Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Monday 17th August 2026 – THESE UNHAPPY, UNCERTAIN …

… days are continuing, piling up one on top of another, and I’ve no idea when it’s all going to end.

Last night, I actually managed to complete my notes (the first time for ages), although I ended up really late going to bed. And although I went to sleep quickly enough, I was back awake again at some point later.

It was one of those awakenings that I didn’t really feel. I can’t remember my eyes opening, but they just were. I wondered how long they had been open before I realised.

Again, it was an early morning of drifting off to sleep and then being awake again and not recognising which was the waking bit and which was the sleeping bit because I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I went off to sort myself out in the bathroom and even to have a shave in case I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant today at dialysis. Then back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night.

I’d been invited to take over the management of a struggling football club in Scotland, so I went up there, and the first thing that I wanted to see was the football club’s accounts, but the accounts were heavily edited, and when I looked at the spreadsheet for the other clubs, it seemed that this was a thing that every club was doing. It was simply editing its accounts, and where there should have been a figure, there was just a yellow blob, so I had no idea exactly of what I was expected to take over and manage and how I was going to do it. There was much more to this, but the alarm went off and it evaporated immediately.

This is reminiscent of what’s happening at Greenock Morton right now. Their major sponsor has “financial issues” right now and, over the last three months, has failed to pay most of the sponsorship money that is due. Consequently, half of the players have left the club, and the club has been obliged to recruit players who, to be honest, aren’t up to the challenge of life in the Scottish Championship.

The nurse turned up as usual and gave me the treatment on my legs and feet. And after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once more, he’s steering clear of controversy today and making sure that he doesn’t provoke anyone into taking an issue with him. Maybe he has had his nose bitten off more times than he cares to remember.

After all that, I came in here to make a start on everything. and there was plenty to do too. When I’d finished the more usual things, I had the radio to deal with.

First task was to review the programme for the coming weekend and make sure that it’s correct. Then I could send it off for inclusion in this week’s stream.

The second task was to carry on with the one that I’d started at the weekend. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that of this almost-two-hour soundtrack, I extracted five particular selections of music that made up over fifty-eight minutes, and this morning, I segued them all together.

The joints are absolutely excellent, and now it sounds just like one continuous performance, which is always what I’m aiming for with these concerts.

After that, there was even time to begin to write the speech for it. And that’s well over half-done now. It won’t take long to finish it now, and I can move on to something more important.

By now, it was midday and time to prepare myself for dialysis. I had to hunt down a few things and then wander off into the kitchen to sort out a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

My cleaner came along soon and helped me apply my anaesthetic, and then she put away the clothes that I’d washed on Saturday. They’d washed really well too.

After she left, I had to wait for the taxi, so I curled up on a kitchen chair and slumped over the dining table and drifted off into some comfortable place somewhere in the surreal. And what made it even more enjoyable was that the taxi was late. It arrived at 13:20, which meant that for a good forty-five minutes, I’d had a nice little snooze.

Today, I was the only passenger, so we arrived in Avranches just before 14:00. I was taken to my little room and installed, and I was dealt with comparatively quickly. By 14:20 I was up and running.

There was football to watch today – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Trefelin BGC, another newly promoted club.

Although the score of 6-0 to the Nomads makes it look like a very one-sided game, Trefelin had several moments of their own. The big difference was that the Nomads were much more clinical in front of goal, with Indonesian international Joe Simatupang Ferguson scoring a hat trick and Egyptian Hussein Mehasseb scoring two.

But credit to Trefelin, who kept on battling away. They never threw in the towel and were still on the attack even at the final whistle.

After that game, there was time to watch the first 35 minutes or so of the Hwlffordd v Penybont game. Hwlffordd have had a dreadful season so far, playing two and losing two, but Penybont have got off to a flyer.

By the time I had to close down the laptop, Hwlffordd were already one goal down.

Once more, no doctor came to see me today, and even worse, the nurse was obliged to finish my session ten minutes early because she had two other patients besides me who needed compressing, and everyone was due to finish at the same time. I wasn’t very happy about leaving here 300 grams overweight, especially as there’s a three-day gap until the next session on Thursday.

My driver was waiting for me when I came out, but we had to wait ten minutes for the lady who lives in Sartilly to finish. She was coming home with us, and only when she was safely on board our vehicle could we depart.

Granville, as usual, was a total mess. Most of the town centre was closed due to the annual braderie when the shops set out everything that they want to move on, sometimes at ridiculously cheap prices.

The Air-Sea Rescue helicopter was on the Pointe du Roc today when we drove past.

Rumour has it that it had rescued a couple of people stranded on one of the Isles de Chausey by the very high tide. It was now unloading them so that it could fly back to its hangar at the airstrip up the coast.

Incidentally, the photo of the helicopter was one that I’d taken IN NOVEMBER 2021 when I’d seen that woman commit suicide.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me back into the apartment, and I was certainly grateful. I’d had an exhausting session today. She stuck a disgusting drink into my hand, and after she left, I made tea – a bowl of cheese salad with rice and veg.

Back in here, I began to write out yesterday’s notes, but I must have crashed out at some point because I suddenly noticed that it was 22:15 and I’d not even written a dozen lines. I was feeling absolutely dreadful at that point so I posted on line what I’d written and crawled into bed. I can finish off those notes tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about helicopters … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish in a previous existence will remember the day I flew in a helicopter. It was a prize offered in a free draw by the new Intermarché in Pionsat.
There were several of us on board, and the pilot announced "complete and absolute silence on board is essential. Anyone who speaks or even makes a noise will be fined €100."
We flew around for ten minutes and then he started to perform some aerobatics. We were thrown around in the sky, but still, everyone kept silent.
"That was amazing" said the pilot. "You lot are the first to withstand the test."
"Well" said a little old man sitting in the corner "I was going to say something when my wife fell out, But €100 is €100"

Friday 14th August 2026 – WHAT A BIZARRE …

… night that was last night!

It was one of those strange nights where nothing seemed real at all, and I don’t have a clue about what was going on.

Although I wasn’t feeling much like it, I actually managed to finish and post on line my notes from yesterday. I don’t know where I found that strength and energy, that’s for sure. And after the notes, I had a few things to do. It can’t have been much short of midnight by the time that I crawled into bed.

Once in bed, I remember nothing at all about going to sleep. Usually, I have some kind of idea as to whether I went to sleep quickly or whether it took a long time, but not last night.

Whatever it was, it can’t have been for long. I awoke because of another mega-coughing fit, but I couldn’t be bothered to check the time, so I’ve no idea what time it was. And then after that, I had no idea what was going on. I know that I coughed a lot, but whether that was in a dream or not, I don’t know

In the past, there have been a few evenings and nights where I was never really sure of when I was awake or when I was asleep, and this one was certainly one of the best examples of that.

One thing that I do know for sure is that I had another one of these dramatic awakenings when I sit bolt upright. Although it was dark, I checked the time and found it to be 06:19. Still dark! How times have changed over the last four weeks. Anyway, I took full advantage of this and had my feet firmly on the floor of my bedroom when the alarm went off at 06:29 so that I could claim an early start.

Having my feet on the floor is one thing, being up and about is something else completely different. It took me quite a while to negotiate my way into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day. But eventually I was washed and dressed, and I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

I was in the middle of Crewe with a friend of mine, and we were looking around at the shops. I was saying that when you live here all the time, you don’t notice the changes. Gradually, one shop moves, another one closes down, something takes over, and it keeps on going like that. But if, like me, you’ve been away from Crewe for well over thirty years, I immediately notice the difference. We were discussing this, and there were these two men standing nearby us, tall, blond and in raincoats drinking coffee. I happened to mention something about Eastern Europe, so this guy stuck a coffee in my hand, one of these two guys, and a piece of money. I looked at it, and at first I thought that it was Croatia, but when I looked closer, it was Poland. Anyway, these two guys had cleared off. The coffee that he gave me was disgusting, and I don’t know how anyone could drink it. Anyway, we carried on walking and we bumped into these two guys again. They told us that they had heard us talking about Eastern Europe, and one guy seemed to fasten onto me and the other seemed to fasten onto my friend. The one with me said “come with me,” so I followed him and we had a chat about different things and ended up in the police station. We went up several flights of stairs and at the top under the eaves were a few bedrooms. He asked me what I thought about this and I replied “it’s a little more comfortable than a cell, isn’t it?”. He had loads of interesting books and papers, and I was having a read of some of them. Then, he dropped the coffee that he had made all over his most important papers and had to run off downstairs with this paper to try to save it. Then we went back out onto the streets where he met a few people whom he knew and said “hello” to them. We were just walking around and walking around until we were out on the edge of the town. Then he said “come and meet my mother” so we went back into town and met the people to whom we’d been talking just now. He asked one “is she in?” and this woman replied “yes”, so he went into a building and I followed him, and we went up these creaking, rickety stairs, each stair having a huge flight to it. It was more like mountaineering than climbing stairs. He just walked into this dingy room where this little old lady was sitting. I followed in, and this woman had this old black cat. I stroked the cat and picked her up, and I began to talk to the woman about my cats.

The first part of the dream is certainly true. For someone who knew the town intimately after all these years as a taxi driver, every time I see a photograph of the town, I have to look it up to see where it is. Crewe is nothing at all like I remember it.

As for the two guys, even in the dream, they are the type of people who stand out a mile in any crowd and have “Police” written all over them. I wonder what their interest in my friend and me might have been.

And even now, I can see the interior of this dingy building, with all of the notices written by disgruntled tenants talking about the dangers of living in this building, the stairs being just one. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first came to Granville in 2017, I stayed for a week in a house that had stairs like that.

The British Government was planning on taking some kind of action against another country for some reason and was busy out there trying to drum up allies. I was with a friend of mine and we were having a chat about this, noticing that not a single country had rallied round to whatever cause it was that the UK was trying to fight, and the battleship that they had sent out to sea in an effort to make some kind of spectacle to attract the people was just sitting there in the open doom, I think. Then, it was announced that the Queen was going to hold a garden party at Windsor Castle on one of the days that this marine event was going to take place, so everyone was far too busy laughing at the complete failure of the British to actually go ahead and do something concrete about this

This story is somewhat along the lines of a discussion that I was having yesterday with the taxi driver who brought me home. Regardless of your feelings about Brexit (and mine are still as strong as they were in 2016), the days of the independent nation-state are long over. With aggressive globalisation and selfish power-grabs, you have to be part of a powerful economic alliance to survive these days, or the big boys will pick you off one by one.

I know that we were in our car planning to go somewhere, and we set out. My friend noticed that we had no warning lights whatsoever and wondered what else in the electrical circuit had broken down. I wanted to push on and get to where we were going, but he insisted on stopping to try to find out what this electrical problem was and to see whether we could repair it.

This story could relate to almost anything that I’ve ever done in the past involving motor vehicles. Back in the old days when things weren’t as strict as they are these days, I shaved all kinds of corners off the road traffic regulations and done other things that I wouldn’t even dream of doing these days

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to see to my legs and feet. She’d been doing her accounts last night because tomorrow is her last working day this month, and she needed my health card. However, because my 100% disability ran out at the end of July, the card was no longer valid. She asked me to have my cleaner sorted out today and she’d deal with my card tomorrow.

After she left, I went to make my breakfast, and while eating, I read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, apart from banging the drum for “England”, he’s steering well-clear of controversy today. That’s a shame, because I’ll have nothing to moan about.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then suddenly, I awoke and saw that it was 11:05. I must have dropped off to sleep without even realising it, and I’d been gone for about an hour. With the wretched night that I’d had last night, it’s no surprise that I’d gone to sleep again. However, it looks as if we’re having a return to the bad old days of pre-dialysis when I’d go off for an impromptu and unexpected sleep at the drop of a hat at any old time of day.

Once I was awake, I carried on with what I was doing, and when I’d finished, I attacked the radio notes, and despite the usual interruptions of a disgusting drink and midday medication period and the arrival of my friendly neighbourhood cleaner to do her stuff, not only had I managed to finish and have the notes ready for preparation, but I’d also found some time to sort out the next programme too.

The next programme after the one I did today is going to be a concert. I only have an hour for my radio programmes, and for this concert, I have almost two hours’ worth of music and introduction, and I need to cut it down to about fifty-eight minutes so there will be room for my commentary on the front.

So far, after careful snipping and editing, I’ve got it down to about fifty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, and it will end up even smaller than that once I segue the five pieces of music that I have selected.

Then it was teatime, and the usual sausage, chips and baked beans with black pepper and cheese, followed by two of my slices of home-made fruit bread

When the tea things were cleared and washed away, it was time for the football. Airbus UK Broughton v Rhydaman. These two promoted sides are having very different fortunes in the JD Cymru League. Airbus seems to be doing OK – they’ve already beaten their points tally and number of victories from when they were in the league the last time a few years ago. Rhydaman, on the other hand, are struggling near the foot of the table with just one point.

This was another game played at a frenetic place where I ended up out of breath just watching it. And Airbus had a lovely spell of ten minutes, shortly before the half-time whistle, that I really enjoyed watching.

All in all, Airbus won 2-0, but that doesn’t reflect their superiority. They had two goals disallowed for offside and hit the woodwork three times as well.

Rhydaman also had a glorious opportunity. An attacker, just outside the penalty area, was in possession of the ball when the Airbus defence just froze. It looked as if the attacker had a week to make up his mind what to do with the ball and, in the end, his shot hit the woodwork with a shot so loud that you could hear it here in the apartment without the aid of a TV camera.

Even better, there are two live football matches to be broadcast tomorrow. Y Barri v Cardiff Metro – a win for the Mets will see them back on top of the table – and Caernarfon Town v Colwyn Bay. That game last season attracted the fifth-highest league crowd ever, and I imagine (or hope) that it will be another bumper crowd with the two best-supported teams in the league, only an hour or so away from each other, facing off against each other.

When everything had finished, it was 23:15, so later than usual, I headed for the hills. Here’s hoping that I can have a decent sleep for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about policemen … "well, one of us has" – ed … two policemen were called to investigate a shooting.
Shortly afterwards, they radioed back to the station "some old woman here has just shot her husband. Apparently he walked on the kitchen floor while she was cleaning it"
"Have you arrested her?" asked the dispatcher.
"No" replied the policeman.
"Why not?"
"The kitchen floor’s still wet"

Wednesday 12th August 2026 – WE HAVE HAD …

… a partial solar eclipse here this evening.

Only a partial one, though. I reckon that the sun was about half-obscured by the moon, nothing like the total eclipse in 1999 that regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier version will recall that we went to see and photograph.

For many people, this eclipse today was a mind-blowing event, but to me and presumably everyone who was with us for those couple of days, it was a disappointment compared to 1999.

And seeing as we have been talking about disappointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … last night was something of a disappointment too. I was in bed later than I would have liked to have been, and it took a few minutes to go off to sleep while I sucked my menthol and eucalyptus sweet. And it wasn’t long before I awoke, although I have no idea of what time it was. I simply didn’t look.

What awoke me was another fit of coughing, and it carried on after I awoke. But then I remembered the second menthol and eucalyptus sweet, so I put that in my mouth. At that point, I began to cough, and, would you believe, I swallowed my sweet. That was a tragedy.

With nothing else better to do, I just lay there, trying my best to find a comfortable position, and that’s how I stayed until the alarm went off. It took me, as usual, a good few minutes to find the courage to stand up, but eventually I was in the bathroom sorting myself out.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

I was with Seren and we were on the high school playing fields, and Vivienne was there. The three of us were watching a hockey game that was taking place. We noticed that one of the girls—in fact, a couple of girls — was not really of the same standard as a few of the others. One of them was the left-wing attack. At half-time, the coach came over to us and asked Seren if she wanted to play for the second half. She went onto the field when they started again, and she really did make quite a difference to her side once she was on there. When they finished, we decided that we’d head for home and have something to eat.

This is another one of those dreams that has a story behind it, but it’s a story that, right now, the World is not ready to hear. It’s something that is quite concurrent.

I’ve no idea why, but I can still see the ground even now. And it wasn’t the playing field at Buchan Grove as I expected it to be and where I once went as our school’s observer to watch our Grammar School girls’ team in a hockey tournament in 1972, but the playing fields at Shavington County Primary School where I spent six years and I didn’t even get time off for good behaviour.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. She was preparing herself for an inspection of some kind of food hall somewhere, and she described some of the things that she needed to do. I decided that I’d let her get on with it, without involving me.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And here we go yet again. He tells us that "in Normandy, as we shall see presently, English ideas probably prevailed, as was but natural, to a considerable extent."

Much as I hate doing it, I shall have to remind him that in the period about which we are talking, the Norman Conquest of England was quite a recent event, and thus it would seem to me that it was the Normans who brought over the ideas to England, rather than the other way around.

When he’s talking about various French cathedrals, he tells us that "we cannot fail to consider them either as direct imitations of English structures or at least as the working of a common element in the Norman mind on both sides of the water."

After breakfast, I came back in here. Outside it was already twenty-four degrees, and it was pretty much that in here. I made sure that the windows in here and the living room were fully open before I started work.

There were several things that needed doing so I did them to get them out of the way, and then I started on the notes from yesterday. They took longer than they ought to have done too, basically because, once more, these waves of sleep washed over me several times. Although I managed to stay awake and avoid crashing head-first into the desk like yesterday, there certainly were periods where my concentration disappeared completely.

Having finally finished the notes and posted them online, I began to think about the radio programme. There were still three or four pieces of music that I needed to find, so I spent more than just a little while hunting them down. And when I had everything that I needed, I chose the songs, reformatted and re-edited them.

Once they were all ready, I paired them and segued them. There was even time to start to write the notes before I knocked off for tea. That was a busy afternoon, that was. But, at least, the menthol and eucalyptus sweets had some effect on the cough, and I shall try them again.

During tea, which was rice with veg and a taco roll followed by pineapple and ice cream, it was gradually going darker and darker, and the sky was full of this grey-green light. It didn’t go completely dark as it had in 1999, which was a shame, but you could see that something unusual was happening. When I was going back into my bedroom to carry on work, one of my neighbours was just outside my window with his camera, on his way to find a good spec.

We had a good chat for about ten minutes, and he asked me if I would like to come outside for a view of the eclipse. He offered to help me. However, I declined because my bedroom is pretty well orientated. I only have to stick my head out of the window and I can see the sun setting over the sea.

And that’s what I did. And it was really bright, so I only looked for a second or two. But squinting my eyes, I could see the moon half-obscuring the sun, not completely as in 1999. So having seen it, I could carry on working. As I said earlier, I’m not going to celebrate this eclipse like we did the one in 1999. That really was something special

Back in here, there were a few things to finish off, and then I started to write the notes for the day. However, I’m not quite sure what happened, but after about half an hour or so, I seemed to have ground to a halt, and the next thing that I knew, I was sitting in my chair with the work unfinished and it was 22:15. I must have crashed out for an hour at least.

Once I awoke, I was in no mood to carry on with my work. I was wasted. And so I went to take my medication, rescue a few more menthol and eucalyptus sweets for the night, brush my teeth and prepare myself for bed. I’m not doing anything else tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about swallowing … "well, one of us has" – ed … the film CARRY ON COLUMBUS received a few stinking reviews when it was released.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Anyway, Carry on Columbus received some stinking reviews when it first came out, but, funnily enough, it’s actually one of my favourites.
One of the best exchanges in the film is when one of the young girls was leaning over the deck rails looking at the sharks in the water.
"I’d be careful there, miss" said one of the passing seamen. "They’ll eat you if you fall in that water."
"Would they swallow me whole?" she asks out of interest.
"I don’t think so" replied the man. "I believe that they spit that out."

Tuesday 11th August 2026 – FOR A LITTLE …

… while, things seemed to be going better today than they had been yesterday, not that that was ever likely to be difficult.

So having abandoned my notes last night, I was in bed by 22:00 or thereabouts, but it took an absolute age to go off to sleep, despite how tired I was feeling. And once I was finally asleep, it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but the car park light was still on, so it was before 02:30.

Once awake, I lay there in a daze, drifting in and out of sleep from time to time and not being absolutely sure of which was which.

When the alarm went off, I was on my way to pick up an old American schoolbus so that I could start doing my round of delivering alcohol now that Prohibition has ended. But I didn’t get very far into that before the alarm awoke me.

A friend of mine, Rhys, who is a regular reader of this rubbish, actually owns an old school bus that he is slowly converting into a mobile home. And appropriately, his “day job” is driving a school bus for his local education authority in South Carolina, not that Prohibition figures all that much in whatever he does.

At that moment, I was feeling rather wretched, and as usual, it took me a while to summon up the energy to leave the bed and head into the bathroom. And having spent a lot of time sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to see what else might be on the dictaphone.

Some friends from school and I had decided that we’d go out for a Christmas meal, so someone had booked eight or nine places at this kind-of restaurant place. I remember going there last year for a Christmas meal, and it wasn’t very satisfactory, mainly because the menu wasn’t properly prepared and there were bits here, bits there and bits somewhere else, so I thought that this evening, I’d go to have a look at the menu. One of my friends came in with me, and there was another one waiting by the door for someone else. So we went to look at this menu, and sure enough, the twenty-second of the month, the menu still hadn’t been properly prepared. I was having to try to argue with the staff about whether “this” would be available on Christmas Day or whether “that” would be available and what other options they would have for someone whose diet is pretty restricting. But this restaurant was one of these ones that was always in the dark and gloomy, and it’s very upmarket with a pub bar right in the centre of the room. They are trying their best to run it as a pub and restaurant, but it’s going to be difficult to try to combine the two.

Where this restaurant is situated, I have no idea. It doesn’t ring any kind of bell with me. However, I have been to plenty of pubs and restaurants where hasty recruiting, crammed venues and an excess of clients, followed by a “certain group” of kids from our school who were determined to spike the enjoyment of as many people as possible, led to unsatisfactory Christmas meals.

Isabelle the Nurse zoomed in, and I told her about the confusion yesterday at the dialysis centre. She was frankly appalled by the laxity over the question of my weight. But then again, she’s a former accident and emergency nurse, so the rules about recording medication, etc., are obviously much more strict there.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, once more, I actually didn’t. I was again caught short and ended up reading page after page of research. Not that it brought me much nearer what I was hoping to find, but I hoped that I’d be making progress somehow, somewhere.

Back in here, there were the usual things that needed doing, and they took some time today. And then, when they were out of the way, I could start to make my plans for this radio programme.

One thing that I needed was some music, so I had to search in all the likely and then the unlikely places on the internet until I found it. And that took hours. Not in the least because between about 11:50 and 13:00, I crashed out completely and definitively.

Even worse, ten minutes later, I crashed out again, and my face slammed right into the keyboard and my desk. And how that hurt! But at least the flow of adrenaline that resulted from the crash seemed to awaken me, and I carried on from there.

One thing that I learned was that either yesterday or the day before, not once but twice, my web pages have been used as a reference to answer a question in ChatGPT. I forget now how many times that has happened, but it seems that my tactic of introducing well-known but long-forgotten facts from old books into the internet seems to be paying off.

At 14:00 I had a visitor. Madame la Présidente of the Residents’ Committee came to see me. Apparently she’s put her apartment up for sale and is moving to St Nazaire to be near her family. That’s a shame because she’s actually quite nice and I can’t ever thank her enough for tipping me the wink about this apartment coming up for sale. I was really grateful for her help.

She brought me some pineapple, which was nice of her, and she stayed for about an hour or so while we chatted about her move, life in this building, the new occupiers we’ve had these last few months, etc.

After she left, my faithful cleaner came down to do her stuff. First thing that she did, though, was to chase me into the shower. Showering these days is much easier than it used to be. Once she’s organised the fittings, etc., I can go in and come out of the shower on my own. I’ve managed that now for the last three or four showers.

Interestingly, the other times that I’ve come out of the shower, I’ve had to come out backwards. Today, though, without even thinking about it, I came out forwards and even dried myself standing up, without having to sit on a chair.

After my cleaner left, I went into the kitchen to make two bread rolls and then came back in here to carry on.

At teatime today, I had the other half of my broccoli stalk soup from last week, with those tiny pasta elbows and my two piping hot fresh bread rolls. And as usual, it was absolutely delicious. I really shall have to make some more at some point, although I need to start eating the florets. I seem to have gathered quite a mountain of those over a period of time.

Having been given some pineapple earlier, for pudding I had pineapple with homemade ice cream. And that was what I call ‘really delicious’ too. I’m hoping that it will be just as nice tomorrow evening when I can have a second helping.

After tea, I washed up and then came back in here to do some more work, and then I began to write my notes. I’d done about half an hour, I suppose, and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 22:15. I’d crashed out in my chair yet again.

When I looked at what I had written, it seemed to degenerate towards the end, and I was typing all kinds of nonsense that bore no resemblance to what had gone on. It was full of spelling mistakes and typing errors too. That was when I decided to delete whatever didn’t look right, post the rest online and then clear off to bed.

Falling asleep on the porcelain horse didn’t help much either, so it was quite late when I finally crawled into bed – much later than I’d been hoping. I’ll never catch up on my beauty sleep like this.

One interesting thing, though, was that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that I wrote about menthol and eucalyptus. While I was rummaging around in the drawers in the kitchen earlier today, I came across a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets that I bought years ago from LIDL.

When I went to bed tonight, I opened a packet and took a couple with me to bed. Once I was in bed, I put one of the sweets in my mouth and sucked it for what seemed like ages. And to my surprise, my coughing immediately subsided. This is something worth knowing and remembering.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve been confusing my own chatbot again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … these chatbots have absolutely no sense of humour.
Last night, I asked my chatbot "what’s the difference between Nigel Garbage and Count Binface?"
My chatbot then set out to give me a huge list of differences, supported by evidence and links.
"No" I replied. "one is a comedy figure, a parody of a politician who has turned politics into a comedy show, who isn’t to be taken seriously and shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Parliament."
"And the other?" asked my chatbot.
"Oh, he’s a man disguised as a dustbin."

Monday 10th August 2026 – DON’T BE SURPRISED …

… if I fail to complete today’s notes before I’m forced to retire early to bed.

This afternoon, I have been to dialysis, as you might expect, and the nurse who dealt with me is one of the longest-serving nurses there. But she’s one of these “minimalist” people who does as little as she possibly can while still completing her assigned tasks. It’s quite true that her approach can save an awful lot of time, and for that, it should be applauded. However, it also leaves room for some glaring errors, and we’ve had one of those today.

And for a change, my luck was well and truly in, so I’m not complaining in the least. Far from it.

Last night was difficult, though. I was hours late finishing off what needed finishing, and it was well after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and crawled into bed.

For some reason, it was really difficult to go to sleep, and when I finally did, it wasn’t for long, because at about 01:20, I was wide awake again. And there I was for a few hours too before I finally managed to go off to sleep.

When I awoke next time, I wondered what time it was. I thought that I’d better go and have a look, but just at that moment, the alarm beat me to it. It took a few minutes as usual to bring myself round into the Land of the Living, and then I headed off to the bathroom for a good scrub-up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today. I have to do my best to look pretty, even if I don’t feel like it.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe so that I could find out what’s been going on during the night.

We were doing some renovation work on a hospital. The original builder had not done a very good job at all. There were quite a few early mediaeval pieces of sculpture on show, and when we measured the dates with the periods, it seemed that there was plenty of ancient British craftsmanship going on between 375 AD and 450 AD. But when we wanted to know where this had come from, we saw that a message was posted on his page saying that it just came from various research following an investigation of the WORKS OF BEDE, which was no help at all. But then we were there in the afternoon, trying to take this wheel off this Land Rover, and he drove by, extremely closely, missing him by a couple of millimetres, I should think. We wondered if we should report him for the harassment of our diggings first.

You can see in this dream the influence of Charles Freeman’s book that we are currently reading and also my theory of ethnic cleansing by the Anglo-Saxons – about 450 AD was when the Anglo-Saxons began to arrive en masse.

There was something else about a film that we had been making, an old man and me. After a lot of time, expense and money, the film was about to see the light of day. The old man had now retired into the countryside, so I remember asking him if he was going to come up to London for the premiere or whether he was going to wait until it reached the local cinema near where he lives. He expressed some doubt or opinion as to whether the film would last until it reached any kind of cinema near him

There have been several films like that where they have underperformed so dramatically that they have been taken off general release before they have gone very far around the circuit. Probably the most famous of these is Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

There was a third thing about a girl who was playing football. She was right-back for some kind of team, but every time the ball came down the left flank, she would naturally gravitate towards the centre of the penalty are, which meant that out on the right wing where she had been, it was an undefended zone and the team was being cut to shreds through there

This dream is very reminiscent of a football match that I saw at the Stade Louis Dior in Granville. In this case, it was a male left-back who was being drawn inside, and just as I was discussing this with another spectator, a beautiful crossfield ball found the unmarked right-winger, who just cut inside and scored a simple goal.

Isabelle the Nurse came as usual, and she noticed my three new herb plants, now in jars of water. She was pleased that I was taking good care of them

After she left, I could make my breakfast, and while I was eating, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, in theory I could, but I was sidetracked up yet another blind alley, looking up obscure architectural terms. Some kind of glossary and maybe even pictures would have been a really great help with this book.

Right at the very beginning of the book, he told us "The present work is not illustrated ; there was at one time an intention of adding engravings, but the idea was relinquished, as to illustrate it completely was altogether out of the question, and a partial and inadequate illustration seemed even more objectionable than none at all …. But, though a complete illustration of the work would have been highly desirable, the way in which the subject is here treated renders its loss less objectionable than it would be in a treatise of detail, or a record of existing specimens."

All I can say on this subject is "you speak for yourself, Mr Freeman. You’re the author, but I’m the reader. A five-minute sketch of, say, a polygonal abacus or a vaulted clerestory would save me hours of research".

Back in here, there were the usual things to do, including checking the radio programme that will be broadcast this week and sending it off.

And once it had gone, I began to research the next radio programme. This is going to be another difficult one to complete as, once more, I don’t have all the music that I would like to use, and again, it’s all quite obscure stuff that might take me a week or two to find.

Round about 11:40, I’d finished the first part of it, and so, as a reward, I curled up on my chair for a relax. It’s a good job that I have an alarm set for midday on dialysis days, otherwise I would still be relaxing now.

In the kitchen, I sorted out a disgusting drink and my midday medication and then began to prepare myself and my things for dialysis. My cleaner came along to fix my anaesthetic, and after a brief chat, she cleared off, so I waited for the taxi.

And waited, and waited.

While I was waiting, I’d had a good sleep, which was nice, hunched up over the table, but I couldn’t stay all afternoon like that. I rang up the taxi depot to find out where my car was, and they replied “another five minutes”. Sure enough, five minutes later, he turned up. Apparently, they had given him a whole host of local work without the slightest of ideas as to how long it takes.

He made good time down to Avranches, but in the car park there was a plant shredder busily shredding away at branches they had cut down. We had to park almost in the road, and so I had an uphill slog of fifty metres on top of the long walk that I usually have to take.

There were no aides infirmières – “nursing assistants” – to help me today, so I had to find my bed all on my own, having first stopped off at the gentleman’s restroom.

With no one about, I weighed myself and then found my bed and sorted myself out. I put my weigh ticket on the temporary table underneath the bombe de froid – “cold spray” – sorted out my computer and climbed into bed.

And this is where it all went wrong. The weight that I’d recorded includes the weight of the clothes, etc. that I’m wearing so usually, the nurse knocks off eight hundred grams for my outfit, telephone, keys, etc. Anyway, she computed her figures into the machine and said “two thousand seven hundred grams to take off today”.

“Get off”, I thought to myself. “It’s never that much!”. I went through all of the calculations that I could, and I couldn’t come up with a figure of two thousand seven hundred grams, but not having the correct information to argue, I left her to it and the machine pumping away almost flat-out at nine hundred grams per hour. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before I was in agony. It’s hard work when the machine is running almost on “max” …. "”Max” in our hero’s case is nine hundred and fifty grams per hour." – ed …

Halfway through the session, I suddenly realised what had happened. I don’t recall her, or anyone else, asking me how much to deduct for my outfit. And when I factored in this eight hundred grams, the figures made much more sense. I still didn’t say anything, though. I’ll have a good head start for Thursday as long as they don’t realise what she has done.

While I was being dialysed, I was watching some more football from the weekend.

The first match was Trefynnon v Connah’s Quay Nomads. Trefynnon, newly promoted and thrashed 6-1 on the opening day of the season, played much better today against a team tipped to be up there in the fight for the title this year. They lost 3-1, and it’s true that the Nomads played the better football, but Trefynnon kept on pushing forward and had the Nomads defence in a panic on one or two occasions.

What was interesting about this was the size of the crowd for Trefynnon’s first home game in the Premier League. Once it was announced, hordes of locals began to appear, carrying big, big carpets to be cleaned for less than half a crown.

The second game was Cambrian United v Llansawel. Another new club to the league, the team from the Rhondda Valley impressed me last week in their match against Y Barri, and I was looking to see how they would get on today. I managed to watch about fifteen or twenty minutes of it before it was time to go.

The nurse dealt with me quite quickly, but she couldn’t stay and compress me, so she found some kind of clamps that would do the job too. And they worked. And when I weighed myself, I was indeed eight hundred or so grams under my dry weight. We’ll see how this impacts the Thursday session.

My driver was waiting for me – one of my favourite drivers – and we had a good chat on the way home. My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then pushed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, I made some food – a cheese salad with rice and veg which was delicious – and then came back in here.

Fighting off waves and waves of sleep, I made a start on my notes, but I couldn’t keep going. After half an hour or so, I posted online what I’d written and then went to bed. The draining of this non-existent eight hundred grams has rather flattened me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once bought a lovely new dress for Nerina, but it was two sizes to small for her, so I left her a little note – "I’d love to see you in this"
When I came home from work the next day, there was a coffin in the living room with a little note from Nerina that said "Ditto".

Wednesday 5th August 2026 – IT HASN’T BEEN …

… as good a day today as it was yesterday, unfortunately. Mind you, it’s been a better day than many a day that I’ve had just recently, not that that’s particularly difficult, all things considered.

Last night wasn’t any better, though. It was once more after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and went to bed, looking forward to a nice long sleep.

Or so I thought, but 02:20 wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. But there I was, wide awake. However, from then on, it was me drifting slowly in and out of sleep, not knowing which was sleeping and which was waking. But I was definitely asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29, because I couldn’t remember where I’d put my telephone so that I can switch it off … "it’s on the bedside table in the alcove behind the head of the bed" – ed …

Once I’d remembered where the alarm was, I switched it off, and then we had the usual struggle for me to rise to my feet and go to sort myself out in the bathroom. It’s becoming ridiculous these days, the time it takes me to stand up.

Back in here after a good wash, the first thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was back in Wales last night, and I’d signed up for the local football club to go training with them to keep fit. On the first night, I’d brought with me my cousin, who plays for Gresford Athletic in the Second Division. So we were doing this keep-fitting together. One day he happened to mention that he was now without a club, and would this team be likely to want to sign him? They gave him a couple of provisional matches, and I could see from what he was doing that he was probably several divisions above the kind of players who were playing for our club. I replied, therefore, that I’m sure that they would, but they kept on dragging their heels about it and I couldn’t understand why, and I didn’t think that it was particularly clear to this lad who was hoping to have this trial … fell asleep here … I’ve just dropped the dictaphone … so I had a bit of a complain to the people in charge, and they began to make a little more use of him in the football team, but the dream ended suddenly because round about 02:20, I had another one of these dreams, dreaming about the bedroom window being left open all night, and so, as I say, there was this sudden alarm going off that awoke me, except that the alarm didn’t.

The main theme to this dream does make some sense to me. A player who had played in the Premiership and Championship of the English pyramid but who had been sacked due to “issues unrelated to the football field” had been signed by a club in tier two of the Welsh pyramid. He was obviously in a class well above that at which he was playing, but it all ended pear-shaped when he left the field one day in a Black Maria. A player of the same name has just signed for a tier two side, and the club is refusing to tell me if it’s the same player.

The bedroom window was open all night, by the way, but the waking up with the alarm is also something that is happening everywhere these days, and I’m hoping that I’ll manage to avoid having a head-on collision at sea. But whatever made me add that in, I don’t know.

Falling asleep and dropping the dictaphone was a short route to a tragedy, and I wish that I knew how it ended. However, I’m glad that I slipped back into that dream later, even though I didn’t go very far.

Isabelle the Nurse came round as usual. As she was dealing with my feet and legs, she told me to take it easy today. Very little chance of that, I’m afraid. I have plenty to do.

Such as to make my breakfast, as I began to do as soon as she had left. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, as he expounds away at his favourite Gothic period, explaining in minute detail the difference between Early Gothic, Fantasy Gothic and all of that, he’s managing to avoid real controversy. However, I don’t imagine that it will be too long before some creeps in somewhere.

Back in here afterwards, there were a few things to clear up and then I began to work on the notes for the next radio programme – a concert. And that wasn’t as easy as it was supposed to be. I had plenty of information about the group – they are one of my favourites, and they have been around and about on my radio broadcasts since the beginning. However, the venue is pretty much unknown so we were even poring over old maps to find some information.

Eventually, though, I managed to write enough, and so that programme is ready for dictating.

While I was at it, I came across another concert that had taken place a few weeks later at the same venue. I discovered a sound track for it in the big box of cassettes that I have, and although there are a few holes in it, I reckon that I can patch it up enough.

It’ll need some re-editing and some remixing too before it’s fit to be broadcast, but I have about three years to deal with that before the date of its broadcast falls on a Friday.

We had the usual interruptions, such as the break for the disgusting break and the midday medication, and I also crashed out for an hour or so too, which is no surprise given the night that I had had.

When everything was finished, round about 16:30, I went into the kitchen. Included in the order from Leclerc the other day was a broccoli, but so far, I’d done nothing with it. So I took off the flowering heads and blanched them while I diced up the stalks into tiny cubes.

The flowering heads were drained and the water was kept, and then I chopped a potato, a shallot and an onion into tiny cubes. The onions and shallots went into the saucepan first, and I fried them with some olive oil. And then the potatoes, and then the broccoli stalk cubes.

When I was satisfied that it was all mixed together, I poured the broccoli floret water onto the veg mix, added some coriander and a stock cube, and left it to simmer. And while it was simmering, I made the dough for two bread rolls.

Eventually, the veg was ready, so with the whizzer, I whizzed it all up, tipping a pot of plain soya yoghurt into the mix as I did so.

It made just about 1 litre of soup, so I sterilised an 800 gram jar in the microwave and put half a pint in it. That’s now in the fridge for another time.

When it was teatime, I had the other half-litre of broccoli stalk soup with those tiny pasta elbows and my two bread rolls. And it was delicious too, especially when followed by two slices of my home-made fruit bread for pudding.

Now back in here, I’m trying to type out my notes, but I keep on falling asleep. And while some of the notes that I’m typing make perfect sense, they bear no resemblance at all to anything that actually happened, so what’s going on?

In the end, I gave it up as a bad job, and I’ll continue with it tomorrow morning when, hopefully, I’ll be feeling much better and much less tired.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Catholic, a Québecker and a Mormon were at a football match when suddenly, the Catholic announces "Do you know, with one more child I’d have my own football team!"
"That’s nothing!" retorted the Québecker. "With one more child I’d have my own rugby team"
"That’s nothing!" said the Mormon. "I have seventeen wives, and with one more wife, I’d have my own golf course."

Tuesday 4th August 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a much better day today than any other day in the very recent past. I’m not sure why, though, because it isn’t as if I’ve had any more sleep than usual.

Believe it or not, by the time that I made it into bed last night, it was after midnight. Long after midnight too. I mustn’t ‘arf ‘ave been letting it all hang out last night. But once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, lying in the position that seems to ease my coughing.

However, round about 03:30, I was awoken yet again by one of these phantom alarm calls that I’ve been having just recently. And once more, it seemed so real that I almost climbed out of bed with it at that point. Although it was fairly cool in here, I was drenched in sweat for some reason. That’s not easily explained.

Once I’d realised that the alarm call was a phantom call and there was no alarm going off anywhere else … "and just who else would have a BILLY COTTON alarm call?" – ed … I tried to go back to sleep, but without much avail at first.

During the period in which I was awake, I checked the time a few times. I saw 05:20, and then the next thing that I remember was 05:50. Then 06:09 and I thought that I’d get up in a few seconds once I’d relaxed, but the alarm going off at 06:29 scuppered that idea.

As usual, it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy and the motivation to go into the bathroom … "but not as much as usual, surprisingly" – ed … but once I’d finished, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

Seren and I were doing something around the house when Nerina turned up. We decided to show her what we’d been doing, which was to build a game something like Snakes and Ladders where you advance down a street towards the town centre or you are derailed up side streets and sent backwards. We developed some kind of kiddies’ slide to slide the die down to tell us the number, but for some reason, I couldn’t fit underneath the bar so I had to stand and watch. Then, the coin or admission token didn’t work very well and we needed to give it quite a bit of force to make it move, and then the water in the watermill would come over and … fell asleep here …

Surprisingly, this would not be the first dice game that I invented. After Roxanne had been to see the film “Jumanji”, I invented a game called “Jumanji”. Our floor where we lived, throughout all the apartment, was tiled. We chose six of her favourite stuffed toys and numbered them from one to six. We put them at the start line by the French windows in the living room and we then threw a die. If the die came up with, say, a “four”, we’d move stuffed toy number four forward one tile, and so on. The first stuffed toy to reach the window in Roxane’s room was the winner.

Interestingly, the two cats played too. Each would have his or her turn “throwing” (or batting around the room) the die, and when we eventually found it, the number on the upper face would tell us which stuffed toy to move.

It was all totally anarchic.

As for the rest of the dream, it deteriorates into the usual nonsense.

Did I finish that dictation from the previous one about the die? It would slide down a kiddies’ slide thing and tell us the number but we’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be and the first two occasions that we tried it, the die shot off the end and disappeared off up the far end of the kitchen

“We’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be”… "nothing new there, then." – ed …

But it seems that at some point, I stepped back into that first dream and even managed to present us with a different ending.

Isabelle the Nurse came round as usual. I told her about Monday at dialysis and she told me to “take it easy” this morning. Chance would be a fine thing.

After she’d left, I made breakfast and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, I’ve not really found any controversy in anything that he’s written. But that might be because I was side-tracked quite a few times. There were several occasions where I’d skipped into the situation of the church at Barthomley, Heighley Castle near Keele and the old racecourse at Woore.

And on a few other occasions, I was off with the Black Prince on his chevauchée around Western France during the opening days of the Hundred Years War.

Back in here, there were a few things to do, as usual, and then I made another start on the radio notes. They weren’t easy either because a lot of the artists and albums are new to my programmes so I have to prepare their notes right from the very beginning.

There were several interruptions too, such as the disgusting drink break and the arrival of my faithful cleaner to do her stuff. And while she was at it, she chased me under the shower and I was able to have a good scrub-up and make myself look pretty.

One more, I needed no help to go into the shower and none for helping out either, so I was in the bathroom all on my own. It meant that I could even go into the shower as nature intended.

Once all of the notes were completed … "as indeed they were" – ed … I could make a start on the next radio programme.

This one is going to be a concert so it’s much easier to work. But where editing the sounds and the tracks of the concerts might sometimes be difficult, I managed to do that before I knocked off for tea. So “press on boldly” tomorrow to write the notes.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and I made a different filling tonight. Apart from the usual tomato, mushrooms, onions and garlic, we had lentils, spinach and bulgur. And it was totally delicious. It made a nice change, and there’s still some left for next week.

So now that everything is finished, I’ll be going to bed ready for a good day’s work tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … A lady wanted to make steak and mushrooms for a dinner she was giving, but when she saw the price of mushrooms, she abandoned the idea.
Her husband told her "go and pick some in the field, from down by the river. I’ve seen all kinds of animals eating them so they must be okay"
She goes down to the river and picks a basketful and hands them to the cook to prepare the meal. When the cook thinks that the meal is ready, she gives some of it to Rover the Dog. Then she dishes up the food to the guests and the host and hostess.
Half an hour later she goes back into the dining room. "I’m afraid Rover the dog is dead, ma’am."
"Ohh God, no!" she exclaims. "Did he have any of that meal we ate?"
"Yes ma’am, he did."
So in a wild panic she calls the emergency services and a fleet of ambulances takes the guests to hospital to have their stomachs pumped.
A couple of hours later, still feeling weak and groggy, they go back to the host and hostess’s house. There, they are met by the cook.
"I was telling you about Rover when you all dashed off like that" she said. "And do you know what? The car that hit him never even stopped."

Monday 3rd August 2026 – ANOTHER TOUGH DAY …

… at dialysis, but this time, it’s of my own making. There wasn’t as much fluid to extract today, so I told the nurse to wind it up and she ended up taking 300 grams extra. That way I can be ahead for Thursday.

But Sunday night was one of these nights where I reckon that I managed to get ahead for a change. Although it wasn’t early when I ended up in bed … "he fell asleep on the porcelain horse again" – ed …, I did manage once more to go to sleep quite quickly.

However, I did manage to wake myself up with a big coughing fit that lasted for an age. I don’t know at what time that was because I didn’t look, but there was no street light on outside in the car park so it must have been after 02:30.

The coughing fit took hours to subside, which is really bad news, but I was soon asleep, and there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

It took me a good while to drag myself out of bed and head off to the bathroom, where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here, the first task was to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was living on the farm again in Auvergne, except that it wasn’t the Auvergne but somewhere along the Austrian side of the border with the Czech Republic. I had to catch the bus into the city and the bus stop was on the main road a long way away from where I was living so I had to walk, and it was raining and misty. When I reached the main road, I had to walk a little way along the road to the bus stop, but coming up the hill towards me were two white Volvo 145 estates with Czech number plates. They each had a big, round and white adhesive disc on the windscreen, high up on the driver’s side with a number on it, and a couple of yellow adhesive signs on the window with different numbers on them. And as I looked up on the old road higher up the hill where the village was, there was a third Volvo 145 estate. When I reached the city, I had a few things to do and then I went for a drink in my favourite bar before buying a loaf of bread and catching the bus back home. In the bar, I met a few friends of mine and we were chatting, mainly about these three Volvo estates. There was currently a football tournament going on between Austria, the Czech Republic and a few other countries in Central Europe, and I wondered if it was anything to do with that, but my friends were much more interested in the long walk that I’d had from my place to the bus stop. Suddenly, I noticed the time – it was 18:00, so I had to hurry, and I doubted that I would find any bread in the shops at this time. One of my friends came with me, but we had no luck in the bread shops that we had tried so far. But as we passed a shop window, we noticed a huge hand-made poster in the window with a photograph of a fleet of these white Volvo 145 estates and some writing in Czech that I didn’t understand. At the bottom, in big handwritten red crayon, written in English, was “and we also have an ex-British Postal Services minibus”. This all looked really interesting, but I wish that I knew what the Czech writing said.

It’s been quite a subject of discussion between my friends and me that I regrettably didn’t take full advantage of the opportunities offered by my early retirement and the Treaty of Maastricht. Regular readers will recall that I visited the Czech Republic ON MANY OCCASIONS, sometimes under the Communist regime and as recently as 2020. I would have quite happily settled down in a country as beautiful as this, but I was far too preoccupied with other matters to think clearly at the time.

The story about the Volvo estates is interesting too. I can’t imagine why these would be much of a subject of interest to me, but doing the kind of work that they do – running between Austria and the Czech Republic – I would have loved to find out more about it, even if it meant having to drive an ex-British Postal Services minibus.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up rather earlier than usual, and she had some news for me. It seems that there has been some discussion by the authorities about what to do if the drought and heatwave continue, and someone has mentioned the possibility of cutting off the water for a couple of hours each day. And it’s not “pie in the sky” either because I’ve seen reference to it in the press. Whether it will ever happen is, of course, another matter completely.

After she had dealt with my feet and legs, she cleared off on the rest of her round, and I could make my breakfast. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today he brings into the conversation the cathedral at Limburg in Germany. "Nowhere is the character of the German Transition better exemplified than in the magnificent Cathedral of Limburg. One could hardly have supposed that a church so visibly belonging to an imperfect style could have been capable of such a sublime effect. But the reason is manifestly to be found in its very slight deviation from the old Romanesque model, upon the type of which it is conceived throughout."

In actual fact, it was a Romanesque cathedral when it was built but seven or eight hundred years ago, much of it was rebuilt in the Gothic style, and the bits that are still Romanesque are the surviving bits of the church when it was originally built.

Back in here, I had a listen to the next radio programme to be broadcast, and, as I was satisfied that it was as it should be, I sent it off to be included in the stream for this weekend.

There were a few other things to do, and then I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. Not that I managed to go very far. I really shall have to become much more motivated than I am.

At midday, I went into the dining area, sorted out a disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then I began to prepare myself to go to dialysis. My cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic but she didn’t stay long, as she had other fish to fry. And it’s just as well that she didn’t because the taxi was twenty minutes early today.

The driver had had to pick up someone at the Centre Normandy who wanted to go to a village near Avranches so the despatching had combined me and the old lady in Sartilly into the same trip. We made good time to Sartilly but the old lady wasn’t ready, so that was that.

We dropped off the other woman at Bacilly and then drove to the dialysis centre. We arrived bang on time, so those twenty minutes in advance were effectively wasted. And when I weighed myself, it was 600 grammes short of the weight for the last couple of sessions so, as I said, I told the nurse to wind it up to put me in advance.

Once I was up and running, I watched another football match from the weekend – Hwlffordd v Airbus UK Broughton. The last time that Airbus were in the Cymru Premier League, they managed two draws and no wins in an entire season. However, they have already improved on that after one match by winning the game 1-0. Hwlffordd had a pretty good season last season and they’ve signed some good players, but Airbus’s squad, mainly the players from their Second Division campaign last season, slugged it out with them toe-to-toe, scoring the goal that won the game with just five minutes to go.

From what I’ve seen, I reckon that Airbus and Llandudno are going to be a handful for some of the other clubs in the Premier Division.

Eventually, I was unfastened from the machine and when I weighed myself, I found that I was below my dry weight, which is good news. I had to wait ten minutes for my taxi, which turned up with another passenger inside, going to La Rochelle-Normande. There’s no doubt that since I’ve been travelling by taxi to my medical appointments, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

Back here, my cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment, where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made my tea – a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille. However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I might have done, and I don’t know why.

Now that I’ve finished my notes and done a few other things that need doing, I’m off to bed, much later than I intended.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Czech Repubilc … "well, one of us has" – ed … and to be serious for just a moment, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was in the Czech Republic in 2015, I drove past a primary school and in the playground, a lot of the kids were jumping up and down on trampolines.
"Hmmm" I thought to myself. "Bouncing Czechs."

Friday 31st July 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a somewhat better day today, not that you might think so at first glance. However, anything has to be better than yesterday, I suppose.

Last night, I was in bed at something like 22:00, I suppose, not that I looked, and once more, I’m sure that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. And I managed to stay asleep for a little longer last night. It wasn’t until about 03:00 that I awoke.

Despite everything that I tried to do, I couldn’t manage to go back to sleep and by 05:50 or thereabouts, I’d completely given up all hope. That’s why, when the alarm should have gone off … "which it didn’t because he’d switched it off" – ed … I was sitting at my desk working.

Before that, though, I had to go into the kitchen. I had a thirst that you could photograph so a couple of mouthfuls of water with lemon juice

Back in here, what I should have been doing was transcribing the dictaphone notes from the night, except that there weren’t any, which, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …is an extreme disappointment to me. But never mind. There were the notes from the previous evening, so I transcribed those instead and integrated them into yesterday’s notes.

There were still a few other things to do, and I was interrupted by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse, who was early. We had a little chat about what’s going on in the town and then, when she’d finished, she cleared off on her rounds.

That left me free to make my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And he’s still going on … "and on, and on" – ed … about the superiority of the Northern races over the “Mohammedans”. "The Crusaders then imported, not Gothic architecture as a complete style, but certain forms thrown away on their possessions, but which northern genius at once felt itself capable of employing to some better use".

Be that as it may, a few lines later, he adds "The Arabian architecture in Spain does not present so close an approximation to Gothic forms as that of the east ; to go no farther, the round arch is retained in its most sumptuous buildings. The Spaniard then had not the same opportunities for learning Pointed forms in his own country as were possessed by the French or English pilgrim to the east".

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to complete and then post online. And once again, that wasn’t easy, due to me collapsing with fatigue on several occasions. It took me much longer than I thought and I was glad in the end to go for my disgusting drink and midday medication.

The next job after that was to look at the football news – I’d forgotten to do that last night. And the first thing that I noticed, apart from the last-minute transfers before the season begins, was that UEFA HAS WITHDRAWN FROM FIFA and won’t participate in any more worldwide competitions.

It’s not the only continental football authority to withdraw either. CONCACAF, the umbrella organisation for North and Central America and the Caribbean, is also making plans to join in.

The issue is over the “sale” of the World Cup competition to commercial marketing companies, one of which is a venture capital company run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s brother. UEFA has announced that “the World Cup is not for sale at any price” and in my opinion, quite rightly too.

It’s all about the supporters and the teams, and the disgraceful milking of supporters over the last few weeks in the USA has shown what can happen when greedy profit-mongers lay their hands on everything

The scenario that I have imagined is that Trump has, I imagine, seen how much money the World Cup has brought in and has worked out a way of bringing in even more, with his extended family being one of the main earners in this scheme.

On the other hand, it might just as easily be UEFA’s way of revenge for how the FIFA President overturned a red card decision against the American team when their star player was permitted, despite being sent off in the previous game, to play against Belgium after pressure was put on FIFA by Trump.

Then I turned my attention to the radio programme on which I’d been working.

The other day, I mentioned that I had found all the songs that I need. but that, I’m afraid, wasn’t the case. Because of my inability to count correctly, I found that I was two albums short so I had to scour the World for copies, and I eventually, after much binding in the marsh, was able to find them.

Once I’d managed to secure them, I had to reformat and re-edit them and then extract the songs that I needed. Now, at last, I had all eleven.

They have all now been paired and then segued, and all that remains are the notes to write. That’s going to take a while and it’s almost certain that I shan’t have them finished before Monday.

Things might have gone easier and quicker, but my cleaner popped in to do her stuff as usual, and that knocked me out of my stride for a while as we chatted about all kinds of things.

At teatime, I had sausage, beans and chips again – the beans cooked with cheese and black pepper, and it’s delicious. Probably my most favourite meal of all.

After washing up, I was back in here for the football – LLansawel v. newly-promoted Ammanford. The game was quite good, with Llansawel deservedly winning by 2-1, but this new TV company with whom the FAW has gone into partnership is, in my opinion, a total shambles.

There’s

no pre-match introduction
no team sheets
no match commentary
just one inexperienced camera crew who didn’t use their zoom lens until right at the very end
only one camera
no cameras behind the goals or in other positions on the fields
no action replays
no subtitles to announce the goalscorers
no subtitles to announce the substitutions

and probably a dozen other things that were wrong with it too that I’ll remember in due course

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we often go to Stranraer to watch the football. They are a small fourth-tier club in Scotland with crowds of about five hundred if they are lucky. Yet their match highlights and commentaries are among the best in the World. If Stranraer can do it, then a society such as NOVIRA should be able to out-do Stranraer quite easily.

After the match, I started to write my notes, but with the game finishing at 22:55, tiredness and fatigue beat me to the end, so I posted what I had written to date and I’ll finish it off later tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the World Cup … "well, one of us has" – ed … an English guy who was planning to go to he World Cup to watch Ingerland play was dismayed to find that the third-placed playoff was arranged on the day of his marriage.
Reluctantly, he put an announcement in the local newspaper – "due to a clash of schedules between my marriage and the England game against France, I’m not able to go. Anyone who would like to go in my place, please contact me."
Someone rang him up and asked "where’s it taking place?"
He replied "St Stephen’s church and her name is Sandra"

Wednesday 29th July 2026 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk. And I had been since 05:50.

It’s not very often that that happens, especially these days, seeing how tired I am, so it’s nice to see it once in a while

Anyway, last night I was in bed by about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. But not for long, though. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke because I couldn’t be bothered to look. But the car park light was still on so it must have been before 02:30.

So I lay there for quite a while, tossing and turning, slowly watching the day dawn through the gaps around the edges of the shutters. In the end, I decided that I was never ever going back to sleep so I left the bed. At that point, it was 05:35

Back in here afterwards, it was 05:50 when the computer fired up, and the first thing that I noticed was that there was nothing on the dictaphone. That was really sad, but if you don’t have much sleep, you don’t have much time to travel anywhere.

Never mind. There are always plenty of other things to be doing, and by the time that the alarm went off, I’d dictated the notes for another couple of radio programmes which I downloaded to my computer, ready to add to all of the others that need editing.

But one thing that I am noticing is that there seems to me to be a general lack of interest and co-operation in all of this – a far cry from when we started this radio station seven years ago.

I managed to sort myself out somehow, though, and then I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

We had an interesting chat about not very much as she attended to my feet and legs. And then, after she had left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman

We’re still discussing Gothic architecture … "and I’ve a feeling that we still will be in several weeks’ time too" – ed … and he’s still running down the religions and architecture of the Muslims and a few other places besides, as if he doesn’t know of any better.

Later on, back in here, I had a few things to do, and then once they were out of the way, I spent the rest of the day tracing the music that I need for the next radio programme.

It will feature ten artists, this programme, and to my surprise, I didn’t have any music by any of them. Mind you, they are all rather obscure artists who rarely ever made it into the mainstream. Consequently, I had to spend all morning, and some of the afternoon besides, downloading all this music

And downloading it was the least of my problems. Once I’d installed it all on my hard drive, then I had to reformat it all so that it would play on the radio company’s equipment. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. It wasn’t until teatime that it was all finished.

Mind you, we did have a few interruptions. There was a pause for a disgusting drink at midday, and then Rosemary telephoned me again for a chat. Just like yesterday, it was a short chat today – a mere fifty-five minutes, that’s all, the same amount of time as yesterday. We are definitely losing our touch these days.

So, when everything was finished as far as I could go, I went to make my tea.

When I was tidying out the freezer the other day, I came across a portion of frozen chick pea curry that looked as if it had been in there for a hundred years. Things can’t stay in there for too long so I decided to polish it off. I was hoping to be able to eat the last slice of vegan pie, but that will have to wait for another time

The curry, with rice and veg, was as delicious as I expected it to be. When I was making these curries, I was at the zenith of my cooking powers. These days, with ill health and all of that, I’m quite out of practice. But now that supplies are running down, I’ll have to go back somehow into my previous days at home on the (kitchen) range when I used to make meals in bulk and freeze them in individual proportions. It’s been months since I last did anything like that.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office in my bedroom, once I’d finished tea, washed up and had my two slices of delicious fruit bread, I came back in here to do a couple of things and then to write my notes. And it was wonderful, with the heat of the sun streaming straight through the open window onto my comfortable chair. Even with the fan going and the window open, I was roasting.

However, when I was about halfway through, the usual wave of fatigue washed over me and that was that. I posted what I had written to date and then cleared off to bed before I fell asleep again in the chair

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about radio stations … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, someone phoned up the local radio station during a request show.
He said "I want to let you know that I’ve found a wallet for a guy named Peter Smith. In it, there are two thousand dollars in notes, two of his bank cards, two credit cards, his driving licence and his identity card"
"That’s very kind of you, sir" said the presenter. "We’ll put a call out to him."
"Oh, don’t do that, whatever you do!"
"Why not? What do you want me to do then?"
"All I want you to do is to play a sad song for Peter. Okay,"

Tuesday 28th July 2026 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine, I’ll tell you that.

Leclerc’s drive-in didn’t have in stock the vegan cream cheese that I love when I made my order last Friday, and so I asked her if, when she goes to the Leclerc supermarket the next time, she can look out for a couple of packs.

While I was looking for an old, empty pack for her to photograph, I came across a really ancient empty pack of vegan Boursin spreading cheese that I had bought one Christmas a long time ago and thought was wonderful, so, even though it was years ago that I’d bought it and hadn’t seen it in the supermarket since, I asked her to keep an eye out for that too, just in case.

And so, just after 14:00, she came into the apartment to do her stuff, not only carrying two packs of vegan cream cheese, not only carrying two packs of vegan Boursin but also a pack of another type of vegan spreading cheese made by the same company that made the vegan Boursin.

For the next few weeks, on Friday nights as I’m watching the football and eating my savoury biscuits, I shall be regaling myself with the toppings that I’ll be spreading on them.

It’s a pity that I couldn’t regale myself with anything during the night, because it was a long, hard slog. Totally exhausted and falling asleep before I’d even hit the pillow, it was 21:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And how much was I needing that?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning. Like 01:23, for example.

That really put the tin hat on just about everything. Having this awful cough come back is one thing – disturbing me and waking me up is another.

So I lay there, coughing my insides out, slowly looking at the day beginning to dawn, and then I must have gone off to sleep because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

There have been days when I simply haven’t felt like getting up at all, and this wasn’t far short of one of those. And although I felt dreadful, little by little I began to feel a bit more human. It took me a very long time, though, to make it into the bathroom.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

We were at the beginning of World War II, and the Germans were invading Belgium. In the absence of any news, they asked me if I would take a patrol of people under cover and survey the battlefield and where all the German troops are. It sounded like a complicated, difficult and almost impossible task. There was a German prisoner at Headquarters so I asked for him to come along too, for no other reason than if there was going to be a disaster, there wouldn’t have been anyone better-suited to share it with us. We had to dress in uniform and then with overalls on top, like we were from a tank or something. Then we were studying maps of what we knew so far. I was in charge of the fire-watching in the cathedral. For me, it was in the crypt underneath, so I wanted to spray the materials and everything like that with water so it wouldn’t catch alight. But one of the things was that they had a rare set of encyclopaedias going back to the end of the eighteenth century and I didn’t want that to become wet or to catch fire, so people were laughing and joking with me about the possible consequences thereof. In the end, we set out on this mission and we arrived eventually at a café that was still in Belgian hands, and everyone there was having a drink or a moan or a chat. I happened to mention to the landlady that we were looking to connect up to the German forces, and we noticed a couple of ears pricking up at one of the tables and the two men sitting there left rather hurriedly

Just recently, I’ve spent a lot of time in various crypts, reading the current breakfast-time book. But I can’t recall fire ever having been an issue with any of them.

The ending of this dream, however, reminds me of the Hobbits in the bar at Bree and the stranger there, as recorded in LORD OF THE RINGS

Apart from that, nothing else seems to ring a bell, although it would be the kind of thing that would make an interesting book.

There had been another one of these parties at someone’s house miles away, and as I was on my travels, I decided that I’d pass by there. However, I was on my old red 50cc moped so it took me quite a while to get there. The people there weren’t really having too much of a good time – it was a very relaxed kind of social gathering – and I didn’t know anyone there. There was just me in my car? Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving. Most people were leaving on Friday but others would be leaving on the Sunday, so I told her that I’d be leaving on the Sunday evening and she made a note of that. The reason was that the car in which I was, the Land Rover, had been left at Berchtesgarten by someone else who wasn’t there. Anyway, I set off and … fell asleep here …

There have been a few of these “party” dreams just recently. However, unsociable creature that I am, I wouldn’t be going to all that many in real life.

“Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving” – just as a nurse does at dialysis so that she can ring up the taxi companies. It’s an everyday routine there.

As for Berchtesgarten and the Land Rover, I have no idea how they came to figure in this at all. It’s a shame that I fell asleep just as it was becoming interesting.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual to soothe my fevered brow and to sort out my legs and feet. We chatted about the fire yesterday, La Havaudière and other fires, and then she pushed off.

Once she’d gone, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We’ve now moved on from the Arabic (with the usual derogatory comments) to discussing his evidently favourite period – the Gothic period. And we’re not even a dozen lines in when we have "the forms that had their root in an age of persecution joyfully surrender their supremacy to those which breathed the spirit of a Church triumphant alike over heathendom without, and secular oppression within. We shall see how they built who bore alike the spear and the crozier in her holy cause ; when ” the praises of GOD were in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hands."

Bearing a spear and a “two-edged sword in their hands” is hardly a Christian attitude, what with “thou shalt not kill” and all of that. But when we have ministers of the church married two or three or even more times after various divorces, you have to understand that the Christian religion has very little whatever to do with the words of Jesus.

Back in here, I had a few more things to do, and then I wrote out my notes from yesterday. And that took longer than it ought to have done too, due to me drifting in and out of sleep for most of the morning.

After I had finished and everything was on-line, I relaxed in my chair for a while, and the next thing that I remembered was that it was now 13:05. I must have been asleep for an age.

Once I’d recovered my enthusiasm and energy, I went to sort out the bathroom. And when my cleaner arrived, bearing gifts as I mentioned earlier, she chased me under the shower. And actually, now that I can go in and come out of the shower all on my own, today I had my first-ever shower in the altogether. And that was nice too.

After she left, I had a second disgusting drink and then started to track down the music that I need for this next radio programme. And this will be difficult as the search motor that I use is currently offline.

Rosemary rang me for a chat in the middle of it all. Just a mere fifty-five minutes today – we’re obviously losing our touch.

For tea tonight, I lengthened the leftovers from the taco roll stuffing from last week and made another taco roll with rice and veg. And that was really nice too. I seem to be eating much better these days. Mind you, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t eating anything at all.

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better sleep than yesterday.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of Christianity in the church these days … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old man walked into a church wearing tatty, threadbare clothes. The preacher was outraged and told the man "before you come into this church again, have a good talk with God and ask him what attire you should be wearing to come into this church!"
Next week, the old man was back, still in the same threadbare clothes.
"I thought I told you to have a good talk with God about your attire before you came back!"
"I did," he replied "but God said that he didn’t have a clue. He’s never been in this place before."

Monday 27th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a big wildfire this afternoon near La Havaudière, between Granville and Avranches. All of the traffic is being diverted and it’s absolute chaos down there right now.

However, for a change, it wasn’t absolute chaos in here. I ended up in bed round about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. At some point, though, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time, as I couldn’t be bothered to look. However, there were high winds outside and it sounded as if it might be raining. Not that I cared very much. I just crawled back under the quilt and went back to sleep.

The next time that I awoke, it was light in here so, intrigued, I had a look at the time. 06:15, so I switched off the alarm and slowly staggered to my feet. Yet another early start recorded.

When I eventually made my way into the bathroom, I had the usual good scrub-up, and I remembered to have a shave too, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with someone in my house, a girl, and I can’t remember who she was, but she told me that she was having a visitor round later that afternoon. Anyway, before I had the chance to leave, a large Afro-Caribbean-type of man, who came in and simply started to chat. I had a chat with him for a few minutes before I left. Then, just as I was about to go, he said “there’s someone coming up the drive. I think that it’s someone called Lucy”. The girl said “oh yes, that will be the Simpsons.” The door opened and a couple with a little girl came in. It was the little girl’s birthday today so they came into the house and came into the living room. The couple sat down but the little girl went straight over to STRAWBERRY MOOSE and began to tell him about her birthday. Then, her mother gave her a present which said it was from Strawberry Moose. Then everyone, including this man, sat down and had a little game, and that man began to look at the girl’s hair and began to rearrange it a little.

What a strange dream this is. It bears no resemblence to anything that has happened to me in my waking hours. It’s a total mystery to me.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up today as usual and chatted away about nothing as she fixed my legs and feet. Then, after she had cleared off, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And he’s off on his high horse again. When talking about the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, he tells us that "in the minor ornaments we cannot fail to remark the constant tendency to anticipate isolated Gothic features" What he means to say here is “Gothic architecture copied many features of Arabian architecture.”

When discussing the Palace of the Alhambra, he tells us that "No amount of mere enrichment can atone for the violation of the great law which requires every weight to have, in appearance as well as reality, an adequate sustaining mass. Nowhere is this rule less regarded than in the palace of the Moorish Kings of Granada. A slender column supports a capital of far too great projection, this again supports an overlapping stilt or fragment of entablature, and as if this were not enough to destroy all notions of mechanical support, the arch itself in many cases does not spring immediately even from this entablature, but from corbels overlapping again ; i t is thus cut off from all decorative connection with the column below, and appears suspended in the air without any sustaining power at all. Nor is the effect at all improved when, as is sometimes the case, this stilt or entablature is supported by coupled columns ; as their separation, by dividing the apparent support, even adds to the idea of insecurity."
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … a real architect, being faced with the inconsistencies that Freeman noted, would have immediately gone to investigate the style and found out just why the building hadn’t collapsed.

Freeman’s attitude took me so by surprise that I knocked over my juice glass and the grape juice within it in surprise.

There were also all of the scores from the Welsh football matches over the weekend. Remember the other day when I told you that 53-year-old legend Marc Lloyd Williams had signed for Llanberis? He scored one of their goals in the 8-0 rout of Amlwch Town in the Welsh Cup over the weekend.

Then I came back in here to carry on work. There were several things that needed doing, and then I attacked the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working.

In a mad fit of enthusiasm that I wish that I could recapture for use every day, I finished them all off and they are now ready for dictation, along with about a hundred others. I really must buckle down somehow and clear this massive backlog. But now that my cough is back … "and in spades, too" – ed … that’s not likely to happen for a while.

At midday, I went into the living room to sort out my disgusting drink and midday medication and to prepare myself for dialysis. My cleaner turned up a couple of minutes later to apply my anaesthetic and to make sure that I was ready to go.

To my great surprise, the taxi turned up for me at 12:40, twenty minutes early. I wish that it would do that every day. There was our usual “other passenger” to pick up at the Old People’s Home in Sartilly but even so, we still pulled up at the dialysis centre at 13:25.

Just like Saturday, I was put into a room with two other people, and there was just one nurse to deal with all of us. Even so, I didn’t have to wait very long and I was up and running by 13:55. How I wish that they could do that every time too. And there was a fair amount to take out today. The machine wasn’t working flat out, for a change, but it was near enough.

Apart from the odd low blood pressure warning which, as usual, brought the nurse running, no-one else came to bother me. If there was a doctor on duty, he or she kept his or her distance. There was the occasional glance of the doctor who thinks that he’s in charge and that he runs the show. He kept his distance too. That meant that I could crack on with work, which is always good news as far as I am concerned.

Even better news was that when I was ready to be unplugged after my session, the nurse was ready and waiting to unplug me. When she had finished with me, I weighed myself and found to my delight that the four-hour session on Saturday had done its trick and even though this was just the usual three-hour session, I was finally down to my recognised dry weigh.

At 17:20, I was ready to leave and as the driver was already waiting, with someone else to drop off in Granville, it was looking as if a 18:00 return was on the cards. However, things all went downhill from there.

At the roundabout on the Avranches side of the village of La Havaudière, the road to Granville was closed, with a couple of policemen directing the traffic down a couple of the small country lanes. In the distance, we could see fire engines and police cars.

The narrow roads were total chaos, with long lines of traffic coming both ways. We had to fight our way along as best as we could, and it wasn’t easy. A lorry coming in the opposite direction would block up the lanes for ages while the drivers of oncoming cars sorted themselves out.

To get back onto the Granville road at Le Croissant, where the road was open again, that was chaos too. A huge line of vehicles was blocked by others on the roundabout coming from Granville and going round and round and round while they were trying to make up their minds which way to go.

By the time that we’d rejoined the road, dropped off this guy and dropped me off, it was 18:20, and that was disappointing.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside the premises and once she had me settled in a chair and armed me with another disgusting drink, she went about her business and I made tea.

Tonight, I had a rice salad with plenty of vegan cheese. It should have been “plenty of vegan ham” but I hadn’t checked the packet for four weeks, and when I looked this evening, I could see that it needed a shave before anything else so it went into the bin.

There were slices of my new fruit bread for pudding, and it really was nice – definitely a success, this, with dates, raisins and cranberries.

Back in here, I checked to see what had been going on down the road, and it turned out that a forty-acre field by the roadside near La Havaudière had caught fire and was busy burning away. We’ve had a few of those now, and perhaps a really good dose of rain is called for before the whole country burns up.

Next task was to write my notes for the day but the effects of dialysis proved to be too much and I was overwhelmed by a great wave of fatigue. I posted what I had written so far and then went to bed. I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the fire brigade … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two girls from Crewe who had locked themselves out of their house while they were clubbing.
Luckily, they had left a bedroom window open so they borrowed a neighbour’s ladder to climb up.
As they were halfway up, one of the girls remarked "ohh, doesn’t it make you feel like a fireman!"
The other one replied "don’t be silly. Where are we going to find a fireman at this time of night?"

Saturday 25th July 2026 – THE WORST HAS …

… happened at dialysis today. And that is that I was obliged to stay for four hours instead of for the usual three. And it was my own choice too. There were a couple of good reasons for doing so, as you will find out as you read on.

As for me, I was in bed late yet again last night. Probably round about 23:30 or so when I crawled under the covers, and I was soon asleep. Once again though, I didn’t have much sleep, although I’ve no idea what time I awoke – I couldn’t be bothered to check – but it was still pitch-black and the light on the car park had been switched off so it was after 02:30.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I stayed awake, tossing and turning for ages as the day slowly dawned. at one point, I must have dozed off because I remember waking up with a sudden start. It was 06:25, just a couple of minutes before the alarm. There was no real point in even trying to leave the bed for an early start in that short space of time.

However, it was the second alarm that rang at 06:33. It seems that Brain of Britain had forgotten to switch on the first alarm after switching them both off the other day.

In the bathroom, when I eventually arrived, I had a good scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. Unfortunately, I forgot to have a shave, as I found out later. That’s one way of blotting my copybook. Emilie the Cute Consultant won’t be very pleased with me.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I needn’t have bothered, though, because there was nothing on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s really quite a disappointment. It’s my only form of enjoyment these days.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. We talked about the Tour de France and then about his holidays, because he’s away for three weeks as of tomorrow and I’ll be in the tender hands of Isabelle the Nurse.

After he left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, as we probe deeper into the architecture of the Arab world, we come across the statement "Saracenic fancy, moreover, contrary to all just principles of aesthetics, delighted in astonishing the eye with a vast superstructure raised on a support apparently quite inadequate to sustain it. The style is rich, wonderful, calculated to enchant at first sight ; but it is one that will not bear critical investigation ; the chaste gracefulness of the Grecian, the soaring majesty of the Gothic, are absent, and are ill supplied by the exuberance of a fancy, vivid and fertile to the last degree, but uncontrolled by any law of taste or consistency."

Any normal architect, having come across a technique “contrary to all just principles of aesthetics” that is “astonishing the eye with a vast superstructure raised on a support apparently quite inadequate to sustain it” would immediately be interested in giving it a “critical investigation” to find out exactly how they did it and to see if he can reproduce it.

Yes, I’ve long since come to the conclusion that this book is not about architecture at all.

Back in here, I have things to do, and then I made a start on the radio notes. But again, I didn’t do as much as I was hoping. All in all, it wasn’t a very good morning.

When my cleaner came down to sort out my anaesthetic, I was already in the dining area sorting out my things for dialysis. She didn’t take long to sort me out and then I had to wait for the taxi.

It was early today – a good fifteen minutes early, which suited me fine. Apparently there was someone else in Granville going to dialysis, and her appointment was for 13:30, not 14:00 like mine.

It turned out that it was a girl from the dinosaur exhibition that has set up camp in a field on the edge of town. They are here for the month of August, apparently, and then they’ll be off somewhere else.

While my driver was hunting her down, I looked at the number plates of the vehicles. Half of them had “59” number plates, indicating that they came from the département of the Nord. The others had “02A” number plates, meaning that they are registered in Ajaccio, in Corsica.

We arrived at dialysis a minute or two before 13:30, and when I weighed myself, I was horrified at what I saw. This is 800 millilitres or grammes over the maximum of what the machine can do in three hours. This process of sending my home without taking everything out, which they have done for the last three or four sessions, is now reaping some horrible rewards.

The nurse, one of the experienced ones, came to see me quite quickly and by 13:55 I was up and running. However, I did discuss the situation with the nurse and, seeing as I was so early, I suggested having a three-and-a-half-hour session instead of a three-hour one.

She told me that if I did that, I’d have to wait around for half an hour, as they would be very busy at that time. “how about three and a quarter?”

After a good think, I came up with “how about four hours?”, going the whole hog. Do it all in one swell foop and then it’s all over.

So four hours it was.

There was only a relief doctor here today so I didn’t bother her with any of my problems, and after that I was left mainly alone, except for when the low blood pressure alarm rang, but that didn’t bother me. Blood pressure at 8.0 is quite usual for me.

When I was finished, I was seen to with very little delay and at 18:15 I was organising my driver. We had to wait fifteen minutes for Mrs Dinosaur nevertheless, and after dropping her off at her caravan, I was back here at 19:04.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside and gave me a disgusting drink – the second of the day – and after she left, I checked the time. It was 19:30, far too late to think about tea now. I had plenty to do still, so I grabbed a bag of taco chips and came in here to do them.

The football season has started this weekend and, to my surprise, the FAW was broadcasting live one of the evening matches in the qualifying rounds – third-tier Cardiff Airport FC at home to fifth-tier Felinfach – and I wanted to see it to see what this new broadcasting system of theirs is like.

Firstly, there was no commentary, which was disappointing, but apart from that, it was quite an entertaining game. The gulf of class between the teams was evident and Cardiff Airport strolled to a leisurely 4-0 lead at half-time, having had the bulk of possession.

Whatever the Felinfach manager had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a drink of it myself. They put up a much better fight in the second half and although Cardiff Airport ended up winning 6-0, they didn’t have the second half all their own way, that’s for sure.

As for the broadcast itself, there was no commentary, no teamsheets, no slow-motion replays and nothing to identify the scorers. I reckon that I’ll only be using this service if SGORIO has nothing to offer at that particular time.

By now, it was 22:40, far too late to start writing my notes, so I decided to do what I had to do and then go to bed. I can write my notes tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about dinosaurs … "well, one of us has" – ed … Mrs Dinosaur was telling us about the exhibits that they have there in their exhibition.
"We have Pteradactyls, Tyrannosauruses, Stegosauruses and Brontosauruses, and we even have a rare example of a sightless dinosaur. "
"What’s he called?"
"D’yerthinkhesaurus."

Friday 24th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… some astonishing news released today in respect of the Welsh football pyramid. One of the all-time greats is back – and he’s fifty-three!

The news is bound to upset former million-pound striker Lee Trundle, who’s still turning out for Cwmbran Town at fifty and who has been the oldest player in the pyramid for quite some considerable time.

Marc LLoyd Williams was a legendary player in the Welsh Premier League for over two decades, as well as several spells in the English football league with clubs like Stockport County, Halifax Town and York City. He played 467 games in the Welsh Premier League and scored a record 319 goals in that time. In the 2001/2002 season he scored 47 goals, a total that would have won him the European Golden Boot had it not been for Wales’s low coefficient.

He retired at the end of season 2013/2014 and since then has been a TV pundit and coach for some of Wales’s youth teams but the news today is that he has signed for Locomotive Llanberis as a player. All I can say to him is “good luck. Nice to see you back”

That’s a nicer thing that I said to myself when I awoke this morning at … errr … 02:30. It may well be that I’d gone to bed last night at 21:45 or something like that that had caused me to be awake so early, but that’s not what I was thinking at all.

So at 02:30, there I was, trying hard to go back to sleep but with no success whatsoever. I lay here and slowly watched the day begin to dawn. However, at one point I must have gone back to sleep because I suddenly awoke, bolt-upright, at 06:18.

When the alarm went off, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed claiming my early start. But, as usual, summoning up the strength and enthusiasm to go to the bathroom was something else completely.

First off, though, was that I had a thirst that you could photograph, and so I went into the kitchen for a drink of water with a good squeeze of lemon in it.

Once in the bathroom, I sorted myself out and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Our little travel club had gone to London because one of the girls was living there. We went to see her and have a good chat to make up old times, but she was saying that she had to go to pick up her new car today, and everyone whom she’d asked to drive her there had let her down. I said that there wasn’t very much that we could do because we didn’t have a car, but she went on for quite a while about this. In the end, she said “come on, let’s go” and walked out. There was her car, a white four-door Fiesta. I noticed that one of the doors wasn’t fitting properly so I asked her about it. She said that it’s not been bolted in. It’s just wedged in. She explained that she’d had a problem with one of the doors, and some English guy who ran a car repair place in Belgium had sorted out a door for her for five pounds. So we went into London and ended up where this event was taking place but it was not really good at all. There was nothing much happening, so we decided to leave. For some reason or other, I’d been eating a whole pile of paper, and all of a sudden, I had to spit it out. I just opened the door and spat out all this paper that I’d eaten and another huge load besides. I was sure that everyone thought that I was being ill. Eventually we found a private members’ club and we were able to order drinks there. Then we had to catch a bus right across London to Victoria Station to find our way home. I felt terribly disappointed because I thought that we all might have been asked to stay but we had to leave … fell asleep here … We were lucky because we found four seats on the tram and the tram was packed to the gunwales with everyone on it, people trying to leave through the “in” door by the driver. It was a total mass of confusion. There were two girls for some reason standing in the pathway of a tram on an adjacent line to ours. It was raining and pouring down, so our tram and theirs had their windscreen wipers working. Eventually, we arrived at where we were going, and one of the girls took us all up these side streets, which I probably thought was a short cut to the station but we’d have to see about that. There was a car pulling out of the kerb so I had to walk round it. The one that was behind it pulled out of the kerb and hit me, so we made a really impressive impact on the driver of that vehicle. The guy who had sold one of us that door, he asked if I’d had my van fixed. I replied “no” so he said that he’d be available after August if I wanted him.

There are a lot of things in this dream that mean something. My three friends, for a start. We’ve travelled miles together, one way or another, all over Europe.

The car, too, currently means something, complete with the missing door. And so does moving between Brussels and London

Many other items fit into events in real life, too numerous to explain, so I reckon that this dream is all about me sorting myself out one way or another.

The nurse turned up as usual, and we had a good chat about bikes and responsibilities while he was dealing with my feet. And then he cleared off, and I could push on and make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We’ve reached the end of the summary, having to wade through page after page of nonsense such as "Much of Europe was still pagan ; during a long portion of this period the Church among many Teutonic nations retained a missionary aspect; and even in Christian countries the Church had not arrived at her full influence. Finally, towards the end of the period the civil and spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investitures roused Europe to its very centre."

There was also "its glorious successor speaks of days when the Church had leavened the world, and, instead of missionaries labouring and dying among Pagan Danes and Saxons, sent forth from those very lands the warriors of the Cross to fight for the holiest spots of their religion.".

It seems that even the church and its ministers, such as Freeman have totally forgotten what is the message of Jesus, Exodus chap. 20 verse 13 and Deuteronomy chap. 5 verse 17.

Right now, we’ve passed on to Arabian architecture. I was expecting all kinds of offensive comments about Arabian architecture from him, and I wasn’t disappointed. We started with "But considered as a real work of architecture, any second-rate production of Grecian, Romanesque, or Gothic art, must rank far above their most splendid monuments. Their splendour is mere barbaric magnificence superadded to fantastic and inconsistent forms, lifeless germs which existed for ages without developing into the features which would seem to be their natural results" and it all went south from there.

Back in here, I had things to do, such as check the Leclerc order that I was about to send off, and then I could finish off the notes from yesterday. Although not without a struggle. You’ve no idea how many times I went to sleep and almost fell off my chair while I was working

Just before midday, I suddenly had this flash of memory – “the washing!” I’d promised my cleaner that I would do the washing today, ready for her to hang out when she comes this afternoon to do her stuff. I usually start it at 10:00 because it takes an age to do, so I hope that it has time to do its cycle.

Round about 13:00 I stopped for a disgusting drink break and the midday medication, and I was caught in flagrante delicto by my faithful cleaner. She set about doing her stuff, and we chatted for a while before I wandered back into here and set about doing some work.

But not for long, though. At 15:25 Leclerc turned up with my load of shopping. And although there wasn’t much, it still took a load of manoeuvre to fit all the frozen food into the freezer and the cool stuff into the fridge. And there was plenty other stuff to put in the cupboards and shelves. It’s becoming quite an art to pack it all away.

Round about 19:30, there was a calamity somewhere. All of the police cars turned up in the car park near us. There were sirens blowing, people shouting, policemen shouting and using the little new loudspeakers and microphones. I’ve still no idea what they are up to, but my cleaner thinks that it’s some kind of demonstration or rehearsal for something

Tea tonight was delicious sausage and chips with baked beans cooked with cheese and black pepper. It’s absolutely wonderful, especially when followed by two slices of my fruit bread.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and checked over everything that I need to do, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Ten Commandments … "well, one of us has" – ed … Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and all the people gathered round him. “It looked like the Crewe Carnival procession” he said later.
"Come on, Moses" they urged him. "Tell us the news."
"There’s good news and there’s bad news" he replied.
"Tell us the good news, Moses"
"The good news is that I’ve got him down to ten"
"What’s the bad news, Moses?"
"The bad news? Well, he wouldn’t budge on adultery."

Thursday 23rd July 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

Not that that was too surprising considering that I awoke at 01:30 this morning. Or maybe it was, seeing as I was in bed round about 21:30 last night. Four hours’ sleep is more than I’ve had on some nights.

And I needed it too. After tea, I came back in here to start work again but I’d not been at it for long when a huge wave of tiredness washed over me. I couldn’t keep on going after that so I gave it up and went to bed. But seeing as I’d already written quite a lot of my notes, I posted the “so far” version and I’ll finish it off in the morning.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until 01:30, as I mentioned. And after that, I stayed awake … "not for the want of trying" – ed … watching the dawn slowly come around. When I finally checked the time, it was 06:22, so I quickly slipped my feet on the floor to claim an early start.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having my feet on the floor is one thing. Being able to stand up and head to the bathroom is something else completely.

Eventually, I made it into there and had a good wash and scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. It was only later that I realised that I’d forgotten to have a shave.

Back in here, even though there were no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I had plenty of other things to do, and I was still doing them when the nurse arrived. And today, it was quite a serious discussion. It seems that there is a threat to close down the railway line between Granville and Paris. Years and years of financial cutbacks and lack of maintenance have, according to some people, left the infrastructure beyond repair and there is no hope for it.

As for me, I think that it’s just a ploy by the SNCF to wring more money out of the département in subsidies, but you can never be sure with some people.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s summarising what we have learnt so far about Romanesque, Norman and Byzantine architecture, as, presumably, we’re going to be moving on to another main subject shortly.

Even here, though, he cannot let go of his old ideas. "it will appear nothing wonderful that the destroyers of the Roman power might be the improvers of Roman art ….. the pier and arch stood ready for the German or Norman architect to adorn alike with the creations of his own genius, and with such of the spoils of heathendom as might be fitly pressed into the Church’s service."

He goes on (and on, and on) to say "It is only the lifeless skeleton of Romanesque which is of Pagan origin, and the lifeless skeleton of Gothic is equally so ; in both the life, the spirit, the animating genius of the style, is essentially Christian, bringing whatever of heathenism lurks about it into bondage to the faith."

Back in here, I finished off what I had been doing before breakfast and then made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. I didn’t get very far, though. Apart from going for a ride on the porcelain horse, I needed a shave as well.

At midday, I went into the kitchen area to sort out my things ready for dialysis, for a disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then my faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic.

After she left, I had to wait for the taxi, which was fifteen minutes late today. As well as that, we also had to go to find a vacancier – a holidaymaker who required dialysis. That took us down a labyrinth of local lanes, but eventually, we worked out that she wasn’t a vacancier at all but a worker at the dinosaur exhibition that has set itself up at the Chateau Bonheur on the edge of town.

One thing that I can say is that since I’ve been travelling with this taxi company, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

We were a few minutes late arriving in Avranches but I was quickly ushered to my little room after weighing myself. The nurse, one of my favourites, came round quickly enough to plug me in and by 14:23, I was up and running.

During the session I was left pretty much alone. However, the blood pressure machine kept on ringing its alarm because it was finding part of the measurements too low. However, low blood pressure is quite normal to me and I wasn’t worried, even if they were.

When the session was over, I was attended to immediately by the same nurse who had coupled me up. She was quick and efficient and it didn’t take too long for me to be ready. But I haven’t lost all of the weight that should have gone. For me, the maximum is 950 millilitres per hour, but more than that was needed to reduce me to my dry weight, so the rest will have to be taken on Saturday, assuming that I don’t put on too much in the intervening time.

I was back here by 18:20, having seen my nurse with his bike in the town centre, and my faithful cleaner helped me back inside. Once I was comfortably seated, she gave me the second instalment of disgusting drinks as a “welcome home”.

At 19:00, I went to make tea. Tonight, it was a slice of vegan pie with peas, carrots, mashed potato and gravy. There’s only one slice of pie now left, so I’ll have to try to invent a filling that will go nicely in it. My artificial Intelligence chatbot has, so far, come up with –

Mushroom and vegan cheese
Hearty vegetable pot pie
chickpea and walnut
lentil mince “shepherd’s pie”
curry style
pasty-style root vegetables
spinach, leek and vegan cheese
onion and potato pasty
tomato, olive and courgette
leek, potato and vegan cheddar
mushroom and herb
stout and vegetables
lentil and root veg
curried chickpea and spinach
cannellini bean and tomato herb

If anyone wants the recipe for any of these, let me know. There’s a “contact me” button on the bottom right of your screen.

By the way, back in June, I posted the instructions to make your own chatbot on an artificial intelligence chat site. You can find the instructions HERE

After tea and washing up, I came back in here to write out my notes. And once more, when I was about halfway through, a great wave of fatigue washed over me and I couldn’t carry on. Doubtless the result of a heavy dialysis session earlier. I posted what I had written to date and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pies … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman once walked iinto the kitchen of Leighton Hospital in Crewe and handed one of the nurses a home-made pie.
She said "can you eat this up for me, luv?"
Of course, with hospital food being so disgusting, the nurse was only delighted to do so, and she even shared it with a colleague.
Fifteen minutes later, the woman came back into the kitchen and asked the nurse "is me ‘usband’s pie ‘ot yet?"

EPIC HALL

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