Tag Archives: Connahs Quay Nomads

Thursday 11th July 2024 – I’M LATE AGAIN

and if it carries on like this they’ll be calling me “the late Epic Hall” long before I officially earn the title.

And for a change, I don’t mind being late at all for I have very good re son. It’s “Europa Cup” night tonight and while Connah’s Quay travelled to Slovenia and Y Bala to Estonia to follow on from the game that TNS played against some Albanians, Caernarfon made the long trip down the road as far as Nantporth Stadium on the outskirts of Bangor to take on those giants of European football … errrr … Crusaders from Belfast.

Late nights seem to be the norm these days and instead of moaning about them, I’ll just have to say nothing and celebrate the early nights instead, so there was nothing to celebrate last night.

In fact it was long after midnight when I hit the hay and I settled down for sleep for what was left of the night. And I awoke in the middle of it and took an age to go back to sleep again

Mind you, I was dead to the World when the alarm went off and it was a rather ungainly stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out.

There was blood on the floor too, but I’ve no idea where it came from. It could be anywhere.

Back in there I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were all going flat out in pursuit of this monster . We had a good idea of where it would be and where it would strike next so we put a cordon round with people just doing ordinary things, nothing suspicious, hoping that whatever it was would pass within this cordon to pick a victim and we could all close in behind it. I was in charge of course but there were lots of other people who were quite willing to take responsibility. My job was the big tree that was the focal point of this little community, which was where probably the most important person would expect to be and that was where you’d expect the final battle to be so they left that responsibility to watch that area to me. And now we just waited around for things to begin.

This looks as if it’s a continuation of the dream from the other night when we were chasing monsters around. And it’s quite rare to have two episodes of the same dream so close together like this. Usually they are months, if not years apart.

And later on I’d gone down to Virlet for a look around and for something. While I was in the house I heard a noise as if a couple of people were searching around in te lean-to. I picked up a blunt instrument and just as I was going to go outside to catch them in the act a guy came through the door into the house. He looked so shocked to see me so I just said “can I help you?”. He just stood there totally open-mouthed as if I was the last person he was expecting to see.

And it would be a shock too if it were to happen, but I’m not likely ever to go down to Virlet again. That’s a chapter of my life that is well and truly completed unfortunately. Someone else can take over down there when the time comes.

Finally I was making a salad. I didn’t really have all that much to go in it but I was listening to the local radio and there was a bring-and-buy sale taking place at the church at Audlem. Someone was selling picked courgettes. I thought that that sounded interesting for a change but I couldn’t really summon up the enthusiasm to go all the way to Audlem. They kept on talking about one or two other things that they had and it all sounded perfectly tempting to me but there were all these excuses popping up about why I shouldn’t go but I kept on finding out answers to these questions and still pointing out (… fell asleep here …)

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few recently, when I say that I “fell asleep” I am actually asleep when I’m dictating. I’ve been working as part of this project for almost 30 years. But when I say that I “fell asleep” what actually happens is that whatever I’m dictating tails off into a mumbled silence and then sometimes you’ll hear a little snore or two and I’m sorry for doubting you about that, Percy Penguin.

But courgettes in the Auvergne – they were the only things that seemed to thrive down there. You’d check your courgettes over, think “they look nice, I’ll pick them in the morning” but you’d have a downpour during the night and end up with half a dozen enormous marrows.

Everyone was sick to death of courgettes after a while. We used to pass around recipes (and courgettes) and I for one don’t ever want to see a courgette ever again.

It’s Isobelle the female nurse for the next week or so and she usually brings the sunshine and warmth with her (although I have seen another side of her once or twice that I didn’t realise existed). She nicely and cheerfully informed me that on Saturday she’s going to take a blood sample.

There’s another sample to be take too, so she’ll leave me a little pot on Friday. I have a feeling that she’ll be taking the p*ss too.

After she left I had breakfast and then a look through the notes for today’s lesson. Unfortunately I didn’t get as far as I would have liked and so my enthusiasm tailed off towards the afternoon.

The hospital rang me up about registering for my operation on Tuesday – right in the middle of a crucial point and so towards the end of the lesson my concentration (such as it was) was broken and I was all at sea.

Mind you, nothing new there. I’ve been all at sea for years, up a creek without a paddle for most of the time.

After the lesson finished I sorted out the music for the next radio programme and began to write a few notes. And then we had the football.

Y Bala didn’t do too well, going down 2-1 to Paide Linnameeskond but Connah’s Quay performed brilliantly, winning 1-0 in Slovenia and being set up nicely for the return match next week.

Then we had Caernarfom playing in front of a packed house at Nantporth. And the Cofi Army burst into song after just four minutes when Morgan Owen picked up a pass 20 yards out from the Crusaders goal and walloped it home

They had even more to sing about after 35 minutes when Danny Gosset found Darren Thomas whose delightful through ball was inch perfect for Zack Clarke to pounce on and slot home for the second.

The game though wasn’t a particular spectacle. It was rather agricultural at times bordering on the desperate at the end as the Crusaders threw everything, including the kitchen sink at the Cofi goal but Caernarfon held out to record a famous victory in their first ever match in European competition.

But these results are really good news for Wales because the more successful they are, the higher their coefficient will be which means that they could have more teams in club competition and maybe even enter the tournaments at later stages.

Not to mention of course the money that’s on offer for doing well in Europe. The prize money from UEFA is well-worth having for a small club. A team that’s defeated in Round One will receive €150,000 and if they make it through to the next round they’ll receive at least €350,000.

And then there’s sponsorship, TV revenue, all of that kind of thing.

After the final whistle I threw some pasta into a pan with some frozen veg and tomato sauce. That will keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

So on that note I’m off to bed ready to kick off nice and early tomorrow morning.

But talking of courgettes reminds me of the guy in the Auvergne who was determined to protect his courgettes at all costs so one night he slept with them. And instead of the fine weather for which he was hoping, it snowed instead.
They found him next morning and he was frozen to the marrow.

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Sunday 28th April 2024 – IT WAS THE …

… Welsh Cup Final earlier this evening and so I’m running horribly late.

Not that I’m complaining because it was one of the best matches that I’ve seen for several years, I reckon, and I’m glad that I watched it.

Other glad tidings are that I was in bed at a reasonable time so that I was able to profit by my extra hour in bed, with the alarm not being set until 08:00. And once again it was another peaceful, tranquil night where I can’t remember awakening at all.

A few more nights like this will do me the world of good, I reckon.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed as usual and crawled across to switch it off. Then I staggered into the bathroom to have a wash and so on.

While I was taking my tablets the doorbell buzzed to say that the nurse was in the building and when she’d finished with my neighbour she’d be here, so I had to quickly arrange the room how she likes it.

When she came in she told me that she’d been back to the office to check for this prescription but it still wasn’t there. I told her that I’d rung the number and it was definitely the Health Centre in Granville that had rung so she promised to talk to the secretary on Monday to find out more.

Then she dealt with my foot, put on my puttees and left to deal with her next lot of clients elsewhere.

Once she’d gone I had come instant coffee and cornflakes for breakfast, and then came in here to watch yesterday’s game where Forfar Athletic beat a very poor Stranraer side 2-0 in a game that has stuck Stranraer at the foot of Scottish League 2 and in danger of being relegated out of the league.

Searching through the directories on the big computer I came across some radio notes that I’d dictated but hadn’t yet edited so this afternoon’s task was to do that.

Despite a variety of interruptions, including falling asleep a couple of times, that’s all edited and the programme is assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen but I need to write, dictate and then edit down some notes for it so that I can finish it off As I said yesterday, there’s now quite a backlog of stuff that needs dictating.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was dreaming about an election for Prime Minister. Everyone thought that the situation was pretty much cut and dried so I decided that I’d throw my hat into the ring. That upset everyone. They couldn’t even remember the password for the coffee machine for me so that I could have some coffee. When we went to a meeting they had to pick me up. They weren’t sure what to do with me, where to put me. We encountered Boris Johnson on the way. He was driving a double-decker bus. He was going to stand for election too. They were quoting the odds on who was going to have the job. It was evidently their preferred candidate and someone else to pretend to challenge them. The whole idea that there would be a third realistic candidate such as me completely upset their whole apparatus. They had to begin too frame questions to ask me to make it appear that they were giving me a fair crack of the whip. This involved an incredible amount of work for them that they didn’t really want to do and didn’t really see why they had to do it but millions of people were expecting it and of course that’s how it should be done anyway so I upset the whole apple cart with this standing for President or whatever but I was determined to see it through, simply to expose their lazy and corrupt practices

Any election process that can elect people like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Donald Trump to high office needs to be confronted and challenged. Anyone who remembers MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and laughed at the scene about STRANGE WOMEN LYING IN PONDS DISTRIBUTING SWORDS will have to admit today that it’s a far better system than the one that elects Johnson, Truss or Trump.

And then we had the football. The Welsh Cup Final between Connah’s Quay Nomads and TNS, with TNS aiming to complete the treble and be the first club to go through an entire season of competitive matches without being beaten.

Last week the two teams met in the league with TNS winning 2-0 and Connah’s Quay lucky to get nil, and we were expecting something similar today.

It’s been shown though that TNS’s defence is not as solid as it might be and teams that have been brave enough to take the game to them rather than sitting back defending the rampant attackers have had some kind of success, and that’s precisely what Connah’s Quay did.

They were 2-1 up at half-time and then during the second half weathered the inevitable storm with some desperate last-ditch tackles to deservedly lay their hands on the cup.

You can see the highlights HERE but they only show about a quarter of what I would have included. But at least you’ll get to see one of the best goals scored this season.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan pizza. Another one of the interruptions was to make the pizza dough as I’d run out so I whipped up a batch this afternoon. Two lumps are in the freezer for another time and the third lump was rolled out and put on its tray to proof.

After the football I assembled it, baked it and ate it. And it was delicious too.

So, much later than I hoped, I’m going to bed to have some pleasant dreams, I hope, before I do battle with the nurse again. And then there’s plenty of work to do like radio stuff and all of that. And I need to catch up on the Welsh that I’ve missed these last two weeks

While I’ve been in hospital there’s been quite a lot of stuff that I’ve let slide away out of sight that I need to catch up. We know the old saying that “work expands to fill the time available” but I wish that the reverse were true and that the time would expand to fit all of the work that needs to be done.

It reminds me of one of the people with whom I used to work years ago. "He does the work of two men, him" his colleagues would say
"Is that so?" I asked
"That’s right" they would reply. "Laurel and Hardy"

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Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

… I bought a cheap hamburger press, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It was rather like an old flat iron made of plastic, with all kinds of sizes that fit inside each other like a Russian doll

It was rather cheap, both in price and quality, so I didn’t think that it would be all that much good. However I have to say that despite all that, I really am impressed with it. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin, and that will stir a few memories from times long-gone.

Actually my friend in Munich sent me ages ago a packet of dried stuff that he’d found in a vegan shop down there and posted it to me. So today I added water and mixed it, left it alone to do its thing and then out came the hamburger press

It actually made a nice, professional job of the rehydrated stuff and I now have four big, really solid burgers and as I said just now, I’m almost as impressed with them as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

“Whatever happened to that?” I asked myself. The last time that I saw it, it was being used as a brazier to burn a pile of weeds down the garden when I used to have my raised beds and vegetable plots. It’s probably now thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with weeds and been pulled into the soil.

It’s 10 years ago since I last planted any veg down on the farm. I had quite a lot of stuff there that year too. The following year I cracked on with the bedroom all the way through the spring and summer ad finished it – and actually moved in.

But we all know what happened in the autumn that year, don’t we?

It was almost 10 years that I lived full-time down on the farm and despite the primitive conditions I really enjoyed it. I keep on thinking – and hoping – that I’ll go back to live down there once more but I doubt that I’ll ever see it again.

For a start, I can no longer drive, and that’s always going to be a serious consideration. And then regular readers of this rubbish will recall the photos of when I was last there and it was overwhelmed by brambles. I no longer have the energy to fight my way to the front door.

Last time it took three of us – Rosemary, Ingrid and Yours Truly – a whole afternoon to reach the front door, and the time before that it was with Terry and he had brought his industrial-scale equipment to clear the path.

Still, as Dan Quayle once famously said, "It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back"

So I shall go past into the back and say that for a change I was in something of a hurry to go to bed last night. I didn’t hang about at all.

It was another good sleep as well and I was fighting fit (well, sort-of) when the alarm aronsed me from my slumbers.

First thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 15.1/9.0 this morning, up from 14.5/9.3 last night. So something must have annoyed me last night. And if you want to know what it was, you’ll have to read on.

After the medication I came back in here, but not for long. The nurse, having been late yesterday, was early today. Today’s moan was that the plastic bag I’d put out for him wasn’t big enough and that I need to wash my puttees. I wonder what tomorrow’s will be

The bread for my cheese on toast was delicious. I had a really nice breakfast later this morning. And then I had a pleasant relax and watched a film.

Another film that has come out of copyright is HELLZAPOPPIN’ so I spent a very pleasant 85 minutes watching it, and it was nice to relax for a change.

It’s not a film to everyone’s taste because it’s partly a musical and "YOU’RE NOT GOING INTO THE SONG WHILE I’M HERE" but where its interest lies is that if ever you want to know where all of the humourists of the 1960s and early 70s like Monty Python and Marty Feldman obtained their ideas, it’s all here, everything and much more besides, and it was done in 1941.

As far as comedy and humour goes, it was light years ahead of its time and will still run the course today.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We’d all gone out as a family together. We all had lifts with various different people so we were all spread out amongst the cars etc. A guy in a mobile home, the type that’s a shell that fits onto the back of your vehicle, took a fancy to one of my sisters. He persuaded her to travel with him. They disappeared but the rest of us kept going in a kind of convoy. We ended up stopping for the night somewhere at the side of a river. Just then this guy appeared with his camper. He wound down his window and said that he was terribly sorry but something had happened to our sister – some other people had come along, taken her, kidnapped her and carried her off. My mother said “I bet that she’s in the back of your camper”, just strode over there and wrenched open the door. My sister was in there on the bed lying down. She began to tell her tale of woe about everything that had happened to her, with my mother and brother becoming more and more angry as the story unfolded about this kidnap.

So there you are – that’s the reason that my blood pressure was up. I had the family round last night. I don’t ask them to come to visit me during the night but they always seem to, far too often for my liking. Why can’t I have Zero, TOTGA and Castor round as often as them?

But kidnapping my family members one by one sounds like a good idea. But you can all think of an idea for the ransom note – "pay us £5,000 or we’ll send them back".

That reminds me of the time when I fuelled up in Stoke on Trent only to find that I’d left my wallet behind at home. I had to leave my friend at the petrol station as hostage while I went to his house to fetch some money

When I told his wife what was the problem she told me not to bother going back, and to leave him there for good

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed we had a taxi job to do, to drive someone up to Newcastle upon Tyne for a meeting and then take them on to Edinburgh later. There was only one daytime driver and me about. The receptionist left a note for the daytime driver “be in the office 04:40 ready for a long trip”. I thought that long trips and office workers all on account etc don’t pay very much in tips if anything so I’d go to do that and let the driver carry on doing normal jobs. The only car we had was an old two-door Japanese thing from the late 1960s or early 1970s. It made something of a racket but I’d been out a few times in it and it seemed to do the job. A good long run like that would probably do it good. Of course Edinburgh – I had my niece in Edinburgh so I could go to see her. I tried to contact her but there was no luck. I thought “should I just turn up at the University there and speak to her?”. I thought that that’s probably not a good idea. But I was impressed that we had this job, going all that way but I was really disappointed that we didn’t have a better car available other than this old Japanese thing.

And that was an age-old problem too. We’d occasionally have some really high-quality work to do but never seemed to have a decent car available to do it, and when we did have a really decent car we’d never have the work. At times I despaired.

This afternoon I went a food-making.

Firstly, as I said, my friend in Munich had sent me some burger mix so I added the water, stirred it all in and then left it to fester for 20 minutes as according to the instructions

There was a box of do-it-yourself falafel powder on the shelves as I discovered when I did some tidying up a few weeks ago. So I added some water to that and left that to fester as per the instructions.

While that was doing its stuff the first lot was ready so with the hamburger press I made four really good and solid burger-types of things. They are busy freezing even as we speak.

As for the falafel, I divided that up into little balls and they are busy freezing too, along with a couple of balls that I made from the left-over stuff from the first mix.

But I’m pleased with this hamburger press as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s really simple and cheap but it made some really solid burgers and it gives me much more confidence about making more burgers from ad-hoc ingredients.

Finally there was the home-made mayonnaise. And once again, that seemed to work in spades. I made it rather more liquidy than before so we’ll see how that works out. It ended up making quite a lot more than I can use in its shelf-life, so I’ve sealed to top on the jars quite tightly.

Yes, having learned my lesson, I’ve put the mayonnaise in a better container or two.

Then we had the football – Y Bala V Connah’s Quay Nomads in one if the Welsh Cup semi-finals, played at Llandudno’s picturesque ground. And it was actually being broadcast on foreign carriers too after the disappointments of the last few games.

The first 75 minutes of the match were nothing to write home about, but it’s really hard to play creative football in a tornado.

However both sides made a couple of substitutions with 15 minutes to go and that kickstarted the game dramatically. Those last 15 minutes wee much more like the football we’d expect to see and Aron Williams scored a late winner to push the Nomads into the finals.

But spare a thought for Josh Ukek of Y Bala, who will probably go down in the record books as being on the field for the shortest period of time ever.

He came on as a substitute for Bala late in the game but almost immediately Kieran Smith, a central defender, was sent off for two bookings. Now a central defender down, Colin Caton, the Bala manager, now wanted to send on a central defender off the bench to shore up the defence.

And Ukek, who had only just come onto the field, was the man who was withdrawn to make way.

Tea was as usual a salad, baked potato and breaded quorn fillet. I know that it all seems to be the same, but I happen to like it so I don’t care.

And now rather late this evening, I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm in the morning for the nurse is coming (so I’ve washed my puttees already) so I’ll feel like death for the rest of the day. Today, I actually fell asleep for five minutes during the football.

But before I go, that story about tightly closing the lid on the mayonnaise jar did remind me of the guy who rang up his doctor
"You know those pills that you gave me to give me strength?"
"Yes" said the doctor. "How are they going?"
"I don’t know" replied the man. "I can’t get the top off the bottle".

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Saturday 9th March 2024 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to switch his alarm back on last night?

It goes without saying that Bane of Britain was up to his usual tricks.

But what was so surprising was that I awoke at 07:35. None of this stuff that we experienced last weekend. And I was wide awake too – to such an extent that I was actually up quite quickly. And that’s even more surprising.

First thing that I did was to check the blood pressure. 16.7/9.4. and don’t ask me what it was last night because I forgot to take it.

But next time that I go to the hospital I’ll be taking my blood pressure machine with me. The figures at the hospital are nothing like the ones that I’ve been recording here. They are much more normal. So I wonder if there’s a fault in my machine or I’m not using it correctly.

If we can compare readings when I go back, that might help. And so will a little practical instruction. It’s not actually very likely that things will be worse here than at the hospital – that is, in respect of anything that’s likely to adversely affect my blood pressure

But fancy forgetting to record it last night. It was actually quite a relaxing late evening watching the football highlights from the games that took place. Nothing really exciting, except that TNS continued their monotonous, relentless march by stuffing second placed Connah’s Quay 5-1 – at the Quay’s home ground.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d be really proud of TNS’s achievements in the domestic game in Wales if only they would transfer some of that form to the European games that they play. But regularly and consistently (or should I say “monotonously and relentlessly”?) they are knocked out in the first round.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they could make it to the group stages of a European competition some time soon, and give us all something about which we can cheer? I mentioned the other day that depressing, dismal game in Sweden where we had to sit through 90 minutes of tactical ineptitude by a manager who is out of his depth at this level of competition.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

In the kitchen I collected the medication together and shovelled it in, piles of it. And it’s going to be even worse on Monday after my cleaner has been to the chemist’s with the new prescription. As if I don’t already have enough stuff in here.

But I’m glad that it’s the cleaner who goes to the chemist’s these days. I’m too embarrassed after the last incident that we had.

That time, I’d been to buy a pack of condoms. "What would you like?" she asked. "Ordinary? Or the new washable ones?"
"I’ll try the new washable ones" I said.
A week later, I went back to the chemists
"Can I have another pack of condoms, please?"
"What happened about the washable ones you had last week?" she asked
"Well, I’ve had this rather offensive letter from the laundry"

Having taken my medicine I went to make the bread for the weekend. And I forgot that it wasn’t Friday and that I wasn’t here, so I made three bread rolls as usual. So anyone who says that I don’t even have a clue what day it is is actually quite correct.

John Bongiovi TELLS THE DAY BY THE BOTTLES THAT (HE) DRINKS but I tell the days by the medication that I take, I reckon.

The bread still isn’t rising as well as it ought to, even though I’ve now moved on to a new type of flour. However, it wasn’t the abject failure of a couple of weeks ago and I suppose that we can be thankful for that

I tried baking it for slightly less time too, and that seemed to make a difference. But of course my oven is very much hit and miss so I can’t say with any certainty that it will be like that next week.

But anyway, it made a really nice toasted cheese sandwich, which was the name of the game anyway.

And that reminds me – me waxing lyrical about air fryers combined with a special offer on sale at LeClerc means that Rosemary has now joined the little air fryer community. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d be lost without my air fryer.

Next stop was to transcribe the dictaphone notes, not that there were all that many. There was a cute little girl at school who for some unknown reason seemed to attach herself to me, not that I minded particularly because I never did much at school except roam around. She caught me one day coming out of the school canteen. I asked her how she was. She wouldn’t say at first but in the end said that she’d failed her exam which I thought was something of a shame so I gave her a few encouraging words. Then she told me that she’d failed another one too so I didn’t think that things were going too well for her so I tried to boost her morale a little but I could see that she was rather sad. Then she asked, out of the blue, “do you want to be a GE?” which is the first level of work as a British diplomat in the Foreign Service. I asked why and it turned out that there was a meeting for schoolkids to hear a talk given by someone in the Foreign Service about careers with them. I thought to myself “I have to do something after I finish my exams, haven’t I?” so I said “yes, OK, I’ll come with you. I’ll be your invitee”. She said “you’re my second”. I asked “who’s the first?”, fearing the worst. And sure enough she mentioned the name of a student with whom I didn’t get on at all, who I thought was completely and utterly pretentious etc. She said “I’ve invited him”. I sighed and said “ohh well, OK” and said that I’d go with her to make her feel better. At least if she had two people coming with her it would do her some good in her exams which aren’t going too well anyway.

There seem to have been a few cute young girls attaching themselves to me during the course of the last few nights. I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I wish it had really been like that when I was at school.

And I wish that I knew who they were, so that I could see if it’s the same girl coming back, or a different girl each time. I’m intrigued to see how this serial ends, as I’m sure that you are. Doubtless though, one of my family will come along and shove le baton dans la rue at a crucial moment.

Like my brother, for example, who was “teacher’s pet” at school
… "Why? Did teacher like him?" – ed …
No – she kept him in a cage at the back of class.

But really – could you imagine me in the Diplomatic Service? It wouldn’t have been a shoe that I’d banged on the table as Nikita Khrushchev is alleged to have done, it would have been the heads of a few of the delegates.

It’s all very well these leaders pronouncing wars and all of that, but they aren’t the ones who have to fight them. It’s always the young and the poor. As the Communist Party once said about the First World War, “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end”.

In my opinion, if someone wants to start a war, there should be vote. And all those who vote in favour should be given a rifle and tin hat and sent to the Front to fight it while everyone else stays at home.

Next on the agenda was the football. Y Bala v Caernarfon.

Two teams challenging for fourth place but it didn’t look much like it. The gale-force wind had something to say about the standard of play, I suppose, but in all honesty it will be one those games that will be forgotten quite quickly.

There was a good crowd there, as there always is when Caernarfon play, but I think that they were probably expecting more for their money than a tame, lacklustre 1-1 draw.

The rest of the day, apart from 10 minutes when I was away with the fairies, was spent chopping up sound tracks. Only about 30 or 40 hours remain before I can start to attack the stuff that the Shrewsbury Folk Festival sent me at the start of the year.

And I shudder to think of how much there is to do there. I’ve told you before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that i’m far too busy to die

Tea was baked potato with salad and one of the breaded quorn fillets that I like. And my home-made mayonnaise from the other week is still keeping on going. The garlic in there hasn’t dissolved the bottle, despite how muc I put in it. I really should put somewhat less in there than I do.

So having finished my notes, I’ll wait for it to go quite than do my dictating. Two programmes that need re-dictating and a third that I prepared last week. It’ll all be a right mess when I finish

Tomorrow there’s an alarm call – 11:00, which might be late for some but it’s early for me on a Sunday. I always stay up quite late because it’s only when the streets are perfectly quiet that I can dictate the notes properly

And then there’s pizza dough to make, and anything else that I can think of. I’ve not made any biscuits for ages, have I? Chocolate biscuits are always good but it’s been years since I’ve made any oat and honey ones. I might think about that.

Right now though I’m going to relax for a little while and find something interesting to read, like that friend of mine who read all of these horrifying reports on the effects of smoking.
"They frightened me so much that I gave up" he said
"Gave up smoking?" I asked
"No" he replied. "Reading"

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Saturday 30th September 2023 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be the wrong one, the person making it is executed.

Anyway, I went to LeClerc this morning to do my shopping. The drive there was horrendous because I can’t now work the brake sufficiently in Caliburn, and the left foot is struggling now to work the clutch.

Not only that, I didn’t have the power to climb back into the cab after my shopping.

When I returned here, I found that my usual parking place had been taken. The only other parking place up against a kerb that was free was right across on the far side of the car park. Consequently my shopping trolley and most of my purchases are still in the back.

Luckily, having had an idea that I might find things difficult, I’d taken a backpack with me so at least I could manage to bring the frozen and chilled food upstairs.

Coming back up the stairs, I did something else that I have never done. The lifts here are on the half-landing so I staggered (and I DO mean “staggered”) up as far as the first half-landing and took the lift up to the next one, and then walked down to my front door.

So in other words, what this means is that I am no longer going to drive. That is, not until I can find a car that works with hand controls only.

Meanwhile, back in the apartment, when the alarm went off I was reading a letter from a company to someone else about a lock-up garage that they were renting and for some reason they hadn’t paid their instalments. There was a family waiting to take it over so what were they planning to do with it. I don’t know why I’d had this copy but it immediately made me interested so I was busy sending it off to our company secretary to see what they could do about it.

So I crawled to my feet and wandered off into the bathroom. And then round about 08:40 I struggled down the stairs with my shopping trolley as far as Caliburn, and then the excitement began.

At LeClerc they had nothing exciting, but I found some vegan camembert-type cheese on sale on special offer so I treated myself to it for a change.

When I finally made it back here, I put away whatever it was that I’d managed to bring upstairs, and then made myself some cheese on toast and a pot of very hot, strong coffee.

Not that it did me much good, because I crashed out on my chair – and no surprise either because I was totally exhausted.

Later on I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes. A group of us was going camping. One of my friends – it might have been a girl – had been to work so I said that I’d pick her up at about 01:30. I set my alarm for about 01:15 and went to bed. When the alarm went off I arose but I had so much to do that 15 minutes was going to be far too optimistic to accomplish it. Meantime I’d been collecting stuff to take with us. One of the things was like a stake that you drove into the ground and you added more stakes to it until it was quite tall and then a basketball hoop. It was extremely high off the ground like this but what my interest was that if I had some kind of long cloth I could make some kind of really nice wind protector for my tent or for when I’m sitting down on the beach, by sewing loops in it and putting each individual stake through each pair of loops to hold it. It was all packed in a big canvas bag like a tent bag so at the moment it was going to be quite easy to manoeuvre. Then I had my dishes to wash, things like that, and that was going to take me ages

And then I went to see my Aunt in London, and I had a woman and daughter with me, who might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We had to go so Roxanne carried STRAWBERRY MOOSE. We walked down from this big building where she lived to where I’d parked the car which was in some kind of extremely steep, muddy car park. I was right at the top so we didn’t have far to walk at all. We piled in and said our goodbyes. I had a packet of digestive biscuits. I made some remark about having made them specially. My aunt said “don’t be silly, Eric. You’ve bought them from a shop to eat on your journey home”. We rolled the car, which was my red Cortina estate, down to the bottom of the hill ready to set off. I remembered something that I had to take back so I left the two of them and the car there and ran all the way back up again. Really, what I wanted to do was to say goodnight to my aunt privately and to ask her about any situation going on that I ought to know. She anticipated this and came down. We met at the entrance to her building after I’d run back up the car park. It was quite an emotional reunion considering, and then we began to chat.

There was also something about some rocky fields and stone walls but I can’t remember anything more than that about it

There was football on the Internet this afternoon – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Penybont, played in a monsoon in a swamp in the Welsh Premier League – second v third.

And despite the conditions, it was an entertaining game with plenty of skill, really enjoyable to watch. And for 60 minutes or so Connah’s Quay roared into a 3-0 lead.

But then, a strange thing happened. Henry Jones, one of the best players in the league when he chooses to be, had been on the bench for Penybont and at the hour mark, Rhys Griffiths sent him on to play.

And a couple of minutes later we had two of the most bizarre substitutions that I had ever seen. I’ve no idea what must have been going through Neil Gibson’s mind but two of his best players, Harry Franklin and one of my favourites, Jack Kenny, who had been running the Penybont defence ragged, were then replaced.

As a result, 15 minutes later the score was now 3-2 and Penybont were going all out for an equaliser. A breakaway at the end of 90 minutes led to a fourth goal for Connah’s Quay but it could have been so, so different.

However, some of the substitutions that one or two of these managers make sometimes totally baffles me.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with salad and chips. And it was really delicious too yet again. I seem to be making good progress with my meals these days and I’m eating well, which is always good news.

So now having had a nice relaxing evening, I’m off to bed, to have sweet dreams and think about how my car-less life is going to pan out in the future.

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Friday 1st September 2023 – FOURTEEN MINUTES …

… of added time was played at the end of the second half of the game between Caernarfon and Connah’s Quay this evening.

When a spectator ran onto the pitch after 53 minutes I thought “here we go again. A repeat of what happened at the game of Y Fflint v Caernarfon towards the end of last season”.

However, it was slightly different this evening. The fan was wildly gesticulating at the Medics’ bench and they suddenly got the message because they sprinted over to the supporter with their medical bags.

After much confusion and a lengthy waiting period, we saw the two medics helping from the ground someone who was clearly in a great amount of distress. And then the game could restart.

When I awoke this morning I was in great distress too because I’d had another turbulent night, as seems to be the pattern these days. I managed to beat the second alarm, but not by much, and then gradually dragged myself into the Land of the Living.

The 09:10 bus was late this morning and so I had to hang around in the wind for a while. But I made it to Carrefour with enough time to do some shopping for the weekend. A few bits and pieces including a couple more small peppers.

The freezer is now full of those but that’s just as well because I can’t ever find them when I want them. Giant peppers I can find by the dozen but they are too big for my air fryer. and there is too much of them anyway for a small appetite like mine.

Back here I had my coffee and cheese on toast and then attacked this back-up task that I’ve been planning.

And by now it’s all ready in principle. I just want one more hard drive for the images which I want to keep separate from everything else. There’s a spare drive bay (in fact there are two) in the array on the shelf so there’s no problem there.

While I was waiting for things to happen I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And I had a surprise visitor. I’d been round to Stoke on Trent to talk to someone whom I used to know. Just at that moment Zero came back home. She went into the house and came out on a scooter, a 3-wheeled thing where you put both feet on and push yourself off and go whizzing down the hill. Her mother ran after her and I ran after her too. Then her mother was on a bike and I ran. She shouted at me “come on Eric, keep up”. I thought “there’s no way that I could keep up with people going at this speed the way I am”. She reached the bottom of the hill, turned round and came back up, came up alongside me, stopped and jumped off She said “get on, we’re going to ..” I thought she said “Meir” so I replied “that’s miles away”. “No” she replied” My house nearby”. She shot off and I chased after her on the scooter thing.

Mind you, I didn’t catch her. Even in the ethereal world she manages to keep well out of the way of my evil clutches as, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, so does TOTGA.

That wasn’t the only excitement of the night either. I’d been away somewhere and then come back with a load of clothes etc all of which I’d washed and hung up. We were a big family living in this house, sleeping anywhere. We didn’t so much have bedrooms allocated. I slept on the sofa in the living room and my chest of drawers of clothes was behind it. Someone whom I knew came and began to disrupt my entire routine. I had to go to have a shower. The first thing that I needed was some clothes so I went to fetch some but the only top that I could find was a thermal vest top. I thought “never mind – I’ll take that”. My mother asked me if I was taking that. I replied “yes”. Once I’d climbed over this rubbish and back to my settee I had to climb back because I needed my deodorant etc to take with me into the bathroom. The visitor was ever so confused about what was happening and so I think was everyone else including me.

Later on I was looking for clothes for one of my 3D figures. I’d just uploaded a whole pile of brand-new stuff and the folders weren’t sorted out correctly as I would like so things were in a bit of a mess. I wasn’t quite sure where I should be looking to find the item of clothing that I wanted my figure to wear. This meant that I was going to have to start to do a big organisation of all of that but I certainly didn’t feel like it at this time of the morning when I’d been asleep.

I’d also invented some kind of leg brace to improve the posture on young girls, like a V_shape with holders at the open end of the V in which you’d put your legs so your legs were always a constant distance apart and could only go forwards and backwards so much. This was intended to keep their composure and poise while walking. They could buy one for use at home if they didn’t have access to one during the day

Finally, and depressingly, I was with my family last night, a whole bunch of them. Everyone was there and many more besides. My youngest sister was marrying and I’d been invited to the wedding. I didn’t want to go but I couldn’t find a good excuse to turn it down. There was some pre-wedding meeting. I’d finished doing a taxi job so I went. From the freezer I brought some things that I’d cooked to take with me as some kind of offering, only to find that they’d leaked in the car. I arrived and everyone tried to hoist onto me the job of giving my sister away. I flatly refused, saying that it’s my father’s job. He was unwilling because he wasn’t very confident. I just didn’t want to become involved at all in any respect other than to be there and then only reluctantly. I was telling my father that he’d been working up his life for giving away his daughter and there he was, “bang!” she’s gone and I’ve given her away. Everyone looked at me, outraged, when I said that. But I added “well, that’s what the gist of it is, isn’t it?”. It wasn’t very popular at all but then again neither am I.

So much for all of that. After the sunshine comes the rain, as we all very well know.

Tea tonight was chips from the air fryer with vegan salad and some of those nuggets. Eaten quickly because of the football.

Caernarfon were second in the table, unbeaten so far this season, and Connah’s Quay were uncharacteristically quite low down having been swept aside by TNS the other week and then beaten by Y Bala. So we were expecting a really tough match

The Cofis, having been known for their flaky defence for the past few seasons, had been playing much better this season and had been the main reason why their team was second in the table, so no-one expected them to fold up so dramatically.

Although they had their moments in the attack, they didn’t amount to anything and conceded four of the sloppiest goals that I have seen ever since Aberystwyth shipped a miserable bagful against TNS 9 months ago.

A 0-4 home defeat was a disaster and they are going to have to do much better than they did tonight.

But not right now because I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow but I won’t need much Rosemary gave me a quick ring this evening just before kick-off so she’s going to ring me tomorrow. I’ll have to lay in some supplies though as it will be a long phone call.

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Friday 24th March 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I wasn’t up and walking about at 04:45 this morning.

It was in fact 03:30 instead. And I think that that tells you all that you need to know about another miserable night that I had.

However, I didn’t manage to be up and about this morning before the alarm went off. I was definitely awake at 07:15 but I must have fallen back to sleep at one point because it was something of a rude awakenng at 07:30 and I staggered out of bed looking like a cross between The Death of Nelson and the Wreck of the Hesperus.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages (including one from this guy with whom I spoke the other day about my shower) I contacted the hospital at leuven to sort out these appointments. The result of this is that I’ve arranged for them all to be on the 11th May. That means that I can breathe some kind of sigh of relief about my congested fixture list.

For most of the day I’ve been planning. I’m planning in the future to reorganise my radio programmes to give them more structure, and I’ve been going through my record library making a list of songs that make reference to space exploration. At the moment I have Elton John’s Rocket Man off with Guns and Roses’ Rocket Queen on the Hooters’ Satellite for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars, to name just a few of the tracks I’ve been sorting out.

The dictaphone contained a few sound files too that needed transcribing. I was at a class for French lessons at one point last night. We were divided into groups of 2. With me and my partner, who was an old guy, we had to wander around the streets looking at nouns and adjectives, finding where they’d been paired either before the noun or after. I was very difficult for me of course because I was on crutches but I did the best that I could. We spotted maybe half a dozen where the adjective was in front of the noun. I couldn’t remember what they were so we had to go to scrounge an old envelope and pencil off someone, go back and start again. On the way around I ended up with a bottle of wine. As I was returning to where our group was standing there were some people with a dog. It wasn’t on a lead and began to run at me, barking. Every time it came close I gave it a kick with my left foot. I was quite accurate too. They were surprised and so was I because the way that my health is for walking I was surprised that I could kick anything at all. This dog certainly knew that it had had half a dozen good kicks from me as it tried to close in. In the end I gave the bottle to one of the people who was there with the rest of the class.

And then I was in a LIDL somewhere. It was half-full of all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Nothing in there of any particular importance. The rest was stuff that they were assembling for the following day. I was having a look around and couldn’t see anything that I liked. There was a film crew in there. A guy was filming something. He was with his son. Something happened and the father bawled out his son and said to the film crew “I hope that you didn’t record that”. I asked “why? Are you ashamed of it? You ought to be! Fancy treating your son like that!”. He followed me down the aisle and started trying to provoke a fight. he was completely out of his mind.

At another moment I was a passenger in a minibus that was doing a school run. We were all dropped off somewhere. The driver wandered off. He came back and got into his bus. Then he came over to me and said “can I ask you something?”. I replied “yes”. He said “next time you fuel the bus up can you fill it right to the brim?”. I replied “yes. Of course I can. I always wondered what happened to this bus after I got off it”. Just them another guy came up. He said “excuse me but someone was telling me that you don’t have a PSV licence, the blue and yellow one”. I pointed to the sign on the door that said “Shearings Bus and Coach”. I replied “of course I do. I worked for Shearings before. I used to work for Shearings. You could see a strange look on the faces of both of these guys.

There was a break in the day’s programme for the physiotherapist, who was very pleased with my progress, and tea tonight was a rather rushed salad and chips with veggie balls.

Rushed because there was football on the internet. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Drenewydd. It’s never easy to play football in a howling gale and rainstorm as it proved tonight but Connah’s Quay, playing with the wind in the second half, took full advantage and scored two goals.

However, I would have liked to have been on the touchline to check the positions when Harry Franklin played the ball to Jack Kenny for the second goal. From up on a gantry on the halfway line you have a totally different view of the proceedings and the perspective.

Nevertheless, there were several moments when I was convinced that the referee and the linesmen were officiating a completely different game to the one that I was watching.

Shopping tomorrow, and I don’t need much, although I have said that before with disastrous results. In any case, as I’m out on Tuesday I might nip to Lidl on the way home from the doctor’s then, which means that I’ll need even less today.

But we’ll see. Just because I don’t need much doesn’t mean that I won’t be buying much, does it?

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Friday 17th March 2023 – WHAT HAPPENED …

… during the night tells its own story about how things went .

That long sleep in the afternoon was clearly the wrong thing to do because when I went to bed last night it took hours (and I do mean hours) to go off to sleep.

And add to that the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about, that will tell you even more.

As well as that, during the brief moments when I must have gone to sleep, I travelled miles. And I DO mean miles. I started off washing the crockery in the sink. There were tons of it. Some of it had dried plaster on it but because it had been soaking for so long the plaster had gone soft. Like a fool I drained my carrots and peas into it without noticing so I had to fish those out one by one from all of the mess as well. Washing up all this was really pretty dismal. I didn’t enjoy it for a single minute with all the stuff that was in there and the sink was absolutely overflowing.

And then we’d gone somewhere to play a game of football. When we arrived there had been a little bit of snow. Someone had drawn out the lines of a pitch in the snow on the carpet. It was tiny. You couldn’t have more than four people standing on this carpet never mind playing the game. In the end we just wiped the line markings off, cleaned the carpet and went round looking for other bits of carpet that we could butt up to the first one to make some kind of circuit. It was still quite small but we found all that we could. There was a lot of argument about some carpet that we were using because some people used them as cushions to sit on. We said that that’s just too bad because they’ve come here to see the game and if we don’t have these bits of carpet to make the pitch larger there won’t be a game of football to watch etc.

There was some kind of advert for a jazz group to form in London. I’d turned up. We were going to set up to have a jam. I’d brought my drum kit along and was in the middle of setting it up when the drummer appeared. he started to assemble his. We chatted about drum kits etc. I explained that I’d bought mine to learn but I wasn’t any good. I started to get the guitar and amp ready. While I was doing a couple of things he picked up my bass and started to try to play it. We had a little chat about that as well for some unknown reason the lead between the bass guitar and amp was very short. Trying to untangle ourselves to walk around was something quite a nightmare.

Did I dictate that dream about travelling to the office on the train and then on the Underground going with an old friend of mine from my school days? “No, you didn’t” – ed …. so we arrived at out building but the building wasn’t going to be hours for much longer because we were moving 2 streets away to another building. I went back into this dream and went off to post some letters. I couldn’t find my British stamps so I bought some more. I wanted some stamps to go to Canada that cost me 24 cents. I opened a letter. It was a letter about a loan that someone had had to take out for some reason or other that required a loan. It was to do with a political campaign where someone had been wrongly accused of hiring a black car in an ice storm in Montreal. I had to write to this person so I wrote a letter. While I was ferreting around in my wallet for the stamps that I’d just bought I came across the original ones. Eventually I managed to find the 24 cents stamp. I went to put it on my letter but the guy next to me started talking. He asked about the letters that I was writing. I said “I’m writing to North America”. He replied “it’s only 16 cents to North America”. I said “I’m writing to Canada and it’s 24 cents” but he didn’t really believe me. I put the stamp on the envelope then went to fetch some airmail stamps out of my wallet to put on it. He was admiring the perforated security holes in these airmail stamps. he asked if I was going back to the USA on business shortly. I replied “no. I’d only just come from there and wasn’t planning on going back for a bit”.

Later on we were all on a coaching holiday. I said that I liked going away on these holidays because I’d meet new people and I’d have to write to them rather than send e-mails. I’d been writing a couple of letters to a couple of girls whom I’d met on a previous coach trip. I was addressing the envelopes. One envelope I made a right mess of, a spelling mistake in the address with big felt-pen letters etc. Eventually I finished them but we were going out soon so I had to go upstairs to change. For some reason I kept on putting it off and putting it off until in the end there was only about 20 minutes. I had to dash upstairs. I thought that I’d better put the camera on charge. I remembered that the battery for the camera hadn’t charged last time I’d tried it so I ended up having to put my credit card into the slot in the camera charger so that it might work. It did this time but I had my bank card that needed charging as well. I thought that with the credit card in the charger the bank card wouldn’t charge up now. It was one of those panicky dreams where nothing goes right, everything goes wrong and I end up running around in circles for no good reason.

And then did I dictate the next dream about going on another camping holiday? “No you didn’t dictate this one either” – ed … so this time I wasn’t going on it but Terry was. He wanted some bread so I said that i’d contact the organiser of this in the USA and have her have the bread ready and Terry would pay her when he arrived with these people. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember it. That’s all that I can remember.

As you can see, I’m surprised that I managed to find any time at all to go to sleep with all of that going on.

After the medications and checking the mails and messages I had a long chat with Liz on the internet. She wanted to know how I got on at the hospital so we spent a lot of time talking about that and our new premises – because she has recently moved house too.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent sorting out 4GB of music. Over the last year or so this programme of digitalising my record collection has continued into the more obscure realms as I’ve tracked down more and more of the digital sound-files to the albums that I own.

Anyway, over the last year, I’ve prepared another 4GB of tracks that I’ve now recorded, split, edited and remixed so I could merge them into the runs of playlists and copy them onto a USB key that I can play on the hi-fi in the living room to pick out music ready to broadcast.

All of that took until teatime tonight. I had salad and chips with veggie balls and as usual it really was nice. I’ve definitely got the hang of this air fryer now, especially when it comes to frying potatoes. In fact one might say that once the potatoes get close to my air fryer, they’ve had their chips.

Afterwards there was football. Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS. TNS just needed a point to win the title and they duly won it with a 0-0 draw, thanks to the heroics in the Nomads goal by ex-Glasgow Rangers keeper Andy Firth. It really was all one-way traffic towards the Nomads goal.

Strangely enough, all thhee ex-TNS players in the Nomads team who have been almost ever-present this season failed to make it onto the pitch. Cue some kind of conspiracy theory somewhere sometime.

Tomorrow I’m shopping. For bathrooms as well as the usual stuff. Time I pushed on and organised myself about this apartment. I want to have everythign in place for whenever the solicitor decides to contact me about the place.

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Friday 3rd March 2023 – HERE I ALL AM ..

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting on my comfy seat in my bedroom. I’ve made it back home.

With just the usual problems, such as losing my keys on the train and having to rouse the staff that was asleep in the office at the station. A good job that it was at the terminus and there was still another train to come in otherwise I would have been well and truly snookered.

And that reminds me of the old French joke –
“Frappe! Frappe!”
“Qui est là?”
“Lost”
“Lost qui?”
“Oui”

Anyway, after another miserable night’s sleep, I was awake yet again before the alarm went off. And after the previous night there was nevertheless plenty of stuff on the dictaphone to be going on with

I was out with an American policeman last night driving around California. he was showing me all these mountainous areas where people had moved in and put cabins. These were in some of the routes taken by wolves during their migration and the cabins were blocking the routes. I awoke quickly after that.

Later on I was at one of these competitions on TV about 2 items. There was an explosive shell. For some reason I began to look inside the shell casing. I dropped it and all of the gunpowder went everywhere all over the film set. We tried washing it away with water but of course that didn’t work. It froze immediately. Some girl was about to skate off and go right through it

I took a girl to the airport last night in a taxi. I don’t know who she was but I ought to. We were discussing the airport, saying how handy it was for us. She said that her father ran some kind of taxi service in the airport area. He’d bought a couple of limousines, a black one and a silver one with the idea of trying to get hold of some high-quality airport work. The chat went on for quite a while. We arrived at the vicinity of the airport. I grossly undercharged her for going and I’ve no idea why that would be. I only ended up charging her £6:00 or something like that. Going to the airport cost a lot more than that back in the day. It was an extremely interesting chat about her father and his 2 silver K135 cars

We were in Walsh class last night reading a paper on changing roles in society. It listed probably 10 roles like mending a fence, mending your roof, taking money to the bank etc. The discussion was about how modern people are now changing their way of thinking. The key word here was “remuneration”. We’re all older in our Welsh class. I was saying that I was up on my roof in August. Someone else said that they’d fixed their own fence the other week. It seemed that we were bucking a trend about this question of changing DiY into paid remuneration.

And so I was up and about and ready to go out of the door at 07:00. The train that came in at 07:10 was another push-me-pull-you double decker and I have a hard time climbing on board them. Someone having chained his folding pushbike to the disabled handrail didn’t help matters at all.

At Brussels Gare du Nord I left the train and found my way onto the concourse but the lift downstairs was out of order so I had a very delicate walk down the stairs. I’ll tell you something for nothing and that is that no matter how much better I’m feeling, it’s a totally different kettle of fish with a backpack on my back.

My bus was due to leave at 08:20 but there was no sign of it. All the others were in and gone, and ours finally staggered into the loading bay 40 minutes late. But there’s one thing about being a disabled passenger and that is that even though it’s difficult to climb up the steps into the bus, they let me on first so I can have the pick of the seats.

Between Brussels and Lille I had a very charming young lady sitting next to me and we had a lengthy chat all the way. It’s a long time since I’ve had such an erudite companion so if you read this, Pauline, un grand bonjour.

She alighted at Lille and I had another companion as far as Rouen. He didn’t have much to say for himself but he picked up my phone for me when it fell to the floor.

From Rouen to Caen I was on my own but we did have a moment of excitement when we were stopped in a police barrage and the bus was searched for drugs. Two people were taken off the bus to be interviewed but they were allowed back on afterwards.

It’s no surprise to anyone that I missed the 16:10 train to Granville. But there’s another one at 17:10 so I was able to grab a nice hot coffee. I hadn’t had too much to drink on board the bus, on the basis that what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out. 8 hours on a bus is a long time and the toilets are really inconvenient for people with mobility issues.

As we pulled into the station at Granville I checked my keys and put them into the outside pocket of my coat so that they were handy. When I reached Caliburn on the car park I no longer had them. In the confusion of organising myself to leave they must have fallen out.

It took a while to awaken the people in the station. Presumably they had gone off for a coffee before the next train comes in, but eventually they arrived and we did the necessary so that I could collect my keys. Serves me right for being disorganised.

Back at Ice Station Zebra I made a drink because I had a thirst that you could photograph. And then I watched the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Bala in the Welsh Cup semi-Final.

The Quay took the lead after just 35 seconds and from them on we had a right full-blooded cup-tie that was played with an extraordinary amount of skill. A really good advert for the Welsh Premier League.

In the second half Bala scored 2 quick goals to take the lead but with 10 minutes left the Quay equalised. We were heading for penalties when Bala popped up with a third and despite Connah’s Quay throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Bala in the dying seconds of the game they couldn’t find an equaliser.

They did actually have the ball in the net right at the end but with Jack Kenny holding down Alex Ramsey in the Bala goal, there was no way that the goal would be allowed.

And how I wish that Jack Kenny, who is one of my favourite players in the WPL, would stop moaning and protesting every time a decision is given against him. He’d be a really good player, one of the best in the league, if only he would stop being so petulant.

On the bus I’d eaten some of my butties so at half-time I fetched the leftovers and demolished them with a pear and a banana. And now I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I’m shopping, and as I missed my St David’s Day, when I return I’m going to make some leek and potato soup for the weekend to vary my diet a little. I’m quite looking forward to that.

And I’m looking forward to my own bed as well. The hotel bed was comfortable, but it’s not mine.

And just a word before I go. Travelling everywhere on crutches is difficult, yet it would have been much more difficult without all of the help that I received from all kinds of people who showed me some extraordinary kindness as I went around on my travels.

It’s the kind of thing that restores my jaundiced faith in humanity and I am really grateful to everyone who helped me along the way.

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Saturday 28th January 2023 – THERE WAS NO …

… danger of sleeping through the alarm this morning. This new phone has the loudest alarm that i’ve ever heard – loud to the point of being uncomfortable. But at least I know that it works which is good news. The way I am these days, I’d be totally lost without an alarm.

So when the alarms went off this morning, I was actually up and about for the second alarm and that makes quite a change. And after the medication and checking my mails and messages I had a quiet morning without doing all that much. Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone though. I must have had quite an active night. I can’t remember much about this first one though, except that I dropped a pile of spaghetti down on my trousers while I was eating my evening meal. That’s about everything unfortunately

And then I was out last night looking at apartments. Not for myself – I was with someone else. We’d been employed as investigators by some kind of TV company to go to look at apartments that were to let and look at the condition, examine them closely, find out what regulations were being broken, how the landlords were getting round the rules etc. It was quite interesting. There were plenty of landlords who refused even to be seen and conducted everything by phone or standing behind a door etc showing us these places. We said that we were questioning them but trying to make it sound that we were interested tenants. One actually said that I should be in politics, something that brought a guffaw of laughter from me and whoever I was with. Then Jimmy Clitheroe went out to look at an apartment and made a report on it too. It was all something extremely interesting.

There was something else going on last night of which I can only remember a little bit. It was to do with money and receipts, whether I was receiving money from being self-employed etc. This was the last time that I was receiving the money so I had to finish off my account book. That meant drawing a few vertical lines in it which I tried to do with a ruler and pencil but for some unknown reason it wouldn’t follow the line of the ruler and going off at slight diagonals somewhere making the whole thing look untidy when I’d been doing my best to try to keep it neat. One of the things was a payment that had been made to Nerina that needed to be included. Again, where her entry had to go was this problem with making these vertical lines for the columns. There was a lot more to it than this but it all evaporated away.

Later on I had to go out into the suburbs of the extreme south of London. I was in the north of London at the time so it meant catching a local train into Euston station, a metro down into the centre and then I could walk the rest of the way. I reached the underground station but I couldn’t find a money-changing machine. In the end I had to negotiate with a woman who was keeping one of the bars there. She gave me 4x50cents for a £2:00 coin. I worked out how to get onto the station. There were 5 platforms here. I had to work out which platform I wanted. As I approached the first platform a train to Kings Cross pulled in so there was a huge stampede of people for that train. It was amazing how quickly the station cleared. They all clambered aboard and their train went. She started to announce the next one, the announcer did, which I hoped would be mine.

And then Nerina turned up. She was in bed so I made breakfast in bed but I’d left it rather late. We had to be in church for 11:00 which meant leaving here at about 10:00 but that would be impossible as she would only have 15 minutes to eat her breakfast and prepare herself. I had a look round and found that there was a service at 12:00 because it was Pentecost so I told her to take her time. When we went out we had to go right the way across London on foot all the way out to the suburbs at the extreme south of the city. That meant catching a train from the north into Euston station, a metro on the Northern Line so far and then walking the rest of the way. We reached the station and had to hunt around to find out where our train was, which was on Platform 5. Something cropped up and as a result we were late and missed our train. We had to catch another one. This was right towards the end of the service. I went down to Platform 5 with Nerina. Of course I wasn’t even sure now that the next train we wanted would be at Platform 5. 2 TGVs went past then a couple of local trains. None of them stopped. A couple of buses pulled in so we went to find out about these buses. One was packed and the other was going somewhere that I didn’t recognise. I thought “if we’re not careful we’ll end up having to walk all the way from where we are. That’s going to take us another couple of hours to reach our destination in the end than it would do if we’d caught the train, the metro and then walked and that was long enough

It’s quite strange really how the second part of the fifth one is quite similar to all of the fourth one. I’m not sure whether or not that classes as stepping back into a dream or not.

After lunch there was football. Connah’s Quay against Y Bala in the Welsh League Cup Final. For a game that finished 0-0 after 90 minutes it was actually quite exciting. In fact both sides were unlucky to finish with 0 necause Jack Kenny up front for the Nomads and George Newell up front for Bala each missed a bagful of chances

Both sides finished with 10 men too, Bala after one of their players had thrown a ball at a spectator. and there was a little 10-minute period where on another day a couple of other players could have joined them in the dressing room for an early bath.

We ended up with penalties, which Bala won 4-3.

But some of the substitutions that Neil Gibson made from the Nomads bench were bewildering to say the least. I’d have played the last half-hour completely differently than he did.

The rest of the day has been writing notes for the radio programmes and one day I’ll have them finished, whenever that may be.

Tea tonight was one of those breadcrumbed tofu slices with baked potato and salad. I’m getting quite into these salads to make a change from vegetables, and tonight’s meal was totally delicious. I’m not sure what I’m going to do though when I run out of this vegan mayonnaise with garlic. I shall have to find a good recipe and give it a good go.

Tomorrow I have a couple of things to do which shouldn’t take me all that long on a good day, but I’m not having too many of those right now. In that case it will probably take me all day and then some more. But I want to finish these 2 radio programmes on Monday no matter what so the more I do tomorrow the less I have to do on Monday.

That of arrangement would suit me fine.

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Saturday 14th January 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… rather quiet day today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday 26th December 2022 – WELL THAT WAS A …

… waste of a morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all of that was a very long time ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 12th November 2022 – WITH IT BEING …

… Saturday today it’s been very quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 26th March 2022 – IN SOMETHING OF A …

…. major surprise, the first day of my Welsh revision course actually passed quite well and I’ve no idea why either because as usual we were launched straight into the deep end.

crane ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022In something else of a major surprise, I actually caught the crane at the ferry terminal working this morning.

With having my Welsh lesson starting at 10:30 I had to nip into town early for my special bread for lunch and the mushrooms for the pizza. And there as I approached the corner of the street the crane was busily swinging something about.

Of course, at this kind of distance and as far as I was away from the outer wall it’s impossible to see what it was that they were moving around. And the sun shining right into the lens of the camera didn’t help matters at all.

person swimming in sea rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022And that’s not all either.

When I went out for my afternoon walk I went as usual to look down at what was happening on the beach and out at sea. And despite the weather I really was surprised to see someone actually in the water this afternoon.

That’s what I call “courage”.

But I’m getting ahead of myself yet again today.

When the alarm went off this morning it was yet another struggle to leave my stinking pit for the real world. Nevertheless, I beat the second alarm clock. Not by much, I have to say, but enough.

After breakfast there was plenty of time to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

The Germans were busy executing a load of prisoners whom they had caught last night, hanging them in groups of so many. After they had done several groups, they decided that they would call it a night for the moment, just as they got to one particular woman. They were all there having a little party I suppose. This woman was sleeping on what was a large bed, the type that you would fit probably a dozen people on. One of the women who was there involved in the executions was with a guy. They were busy eating green apples. They asked this woman if she wanted one but she said no. It created problems with her stomach so they carried on with what they were doing while she was there trying to sleep with all this noise. her hands were tied so she couldn’t do very much. When everyone went off to sleep she tried to free her hands but she wasn’t able to do it. Next morning the hangings started again and she was in the first batch of them to go to meet their maker. Interestingly, where this was all taking place was somewhere round by the corner of Alton Street and Walthall Street in Crewe.

And later we were babysitting a small child for someone. I can’t remember who I was with now but it was male. It might have been my brother. We were babysitting in my house. This woman turned up unexpectedly to take the boy away. It was her grandmother on his mother’s side. She had a friend with her. They walked into my house and had a look around. She said to her partner “just remember before you say anything about the condition of their house, it’s their house”. She said that with one of those long pointed looks down her nose. I thought “you ungrateful cow”. I was just about to tell her what I thought of her when she grabbed the child and left so I chased after her but she had gone. Just then my mother in law turned up with her other daughter in law, her brother’s wife, for measuring our house. We had a tape measure and someone asked to know the length of it so I said that it was 20 metres. They insisted that it was 10 but I could see quite clearly that it was 20. I told the story of this woman coming in. My mother-in-law said “yes, quite” as if she clearly agreed with the first woman. I thought “all these miserable people here . I can’t even live my life quietly on my own without having all of these attacks from all kinds of different people. What made it worse was there I was out of the goodness of my heart looking after this little child and all I received was a heap of abuse, which sounds about pretty much par for the course the way things are these days.

And that’s not all of what happened last. But trust me – you really don’t want to know about the bits that are missing, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

There was also an extremely bad-tempered reply to the e-mail that I wrote last night. Which went basically “I’m not paid to do …” a task that he actually volunteered to do without any prompting, and “ohh, that’s different” – the standard sort of reply that you receive when you mention something that they haven’t considered.

And plenty of other bells and whistles besides

“Ohh, that’s different” – like when the subject crops up about the footballer who is accused of cruelty after kicking his cat and you ask his critics if they’ve just eaten a meal containing the flesh of some animal that someone has actually killed.

crane ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022So climbing down from my soapbox, I headed off into town this morning nice and early just as the shops were opening.

And there at the viewpoint at the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne I watched them playing about with the crane but by the time that I arrived at a good viewing position whatever it was that they were moving had gone out of sight.

There were problems going down into town too. There are some steps that go down from the Rue des Juifs to the Place Pelley and someone has erected a scaffolding across them, as I discovered when I was half-way down.

market place general de gaulle Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022At the Carrefour I bought a special baguette and a punnet of mushrooms and headed for home.

Although it’s early, the market was in full swing. The barbecue on the right, burning its charcoal, was in full operation. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that two years or so ago the Maire at the time tried to stop him burning charcoal, but he fought the case and won.

The walk back up the hill to home was surprisingly easy. Not only did I not stop for breath, I actually made it up to the top at something like a reasonable speed as well.

That’s not like me these days either, is it?

At 10:30 our lesson began and I was actually already connected up. But not for long. The laptop that I use for Zoom crashed and it took me about 15 minutes for it to fire up again and reconnect.

We’re 15 students in this class, all from South Wales apart from me so I’m confusing them all by saying “efo” instead of “gyda”, “rwan” instead of “nawr”, “dwâd” instead of “dod” and so on which isn’t very helpful. I don’t know why they insist on putting me in a South Walian revision group when my learning provider is registered as Coleg Cambria, which is based in Wrexham in North-East Wales.

We had two coffee breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and a lunch hour of course. And to my surprise I managed not to fall asleep either.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022As soon as it finished I legged it off outside, rather later than usual, but never mind.

Earlier on, I mentioned that it was a beautiful afternoon. And you can tell that by the crowds of people down there on the beach.

This lot is sitting at the foot of the steps that lead up to the Rue du Nord. And there were dozens of other little groups like this one scattered around all over the place as well, enjoying every minute of the weather.

Including the woman, who we saw earlier up to her waist and beyond in the water. Perhaps I ought to mention that despite the crowds down there, she was the only one who had taken the plunge. It wasn’t that warm.

people on path pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022You’ve seen the crowds on the beach already. Now look at the crowds on the path on top of the cliff.

My route to the lighthouse was dogged by hordes of people pushing pushchairs, walking dogs, holding children and all of that kind of thing. The beautiful weather has brought them out in their droves this afternoon.

And the reason why everyone seems to be on land at the moment is because if you look at the background of the photo you can see that we have the sea mist back again..

There won’t be much sightseeing being done on the water this afternoon.

fishermen in boats baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022However this photo represents something else completely.

There were a couple of boats that I could actually see and even though the bright sunlight was shining directly into the camera and reflecting off just about everywhere else, I still had a go at it.

These two boats were actually full of fishermen – you can tell by the silhouette of their fishing rods – but what caught my eye was how close they were together, like the two trawlers the other day and there were some strange antics going on aboard.

There are some strange things happening out at sea these days.

people on bench cabanon vauban pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022And whatever it was that they were doing, they had an audience watching them.

Down on the bench by the cabanon vauban this afternoon we had another group of people enjoying the sun and whatever the spectacle was out there with those two boats.

And no dog – or polar bear – to disturb the peace either today.

But I have things to do, places to go, people to see, so I headed off towards the port on the path on the other side of the headland to see what was happening over there.

cabin cruisers baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022There was no change whatever either in the chantier naval or over at the ferry terminal since we last looked.

But there was some water in the inner harbour and there was a small cabin cruiser on its way into port. Presumably the larger one is waiting for a bit more water to come in.

Back here there was football on the Internet. Haverfordwest County v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

And what a match this was. The first shot on target was on 32 minutes and the second shot on target was at 51 minutes. We had a brief flurry of action for 5 minutes immediately after than and then it was “as you were”.

The final score was 0-0 and believe me – both sides were lucky to get nil. After the exciting game we had last Friday night, this was a considerable let-down.

Tea was a burger on a bap, and then I came in here to write up my notes.

Having done that, I’ll have a play on the guitar and then go to bed. No lie-in tomorrow either. I’ve set the alarm as I have Day Two of my Welsh revision weekend. I suppose that if you throw enough of it at a wall, some of it might stick.

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Saturday 26th February 2022 – YOU HAVE ALL MISSED …

earth and tyres dumped by farmers at leclerc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022… the excitement that took place through the night at quite a few of the supermarkets in Normandy overnight.

It seems that the local farmers had been to pay a visit, and had dropped off loads of earth, old tyres and other assorted stuff all over the entrances to the car parks so that no-one could enter.

The cashier at LeClerc with whom I spoke about the matter couldn’t tell me what was the object of the exercise, but French farmers don’t need an excuse to be militant . They can do it as a matter of course

tractors and lorry removing earth and tyres leclerc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Some of the obstructions had been moved by the time that I arrived, and when I was on the point of leaving they were removing the others.

One of the workers had seen me taking photographs and came over to talk to me. He wanted to make sure that I knew that they had nothing whatever to do with the depositing of the load and that they were private citizens clearing it up.

Of course, I had no idea that they were anything else, but as they went to great pains to point it out, I thought that it was only correct that I emphasise the point.

Another point that I ought to emphasise was that I didn’t have much sleep last night. Not at all.

It was about 11:30 when I went to bed and with the alarm set for 07:30 I was optimistic that I could have something of a reasonable sleep. However I set off on my first nocturnal ramble at 01:24 according to the dictaphone and I didn’t stop after that. I started off in the north of Québec on a big Harley Davidson. It was winter and snowing heavily, and the only way that I could keep warm was to have my hood up on my jacket right over my head with just a small gap for my face. For some unknown reason the hood came down. I was riding along this autoroute and I was freezing – i’d never been so cold. There was snow and ice everywhere. On one occasion I lost sight of myself and looking on further down the road I couldn’t see where I was on this motorbike. Eventually I managed to catch up with myself and I had my hood back on. I arrived at the place where I was going, somewhere round by Québec or somewhere like that

And later we were back in Québec again, in winter again and at school. Again it was one of those things where my hood came down and I started to freeze to death in the snowstorm without putting my hood back up. Eventually, later on I relocated everything and I could put my hood back up. Then I could go to find the Governor and talk to him about some kind fo reciprocal arrangement for me to leave.

Amazingly, I was back a third time in Québec working in a butcher’s or a food-packing plant where we were putting boxes of food away in freezers ready for distribution. For some reason, in order to move fast, I was on a pair of roller skates and I’ve no idea why that was or how likely it would be and I can’t remember anything more about this, although I do remember that I went back into this dream at a later point but while it was pretty much the same dream my way of moving about this warehouse was a considerable amount slower compared to how it was previously when I was on roller skates.

The dream about the woman in the Ukraine dressed up on the second trip was actually after the Ukraine one that where everyone was freezing cold on the second trip. That’s what I dictated anyway, and what it relates to I really don’t know. Should it be maybe something connected to my second trip to Québec and does the woman relate to the part that I forgot?

It makes me wonder what else I might have forgotten or failed to note when I’ve been out and about at night, and whose visits have I omitted to record.

There was a deer that was wild but somehow it had come into a place where there were lots of people. It started jumping up and knocked over a woman in a bright blue dress before stamping off through the town. This was something to do with me being at work. I’d been absent for a considerable period of time. When I came back I plonked myself in a corner. people were making remarks about me being stuck in a corner. I replied that I’d just sat here to keep out of the way. if it’s someone else’s desk they have to tell me and I’ll quite happily go and sit somewhere else. In the end someone said that it was his seat. I was sure that it wasn’t so I had to gather all of my things. With all of the stuff that I have, it takes much longer than for someone else. Eventually I found that I had almost everything in my arms and stuck into bags etc. They found a place for me on a chair with no table sitting by a wall near a radiator. At least there was a bit of a socket there. One of the girls, Anne-Marie or someone, came to talk to me. “No-one likes Morales”, they said. “You should see his car. It’s parked 15 feet in front of a parking space” etc. That’s just the kind of person whom he is.

While we’re on the subject that vampires come up into this (and what this relates to, I really don’t know). Alison and I suggested meeting Jackie at a town that we know that was decaying, crumbling down where some really depressing things look as if they have taken place. There was something else about whales in an aquarium tank that I can’t remember at all

Finally, I was at some kind of meeting last night. There was some kind of talk being given and later on everyone went for lunch. When we came back out I was looking for a seat because someone had taken mine. There were these 4 statues right at the very front of the room. I patted one on the head and it said “hello” and started to talk to me. I realised that it was one of these pre-programmed things and the reply was based on what you said to it. I asked it all kinds of strange questions and was giving me some reasonably coherent answers, so much so that I was surprised. I was having quite a lot of attention from various people, my conversation with this statue. It turned out that the voice inside it was that of a girl and she came from the Soviet Union somewhere. I had quite an interesting chat with this pre-programmed robot statue thing.

So no TOTGA, Castor or Zero yet again, but having an interesting and exciting chat with a statue is something new. It sounds just about how my real life is these days. If I were to have a statue in here, having an interesting chat with it would make quite a change to talking to myself.

So after the medication I had a shower and then headed off to the shops.

All they had at Noz that interested me was some Italian alcohol-free beer so I bought a couple of packs of that and I’ll try one with my pizza tomorrow.

100 percent veggie food with eggs noz Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022But what was interesting, for quite another reason, was the 100% veggie Schnitzel escalopes.

Having been caught out on a previous occasion by one of the 100% veggie products that they carried, I check the labels these days and sure enough, it contains eggs. So much for the 100% veggie.

But I thought that the “yellows of eggs from free-range hens in powder” was rather extraordinary. How can powered hens, free-range or otherwise, lay eggs?

At LeClerc’s, apart from forgetting the Vitamin C tablets yet again, I didn’t buy anything special. It was just a normal shop this week. Quite a change from last week.

tractor removing earth and tyres leclerc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022As I was leaving the supermarket, the tractor that was helping to move the rubbish turned it.

At first, I saw the tyres so I thought that it was coming to drop some more rubbish off but then I saw that those tyres were stuck on the prongs

On the way home I was listening to some SIMPLE MINDS. It’s another one of these albums that always touches a nerve with me. There’s a time and a place for music like this in my life and unfortunately, it always comes round on the playlist at the wrong.

“Somewhere there is someone who can see what I can see”. Yes, and for three whole days (and nights) too.

Back here I had a coffee and a slice of my really delicious coffee cake, and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes, which you read earlier.

After lunch there was football on the internet – Y Drenewydd v Connah’s Quay Nomads. The Nomads won 2-0 but I’m not going to comment on the match for fear of being charged with bringing the Welsh Premier League into disrepute.

What I can say is that if Chris Hughes, the manager of Y Drenewydd knew Jim Finks, the manager of the New Orleans Saints back in the late 80s, he would be repeating his comments “We’re not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022On that note, it’s probably best that I go out for my afternoon walk.

And as usual I wandered off across the carpark to see what was happening down there on the beach. And I don’t know if the young girl down there is the same one who was down there yesterday but the wellingtons certainly looked familiar.

In fact there were plenty of people down there this afternoon. We’re supposed to be having the carnival but that has been cancelled. Nevertheless I imagine that many people had made arrangements to come here and they are here to make the best of it.

cabin cruiser fishing baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022And as usual I also had a good look around out at sea while I was here.

The yellow buoy that we saw yesterday was still out there but I was more interested in the cabin cruiser that was right out in the bay.

By the looks of things it’s a fishing party that’s out there – a rod and line fishing party, I mean. There weren’t any trawlers out there this afternoon. When I went past the port earlier this morning they were all moored up at the quayside.

They must be having a day off today.

sea pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of the things that feature regularly in these pages is the water out in the bay.

We’ve seen a few good examples just yesterday of these variegated layers of water and yesterday we even saw quite a clear demarcation line where two currents had met.

But today, just offshore, we had another really good example of what I mean. There’s no physical demarcation but the colours are quite distinct.

On a completely different subject, there was a girl walking along the cliff edge filming herself and talking on the phone. I was inclined to go over to her to tell her to be careful. After all, I don’t want to be a witness at yet another inquest but she stopped her call as I approached and walked off.

She must have heard all about me from someone else.

yacht ile de chausey baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022There was something else that was moving about right out in the bay off the Ile de Chausey so I went to stand on my bunker for a better look.

As I thought, it was a yacht returning to port after, presumably a sail out to the island. Not that I’m surprised because it was a gorgeous day. Quite sunny and just enough wind to move boats around out at sea but not enough to disturb those of us up here on the headland.

The sails were quite distinctive but it isn’t a yacht that I recognise. There were several seagulls keeping her company too so I hope that the crew had their headgear. The seagulls around here have an accuracy that puts Bomber Command to shame.

couple bench cabanon vauban pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022The weather was so nice that I was expecting to see crods of people out and about around the car park.

The lower path that goes round the base of the cliff was crowded today and we even had a pair of lovers right out on the headland at the bench by the cabanon vauban and it looked as if they were having a good time.

And so was I, actually. It was nice to be out there in the sun without too much wind to blow me around off my perch. And so I headed off around the corner to the other side of the headland.

yachts le loup baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022And out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel there were a several other people out there taking advantage of the good weather.

There were several yachts wandering around in the bay but these two particularly caught my eye and I waited until they were lined up perfectly with Le Loup, the marker light on the rock at the entrance to the harbour.

Over there in the background there were several people walking around on the beach at the side of the road that runs between St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville. They were taking advantage of the nice weather too.

tiberiade la roc a la mauve 3 courrier des iles yacht chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Meanwhile, in the chantier naval it looks as if most of the people connected with the activity down there were having the weekend off too.

As far as I could see, there was just one person down there, working on La Roc A La Mauve III. But by looking around on the ground underneath Courrier des Iles you can tell that they’ve been sanding down her paintwork.

Back here I had a few things to do, such as unpack the shopping and put it away. And I actually found one of the burgers that I especially like.

Consequently, for tea I had a burger on a bap with potatoes and veg. Plenty of mustard and garlic mayonnaise.

So having done everything that needs doing, I’m going to change the bedding. I had a good scrub this morning and I’m feeling quite clean (for a change) so I’m going to make the most of it.

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