande Ancre I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

Yesterday we had seen Le Poulbot in the cradle of the portable boat lift waiting for the tide to come right in so that there would be enough water to float her away from the quayside. Anyway, she’s now cleared off back into the water than that is that

There’s still that empty place though where Pierre de Jade was until earlier in the week. I suppose that someone will come along to claim it in due course

In the meantime, Gerlean and L’Omerta are still where they were, over on the right of the yard.

By now, one of the other boats that was out in the bay has come into port.

She’s one that we have seen before – CH922398, otherwise known as Gwenn Ha Ruz, which means “White and Red” in Breton.

There’s quite a load on board her too so it must have been a really good day out there today from that point of view.

By the way, don’t confuse Gwenn Ha Ruz with Gwenn Ha Du, “White and Black” in Breton. That is the colour (and nickname, incidentally) of the flag of Brittany. And you can see the similarity between the Welsh and the Breton languages.

Back here I had a play with the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. It’s going to be a special programme because there’s an event that needs to be celebrated so I spent quite a while trying to find some appropriate songs.

But now I have my 10 and one or two extra to fill in at the end. But I’ll need to make sure that there wiil be plenty of stuff to cut out of the text because I don’t have the same room to manoeuvre as I usually would for an 11th track.

Tea was a baked potato with veg and one of my breaded quorn fillet things. They really are nice. And as I’m having to ration the potatoes at the moment I had a slice of apple pie from the freezer. Dated September 2020, it was still quite nice.

And now before I go to bed I need to make a start on a mega-back-up. It’s been ages since I’ve done a complete one for the travelling laptop so I need to think about that.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes of course because Sunday is a lie-in and I fully intend to make the most of it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Friday 23rd September 2022 – THE END OF …

… an era. And I’m not talking about anything to do with la Soupape I and Philcathane either.

What I’m talking about is what is – or more correctly, isn’t – behind them on the quayside.

In all of the excitement yesterday I omitted to notice that all of the equipment for the gravel boats has gone.

When we were on our travels on Wednesday we noticed a huge crane pull into the harbour but I forgot to go and check what was going on on Thursday and so I missed its removal.

It’s all been sold to the port of St Malo and they sent a lorry or two to pick it up and take it away. And that’s the end of the gravel boats coming into the port.

Presumably that’s going to underline the slow demise of the port as a cargo hub and I wonder how long it will be before the little freighters to Jersey move on. With the gravel trade going, the Chamber of Commerce who runs the port will have to think about how it’s going to finance all of the rest of the operations here.

But there will be another time to worry about that. While you admire a few photos of Le Coelacanthe and Le Tibériade having fun and games out in the Baie de Mont St Michel, I shall tell you about my day today.

And although the night was rather later than it otherwise might have been I still leapt out of bed with alacrity (and you thought that I was on my own too!) at … errr … well, maybe not quite 07:30.

After the medication I spent some time slowly dragging myself to my feet, which was not easy today, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And we started off the night at Zero’ house, and wasn’t that a nice surprise?. There was something going on there about books. I can’t remember what I was actually doing now but she was there. So was her father. Our mother had died. There was a handbook for a Ford van, an E83W vzn, of which my father had two, one after the other, when we were kids and I do actually own a handbook for one, would you believe?. This was being given now to my father so I had to write an inscription in the flyleaf. There was also an encyclopedia left to my mother by someone called “Red George”. That had to be gifted to my father as well so I wrote the dedication in the flyleaf for the workshop manual then I was hoping to disappear with that so that I could present it and the pen over to my brother so he’d write the second dedication then I could get off and see Zero but I had a feeling that this was something where there would be some kind of ceremony or something about and of course she would be long gone by the time that all of this ended.

And this situation with my family trying to spike my guns when I have something interesting going on has a very familiar ring about it, doesn’t it?<

This next one was another dream that didn’t really get going. It was all about how I write up my blog. How I list all the image files which I normally do and then copy them onto a blank page and then fill in the text all around it but for some reason I was copying and pasting into the wrong file at the wrong time at the wrong place and generally speaking I couldn’t really co-ordinate my movements at all. It ended up being something of quite a mess which was a shame. It should have been so simple but I was finding all these ways to complicate it and time was slipping away.

And that’s a regular occurrence too, isn’t it?

But later on, when I was in work. TOTGA turned up for the first time in God knows how long and that was quite nice too. It’s been a good while since she’s been around. We started to talk and I invited her out for a meal as it was lunchtime. She agreed but she told me that someone else had invited her out at lunch and she was thinking of going with them. I immediately downed tools and said “let’s go now ourselves”. I asked her if there was anywhere she didn’t want to go because of other people whom she might meet. I stood up and started to walk out but suddenly realised that I had to pay for the meal that I’d had a while ago. I had to find a waiter but it was the equivalent of LIDL in here. Everyone was queueing etc. In the end the guy with me (for I was now with a guy) muscled his way in to the front of the queue and started to prepare my bill for me as if he was a waiter here or someone like that so that I could leave.

So while you look at the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou going out into the bay past le loup, I was in Virlet last night, taking stuff down to my house. I was doing it and there were one or two other people as well. Loads of other people came to join in. They were bringing stuff with them and putting it in my house as I was trying to sort through it to see what I had. Amongst the things that took me by surprise was a box that I thought was full of screws but when I looked underneath there were boxes of nuts and bolts etc, spark plugs and a condenser and set of points for the Cortina, all kinds of treasures, so I started to sort them out. Other people were bringing stuff. Someone pointed out a lorry fuel tank that was there. He was saying that when he put it there it was in good condition but someone had dropped something on it so it was now dented and useless. I was bringing a large plank with me. there were a couple of kids who were trying to get in my way by grabbing hold of the plank as I went past so I shouted at them. Some woman came past with some stuff that she had found that someone had apparently dropped. There was a fire burning in the grate even though the place had been empty for years. I asked if someone had lit a fire and they replied “yes”, not that I minded because it was cold. It was quite a little hive of business going on in there. At one point I had to find something. I remembered that it was in the fuel tank of my old CZ motorbike so we had to dismantle that but I couldn’t get my hand in to pick it out. I needed things like a long twig or something that I could push inside to dislodge this item. Everyone was really busy.

And apart from that, I’ve been doing stuff on the internet and not having a great deal of fun doing it either.

But there are moves of some description afoot to which I need to attend and they won’t be done if I sit on my derrière and do nothing.

Consequently I have had “arrangements” to make.

And as usual, half the people to whom you write or otherwise try to contact don’t reply to you. People talk about there being a recession and how hard it is to earn money these days. And here I am, with a desperate need to spend some of it and it’s far too much like hard work for anyone to do what is required to prise it out of me.

That was the cue for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

It was like November today. Wet, windy, foggy and overcast so my hat comes off to these two people here, especially the one who looks as if she’s just this minute come out of the water.

Not quite à la Ursula Andress, but never mind, hey?

And as far as I could see, they were the only people down there on the beach, and that won’t be a surprise to anyone who was out there this afternoon in this weather. I was in a sweater and a rain jacket in a vain attempt to keep myself dry.

Here are some people in a zodiac having a sail around offshore, as I noticed as I continued on my way.

I don’t know what they were doing but whatever it was, they were doing it with a loud-hailer for the rest of the day,

The kids were also out there again though, orienteering around on the lawn around the bunkers. One little girl had a little chat with me which was nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I competed in the North West England Schools Championship on one occasion.

As an aside, not long after I moved to Brussels I saw someone wandering around in sports gear carrying some orienteering equipment so I wandered over to him to ask him.

He was aghast. The moment I began to speak to him he took one step back and stuttered “On se connait?” – “do we know each other?”.

In the end, I ended up running around the streets of Schaerbeek and Evere at night on my own

You’ve seen already a few photos of Le Coelacanthe and Le Tiberiade and one of the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou out in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

At one particular moment we almost had one of Tom Rolt’s “Greek v Greek” moments and I thought that it was quite appropriate that the lifeboat was in the immediate vicinity.

From what I could see on their radar plots, they had both been fishing just offshore and were now considering whether or not to head for home. You saw Le Coelacanthe coming into the harbour in one of the earlier photos after she had made up her mind.

And on the AIS database she didn’t have a photograph. But now she does!

With no-one at the cabanon vauban this afternoon, I pushed on towards the harbour on the other side of the headland.

And it’s “all systems go” at the chantier naval this afternoon. And about to go is Le Poulbot after her length stay in port.

She’s sitting in the cradle in the portable boat lift waiting for the tide to come further in deep enough to drop her into the water.

Gerlean is still there though. You can just about make her out on the right. And L’Omerta is still there too, although you can’t see her.

But also gone! And never called me “mother!” is Pierre de Jade. Her berth is looking quite empty now.

But someone stepped into Le Poulbot‘s shoes before she has even gone into the water. In her place is the pink Suzanga, one of the newest trawlers here in the port.

She’s been here not quite two years and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we “scooped” the local press by having her photographed and recorded here before they did.

So who is going to come along and claim the empty berth then?

Meanwhile, with both Gerlean and L’Omerta being in the chantier naval, we have other fish frying over at the Fish Processing Plant.

Moored there today, amongst several other boats were Calean and behind her, La Grande Ancre. And there are a couple of guys standing on the lower level by the van taking a great deal of interest in whatever is on the stern of La Grande Ancre.

Behind them, Le Coelacanthe had by now come in to unload. There was another boat too and waiting her turn to dock at the quayside was Le Tibériade.

It’s a shame that there are a few boats that habitually moor up at the wharf and prevent other ships from unloading quickly and having a rapid turnround.

So that was that and I headed for home and a coffee.

And I wasn’t the only one heading for home as around the corner towards port came Belle France from the Ile de Chausey with a crowd of passengers on board.

And I bet that they would far rather have been out there yesterday when there was everything going on in the bay. It was quite quiet and boring there this afternoon.

Armed with my coffee I carried on working and then knocked off for tea.

What I’d been doing, surprise surprise, is going through the Accounts of a football club in Wales to see if I could identify why they would want to allow themselves to be struck off the register at Companies House and compulsorily liquidated when they had assets of about £400,000.

That’s a saga that will run and run too.

Tea tonight was a Left-over Curry, delicious as usual, and then I had to run as I’d forgotten about the football this evening.

It’s this weird competition organised by the Scottish Football Association that includes the leading part-time clubs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. TNS were at home to Dundee tonight live on the internet.

Really, it was no competition. TNS had by far the lion’s share of possession but I don’t think that Dundee ever broke into a sweat. They just stepped up a gear when it mattered and made it look easy.

The difference between the “professional” clubs and the “amateur” club is the fitness.

You watch when a big team is playing against a minnow. For much of the game the teams can slug it out toe-to-toe but the danger periods are the first five minutes of each half when the lesser team is struggling to come up to the rhythm and the final 15 minutes when the steam has gone out of the lesser team.

And sure enough, Dundee rattled in two goals almost straight from the kick-off for the second half, and added another one right at the end. They were just in a completely different class to TNS.

Bed time now, and I wonder who’ll be waiting for me. Zero and TOTGA again? Or Castor? It’s about time she put in an appearance again. But my money will be on one of my family coming along to spike my guns.

Watch this space.

Saturday 17th September 2022 – I FORGOT …

… that it was Saturday and shopping day today and almost forgot to go out.

When the alarm went off this morning I wasn’t in any rush at all and was lounging around for a whole 10 minutes or so before I had a sudden attack of realisation and leapt to my feet in something of a panic

So while you admire a whole collection of all kinds of aerial craft, because today it looked as if almost anything that could fly was in the air this afternoon, I shall regale you with my adventures.

And when I say “almost anything that could fly was in the air this afternoon”, there were even one or two things that couldn’t but were making a valiant attempt.

Like this Nazgul, for an instance. If it were me, I’d have “shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight. “ but Legolas was obviously having much better luck than Wordsworth and me.

This Nazgul came staggering around the headland clearly in some kind of difficulty and he ended up loitering around here for a good five minutes just half an inch above the ground waiting for a gust of wind to pick him up and send him on his way.

Not all of the aerial craft was unidentified though.

Flying by this afternoon was Air France flight AF428 from Paris Charles de Gaulle to, of all places, Bogotà in Colombia, by coincidence where my journalist friend Jill from Philadelphia is on an assignment right now, and had I known, I would have been on it.

The plane that’s taking the flight is a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, registration F-HRBC, and it was at 34,000 feet on course 261° at 460 knots.

We’ve flown on Dreamliners before, once FROM CHARLES DE GAULLE TO MONTREAL IN AUGUST 2014 and once FROM MONTREAL TO CASABLANCA IN OCTOBER 2019.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and more banal kinds of flying machine.

So there I was, scrambling to my feet and dashing off to take my medication while I made plans.

After the medication I leapt (well, crawled, actually but sometimes you have to write for effect) into the shower for a good scrub and to make myself pretty, but I’ll need much more than the 4 minutes that the British Government recommends that you spend in the shower in order to do that.

And then Caliburn and I headed for the hills and the LeClerc supermarket.

Today’s shop was actually quite expensive, but they had a lot of stuff on special offer today.

The hair shampoo that I use, a special type with oils and not soap, was on offer in three-packs. It’ll probably take me the rest of my life to use it all but I couldn’t turn it down.

Fabric softener was at a give-away price too, and then they had some 100% végétale margarine of the best quality in the “end of range” row. It’s much better than the rubbish that I usually buy and the reduced prices was even cheaper than what I would pay for my usual stuff.

Nothing there that I could pass up.

These days I’ve become quite domesticated, haven’t I?

On the way home, I called at the Health Centre. The nurse had told me that my vaccination certificate for my fourth vaccination is now ready.

The certificate might be ready but the receptionist wasn’t. Her desk was all closed up. It looks as if the reception is only open 5 days per week. And so instead I came home.

Having put the frozen peas and the cold items away, I came in here and started work.

One thing that I want to do on Saturdays now that I have a little free time with only going to LeClerc and not to Noz is to pair up the music for the radio programme that i’ll be preparing on Monday. That means that I really can have Sundays off.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up like Robinson Crusoe. he worked a 5-day week because all his outstanding work was finished by Friday.

The joins in the pairs were amongst the best that I’ve ever made, and I’m very pleased with these.

While I’d been rummaging around in the fridge the other day I found some vegan cheese that I had forgotten. And so for breakfast I had cheese-on-toast and coffee. And that old vegan cheese, stuff that I’d bought ages ago from Lidl, actually melts like real cheese.

That’s the kind of thing that’s useful to know so I made a note.

So having had a nice breakfast, I made a start on what was on the dictaphone from last night. Tons of stuff too. It must have been quite a mobile night.

Last night I was at the airport taxi-driving. I was sitting in the car in the rain watching the line of passengers grow longer and then shorter. Then it was my turn to leave, and I picked up some people going to the hotel in the south near Waterloo. 6 people entered the taxi so I had to insist that 1 of them left as I was only licensed for 5. In the end 2 of them left. They had a chunter but I was only licensed for 5 so there was nothing that I could do about it. We set off

After that I had my boat and I was up round the top of north-west Scotland somewhere. An emergency had occurred and I had to go back to London. It was fairly stormy but I went none-the-less. Although the journey shook me up a lot I made it back without any serious injury or illness.

Later on, Nerina came home from school one day very upset because someone had been taking the mickey out of her. She wanted me to go along and sort them out. Of course it’s not really something that you can sort out as I told her. I said that it was pretty pointless but she insisted so we drove back to Nantwich. I said “when we park up you’ll have to do this, this and this”. She replied “I’m not coming with you”. “Of course you are. This is about you”. In the end we didn’t actually have to go very far because as we pulled up he was there. I had a few words with him about it. He was effectively “what are you going to do about it,”. Of course there wasn’t really anything that you can do about something like that. In the end nothing ever became of it. It didn’t really prove a point but it was one of those things that you just have to do, one of the affairs through which you have to go.

and then this was early in the morning. Everyone was getting up. I was talking to someone at the front door of the residence where I was staying, brushing my teeth. He pointed to my upper lip telling me that there was some toothpaste on it. I replied “don’t worry. I’ll wash my face when I’ve finished”. He replied “yes but I’m telling you that I thought for some reason that it was an extremely silly thing to do”. There was an advert on the TV as well about a young black boy taking 2 children, 1 on the handlebars of his bike and the other in a trailer behind. he was struggling up a hill in the snow. It was something to do with some kind of energy product because it cut to the end where he was cycling up this hill and overtaking everyone like nobody’s business, nothing like the struggle he was having before”. One of my friends from Germany was there. She was there as I was rinsing my face off so we had a little chat. I had my suitcase and was thinking that I’d have time to go to the airport to check in and hand in my suitcase and then come back. Then I’d be ready for going in the evening. I was thinking about it and I wasn’t going for another couple of days yet so why would I be wanting to take my suitcase now? This was starting to become really confusing.

After the lunchtime fruit the next task was to deal with the carrots. I’m running a little low on them so seeing as they had 1.5kg bags this morning at the same price at which 1kg bags usually sell, I treated myself

They are all now scrubbed, diced, blanched and in the freezer. And I had to be quite imaginative about how I fitted them in because it really is now full to the brim and there’s no room for anything else in there.

Now that I’m much more organised here, I realise that I should have pushed the boat out and bought a bigger freezer. However I would have filled up the space just as quickly and I still would have ended up in this position with no room in there for anything else.

With the carrots now done, there’s still no time to breathe a sigh of relief and collapse into a heap.

There’s the afternoon walk – or stagger – around the headland. But not before I’ve gone over to the wall at the end of the car park to check up on the activities down on the beach.

Plenty of people down there this afternoon. No surprise though because although it was quite windy, even if a Nazgul rider didn’t think so, it was a lovely late summer day and it really was a pleasure to be out in it.

There were even one or two people brave enough to be in the water this afternoon.

The views out to Jersey were magnificent this afternoon.

They were so good that you could see some of the buildings on the island with the naked eye, and now that I’ve been over there I can tell you what some of them are, and when I’ve finished reviewing the photos I’ll probably be able to tell you what the rest are.

Going from left to right, what I think that we have is first of all Elizabeth Castle and to the right is Fort Regent. Over to the right, the white buildings are the blocks of flats at Le Marais in St Clément.

Of course, that’s guesswork based on what I saw when I was over there, but of course I didn’t actually see everything.

And how about a flying ship?

It’s not actually a fata morgana – it is a real ship roughly in the position where it’s supposed to be, but the effects of the haze caused by temperature inversion at the water level gives the impression that she’s flying,.

It’s a phenomenon that’s been observed by mariners for centuries and has been the subject of all kinds of books and the like.

And no prizes for guessing who she might be either. It’s actually Commodore Goodwill out there in the English Channel surrounded by yachts and she left St Helier at 10:36 for a slow sail over to St Malo.

Fighting my way past the crowds and the wounded Nazguls I crossed the lawn and came to the crowded car park.

Out in the bay there were a couple of kayakers having a good paddle around offshore this afternoon. Having a lot of fun, I suppose.

When I was at school I used to go canoeing but that was a very long time ago and on a canal. I wouldn’t fancy my chances in an open sea in this kind of wind.

STRAWBERRY MOOSE has been kayaking in the open sea while we were in the Arctic, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
“Would you like a couple of oars?” I asked him before he set out.
“Yes” he replied. “After I’ve come back and put away the kayaking gear”

My route continued across the car park to the end of the headland, and then I picked my way very gingerly down the loose gravel path on my one good leg.

There was plenty going on out at sea and plenty up above in the air too, as you have already seen. Consequently seeing someone sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban was no surprise at all.

What was surprising was that he was taking no interest whatever in the exciting events that were unfolding all around him. By the looks of things he was reading a good book, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with continuing my way down towards the port either.

So I scrambled off on my way towards the viewpoint overlooking the harbour to see what was happening there.

Nothing much going on at the ferry terminal today. It seems that despite the fine weather, the summer season is grinding to a close. Moored over there are Belle France and one of the Joly France ferries. No step in her stern so that means that she’s the older one of the two.

The only one out at the island today is the other one, the newer of the two. So there aren’t any tours around the bay this afternoon.

As for Victor Hugo, she’s still moored in the inner harbour. Her season is definitely finished and I imagine that it won’t be long before she and her sister are off to Cherbourg for a maintenance visit.

The portable boat lift here in the chantier naval is only rated at 100 tons and I don’t imagine that that’s anywhere near as what is required to lift Victor Hugo out of the water.

It would be nice if we had a bigger left to pull heavier boats out of the water but then there’s no real room here for anything large.

Everyone whom we saw yesterday is still here by the way. However I took a better photo of L’Omerta. When I was looking at the radar yesterday I noticed that there isn’t an image for her on the radar database. As I keep the installation here I reckon that it’s upto me to bring it up to date.

That’s a little project for me – to go through and photograph every boat that lives here. I probably have most of them anyway.

Back here I had a coffee and then settled down to watch the football – Y Drenewydd v Penybont in the Welsh Premier League.

This was a game that had everything. Penybont were the better side and they raced into a 2-0 lead in the first half. Watching Y Drenewydd mounting a comeback and trying to pull themselves back into the game made the second half probably one of the most exciting that we have seen.

They pulled a goal back and kept on piling forward, only to be hit by a sucker-punch breakaway that made the score 3-1. Nevertheless they kept on going and scored a second, but couldn’t find a way through for the third despite everything that they tried.

3-2 was about the right result and the game was a great advert for the League except for a couple of “little incidents” in stoppage time that saw a rash of bookings and a sending-off as Penybont tried to slow down the game and run out the clock.

Tea was one of my breaded quorn fillets with veg, and then I came back in here to write up my notes, rather later than usual.

All my work for this weekend is now done so I can have tomorrow off. I even have pizza dough in the freezer (I think).

So I’ll try a walk around the walls tomorrow and see how I feel. I’m still not feeling myself, which is just as well because it’s a disgusting habit, but apart from that my right knee is finished, I reckon. I don’t think that I’ll recover from this.

And even if I were to recover, I’m not sure that i’d have the confidence in it that I had.

That’s sad, isn’t it?

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: football

Saturday 21st January 2023 – MY EXCITING LIFE …

Saturday 14th January 2023 – THAT WAS A …

Saturday 7th January 2023 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

Friday 30th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

Monday 26th December 2022 – WELL THAT WAS A …

Friday 23rd December 2022 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Friday 16th December 2022 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

Sunday 11th December 2022 – I’M EXHAUSTED …

Friday 2nd December 2022 – THE SOCIAL SERVICES …

Saturday 19th November 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

Saturday 12th November 2022 – WITH IT BEING …

Saturday 5th November 2022 – IT’S BEEN A …

Saturday 24th September 2022 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

Friday 23rd September 2022 – THE END OF …

Saturday 17th September 2022 – I FORGOT …

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