Tag Archives: dialysis issues

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 16th August 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 7th August 2025 – I AM IN …

… total agony after the dialysis session today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday 29th July 2025 – I STILL HAVEN’T …

… uploaded the photo of my bedroom, despite what I said yesterday … "and the day before" – ed …

For a change, I have been in great demand and I’ve no idea why I’ve suddenly become so popular.

Not that I was in any fit state to upload the photo last night either. I was so tired last night and had a real struggle to reach the end of the day’s programme. I was fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) wave after wave of sleep while I was working and that made me even later than it otherwise might have been.

In the end, I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally hit the hay. I couldn’t be bothered to look. All that I wanted to do was to sleep.

Not that I managed much of that either. It was an extremely restless night that saw me awaken several times. In the end, round about 05:30, I gave up even trying and crawled out from under the covers.

It was the usual desperate stagger into the bathroom followed by an even more desperate stagger into the kitchen for the medication. None of this should be any surprise of course, bearing in mind how I was feeling.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and I was astonished. I must have travelled miles. I was at the dialysis centre last night. They were busy sorting out people into what particular treatment they needed. With me of course it was the filtration but also I’m there for three and a half hours with my legs raised somewhat. During the dream they had me weighing myself and they were calculating the weight of my legs, fitting weights and things to them that were inclined and much more complicated to work so that I was walking around with my full weight all the time. It was a most uncomfortable situation to walk around or to sit down or to sleep like this but they didn’t seem to care. Into the room came some Jamaican Hercules dancing troupe people who had presumably been captured by the ancient explorers and brought to Europe. They were there in full dance mode while we were waiting to be treated with dialysis.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … even though I’m asleep when I’m dictating, when it comes to transcribing the notes there’s some kind of recollection of something in the back of my mind. But for this one, I have absolutely no idea at all. Apart from the dialysis and the musculation exercises (which will become relevant as you read on), it’s totally meaningless … "aren’t they all?" – ed …

On the dictaphone too, some time later was a note that I can still see the emblems from this dialysis session too. On this machine where I was being treated, on the floor was an arrow and a drawing of one of these ad-hoc storage unit things on wheels, something like a portable patient, with a drawing of a patient upside-down by his ankles and the person in charge of the county of Chester was also drummoned and sentence to be executed on this Danish island somewhere and he had a small chest and a double overlooking a uniform thing, yoga pants, tight yoga top. People were wearing that and this was how it was drawn, this pictogram, along with you upside down having been held by your ankles and an umbrella upside down, being held by the hook over the arm of the dialysis thing.

It’s strange that I stepped back, totally unawares, into a dream of which I was totally unaware. This is some kind of new experience. Usually, I can remember stepping back into dreams, even if it doesn’t happen as often as I like, especially when one of my young ladies is involved.

Later on, one of the boys from the Welsh class came round last night. He was in an extremely bad mood and I thought that it was something that I had done at first. Instead, it turned out that he had been trying to do the Welsh homework all day, which was a bookkeeping exercise, and had failed miserably despite all that he could do. We sat down and looked at it, and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it either. Generally, when bookkeeping goes wrong, you have something in the wrong column. We tried various permutations but that didn’t work. In the end, we thought that we’d leave it and let our heads clear, and go back a little later. He told me that he’d seen another member of the class wandering around who was on his way to sit on the beach at Goodwin Sands so after seeing him leave, I went for a wander out onto the cliffs overlooking Goodwin Sands. That guy was there on the cliffs looking down at the people. We could hear someone having a really good discussion with a small group. Suddenly, he mentioned the name of our classmate and there was a reply, so we shouted down his name. He stuck his head out of the crowd, saw us and waved so we waited. Someone wanted to know who it was who called down to him. He replied “it’s some friends”. They said something like “it’s not that little girl who follows you around who has come to see what you’re doing, is it?”. He replied “no, because her mother is already down here on the beach and she’s hardly likely to come down here on the beach and leave her daughter somewhere else. So if her mother is here, the daughter is here so it can’t have been her who yelled”.

We should have had a Welsh group chat today but this morning we had a mail to say that it’s been postponed. The area around the Goodwin Sands, that is, the cliffs of Pegwell Bay, is an area that I know very well from the days of my youth and summer holidays with my mother’s relatives on the Isle of Thanet.

There was a whole group of us wandering around in IKEA doing the shopping but it was dragging on and on and on. In the end I lost a little patience and went for a wander around. Eventually, everyone else caught up with me and asked where I’d been. I told them that I’d been off with Zero looking at a few things and then I’d wandered off into the food hall. “Well, Zero never said anything” her father said “but she did ask if anyone thought whether she was trying to get you into trouble”. I replied “no, she won’t ever get me into trouble”. “Well, you need to be careful because she’ll dye your work trousers brown without any second thoughts”. We had something of a laugh about that but I was definitely not in a very good mood during that shopping trip. I was really fed up with this whole kind of thing at the moment.

So welcome back, Zero. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. It really is nice when one of my young ladies puts in an appearance during the night, and how I wish I could step back into a dream with one of them. However, as seems to be always the case, someone comes along to throw a spanner into the works.

Isabelle the nurse turned up this morning. She gave me my injection and then sorted out my feet. I could then make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we are talking about all of the jousts between knights etc and the trials by combat that all took place at Smithfield, quite often in front of the monarch. One of the combatants was called, rather eloquently, “The Bastard of Burgundy”

There’s a lengthy discussion on the banquets that were served up at the Bishop of Ely’s residence, and I couldn’t believe the amount of food cooked. Even our author says that "it were tedious to set down the preparation of fish, flesh and other victuals consumed at this feast."

As it happens, I’ve seen the list, and I wouldn’t know where to begin to describe it. We start with "twenty-four great beefs… and one ox" through an entire menagerie to "larks, three hundred and forty dozen."

More interestingly though, he touches on the origins of the Old Bailey and the Inns of Court.

After breakfast, the taxi came to pick me up to take me for my x-ray. It was the guy who thinks that he’s the boss, and we had a very interesting chat all the way to the hospital.

When the x-ray was finished, I had to wait around for the taxi to take me back, and as there was no cleaner to help me upstairs, I had to manage myself. After a pause to recover, I packed a few more boxes.

My plumber had mailed me with a list of things that he needs for the shower so my kitchen fitter and I spent an age going through various on-line catalogues to find stuff that was available at short notice.

In the end, we had quite a list and he went off on a prowl to try to find what we need. He found most things, and acceptable substitutes for the rest, so who knows? I may even have a shower quite soon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I had something of a moan about the kitchen fitter, but I really must shut up and instead, count my blessings that I have found someone who is prepared to go way beyond the extra mile to help me out.

When my cleaner turned up to drop off tomorrow’s injection, she took down the boxes that I’d packed and they are now ready for putting away, which will be Thursday’s task.

There was the radio programme to finish, and that’s now done. I followed that by reviewing the programmes for the month of August and they are being sent off one by one ready for inclusion while the coordinator is on holiday.

In the middle of all of this, the Re-education Centre contacted me. Would I like to come for an assessment interview on 26th September? I don’t see why not. After all, it might even do me some good, even if I doubt it very much. But one thing is for sure, and that is that the taxi owner can buy himself a new Rolls-Royce this year.

While I was at it, I rang up the dialysis centre about the mattress, but for all the good that it did me, I may as well have saved my energy. "No-one else has complained about it" was the helpful … "I don’t think" – ed … reply.

So having had a fry-up (for a change) for tea, I’m off to bed ready for all of this work that I have to do tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about x-rays … "well, one of us has" – ed … while I was in the hospital, I heard two x-ray plates talking to each other.
"I’ve lost an electron" said one of them
"Are you sure?" asked the other.
"Ohh yes. I’m positive."

Monday 28th July 2025 – YET MORE TORTURE …

… at the dialysis centre today. The mattress on my bed has collapsed and there’s a big hollow right where my left hip fits. And so, after about ninety minutes, with two hours still to go, I was in total agony. And so it dragged on throughout the entire session.

It’s bad enough being poked, prodded, stabbed with needles, awoken when I’m trying to doze, but this is the final straw. I shall telephone them tomorrow and tell them that if it’s not fixed by Thursday, I shan’t be coming again. I reckon that i’ve had quite enough.

Especially after last night. Chatting with my kitchen fitter after he’d finished seemed to take hours and all that I wanted to do was to eat my pizza. It was stone-cold by the time that he went, I was royally fed up and in the end, it was some quite ridiculous time when I finally managed to haul myself off to bed. I really can’t take much more of this.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was totally flat out in bed. It was quite a battle to raise myself out before the second alarm and had there not been a second alarm to encourage me to leave the bed, I probably would still be in there now. I was totally shattered.

In the bathroom, I went for a wash and a shave and then into the kitchen to sort out the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night but there was nothing thereupon. I must have had a really deep, intense sleep. And if so, why aren’t I feeling much better than I am right now?

There were a few things that I needed to but I was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. He was in and out in a flash, seeing that he’s off on his holidays this evening. I could push on, make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still on our perambulations of course, but today he tells us that "on the River Thames, of late years, was placed a corn mill, upon or betwixt two barges or lighters, and there ground corn, as water mills in other places, to the wonder of those who had not seen the like, but this lasted not long without decay, such as caused the same barges and mill to be removed.". I would have loved to have seen that in operation. It must have been a fantastic machine.

We’ve also had another rent payment made in flowers. This refers to one of the towers in Baynard’s Castle, which Edward III gave "to William, Duke of Hamelake, in the county of York, and his heirs, for one rose yearly.to be paid for all service."

There’s also a movement inspired by the Bishop of Rochester and several others to provide aid for the poor, and many men "moved liberally to grant what they would impart … and what they would contribute weekly for their maintenance for a time.". Where is the church today when it should be leading the same kind of campaign amongst the wealthy and privileged?

And yesterday, we had a fight amongst a couple of priests. To day, he tells us of a rather incendiary confrontation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and his retinue and the canons of the Priory of St Bartholomew. Tomorrow, we’ll probably find the Pope in there somewhere having a helping of violent disorder.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review ready to broadcast. But once more, I didn’t like it so I re-edited it and remixed it. The programmer is off work on holiday in August so I’ll have to review the programmes for that month tomorrow and send them off.

There wasn’t much time to do much else before my cleaner arrived to fit my patches. When she had finished, we went downstairs with a few boxes to empty out. And I did take a photo of the bedroom but I’m so whacked that I really don’t have the energy to post it. I shall do it tomorrow.

The driver who took me to dialysis was the young, chatty guy and we had a very interesting chat all the way down there. We were early arriving too, but it did no good seeing that so were several other people and as usual, I was last to be plugged in.

They gave me a prescription for an x-ray on my chest, which is arranged for tomorrow. That is just crazy. I’m not having a moment to relax, with yet another climb back up the stairs when I should be resting. Why couldn’t they arrange it for a day when I have dialysis?

The disinterested doctor was on duty today and he didn’t seem too interested in what I had to say. He did, however, inspect (at my insistence) my catheter port and pronounced it healthy. But there’s a bruise that is causing the pain that I am feeling.

Apart from the mattress, which has totally annoyed me, nothing much else happened. Being late coupled up, I was late leaving. It was the young Asiatic girl who brought me home and we talked about Italian food all the way home.

Back here, we went into downstairs and began to make a list of the work that needs doing, but it ended up being something of a building meeting with a group of us outside my door chatting.

It was a real struggle to climb back up here. I feel that I’m going backwards with this chemotherapy and losing whatever mobility that I had. There was another barrage of messages from the kitchen fitter but I’ll reply to them when I’m in a better humour.

Instead, I made tea – a burger with pasta and veg. I couldn’t be bothered to do much else.

So right now, I’m off to bed, hoping that I’ll awaken in a better frame of mind tomorrow, although with this trip to the x-ray and the climb back up here, I doubt it very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about flowers … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of one of those “Mr and Mrs” quizzes in which Nerina and I competed.
The presenter asked me which was Nerina’s favourite flower. And Yours Truly, completely misunderstanding the question, replied "Homepride self-raising, I think."

Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

… is looking wonderful, it really is.

It’s not finished yet – it probably needs another full day’s work – but even so, it’s quite impressive as it is. The oven and microwave are installed and the hob will be next, and then it will just be a case of the final touches. But it really is impressive.

It will be another five weeks or so before I’ll be moving in. It seems that the weekend round about 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August is when a few volunteers have offered to come along to help, although I’ll be hoping to move a pile of stuff before then, if I can. So if anyone is at a loss for a few things to do one week or one weekend in the near future…

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, it was another late night last night by the time everything was finished. Or, rather, it wasn’t finished because I had forgotten, would you believe, the backing up of the computer.

But anyway, once I was finally in bed, there I stayed until 06:27 precisely, two minutes before the alarm was due to go off, and I managed to struggle to my feet to beat the alarm. But if that’s not impeccable timing then I don’t know what is.

After a good wash and my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was having some kind of injection because of all these foreigners who were coming to play football around here. Many people were disillusioned by the fact that they had signed a lot of the youth players from English clubs because they were thinking that the academies of these clubs were of absolutely no useful purpose at all – it was simply a paperwork exercise to show that the club has some kind of development certificate and there was no possibility of these young boys ever being included in some kind of first team round-up and some kind of Premier League involvement in due course. Most of these lads were destined to have the job when they reached the end of the age group.

This actually refers to a discussion that some of us were having on a football news forum yesterday, talking about how many under-17, under-18, under-19 etc football academy players, even youth internationals, are now playing part-time in non-league or minor league football, saying that these football academies are really nothing but window-dressing for the clubs concerned, simply to abide by certain rules and regulations with absolutely no intention at all of promoting local youth talent.

Isabelle the Nurse came in to see me and gave my knee some heat treatment, and then she attended to my legs.

After she left, the kitchen fitter put his sooty foot in the door. I organised him and he wandered off to start work. I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author is still giving us the conducted tour of various churches. He tells us that in the Church of St Mary Woolnoth there is a memorial to"Thomas Roch and Andrew Michael, vintners, and Joan, their wife." And I’m definitely eager to find out more information about that cosy set-up.

Interestingly too, he tells us that "in divers countries, dairy houses or cottages wherein they make butter and cheese, are usually called ‘wicks’.". A “wich” is quite often associated with a salt town and has other meanings in Norse and in Anglo-Saxon too, but Stow’s interpretation of the ending is certainly food … "groan" – ed … for thought.

After breakfast, I came back in here to sort out the radio notes that I dictated yesterday. In total, there is about twenty-five minutes’ worth and that’s going to take an age to edit. I shall be here for the next two months doing that, I reckon, and miss the actual programme dates if I’m not careful.

My faithful cleaner came along and sorted me out with my anaesthetic patches, and I came back in here to carry on working.

The driver who came to pick me up was the Belgian girl and I like her very much so we had a lovely chat all the way down to Avranches, except for the time when she was having an argument with one of her children on the telephone. I suppose that a pair of eleven-year-old twins would be a handful for anyone.

My luck was in at the dialysis centre. I was attended to by Julie the Cook who showed me some photos of her latest culinary creations. And wonderful they are too. But she had a lot of trouble coupling me up to the machine today and for quite a while, my machine kept on sounding the alarm.

One of the doctors came to see me today to ask me how I was. I told him that it’s pointless asking me because they don’t do anything about what I’ve told them already. So he departed with a flea in his ear.

The dietician was next to come along, with a prescription for forty-eight samples each of four different varieties of a new protein drink. I wonder what all of that will be like.

And then all Hell let loose. There’s a patient who has a four-hour dialysis session who is currently in hospital at Granville. His session is due to start at 14:00 but the ambulance didn’t bring him until after 15:30, meaning that the girls have to stay until about 20:00 this evening. It goes without saying that they were not too happy about it, and they expressed their displeasure quite forcibly to the ambulance crew.

There’s another person there who is … errr … well, he <DOESN’T HAVE BOTH PADDLES IN THE WATER. He was an endless source of trouble and stress to the nurses this afternoon and in the end, one of them had to sit with him for quite a while to keep an eye on what he was up to.

For once, I was unplugged quite quickly and the taxi was waiting for me too so we were soon on our way home. We came back via the town centre so that we could have a look at the chaos with the rebuilding paused for the summer, and then the driver dropped me off at home where my faithful cleaner was waiting.

First thing that I did was to go to inspect the kitchen and to chat with the kitchen-fitter and his wife who was helping. And my kitchen does look lovely. He’s done a really good job and I’m well-impressed. It will be even better when it’s finished.

Mind you, I had a very late tea tonight because I had to wait for an age while he finished off and packed up his tools.

He also presented me with a bill to date, and after I’d paid it, I had to go to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Tea tonight was just like The Carmichaels, as SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. It was too late to cook a proper meal.

So now I’m off to bed, later than I would like. And I need to be on form as there’s a lot to do tomorrow. There’s the Sunday Woodstock notes to continue to edit and also June and Catherine are coming round to see me before they head off back to South Germany.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the kitchen fitter … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked him if he would like to install a mirror for me in the kitchen.
He thought for a while and then replied "ohh yes, why not? That’s just the kind of job that I could see myself doing."

Monday 14th July 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that Marion loves me any more.

The last time that she was on shift when I was at dialysis, she was nagging me to do my own preparation.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly why I am simply unable to do it and so it doesn’t do any good at all to insist. It’s simply impossible.

And so this afternoon, she tried a new tactic. When my machine pinged to say that my session was over, she half-uncoupled me and then wandered off to do other things, leaving me hanging around like Piffy on a rock for twenty-five minutes.

If she thinks that that is going to galvanise me into action, she’s mistaken. I simply can’t bring myself to touch this pulsing, throbbing vein that they installed in my arm a year ago and that’s the end of it.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night, for a change, I actually finished early. After taking the stats and performing the back-up, I went and sorted myself out and ended up in bed by 22:40 which made a very welcome change, and how I enjoyed it too.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s really pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So quickly to sleep once I was in bed, but wide awake this morning at 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing, being up and about is something else completely and you have to wait until 05:40 when I finally crawled out of bed.

The ice pack had slipped from my knee during the night and was flapping about in the breeze this morning, so that hadn’t been of very much use, but nevertheless, I was moving about a little easier, which was a surprise.

First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was dreaming that I was going into hospital so I was checking everything that I had and that I needed to take with me. I took my ‘phone. When I was finally in bed, I strapped an ice pack onto my knee and just lay there. At a certain point a little later I heard my ‘phone making noises as if there was an alarm or something going on. After several minutes I realised that it was one of the chat programs on my telephone that had received a whole series of messages with the usual message tone but I hadn’t realised it prior to that.

Packing ready for hospital is something to which I look forward very much (I don’t think), knowing that in the immediate future I have to go back to Paris for the next session of chemotherapy, when I shall be insisting upon knowing why they are giving me the same chemotherapy that my body rejected violently nine years ago.

As for the ‘phone “making noises”, this morning, when I looked at my ‘phone, I found that I had indeed received a whole series of messages and photos from the kitchen fitter who had clearly been burning the midnight oil.

Later on, I was with my cleaner and my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent. There was a big group of people and we were connected in some way to a chevreuil which of course is a small deer. There was some issue about this deer and it had escaped, so everyone was out looking for it. We had other things to do but we couldn’t stop to look. Instead, we were going somewhere in a Mini. We were driving through a field and we had to perform a “U-turn” somewhere at the side of the road. There was this little turn-round place into a small field there but the only way out was on a blind corner so I went across the field in the Mini. It turned out that there was a really steep drop in this field so I told everyone to hang on and I went down in this Mini. We came across some traces of where these people had looking for the deer. There was some old pet’s bed there that had probably belonged to it. We continued to drive until we came to a huge set of gates where a lot of people from this search party were congregated. One woman was incensed about seeing the three of us together. She was complaining about how there were only two of her – she and someone else – in their group, how there ought to be more of them and how we ought to help. We explained how we had much more complicated and difficult things to do but she carried on and on and on. At these gates, she was struggling to open them with a key, this complaining woman, so I took a key and managed to open it straight away. It was a car scrapyard like McGuinness’s in Stoke-on-Trent. Inside was a “K” registered Škoda parked round by the door which I recognised as belonging to this woman. Once I’d opened the door, my friend from Stoke-on-Trent with his car and caravan drove inside. I went for a walk inside but it was totally empty. There was hardly anything at all in there. That disappointed me intensely because I was expecting it to be full of old vehicles as it usually was. Instead, I had a little walk, just looking at the wasteland while my friend drove around in his car and caravan. He came back, parked it up next to the Škoda and stepped out, looking as if he was walking away and leaving it. He asked me if I had my camera so that I could take a photo and asked me if I knew what kind of year the car was. I said “It’s ‘R’ registration so that puts it at about 1976”. However he thought that it was something different but he didn’t say exactly what. I went to fetch my camera to take a photograph of his car, the caravan and the Škoda, which were about the only three things in this entire scrapyard.

Now, there are loads of mileage in this dream. For a start, is this the first dream in which my cleaner has appeared?

As for my former friend, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he was the kind of person who would do absolutely anything for you, but after his accident 25 or so years ago, he became a totally different person and I couldn’t handle the stress. I had enough trouble dealing with my own problems at that time without having to deal with someone else’s, and when he left his car to go, on his crutches, to thump the person in the car behind who had just beeped at us, the writing went on the wall. There were several other incidents too that convinced me that things had run their course by that time.

Where this “U-turn” place was situated was at the corner of Warmingham Lane and Groby Road in Crewe, across the road from the depot of the coach company where I worked in winter when there was no tour work at Shearings.

The “Škoda” was actually a gold FSO “Polonez”, but much more slimline than the car would have been in real life. They were strange cars, a nice design but the quality was appalling. When they finally sorted out the quality issues in the early 1990s, they were wonderful cars but by then the damage had been done. They were powered by a clone of a FIAT engine, and when importation into the UK stopped because of emissions issues, the aforementioned friend and I were thinking of buying one and fitting a FIAT diesel engine in it.

The highlight of the dream would have been wandering around McGuinness’s scrapyard. I’ve had many a happy weekend in there and the stuff that I’ve had from there was unbelievable – even an old Jaguar 420 that I wanted for spares for my Daimler. I once saw a Rolls-Royce in there, only the second that I have ever seen in a scrapyard after the one that I saw IN A SCRAPYARD IN BRIDGEWATER, MAINE, IN 1973

But mountaineering over mountains of scrap cars in scrapyards looking for exciting bits and pieces. Those were the days. You can’t even go into them now, thanks to “Health and Safety”.

After a wash and my morning medication, I came back in here and dealt with the last of the outstanding correspondence and paid the bills that I didn’t pay yesterday. And then I had to sort out some money for the kitchen fitter who had bought some wood and so on for the kitchen that he’s installing.

The nurse was early again? He applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then after having dealt with my legs, he cleared off quite rapidly.

He was closely followed by the kitchen fitter who came to do another day’s work. I gave him the money for the purchases he had made and he and his son went downstairs to carry on.

After they had left, I could carry on with making breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

Our author start off today by talking about the Bedlam (or Bethlem, as he calls it) Hospital for "distracted people" as he quaintly puts it, and tells us that "in this place, people who are distraight in wits are, by the suit of their friends, received and keep as afore."

All that I can say is that if that kind of situation were to persist today, I would have nothing to fear because quite simply, I don’t have any friends.

He goes on to talk about some works being undertaken at Spitalfields, and we have a gorgeous eyewitness account of the discovery and unearthing of a Roman cemetery and an account of the contents of the graves. It’s one of the most fascinating accounts that I have read.

Something else that he mentions is a land dispute between the parish clerks and a local nobleman who had been gifted some monastic property after the Reformation that had been gifted previously to the parish, and "the parish clerks having commenced suit … and being like to have prevailed, the said Sir Robert Chester pulled down the hall, sold the timber, stone and lead, and so the suit was ended.".

After that, I came back in here to attend my Welsh Summer School but it wasn’t a real success because I couldn’t stay here for long, having to go after ninety minutes to prepare for dialysis.

When my cleaner had fitted my patches, I didn’t have long to wait for the taxi, and we whizzed down to Avranches.

It took them forty minutes to couple me up today, leaving me sitting around for quite a while as they dealt with other people. I really felt quite out of it today.

However, the good news is that my friend from Ulm and her daughter will be on their travels and they plan to pass by later in the week to say “hello”. As well as that, my friend from Macon with whom I was on a student exchange in 1970 will be in the area at the beginning of September. He and his wife are planning to come to see me, and that will be nice too. I seem to be in great demand these days.

It was the je m’en foutiste doctor on duty today and he passed by to see if I needed anything, but when I spoke to him, he didn’t seem to be interested.

At one point, I dozed off for five minutes but Marion awoke me. I really think that she has it in for me at the moment, what with waiting around at the start and at the end. She also “forgot” the cold spray when she coupled me up, so all of this cannot be coincidence.

However, as I said just now, it’s not going to change a thing.

The poor taxi driver had to wait around for an age while we had the shenanigans at the end of my session, and I didn’t return home until 19:00. I stuck my head in downstairs to look at the kitchen and it really is impressive. I shall enjoy working with that when it’s ready.

Tea tonight was something cobbled up out of a handful of mushrooms and a small tin of kidney beans with pasta and tomato sauce. But now I’m off to bed, ready for my Summer School tomorrow. I have a feeling that tackling this course is not my wisest move, but we shall see.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Bedlam Hospital … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s a little-known fact that I once served on the committee of the hospital.
One day we had to interview a patient who wasted to be liberated, so we had to go to see him to find out why.
"God told me that I was no longer crazy and that I could go home" he explained.
The man in the next bed shouted up "I said nothing of the kind!"

Saturday 12th July 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again.

For once, the taxi came early and the other passenger who travels with me on Thursday and Saturday was already on board.

For once, we arrived quite early

For once, they were ready and waiting

For once, I was coupled up quite quickly and quite early

For once, it was only a three-and-a-half hour session

For once, as the session slowly drew to a close, I was looking forward to an early escape and return home

And so regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens next in circumstances like this.

In fact, it was a pretty miserable day all round, what with one thing and another, and I wonder when I might be able to step off this treadmill.

Despite my best efforts, last night was another late night when once more I failed miserably to make any impression upon the idea of having an early night.

This pain in my chest was also playing havoc with me. I couldn’t cough and I couldn’t sneeze because I was in total agony every time I tried to expand my lungs. I’ve no idea what’s happening now.

Anyway, I settled down in my lovely clean bed thanks to my faithful cleaner … "huh?" – ed … Yes, I suppose that I’d better explain. It wasn’t she who settled me down in my lovely clean bed, but in the afternoon she had changed the bedding as part of the plan to make my bedroom/office/recording studio look nice, clean and comfortable, as indeed it proved to be.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, however, when I awoke, it was still dark. I tried to go back to sleep but I wasn’t able to do so, and so I gave some serious thought to raising myself from the Dead. However, a glance at the time on my ‘phone dissuaded me. 03:10 is far too early to be up and about, even if I can’t sleep.

Consequently, I decided to lie there semi-comatose until a more realistic time, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. Bane of Britain has struck again, asleep when the alarm went off.

When I awoke, I was dreaming about something to do with the Welsh Premier League and Y Bala FC. As usual, it evaporated so quickly from my mind before I could take hold of the dictaphone.

It’s not difficult to guess what it might be, though. Having failed to qualify for Europe for a couple of years now, the money has run out, the budget has been slashed, and according to the FAW’s squad lists, at least twelve of their star players, more than an entire team, have voted with their feet. As far as I can tell, to date they have signed just four, and none of them would be what I would call “significant” signings.

Over the past few years we’ve seen several clubs in the same position and it’s usually always ended in tears and involving relegation. But the future of Y Bala looks more bleak than all of the others right now and I reckon that unless they pull something magical out of the free transfers elsewhere, it’s going to be a very long and hard season.

It took a while to come to my senses yet again and to unstrap the ice pack, with which I went to sleep, from my right knee. And with the pain still wreaking havoc in my chest, I went off to the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

While I was in the bathroom, I set the washing machine off. With loads of bedding and everything else, there were probably about three machines-worth but one will suffice for now, with the bedding and the hospital stuff seeing that I might be back for chemotherapy in ten days time.

The kitchen was another really slow, leisurely affair while I took my time with the medication. I just couldn’t find the motivation today. As I said earlier, it was a pretty miserable day all round.

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

Nerina and I had to go to see a sports scientist kind of person for my knee. We were sitting in the waiting room and we heard him sawing a child’s foot to even off the bone. We could hear her screaming and it was absolutely horrible. Then we had to go into the room and it was freezing cold so the first thing that I did was to light the gas fire. Nerina was busy arranging everything and tidying it up. She made some kind of remark to me about why I wasn’t helping. I replied “I can’t possibly help because I’m so slow to move around these days on my crutches and you are very much quicker than me in doing everything”. However, she wasn’t very happy with that kind of answer.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not my usual habit to post distressing dreams like this. Some of you will be eating your tea right now, others will be turning the page, and I will be feeling extremely uncomfortable. In fact, I can’t understand why I did post it because “distressing” really is the correct word to describe it.

And why this kind of dream should occur when Nerina is there, I don’t know that either, but Nerina and I ended up just as we would end up after coming back from holiday

However, there was something in there about a group of musicians being on tour. They had a Volkswagen Microbus and there were so many of them that half of their group, the smaller ones, were sleeping on the floor with a series of camp beds above them. That was where the elder ones slept, all inside this VW caravan. The heat generated by these people must have been intense and the smell of bodies overpowering. I seem to remember it heading towards Barry Town in order to be there for the special day a week next weekend when hopefully the gates might be hung.

As for what this may be about, it’s a pretty good description of that trip I mentioned a few months ago when a group of people piled into a J4 van in Crewe in 1973 and drove all the way down to the Windsor Free Festival, blowing a tyre and almost overturning on the way, while my friend from the Wirral and I went down a different way on a Triumph 350cc motorbike.

The nurse turned up early yet again. He applied this heat treatment to my knee and dealt with my legs, after which he left. I could then push on with breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has been talking about the various “Undershafts” in London, and explains how the name came about, "because that of old time, every year on May-day in the morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there … which shaft … was higher than the church steeple."

He goes on to describe how it was stored "laid along over the doors and under the pentises of one row of houses" and mentions its ignominious end when the curate of St Katherine’s Christ Church denounced it as idolatrous and "whereon it had rested two-and-thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking as his share so much that had lain over his door".

After breakfast I took the washing from the machine and hung it up in the living room window to dry. And that’s a task that’s becoming harder and harder as time goes by.

There were things to do after that and I was in the middle of doing them when my faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches.

She was still here chatting when the taxi arrived and so I descended to the vehicle and we cleared off into a glorious, hot summer’s day. Far too nice to go to dialysis.

At the beginning, I spoke about some of the events at dialysis today, but one thing that I haven’t mentioned is that the connection was the most painful that I have had for a very, very long time and I was in agony throughout the entire session.

The je m’en foutiste doctor came to see me during the afternoon. I told him about my complaints so he put his stethoscope to my chest and totally ignored my knee yet again.

There was plenty of work for me to do and I was advancing quite well, looking forward to a really early finish with just ten minutes to go, when another patient had a crisis and all of the nurses went a-running. And I was simply left there, sitting like Piffy on a rock while the nurses dealt with the emergency.

Eventually, Sarah came back to deal with me and to unplug me, for which I was heartily relieved. Mind you, she dropped the pipe and there is now blood all over my shirt. The good news is that I am now below my “inactive” weight which suits me fine.

In the hallway my co-passenger and I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. Twenty-five minutes later, he turned up.

It’s the busiest weekend of the year this weekend, and we’d seen the enormous queues on the motorway as we came down. There had been plenty of breakdowns in the afternoon and as the taxi company holds the contract with the Highways Authority for dealing with repatriations, they had a whole pile of vehicles out of the area, so those who remained were rushed off their feet.

Consequently, we were no earlier coming home than we might otherwise have been.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I struggled upstairs, and then I collapsed into a chair, totally worn out.

Tea was a breadcrumbed quorn fillet with salad and baked potato, all very nice, but I struggled to eat it tonight. My appetite still hasn’t come back and it’s only ten or so days to my next chemotherapy.

But I’ll worry about that another time. Right now, I’m going to bed and I can’t say that I’m sorry.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Nerina … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what did you like especially about Nerina?"
"I liked the fact" I said "that she could see both sides to every argument."
"Could she really?" he asked.
"Indeed she could" I said. "Both sides – her side and the wrong one."

Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

… of the dialysis centre and the je m’en foutiste of the doctor who always seems to be at the centre of any dispute that I may have.

Once more, we’ve “had words” and it wasn’t a very ideal situation. I’ve made my point but it will have made absolutely no difference at all.

In fact, it’s been a bad day all round. It started off badly by me being asleep yet again when the alarm went off. How many days is this? A far cry from the heady days when I was up and working at 04:30, things like that.

It wasn’t as if it had been an early night though. It was quite close to midnight when I finally crawled into bed, but once in bed, there I stayed without moving.

It was actually difficult to move because my right knee was covered in this heat treatment and I had an ice pack strapped to it too. “Kill or cure” is my motto for right now.

When the alarm went off, it took a while for me to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and then I had an undignified stagger into the bathroom for a wash and scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

It was a very slow early morning in the kitchen sorting out my medication too. It seemed to take an age before I was back in here.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a football club that was preparing for a series of pre-season friendlies. The match that was coming up was against Manchester United and so everyone was quite nervous about how the score would unfold. However, when we took to the field we found that it was against another club and that the Manchester United game had already taken place. However, no-one could remember the result of that game. Then the whistle sounded for the kick-off but it wasn’t the whistle, it was the alarm sounding at 06:30.

There are so many pre-season friendlies going on right now that this could refer to just about anything, although it was interesting to see me having yet another bout of confusion.

The nurse turned up early again. I asked him if he could have a look at my knee so he gave it a cursory examination and reckons that it’s simply bruised rather than broken or chipped or anything. This heat treatment and ice pack is the way to go, he reckons.

After he left I made my breakfast and had to deal with a volcano in the microwave, because the surveillance of my porridge was interrupted by my faithful cleaner arriving to check on me, to see how I was.

After she left, I cleaned up the mess and sat down to eat breakfast while reading MY BOOK.

Today, we have been talking about the wealthy people whose donations to various charities enabled the poor of London to have a less mean existence. And when you see the amount of money donated by some people, you can see immediately, with the Margaret Thatcher "Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.", that modern-day society has collapsed, with the rich squirrelling away as much as they can in their offshore accounts.

Our author gives us a lovely example of how things were in the Sixteenth Century. There "were some small cottages … for some bed-ridden people … devout people … were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Fridays, weekly to walk that way purposely to bestow their alms."

What price that now?

Back in here, I read through my notes for the “Saturday Woodstock” programme, making a few corrections and additions ready to dictate the next time that I’m up early, whenever that might be. But the way things are going, it will be a while yet.

My cleaner turned up and fitted my anaesthetic patches, and after she left I came back in here to work. However, unbelievable as it may be, I dozed off.

The taxi awoke me and I staggered out into the lovely warm afternoon to drive down to Avranches. It was the chatty young female driver who took me so we had an interesting chat along the way.

At the centre, I was met with the bad news. Having insisted that I was losing weight and they denying it and insisting that these 200 grammes here, 300 grams there was correct, they performed another scan on me to determine my dry weight.

As I suspected, I have lost about three kilos just recently and I’m now officially below my preferred “inactive weight”. This also means that I had about four kilos of water to lose that they hadn’t extracted over the period that my weight was decreasing, and that means a stay of four hours.

All of the messing around meant that the procedure didn’t start until late either.

My blood pressure was horribly low so every fifteen minutes when the machine checked it, it sounded the alarm and the girls came running.

The je m’en foutiste doctor was there on duty so I complained to him. As usual, he didn’t seem to care so I expressed myself in somewhat … errr … forthright tones, but it made no difference.

While he was there, I also told him about my dizzy spells and the fall, but he didn’t seem to be too bothered either. He didn’t even examine me. He’s definitely in the wrong job.

The dietician came to see me too. They are all concerned about my loss of weight and in particular, the loss of protein. She was trying to persuade me to adopt a carnivorous diet, even though my body can’t digest animal fats and that I had a recurrence of my pancreas issues back in April.

These people really have no idea.

In the end, she told me to take as many as four disgusting drinks per day, and gave me several recipes to make it more palatable, including a recipe for a banana and orange milk shake, which totally threw me, seeing as about six months ago, she banned me from eating bananas and oranges because of the potassium.

The nurses came back and gave me some kind of electrogram test, although I don’t know why and neither did they.

During all of this, I was fighting off wave after wave of sleep but in the end I succumbed and poor Alexi had to awaken me to disconnect me.

Horribly late again, there was another passenger in the taxi and we had to drive miles through the Normandy countryside to drop him off, meaning that it was long after 19:30 when I returned home.

On the way in, I stuck my head inside the new apartment to see the work that the kitchen fitter had done, and it was so impressive. I can’t wait for him to come back and crack on.

My faithful cleaner has been busy too. She had been through my apartment here, tidying up and cleaning and it looks wonderful. Tomorrow, she’s going to blitz my bedroom so it all looks good for this photography session.

Tea was bangers and mash with vegetables. I don’t know why, but I had had a craving for them all-day. However, as is usual, they tasted much better in my imagination than they did in real life.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for a good day’s work tomorrow. There’s a lot to do and I can’t hang around. It won’t be done on its own.

But seeing as we have been talking about the je m’en foutiste doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … during our chat, he told me "if you are really becoming fed up with being here for four hours, you can ask to be unplugged and then go home".

"If I could go home whenever I became fed up with dialysis" I retorted "I would never arrive at all"

Monday 9th June 2025 – THEY HAVE CHANGED …

… my hours at the dialysis centre, so it seems.

However, it wasn’t they who told me, it was the taxi company, when I rang them to find out why the taxi hadn’t come for me

It’s not been changed to the morning either, which was what I was hoping, but instead it’s being put back from 13:30 to 14:00. That is what they would in Mexico call a peon in the hacienda.

What was annoying was that I was good and ready for the taxi at 12:30, after having what for me is a good night’s sleep. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled off to bed. It took a while to go off to sleep but once I’d gone, I’d really gone.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 05:50. I didn’t recall anything whatsoever going on during the night.

Being awake is 05:50 is not the same as being out of bed. That’s for sure. Mind you, when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I was already sitting at my desk. I had decided to make the most of the opportunity and I was dictating the notes for the additional track to complete the radio programme that I almost finished yesterday.

After a wash, a clothes-washing session and the morning’s supply of medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night. I wasn’t going to work any more. I’d been ill so I’d finished work and was at home. I’d been experimenting with a few things. At the end of the week, on a Friday, Nerina came home with a loaf of bread, some cakes and a few types of speciality loaves. She was showing them to me. “I don’t want to steal your thunder” I said, but reaching under the worktop, I pulled out a loaf that I had made during the day. She replied that her loaf was much nicer than mine, which they probably were. I noticed that my loaf of bread had been cut in half. It was in two halves under the counter and one half had not been put into the freezer to freeze. She’d also brought some cakes with her. She told me that a couple were for me. I wondered how I was going to eat them because it was going to be difficult. She made no explanation so I thought that I’d eat one today and maybe one tomorrow, something like that. I thought that this would give me a great opportunity to actually do some baking myself. I didn’t want to be put off by this idea of Nerina buying stuff and bringing it home when I’d like to have a go at making it

Nothing in the above would surprise me. Nerina never had great faith in my cooking, which was hardly surprising bearing in mind my mother’s cooking. What started off my culinary apprenticeship, such as it was, was with Nerina who, having an Italian mother, could rustle up a tasty meal out of the most basic ingredients. The rest was picked up here and there, especially from my friend Liz (“that” Liz, not “this” Liz) and by trial and error – usually much more of the latter.

There was a battle to be fought. It was to take place in the early months of the Spring. It was again something to do with the Wars of the Roses. The armies had to negotiate themselves into a good position so that they could defend it and attack the opponents. One of them had to inform its superiors in whichever army by 12th June – can you imagine that? Preparing for a war and having to organise something for several months like this?

We had a “Wars of the Roses” moment the other day too. This book about medieval castles is really getting to me right now. But the prelude to the battle bears a strong resemblance to the prelude for the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513

Later on, it was something to do with mobile ‘phones. Some young boy had had a mobile ‘phone at first and was totally confused by all of the offers on the market. His father sat down and went through them all with him. They worked out which one was the best so they arranged coverage with that one. In the meantime, the father decided that he’d buy the main shop in the town where this best company was installed and slowly set out the premises, then he could take over the installation of these sites and how tall they were. That way, he’d have a monopoly on the amount of work that was being done in the town on mobile ‘phones.

There was nothing in that dream that seemed to be of any significance or ring any bells with me.

Finally, I’d had a girlfriend. She was a few years younger than me but I liked her anyway and she liked me, which was the important thing. We hung around for a while, nothing particularly seriously, One day she’d been round to my house but my mother said that she’d have to go. I saw her to the door but told her to come back in half an hour. Half an hour later she was there on the doorstep and I smuggled her into the house. I had to leave her for a minute while I went to the bathroom, and she decided that she needed to go too. She went into the bathroom and I closed the door and waited outside. My mother had heard the toilet flush from the previous time so she came upstairs to use the bathroom, walked in and found this girl in there. Naturally, she was quite upset and it led to something of an argument but by the time that the three of us were walking downstairs again my mother had calmed down a little. I think that she’d started to accept by this time that this girl was going to be somewhere around in the future. I remember saying to this girl as we were walking down the stairs “you can’t say that life going out with me isn’t exciting, can you?”.

This house – it was the one in Shavington that we left when I was 16. I can see it quite clearly. I can still see the girl too. She was short, small-framed and with dark curly hair down just past her shoulders. I was convinced that I knew who she was too, but now that I’m awake … "really?" – ed … I can’t recognise her at all.

But finally “getting the girl” and overwhelming my mother? Things are surely beginning to look up. I just wish that I knew who the girl was.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t hang about. It’s her last day so I imagine that she has plenty of blood samples and injections to perform, seeing as her oppo starts his round tomorrow.

After she left I made breakfast and then sat down to eat it, with a good book on the laptop.

At long last, we’ve finished Geo T Clark’s MEDIEVAL MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND and I can’t say that I was disappointed. It ended up going out like a damp squib which is not surprising.

And having yesterday mocked somewhat the author of a book dated 1840, the next reading matter to come round on the book list was printed in 1604.

It’s called THE SURVEY OF LONDON and it’s a guide book discussing the different localities of London as they were at the end of the Fifteenth Century, with a few anecdotal notes about things that our author, John Stowe, picked up while he was researching.

It’s a book that’s been on my reading list for ages. Liz (“this” Liz, not “that” Liz) and I spent days wandering around London in between University meetings twenty years ago, visiting all kinds of hidden corners.

London has changed considerably since the slum clearances that began at the end of the Nineteenth Century and the Luftwaffe bombing, so I’m hoping to find a collection of books that describe how it used to be. I’ve found a few from the early Twentieth Century but they are in the period where the modernisation of the City was in full swing, and a lot had gone already by them.

What I’m hoping is that this book will fill the gap.

After breakfast I came back in here to start work. And today’s task was the Welsh homework, which is now finished, although God knows what it will be like. I’m really struggling to concentrate these days.

My cleaner turned up bang on time to fit my patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

When I rang up to enquire after it, I was told that the dialysis centre had changed my hours. That was the first that I had heard of it.

The taxi already had a passenger aboard when it arrived, and once I was in, we set off.

At the dialysis centre I was seen quite quickly. They confirmed that my hours had changed but they didn’t believe me when I told them that I knew nothing about it. That rather annoyed me.

No-one bothered me all afternoon, which was a good thing. However, I didn’t do very much. I wasn’t in the mood.

The same passenger was with me on the return journey so the driver dropped him off first. It took about fifteen minutes to take him to his room at the Re-education Centre so it was about 19:15 when I made it back home. And I’ve no idea why, but I found myself in a foul mood.

Back in my lair, I crashed into a chair and vegetated for an hour. I was exhausted. Tea was a simple pasta and burger and now I’m off to bed, totally wasted.

But seeing as we have been talking about historical novels … "well, one of us has" – ed … a book written in 1604 will be full of obsolete phrase and spelling.
That’s no surprise though, because the English language was in a state of confusion, consolidation and correction round about that time.
As Kenneth Williams once famously said "but English is a very peculiar language"
And as Sid James famously replied "you interrupt me once more and you’ll hear some VERY peculiar language"

Monday 2nd June 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

… debacle this afternoon was. Almost anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and I ended up being one extremely tired, unhappy bunny.

You are probably thinking that I seem to dwell on the depressing side of life, but that seems to be all that’s happening right now. The solution to this would have been, in the past, to changer les idées as they say around here, but how do I do that when I can’t go anywhere or do anything?

Last night was another one of those nights where I seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and what should have been an early night ended up being much later than intended. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything right now and it’s driving me berserk.

When I finally made it into bed though, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until … errr … 05:50. It took me a few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing just how few I seem to have these days, and then, in a magnificent fit of enthusiasm, I dictated the radio notes for the eleventh track of the radio programme that I was organising yesterday.

Having done that, I wandered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and make myself look pretty in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And in the kitchen, as well as the medication, I cut the bread that I’d baked yesterday and put half of it into the freezer.

After the medicine I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to discover that there was actually something on there from the previous night when I was convinced that I hadn’t been anywhere at all.

First task therefore was to transcribe those notes and add them in to that day’s entry. If you’re interested, you’ll have to go back and have a look.

Having done that, I could turn my attention to last night’s notes. There was a girl I knew who had been staying as some kind of paying guest at a house somewhere in the countryside. She’d taken with her some of her urban habits to which they were not particularly accustomed. On one occasion she had to go to try to find a job somewhere. She went for an interview of which she seemed to take control, and when she returned, she told the owner of the house all about it. She told me later that she was horrified that she’d been behaving like that because it was not the kind of behaviour to which he was accustomed, although of course she and I had a joke about it and a laugh. After staying there, she came back to live in temporary accommodation in the town again where she could pick up with her usual habits and way of life, and not be out there on a limb in such an extraordinary position.

This reminds me of a girl whom I used to know in Brussels. She was a free-lance worker for one of these NGOs and her work was interesting, but irregular. On one occasion she had no money to pay her mortgage so I agreed that she could come to stay with me for twelve months and let out her place to a tenant on a short let in order to catch up with her arrears of mortgage.

She would have been the type to have taken control of an interview, and she was also the type who seemed to do nothing but complain about how far out of town my apartment was. I did offer to push it closer to the city centre for her but the humour went right over her head. After she left, she didn’t speak to me after that and I’m still waiting for her to make some kind of “gesture” towards the accommodation. Not that I was expecting any but a gesture would have been nice.

The nurse turned up and organised my legs, with more of the banal talk that gets on my nerves. Luckily it’s Isabelle the Nurse for a week starting tomorrow, which will cheer me up.

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

We’re now on a whistle-stop tour of various castles as we dash towards the end, not hanging around long in any of them. Our author seems to be losing his interest in them, judging by the lack of clear description, and I can’t say that I blame him.

He tells us on page 490 that for Taunton Castle, "The inner court is further subdivided into two parts, of which the eastern half seems to have been raised into a sort of platform upon which probably Ine’s actual residence was placed.".

Just a handful of lines further down he tells us that "The walled part is roughly triangular, the base being the east side, arid the truncated part open to the west. This area seems further to have been divided by a cross wall into two parts, the keep, hall, and gatehouse being in the western, and in the eastern, the earthworks, which favours the notion of this having been the old English citadel.", totally forgetting that he mentioned that just a few lines previously.

On page 498, with regard to Tickhill Castle, he tells us that "The outer front of the first floor is ornamented with four stiff rude pediments". I don’t know about you, but my imagination is working overtime.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and finally finished the outstanding unit ready to send off. I also reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and sent it off. It’s a concert that came from Germany in 1982 and it’s certainly interesting.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and sorted out my patches, and then I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. And waited.

It was 13:11 when it finally turned up and I was not in a very good humour. We arrived at Avranches at 14:00 and it was, would you believe, 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had vowed to “have a discussion” with them about this fiasco of changing the dates, and so regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, knowing my luck, it would have to be Emilie The Cute Consultant on duty today.

She explained basically that it was only an idea, apparently not understanding that it’s the kind of decision that involves not just me but half the town as everyone else has to shunt their appointments around. She definitely doesn’t love me any more now.

No-one else bothered me at all. They were far too busy organising a new visitor who was not co-operating with them. I tried to revise my Welsh but I couldn’t keep going and drifted off into oblivion, to be shaken awake by the little student who told me that things were finished.

Nevertheless, they took their time sorting me out and the little student drew the short straw so uncoupling me took longer than it should. Weary and exhausted, it was 18:50 when I finally staggered out to the taxi and it was 19:35 when I finally sat down in my apartment.

And so I’m just about done for the day. It’s an afternoon that I would like to forget, and the quicker the better too.

Right now I’m off to bed where I would like to sleep for a hundred years but I’m up early tomorrow to go to Paris. I am not looking at all forward to this trip. Not in the least. But before I go to bed, I’d better check on my stiff, rude pediment and make sure that it’s OK.

But this idea of moving my apartment towards the city centre reminds me of the American tourist who staggered into a pub in Dent and asked the landlord "why did they build the railway station so far from the town?" (it’s three miles away).
After thinking for a moment, the landlord replied "they probably thought that it was a good idea to build it at the side of the railway line."

Thursday 22nd May 2025 – LAST NIGHT …

… was a somewhat different night from the last God-knows how many. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I’ve been a lot less tired than that just recently too and somehow managed to fall asleep quite quickly.

However, not last night. I don’t know what was happening but I had some kind of skin irritation that kept me awake for hours and round about 03:00 I left the bed in search of some kind of cold cream because I reckoned that that was the only way that I was going to have any kind of sleep at all.

And it worked too. Not as quickly as I would have liked, but I did manage to go off to sleep eventually.

Nothing of the foregoing, however, prevented me from awakening round about 06:15, and that was a surprise. I must have had less than three hours sleep. Strangely enough, I wasn’t all that tired either … "relatively speaking, that is" – ed …

So when the alarm went off this morning I was on my way out of the bathroom, having had a good wash, a shave and a wash of my clothes in the sink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to find that even though the night was so short, there was something on there too. I was still working in an office and nothing at all was going right there. I was hardly accomplishing anything but then again it was only a week or two before I was due to retire so I was just going through the motions anyway. I could tell that the bosses and everyone like that were unhappy about my efforts but I couldn’t really care less. I thought that I’d had a very raw deal at that place and I didn’t think that I owed it anything. I was just waiting to leave and if anyone said anything to me that would have provoked any kind of argument I would have quite simply walked out. Things reached some kind of head on Monday and I was due to go back in on Tuesday but I ended up going to see a friend on Monday night who had a collection of strange vehicles. He told me that he was planning on cutting one of them down to salvage the cab to put on another one. I thought that that was rather a shame and something of a waste but he was quite adamant about doing it and he invited me to go round to have a look because he felt that it wasn’t going to fit without any kind of severe modification so I agreed that I would go to have a look with him and see what I thought but I really wasn’t very happy with this idea of his of cutting up one of his strange vehicles.

That sounds like a couple of jobs that I’ve had in the past, after which I decided that office work is not really for me. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that not pulling my weight at work, being close to retirement and planning to walk away was a regular theme during the night at one time.

The story about the guy with the vehicles also rings a bell – to such an extent that a couple of his bizarre vehicles have come his way via me. He features fairly regularly (or did for quite a while) in these pages too, but merely as a supporting actor to a main character. This world is far too small for my liking, or Byd Bach! as they say on the other side of the Severn-Dee valley.

Isabelle the Nurse came round to do her stuff, and she brought some good news with her. It seems that she had been round to the old High School that is being converted into offices (and which is where our radio studio is) and she had a quick peek into the building that is going to be the Granville Dialysis Centre.

She reckons that the transformation work in there is well advanced and wouldn’t be surprised to find it open ahead of schedule. That will save me at least one hour every day, not having to trudge my weary way three times per week down to Avranches.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve breezed through Pickering Castle in North Yorkshire and have now arrived at Pontefract.

Pontefract is a major castle with a very long history, so I wonder how much of the book has been devoted to a discussion about it. After all, we’re about half-way through the book and if we aren’t careful, we’ll be running out castles before we reach the end.

After breakfast, I came back in here and had a few things to organise, a few letters and forms to scan, a few e-mails to send and when I’d done all of that, I made a start on my Woodstock magnum opus.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t pay much attention to what happens to my body when I’m in hospital or at dialysis. I was hospitalised as a small baby and I reckon that it must have traumatised me because I can’t bear to talk about, think about, listen to or watch anything medical.

So I don’t know what is going on at all, but when my faithful cleaner rolled up my sleeve to fit my anaesthetic patches, she gasped. My upper arm is swollen like a balloon and it’s just one huge dark-blue bruise where one of the punctures from the dialysis had bled under the skin. No wonder it was so painful.

She fitted my patches nevertheless and for a change, the taxi was early for me. We were three passengers in total plus the driver, and we had a lovely drive in the sunshine down to the dialysis centre in Avranches.

Today, being early, I was third in and third to be coupled up. And the nurses gasped too when they saw the mess that was my upper arm. You cannot imagine how painful the coupling-up was either. I had to wear an ice blanket to numb the arm and deaden the pain. Even so, I had to endure it for three and a half hours, during which I made out my LeClerc shopping list, but it was far too painful to concentrate on anything else.

One of the first in, one of the first to be coupled up meant that I was one of the first to be uncoupled. But it took much longer than it ought – firstly because of the pain and secondly, because they had a young student stagière there and I offered to be the guinea pig on which she could try out her skills. After all, how else am I going to have some nice young female holding my hand for ten minutes?

Even so, I was back here by 18:25 which makes a really nice change. And there was more good news. That electrician who came the other day has sent me a quote which is not unadjacent to what I was expecting. Even better, the work qualifies at the lover rate of TVA by virtue of the age of the building and the age of the installation.

It’s nice to have some good news for a change. After all, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Tea tonight was a helping of lasagna out of the freezer. I need to start to think about making some space in there. I’m hoping that fairly soon, Rosemary will come back with her recommendation for a fridge-freezer and then I can organise myself (if ever that’s possible) and move some of the frozen food downstairs whenever the apartment is free. It’s strangely quiet down there.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about people holding hands … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago, I saw one of my friends wandering around Hanley hand-in-hand with his wife.
When I met him a few days later, I told him "you two looked so sweet wandering around Hanley like that, holding hands as if you were still teenagers"
"Ohh, it wasn’t like that at all" he said
"Why was that?" I asked.
"Didn’t you notice the sales?" he replied. "I was trying to stop her hand going after my wallet."

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

… that I have a sense of humour meltdown, but today has been one of those days, right enough. Nothing that I have done seems to have gone as it should.

Last night’s activities set the scene somewhat for today’s disasters. What with the football and everything, I ended up being really late going to bed when I could really have done with going to bed early.

Once in bed though, I can’t remember all that much. I have the vaguest memory of waking up, noticing that it was still dark and so going beck to sleep pretty much straight away.

Be that as it may, I awoke at 06:40, 20 minutes before the alarm and when the alarm finally did ring, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. Not as early as some, but an early start all the same.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a public ward in a hospital after an operation on my leg. I found it really difficult if not impossible to walk around at the moment but being in this ward with all these other people made me realise just how healthy I was. It was probably the best reason that I could think of for actually leaving the bed but it was so painful trying to move. There were examples being shown on the television of other people who had had this kind of operation to their leg, mostly foreigners, people from abroad. It was interesting to spot their places where they were actually going to fit into this hospital regime as far as needing help and lack of autonomy went. They would be cruising so many hours of their own private life for so many hours per day on dialysis and was it worth it?

If you want to know my opinion about this, read on. But once more, I was dismayed that I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about medical issues.

Later on, my brother was talking to a girl from his class whom I recognised and to whom I used to chat occasionally. When they finished I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was at Manchester University. I took hold of her and pulled her so that she sat down on the edge of my bed and asked her what she was studying. She said, with a strange look on her face, “geography”. I asked how she meant. She replied “different parts of Europe and Dalmatia – I moved my bath the other day and there they were, all of them on the floor. I was horrified”. I said “had I known, I would have let you come and share my bed”. We had something of a laugh, a joke and a flirt around. I thought to myself “this is yet another good chance of actually trying to build on something, some kind of relationship for the immediate future”.

Even now, I can still see this girl. I’ve no idea who she is but in the dream I knew that I knew her. She was wearing a red and white gingham school dress too, so what she was doing at University I really don’t know. However, there is some kind of undercurrent to this story but the World isn’t ready to hear it. And what a shame that the dream finished when it did.

There was something going on with a Native American tribe in North America of which I was a member. I was there, I suppose, because I respected the people, liked them, liked their culture. A group of Native Americans from outside my group were not content with everything and were trying to incite my group of Native Americans into rising up and rebelling whereas our opinion was that rising up and rebelling is OK in books and folk songs but it’s much more complicated than that. In the end the situation became so severe that those from outside our group were expelled from the tribe. There was talk that I would be expelled too because my position was seen as being something of an anomaly and I was being seen as a position of suspicion by some people from within the group.

What immediately came into my mind when I was typing out these notes was my visit in 2019 to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site where the US Army massacred what was left of the Lakota Sioux people, where I went for a walk around the site of the slaughter and visited the mass grave of the victims.

This is what the author of “The Wizard of Oz” had to say at the time about Wounded Knee "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth".

Nothing has changed in the USA.

The nurse had very little to say for himself, which suited me fine. He was soon in and gone and I could carry on with making breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’re pushing on with our visits, dashing from one site to another in some kind of indecent haste. We’ve been to the castle at Oswestry, such as it is, and then back across the dyke into Wales for a couple more places. We’re pushing on at quite a rate and there can’t be all that many places left to visit.

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and then I had an electrician to see.

Not that I know an awful lot about electricity – I do it all by trial and error – but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a disgraceful estimate. To supply and fit a new power board (that isn’t necessary) that costs €199:00 at Brico Depot, he’s quoted €2,000. For changing eight double sockets for multiples and wiring up the oven, microwave and hob, he wants another €2,000.

What beat me though was that he had the quote back here in less than the time that it would have taken to go back home to type it, and he rang me up thirty seconds after the quote arrived, to tell me to sign it and return it quickly. I’m not sure from which tree he thinks that I fell, but I feel really sorry for any elderly person who comes across him.

Next task was to finish my Welsh homework, which is now ready for a final check tomorrow morning before I send it off for marking.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait, and wait, and wait. Round about 13:00 I ‘phoned them up to enquire and was told that "he’s running a little late."

These new Sécurité Social regulations allow a 45-minute window in order for the vehicles to carry multiple passengers, and when my vehicle did turn up, 44 minutes late, it already had one passenger in it.

The driver and the other passenger chatted like long-lost buddies so I relaxed and enjoyed the view, knowing full well that by the time I arrive, my anaesthetic will have worn off.

As I was leaving the car, my telephone fell out into the footwell, as I found out later when the driver brought it back. And an envelope in my pocket with a prescription for a blood test became dislodged and I won’t tell you where it fell, because you are probably eating your tea right now.

There was a new patient today and all of the nurses were congregating around him, sorting him out. It was 14:20, 50 minutes late, when I was finally plugged in. painful yet again

There were plenty of things for me to do, right up to the moment when the needle ceased to work and my arm began to swell up. By that time though, the new patient was having a crisis and the entire medical staff, doctors and nurses, were congregating around him so I had to wait.

When the crisis began, my nurse was standing by me bed, dealing with an infusion. When the alarm sounded, she dropped the infusion pouch – right onto my leg where the wound is.

Later on, moving the table with my computer, she banged the wound yet again.

Everyone finished at the same time today but while most of the staff were dealing with this emergency, there was just one nurse unplugging everyone. So guess who was last?

By the time that I made it back home it was 19:20 and I was thoroughly fed up with everything. So in answer to the question that was asked during one of my dreams, it’s certainly not worth it

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up with today. Gotthold Lessing once famously said "Better counsel comes overnight " and that is for what I am hoping.

But seeing as we have been talking about transport issues … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not by any means the first that I have had.
Several years ago I was waiting for a train in Canada – the 11:55 from Calgary to Regina – when at 11:42 exactly it pulled into the station.
It’s never happened like that before so I went to express my admiration to the driver.
"It’s not like that at all" he replied
"Why not?" I asked
"Because, if the truth be known, this is the 11:55 train from a week last Tuesday"

Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

… amongst the painful dialysis connections. After a few sessions of comparatively painless connections since Emilie the Cute Consultant did her stuff, they have been gradually worsening and today we were back in the agony stakes. So I’ve no idea what’s going to happen now.

Another thing about which I have no idea now is this story about early nights. I cracked on rapidly to finish everything last night and managed somehow to finish relatively early. However I was as usual side-tracked by a couple of really good concerts on the playlist and it ended up being long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change it was a comparatively decent night. I slept right though until the alarm sounded with only the vaguest memory of awakening in mid-sleep.

It was a struggle to rise to my feet when the alarm went off but I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the wash I set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. For once, I managed to fit everything into it but it probably wasn’t a good idea because it struggled with the weight. I need to wash my clothes more frequently – or wash fewer clothes more often.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I should have been going into work with Nerina. We were on our way to catch our bus at the top of Mill Street. I was walking on my crutches and Nerina was with me. Nerina suddenly remembered that she had a prescription to pick up at the chemist’s across the road. She said that she would go and pick it up. I told her to be quick so she dashed off while I continued as quickly as I possibly could, which wasn’t very quick at all. I saw the bus come up Mill Street to the traffic lights and turn right. I knew that I wasn’t going to catch it. I saw Nerina come out of the chemist’s and run across the road. I thought “at least she’s caught the bus”. When I reached the bus stop she was standing there. She was saying that she had seen that I wasn’t there and so had waited for me. I told her that that was a silly thing to do. She should have caught the bus and gone on into work anyway on time. I would follow as best as I could. She would have been on time but now we are both going to be late and there isn’t another bus for hours so we are probably going to end up missing half a day. That was a strange decision.

Why I should be going to work on the K43 to Nantwich (that was the bus route where I was) is a total mystery, as is why I would be coming from the general direction of the railway station. And I wouldn’t be on crutches in Crewe either. Furthermore, I reckon that Nerina would have had far more sense than to have missed the bus in order to wait for me if I were going to miss it.

There was also something about being on board a yacht. There was some boy there who seemed to be very well-educated from a good family but that was far from the case. He was very insistent on his rights etc. He was going on wanting this, wanting that and everyone was annoyed with him in the end. They decided that they would teach him a lesson. When he made some more demands, someone reminded him that he was hoping that we’d move back into more traditional ways that were all good and proper a hundred years ago. They put him on a bed face down, removed his trousers and spanked him with a slipper. Every time he protested, they reminded him that he was hoping for a return to the Good Old Days and isn’t this just the kind of thing that he would have wanted? When his parents came back they were outraged by what they saw but everyone on board said “well, he was asking for this – it was literally what he wanted, a return to the Good Old Days of a hundred years ago and he’s receiving exactly what he wanted. None of us can see what the problem is”.

There have been some very, very strange dreams in the past but I don’t think that there has ever been one quite as strange as this. It quite possibly relates to an argument that broke out on the Internet a while back when someone posted "the problem with today’s children is that they don’t seem to have the sense of fear that the sound of a leather belt being withdrawn quickly so a series of belt hoops on a pair of jeans would instil into them.".

Isabelle was in quite a chatty mood today and talked incessantly about nothing whatever as she organised my legs.

Breakfast was next, with more of MY BOOK. We have left Harlech and are now at Hastings Castle, discussing the finer points of corbels and arches, with the odd flying buttress thrown in for good measures. A flying buttress is the equivalent of half an arch, leaning against the outside of a heavy stone wall to stop the wall falling outward. But does our author tell us that? Of course he doesn’t. He describes the buttress’s more elegant points from an artistic point of view and that’s about it.

Back in here I spent a couple of hours drafting a complicated letter to my tenant downstairs, but after having had a couple of chats with a couple of people and having had second thoughts, it’s all becoming far too complicated for words and so I’ve decided that she will leave at the end of the current lease. I’m too old, too tired and fed up to start to negotiate complicated deals and arrangements.

My cleaner turned up on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi. I didn’t have long to wait either. And I was the only passenger in the car so we arrived at the dialysis centre quite early.

For a change I was second in and second to be coupled up. Despite the patches and despite the new procedure and despite the ice pack, it still hurt, and it was hurting throughout the session.

The good news is that if they had the machine on max and ran it for three and a half hours, it would leave 200 grams behind. After a discussion with the doctor today, I decided that it would make more sense to go with three and a half hours, and have a look at how things are on Monday. Four hours would probably be better then, and bring me down to an ideal weight ready for my three-day break.

There was football on the internet as I mentioned earlier – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth. And for once in my life in the Welsh Premier League, I saw a team play the way that I would play my team against any team that has a rather pedestrian central defence.

Y Drenewydd were desperate to win to keep alive any possible hope of avoiding the drop, so they went on an all-out attack, However Aberystwyth, who have clearly been reading my training manual, played with the rapid winger Niall Flint at centre-forward. Every time Aberystwyth won the ball in defence they kicked it upfield over the head of the central defenders and Niall Flint ran after it.

He was causing panic in their defence all through the game. And while Y Drenewydd scored two goals, Niall Flint scored two of his own for Aberystwyth, he hit the post twice and only some desperate defending kept him out on another couple of occasions. And when Aberystwyth scored a third as the game drew to a close, that, I’m afraid, was that for Y Drenewydd.

During pre-season I’d seen Y Drenewydd play against Hednesford Town, and what I saw prompted me to enter into correspondence with the Drenewydd club secretary. On the 5th of August I finished my correspondence with "I can see it being a long, cold season ahead"

At least the Chairman of Y Drenewydd was quite frank after the game. "We lost some very good players in close season but didn’t replace like with like". That is no surprise at all. What is a surprise is that he didn’t do anything to redress the balance.

The boss was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and he brought me home through the immense traffic queue as the Parisians desert their city for the Easter break. Despite dropping off another passenger, I was at home for 18:15 and I wish that I could do that every time.

My cleaner watched as I climbed my weary way upstairs where I relaxed for an hour or so.

Tea was as usual baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet, followed by cake and soya dessert. Now I’m having a little break before dictating my radio notes and going to bed. A lie-in until 08:00 in the morning and then I have baking to do. Bread, more bread and a chocolate cake. Let’s see how the new water measurer copes

But seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … tomorrow there’s a live football match in the Women’s League Cup – Caerdydd V Llansawel.
In the previous round Llansawel beat a team representing the Walt Disney Fan club. It was quite an easy match for Llansawel so I asked them why
"It was as if that Disney team only played with ten players" explained the Llansawel manager. "They had a player on the pitch called ‘Cinderella’ but she spent the whole ninety minutes running away from the ball"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: dialysis issues

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

Saturday 16th August 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

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

Thursday 7th August 2025 – I AM IN …

Tuesday 29th July 2025 – I STILL HAVEN’T …

Monday 28th July 2025 – YET MORE TORTURE …

Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

Monday 14th July 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

Saturday 12th July 2025 – HERE WE GO …

Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

Monday 9th June 2025 – THEY HAVE CHANGED …

Monday 2nd June 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

Thursday 22nd May 2025 – LAST NIGHT …

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

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