Tag Archives: falafel

Thursday 14th November 2024 – SO HERE I AM …

… back from the Dialysis Clinic, still in one piece. But not without them trying their best though. I’m really not too sure how long I can keep it up (as the Bishop once famously said to the actress).

And while we’re on the subject of things being up … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was up quite late again last night. However that was a personal choice of mine and nothing to do with any work or other obligation so I’m not complaining.

But once in bed, when I finally made it, I slept the sleep of the Dead and remember absolutely nothing at all.

When the alarm went off I was off on my travels somewhere but it evaporated immediately which was a shame. It must have been exciting, and there’s not enough excitement in my life these days. It’s a pity that every last memory of whatever it was simply disappeared.

The bathroom was first, and I managed to stagger in there before the final alarm of the morning. I had a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. I was with my youngest sister. We’d gone to a walled city, something like Chester or something like that but in actual fact it was a port on the south coast. We were going to see a ferry – the one that goes from Sheerness to Vilssingen but it had been doing something else on the high seas somewhere and had changed its name. We were discussing the ship. When we arrived at the outskirts of this town I made the remark that I’d only ever been here once before but didn’t have a camera with me. You could see across the bay in the cliffs all these houses that had been carved out of the cliffs. Once I’d passed underneath the entrance gate to the city and began to climb the hilltop towards the city centre, I stopped to take a photograph of it but the camera on my ‘phone wasn’t working properly. It was having difficulty taking the photo. A couple of guys came over and began to chat. They were really getting on my nerves – one of them saying “I know a good place where you can photograph”. Anyway, right in the end I told him to clear off while I tried to take this photograph. I had to go back down towards the gate again but still this photograph wouldn’t turn out. Then I joined my youngest sister again who had been for a run. She told me that you could run in this city as long as you obeyed various rules like in which order you can run, the distance that you are running, which lane you should be in etc. It sounded really complicated to me but when she set off I joined her and we were only losing 2-1 for quite some time before we were overtaken again by events but I thought that we put up a really magnificent performance …fell asleep here … so we had a good run in this city. My sister set off and ran down the hill so I ran after her. Instead of keeping to the footpath she ran right back through the road in the city gates and underneath the walls into the town. I was surprised that that was allowed but she insisted that it was perfectly safe to run through on the road instead of on the pavement and so underneath the city gates rather than through the pedestrian exit. She began to explain all the lanes, their order and what they meant, where you should be, who you may overtake and in which lane

Not that I’m ever likely to be going anywhere with my youngest sister, and she is even less likely to want to go running. But I’ve had a couple of dreams about being in Chester or somewhere like it just recently so am I becoming all nostalgic? I lived there between 1972 and 1974 in my late teens and I do have to say that it was amongst the happiest times of my life. What wouldn’t I give to return to that joyous, carefree period surrounded by good friends and a healthy ambience? And a camera not working? That was a recurring dream at one point, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Later on I found myself another girlfriend. She’s someone whom I know and I wish that I knew who it was. We hadn’t been officially boyfriend/girlfriend but we spent a lot of time in each other’s company and I really looked forward to seeing her. She became ill, and had to have a lot of people looking after her which cut down quite considerably the time that we spent together. She slowly began to go out again. I met her once at some kind of concert where she was with some friends. I went over to say “hello” to her, and the first thing that she did was to give me £15:00 because she owed me £15:00 and I’d completely forgotten about it. I made a remark about her being a little better so would she like to come and have a chat with me. She said “no” which really disappointed me. She replied that things had changed. “I’ve been ill” she replied “and you’re no longer going to like me”. I told her that I’d always like her regardless of anything. She replied “you can’t trust me really, can you?” which was a reference to my own insecurity more than anything else. I was going to reply but at that point the dream faded away. Either that or I did.

That’s another thing, isn’t it? Me finding myself a girlfriend. In fact there’s something connecting this to real life too. I had a girlfriend at school and we drifted apart. A a couple of years later I was at the Teacher Training College in Crewe watching a rock group when I noticed, among the people in the crowd, the aforementioned. I went over for a chat and one thing led to another, and once you start you’d be surprised at how many other things there are. So our couple reignited but when she left school and went to University at Bangor it fizzled out again after a while.

The nurse was, for a change, late today. He asked about my plans for moving apartment and then proceeded to try to teach me to suck eggs, as if I’m senile or something. I wish that he would stop patronising me like this. It’s really getting on my wick.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. Samuel Hearne is now well on his way to the Coppermine River. He’s making some very pertinent observations about the life and habits of the First-Nation people out in the Barren Grounds of Canada – that area of peri-Arctic tundra situated above the tree line. He describes the philosophy of the First-Nation people as “every man for himself” and “the survival of the fittest” and describes how a stronger man taking away even a weaker man’s wife seems to be an everyday occurrence. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Barren Grounds is one of the most remote, isolated and cruellest places on earth. If Jacques Cartier had called Labrador "the Land God Gave To Cain", whatever would he have said if he had made it to here? I was in Yellowknife in 2018, AS REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH WILL RECALL and while that’s not exactly in the Barren Grounds, it was still dismal enough from a natural history point of view.

Back in here I had a few things to do and hadn’t even started work when my faithful cleaner came to fit my patches. After she’d done it she took away with her all of the medication that I no longer use. She’s going to sort it and make a list to see whether any of her other clients can make use of it, to save throwing it away.

The taxi came early and it was one of my regular drivers but she was quite quiet. But didn’t she drive us down to Avranches at a hell of a rate? I’ve no idea what might be the matter with her.

There were quite a few patients here today and as a result, even though I was early, I was the last to be seen, as you might expect. I’m convinced that they do it deliberately, wait until the anaesthetic effect of the patches has worn off.

The first needle though was painless. Totally painless. However, the second needle made up for that. I knew all about that one and so, I suspect, do those people walking past outside.

My glucose limit was right down in the basement but no-one brought me an orange juice. Consequently I slipped into a diabetic coma until one of the Auxiliaries brought me a juice with my coffee. And then I revised my Welsh, listened to some music and read more of Hakluyt’s translation of Jacques Cartier’s voyages.

Here, Cartier sets the scene for all further problems between the French and the First-Nation people by kidnapping the sons of the chief of the local tribe in order to take them back to Europe. And then on his return, on his second voyage, he befriends the wrong tribe, hence leading to 250 years of conflict between the French, the Dutch, the English, the Iroquois and the Huron, along with various other Europeans and First-Nation groups.

Last to be connected, I was last, and by a long way too, to be disconnected. My cleaner had sent me a frantic message wondering where I was.

In the meantime though a doctor came to see me. We had the usual banal questions but said nothing about my scan last week so I asked him. He went away to have a look and came back to say that I had a slipped disc. And then wandered away before I had chance to ask him what their plans were about it.

That rang a bell with me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying in the past that there’s one of the doctors here at this hospital who has all the air of wishing that he was driving a taxi or serving in a restaurant, anywhere but working in a hospital. It looks as if he’s been pencilled in to deal with me

It was another speedy drive back home with a driver who was listening to the news all the way back. And then my helpful cleaner watched as I managed once more to climb the twenty-five steps up to here totally unaided.

Tea was steamed veg with falafel in a vegan cheese sauce followed by chocolate cake in a soya pistachio cream. And it tasted wonderful too. I really must stop eating so well.

But now I have some more things to do before going to bed. And tomorrow, I’m not (planning on) going anywhere so I can take my time.

What I shall do is to read some more of Samuel Hearne’s adventures in search of the Coppermine River.
The next chapter, written by Samuel Hearne is "Some Observations On The Sex Life and Practices Of The Athabasca and Chipewyan First-Nation People"
And the following chapter, written by the Athabasca and Chipewyan First-Nation People is entitled "Some Observations on the Sex Life and Practices of Mr Samuel Hearne"

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Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

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Friday 6th September 2024 – SO THAT’S THE …

… end of this long series of Welsh-language Summer Schools for another year.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry because my head has turned to porridge or some such like. You’ve no idea just how much it takes out of you having to work like this

When you reach “a certain age” it’s not just your body that slows down. Your brain does too and if you don’t keep exercising your brain it tends to stick, just as your other muscles do if you don’t exercise them

It’s important therefore that you do what you can to keep your brain ticking over somehow or other and this series of Welsh-language courses is my way to go.

Previously I was registered with Oxford University’s series of continuing courses as well as the “OpenLearn” project and I learned some interesting things. But the study wasn’t really a formal study in any sense of the word, even if I did enjoy that course on translating Roman gravestone inscriptions

So formal study it is – and was throughout this Summer but now I’m going to sit with my feet up and relax until … errr … Tuesday, when the 5th Year of my Welsh course begins. Just this year and next year to go and I’ll be ‘O’ Level standard.

That is, in theory. Despite all of the courses on which I’ve enrolled I still feel as if I’m miles off the pace. I can understand just how Homer Simpson was feeling when he said "every time I learn something new, it pushes something old out".

But anyway, be that as it may, I had another late night last night. One of my groundhoppers, about whom I’ve spoken in the past, was out and about. He had been to Heriot-Watt University to watch them take on Arniston Rangers in the East of Scotland League.

He’s not a very good commentator and could benefit from learning a few of the rules regarding refereeing, but he goes to some interesting places and makes a good video. I had to stay up and watch the game

Eventually I managed to take myself off to bed, much later than I should have done, and was asleep quite quickly.

And there I stayed until about 06:20 with hardly moving a muscle. And then it was tossing and turning about until 07:00 when the alarm went off and I could haul myself off into the bathroom.

There wasn’t much that I needed to do or felt like doing at that time of the morning and I was soon back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was playing in a rock group. One of the songs that we were singing was THE RAIN SONG by Led Zeppelin. One day we began to dissect the song phrase by phrase, line by line to examine it to try to find out exactly what it meant. As we delved deeply into the song we found that it began to mean quite a lot that we hadn’t realised and hadn’t understood at all at the time. It was much more of an anthem than quite simply a song. There were a great many phrases in there that could be changed to give a completely different meaning so we experimented with some and swapped some round, put the emphasis on different words to see exactly what would happen to the song

You’ll be surprised just how many songs there are that talk about the rain. One of these days I ought to make a list and maybe even a radio programme. But it’s true that the Led Zeppelin song isn’t really about the rain at all if you look carefully at the lyrics. “The rain” is symbolic of bad luck and sadness.

I was attending University somewhere and had gone for a walk around the campus. There were several building with machines inviting you to play them. One particular building had a big embankment around it that effectively sealed it off from the rest of the University. Instead of going all the way around the path I decided to take a short cut by walking around the back of this building and climbing up the mound over the top and down the other side. The mound was much, much steeper than I thought and full of abandoned cigarette ends. When I reached the top I was spellbound by the view. It was like seeing the Sacré Coeur church for the very first time perched on the horizon. Behind me on the horizon was the spot on the high road where I’d stopped many times to take a photo of it but I’d never ever seen it from down here in the valley from the top of this mound. It looked so impressive that I wondered why I’d never come by this way before and why this view had never been shown to the public because it was really one of the best views that I had ever seen

And while it’s not exactly the Sacré Coeur, which is actually situated on top of a ridge on the edge of Brussels, the church that I saw during the night was L’Oratoire de St Joseph situated on its ridge in Montreal not too far from the Snowdon Metro Station. Where it is, it’s clearly visible for mines around and it so intrigued us as we kept on passing it at a distance that in 2013 WE FINALLY WENT TO VISIT IT. Those were the days when we used to get out and about at the drop of a hat at the slightest excuse. These days, even going to the bathroom has become a major expedition involving native bearers, well-versed local guides and the attendance of a registered nurse. What kind of state am I in?

At one time or another there was Pete Townshend’s son who was wearing scruffy clothes and drifting around from place to place but Pete Townshend suddenly decided to have a word with him to make him wear more respectable clothes and make him adopt a much more professional and personal attitude towards life, which didn’t go down very well at first but slowly the son began to take it all on board.

As if Pete Townshend would ever be interested in people being more respectable? Mind you I can tell you some stories …

The nurse was quite chatty this morning. He seems to have calmed down quite a lot from our eruption and explosion the other day and if he keeps up with the improvement he might become quite human. Apparently the clinic where I’m likely to be dialysed has been in contact with him. Things seem to be moving rapidly these days

After he left I went for the final day of my course. And it didn’t go as well as the other days which is a shame. I think that I’ve become saturated now.

When it was over I breathed a sigh of relief. I went into my nice clean kitchen – clean because the cleaner had been – and found that my course book for the forthcoming year has now arrived. So it’s “all systems go” starting on Tuesday.

Except that I have a hospital appointment on Tuesday afternoon, and so I had to ring up to book myself a taxi to take me there.

Rosemary had rung me and I’d promised to ‘phone her back but after my hot chocolate I came back in here and regrettably fell asleep, totally exhausted. I forgot to ‘phone her so there will be a red face tomorrow when I call her back

Tea was falafel and chips with a very tired salad. My lettuce don’t seem to keep too well, not even in the fridge which is a shame. However, when I move I shall buy a big, decent, proper fridge and start again from Square One with my food storage activities.

And so that’s it for today. I’m off to bed now if there’s nothing else going on. I’m totally exhausted after all of this.

But as Led Zeppelin said, “Upon us all a little rain must fall”. But not upon all of us equally
"The rain falls down upon the just
And also un the unjust fellow
But mostly on the just because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella"

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Friday 23rd August 2024 – WELL, IT’S ANOTHER …

… really late night tonight.

For some reason that I don’t understand I completely forgot about the football tonight. Y Bala v Y Fflint and this was a game that I really wanted to see.

But it slipped my mind and when I came back from tea tonight the first half was almost over. Luckily it’s on a recorded stream so I could wind it back to the start and watch it from the kick-off, but it means that now the final whistle has gone, it’s not really late

There’s definitely something going on here because I seem to be forgetting just about everything these days and I can see this bringing me into some serious trouble at some point because there’s a load of stuff piling up and some of it is really important.

At least I remembered to wash my puttees. After I finished my notes last night I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then washed the puttees. They had been soaking for 36 hours in warm soapy water so it didn’t take long and they were quite clean afterwards.

Furthermore, I managed to do it without knocking myself or making myself bleed and that’s an achievement in itself these days.

It was quite early too when I went to bed. In fact I beat my 23:00 target. Only by a couple of minutes but even so, that’s still important. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

A couple of times during the night I awoke but I remained stuck to my mattress until the alarm at 07:00 when I crawled out of bed and into the bathroom. I had a good wash and shave of the parts that I missed yesterday, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had been recruited to hunt down an old friend of Watson’s who had disappeared, someone who lived in salubrious surroundings. It was no surprise that he’d disappeared but a lot of people were worried soo they were set on the trail. Eventually, following a series of clues, they managed to track him down to a doss-house in Limehouse where he was staying under an assumed name. Apparently he’d had money difficulties so he’d sold a lot of his possessions to a pawn shop and with the money was living the life of an escapee in crude digs or something. When Holmes and Watson caught up with him he was extremely remorseful. He said that he’d spent £2900 but that was everything that he had and there was not a penny left so Holmes and Watson had to sell whatever possessions he still had in order to recruit him back into society. They had the cunning plan of advertising an Electricity Service where they could band together all the residents in one particular area and agree to arrange their electricity for them, including new houses that hadn’t had electricity up until now so they were going through these houses and photographs, selecting the best photographs. There was one there with a ghost walking out of the front door between two people and they were trying their best to capture this image but for some reason the image didn’t seem to want to be captured

There were several stories similar to this one in the Sherlock Holmes repertoire and of course his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was very interested in the paranormal, being a huge supporter of spiritualism, séances and the supernatural arts to an extent that was almost fanatical. Seeing a ghost in between two real live humans would have been no problem for Conan Doyle.

When the nurse came I told her the good news about her supplies, my new puttees and the switch for the door. She gave me my injection and then dealt with my legs while chatting away. She reminded me that it’s a blood test tomorrow and she also need another … errr … sample … of a different type. I hope that I remember.

After breakfast I tidied up a little and then went to my Welsh class. It’s the last day today for a week or so so we can relax but she still had us working hard. I feel much more confident about my skills right now, but there was an awful lot to take in.

The big issue is that Welsh is not a Romance language like French or Spanish or Italian. It’s a Celtic language similar to Breton, Gaelic and Scots Gaelic so the rules of grammar are nothing like those to which I’m accustomed.

The vocabulary too bears little resemblance to any Latin-based language so sometimes it’s impossible to have a guess at the words.

There was a pause at midday when my cleaner came in to bring the medication – or, at least, the first load. The rest will come over the next day or two.

When the lesson finished I was surprised once more by the cleaner. We have a friend in the building who has now gone into a Home, and my cleaner, who had been tidying up her apartment, brought down some apple purée and tinned food that might be of use to me, which was very kind of them.

A neighbour popped in to, and left me some lovely strawberries. I seem to be flavour of the month right now.

Then Rosemary wanted me on the phone so we had a quick chat. Only a short chat today – just 58 minutes. We seem to be losing our touch

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad – delicious as usual but I’m running low on salad stuff. It might be sausage, beans and chips for tea tomorrow night yet. But regardless of that, the strawberries were delicious and there are some left for the next few days.

Then we had the football. Newly-promoted Y Fflint v Y Bala down at maes Tegid – Bala’s “Cae Tatws” football ground.

As has been said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s a massive gulf between the second tier and the first tier and that was evident today.

But while Llansawel, the other promoted side, were being well and truly turned over by Cardiff Metropolitan, Y Fflint put up a gritty battle and while the result (Y Bala won 2-0) was never in any doubt, Y Fflint were in the mix all the way to the final whistle.

A loss though is a loss and already we’re starting to see a little gap open up between the two new sides, stuck at the foot of the table, and the other 10 clubs in the division and it’s rather early for this kind of thing. Three games without a point is still no points, no matter how well you play and how close the game are.

So right now I’m going to bed, hours later than I intended. I’m not doing myself any favours at all.

But talking of mediums and spiritualism and the like I once had someone ‘phone me up
"I’m phoning to tell you about Madame (whatever)". said the voice. "She’s a world famous Medium …"
"Well, she can’t be much good, can she?" I said
"Why?" asked the voice
"Because if she’d been any good, she’d have foretold exactly how this conversation would end …" and I hung up the ‘phone.

0

Thursday 27th June 2024 – JUST FOR A …

… change, especially given how things have been just recently, I’ve actually had a day at home.

The word “quiet” was going to figure in there somewhere but Hurricane Cleaner has blown through here on a couple of occasions leaving a wake of desolation in her trail, and that has blown away any cobwebs that were hanging around anywhere.

But at least I now have some brazil nuts. She actually managed to find them in the loose “weigh it yourself” products in LeClerc. But what a price! Cheaper than ordering them on-line when the postage is taken into account, but nevertheless …

And nevertheless, last night was yet another in a long, long line of late nights. Robinson Crusoe may well have been the inventor of the five-day week, with all of his work being finished by Friday, but I wish that I could invent something that would finish all of my work by 22:30. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But once again, once in bed I didn’t need much rocking and ended up with another one of these really deep sleeps. One where I don’t move a muscle for the entire night, and how rare is that?

In fact, looking at the miserable collection of dreams that I’ve been having and all of these really deep sleeps, has someone slipped a sleeping pill in amongst all of this medication?

There better hadn’t be. The only fun that I have these days takes place during the hours of darkness when I’m off on a nocturnal ramble and I’d hate all of that to be suppressed.

Just imagine not ever getting into mischief, being up to no good, and not having close encounters of the third kind with Zero, TOTGA and Castor. Things are bad enough as they are without losing all of that.

When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed and wandered off to the bathroom for a wash and brush up. Then back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night, such wretched affairs that they were. There was a girl in the sick bay reading something like “Pride and Prejudice” with a portable lamp to light up what she was doing and a hair dryer working to keep her warm. She was tucked up in bed like that. The Inspecting Officer who happened to come by the hospital at one particular moment caught her at it. There was going to be absolutely a fearful row. He confiscated the hurricane lamp but it didn’t make any difference and she continued to read.

That was the best that I could do, and it doesn’t have any significance as far as I’m concerned. Living as we did in the wilds of rural Flintshire, Shropshire and Cheshire in the 1950s before the widespread introduction of electricity, we had a hurricane lamp, an old pump-action Tilley lamp that was real fun to work when you were a small child. I wouldn’t have liked to have taken it to bed though as it fizzled and popped away. However, the Tilley lamp and the “Aladdin” paraffin stove for heat on which you could boil a kettle or even some food in a saucepan if you were desperate were our friends when there was one of the frequent power cuts when we were small.

When the nurse came I asked her if she’s enjoyed her swim. She’d been to see “Coldplay” in Lyon at the weekend but the Saturday performance was devastated by a flood. However, her tickets were for Sunday so she was safe.

She told me how much she enjoyed it as she sorted out my legs. For a change we had quite a chat. She mustn’t be busy today.

After she left I made myself breakfast and by the time that I’d finished I was surprised to see that it was 10:00. That chat must have gone on longer than I thought.

Most of the day has been spent editing the radio notes that I dictated the other day. Two more radio programmes have now been completed and I would have finished the last one of the backlog that I dictated had I not wandered off a couple of times with the fairies.

You’ve no idea – or maybe you have, I dunno – how fed up I am of all of this crashing out all over the place. I would give all that I own, and much more besides, to be able to keep on going for 16 hours every day without falling asleep. It’s really going beyond a joke

However, it’s not all doom and gloom, during one of my spells of being away with the aforementioned, I actually went off on a little voyage. While I was asleep in the afternoon there was all kinds of stuff about flowers, the beautiful snapdragon types and that kind of thing. And then I was walking through someone’s garden but it was all fenced in and I couldn’t find my way out. I eventually came across a sign that said “we operate an ‘open door policy’ and by the sign I eventually find a well-disguised type of door that I could open and this took me to a little path that led to the road. The owners of this garden, two women, were in the neighbouring one doing some weeding and I was worried in case they saw me, but they seemed to take no notice of me;

Now that’s more like the kind of dream that I used to have. It was much more picturesque and I actually felt involved deeply in it rather than just having some kind of passing interest. I really need a few more dreams like this.

As I mentioned earlier, the cleaner came by a couple of times.

Firstly, she brought some stuff that the nurse wanted. Later she came past with some stuff that had been ordered earlier from the Chemist’s which had now been delivered.

Finally she came in waving a brown paper bag. “Peace In Our Time” I immediately thought, remembering a famous photograph, but it was actually a bag of brazil nuts.

They are an essential ingredient in some of my baking. Their selenium content is very important so I grind them up in my whizzer and add them to my fruit buns and flapjacks, that kind of thing. I’d run out of my stock and couldn’t find any more so I asked my cleaner to keep an eye open for some.

And now, we’re back in business, and that’s good news. I shall just have to go and lie down in a darkened room when she gives me the bill for the month.

She also came up with an idea about my bank card. One of the smaller supermarkets which she uses has a “home delivery” service where you pay for your goods when they are delivered. The guy brings his card reader to your door.

With it being the end of the month, she needs a lot of stuff delivering so she’s going to arrange to have it delivered to me, I’ll pay with my card which should then activate it and she’ll knock the total off her bill.

That seems like a very eminently suitable solution, but it’s too simple to actually work. We’re bound to encounter a pitfall somewhere along the way "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy" as Robbie Burns was apt to say at moments like this.

Tea tonight was one of the best of a long line of good meals. Steamed vegetables and falafel balls smothered in a nice vegan cheese sauce. Just one of the many meals that I could eat time and time again, with the broccoli and sprouts cooked to perfection.

But now for once I’m going to try to go to bed early.

But this story about the home delivery reminds me of one of my many visits to one of the hundreds of hospitals that I’ve visited over the past few years.
As I was wheeled past one bed I heard a patient mutter "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy"
At the next bed, that patient was muttering "O, wad some Power the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us"
At a third bed a patient was muttering "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! "
"What is this place?" I asked. "The lunatic asylum?"
"No" replied the attendant. "It’s the Burns Unit"

0

Thursday 23rd May 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

.. what I’ve done to myself, but I have aches in places I didn’t even realise that I had places.

At some time during the night I pulled a muscle in my groin in bed.

Usually I don’t mind pulling a muscle in my groin in bed, but only if there’s someone else in there pulling it with me. This time though it happened during the night when I was asleep and I didn’t realise until I had to leap out of bed to switch off the alarm

And then I did! Ohh yes.

And I’ve also done something to my lower back too so sitting down, even in my lovely office chair, is agonising too

When I went to bed last night, earlier than usual for a change, I was in perfect health. Well, as perfect as I can be, I suppose. And for a few hours I had a nice relaxing sleep.

However things went south from there. I was tossing and turning around, obviously far too much at one point.

When the alarm went off Billy Cotton cried his famous cry three times before I could reach the ‘phone to switch him off. Usually I can manage to do it before the first chorus ends but that’s when I don’t have pulled muscles in my body with which I have to contend.

In the bathroom it took me half an hour – yes, half an hour to dress myself. It really was so difficult to pick up my right leg with this agonising pain.

Eventually I managed it though and limped off into the living room to sort out the medication. It’s a day of everything today, even the Vitamin D supplement that I have to take these days with being stuck indoors.

When the nurse came I told her of my predicament and she insisted, absolutely insisted that I take a painkiller. I’m totally opposed to that idea but I could see the logic in her argument today.

However I had a few things to do that needed my attention beforehand

Once I’d organised everything I took a painkiller, with the predictable results. Having crowed yesterday about not crashing out at all, I was away with the fairies. And away for almost 4 hours too. It was 15:06 when I awoke and … errr … somewhat later when I started work.

The cleaner had been in while I’d been asleep and apparently we’d had a chat. I wonder what it was that I’d said. It can’t have been anything offensive because she came back later with other stuff. It seems that one of my neighbours has left me a couple of punnets of soft fruit which is really nice.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were having a big discussion about teenagers wasting time. It turned into some kind of battle like a game of football or something. Whichever team I was on, we swept the field and won quite convincingly. This led to me moving into a new apartment. I had some help to do it. Afterwards we were settling down when the ‘phone rang. It was Rosemary so she and I had a good chat. She found out where I was living now, which was just down the road from ETS Elliott School and some of her stuff was there in a box so she wondered if we could go to pick it up at some point at lunchtime. I didn’t see any objection to that except that I wasn’t sure how I was going to carry it away. It would probably need to go into the car which meant coming back from work on the bus or tram, getting into the car, going to the school, getting the things, going back home and then going back to work on the bus or tram again. Certainly in theory it was possible anyway

Time is, after all, only wasted if you actually regret it. And when you are teenage you don’t worry about that

There’s a General Election taking place in the UK. I’ve been an MP for 5 years creaming the money off illicit contracts and tings like that from the NHS over Covid. Of course with the elections coming up there was likely to be a new Party, there’s likely to be a public enquiry which could eventually lead to prosecutions. I would have to admit at some stage or other that I was likely to be prosecuted for some misdeeds with regard to the Covid disaster and the aftermath of it. It was all extremely depressing for me as time passed on the approach to the date

Yes, I’ve caught the General Election fever right enough with all of this. It’ll be like this now for the next few weeks until it’s all over.

I was going somewhere on a train. The train was quite crowded. There was one guy behind me talking to one guy in front of me. Although they were talking quite quietly it was impossible for me to sleep. I had all kinds of dreams and things going through my head relating to the economy and knights in shining armour etc but of course with not being asleep they are only flitting through. In the end there was an incident on board the train. Someone made some kind of remark to me so I replied and mentioned about these two guys talking to each other and said that maybe now they can keep quiet and let everyone else go to sleep. I suddenly realised that not only was I sitting on a set of seats for two in this crowded train I was sitting on the one against the aisle and my feet were across the other one propped up on the back of the seat in front. I had stuff all over where I was sitting on the window ledge and on the tray of someone sitting across the aisle too. I suddenly realised that I’m the last person who ought to be lecturing passengers about their behaviour on this train. As it became more crowded and people were standing I suddenly realised that maybe I’m going to have to change my behaviour and let someone sit alongside me which would of course make the journey much more uncomfortable for me but make it much more comfortable for everyone else. It really did seem strange the way I was reacting when I was being twice as bad as everyone else when it came down to selfishness

And this isn’t like me, is it? I’m not usually the inconsiderate sort. Not these days anyway.

Next step was the radio programme. I’ve chosen all of the music and begun to pair it off. That should keep me out of mischief for the next few days, writing the radio notes for the music that I’ve chosen. There’s some good stuff in this programme.

Tea tonight was, as I said the other day, steamed veg with falafel in a vegan cheese sauce. That’s another one of my favourite meals and it was as delicious as always. That’s another meal I can eat every night of the week.

But seeing as I’m in agony I’m off to bed. Fully dressed because I’m not going through this morning’s pantomime again.

Tonight I feel like the woman who went to the doctor’s about her aches and pains.
"What did he say about the pain in your back?" asked her husband
"He told me to rub in this embrocation three times a day" she replied
"Did he say anything about the pain in your *rs*?"
"Yes" she replied. "He told me that I ought to apply for a divorce"

0

Thursday 11th April 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what happened to this morning.

There I was, sitting down at my desk typing out a few notes and the next thing that I knew was that I was flat out asleep the ‘phone was ringing and it was midday already.

A whole morning had passed and I’d been totally out of it. It was just as if someone had flicked a switch at some point earlier in the morning and I’d just switched off completely with no warning.

You’ve no idea whatever just how strange it feels to be in a circumstance like that. All that I can say is that it’s a good job that I can no longer drive.

This morning I knew that things were going to be difficult. I’d been awake since about 06:00 and was actually up early before the alarm went off. It was actually quite a struggle to leave the bed, no matter how it sounds, because I didn’t feel in the least like it.

It had been a late night too. This idea about trying my best to finish everything early isn’t really working and despite the best intentions, and the road to Hell is paved with those, I’m not doing aby good with the plan.

It was probably about 23:30 when I slipped under the covers and so awakening at 06:00 is simply not enough sleep. Heaven alone knows how I managed 30-odd years ago when if I thought I was having half that time in bed I was doing well.

So first thing was to check the blood pressure this morning. It was showing 16.9/11.2, which compares quite miserably with last night’s figure of 14.9/9.3. Something had gone on during the night to upset me, by the looks of things, but we’ll have to wait to find out what.

Instead of worrying about that I went to take my medication, the typical European Medicine Mountain of stuff, and then to rearrange the living room ready for her and also to have a good wash

While she was here she gave me a list of stuff that she needed and then wandered off, and I began to sort myself out. However it was at some point round about here that I disappeared off the face of the earth.

awakening was the thing, because I was totally out of it and it took me a good couple of hours (seriously) to come back onto this planet. It was certainly well after 14:00 when I restarted work.

First thing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night – and from the morning too because there were some of them. But during the night I was back in Outer Space again assembling a rock programme. What I was actually doing was cutting an audio track from an obscure German rock group called Dreadnought, copying out the segments. There were dozens of them, all extremely long so it was a complicated business to do it. I was chatting to one or two people while I was doing it. They were apparently quite impressed and spent some time watching. I found that one of the women there, she knew exactly how to do it. She had a Welsh programme there and she was going through telling me how she did it, in Welsh, which I understood, saying “it wasn’t done in this way – it wasn’t done in this way and it wasn’t done in this way and it wasn’t done in this way but it was done in a way like this”, said in Welsh all the time and I could follow the conversation, I could follow exactly what she’d done. She made it sound really, really interesting. I thought to myself “maybe I ought to investigate things from that point of view and see how they fit with what I’m doing”

Funnily enough, just recently I have been editing a concert sound track by a German space-rock group called Dreadnought, another one of my contacts from one of the various Hawkfests, and it’s really quite interesting. But I wish that I knew in real life which method this woman was using. I’m completely self-taught in respect of my use of a sound-editing programme and can conjure up some surprisingly good results. But there are tons of facilities that I have never used, and some expert advice would really not go amiss

Later on I was back in a dream in Welsh. Our Welsh class had to translate an ancient song. There were two ways to do it, one was a translation after the fashion of Morgannwg … "presumably the poet Lewys Morgannwg" – ed … and the other after the fashion on Cadwaladwr … "presumably Cadwaladr ap Rhys Trefnant" – ed …. The problem was that both translations are rather inflammatory and as a result its use has fallen out of favour but nevertheless that was our task. One girl was already receiving some grief because her translation had come to the notice of the authorities and we were wondering all the way through the rest of this dream how long it will be before our version of the translation comes to the attention of the authorities, and what action they’ll take against us

And that’s the problem with much of Welsh literature of that period. It’s a tale of lament about the oppression of the native people by the wicked English and like many other things, it’s not very appetising to the English palette today.

While many countries have tried hard to come to terms with their past, in England there has never been any kind of attempt at reconciliation. There are a great many scars that have never ever healed.

While I was asleep during the morning there was also a complicated discussion going on about the use of personal pronouns, something else that seems to be quite a touchy subject these days.

As we said the other day, there are a lot of people with nothing better to do so they trawl the internet and places like that trying to find ways in which they might be offended. If you’re born with a certain gender and you don’t like it, then that’s your problem, not everyone else’s

Whoever it was on the phone who awoke me, I have no idea I was in no fit state to answer.

Instead I lowly (as in the next couple of hours) came back round into the Land of the Living and then made a start on the notes for the next radio programme.

Not that I went far because firstly the cleaner descended upon me with some supplies for the nurse, and then the Auvergnats came round to fill me in on their exciting day. Tomorrow they are off down the road to Mont St Michel so I’m being allowed a day of freedom myself. I’ll see them on Saturday for the last time.

But it was nice to chat about all of our old stamping grounds down in the Combrailles and to discuss all of our former partners in crime, most of whom have moved on to pastures new.

And that’s a shame because I really loved my life in the Auvergne. It was just how I imagined rural France to be and I’m glad that I managed to grab hold of one of the last vestiges of it before it disappeared completely

There was definitely something to be said for life down there, but it’s no life for anyone who is not 100% fit.

After they left there wasn’t much time left until teatime – some pasta and veg in a vegan cheese sauce with a couple of the falafel balls that I made the other day. Totally delicious.

So when I’ve finished everything again, my throbbing leg and I are going to bed and if the pain subsides I might even sleep. But it would be nice to have a regular sleep.

And by that I mean one with lots of dreams. Lee Jackson sang "YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE
TO BE BACK IN YOUR DREAMS"
and he’s not at all wrong, not on my account anyway

It does remind me of the time that Nerina and I chatted about our dreams
Nerina said "I dreamed last night that I’d gone shopping in Asda"
"Really?" I asked. "I dreamed that I was making love to three beautiful, naked women in the park under a glorious warm sun"
"Was I there?" she asked
"Actually no" I replied. "You’d gone shopping in Asda"

0

Thursday 25th January 2024 – I’VE BEEN OVERWHELMED …

… by a fit of positivity today, and I’ve absolutely idea where it came from.

It’s probably something to do with the choice of music. When I make up a playlist of Hawkwind or Help Yourself, Marillion or Alquin it brings back far too many distant memories that I’ve long since consigned to the dustbin of history – or, at least, I thought that I had

And as Gimli said to Legolas in LORD OF THE RINGS, "Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror"

Instead, I’ve been making up a playlist of Tangerine Dream. By an amazing coincidence, Edgar Froese, John Kay of Steppenwolf and my friend Lorna’s mum were in the same refugee column that fled from Tilsit in East Prussia in the winter of 1944/45 before the advancing Red Army.

Lorna’s mum, who was 12 at the time, told some horrific tales of the flight that people would have found hard to believe before the news of the events in Ukraine broke

But I digress … "again" – ed …

Tangerine Dream bring back memories of happier times – the hot summer of 1976 where we lived at an abandoned sand quarry near Congleton and the next couple of years when I was struggling to get myself and my life together again after several years in the Wilderness and ended up going from living in an old van to owning a brand new semi-detached house in the suburbs of Winsford in just 3 years.

Albums like TANGRAM, WHITE EAGLE, FORCE MAJEURE and EXIT with the two magnificent tracks PILOTS OF PURPLE TWILIGHT and CHORONZON that can only ever be played one after the other.

Then there is CYCLONE, the best of all the Tangerine Dream albums with two tracks that have never ever been off my playlist, BENT COLD SIDEWALK, and RISING RUNNER MISSED BY ENDLESS SENDER.

But maybe it isn’t. I found an old elastic knee reinforcement that I used a few years ago and I tried that last night. I’ve been wearing it ever since on my right leg and since then the pain seems to be manageable. Perhaps it’s that which is making me feel better

However, it’s still something of a misery in bed and I was moving around all night trying to find a comfortable position. Not that you would have thought so with the amount of stuff on the dictaphone. Even when I was asleep it must have been quite restless, and there were some strange, very strange comments on the dictaphone, such as “you can tell that I’ve been on this anti-potassium stuff. There’s a radio playing somewhere, there’s a speaking voice that I can hear presenting a radio programme from somewhere. There’s absolutely no radio anywhere near where I am and this time of night no-one would be playing a radio so loud that it would penetrate solid grès de Chaussee solid granite walls 1.20m thick. I’ve no idea what’s happening except that it’s really confusing me”.

And then I awoke (so I said in my sleep) in the middle of a dream. I was in a French class and was late back from a break. Everyone else was there so I had to fight my way through the crowds to a seat at the back. The teacher had given everyone an exercise that they had to write a letter as if they were in the final throes of preparing a music festival when someone had written offering his services as a singer. I had to hunt for the question first – it was on page 80 of our notes so eventually I managed to find it. When I went to begin to write I found that my notebook was completely full. I reached under my desk, went into my backpack, pulled out a scrap pad. The people around me were amazed that I had so much stuff and was so well organised that I even had a spare notepad. I just gave a smile and began to write down the question on the spare notepad so that I’d be ready to answer it and writing it down gives me a little chance to think a little

Talking of surprises, I think that the whole wide world would be surprised at the amount of stuff that that I have. I’m probably sitting on a fortune of stuff that I’ve never had time to deal with. And as for being well-organised, I think that even I would be surprised at that.

They’d … "who?" – ed … been playing in a rock band with Declan McManus of Leek’s sister and somewhere in the middle of the Sunday hall they’d been overcome by something or other. They thought that it was just grief but maybe there was some slight predicament that was needed but it grew worse as the day went on. His leg was positively killing him at night so they arranged for an ambulance to come and collect him and have a look at whatever it was but I don’t know the name of the film now but I remember thinking that it was an excellent film and deserved to be shown on mainstream television.

And apart from the fact that Declan McManus doesn’t play for Leek but for TNS in Wales, you don’t really expect a dream to make sense, do you?

After that we were suddenly in Crewe again. I was sitting rather than going for a walk and suddenly had an appalling fear or suspicion that someone was watching me and I couldn’t shake it out of my mind …fell asleep here…

At a later moment a bunch of crooks had stolen a pile of antiques from a place in South-West London, rather similar to something like one of the Ealing comedies. I was involved merely as a spectator. The retreated to their headquarters with all of their loot. They tried to take taxis in order to disperse but all of the taxis were booked. In the meantime I was ringing a friend of mine in Chester to tell him that I’d left my job there as an underwriting clerk. If he was still looking for a job there was one vacant and he ought to apply. I was greeted to a pile of silence so I said “right, see you there” and hung up. I went back into the room where they were arguing. Eventually one of them grabbed his share of the loot from the table, said “right, I’m going by bus”. Someone else replied “the buses from here don’t go to Finchley Central”. He replied “I don’t care. I can take a bus to the Angel, take a bus to somewhere else and catch a bus there. It’s better than sitting around”. That propelled one or two others to start moving, particularly the fellow who had organised it to suddenly get to grips with what was going on and get a settlement to the airport so that they could fly out of the UK quickly

Did I dictate that I was with Marillion last night? … "No you didn’t" – ed … Things had been slack for them on the music scene and they’d become taxi drivers. Someone had gone up to Fish to tell him that they’d seen a dead body somewhere. He was at the taxi rank picking up a fare so as soon as he dropped off the fare he went with this other person to go to look to see if they could find this body. The rest of his group turned up too to help. Then the alarm went off so I don’t know what happened next

It was a struggle to make it to my feet which is no surprise these days and to give you an idea of what’s going on right now, getting dressed, going into the kitchen, taking my medicine and then coming back in here took me 50 minutes. What kind of state is that to be in?

First thing was to check the mails and messages and then to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And then afterwards, seeing as I was in a malicious mood I rang up the garage to find out why they hadn’t been for Caliburn.

After the usual excuses they’ll be here for him on the 8th of February to take him for his annual controle technique.

And that’s a shame because just when I was getting myself under control and feeling as if I might manage a trip around the block, I have this really bad fall that knocks the stuffing out of me and sets me back.

While I was now in something of an aggressive mood, I rang up the supermarket to complain about why one of the products that i’d ordered and they’d delivered yesterday was damaged. I sent them a photo by e-mail and they agreed.

The result is that I’ve had the purchase price credited back to my account and I can keep the product. They were really quite nice and helpful too which made a lovely change.

Next task was to go one better than David Crosby, presumably because I hadn’t had the flu for Christmas and was not feeling under par. It’s been a while and it was growing quite long – at least, for how I like it these days – but now it’s all short and bristly thanks to the sheep-shearer in the bathroom cupboard.

Strangely enough, sitting on the chair in the bathroom after I’d finished, I crashed out for 5 minutes. While I was away with the fairies there was something going on in my subconscious about two cats having a playfight and someone picking up one of them.

Of course, that made me wish that the tenant in my apartment downstairs would hurry up and find somewhere else to live so that I can move downstairs and have a moggy adopt me. Only 16 more months until the lease ends but I can do with her clearing off a long time before that. The way that I feel right now, I’ll be finished off a long time before the lease is.

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I loaded the washing machine and gave the clothes a whizz around while I went to eat some fruit. Only apples and clementines – I don’t like the pears that they have and they had run out of the Eco bananas at the delivery site.

There was even some time to play the guitar – the first time for several weeks. But how sad is it that I can no longer stand up to do it and sing? I’m really surprised that I kept my good humour.

Once I’d hung up the washing to dry I went to sit down. I reckon that I’d done enough today. I really don’t know what had come over me with all of this effort, as Monica Lewinsky one famously said.

After my hot chocolate and Christmas cake (there’s not much of that left now) I carried on with the radio programme and wrote a few notes for some of the tracks that will be figuring in the programme. Just a few to dictate now and it will be finished and I can go back to my usual routine and record it on Saturday night.

In the meantime I’ve been giving my “Hawkfest” and “Isle of Wight 1968” programmes some thought, about who will feature and so on.

The Hawkfest isn’t too difficult. Back in the good old days of the anarchy of what was loosely called “Usenet” down in the bowels of the internet quite a comprehensive list of the first Hawkfest performers was “published” and I tracked a few down, even someone who lived in Congleton who had been up on the stage performing, but the first Isle of Wight is not so easy. There was a big pile of extremely obscure groups who played there, including one that at one time had had on bass guitar Lewis Collins, later actor in The Professionals.

Even finding their names wasn’t easy, and tracking down any of their work will be much harder than that.

As for tea, I changed my mind about what to have.

During the course of the day my mind had gone from gravy to cheese sauce and I don’t know why, but nevertheless I steamed some vegetables in my microwave vegetable steamer and cooked some falafel in a nice thick cheese sauce which I poured (well, it was too thick to pour, but you get the meaning) over the top. And it was just as delicious as I expected.

So right now I’m going to go to bed. And hope that I awaken in the same positive mind tomorrow.

First task (and straight away too) is to bake my bread for the weekend. That’s important and it needs to be done early ready for my mid-morning cheese on toast.

My bread rolls were a success so I might do that again, but this time hope that the bread rises more than it did last time. I really don’t understand why my bread doesn’t rise like it ought to.

It reminds me of the time that I went to the doctors to ask for certain “help, advice and assistance” about my meeting with a certain young lady of my acquaintance in April a couple of years ago and who has figured in these pages on occasions too numerous to count, especially during the night.

He took one look at my “problem” and said "I’ll give you the number of a spiritualist whom I know"
"Why’s that?" I asked.
"I’m a doctor" he replied. "It’s my job to heal the sick. It’s his job to raise the dead."

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Thursday 14th December 2023 – IT WAS THE …

… staff Christmas lunch at the Centre de Re-education at midday today. And so as a result there really wasn’t all that much point in any of the clients going there this afternoon.

Anyone who has ever been to a French office party or Christmas lunch will understand only too well exactly what I mean.

It looked as if it was all going to go the Way of the West when Severine told me how difficult it was to make my feet respond to her massage.

She would probably have had more luck had she remembered to take of my shoes first, especially after all of the effort through which I’d gone to change my socks and put on clean ones earlier that afternoon.

Mind you, at least she went through the motions. Ophélie the Ergotherapist was definitely on another planet in some other universe somewhere and our session, which took ages to start, finished quite rapidly.

But I knew that today was going to be one of those days. During the night Zero had come to visit me. It was really nice to see her, but in the middle of a long interesting discussion that I was having with her, I suddenly awoke bolt upright and she immediately vanished into the ether.

Start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

Having finished my notes early last night I had an hour or so on the guitar and ended up going late to bed. One thing that I love about living in a building where the walls are 1m20 thick of solid granite is that I can make as much noise as I like and no-one can hear me.

Apart from all of the usual songs that I run through, I had a play around with THIS ONE.

It sounds really well on a decent acoustic guitar and the last time that I played the song to an audience was on the observation deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at about 04:00 one night when Castor and I were huddled up watching the midnight sun over Coronation Gulf on the last night of our little adventure

Playing Trevor Bolder’s bass line is really enjoyable and I used to do that a lot, but for some reason that I could never understand, I could never sing the chorus when playing the chorus’s bass line no matter how much I rehearsed and practised, and I found it deeply frustrating.

Being determined never to admit defeat and to master it one day, I still keep on trying, even if it has been 20 years.

"Keep your electric eye on me babe
Put your ray-gun to my head
Press your space-face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream"

At least, we had the midnight sun, I suppose.

Being late going to bed, I didn’t go very far. But it’s quality that counts, not quantity of course, and just like Kris Kristofferson, "I’d give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday".

I dreamt last night that I was at the Centre Normandy again. They were teaching up all kinds of things like different series of recipes which for example was the one where we learnt about Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings. There was another one where we learnt about stuffing etc. It began quite normally but as the menus progressed it became more and more chaotic until in the end I was chasing a tin of Christmas pudding mix around my bed trying to find it (and I was too!).

And later, I was dictating the next dream without the dictaphone again, something that I do far too often. But I’m glad that my subconscious realised it and made a wild grab because this was when Zero appeared and I didn’t want to miss her. I’d been out around the North Shropshire area in my red Cortina estate and coming back through Whitchurch I wanted a pint of milk. I couldn’t find one so in the end I ended up at Northern Dairies where I bought a bottle. At some point or other I’d picked up Zero but I can’t remember how – at one minute I was on my own and next minute she was in the car. Then I had something else to do that meant that I had to double back through Whitchurch and drive around the town for a while. Instead of Zero I then had someone else with me but I can’t remember who it was. In the end I was just driving around. It was the afternoon. The previous evening I’d been to a football match, a ladies match between 2 teams. I came across a sports ground somewhere on the edge of Birmingham. There was a fair-sized crowd for what looked like an amateur game so I decided to stop to look as kick-off hadn’t happened yet. I was wandering around and ended up in one of the rooms of the building. It was full of schoolgirls and a couple of teachers. One of the teachers was wearing a bright blue flannel suit and waistcoat with his name on it and a lime green shirt and was talking in a high-pitched voice to these girls about their English exams. There was probably 20 or 30 schoolgirls packed in here. I was just sitting quietly in a corner trying to work out where I was. I noticed that the postcode of this place began with PR1. I thought “it can’t be Preston so where was I?” In the end I came to the conclusion that I was in Perry Barr on the edge of Birmingham. I ended up talking to 2 of the girls, asking what time kick-off was. They told me that we had 20 minutes to wait. Then in walked Zero. I said “hello” to her and called her by name which surprised everyone in this room – they didn’t know that I knew one of their schoolgirls. She came over to chat. I asked about her birthday, what presents she had, and asked her about her holidays. We were having a really lengthy involved chat when I awoke quite dramatically.

After that, there was no point in going back to sleep, even though I tried. I knew that this would be one dream into which I would never be able to step back. Can you imagine the disappointment? There I was with Zero on my plate, just about get my fork stuck in, and “paff”.

"Gone! And never called me ‘mother’!"

For about half an hour I carried out my exercises with the elastic strap around my ankles and then Arose from the Dead. It was 05:40.

Being up and about is one thing. Actually being in any state to do anything is something else completely and it took me an age to wind myself up ready to go.

Eventually though I managed to make a start on things and by lunchtime I’d edited the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed and assembled another complete programme.

Had I put my shoulder to the wheel I could have finished it off a lot earlier than that but what with a late night and a really early start, I went off again with the fairies for quite some time in the middle of it all.

Having had a good wash and scrub up I made myself ready for the Centre de Re-education and while I was waiting for my lift I hunted down some music.

Unfortunately I ended up stuck in yet another nostalgia groove (and in case you haven’t already noticed, I’m still in it, regrettably) and came across a recording of a live Hawkwind concert from a festival in Canterbury 20-odd years ago. And that was that, I’m afraid

That actually gave me yet another idea for my radio programme.

Back in the 1970s with my various vans I used to run a sound engineer around to work at various gigs and then a friend’s son was sound engineer with the Pink Fairies who supported dozens of headline groups. Consequently I seem to have inherited quite a collection of live concert recordings

Occasionally I feature a live concert recording in my radio shows when it’s convenient so I’m wondering if maybe I should go through my collection of recordings, try to identify the dates for those that aren’t labelled (there’s A HANDY WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET where people post setlists of concerts that they’ve seen and that should help identify some of them) and then broadcast “anniversary concerts” when the appropriate date coincides with one of my programmes.

After the Centre de Re-education I came back here, made my hot chocolate and sat down to sort out the music for the next radio programme. That’s all paired off now and I’ve even written some of the notes. Once more, I could have done much more but I … errr … relaxed for a while.

Tea was steamed veg with falafel and vegan cheese sauce but the veg wasn’t really steamed enough. It seems that my microwave is being rather hit-and-miss these days too.

So having finished off everything? I’m going to sort out some paperwork for the hospital, make my shopping list for the supermarket at St Nicolas tomorrow and then have a play on the guitar.

And hope that Zero comes back to see me again during the night, either on her own or with Castor and TOTGA

Yes, I’m still on this nostalgia thing again, so what better track to leave you all with than THIS ONE? Definitely the poet Robert Calvert’s finest hour.

He describes the perigee of despair in terms that no-one else could possibly imitate. Imagine being stuck in a interplanetary spacecraft on an inter-galactic voyage that will take centuries, just you and a clone of your lover, and when you make love to it "she calls another’s name"

There will never be another song quite like this.

Calvert is buried just a few hundred yards from where my mother lived as a child and one of the things that I intended to do was to go to visit his grave. But that’s just one more thing that won’t ever be done.

This “unfinished list” seems to be growing longer and longer, and there’s nothing that I can do about it.

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Friday 13th October 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… really good decision that I made for this morning.

As I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can no longer climb into the bus at the Port because there’s no pavement at the bus stop so I’m having to climb in from street level.

Consequently, if I want to go out (and I ought to go out at least once per week) I have to think again.

Right out on the edge of town off the beaten track is the quartier of St Nicolas.

It was formerly a village in its own right but was absorbed into Granville during the regrouping of communes some time ago, and so it has all of its own services which, to most people’s surprise, have remained intact.

There’s one of these typical small 1960s-type of shopping centres which is only 100 metres from a bus stop on the bus route that starts and finishes outside my front door. When I was out there on Monday, I checked the bus stops and to my delight, the pavements at both are raised to exactly the correct height.

There’s a chemists and a Post Office right next door to each other and then there’s the Carrefour supermarket. Much bigger than the one in town with a greater variety of produce.

There is a downside to it, in that the time between the bus dropping me off, completing its run, turning round and coming back is only 12 minutes, and that’s not enough.

However, that’s not a problem because there’s a bakery in the supermarket that bakes fresh bread and sells coffee. So I had a lovely rest with a nice hot coffee while I waited for the next bus.

There’s a lot going on there with a lot of people about and they all seem quite friendly too, so it was a really good idea to go there and I’ll be doing it more often.

Yesterday evening I’d psyched myself up for it by going to bed early but it made no difference because it took ages to go off to sleep. At least the night wasn’t as restless as some have been just recently.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream about someone who had quite a few cats. For some reason he’d locked them up into one particular room, gone away and left them. The cats succeeded in breaking down one of the things that he’d erected to block off the fireplace. By means of the chimney they were then able to move around the entire house. There was much more to it than that but that was all that I can remember when the alarm went off.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a dream about cats, hasn’t it?

After the medication I had to finish off the letters from yesterday and print off some paperwork to go with them, and then I hit the streets.

The bus was already here outside so I staggered on board and we set off for our journey. At St Nicolas I went to the Post Office to post the letters and then off to the supermarket for the shopping, followed by a nice hot coffee while I waited for the bus.

Climbing back on board was much easier, for which I was extremely grateful, and the climb back up the stairs seemed to be a little less difficult. In fact, I think that i’m moving about a little bit easier that I was before I set out. Mind you, that’s not saying too much because things have been difficult just recently.

For a very late breakfast I eschewed the cheese on toast and had some soup with the crusty bread that I had bought. It really was delicious, and I’ll have some more of that.

Back in here, I crashed out – quite definitively too, and for at least an hour. That’s no surprise at all.

Once I’d recovered I sat down and bashed out another radio programme. That’s the last one of the four that I dictated last Saturday night. Tomorrow I’ll carry on with the next one in the pipeline. I’m going to try to do two next week as I’m in hospital the week after.

There was stuff on the dictaphone from last night too. I’ve been packing up a room where I’d been staying for a few days ready to go off on an expedition. I’m going to have to go through all of the stuff because I’m going to be limited on what I can take. When I looked through the stuff I was surprised at all of the things that were there, all kinds of stuff that I’d been dragging around with me that I must have emptied out of a vehicle – glass bottles, jars, tons of papers etc. I had to be really severe about disposing of it all. Some of it is quite valuable in an intrinsic or sentimental way but the fact is that I simply can’t carry it so I’ll have to dispose of it and just take what I need for the journey and maybe one or two other things that would come in handy for the journey that I could use again. If it won’t be handy for the journey I’d have to throw it away whether I like it or not and that is filling me full of depression. Not that that’s any surprise because I have a hard time throwing things away.

There was something going on about a house party with a lot of people there, a few who were disabled. While I can’t remember very much about this dream I remember that some kind of cards were distributed among the people – you took your chance and took a card. The receipt of a disability card entitled you to certain things. The first person who pulled out a disability card was someone who was extremely able-bodied and active. That caused quite a gasp around the place as they tried to work out what it would mean for this extremely active person to have a disability card.

So now I’m dreaming about disabilities and handicapped people. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs for me to be in. Realisation sinks in slowly, but it sinks in deep.

Tea tonight was chips and salad with some falafel. Nothing special but nevertheless quite nice. Tomorrow I have one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets, and I’ll probably go for a baked potato with that.

So now I’m off to bed, flushed with success about having made a good decision for my shopping. It’s not all that often that things that I plan seem to come off so I shall bask in the glory of that until I probably fall out of the bus next weekend.

By the way, you did all listen to my radio programme on Friday night, didn’t you? If not, you can hear it on Saturday evening.

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Thursday 17th August 2023 – I’VE HAD A REALLY …

… horrible afternoon today.

There were a couple of moment during my Welsh lesson when, for some reason or other, I felt myself drifting away into never-land. Then later on, after I’d had my hot chocolate when the lesson finished, I crashed out completely.

And I DO mean “completely” too. For about 2.5 hours I was totally out like a light in probably the deepest sleep I’ve had for quite some considerable time. Not a thing was moving during that time.

It’s not as if I didn’t need it though. What with one thing and another I didn’t go to bed until after midnight last night. Just as I was on the point of going to bed a Paul Temple mystery came round on the playlist so I stayed up to listen to it.

Despite all of that, I had woken up and was out and about (after a fashion) before the alarm went off, which goes to prove that there’s no pattern to what’s going on inside what’s left of my brain right now.

As usual, it took a good while to wind myself up, and then I had a couple of phone calls to make. Firstly there was to the chemists to order the next month’s supply of Aranesp, and then to the doctor to order another supply of medicine as I’m running out of certain supplies.

There was the dictaphone to listen to, to find out where i’d been during the night. I was with someone like that guy whom I knew when I had my taxis, me and a girl. For some reason we’d gone to California in Caliburn but he was driving. We went all the way to California. The girl and I were talking about settling down there, going to school etc, creating a new life for ourselves. We had to go back to collect our equipment. They drove us back and they said “we’ve been in your bank accounts and paid back all the money that you spent on this trip”. I told them that they didn’t need to because it was for us anyway, but they insisted. I began to collect my things together. I disposed of one scrap car out of my garage but there was a gold Cortina MkIII in there where I had half the axle out but a rear wheel had seized on a bearing so that bearing was still in the axle. He brought a pile of screws and nuts for me. They were mine anyway but he said that he wanted me to have them back. I went into the garage to find a box for them but he followed me in. He was looking at my tools and equipment saying how wonderful they were. he looked at the Cortina. I told him about the wheel. He replied “we can have that off”. I explained that I’d tried just about everything for months but I’ll end up having to cut it off. In the end we were preparing to go. But this thing about him turning up looking around my garage began to fill me with unease. I’d no idea why that would have been

And later I was back in this dream again talking to a friend of mine about my illness. We were talking about Zero. He was saying that if I’d been in good health she would have probably been living with me by now. I was chatting to Zero (so welcome back to her, who has been absent from my voyages for quite a while) and I asked her how she fancied living in California. I explained to her about portable oxygen cylinders, how I could buy one and walk around etc. She was worried that the heat in California would be too much for me. I explained that if we were to live by the sea it would be quite comfortable. We had a long, lengthy chat about moving, living down there by the sea etc. This was another one of these rare dreams where everything seemed to be going so right. It really felt much more than just an ordinary boring dream, a lot more intense feeling that there was in most, which was quite a surprise.

And what’s going on with California? I’ve been going there quite a lot just recently which is bewildering because I’ve never been farther west THAN ARIZONA OR UTAH. So I’ve no idea what’s happening about that.

After spending some time doing my Welsh homework I went for my lesson. The morning didn’t go too badly but gradually as the afternoon went on I found myself fading away, and that kind of thing is doing me no good at all.

During my brief moments of lucidity today I’ve been writing notes for my forthcoming radio programme and then I went for tea.

Tonight’s tea was another really good one – mixed veg and falafel in a vegan cheese sauce. And I’ve got the hang of all of this now.

It makes a world of difference being able to lay my hands on what to date is proving to be a consistent supply of vegan cheese. In the past I’ve only been able to grab it when I can but it looks as if the supply from LeClerc is going to keep on running for the foreseeable future, although nothing in this World is certain.

Having done all of that I’m off to bed, ready for a trip down into town before my lesson. Mind you, I probably won’t sleep, having had a really good session this afternoon.

But it was nice to see Zero again last night and it would be even nicer to see her again tonight. But what on earth is going on about California?

STANDING ON A HILL IN MY MOUNTAIN OF DREAMS,
TELLING MYSELF IT’S NOT AS HARD, HARD, HARD AS IT SEEMS

Well, yes.

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Friday 4th August 2023 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, today followed pretty much the same pattern.

Although there wasn’t the same number of sound files on the dictaphone, it wasn’t far off. And I reckon that had I gone to bed last night at 23:00 as normal instead of … errr … 01:30 this morning, who knows how many there might have been?

When the alarm went off this morning I was actually in a record shop somewhere discussing a Wishbone Ash album with someone. Consequently it took me a few seconds to find my feet.

When the second alarm went off at 07:05 I was actually on my feet – but only just. And the shower that I had after my medication did little to revive me.

Just as last week, I was on the bus early, on the grounds that the sooner I go, the quicker I come back – rather like Tommy Handley’s Ali Oup and “I go – I come back”.

At Carrefour I did a little shopping and then for some reason had to wait quite a while for the bus. I’ve no idea why he took so long to come back this morning.

Back here I had a little accident. Having cleaned out a pepper ready for freezing, I dropped one of the freezer drawers on the floor. I ended up having to clean it, repair it and repack it And then I could sit down and have my cheese on toast and coffee.

There had been plenty of post in my letterbox. The most important letter was that the Physical Re-education Centre that contacted me by phone a couple of weeks ago has offered me 20 – yes, TWENTY sessions, starting in mid-October.

It seems that they are taking this nerve problem seriously. What with that and the hospital visit at the end of the month, who knows?

Also in the post was the acknowledgement of my application for a disabled person’s permit. They told me that I had sent in everything that they needed and I can expect a reply “within four months”. We shall see.

For a change, I managed to avoid falling asleep this afternoon, not that I actually felt like doing all that much. But eventually I had a listen to the dictaphone – piles and piles of it. I had a dream last night. I can’t remember very much about it but I remember that it was full of a lot of people watching it who were coming out of profanities. I had to post some kind of notice requesting everyone to mind their language as there were young children in the vicinity listening to all of it.

There was also the story of a whaler out of Dundee that ran onto rocks and sank as it was coming into the harbour. The crew took to the boats and came ashore but they must have been on an island because there was still no way to reach Dundee. They had to wait to be rescued. There were all kinds of accusations flying around. I was captain of the whaler so I had one of my crew discreetly count the number of people who were with us. He said “between 18 and 26”. That was not what I wanted to know. I was hoping that he’d give me an exact number so I’d know first of all how many we’d had starting out, how many had made it ashore and how many had subsequently been able to go ashore somewhere else. There was an old mariner on this island who was extremely critical of what we’d done. He was very domineering and told us to sit down even though we could see a ship coming in the distance. He told us to sit and watch television while we awaited rescue. I said that I wasn’t interested in watching anything on television. he made some kind of dismissive remark about that. My story was that the chart was deficient but he seemed to think that it was my fault completely, the sinking of the ship. I was looking forward to the subsequent examination where I could put forward my points of view.

Here we were on this island awaiting rescue and we came across a pile of railway carriages for the London Underground. That invited a lot of comment as to what they might be doing there in this rural outpost somewhere along the shore near Dundee. One thing though was that I was sure that looking at the men who had been saved I didn’t really recognise anyone who’d started out on the trip. They could have been different people for all I know

And then someone wanted to work out some kind of survey where any kind of activity took place on the island compared to life on there as normal. I told him to clear off and said that as far as I was concerned no-one was having anything to do with him and this particular survey. What with all of that, it must have been a quite interesting night on that island near Dundee.

And on another island in the middle of the Atlantic there were about 20 children. What they were doing was to play some kind of game with them to see how many could identify the places that were involved with many of the early explorers’ voyages around the world, like the Canary Islands and the Azores, Lanzarote, islands like that situated off the coast of Europe and North West Africa.

I was in a music shop last night. I’d bought a Wishbone Ash album years ago but I’d never got round to actually playing it. When I did, the tracks didn’t correspond with what was on the running order list. I did some research and found that it’s the wrong album that’s been pressed on the CD. The label was for the CD box but the album on the disc was a different one. I went back to the record shop to tell them about it and see what they could do, not that with all this immense lapse of time I expected them to do anything. I was in the middle of talking to them when the alarm went off.

There was some other stuff too but you don’t really want to know about that right now.

As I mentioned yesterday I spent some time on the radio programme that I started yesterday. Another pile of notes have been written and I can finish it off tomorrow. Then I can dictate the notes tomorrow night and if I’m lucky I can prepare two radio programmes on Sunday.

It’ll be a busy day on Sunday because I have some fruit buns to bake. I’ve almost run out of those.

Finally I spent some time tracking down some more stuff about Muskrat Falls. I managed to find not only the agreement that was signed between the Newfoundland and Labrador Government and the Innu community in 2011, I managed to find out how, why and when it all went pear-shaped.

Peter Penashue, the leader of the Innu community at Sheshatshiu, the Innu settlement whose tribal hunting grounds were most affected made an impassioned speech setting out the community’s grievances and the reasons for the blockade of the site.

Basically, there was some kind of profit-sharing agreement proposed in which the Innu community would be paid a percentage of the resale of the electricity generated.

However with massive cost and timescale overruns and structural failures, and much of the electricity being siphoned off by the residents of the Provincial capital in Newfoundland, something that has added millions and millions of dollars to the costs, even the most optimistic estimates reckon that there will be no profit generated for at least 30 years.

That’s assuming that nothing else goes wrong (and what are the odds on that?) of course. And by that time all of the people who were expected to profit from the development will have received nothing.

In the meantime, their hunting grounds and traditional way of life will have been destroyed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our first trip to Labrador before there was any sign of development, we saw moose a-plenty, and even bear. Since the development began, we’ve seen just one moose and that’s your lot. In 2017 we didn’t see anything at all.

Tea tonight was salad and chips with some of the falafel that I bought the other day. It was quite nice too, but then again that falafel is a proprietary brand rather than a generic one.

Back here I actually fell asleep for 15 minutes which was disappointing – I was hoping that I could keep going all day having gone “over the hump” this afternoon. But now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow, but I don’t want all that much. But supplies of coffee are beginning to run low so I’ll be on the lookout for a coffee sale. They haven’t had one for a while so they must be due for one. It’ll probably be the week after I’ve bought some at full price.

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Firday 21st July 2023 – I MADE IT …

… back from town this morning.

Actually, going down into town was the easy bit because I went on the bus.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t because just as I was stepping out of the front door I realised that I’d forgotten half of the paperwork that I needed so I had to come back.

These days I can’t move very quickly at all so I was afraid that I’d miss the bus. But luckily I managed to stagger aboard just before she pulled away.

Something else that might have made me miss it was another miserable night. What with the football and everything it was long after midnight when I went to bed and it took me an absolute age to go off to sleep.

Once again, I was up and on my feet before the alarm went off, and after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I went and had a shower to make myself smell nice.

Before leaving for the bus I put the washing machine on the go so that at least I’d have some clean clothes for when I came back. I’m running out of clothes at the moment.

At the Carrefour I forgot the cherry tomatoes but I remembered everything else, and then wandered off to the Post Office to post a couple of letters, one of which was the demand for a disabled parking badge, and to pick up a registered letter.

At the chemist’s the staff were fighting over serving me and I ended up with the girl who lost the bout. She gave me the Aranesp, which cost an arm and a leg as usual, and then I set off for home.

The walk back was agony. It really was. It took me an age and I was exhausted by the time I returned. I had my cheese on toast but regrettably fell asleep almost immediately.

It’s no fun waking up to a cold mug of coffee. I’ve no idea how long I was asleep but it wasn’t five minutes – I’ll tell you that for nothing. It felt like an eternity and at one point I really was contemplating the idea of going to bed.

Anyway, instead I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. I was with a friend of mine. We’d gone to some kind of sports hall place to do a job. As we left Crewe to join the motorway there was a policewoman at the top of the motorway exit watching the drivers join the motorway. She shouted “drive safely, watch your speed limits and don’t speed”, something like that. Of course my friend immediately shouted back some kind of comment as he would about “what do you mean? I’m not going fast. What are you saying? What are you implying?”. Of course I could see exactly where this is going so I said “come on mate, let’s get to work” but he still wanted to pick a fight with this policewoman. In the end I managed to organise him and I apologised to the policewoman. The last thing I wanted was for her to chase us down the motorway. So we did what we were doing and it worked quite well. There was a roulette table and a few one-armed bandit things there. He looked at his watch and said “we can spend an hour here and have a play on that”. I’d put all the money safe so I didn’t want to go bringing it out again. I should have put my possessions into some kind of safe but I didn’t fancy the idea of it because there was no lock. Everyone could go in and take the stuff so I kept them on me. I really wanted to go home but he was dead set on staying here wasting his money so I suppose we’ll have to. But I hope that he really is only going to be here for a short while and not spin it out for the rest of the night. I could see that happening quite easily.

Later on there was another group of us who had been out for a walk. I’d ended up with a man and a woman who might have been some friends of mine, I dunno. We met an American couple. The woman-friend of mine had gone off to do something so we were just wandering around when the American couple appeared. They asked if we knew where a certain café was. My friend thought that it was the one around the corner from where we were standing although I thought that it was the one where we had been earlier in the day. We went round the corner to this one and could see that it was a really expensive place. There was nothing special about it. The guy said “let’s walk up to some place or other at the end of the track”. I asked “what about your wife?”. There didn’t seem to be much of a reply. Off we set. It was slowly going dark. We reached the end which was by the water. There was a girl there. For some reason I was asked to take a photo of her so that she could be put on a poster. I had the little Nikon and went to take a photo but for some reason the camera wouldn’t take the photo. It might possibly have been too dark. I took the big Nikon which doesn’t need the light so much and I positioned this girl in the street light at a table in the café so that the light would fall on her to give the best possible view, went to take the camera but found that the battery was flat. This American couple had a bit of a moan to me about all my things etc.

Later on I spent some time back in Canada. I’ve left Cartwright and I’m heading down the Métis Trail back towards the Trans Labrador Highway.

The area around Cartwright and Sandwich Bay in particular is populated by the Métis.

When the early European traders came out here in the 18th and early 19th Century, those employees who opted to stay usually took a native wife, sometimes an Innu but mainly an Inuit. Their descendants are known as Métis

Almost everyone out on the coast is descended from probably about 20 distinct families and it’s interesting to read the Censuses of 100 or so years ago. Each cove or sheltered bay would have its own “family” who would work the salmon fishing, the cod fishing and then go off into the interior trapping during the winter.

Even more strangely, suddenly you’ll find that in a certain location there might be a different family than in the previous Census. Almost inevitably, one family might just have daughters. When she married, she would stay at home and bring her husband to her, and he would inherit his father-in-law’s cove and trap lines

Every now and again you’ll come across a French name – Michelin being one of the most common. For a while there was a trading firm from Montreal – Revillon Frères – out here on the Labrador coast trying to establish a foothold against the Hudson’s Bay Company.

There were also a few merchants from the Channel Islands who tried to establish themselves here but a big bank crash in Jersey in 1873 wiped them out.

The Métis did not have any rights at all until the 1980s. Being the children of native women they were never recognised as Europeans by Law according to the European settlers, and because they were the children of European men, they never acquired the rights of native indigenous people. It wasn’t until Section 35 of the Constitution Act was amended in 1982 that the Métis became recognized as one of Canada’s three Aboriginal peoples and began to receive their rights.

Tea tonight was falafel, chips and salad. Quite delicious but it’s given me stomach ache and I don’t know why.

But now I’m off to bed for a good night’s sleep ready to fight the good fight around the shops tomorrow. But before I go, I’ll leave you with the HIGHLIGHTS OF LAST NIGHT’S FOOTBALL. I hope that you enjoy them as much as everyone else seems to have done.

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Monday 8th May 2023 – AND THE ANSWER …

… to yesterday’s question was indeed “not very much”.

It’s actually a Bank Holiday here today when the country celebrates VE Day and strictly speaking I ought to be having a lie-in as I try to do on as many Bank Holidays as I can, but with the threatened arrival of the nurse to give me my fortnightly injection, that’s out of the question.

What usually happens is that when I try to lie in on a day that he is due to come to visit, he usually has a blood test to carry out in the building so he’s here before breakfast. Consequently, we had an alarm set today for 07:00 as usual.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered because when the alarm did go off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing. we’ve had another one of those nights – and mornings.

It was about 08:50 when he came round to give me my injection. And here’s a thing that’s totally unexpected – the database paperwork that he has to keep to record the injections that he gives me is now full.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I don’t know” he replied. “It’s never reached this stage before”

So clearly I’m continuing to defy all expectations. No-one with this illness has lived longer than 11 years and I was diagnosed in 2015, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall (and I expect that I had it a good while before then) but while it’s true to say that I know all about ill-health, I’m still fighting on. Not exactly fighting fit, just fighting for breath and fit to drop.

With it being a Bank Holiday I’ve had a very relaxing day doing too much of nothing at all. I did finish the radio programme today, as I said that I would, and listened to the one that is to be broadcast this coming weekend but that’s about it.

There’s just one more now that is half-done and I’ll do that this coming weekend. And then I’ll have to start off again. I’m months ahead, which is good news, but there’s always this feeling that some of it will have to be done again as some of these artists can’t go on for ever. I remember back a few years ago in the old “Radio Anglais” days when I spent quite some time waxing lyrical about Chris Squire, only for him to begin to manger les pissenlits par les racines the morning the programme was due to be broadcast.

There was also the stuff on the dictaphone that needed transcribing too. We’re back on the Sherlock Holmes murders again. A couple of people had been struck down in a park by someone dressed entirely in black. There was some woman who dressed herself in black ready to go out just as 2 people were starting to walk on a common in Balham. These 2 people were talking about their past, the girl saying “wasn’t it to this common that you brought such-and-such a girl with whom you used to go out, but she was rather strange?”. The name that they used was the name of this girl. There were police loitering in attendance. They arrested someone dressed all in black in the vicinity of this couple and dragged him away. It turned out that he was actually a mime artist dressed in black ready to perform his act to collect money. As the camera panned to see him dragged away it panned through a figure in black sitting in a café on the common overlooking the events that were taking place

Later on I was going on a coach trip with work for some kind of sports event. One of my colleagues asked me if I went on the previous one two weeks ago to Carlisle. I said no because I had something else to do that evening. While we were waiting for the coach back on this draughty bus station it just didn’t appear. We sat there waiting. There were several tomatoes rolling around, coming and going. One of them came back so I asked it if it had come to pick us up. Someone said “I’ve already asked him and it’s not him” so we sat there and waited. Suddenly I realised that I didn’t have my watch or my key to the office. I’d left them at home. I was wondering what I was going to do. I thought that I’d better take a gamble and go to fetch them. I ran, which was the first time in ages, all the way home to our house in Vine Tree Avenue. All the lights were on. I could hear people moving around. The front door was unlatched so I walked in and ran lightly up the stairs. The taps were all dripping in the bathroom but no-one was in there. My brother was asleep in bed with the light on so I walked quietly in, picked up the key card and my watch that was on the bed, came out and came downstairs again. I could hear my parents in the front room talking about me but I didn’t have the time to stay and listen. I managed to open the door again without making too much noise and set off to run back to the bus station.

It’s a total mystery to me why it is that my family keeps on intruding into my nocturnal voyages. During my waking hours I don’t even waste a minute thinking about them so what’s going on in my subconscious? I don’t mind Nerina putting in an appearance every now and again – after all I invited her into my life for better or for worse, but one of the reasons of leaving the UK was to escape the negativity of everything that was weighing me down and I thought that I’d left them all behind.

But it was interesting to read the bit about “running”, given how I’ve not been out running for a couple of years and I couldn’t do so these days anyway. When we started this programme at University we had all kinds of people recording their dreams, one of whom was a girl who was born without legs. She would tell us that although she’s never walked a single step in the whole of her life (for obvious reasons) she still dreamt about herself going for a walk. So clearly, dreaming isn’t completely tied up with your own personal experiences.

Finally I’d had some issues at work about sick leave, that kind of thing. In the end what I used to do was that at night I’d take a van from work without authority and do furniture removals etc. On one occasion I came back with my Luton Transit. We dropped it off at Zero’s father and began to strip it for spares so we could sell the bits and move on. It wasn’t until we had it pretty much dismantled that it suddenly occurred to me that in the back of it was an old Volkswagen estate, another estate car, a motorbike and lots of other bits and pieces. I’d been using it as a shed I went round to see his wife and said “you’ll never guess what I’ve just remembered” but she told me. She asked me what the plan was. One thing going through my mind was to hire a vehicle, put the Luton Transit on the back and drive al lthe way to France, unload it, drive back and carry on. I said that it would probably take us about a week. If you like, you, your husband and Zero could come along as well. She looked dubious at that point and asked “could it be done in a weekend?”. I replied “we could get there and back in a weekend but unloading it is something else”. She said “the difficulty is with Zero. She could go to her grandfather’s who could take a day off work to look after her but I don’t think that we could do anything else. Are you sure that it couldn’t be done in a weeked?”. I had to describe the journey to her etc. She said “the next question of course is whether we have any money”. I repled “you won’t need any money. Everything will be on me of course”. We had this huge discussion.

Interestingly, I do have a Luton Transit, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall. I bought it for scrap because I wanted the box off the back to use as a garden shed and it’s still down on the farm 20-odd years later. And there is a Volkswagen estate in the back of it too, albeit in pieces. A diesel estate that was crashed in Spain and which I recovered to use for spares for mine.

And even more interestingly, while I was waiting to take it down to the farm, I did use it around Brussels doing furniture removals at night and weekends. No tax, no MoT, no nothing in fact. But back then in those days no-one really cared. I remember reading the story of Sir Daniel Gooch, Chairman of the Great Western Railway, reminiscing about the experiences of the way that the GWR operated in its early days, and commenting “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

And, interestingly, once more as Tom Petty would have it, “HOW COULD I GET SO CLOSE TO” ZERO “AND STILL BE SO FAR AWAY?”. I’m not sure how many times this is just recently that she’s just been tantalisingly dangled out of reach during one of my nocturnal rambles. It seems that I can summon up members of my family at the drop of a hat but Zero, TOTGA and Castor are totally eluding me. And the Vanilla Queen dropped off the radar a long time ago.

Looking back on things, each time that I’ve been up in the High Arctic, and each time I’ve been trying to edit that Colosseum live concert late at night on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR I’ve had a strange encounter with a mysterious young lady of the opposite sex. First there was The Vanilla Queen, and the next time there was Castor. Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, but the way my health is going, there won’t be another trip out there. 700 miles from the North Pole we were in 2018 and it looks like that will be that. No Rensselaer Harbour, no Thank God Harbour (where my namesake is buried after they poisoned him 150 years ago) and no Fort Conger.

All of this reminiscing probably means that I have too much time on my hands. But nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

So having crashed out here and there, I went for tea. Steamed veg with falafel balls and a vegan cheese sauce. It’s amazing just how different things have become since mainstream French supermarkets are now selling vegan cheese. It’s expensive of course, but it saves me having to bring back a rucksack full every time that I return from Leuven.

Tomorrow is a Welsh lesson of course, so I’m off to bed early. I don’t want to go crashing out in the middle of my lesson. And then I’ll have to pack my stuff ready for Leuven. Three hospital appointments I have on Thursday so I’m going to be busy.

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Thursday 27th April 2023 – WE ARE HAVING …

… a disaster.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Alison and I have a favourite restaurant in Leuven where we usually end up in the middle of our walk around the town. She passed by there earlier this evening for a portion of the beautiful sweet potatoes, only to find that it’s closed down definitively.

We started to go there because another vegan restaurant that we used, “The Loving Hut”, closed down a few years ago. We’ll now have to look for somewhere else, always assuming that there IS somewhere else to go.

We shall have to make further enquiries.

Further enquiries too about my sleeping issues because it was yet another depressing night when I took an absolute age to go off to sleep.

And once more, I awoke in the middle of the night and spend a miserable couple of hours trying to go back to sleep. However at one point I must have dozed off because I sat bolt upright wide-awake (well, sort-of) at 06:59, a minute before the alarm went off, so I fell out of bed just for the sake of saying that I beat the alarm once again.

When I was checking my mails and messages I found out what had awoken me. It was the nurse sending me a message to say that he’d miscalculated and it’s tomorrow when he needs to come to take my blood sample.

Once I’d organised myself this morning and awoken properly I bashed out another radio programme from the stuff that I had lying around. I’m getting nicely ahead of myself now, but it will all go pear-shaped of course because someone whose virtues I’ll be extolling will drop dead just before the programme will be broadcast.

And that reminds me. Some of the more legendary figures of the rock world are reaching the kind of age when fate will overtake them. I suppose that when I have time I really ought to prepare a couple of programmes that relate to people like Bob Dylan and keep them on the back-burner “just in case”.

It was while I was on my way to la Haye-Pesnel in Caliburn yesterday that I thought of a really good idea for a programme in this respect. What provoked the was when Spirit came onto Caliburn’s playlist and played “All Along The Watchtower”.

This afternoon I had a ‘phone call. Would I like a lift to town?

It was raining outside quite heavily and although I did have things to do, I didn’t fancy walking down there in this so I grabbed a lift. A couple of my neighbours were going off to the shops.

They threw me out in the town centre and I went to the letting agency. That’s a good place to start, I reckon, with my quest to gain vacant possession of my new apartment. However, there was only a receptionist there. The agent was out on a mission.

She took my details and said that the agent will call me back. And, as you might imagine, I’m still waiting. I’m also still waiting for the return phone call from my visit to the property management company yesterday. I have a rather uneasy feeling that I’m going to end up with a bunch of je m’en foutists.

That’s a beautiful French expression. Je m’en fous is rather a vulgar French way of saying “I couldn’t care less” (I’m sure that you can think of an English equivalent, but this is a family website) and so a je m’en foutist is an employee who is only interested in collecting his salary and doing as little as possible to actually earn it.

It was 15:05 when I went in, and by 15:10 I was back out again. The rain had quietened down considerably so I decided to walk back. It didn’t take me long and I didn’t have to stop for breath too often. But one thing that I noticed was that trying to squeeze into the back of the neighbour’s car, my right leg wasn’t comfortable whatsoever – not one little bit.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in the middle of having a dream but I awoke (that was the time in the middle of the night). The dream evaporated completely and everything went except for a vision that I had about coffee in Malta or Cyprus that cost £3:00 per ounce. That’s all that I can remember about it.

Again this next one is another one of which I can only remember bits. I was at a talent contest last night. There was a couple of girls singing in Inuit. One was an older girl and the other was a younger girl. What happened now I forget, but later on someone else at this concert contacted me. They had a house to let in Greenland. They were quite fed up of the type of tenant they were having. They tended to be the younger, trendy type of person and they wanted someone more traditional. It turned out that they were writing the adverts in the newspaper in Inuktitut, the more modern style of Inuit language for people looking for lets. I suggested that she write the adverts in Sisu, the more traditional type of language, and that way it would be the more traditional type of person who would understand the advert and would make more of an effort to reply to rent it. She thought that that was a good idea. She turned over in bed and squashed me. She said “I’m hitting you, am I? It’s most uncomfortable lying here in bed with all these people” but this was the way of life up there and we just had to accept it. I walked out to Caliburn. He was up on a jack for some reason. I noticed that one of his rear tyres had a bald patch. That was strange. It had only done 8000 kms, these tyres. Most of the tyres were in really good condition but just this one bald patch. It started to worry me for it meant that there was something wrong somewhere with Caliburn’s suspension or brakes. I needed to try to sort it out but there was this expensive tyre that had just gone to waste.

After that I made some hot chocolate and had a few of my delicious chocolate biscuits – and then I rather regrettably fell asleep for a while.

As for tea tonight, I couldn’t think of what to have. In the end I settled for steamed vegetables with falafel in a vegan cheese sauce.

That was really delicious yet again, but I have to say that this other type of vegan cheese is nothing like as tasty as the vegan Cheshire Cheese. Even though the Cheshire Cheese is much more expensive, I think that I’ll be sticking with that in future.

Tomorrow the nurse is coming to take my blood sample, and then I don’t have anything planned for several days, except the football over the weekend of course. I’ll have to start to plan for my trip to Leuven though because that’s important. It seems that all kinds of things are unravelling right now.

And who knows? I might even have someone return one of my phone calls about the visits that I’ve made. If that happens, there won’t be any notes tomorrow night. I’ll have passed out from the shock.

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