Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed – and had been for ten minutes – trying to summon up the force, the energy and the courage to leave the bed.

Well, in fact, the alarm didn’t go off at all. I switched it off when I rolled out from under the covers, but you get the idea.

It was quite astonishing that I was up so early because it was a horribly late night. Feeling rather depressed and miserable, a concert by the Phil Beer Band came onto the playlist and there are several songs on there that seem to affect me like that and I really don’t know why.

However, I’ll always make time for the group to play THE BORDER SONG and, as you might expect, when you want to go to bed and there’s a concert of one hour and forty-three minutes, that’s the song that they always play to close the show, so you have to wait up.

Once in bed though, I was soon asleep and although I was tired, I awoke on two or three occasions. When I awoke just after 06:00 this morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep again and for twenty-odd minutes, there didn’t seem to be much point so I forced myself out of bed.

After I’d had a good wash and clean up, I went for the medication and then, changing the habits of a lifetime, I quickly tidied up the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Isabelle the Nurse starts her round today and I expect that she’ll want to examine the apartment.

Back in here, while I waited, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. And to my surprise and delight, I’d had a special visitor last night.

There was a group of us going off again. I first of all had to go to collect one of the girls who had a shop in High Street in Crewe. So she locked up her shop and had to go to the nightclub next door for the keys, but then found that there was a light on further back in the shop so she had to run down there to switch it off and then run back to hand in the keys. Meanwhile, my brother went across the road and fetched Zero. She was coming with me. Eventually, we all gathered in the car park and climbed into the van that I had. There were a couple of girls sitting in the front and I was driving. Zero was sitting right behind me, leaning over my shoulder. As we were driving, I made the remark that she looked rather like a parrot sitting on my shoulder, to which she replied in a bad temper that she wasn’t a parrot at all. I asked her what she was to which she replied “a bad-tempered, rude-mouthed girl” which made me laugh. After we had been driving a couple of years … "don’t you mean ‘hours’?" – ed … we pulled up at the side of the road to sleep for a few hours. I curled up in the back and Zero came to curl up next to me.

So after having mentioned yesterday one of my special young ladies, another one came to see me last night. And what’s more, she curled up next to me in the back of the van and for once, my family didn’t intervene. But the story about curling up in the back of the van with a young lady reminds me of another occasion that is much more recent, and just about as ethereal as curling up with Zero.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to complain at all.

When Isabelle the Nurse came in, she inspected the apartment and promptly fell in love with it. I’m not surprised, because I love my little apartment too. She sorted out my legs and then we discussed this “dialysis at home”. She gave me a very stern warning against it, for a variety of reasons.

Apparently, the people at dialysis describe it in one way that makes it sound attractive, but Isabelle described the same procedure in a totally different way that made it totally unattractive to someone as nesh as me.

And that reminded me of my first introduction to propaganda. When I used to drive taxis, I would always drive at night and the BBC would finish its broadcasts at 02:00 with a news bulletin.

Turning the dial slightly, you would then pick up the English language broadcasts of Radio Free Bulgaria that would start at 02:00 with a news bulletin. They would say the same news, but by changing the stress and the pronunciation, they could make it sound exactly the opposite to the BBC.

So the same news, told the same way but with different stresses and emphases to make it portray the opposite viewpoint. Who was right?

After Isabelle left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now discussing the Saxon overrunning of Middlesex, with a highly fanciful account of the invasion that is backed up by almost no evidence whatsoever. Our author seems to like this flights of fantasy into unrecorded territory.

Modern research seems to discount almost all of his theories in this respect, but then again, modern research also seems to discount or deny the ethnic cleansing of the Romano-British population by the Saxons. However, ss I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the sudden and dramatic end of writing, of ironworking, of urban dwelling and of many other skills and habits cannot really be attributed to anything else. We have the classic example of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields and the “Back To The Land” movement in this respect.

After breakfast, I changed the habits of a lifetime and began to tidy up. Having spent hours trying to find certain herbs and spices yesterday, that was the focal point of my attack and eventually, I’d managed to sort them out as I would like them to be.

There were a few other things too but I didn’t go too mad in this respect. However, I am having difficulty finding things, like the power pack to drive the little Roland bass cube for example.

There was a disgusting drink break of course and then I came in here to deal with a problem concerning the data senders for the fleet monitor, the transmissions for which are not being received at the Head Office in Denmark. The warning lights seem to be flashing as normal, so I took a one-minute video of the senders and the flashing lights.

There followed an interruption by the usual Wednesday visit by my cleaner. First thing that we did was to sort out all the bedding and I found a quilt cover and sheet that I didn’t know that I had.

She arranged the shower for me and I went and had a really good soak too. You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a lovely, warm shower in a lovely shower cubicle. But it’s rather precarious and I need to sort out the handrails so that I can have a much better purchase for pulling myself into the cubicle.

After my cleaner left, I came back in here and crashed out in one of those sudden, dramatic crashes that I have sometimes. I was out of it for an hour or so, which was disappointing, but even more disappointing was that when I awoke, I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was, and I was half-expecting to go for breakfast at that point.

Not that that’s any surprise. I don’t know where I am or what day of the week it is even when I’m wide awake.

At that point, Rosemary ‘phoned me for a chat. Just a short one today, only one hour and thirty-six minutes. It’s nice to chat to people like that and thanks to these internet chat applications, it’s all free too.

One of the things that we discussed was how good friends seem suddenly to drop off the radar and you never seem to hear from them again after a while. That’s something else that is perfectly true. Having said that of course, I still have a friend and a former girlfriend from Grammar School with whom I’m regularly in touch

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. Tomorrow, it’s dialysis and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about propaganda … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the greatest exponents of the art of propaganda was General Hindenburg of the Imperial German Army, who claimed all of the credit for the battles in Eastern Europe that destroyed the Russian Army in 1914, much to the disgust of General Hoffman who had actually led the German troops into battle.
Years later, Hoffman used to take official visitors around the battlefields there, and he would always point out three particular farmhouses.
Of the first one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept before the battle"
And of the second one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept after the battle"
But of the third one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept during the battle"

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

… back at my desk well over an hour later than I ought to be, but I simply couldn’t get going this afternoon and evening.

I’ve had one of those days when I have done a lot of work but accomplished nothing at all and such enthusiasm that I still possess these days drained away as I watched it.

Having read again my rather intemperate and incendiary notes from last night, and read a few more of recent times, I can see that I’ve been sliding deep into the black pit again, and I’m not the only one to have noticed, as you’ll find out as you read on.

Not that it’s any surprise, of course. This time seven years ago, we were wandering aimlessly around the High Arctic of Canada looking for our ship that was icebound somewhere trying to work its way through the North West Passage.

And six years ago today, I was on the point of stepping ashore at the end of our famous traverse of the North-West Passage, having just spent three lovely evenings and nights in the company of a certain young lady who at one time figured frequently during my nocturnal rambles but has been conspicuous by her absence for much longer than I like.

All of this is enough to try the patience of a saint, and believe me, I’m no saint at all and never will be.

Last night was also a late night, although not as late as this one will be. After having finished my incoherent rant and been through the usual end-of-day routine, I went to bed, still seething with anger.

It was a very long night last night and it felt as if I hadn’t been to sleep at all, so wound up was I. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, having given up any thought of sleep a long time before.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t wind myself up to go and it took an age before I ended up in the bathroom. In the kitchen, I’d run out of more medication so I had to wander off in search of the aforementioned in my faithful cleaner’s lovely little box.

It wasn’t true that I’d had a night without sleep, because I found some notes on the dictaphone and I really can’t remember dictating them. A group of us was off to Germany, three or four of us. We ended up meeting a friend who lived on an island in the mouth of the river at Bremen. After we’d settled ourselves down, we thought that we’d go for a trip to Bremen so we dashed out of the house, climbed aboard the little train that was there but found that the train was going the wrong way. It reached the far side of the island and we could see part of the city way across the estuary there but that wasn’t where we wanted to be so we had to stay on this little train and go back across the island to the far side. However, the river was so wide that the ferry crossing was about two hours and it was already about 21:00 so we decided that perhaps we would save that for the morning so we all went off to find something to eat locally. Our friend who lived on there was packing her son off on a school trip and had lots of his things that she’d cleared out that she was going to sell. What she had planned to do was to give them to the school so the school could sell them on as a way of raising funds. She asked me if I wanted to go to have a look but I couldn’t think of a good reason to do that at the moment. Then we began to start making plans. There was a huge boxing match taking place down in southern Germany in a town not too far from the Czech border and we were all planning to go. I thought that I may as well go too, but why don’t we find a hotel in the Czech Republic so that we can say that we have done something different while we were there. We were busily sorting that out when suddenly one of my friends arrived. I’d told him ages ago about buying a motorbike, and he had turned up on a big 500cc motorbike and said “I have your motorbike outside”. I thought that this is going to become really complicated because I’ve come here in the van. How do I take this motorcycle home? This is the wrong time because we are all setting off in a minute for this boxing match. I could see that the friends with whom I had come to this island weren’t at all keen on this guy being here. I thought that this is going to create some kind of wrong atmosphere and I don’t want this to happen but I couldn’t think of how to avoid it.

Leaving aside the fact that Bremen isn’t situated at the mouth of a river, and even so, there’s no island in any mouth of any river in Germany that corresponds to this description, it was quite a dramatic dream. It’s been an age since I’VE BEEN TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC and it’s easy to understand why I’m feeling depressed when I keep on encountering things that I used to do with pleasure but am no longer able to do.

And that includes riding a motorcycle. My last motorcycle was a CZ175 but I had loads of fun on my old CX500 when I moved to Brussels. I really was at one point quite recently thinking about having another one but I was overtaken by events.

The nurse caught me in mid-transcription and sorted out my feet. He thinks that there are no oedemas in my legs, so maybe the situation at dialysis isn’t as desperate as I was thinking. I still think that I’ll be there for four hours though, which will fill me full of dismay.

As he left, I thanked him and wished him a good rest for his week off. It was nice to see him in such a better humour since his holiday.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now well into our discussion of Roman land division and the settlement of the individual parcels of land, and how the system of the occupation of the land that the Romans installed lasted until the Enclosure Acts of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, and how the actual physical division of the land under Roman law lasted until the passing of the Local Government Act 1888.

However, our author implies that travelling the main roads must have been a bagful of fun back in Roman times. He quotes the author JWE Conybeare who tells us that "Intercourse was easy between the various districts, for along every great road a series of posting stations, each with its stud of relays, was available for the service of travellers.”". I’m not sure exactly what service the travellers would have obtained from the stud of relays, but I’m sure that the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine could tell us.

Back in here, I made a determined attempt to finish the installation of the office and although it took me all the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon, it’s now all up and running. I have all of the back-up drives and the array working … "hip hip array" – ed … and we have music again too, which is good news. I can’t stand the quiet – it drives me mad.

My faithful cleaner came down later with another pile of vegan cheese and also a pile of the yeast that I like and which has been out of s for a while. She was followed by one of the nurses from dialysis who inspected my apartment to make sure that I was living in sanitary conditions and who then proceeded to talk to me about dialysis at home.

That would be good if it worked, but merely talking about the procedure made my stomach churn and my muscles tense up. However, I did take advantage of her by making her give my faithful cleaner a thorough course in dialysis implants and how and where to apply the anaesthetic cream. That was worth its weight in gold, that course of instruction.

However, she did say something that surprised me. She asked me if I’d considered seeing the service’s psychologist. I haven’t, but I can’t see what good a psychologist would do. I’m dying, I know that, and I’m resigned to it. It’s difficult sometimes to come to terms with it but I can’t see how a psychologist would help me in that respect. And in any case, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d hate to be the person who would draw the short straw and have to probe the depths of my subconscious mind.

After everyone left, I came back here where I regrettably crashed out for an hour. That’s disappointing, but with the wretched night that I had had last night, it’s not surprising.

For one reason or another, I was really late going for tea, stuffed peppers etc, so consequently I’m late going to bed. I can’t wait to be under the covers though because, once more, I’m exhausted. A good night’s sleep will do me good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of motivation … "well, one of us has" – ed … the nurse from dialysis asked me "what happened to your famous ‘get up and go’ then?"
"By the looks of things, it’s got up and gone a long time ago." I replied.

Monday 1st September 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY SICK …

… tired and totally fed up with this dialysis nonsense, and if there’s much more of it, I’m going to write my wills (because there will be three), call a halt to it and let nature take its course.

One of the doctors told me a few weeks ago that if I were to stop the dialysis, I wouldn’t last out the week. But at least I would have a week to myself without being dragged around from one medical appointment to another and totally inconvenienced in the process.

The taxi was early today – 12:45 instead of 13:15, and we arrived at dialysis at 13:20. So there I was, looking for an early start, a quick “in and out” and back home early for once. But ohhhh! Cruel, wicked fate! How you (and I suspect some human agency too) conspired to thwart my plans. And in spades too.

The way things went last night, I might have expected some problems today. Despite my best efforts, it was 23:40 when I finally crawled into bed, much later than I had been planning. But once in bed, I had a really good sleep for a change.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was actually on the point of throwing off the covers. Not actually out of bed though. And leaving the bed was not as simple as it might have sounded. It was a desperate struggle to beat the second alarm.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this objectionable, may we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life by hunting him down on the internet, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter?" – ed… and then in the kitchen I had my medication.

Some of the medication in the drawer in the table had run out so I had to go to the supplies. And what a marvellous surprise. I’ve moaned and moaned about the medication all over my apartment, making it look like a Chemist’s shop and depressing me no end but my lovely cleaner has fitted out a cardboard box, complete with little curtains, to store everything. That’s one of the nicest things that anyone has done for me.

Once more, I’d hardly come back in here before the nurse arrived. Once more, he was in a really chatty, sociable mood and I hope that he stays like this because it makes things so much nicer.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is now well into his stride about Roman surveying, and I’ve been having to rack my brains from my Primary School days in the early 1960s about rods, poles, perches, chains and furlongs. I suspect that tomorrow we’ll be discussing bushels and peck, and the difference between avoirdupois and troy weight.

However, it’s his comments that are the most interesting. When discussing the longevity of the Roman system of land division, he observes that "it is manifest that neither the rude Saxons nor their Norman successors were capable of designing or carrying out such a big undertaking."

It makes me wonder what the Saxons must have been doing, and did the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine know about it?

He also talks about the erection of wayside shrines at the intersections of Roman field trackways, and how Pope Gregory encouraged Christian missionaries to adopt these wayside shrines and convert them to Holy Christian places.

Anyone who has wandered around rural France as much as we have will have noticed statues of the saints at many intersections of rural trackways.

Another thing that he mentions is that on "Rogation days, when priests with the Cross went in procession round their parochia, and certain Gospels were read in the wild field among the corn and grass, so that wicked spirits which infest the air might be laid low to the extent that the corn may remain unharmed."

The ceremony of the Beating of the Bounds and of well-dressing is still carried on today in parts of the UK.

After breakfast, I came back in here to spend a brief fifteen minutes finishing off the connecting up of my office and all of the computer peripherals, and when my cleaner came to sort out my anaesthetic cream two and more hours later, I was still in here trying to sort it out.

No matter what I have tried, I can’t make one of the external back-up drives fire up. I’ve changed cables and everything, but the warning light is far paler than the warning light on another one and the computer won’t read it. I shall have to keep on trying. Everything else works fine.

Once my cleaner had dealt with my arm, she began to chat. And was still chatting when the taxi came. I really am flavour of the month around here these days.

There was only me in the car with the driver today – a nice young guy who has taken me to Paris before – and we had a good chat. But the fun came to an end when we arrived at dialysis because we arrived at the same time as seven other people.

Not only that, they weren’t ready in the wards so we had to wait. And when the doors were opened, it was a mad stampede to the beds. My bed was the farthest possible away from the door, as you might expect, and because I am the slowest, I was last to arrive.

It was not surprising that I would therefore be the last to be connected, but 14:30 – well over an hour after I had arrived – is really taking the mickey.

There was plenty of room to manoeuvre with the weight loss so I asked the nurse to wind it up so that I’d have a head start for Thursday, but for all the good it did, I may as well have saved my breath.

Once everything was under way I had a brief doze … "he means ‘half an hour of deep sleep’" – ed … and then I was in no mood to do any work. I really am over-tired these days.

Even worse, the chef de service came by, and said that one of the other doctors had made some remarks the other day about my overall health and how I seemed to be suffering under the strain of dialysis. And so, he cut right down to a minimum the amount of fluid extraction.

And the final straw – despite all my entreaties, he left me 700 grams short, which means almost inevitably that I’ll be stuck here for four hours on Thursday. People could be forgiven for believing that he’s deliberately setting me up in an act of revenge for my letter to his Head Office.

So the ridiculously low extraction came to an end at 18:00 precisely, but I wasn’t unplugged and attended to until 18:25. It was 18:50 when I finally walked out of the dialysis centre – the poor taxi driver had been awaiting me for over half an hour.

To cap it all, we had to drive right across Avranches to the private clinic to pick up someone else and run them to Granville, where they were dropped off first.

It was 19:40 when I finally came back here, as if I don’t have anything else to do, and I was totally seething. I really am fed up with all of this. I was away from home for almost seven hours for a three-and-a-half hour session and that is totally unacceptable.

If I don’t calm down soon, I’ll be the one blowing a gasket.

Tea was a quick pasta with chick peas and veg, and then I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I can’t remember who I was with but I was wandering around somewhere like Stoke-upon-Trent last night with someone. We came across a car that was for sale, a red Morris 1000 traveller and whoever I was with was trying to make up her mind whether to buy it or not. I couldn’t see how it would fit in with our plans but it was a nice vehicle all the same. We met a few other people wandering around there too and we had a talk with them. The next thing that I remember about this was that we were in Nantwich, having a look at the water pumps there and the system to distribute the town water. They were at the back of the Swine Market, at the back of one of the shops. We were talking about how they were installed and the controversy about digging up all of the streets, stopping the traffic from circulating for months but that’s all that I remember about this dream.

Nerina and I went to see a Morris Traveller once. It was for sale at a giveaway price because one of the spring hangers had torn out of the chassis. I would have had it and welded it up, but she decided against it, which was a shame. I’m not sure why we ended up in Nantwich though. In those days, Stoke-upon-Trent would have been much more likely.

So still fuming, still seething, I’m off to bed. I hope that I will have calmed down by the morning although I doubt it. But I’ll be interested to see how my dreams are tonight. However, knowing my luck, there won’t be any at all.

One thing that I am going to do at the dialysis clinic though next time, is to watch very carefully how the nurses operate the machines. And then, when their backs are turned, I can adjust my machine myself to how I would like it to be. Then we can watch the sparks fly!

But seeing as we have been talking about religion and Priests … "well, one of us has" – ed … a priest and a couple of parishioners were standing on a road with a sign saying "The End Is Nigh. Turn Round. Retrace Your Steps Before It’s Too Late"
However, a car drives past, with the occupants hurling abuse at the Priest and his parishioners.
Next moment the Priest and his parishioners hear a loud “splash”.
One of the parishioners turns to the Priest and says "Yes, I reckoned that a simple ‘Bridge Washed Away’ sign would have been a better idea"

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… drama, I suppose that I had better take a calmer look at things. We can’t do with having that kind of emotion day after day.

So last night, in the middle of what can be best described as “a bilious attack”, I left the desk and fell into bed. It was all of 22:10 as well, and you don’t have a finish much earlier than that every day of the week.

Once in bed, I was out like a light. I really was exhausted, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that too.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I really thought about going back to sleep. However, one glance at the time persuaded me to stay in bed. It was 01:24 and, much as I like to be an early riser, that kind of thing is ridiculous.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep again because I remember awakening a couple of times during the night. However, at 06:26 exactly (my body clock is working really well these days) I awoke again, and at that point I decided to leave the bed, even though it’s Sunday and I’m entitled to stay in bed until 07:59 or thereabouts.

Saying that I would be leaving the bed is one thing. Actually leaving it for real is something completely different and it was a real struggle into the bathroom. I decided against having a wash as I really wasn’t in the mood, but everything else that I needed to do took quite some considerable time.

So did the medication this morning, and then I had the disagreeable task of doing last night’s washing up. One thing that I really detest is waking in the morning to find a heap of dirty crockery awaiting me but I really was in no kind of state last night.

After all of that, I was hardly back in here when the nurse arrived. He sorted out my legs, did his accounts and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is laying the ground … "groan" – ed … for a chapter on the Roman surveying of Middlesex. I’m really looking forward to that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we discussed Roman surveying or urban areas during one of my University modules, and I even built some Roman surveying equipment such as a GROMA.

Back in here later, there were the dictaphone notes to review. Back in the 18th Century there was a Native American raid on a village somewhere in North America. The residents succeeded in fighting off the invasion and killed several of the Native Americans. There was bound to be some kind of enquiry about it, and the settlers were concerned about what would actually come out in this, so the organised a collection of all of the arms that were in the possession of people. The aim was to try to find somewhere to hide them until the investigation was over. My plan was to put them in a coffin and bury it in the churchyard with the victims of the incident, then it could be dug up when the enquiry is over. However, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant about that idea.

Attacks by the Native Americans on settler communities on the frontier were commonplace in the 18th Century and there were terrible stories of atrocities – on both sides, it has to be said. But the burial of firearms in a coffin in the graveyard relates to an actual event in a village in north-east France just before the arrival of the Germans during their rapid advance of summer 1914.

Did I dictate the dream about me being with the old Ford Escort estate … "no you didn’t" – ed … My friend from Munich was there and he had borrowed it for a couple of days. He had taken my collection of small solar panels and installed them on the vehicle while he was borrowing it. When I went back to pick it up, he’d taken the panels off. I asked him how it went, and he replied that it was extremely good because he’s had a figure of 35 Kilowatts of electricity generated while he’d been borrowing the vehicle. I asked him where he’d installed them, and he pointed to the kind-of ladder rack on the back. He said that he had put them on there and they seemed to work fine. I had the panels and I had another attempt at installing them on there. It was complicated because the mounting blocks that I’d designed for it were fouling the nuts that held the ladder rack on. We had to be very careful about how we fitted everything. I thought in the end that rather than use a rubber sheet underneath the panels, I’d mount them on a sheet of wood or something that would be covered in the rubber sheet. That way, it would be much more solid and the mounting blocks would work better. We were there for quite a while, trying to fit these solar panels back on. He said that in the meantime, I’d lost two more of my volunteer drivers for this scheme. He said that Old man Sinclair was one. I said that I’d never really expected him to take part in it anyway. I said that I suspected that the other one would have been that little Jackie. he agreed that it was she who was the second, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed by those two because I didn’t think that it was likely that they’d take part.

It was the old Escort van that had the ladder rack, bot the estate that I had when I was with Laurence and Roxanne. And of course, the solar panels are on the roof of the Transit. But why Jimmy Clitheroe’s grandfather would be involved in this dream, and also “Little Jackie”, a girl whom I knew in Crewe in 1982/3, I really don’t know.

After that, I began the task of writing up last night’s notes and eventually, after quite a long while, I managed to post them on line, so you can all find out about my horrible day yesterday.

And so it was time for a footfest. There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League, and afterwards there were the highlights of Stirling Albion v Stranraer. Stranraer had about 90% of the play and had a hatful of shots at the Stirling goal, but failed to make any of them count. Stirling only had one meaningful shot on goal, so I shall leave you to decide what the final score might have been.

There were bread and pizza to make later on too. The bread is cooked magnificently, and the pizza was one of the best that I have ever made. My new oven is marvellous and I am almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

But right now, I’m going to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I really could do with a week off. But right now, all I want to do is to sleep. I might be feeling better but I’m still dog-tired.

But seeing as we have been talking about how ill I was last night … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that church in Neston where we went once for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
At the entrance to the church was a box marked "For The Sick" and next to it was a note – "This Box Is Restricted To Monetary Donations Only."

Saturday 30th August 2025 (… continued …) – SO STARTING AGAIN …

… after the adventures reported in the previous entry, Saturday has not been a very good day for me, for a whole variety of reasons, and I’m glad that it’s over.

It started off with me still being at my desk working at some ridiculous time like 00:40, and long after that too. But you know how it is … "No. How is it?" – ed … Once you start something, it’s very difficult to stop it, and trying to download about 50GB of Artificial Intelligence data software is not the work of five minutes.

That was something that was going on and on and on, and I didn’t want to stop it and start again. I was working on the theory that if I’m really tired during the day, I can always have a good sleep at dialysis in the afternoon. In the end though, it was starting to become ridiculous so I simply switched off the screen, left the computer working away to itself and went to bed.

Despite the very late night, I was awake again a few minutes before the alarm went off but, as you might expect, it was something of a struggle to persuade myself to leave the bed and have a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this remark objectionable, my we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter, by hunting him down on the internet?" – ed…

After the medication, I ended up back in here, a good hour after having left the bed, and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a Roman empress or the wife of a Roman emperor or the wife of a British governor who visited the office of one of the native tribes in England for some kind of interview, but things went so badly that the woman took out a dagger and slashed all of the horsehair-filled seats that were in the room, causing a lot of damage, so the tribal leaders tried to contact the Roman legions who would pay for the damage, but of course they wouldn’t and everything was left up in the air with a very bitter taste in the mouths of the British people and the tribe concerned.

Quite recently, I’ve been reading quite a lot about different Roman Emperors, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and there was also something going on in my mind yesterday about car seats. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several years ago in Québec we went to visit the RIVIERE DES VASES which was where the eel grass, used to stuff car seats in the early days of motoring, was harvested and the discussion had turned round to horsehair seats in the UK

The nurse came in at his usual time today and caught me working at my desk, so he took my blood pressure here at my desk. He reckoned that it would be a much more accurate reading if I remained sitting here rather than standing up and going into the other room.

He sorted out my legs too, then after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

This morning, I didn’t go very far into the book because I went off on a tangent, following the trail of the Roman armies as they wandered peripatetically around what today is Scotland. There was also a little trail to follow about the collapse of the “Hen Gogledd” culture as the Romans pushed from the South and the Picts pushed down from the North, events recited in the Heroic Welsh ballad Y GODODIN.

After breakfast, I came back in here to see how the Artificial Intelligence downloads had gone. By the looks of things, everything was complete, but it’s going to take a good while to sort out. And after all of that, when everything is ready, I’ll probably find that I would have been much better off with Natural Stupidity because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

However, having said that, it’s an old principle of computer programming, drummed into us when we were messing around with Machine Code at Night School in the mid-seventies, that the only equation in computing on which you can rely is GI = GO, which stands for “Garbage In” = “Garbage Out”, and it’s probably fair to say that … errr … “confusion” in a computer program is inevitably the fault of the person who has programmed it.

Once more, my faithful cleaner caught me unawares as she came to put the anaesthetic cream onto my arm, and she stayed for quite a while chatting. I’m not sure why I seem to be the “Flavour of the Month” right now. However, our chat was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi so we went outside to meet it.

Unusually, I was the only passenger in the car today, so I asked the driver about the lovely lady who usually accompanies me. However, he had no news of her, so we travelled alone.

For once, I was early arriving, but as usual, I was one of the last to be connected, which was a shame. And as I expected, for the first half-hour I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would be of interest to the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. When I came back into the Land of the Living, I didn’t really do all that much.

The doctor came to see me and I told her the story of the injections. She thought too that I’d be much better off going back to the old series of injections rather than this new one that had so upset my body.

Eventually, they came to unplug me after, for once, having had a full session of three and a half hours without a crisis of any kind. However, the woman in the next bed was not so lucky and they had to unplug her after an hour or so. When she’d recovered, she was whipped off to hospital for observation

Earlier on, I had asked one of the nurses if she knew why the lady who usually accompanies me on Thursdays and Saturdays was not present today. She had checked up during the course of the afternoon and while she was compressing me, she told me, to my deep shock, that she had died yesterday.

When I’d seen her on Thursday, I noticed that she didn’t seem to be herself, but to hear that she had died the following day was the last thing that I expected to hear.

On the way out, they weighed me as usual, and I am now the lightest that I have been for quite some considerable time. I can see that this is not going to end well, but I can’t think of what to do about it, with the lack of appetite and everything that I eat tasting heavily of salt since the chemotherapy began.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, but there was another passenger who needed to be dropped off in Avranches, so what with all that had gone on today, I was far later arriving back home than I otherwise might have been, which was annoying. There was a rainstorm too that was rather annoying.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she sorted me out quite quickly. She’d also brought two of the guitars downstairs, which was nice. The others will follow in due course.

After she had left, there was football on the internet. The game between Hwlffordd and Caernarfon had started half an hour ago but the advantage of being on the internet is that you can wind it back to the start.

Mind you, it wasn’t a very interesting match. For some reason, all of the liveliness and energy that had seen Caernarfon go to the top of the table and score a bagful of goals so far this season seemed to have disappeared and it was a very lethargic performance. Hwlffordd gave a workmanlike performance but didn’t set the game alight either.

A 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, and I have seen far, far better matches than this one. If Caernarfon wish to stay at the top of the table, they will have to play much better than this. However, perennial champions TNS dropped another two points with a tame draw down south at Barry Town and Penybont, who have shown some class and character over the last two or three seasons, were surprisingly beaten at home by Connah’s Quay Nomads.

At half-time, I paused the game and went to make some tea – pasta and veg with chick peas. And it was a big mistake because what with the nausea that I have been feeling these last few days, I ended up in some kind of severe difficulty. In the end, as soon as the football finished, I typed a terse note and went straight to bed.

Tomorrow is another day and we’ll see how we feel. My cure for everything at the moment is to go to bed and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about my poor fellow traveller … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my faithful cleaner about her death. After all, she had met her a couple of times.
"How many of your fellow passengers have now passed away over the last year?" she asked.
"Three" I replied "and a fourth one now has to come by ambulance".
"You’ll do everything you possibly can to have a car to yourself, won’t you?" she said.

Saturday 30th August 2025 – THESE LITTLE ATTACKS …

… of nausea that I have been having these last few days have finally caught up with me this evening.

That’s why there’s not much here tonight, because I’ve gone to bed with a bucket by my side. I hope that I’ll feel better in the morning, when I shall write my notes correctly, but right now I just want to lie down and go to sleep.
(… to be continued …)

Friday 29th August 2025 – I HAD FORGOTTEN …

… all about the wind outside here.

When I lived on the first floor, I was at the back of the building and so my only encounters with the wind were on the rare occasions when I went outside the door – or couldn’t, because the wind was so strong that we couldn’t open the front door so I would have to go out of the back.

However, last night, I remembered all about it.

The wind had begun to rise as I was on my way home last night but I hadn’t really taken much notice. However, by the time I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, it was blowing quite hard, and then I realised that being in the front, overlooking the cliffs and the sea to the right, is not necessarily always a great advantage and that there are after all, some drawbacks.

But last night, I was so tired. I fell asleep a couple of times while I was writing my notes and no fewer than three times when I was … errr … contemplating the state of the nation. I was glad to make it into bed, when I fell asleep almost immediately.

And there I lay until all off … errr … 05:29. For once just recently, I awoke earlier than the alarm, and I was seriously contemplating raising myself from the Dead, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so I must have gone back to sleep.

It was a real struggle yet again to find the energy and enthusiasm to leave the bed and sort myself out. Yet again, it was over an hour, all told, before I ended up back in here after the medication.

First thing was of course to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, I was doing something with some kind of radio equipment, I can’t remember what, when a couple of my friends turned up. They weren’t going to stay for long so it was necessary to clear the sofa of everything so that they could sit down. One of them volunteered to put all of the clothes away even though there wasn’t room for them anywhere. In the end, they both managed to sit down. Later, after they had left, I had to look for the clothes again. They had been rolled up in bundles and put on the stairs, each bundle, and several had been put into other places. One had been hung inside a CD cupboard, with the CDs from the shelves in that particular column being merged into other shelves in columns elsewhere. I was thinking that that probably means that I have to sort all of these out into alphabetical order again.

That’s a task that I still have to do, because the records, CDs and DVDs seem to be in any old kind of disorder, and sticking the clothes back into places where they don’t belong is also something quite relevant at the moment.

Later on, I was on a Plaxton Elite coach, driving it, taking a load of English kids back to boarding school. When I went to join it, it was crammed full of children and I couldn’t understand at first what was happening. It turned out that these kids were all French refugees who had fled France during the invasion by the Germans in 1940 and were being taken to some kind of hostel. I was charged with distributing all the food around. That became extremely complicated as people were moving around, and I didn’t know who had had some food and who hadn’t. There were all these giant biscuit things that I was distributing. Every now and again someone would raise their hand and ask for some more food. If I had some, I would take them half of one of these biscuits. Earlier, I’d been talking to a couple of boys about how comfortable it is to be going back to school. When I met them on the bus at that moment, I asked them what they thought of it now but they didn’t say very much. There was a mass of clothing on one of the seats right by where these two boys were sitting. I asked them what it was and they replied that it was a little French girl who was asleep. In the end, this began to become more and more confusing as I was awaiting the signal to leave and handing out these biscuits. I thought that at one moment that these biscuits will run out and what am I going to do then?

It would be a good dream to be driving a Plaxton Elite in wartime, seeing as they weren’t introduced until about 1968. And once again, in a dream, I’m worrying about something that might never happen, and that seems to be a recurring theme these days.

The nurse came as usual, armed with his blood pressure tester, and once he had taken one of the measures of the three that he was supposed to take, his batteries went flat … "in the machine, not in him" – ed …

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Once more, it’s hard to understand the thought patterns of our author, Montagu Sharpe. He’s spent several pages bewailing the loss of artefacts from the period, salvaged by all and sundry without any record being kept, yet on page 37 he tells us that when he spoke to the person who had discovered and uprooted the Ancient British stakes that guarded the ford across the Thames at Brentford, "He kindly gave me several specimens which I have since passed on to Museums and to interested persons.".

He goes on to add that "from the inner portions various articles as mementoes have been made".

A little earlier though, on page 32, he has a crisis of T Rice Holmesque proportions when examining some notes by JS Maitland on Caesar’s crossing of the Thames. He tells us that "Maitland, in his “History of London,” places Caesar’s passage of the Thames at Chelsea" and continues by saying "All that Maitland seems to have done in 1732 in support of his theory was to take a boat to sound the river for shallow places, and thirty yards west of Chelsea College found the “channel N.E. to S.W. was not more than 4 feet 7 inches deep.” ! ! He made no quest for the remains of the stakes which Caesar says lined both the bed and bank of the Thames, which have in great numbers been so found, guarding the great ford of the river at Brentford,"

That’s not what I would call a respectable academic criticism of Maitland’s theories.

After breakfast, I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. The nurse is writing up his accounts for the end of the month and needs the prescription for the injection that he gave me on Monday. And so I telephoned the hospital at Paris. I tried on several occasions, but they didn’t answer the ‘phone, which is no good at all for an emergency helpline.

In the end, I e-mailed them, only to have it returned as my professor is on holiday. I had to resend it to his assistant.

But that gave me an idea. It was Monday when I had this new injection, and it was about Monday that my problems of nausea and dizziness began.

Accordingly, I rang the dialysis clinic, but once more, it took several attempts before I was able to speak to the doctor who saw me on Thursday. I explained to her that I’d had a new injection, and she confirmed that side effects of dizziness and nausea are quite common with this new injection.

My cleaner turned up early in the afternoon to do her stuff, and we had the nurse back at 16:00 to take the afternoon’s blood pressure, with new batteries this time.

After he left, the President of the Residents’ Committee came down to inspect the apartment. She loves it so I thanked her for giving me the tip about it going up for sale. Without her, I would never have managed to purchase it. She brought me a yellow tea towel, to match the walls, as a housewarming present. That was really nice of her to do so.

The rest of the day has been spent playing around with some Artificial Intelligence. So far, I’ve managed to run two Artificial Intelligence chatbots into endless loops, which goes to show, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Something else that I’ve found is an Artificial Intelligence server that downloads to your own computer. Even as we speak, I’m having a play around with that and downloading it, to see whether I can program it to be more random than it actually seems to be. It takes about 50GB of space, so I’ll be here for ever doing that.

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with salad and chips, and now I’m off to bed, long after midnight but I’ve been dealing with all kinds of things this evening that have run me up a variety of blind alleys. And I’ll have the howling gale outside to blow me to sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember an old Andy Capp cartoon that featured two men struggling unsuccessfully to move a large computer through a small door.
"No problem" said Andy Capp. "Just plug it in and let it work it out for itself."

Thursday 28th August 2025 – YET ANOTHER MORNING …

… when I slept right the way through until the alarm at 06:29. And once more, I had no end of a struggle to leave the bed prior to the alarm going off.

Last night wasn’t however as late as some have been just recently. I was actually, for once, in bed prior to midnight although it does have to be said that there can’t have been much in it.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and that’s all that I remember of anything until 06:29 when the alarm went off. It’s not very often that I sleep as soundly as that.

It took me an age to make myself ready this morning too. What with having a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went into the kitchen for my medication and didn’t come out again until 07:41 precisely. That was what I would call a “slow start”.

Yes, and “Emilie the Cute Consultant” … while I was waiting for my Doppler examination yesterday, with nothing better to do, I found a copy of the “Patients’ Charter” and read it. I do strange things like that every now and again.

Article 11 states that "a person who has been hospitalised has the right to express his observations on his treatment and on his reception." Consequently, if I have received an “over-generous” welcome from a member of staff, I shall say so, whether or not the doctor in charge of the service blows a gasket.

Even more importantly, Article 9 says that "every hospitalised person has the right to have his private life respected." It continues by saying that such a person "has the right to confidentiality respect of his …" communications.

Therefore, if the chef de service doesn’t like what I’m writing, I shall want to know why someone has been disrespecting my private life by hunting me down on the internet and reading my communications.

Frankly, I’m not in the least bothered about who tracks me down on the internet and who reads anything that I have written. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if you have seen something that displeases you, no matter how you found it, there’s a “contact” button on the bottom right.

But if you are reading this and you aren’t supposed to, no matter what the reason, you only have yourself to blame.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I was at Aberystwyth watching Aberystwyth Town playing in the JD Cymru South League following their relegation from the Premier League. It was a completely new side with all their old favourites missing. It just wasn’t the same kind of team that it was before. Several of their former players who had left in the summer were there but seemed not to become involved or take any kind of side during anything that was going on. That was a disappointment again.

Amongst the players whom I recognised in the stand was Louis Bradford, Aberystwyth’s former centre-half, but also Alec Mudimu, someone who has no connection at all with Aberystwyth. He’s a Zimbabwe international defender who played in the JD Cymru League previously with Cefn Druids and after a spell playing in Eastern Europe, signed for Y Fflint the other day.

The nurse came at the usual time for a change today, and once more, he was full of jovial good humour. I really don’t know from where it’s coming, but I hope that he keeps it up. He’s a much more agreeable person when he’s in this kind of mood.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is still setting the scene but he’s now moved on to talk about hunting. And in the middle of his discourse, he stops to paint a very illuminating but fanciful account of a fictional hunt involving Cunobelinus and his “daughter” Helena, a personage just as fictitious as Montagu Sharpe’s description.

Sharpe talks about the wild "animals turned by the long line of bank and hedge now known as Grimm’s dyke, blindly rushing towards these outstretched leafy arms," of the hunting trap. And then he loses the plot completely as he talks about the "blast from a long bronze carnyx, the sportsmen scatter to their places, and with weapons ready".

Would anyone like to guess what might happen to a herd of wild animals if someone in their vicinity were to blow a note on a solid bronze anything?

Really, this kind of writing has no place in what is supposed to be a genuine and serious historical account.

Back in here, I had a few things to do but time caught up with me quite rapidly and my cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic patches. After she’d finished, we had a very long chat and then she left me to await the taxi to take me to dialysis.

It was late coming this afternoon and the other passenger in the car with me had the air of being extremely unhappy. We were late arriving at Avranches and as you might expect, I was the last to be plugged in.

To make matters worse, having had the session interrupted on Monday, I had so much liquid to lose that I had to stay for four hours. And the internet was down all day too, which really put the tin hat on it.

Océane was looking after me today, which was nice. The first needle, I felt a sensation when she pierced the skin but that was all. As for the second, the one that gives me problems, I didn’t even realise that she’d injected me, so good was the puncture. She can do it again like that and I’ll be happy. And once she had finished, I crashed out for a whole forty-five minutes

The doctor came to see me at one point. They had had the report from the hospital. The implant is definitely faulty and they are discussing whether to repair it or replace it. That was not what I wanted to hear.

During the session, the blood pressure alarm kept sounding as my blood pressure dropped. With twenty minutes to go, it was down to just about eight so at that point, Océane stopped the session. She’s already seen me in a coma once and doesn’t want to see it again.

She raised the bottom of the bed to give my blood pressure the space to recover, and when my pressure was stable at 9.5 she uncoupled me. The doctor gave me a prescription for the nurse to monitor my blood pressure for the next couple of days.

The taxi driver was waiting for me, last out of the building as I was, and she brought me home. My faithful cleaner was awaiting me and what a relief it was to come back into my apartment without those wretched 25 steps.

After a good while to recover, I made tea – a leftover curry. And now I’m off to bed, exhausted once again. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these last few days.

But seeing as we have been talking about hunting … "well, one of us has" – ed … two guys are out hunting in the forests of Maine when they are attacked by a black bear. One of them escapes but the other one is badly mauled.
Eventually, the one who escapes goes back to his friend and sees the bloody mass on the floor.
Taking up his ‘phone, he ‘phones 911."My friend has just been badly mauled by a black bear. I think that he’s dead"
"Really?" asks the dispatcher. "Can you make sure?"
On the other end of the ‘phone, the dispatcher hears a “BANG”
"I’m really sure now" says the surviving hunter. "What do I do next?"

Wednesday 27th August 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still fast asleep.

It’s no surprise really, for when you don’t go to bed until after 00:30, there really isn’t all that much time for sleeping. It is, however, disappointing to say the least. I was hoping that this series of very early starts would go on and on and on.

Yes, it was after 00:30 when I finally went to bed last night. I know that what with one thing and another, it was a late night but I hadn’t realised that it was that late until I checked the time.

Once in bed, though, I remember nothing at all. I must have gone to sleep quite quickly and stayed there until the alarm. Being as tired as I have been over this last week or so since chemotherapy, the good (well, for me, anyway) sleep probably did me some good.

Mind you, I didn’t feel like leaving the bed when the alarm went off. Once again, for two pins I would have gone back to bed. I had a real struggle to leave the bed before the second alarm went off.

It really was a slow start to the morning. It took an age to sort myself out in the bathroom and I didn’t rush to take my medication. It was about 07:40 when I finally made it back into here.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone, “just in case”. I was travelling miles in my sleep but I can hardly remember anything of it because the alarm awoke me yet again. However, I do remember that on one occasion I was going back into a place where I worked, trying to smuggle out a textbook or instruction book or something so that I could do some work at home on the Thursday or Friday and have the book back in the office for Monday morning. I also remember doing something with a sheet of newspaper, rolling it up into some kind of spiral like the kind of thing that you’d make if you were lighting a fire. That’s all that I remember about what was going on during the night.

And isn’t that disappointing too? Having a really interesting dream, only to find it evaporate away like that.

The nurse was early again and he was once more in a spirit of amiability. I hope that this keeps up, rather than his usual depressive state

After he left, it was breakfast time. However, I had hardly started it, never mind finished it, when there was a ring on the doorbell. I’m not sure that I mentioned yesterday that the dialysis centre wants me to go for a Doppler examination on the implant in my arm. It had been arranged for 09:30 this morning here in Granville, so I wasn’t expecting the taxi at 08:45.

We arrived at the hospital at 09:05, in plenty of time for my appointment at 09:30, so it goes without saying that I wasn’t seen until a little after 10:00. My taxi driver had already been once to pick me back up but she found me sitting there waiting to be called.

The doctor who performed the examination was someone whom I have met on several occasions in the past. A small lady of “a certain age”, she would make a very good companion to my favourite taxi driver, for she is another one who gives a running commentary of “a certain kind” while she is working. Those two working together would make a wonderful combination.

She had me there for well over half an hour, and the result is exactly as I knew it to be before we even talked about going – namely, there’s a fault in my implant right where the second needle goes, and the fault has been there for months, exactly as I said that it had.

That is the responsibility of the clinic that tried its best to rob me of €1667 or thereabouts last summer, and for which I had to fight over four months for it to be returned. I am now awaiting the formal report before I decide my next move.

However, I shall be having words with the doctors at the dialysis centre too. I’ve been complaining about this implant for months, and no-one has done anything about it. It’s a shame that I had to write to the dialysis centre’s head office so that something could be done, and despite the objections of the chef de service who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, took great exception to my letter, my letter has produced some kind of results.

When I left the radiology booth, my poor taxi driver was still awaiting me. I felt terribly sorry for her but there wasn’t all that much that I could do about it.

It was 10:55 when I arrived back here and I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that was that it was lovely just to walk back all on my own across the courtyard to the front door, into the building and straight into my new apartment without having to worry about how I’m going to climb 25 stairs.

First thing that I did when I was back here was to reheat my porridge and coffee in the microwave and then finish my breakfast, at long last.

The second thing was to say hello to my faithful cleaner who came in carrying an urgent letter. And so it’s official that Tuesday 16th September I go to Rennes for my next session of chemotherapy.

It looks as if it’s just for the day too. Plenty of mention about what I need to bring, but nothing at all about an “overnight bag”. Of course, I’ll telephone to check. However, if it is just a day visit, that will cause a few other problems because I don’t think that I’ll be in much of a state to travel afterwards, if the previous sessions have been anything to go by.

Much of the afternoon has been spent beginning to unpack my office and installing my external drives. There’s a lot to do in this respect and it will take a while to do it all.

However, the good news is that I have had my first shower. And it was gorgeous too. It worked just as I wanted it to and I was so impressed. However, climbing in and out of the shower is difficult. The step up is just a little too high for me.

But I have a solution to that. Lying around here are all kinds of offcuts of scrap wood from the kitchen, and if I put two or three together and screw them so that they don’t move, they would make a nice step up of half-height and so I should be able to manage the ascent so much better.

What kind of state am I in these days?

Later on, we had another foot-fest. I’d missed the match between Stranraer and Clyde at the weekend, and last night Stranraer had taken on Glasgow Rangers Youth in the Scottish League Cup.

The match at the weekend was a tame 1-1 draw but last night’s match was … errr … interesting, to say the least. Stranraer won 4-1 but, big Stranraer fan that I am, their third goal was scored from the softest ever penalty award that I have ever seen which in 99 games out of 100 would have been waved away, and as for the fourth goal, you can show me that again as many times as you like and from every kind of angle too, and I will still say that the Stranraer forward was half a mile offside.

However, Stranraer has in the past been on the wrong end of several dubious decisions in the past so I suppose that things eventually even themselves out.

Tea tonight was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer with pasta and vegetables, and in a return to normality after the upheaval of the last week or so, I read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES by Montagu Sharpe.

Sharpe has been discussing the Iron-Age occupation of Middlesex by the various Celtic tribes and that has led me on a chase around cyberspace for buried treasure. Quite literally too, because the subject of buried hoards from the Iron Age came into the discussion.

Of course, I went off on a side-track and in the words of Fridtjof Nansen, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on."

And that, dear reader, is the answer to why it takes me so long to write up my notes, and why my Degree studies were not as they ought to have been. I am side-tracked far too easily by things that, to me at least, are much more interesting than whatever I am supposed to be doing.

So late once more, even though at one stage it promised to be quite early, I’m off to bed, wondering if I’ll have another “lie-in” until the alarm goes off.

But despite my having the first decent meal tonight since before chemotherapy, it’s been something of a bad day. On several occasions, I’ve felt my head spinning round and I’ve had to hold on to something to stop me falling. I’ve still not recovered from chemotherapy, I reckon, and I have no idea for how long this is going to continue.

But seeing as we have been talking about Fridtjof Nansen … "well, one of us has" – ed … he is of course famous for his epic hike across Greenland in 1888. During his trek he came across an Inuit building one of these little round houses out of ice blocks.
"What do you call this building?" asked Nansen
"It’s an ig" replied the Inuit
"Don’t you mean ‘igloo’?" asked Nansen
"Oh no" replied the Inuit. "There’s no plumbing up here on the Greenland Ice Cap."

Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve felt as ill as I have today?

And how long is it since I’ve been to bed well before 23:00 (21:56 was when last night’s notes were published) and slept right through until the alarm sounded at 06:29?

Yes, it has been a day of all kinds of records, some of them unwelcome, and I hope that things improve quite rapidly as I can’t go on like this.

Last night, though, I was in all kinds of states. I was feeling nauseous, my head was spinning round and I was absolutely flat-out tired. I dashed through my notes and staggered through my preparations for the night, and then fell into bed.

During the night, I remember nothing at all, and no-one was more surprised than me to still be asleep when the alarm went off. It’s been an age since that has happened. It took me a while to stagger to my feet too – for two pins I’d have gone back to bed – and even longer to go to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Once I was ready, which took a lot longer than it ought, I went into the kitchen to take my morning medication. I must try to return to my old routine now that everything is calming down. I’ve forgotten the medication more times than I care to remember just recently.

There was a task that remained uncompleted from when I was taken ill at dialysis yesterday. I was in the middle of splitting a music soundtrack, and I’d only completed “less than half” of it. There’s no time like the present so I had a good go at that to finish it off.

The nurse interrupted me with his visit, and I do have to say that since he’s come back from his holiday, he’s become quite likeable as he was when I first met him. He was disappointed that the Hound of the Baskervilles has left though.

Breakfast was next, and it was nice to have an unhurried, leisurely meal looking out of the window at the World as it walked by. Much as I liked the view from upstairs, outside here on the ground floor is much more animated.

Back in here, I can’t remember what I did next. It wasn’t to go through my usual routine of seeing what had gone on during the night and transcribing the dictaphone notes, that’s for sure. It was probably something to do with trying to find some of the things that I need that have been put into boxes, there to remain, probably forever.

There were a few people online with whom I wanted to chat, so that passed some time as well.

After lunch, I had a foot-fest. There had been a whole series of matches in the J D Cymru League yesterday and I had purposefully refrained from reading about them because the live match would have been when I was on my way home, so I wanted to watch it all in one go as if it were a live game.

So this afternoon I had Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint from yesterday afternoon. And having watched Llanelli throw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 to Llansawel the other day, this time it was the turn of Y Fflint to throw away a 2-goal lead, to go down 3-2.

For the first half, Connah’s Quay were awful and Y Fflint made it look easy. But at half-time, the Nomads made no fewer than four substitutions, the first time that I have ever seen so many changes at half-time by one club. It obviously worked, because they stormed away throughout the second half.

There were also all of the highlights of the other matches, including Colwyn Bay’s impressive 1-1 draw against perennial champions TNS. After four matches, Caernarfon are currently leading the table, and it’s been a very long time since that has happened.

What with one thing and another, I’d almost forgotten the dictaphone notes. They were next on the list and the massive “War And Peace” from the previous night is now online. I’ve no idea what must have been going on during the other night, but there are tons of stuff, and it’s well-worth a read.

Having done that, I could then turn my attention to last night’s notes. At some point during the night I dreamed that my cleaner came down with a whole load of stuff that had been sitting around and about the apartment, and threatened me under pain of dire retribution to start to move anything around. However, I was in bed at the time and certainly didn’t feel like getting up so I didn’t say anything. I just left her to go about doing it. But after a good half-hour or so, I had a look at the time. It was 02:26 so it must have been a dream that I had had, probably because I couldn’t see any changes to any of the piles in here. So now I have to try to go back to sleep and hope that I can manage it before all my staff desert it all for the goldfields.

Firstly, I can’t remember awakening at 02:26. And then we’ve had dreams within dreams before now, and I always find them to be an interesting phenomenon. Finally, the incident about the staff deserting for the goldfields reminds me of a VERY AMUSING INCIDENT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN LABRADOR. Who will ever forget "Gold Strike at Bear Creek"?

Later on, we’d moved into some new digs. I was sitting there, comfortably thinking that when we all go out on Tuesday, I would go and buy a motorbike for myself. That way, I could travel to and from work and everywhere I want to go much more easily. Of course, my brother thought that the idea was silly. He said that it would be two weeks before I fell off it, or something like that. However, I decided that that was what I would do. In the end, I ended up having a discussion with the landlady of where we were staying. She talked about different things, and I happened to mention that I might go back on the buses. She said that that was a huge jump up from driving a car. Did I think that I’d be safe? Did I think that I wouldn’t have any problems? Etc. I told her that I used to drive for Shearings, which lit up her eyes. She said “ohh, well you’ll probably remember me then”. Just as she was about to say why, the alarm went off.

Apart from my family sticking the oar in, imagine these days still being asleep when the alarm went off. Had I been awake, I would have missed this little voyage.

All through the day, I had been feeling nauseous, my head had been spinning and by the late afternoon, my vision had become blurred and I could hardly see what I was doing. I couldn’t find the force to stand up and I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, even though I’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

However, I forced myself into the kitchen, later than usual, and made a bowl of pasta and vegetables with one of the vegan burgers that I have. I didn’t feel like eating it but if I don’t make an effort, I’m going to be seriously ill one of these days … "as if you aren’t already" – ed …

Standing up afterwards, my head was spinning around and I could barely find the energy to stay standing upright, crutches or not.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, horribly late.

But seeing as we have been talking about the saloon in CARRY ON COWBOY … "well, one of us has" – ed … in the same saloon, the local preacher came in to preach to the cowboys about the evils of the demon drink.
"Would you like a whisky first?" asked the bartender.
"No evil liquor should ever touch my lips" roared the preacher. "I would rather spend the night in a brothel with a woman of ill-repute!"
At that, several cowboys dashed up to the bar and handed back their whiskies to the bartender.
"Why are you doing this?" asked the aforementioned.
"Well" replied the cowboys "we didn’t realise that we had a choice."

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

… another malaise – or “funny turn” – at dialysis this afternoon. And what a state I was in too. For a good while they had to switch off the machine.

It surely must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy, because I can’t think of what else it might be. After all, I had what for me would have been a good night’s sleep last night.

When I finished all of my notes etc last night, it was about 23:20 but as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep at my desk yet again and it was at about 23:50 when I tore myself away and went to the bathroom. When I finally crawled into bed, it was just slightly after midnight.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but I awoke at about 04:10. I was seriously toying with the idea of raising myself from the Dead at that point, but instead I went back to sleep and finally awoke at 06:20, just a few minutes before the alarm. Six or so hours’ sleep is quite good going these days.

The Hound of the Baskervilles and his master were already awake, and they went off for a walk while I tried my best to organise myself.

When they came back, we had a coffee and a good chat, and then my friend began to pack while I made myself some breakfast.

The nurse had been round earlier and, for a change, he was quite sociable. He gave me this new injection, which may well be a contributory factor to this malaise, and then he cleared off.

My guests left at about 10:00, and then I had plenty of things that needed doing. So much so that I forgot to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There are plenty on there, so you’ll need to look further down the page.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic cream, which we are trying instead of the patches. She did her best to organise me, but I was already not feeling too well so that was a waste of her effort unfortunately.

The car down to Avranches was full today, and it was driven by one of the chatty females who wants to take me to an axe-throwing session (we have some strange pastimes around here). I’m almost tempted to go, except that I can’t stand up straight these days.

At the dialysis clinic, I was stuck once more in a room on my own, where I was attended by one of the more … errr … “senior” members of the nursing fraternity. She had lived in London in the past, and wanted to practise her English.

There wasn’t very much water to remove today, mainly due to the fact that I’m not eating much these days, but I persuaded her to wind up the machine to take out more so that I have a head start for next time.

There were plenty of things to do, but after a couple of hours, I began to feel ill. My head began to spin, my eyes blurred over, I had a dreadful pain in my right shin and I began to sweat profusely.

They put me flat on my back with my legs in the air and put an ice pack on my head. That didn’t seem to calm me down, but I managed to doze off for an hour or so, which was probably the best thing to do

When it was time to go, I was left pretty much to my own devices. The good news though was that it was my favourite taxi driver who brought me home, and we had a good chat about her house-moving project next week.

My faithful cleaner and the neighbour had been helping me move were waiting for me. But by now I was wasted and couldn’t really function. They left me alone and eventually, I managed to make some food. However, you can tell that I’m ill because I left some of it, and it’s not like me to leave food on the plate, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually, I managed to catch up with the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I must have had a really mobile night. I was out in the street in a cul-de-sac somewhere and set up on a very low stage right at the end of it was a rock group whose singer played trumpet, saxophone, flute, a bassist, a couple of guitarists, a keyboard player and a drummer. They were doing all the songs that I knew. One of the songs was Hawkwind’s CHILDREN OF THE SUN. Their version of it was absolutely terrific, and the bass line was just how I would have played the bass line to that song too. We were all having a really good time watching them, and the musicians were dancing around. One of them, one of the guitarists, was dancing with the crowd and collided with me but I just smiled and let him carry on. It was a tremendous concert. At the end, they happened to mention that two of their musicians were taking the day off at the weekend for some reason or other and they were going to be rather short-handed for a gig on Saturday night. I wondered whether it was worthwhile my going over to introduce myself to see if they wanted a bassist for a couple of nights, looking for a change to go out and about and go back on the stage.

As it happens, I know where this cul-de-sac is. It’s just round the corner from where I lived in Gainsborough Road in Crewe. And I also know the track “Children of the Sun” and I would indeed play the bass line in a different way to Hawkwind. Also, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, once I settled here I began to relearn the bass guitar and six-string guitar. It was all flooding back to me and I was really enjoying myself and giving serious thought to going back on the road. I even bought a 200-watt bass combo amp. However, losing the mobility in my legs, not being able to stand up, and having this implant in my arm means that I won’t ever play the guitar again.

At another moment, I was down in Hampshire, on my way back to the cross-channel port ready to go home. However, I had someone else to see but I can’t remember who it was. Someone with whom I was talking happened to mention that they were looking forward to seeing me, and I remember replying that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them. It turned out that I had 400 miles to go in order to reach the ports so I had to leave quite quickly and there wouldn’t be much time to see anyone because 400 miles on French roads in a day is fine but 400 miles on UK roads could be problematic so there wouldn’t be a minute to spare to go to see anyone in my opinion. I didn’t know how I was going to fit this extra visit in.

400 miles from Hampshire to a Channel Port? The only port that might fit that description in any way at all is Rosyth, from where there used to be a ferry that sailed to Zeebrugge, although it’s been cancelled for years. Strangely, my friend and I were talking the other day about this ferry crossing.

Later on, I was out in a minibus last night with someone else. We were dropping off TV decoders at different places. At one place, right out in the countryside, we had to wait until someone came along with a car. It was a woman with a tiny, tiny daughter. She came to pick up the TV decoder and she began to tell us about this car park where we were waiting. I can remember it being a gravel place at the side of the road but these days, it had been modernised and made to look much nicer although I thought personally that it was a waste of money. This little daughter was running around somewhere very close to the side of the road. I thought that this was extremely dangerous and would cause a great many problems if she wasn’t careful. We were discussing this situation, the driver and me, saying that we’ll never have this job finished by 16:00 at the rate that things were going, so I was trying to think of a way to speed it up.

Later on, I was with a little girl who was my daughter. For some reason, I didn’t have a partner and the girl didn’t have a mother. We were going to a party so she was dressed in a little lilac party frock. We went in, and everyone looked at us. We eventually found a place to sit down. The two of us were chatting to each other. I could hear one or two whispers that people were thinking that maybe it’s wrong for a guy to have a daughter without having a partner there as well, but we didn’t really care all that much. Then my niece appeared. She asked me later if that place was going to be my local from now on, the place where we had that party. I told her that I’d been here before and I know what it’s like. I’ve had a few games of snooker here but it’s rather far out here from home so I don’t really know.

Something else that’s bizarre is the story of the lilac party dress. The nearest thing that I ever had to a daughter was Roxanne, whom I looked after for three years. When her mother and I separated, Roxanne had left some things in the apartment that we had. There were her communion dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and the clothes that she wore on the night of the wedding that she attended. There were also some other items and two extremely large dolls, one of which was almost as big as she was, and I can’t bring myself to give any of them away, sad creature that I am. When my faithful cleaner was sorting out my old suitcases, she came across the party dresses for the two dolls (you can’t go to a party all dressed up yourself and not take your dolls, dressed up too!) and one of them is a lilac party frock.

The story about being a man on his own with a daughter is probably something to do with the fact that I got on better with Roxanne than I did with her mother, and I was sadder about her having to leave than her mother leaving.

Then we moved on from there and I was with this young Italian girl. We were talking about all kinds of different things, having a really interesting chat. Then she took me off into a corner of this car park where we had been with the minibus earlier. There were half a dozen graves there. She pointed out one and said that it was her little brother, then she pointed out another and said that that was her mother. She said that she had had a lot of difficulty coping with the death of her mother because she was so young. I felt really sad for her and put my arm around her to console her, and we began to walk back to the town. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a really nice person, which I didn’t think very much, and she told me that I ought to moderate my language because it is rather coarse, and I ought to take more care of myself etc, my dress and so on, because she said that the two of us might actually make a very nice couple at some point, which pleased me immensely because I liked this girl. We carried on chatting until we came out of one of the back entries on Nantwich Road ready to go down Edleston Road into town. This was another one of these dreams that felt so comfortable and felt so relaxed. I haven’t had one of these dreams for months that had this calm, comfortable and relaxed feelings.

As I said in my dream, I’ve not had one of these dreams for ages. As for Italian people, I love them and all of their emotions. When I first met Nerina, I found it very difficult to come to terms with the emotional side that she presumably inherited from her mother, but having worked with a bunch of Italians in Brussels later on, I just wish that I had met Nerina ten or fifteen years later. But you can’t turn the clock back, no matter how hard you try.

It’s true too that I suppose that I don’t take enough care of myself and my personal appearance, and it’s true that some of my speech is … well … quite emotional. However, you can take the man out of Crewe but you can’t take Crewe out of the man.

So having struggled to do the washing up, I’m off to bed, even though it’s quite early. I can’t keep on going any more this evening, so I hope that I’ll feel better tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling out-of-sorts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time that I was at Balmoral talking to a serving wench, when suddenly she burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
"What’s the matter, girl?" asked the Queen. "Are you feeling hysterical?"
"Och no, Ma’am" replied the girl. "He’s feeling mine!"

Sunday 24th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… evening that was last night. I can’t think of a time when I have been as tired as I was last night. In fact, I can’t remember whether it was three or four times that I fell asleep while I was writing my notes. One thing was sure though, and that was that I fell into bed almost immediately afterwards and that was that.

It wasn’t as if I had done anything special to warrant it last night either. And I’d had a nice, relaxing if painful session at dialysis too. It must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy that I had on Tuesday and Wednesday, I suppose. That does quite a few strange things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Anyway, once in bed, there I stayed. I knew nothing about anything at all until all of … errr … 06:50. And it took twenty minutes for me to raise myself from the Dead. This might sound late to some people, seeing as the alarm is usually set for 06:29, but in fact Sunday is my Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, so it’s still an early start.

First thing was to go to sort myself out in my nice new bathroom, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was one dream about the hospital and the taxis, and dialysis, all of that, but I had rather a rude awakening and the moment that I basically went to grab hold of the dictaphone, the dream evaporated and I could remember nothing whatsoever except a very little of how it began and what was involved in it. It was a huge disappointment when it happens like this.

It’s obviously preying on my mind, all of this, and it’s no surprise. Over the past twelve months or so, I’ve become a slave to the medical service and I can’t see any way out of it, except to go out horizontally. There is no cure in sight, nor is there ever likely to be, and I shall have to just keep on trudging wearily on until I meet the inevitable.

Although I didn’t dictate it, I have a vague memory of being upstairs, looking at the old apartment and how clean and tidy it was, even down to the polished glass in the old oven. And there was someone there saying “you aren’t really dreaming, you know” or “this isn’t a dream, you know” – something like that. There was also a vague recollection of having to go downstairs, and that I’d taken half a dozen steps to the top of the stairs before I realised that I didn’t have my crutches, and I had to send someone to fetch them.

As it happens, I have been specifically banned from entering the apartment upstairs, on pain of suffering the wrath of my faithful cleaner who has done her best to tidy up after me And I am not alone in that interdiction, because a similar ban has been also placed upon the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Interestingly, how many times is that now that I have been dreaming of going somewhere without my crutches? I hope that this is a positive premonition once I start to have my treatment in Rennes. We can but hope.

Eventually, the sleeping beauties on the sofa crawled back to life and I was looking forward to a coffee but the Hound of the Baskervilles had urgent business to which he needed to attend so he dragged his master off outside.

But not before the nurse had taken us unawares yet again. Not quite as early as yesterday, but still early enough. And once more he didn’t hang around.

While I was waiting for everyone to come back, I attended to the erection of the antenna for the maritime data recorder. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain and operate the maritime data recorder for the Port of Granville, a radio transceiver that tracks the movements of the boats and ships in and out of the port and sends them to a Worldwide central control database receiver in Denmark.

When we had all collected in the kitchen, we had a coffee and a chat, and when they went out again, I attended to the assembly of the hi-fi unit. That involved drilling a couple more holes in the rear and the side of the shelf unit so that I could pass the cables through. It didn’t take too long, and we celebrated our success by eating breakfast accompanied by music.

After breakfast, my friend went to empty out the van while I tidied away the tools that I had been using, but we didn’t get very far because the girls turned up. They checked the books to make sure that I hadn’t rearranged them, and then we sat around for a while and had a really good chat as they are going home this afternoon.

Everyone went off later for a late lunch so I came in here to sit down and relax for an hour or so. I needed it.

When my friend came back, having stuck the girls onto the train, I began the baking exercise – a loaf of bread, and a pizza for tea.

Firstly, my new adjustable stool really is the business. Adjusted to the maximum height, sitting down to knead the dough is totally painless. The stool was an excellent purchase.

Secondly, the oven is wicked. Even with the baking time reduced from 55 minutes to 30 minutes, it still burned the top of the bread. It’s now a glorious dark brown instead of the insipid white of the old table-top oven.

As for the pizza, I cooked it for 15 minutes instead of 25 minutes, and even so, it still burned the edge. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

There was a mountain of washing-up to do and that took an age, but now I’m finished. I’ve written my notes and I’m off to bed in a minute. Tomorrow, the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master are leaving, so I’ll be on my own. There are still plenty of things to do, but they will have to be done some other time, and I don’t think that we’ll be able to take the solar panel off the roof of the van, which is a shame.

You can’t win a coconut every time.

But seeing as we have been talking about the new oven and its cooking capabilities … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was thinking that my mother would really be at home with my new oven.
Back many years ago, I remember telling a friend "my mother treats me like a God"
"Why’s that?" he asked.
"Well, every time we came home from school, my mother served me up a burnt offering."

Saturday 23rd August 2025 – AT LONG LAST …

… we finally have the house internet working.

But not for long though, because according to the technician’s report, the cabling is breaking up. They are going to send out yet another engineer on Wednesday to re-wire the internet circuit, so let’s hope that it keeps on working until then.

There are lots of other things in this apartment too that weren’t here yesterday, and I reckon that we can safely say that this furniture removal should be complete tomorrow afternoon. My friends and neighbours (such of whom were present) have been absolute heroes and words cannot describe just how grateful I am for their assistance.

Last night I left the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master lying on the sofa ready to go to sleep, and I carried on in here writing up my notes.

When I’d finished, it took me a good while (but not as long as Thursday night) to summon up the energy to leave the chair, and after having sorted myself out ready for bed, I hit the sack.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but once more it was a turbulent night, not the profound, solid sleep for which I was hoping. Once more, I awoke round about 05:20, but this time, it was 06:00 when I left the bed for a good wash, being careful not to mention Shhh! You Know Who!

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had been discussing boundary revisions down in South Wales. There had been one between Afan Lido and one of the other Welsh football clubs. Afan Lido had been awarded a fair amount of territory. The delegué went back to the main office to collect the ladder because his intention was to begin loading and unloading it soon as quickly as possible so that no-one would have time to lodge any kind of objection to the Court’s decision just now.

There is a very lengthy, and at one moment very controversial story about Port Talbot Athletic and the creation of Afan Lido FC who also play in Port Talbot. However, that was long ago in the past.

There was also that dream about the economies of scale of making giant motorcycles that could travel across the USA with freight etc. Four times the size, four times the power, four times the speed. However, the people behind it decided to secede from the USA to govern themselves, and there was a big battle just outside the town from where they came, and they were overwhelmed and defeated, and the project was abandoned. There were no more of these giant motorcycles.

Even now, I can still see this battle raging and roaring up the high street of the town – a typical Wild West scene with gunmen in the street shooting the baddies off the roofs. But the “four times the size” relates to the dispute that we mentioned the other day between Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Dr Dionysus Lardner about the size of ships and the freight that they can carry.

When those next door awoke, we had a coffee but were surprised by the nurse who came really early. He knocked us out of our stride so much that we both forgot our medication and I even forgot my disgusting drink break.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for a walk and I began to tidy up again in here. And I made really good progress too. We did however hit a major snag with the hi-fi and that will need some work tomorrow.

When everyone came back, we had breakfast, and then my friend went to fetch some things like the Carlsbro combi amp and speaker out of the van and to bring a few other things down from upstairs while I carried on tidying up.

By the time my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, we’d made good progress and there was plenty of space on the floor for more stuff.

The girls arrived just as I was going out. The taxi had come early and we had a good whizz down to Avranches with a very chatty young driver. She dropped us off early and much to my surprise, I was seen quite quickly. My nurse today was Julie the Cook so we had plenty to talk about.

The first needle, I felt nothing at all. It was totally painless. The second absolutely killed me, making me even more convinced that there’s a fault in the implant.

The time was spent watching Llanelli throw away a two-goal lead to go down 4-2. Llanelli will have to play much better than this.

There were the highlights of the rest of last night’s games, and all of that took me up to a quite early departure.

Back here, I saw the efforts that everyone had made this afternoon. My room is full again, and we now have a huge bass stack against the wall. There’s not much more at all to come down, and then there’s the cab of the van to empty. I would really like the solar panel off the roof too, but that will be difficult.

Back in here, I saw the latest internet issues and so I had a very lengthy and unproductive chat with someone on the helpline – probably the worst that I have ever had. But anyway, they are coming to rewire on Wednesday.

While everyone was out, I had tea. Baked potato, breaded quorn fillet and salad. And now I’m off to bed, dog-tired, exhausted, call it what you will. Tomorrow, I’ll finish this off because I really can’t keep going any longer.

But seeing as we have been talking about Port Talbot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to a fancy dress ball there, and met a man, totally naked, with a girl sitting on his shoulders.
"What are you supposed to be?" I asked him
"I’m dressed as a snail" he replied
"And what about the girl on your shoulders?"
"Ohh, she’s Michelle."

Friday 22nd August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DREADFUL …

… day yesterday, things have gone much better, although physically, I’m still quite out of it.

Looking back on what I wrote last night before going to bed, it’s easy for anyone to see how stressed out I was. However, looking back at a few of the previous times that I’ve had chemotherapy both this time and before in 2016, I can see the same patterns, always a day or two later.

The difference has been that at those times, I’ve always been on my own and have been able to take to my bed and there to stay. It’s much more complicated coping with these kinds of chemically-induced emotions when one is amongst others and when things aren’t going correctly.

Chatting to my faithful cleaner a little earlier today, she told me (and I agree with her) that my best course of action should have been to eschew the restaurant last night and slink off to bed ready t fight the good fight the next day. But that’s not really something that one can do when one has company.

Things could hardly have been worse last night though. After I’d finished my notes, I couldn’t move off my chair. I was so stressed out and I just couldn’t calm down. It took me about an hour to be able to leave my chair and another half-hour to make myself ready for bed. God alone knows what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

Mind you, I knew what time it was when I left the bed this morning. It was all of 05:50, and I’d first noticed the time ar 05:20. It actually felt as if I hadn’t been to sleep at all.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen, trying my best not to awaken the sleeping beauties, and began to clear away the devastation that I had mentioned yesterday. My friend awoke soon afterwards and he joined in, and within about half an hour, the kitchen at least was looking more-or-less how I wanted it to be. We’d deliberately postponed coffee until it was done, so we then sat down to a well-earned drink.

The nurse surprised us, but he sorted out my legs and then cleared off. The Hound of the Baskervilles then dragged his master off for a walk, and I carried on with the re-arranging.

When they came back, we had breakfast. I made porridge which, despite being extra-careful, erupted in a volcano yet again. As my friend said to the girls later, "when Eric makes porridge, everyone else gets some too."

We also discussed my new plan for today, which was that nothing else whatever comes downstairs until tomorrow. Today, we concentrate on putting away what is already down here. One thing that did come down though was my bedroom carpet. On a polished wood floor, every time I stood up from my chair, the chair rolled away, my feet slipped and I fell over. The carpet would stop everything slipping and sliding.

While the others had been out, I’d managed to do a lot of work on the stuff on the floor, and so we carried on. It was looking quite well when Alison and Jackie arrived from their digs.

They both fell in love with the kitchen and they liked the bathroom. In fact, they liked everything about my little apartment.

Once the guided tour was over, they asked what they could do to help. I set them a task, TO PROVE THAT THEY ARE WORTHY, which was to organise my kitchen and put everything away.

That’s a job rather like asking Hercules to clean the Augean Stables, but they tackled it willingly. I probably shan’t know where anything is now, but it does look beautiful.

At that point, I packed them off out for lunch. I had a disgusting drink break and I was going to have an hour or so of rest, but first Rosemary wanted a chat, and then so did my friend from Newport in Shropshire who is handling my project over in the UK.

When they came back later, Alison and Jackie decided that they would sot out my books, so my friend and I devoted ourselves to the Threading of the Electrical Cables. We were trying to drill holes through a chipboard panel but gave up when we saw that it was armoured with kevlar. In the end, we discarded it and substituted a light hardboard panel as a kick panel under my desk. That was much easier.

We had to thread a few cables around the living room, so the girls helped us manoeuvre … "PERSONoeuvre" – ed … some of the furniture around.

Later on, everyone went for tea and I was left alone with The Hound of the Baskervilles. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, there was something on it, so I must have gone to sleep at some point. I must have dozed off for a minute and I was back talking to one of the drivers from the taxi company that I use, the boss, and we were talking about all strange and weird things that made no sense whatsoever. One of the girls who was standing nearby asked me “is his name Alexi”? However, I couldn’t think of what his name was so I didn’t really say very much. But it was a conversation that didn’t last very long but it was talking really about nothing that made any sense.

Firstly, since when have I ever said anything that has ever made any sense? Secondly, that dream tells me that I have several things going on right now that are preying on my mind, and how I wish that I hadn’t. They aren’t things that I can resolve either, unfortunately.

Next thing was to begin the installation of the big office computer and screen. That’s going to take quite a while because there is so much of it to install. There is also a mountain of cables to untangle so I began that too.

At about 19:30, I knocked off for tea. I wasn’t hungry but they will only moan at me at dialysis if I don’t eat anything, so I had pasta and veg tossed in olive oil and black pepper, with grated cheese.

There was football afterwards, LLanelli v LLansawel. LLanelli roared into a two-goal lead, but Llansawel slowly pegged them back to 2-2 and then the computer froze, so I shall have to watch the rest tomorrow at dialysis.

By now, my friend was back so we had a chat, and then he went off to join The Hound of the Baskervilles on the sofa while I wrote up my notes.

And now, in a better frame of mind than last night, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow and hopefully, while I’m out, the others will help the internet engineer fix the fault on our line. Then we will be back in business.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Jackie and Alison rearranging my books … "well, one of us has" – ed … I noticed that somehow, there were two books of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy together in one place, and the third on its own somewhere else.
"Did you move the odd one to next to the other two?" asked my friend later
"Oh no" I replied. "I didn’t dare."

Thursday 21st August 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing at all has gone right? I’m in the middle of one right now and I’m going to have a major sense of humour failure before long. It just isn’t my day at all.

Last night was quite nice though. After everyone had left after tea I sat down, wrote my notes, did what I had to and even managed fifteen minutes of tidying up. It was quite late when I eventually went to bed, but I didn’t mind at all. I was enjoying myself in my new abode.

Once I finally made it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but unfortunately not for long. At 05:05 I was wide awake and by 05:30 I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep, so I called it a night and left the bed.

Unfortunately, there was nothing whatever on the dictaphone. I know that I must have been tired after my marathon 48 hours of the last couple of days with just a few hours sleep, but it really must have been a very deep sleep into which I slipped.

So instead, I had a good wash and scrub up, trying to avoid mentioning Emilie the Cute Consultant in case the boss of the dialysis centre finds out and blows a gasket, had my medication and then did some more tidying up. The kitchen was now looking quite tidy, which was lovely.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master in, we had coffee and a chat, and then I made yet more strides with the tidying up while the two of them went out for a walk.

While I was at it, I rang up about the internet. It doesn’t seem to be a fault on the line, so they think that it might be a bad connection here. They will send out a technician to check it, but he can’t come until Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, we managed to arrange some kind of temporary internet that might keep us going for a day or two

When everyone came back, we had a very late breakfast, where I discovered all about just how powerful my new microwave oven is when I went to make my porridge. Consequently, I had to spend ten minutes cleaning the oven, which did not make me feel any better.

Once breakfast was finally finished, the tidying up restarted and I began by trying to make enough space to bring my bass stack down from upstairs, on the grounds that it will be farthest away from the door and so much easier to bring in without there being any obstructions. However, everyone else had other ideas of what needed doing next, so while I was busy putting away the stuff that I’d taken off the floor, everyone else was filling the space with other things.

Nevertheless, we soon managed to work out a rhythm of how we were doing to work out everything, but with a very late start, the cleaner came in to sort me out, ready for dialysis long before I was ready.

Once she’d left, I began to prepare the stuff for the washing up of what had accumulated but the taxi driver beat me to it, so I left a mountain of stuff all over the kitchen ready to do when I returned home.

My arrival at Avranches coincided with the arrival of five other people so as usual, I was the last person to be coupled up. I almost had heart failure when they told me that I had gained so much weight that I needed to stay for four hours, especially as I’d starved myself and hardly drunk anything at all since Monday.

However, they realised that they had miscalculated, and reset the machine for three and a half, which eased my plight somewhat.

The dietician came to see me about an expired prescription, and the doctor came to see how Paris went, but one glimmer of good news is that The University Hospital of Rennes ‘phoned me. It is indeed licensed to administer Bandamustine, and I can go there on Tuesday 16th September rather than to Paris. That sounds extremely optimistic

While I was there, I made good use of the internet right through until it was finally time to go, but as you might expect, not only was I the last to be uncoupled, there were so many problems with the people being uncoupled before me that I had to wait nearly half an hour before the nurse could attend to me.

When I was finally free to go, the taxi was there waiting but there was someone else to travel with me, but we had to wait ten minutes for her to finish and be ready, and then she lived fifteen minutes down the road in the opposite direction.

Consequently, it was 19:30 when I arrived back here, far too late to do the washing up, the pile of which had grown considerably during the afternoon.

Still, out we went and met up with the girls who had come down from Brussels and Cologne to help out for the weekend. I’d booked a table at a restaurant, completely forgetting that there were several steps down into the building and no handrail, so I almost fell in, and then spent the whole of the meal being stressed out about how I was going to climb back out again.

The meals that the other three had were delicious. My first salad came with ham on it, and the second one came with eggs in it so by this time I had long since given up all hope of anything going my way at all.

With some help, the climb out of the restaurant wasn’t as bad as I was fearing, but the hundred yards up a steep hill to the car was far too much and that stressed me out even more. I should never ever have considered trying it. I made it though, but I won’t ever make it again.

Back in here yet again, I just took one look and the huge mess in the kitchen, that seemed to have grown even more, and I gave up in despair. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. My one pet hate is waking up in the morning to a pile of dirty dishes, and this huge heap in front of me has depressed me beyond all measure.

Calling it a night, and hoping that I’ll feel better in the morning, I came into my room to write my notes. I picked up a bag of things that had been left on my desk, and knocked off a huge pile of other stuff that had been abandoned on there.

There are several other things that I could mention but it would just depress me even more, and probably depress you lot too. So I’ll call it a day and go to bed, in the hope that I’ll feel better in the morning. Although how I’m going to cope with all of this washing-up I really don’t know as yet.

But I shall really have to stop being so stressed out. It’s a really bad week for me, with chemotherapy, the trip to Paris and everything. It’s hardly surprising that I’m just totally out of it all right now. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will help. Who knows?

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad luck today … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of being in Sheffield when the boiler at the vegan tomato soup factory exploded as I walked past.
"That was your lucky day" said a friend.
"Not really" I replied. "The only implement that I could find was a fork."

EPIC HALL

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

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

Monday 1st September 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY SICK …

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

Saturday 30th August 2025 (… continued …) – SO STARTING AGAIN …

Saturday 30th August 2025 – THESE LITTLE ATTACKS …

Friday 29th August 2025 – I HAD FORGOTTEN …

Thursday 28th August 2025 – YET ANOTHER MORNING …

Wednesday 27th August 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

Sunday 24th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Saturday 23rd August 2025 – AT LONG LAST …

Friday 22nd August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DREADFUL …

Thursday 21st August 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

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