Tag Archives: flapjacks

Thursday 30th May 2024 – SO HERE WE GO.

Yes, by the time that some of you (but not others, of course) will be reading this I’ll have been tucked up all nice and cosy in bed by a bevy of beautiful nurses at the hospital at Avranches.

Some hopes.

Knowing my luck it will be a retired female Bulgarian weightlifter or hammer-thrower and she won’t have tucked me up at all; never mind smoothed my fevered brow. I shall have to do that by myself.

Before I leave here in the morning I’ll have done all that I can and the rest is in the hands of the Gods.

If it’s anything like last night, it’ll be extremely difficult, that’s for sure. The lethargy about which I spoke … "at great length" – ed … carried on and I couldn’t summon up the energy to leave my comfy chair until almost 01:00, well after my usual bedtime.

It’s difficult to explain what’s happening to me right now. I can’t seem to find the effort to do the simplest of things and it’s so dispiriting.

At least, getting into bed was so much easier and apart from the difficulties that I’m having with my legs right now, even turning over and over in bed was much easier too. Things seem to be pretty much back to normal … "for now" – ed … in that respect, and aren’t I grateful?

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then crawled off into the bathroom.

After that it was the medication. 13 different capsules or potions if we count the anti-potassium stuff. I must be reaching a world-record of some kind at some point. I hear that the French Government is putting up taxes quite soon. It’s all my fault.

For a change, the nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself. But he couldn’t make his card reader connect to the internet to read my health card so after much binding in the marsh he said that he’ll do it next time. I hope that there will be a “next time” anyway.

After he left I had a “rest” for a while and then transcribed the dictaphone notes. Last night there was a group of young girls taking part in a singing competition. While the singing was absolutely excellent they made life extremely difficult for the judges by crowding the backstage and confusing themselves with the other groups so people lost track of who was who because there were so many of them. In the end the judges had to ask several groups to perform again which led to a lot of chaos from some of the groups of parents whose children were feeling excluded by this. All in all, what should have been a simple singing competition turned into absolute chaos coupled with the fact that some jewellery went missing at some point. Of course The Saint was in the audience so everyone suspected him. Some of the parents wanted him involved in helping to find it. It all went on throughout the night in the usual turmoil and complete mess. Nothing was ever decided.

These “Saint” DVDs are a long way from being finished too. I’m about halfway through the black-and-white episodes and then I have all of the colour ones to go at. And all these wonderful British cars of the 1950s and 60s too. Not a single mainstream British car anywhere these days. Hard to believe that at one time the UK led the World

There was another thing about being on the roads of Maine in a snowstorm on I-98 going north. There was a huge pile-up and they were announcing things on the radio “2 women injured” then the total went to “5 women injured” and gradually increased. I heard someone in the background say “what the heck is going on there? Aren’t there any males in that traffic queue?”. I thought to myself “that’s a really nice thing to say, isn’t it, seeing as I’m stranded in this queue but near the front nowhere near where these collisions are taking place?”.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been on Interstate 95 in Maine on numerous occasions, but rarely in the snow. But we’re back to this theme of “token womanism” again where “x people were hurt, of which Y were women and children” Imagine the outcry if they had said “X people were hurt, of which Z were men”.

We once did a study of “minorities” listing all of the people from different classes of minority and subtracting them from the total population. We eventually reached the conclusion that a white middle-class middle-aged man was very much a minority when it came to today’s scale of things. Of course, our report was … errr … mislaid.

After my coffee and flapjack I fell asleep again but this afternoon I’ve been packing and making myself ready for the road tomorrow and the hospital at Avranches as well as doing some stuff for the radio. I’m not sure what they want of me but I know what I want of them and I’m hoping that they can do something to alleviate my suffering.

On that note, I’ve baked a loaf of bread and I shall take half of it with me. My invitees can share out the rest amongst themselves. But with my half a loaf and half a flapjack I’m hoping that at least there will be some food for me to eat somewhere.

That’s the big problem – who do I know who can bring me some food parcels?

But I’ll worry about that in due course. I’ve had a nice tea tonight of baked potato (seeing as I had the oven going) sausage and beans.

It’s been ages since I’ve had baked beans so, listening to my stomach right now, I won’t need a taxi to get me to Avranches in the morning.

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Tuesday 28th May 2024 – “YOU ARE REQUESTED …

… to come for an appointment at the hospital at Avranches on Friday morning at 09:00. Ohhh – and bring your overnight things”.

Things are moving faster than I even expected and it’s rather important because this weekend I have friends coming over from Germany to visit me. I bet that they didn’t expect to come to visit me in a hospital bed.

But yet more visits? More visits this year than I’ve had in all the other years combined since I’ve been living here. Anyone would think that I’m dying or something.

Last night I actually felt like dying. I’d done all that I could to have an early night and then the fates conspired against me, one thing led to another, and once you begin you’ve no idea how many other things there are. As a result I was late into bed once more.

However I actually found it a little easier to crawl into bed last night and turning over through the pain barrier into the only position in which it’s possible at the moment to be comfortable was nothing like as painful as it has been

My legs were well inside the bed too which meant that I didn’t fall out once which was an improvement on the previous night. Nevertheless I was awake a long time before the alarm went off and wandering around the bathroom when it finally did ring.

No blood test today for some reason. He’s going to do it tomorrow, which probably means that I won’t have my injection of the Last Resort until Thursday, if it’s not too late by then

But I do wish that he’d stop moaning. Things may well not be pleasant for him around here right now, but imagine how they are for me. Don’t you think that I’d change things if I could?

After he left I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There wasn’t actually anything on it but that’s not to say that I didn’t go anywhere.

In fact I had the greatest memory of another one of those really long dreams that I’m sifting through my head before I dictate them, just like the other night. This was a lengthy newspaper article that I was writing about how unjust it is to blame goalkeepers for their errors on the field. A keeper who lets a shot roll in under his body has no more lost the game for his club than the centre-forward who misses a sitter. Yet you see plenty of “goalkeeper error” videos but very rarely a “centre forward error” one.

What started this. I suppose, was a game that I saw the other day between Annan Athletic Under 17s and Threave Rovers Under 17s when the Annan keeper was yellow-carded for “deliberate handball” giving away a freekick that led to a goal by Threave Rovers. The game was being played on a sports centre pitch where there were five different sets of markings and he simply carried the ball out to the wrong set of lines. So what I was doing in my sleep was going through lists of games where a keeper had made a mistake and conceded a bad goal and a striker had missed a sitter in front of goal, and comparing who was blamed for the defeat.

Of course, each time that I thought that I’d had my list ready to dictate I remembered something else and had to start my list again. But I was awake before I could do that.

Coffee and delicious flapjack were next, then back in here I didn’t do all that much for a while.

A ring on the doorbell, a real one this times, jogged me into action. It was the doctor. He took one look at me and almost collapsed with shock.

He gave me a good going-over and reckoned that I ought to have a spell in hospital – “and not just a couple of days either”. He’d “have a word with the nephrology professor” at Avranches about me

So after he left I began to bring my medical file up-to-date, weeding out all of the time-expired stuff and adding in the new stuff. You’ve no idea how much has changed over the past few weeks.

My prescription – I’d given than to the nurse this morning. I had to print off another one along with yet more paperwork.

In the middle of all of this the hospital at Avranches rang up with the convoquation. So here we go.

Firstly, I had to book the taxi to take me. Secondly, I had to tell Paris where I was going just in case I can’t make their appointment on the 10th of June.

The doctor’s office rang me back later too “there’s another medicament …” so I had to contact my poor cleaner. And having one hospital take me off the Burinex for something else, Avranches has now put me back on the Burinex. And that’s just as well because I never had these problems when I was taking that.

In the middle of all of this I’d been doing some radio stuff. I’d started by choosing some music for another programme but with the news that I had, I verified three more programmes and sent them off. I told you that it’s a good idea to have a few prepared in advance.

At long last I could go for tea – a taco roll with rice and veg. Totally delicious as usual. I really do like my boring meals. They are totally different from what I’ll be eating in a few days time. I hope that some of you will be sending me food parcels.

But that’s for another time. I’m living from day to day here – in fact, from minute to minute. Getting into bed is the next challenge

The hospital should be fun – in the sense of interaction with others. I don’t see enough people, stranded as I am in my apartment. I know that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having told me that I need to get out more.

But it’s going to be a struggle for them at Avranches. Last time I was there I heard more than one nurse say, as I was climbing into the taxi to take me home "if he comes back, I’m leaving!"

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Monday 27th May 2024 – IT’S BEEN LIKE …

… Euston Station in here with all of the various comings and goings. And not just physically either. The telephone has been burning a hole in my hand too judging by the number of calls that it’s had to handle.

From dawn until dusk things have never been quiet, always with something happening and I really am at the stage of wondering “why?”

Last night though was rather quiet. After I’d finished my notes, late as it might have been, I didn’t hang around but fell onto the bed quite quickly. Actually making myself comfortable under the quilt was something else completely but never mind. “Agonising” or “painful” are quite appropriate words to use here.

And things went fairly well during the night until about 05:30 when my right leg fell out of bed.

“Why didn’t you put it back in bed?” I hear you say. But I did, even if it did take me half an hour to do it. And if you think that I am joking I promise you that I’m not. You’ve no idea what kind of state I’m in.

And once it was back in bed it didn’t last long and at 06:30 it fell out again. This time, no matter how I tried I couldn’t get it back into bed. At 06:50 I gave up the struggle and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse

The nurse came round later and took my blood sample. It was the most clean, painless blood sample that I have ever had taken too and it’s a shame that she’s now finished until next week.

After she left I came back in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes.. I was in Berlin last night. The old West German government was trying to persuade some woman, the wife of some West German minister to murder some political rival by poisoning him. They had some information on her and would use it if she failed to carry out their demand. Instead, she killed him in a different fashion which puzzled everyone. No-one could understand who had done it and why. There was a big investigation and she ended up in Court to answer questions. She told the Court everything about her involvement with the attempted poisoning but nothing whatever about the shooting to make it appear that she had a perfect alibi for whenever the killing had taken place with regard to this other person.

It’s years since I was in West Berlin. It was the case where this kind of thing happened only too frequently. The people, were living under the shadow of the East so time was short, and fun, deceit and intrigue was the name of the game. I encountered just as much “surveillance” there as I did in Minsk and Moscow in the days of the Iron Curtain There were all kinds of murky goings-on in West Berlin.

Having almost fell out of bed, I finally managed it at about 05:30 when my right leg hit the floor dramatically and awoke me. I was thinking at the time of a song, a new wave song that was going round in my head and which I’ve subsequently forgotten. A Jeep, like a Japanese four-wheel drive pickup thing in Canada being involved in a bit of road rage and doing a U-turn through a parking lot to go back onto the road and chase after the people who had upset him which was when I fell out of bed

And as if there’s ever any road rage in Canada. The only time I ever encountered people blowing their horns was near me when I was driving. Canada – even parts of rural Québec – is one of the most laid-back places on earth.

While I was sitting on the edge of the bed I fell asleep. Leicester City lost one of their young midfield players who went to play for Plymouth Argyle. The fee was £60,000 and Leicester were upset because they thought that it was more. The guy who replaced him in Leicester’s team had a really bad injury and was carried off the field. There wasn’t really anyone on their bench to replace him so they were even more incensed.

Having typed out my dictaphone notes I went for my morning coffee and new flapjack, which is quite delicious but a little dry. I shall have to increase the amount of honey that I use, I reckon. But I am very impressed with it – almost as much as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

The phone rang immediately afterwards. It was the hospital wondering how I was.

When I’d finished telling them of my grief they told me to contact my GP and tell him everything, which I promised to do. However back in here I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I knew, it was 14:06.

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I wrote out my letter as promised and sent a message to my faithful cleaner to see if she would deliver it.

Then I received an e-mail from the hospital – “here’s a new prescription changing a few things …” so I printed it out and send another note to my cleaner.

The doctor’s surgery was next to call. The hospital had contacted them. The blood test must be done again – I don’t think that they can believe some of the figures (and neither could I when I saw it) so she’ll see the nurse, but there’s a new medication that I have to take – she’ll send the prescription direct to the pharmacie

So I sent another message to my cleaner.

The blood test results turned up next.

The red blood cells have now dropped to 8.4 – just 0.4 above the critical limit. No wonder I’m feeling wretched right now. We’re back on the injections as of Wednesday then.

If that’s not enough, remember when the Creatinite had risen to 310 and caused them to summon me urgently to the hospital for emergency treatment? It’s now at 336, a figure which apparently won’t support life.

My cleaner turned up and I gave her everything. And bless her! She seemed to think that it was so important that she sailed off like a galleon down into town without even stopping for breath.

And guess what? Remember the anti-potassium stuff that was giving me all of these hallucinations? Here it is again

The cleaner and I spent a good while going through all of my medication. Even the nurse thinks that it’s too much and I can’t say that I disagree. But there’s piles of it – two new ones as of now and I wonder how many more after this next blood test tomorrow.

Finally, a cruise company rang me to see if I wanted to go on a little voyage around the World, one of my plans from a few years ago put on hold during the lockdown.

And I still managed to find time to finish off all of the radio notes too, would you believe?

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper – the last one unless I can get in another stock before next Monday. Delicious as usual and plenty of stuffing remaining.

So now I’m off to bed if I can manage to make it into bed without falling out again.

What delights will tomorrow bring? I shudder to think. As if the news of today isn’t enough to be going on with.

But I can’t help thinking that has inspired this cruise company to contact me? I suppose it’s the local community all getting together to tell me to go away and clear off..

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Sunday 26th May 2024 – I CAN’T GO …

… on like this much longer. I really can’t.

You cannot imagine the amount of pain I’m in from the muscle in my right leg and you cannot imagine the amount of effort even the most simple of everyday tasks is taking me.

Crawling into bed at night is a nightmare and one I’m in I’m stuck in that position and can’t move at all. And then there’s this stabbing pain every so often that starts in the sole of my right foot.

One thing that’s certain is that I’ve had enough of all of this.

Last night I was actually in bed quite early – well before 23:00. And how happy I was about that too. If only I knew what was coming.

It was 04:15 when I awoke in agony and couldn’t find a comfortable position, couldn’t move, couldn’t turn over, couldn’t do anything

Nevertheless I decided to stick it out until the 08:00 alarm but I gave up round about 06:00 and crawled out of bed. So much for the early night and possible lie-in.

After a good wash and clean-up I found another early-bird so Liz and I had a good chat on the internet for quite a while. Liz is also planning on joining the Air Fryer Assembly and was picking my brains, such as I have these days.

Once the nurse had been and gone (and been persuaded to do my blood test on Monday) and I’d had breakfast Liz and I carried on out chat for a while and then I came in here.

At first I didn’t do much except transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. People who were believed to be British spies or spies for, the UK were being denounced by another spy organisation from the Midlands as unfaithful. The authorities were taking every step within their powers to find these members who were … fell asleep here

That’s no surprise given what I was reading last night. There was something about The Disappeared – the missing victims of the IRA terror squads – and then about a police sting that went wrong in the USA when a County Police Undercover Unit “busted” the Undercover Unit of a neighbouring County

Later on I was rolling through all the history of Billy the Kid during the night. All about the different women with whom he was consorting, about the different stories about his end, the different stories about his grave and so on. I was churning it over in my mind ready to dictate when I would remember something else so I’d start again – and again, and again. And this went on for several hours while I was asleep in the very early morning and I never actually managed to dictate anything about it.

Then I couldn’t do much because I crashed out again, and for a couple of hours too. That’s no surprise given the early start that I’d had.

Lunch was late today as you might expect after all of that. It had taken me a good while to come round into the Land of the Living today – longer than usual in fact, and that’s long enough.

Once lunch had finished I spend the whole afternoon , yes the whole afternoon baking

Right now I have a pile of pizza dough, a whole pile of naan bread dough and I also baked myself a flapjack.

A flapjack with a difference too because while I was hacking some figs about with the food processor I had a few squares of chocolate in there too.

It’ll be intriguing to see what that tastes like, all mixed up with the honey

There would have been biscuits too but I ran out of time, of patience, of energy, of enthusiasm etc.

The pizza dough was delicious and the pizza excellent but I had other preoccupations so that I couldn’t really enjoy it

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to crawl into bed, pains and all, ready for tomorrow and my blood test. And this must be the very first time that I hope that they’ll have found a serious anomaly so that they can do something about it

But it all reminds me of my namesake the Arctic Explorer Charles F Hall in the second half of the 19th Century who lived up to the family tradition by being murdered by his expedition crew.

He was once treated for frostbite “in an embarrassing place” and when he asked why, told his interviewers "the USA’s Admiralty Board told me to stick it out as long as I could, but I must have misunderstood"

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Sunday 14th April 2024 – AND IF YOU …

… think that the last few days have been bad, you should have been here today.

Today, it was just like being back in the olden days when I was living in Leuven. All my energy and enthusiasm, which has been giving signs for a quite a while of wanting to go, finally departed today and there was a washed-out hulk of me sitting on a chair in my bedroom totally unable to move

Back in the days of Leuven I’d have crawled off to bed and stayed there until I don’t know when and hoped that everything would slowly improve. And for two pins I would have done that today too except that I’m not convinced that there will ever be any improvement.

What’s so sad about all of this is that I made a special effort to be in bed early last night and with an extra hour’s sleep before the alarm at 08:00 instead of 07:00 I was really looking forward to some improvement.

Last night before going to bed I’d had a good run around and done everything early which meant that for once I was ahead of myself and could crawl into bed quite content. But ohhhh! Cruel fate!

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed as usual and went to check the blood pressure. 15.7/9.8 this morning, compared to 15.5/10.1 last night. So roughly about the same.

Next task was to set out the room for the nurse so that she’d be happy. I have to look after people like that if I want a comfortable life. It’s not a good idea to upset a nurse who has to tear a plaster every morning off an open wound on your foot.

After she’d left I had some corn flakes and coffee and then came to check the dictaphone notes. of which there are more than just a few. There was a girl – I’m sure that I’ve not dreamed her before. She was about 14 and used to belong to this group of runners. We’d go running at lunchtime at school. Something had happened to her computer and they had to go right back to the days of old DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.0 and ancient computers and files to restart things. This was becoming really complicated but she was sticking it out, which impressed me more than anything. In the end there were only the two of us. As time advanced it became clear that the two of us had become a couple for once which is a rare occasion during a dream, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

She had very short hair and a nice little shape, a little on the muscular side, her thighs and so on. All in all I considered her to be quite a catch and thought myself extremely lucky.

It’s a shame that there was no such girl in our group of runners at school. Every lunchtime a few of us would assemble and run all the way down to Acton, perform a few exercises to warm and loosen us up, and then run back to school.

Those of us in the Sixth Form, whose common room was the old cookery lab, would then tuck in like animals to a catering-size tin of baked beans and sliced loaf of bread.

That went on for a while like that until we found that one of our “runners” was the nephew of the landlord of the Double-Necked Swan down the road. Then our lunchtime habits changed.

And then I had a small force of men including a couple of tanks and had to attack an enemy stronghold with it. What I did was to surround the stronghold with my troops. Then I sent in the tanks and used them to roll up the flanks. As the tanks passed the waiting infantry, the infantry closed in behind the tanks to keep the pressure on the bubble of enemy and to stop them trying to break out to join up with other units so that we could consequently crush them

So in this expedition from school which I’d mentioned earlier … "when?" – ed … we’d begun to build up the tanks but they pushed in to hold the unit together and the tanks did well to roll up the outposts that they had. We were pretty well-impressed. The only difficulty was wondering what they were going to do for our next trick because this wasn’t a trick that you could repeat more than once on the battle field. You need good weather, good legs and good transport to take yourself to the next point of attack and we didn’t actually have anything like that at all at the moment. It was all a very ad-hoc structure.

And I’m not sure about you but I’m impressed that I can plan a military campaign in my sleep. Like the other day when I was planning an advertising campaign, I clearly have some hidden talents, hidden so well that not even I am sure of where to go to find them.

And I wish that I did because I could do with something to liven up my life.

“The cameras say that I’m beautiful” said Julie. “Well, you’re far too young to be beautiful” said Amy. “You have to be pretty, you have to be sweet, you have to be charming and you have to be delightful first, and then someone might find you beautiful, but not when you’re 12 years old. The cameras are lying to you and are obviously seducing you into their magic without you being aware of what is happening. You need to think about this because soon it will be too late for you to resist the magic that they are pulling on you. You need to learn to resist”.

As it happens, I vaguely remember something about this dream. It was similar to a scenario in “The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe” about children who suddenly become the decisive instruments in a power-struggle that is beyond their comprehension

Of course that’s the kind of thing to make anyone question their surroundings and what is going on.

But I definitely can’t remember anything of the following dream. This was when all the objects were arranged neatly in the rear window of the car that was taking them away. It was all in a position of just inviting a burglary if they were going to be left overnight like this

It was round about this point that I fell asleep for the first time; so dramatically and deeply that I was off on another travel. I was working for Shearings and had been called in to do a feeder. It was running to some hotel and venue in the south of England. But when I reached the depot there ere all kinds of a strange green coloured service double decker with pointed roofs like the old Beverley Arch buses. One or two of our coaches arrived and parked down at the bottom end of the yard so I went to see. There were some old World War I type of lorries there and someone was negotiating with their drivers to take our passengers in their old stinky canvas-topped lorries that had a strange kind of crash-reverse gear fitted

There was no danger of missing my food. I awoke in time for lunch but not even two cups of coffee could save me as I crashed out at the kitchen table.

Later on I recovered enough to take myself off to my comfy chair in the bedroom and that’s where I stayed, feeling, tired, exhausted and sorry for myself. I really was in quite a state.

Later on I managed to summon up enough energy, from I don’t know where, to go to make a flapjack and my Sunday evening pizza. But I really didn’t want to. I was in no mood to do anything

What I’m hoping for is enough courage and energy to hang on for a week and my trip to hospital, when I can tell all to people who might be able to do something about it.

But right now that’s my lot. I’ve had about four mouthfuls of pizza and that’s all that I can manage. And anyone who knows anything a tall about me will know that if I’m off my food I really am ill.

Those bad attacks of wind are back again but I’m not going to say anything about them to the hospital because, knowing them, they’ll just prescribe a kite.

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Tuesday 26th March 2024 – THE SMELLS IN …

… my kitchen are delicious right now.

Sitting in there cooling down at the moment is another honey flapjack, and as well as that, there are two dozen mixed nut and fig biscuits cooling too. And there would have been more biscuits too, and probably some other stuff besides, if I had a big oven

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s a proper built-in oven sitting downstairs in Caliburn along with the unit to build it in, but it’s beyond my capabilities to bring it upstairs . How I would love to have this up here working properly with plenty of room to do stuff.

But I shall just have to dream about it right now and make the best of what I have.

And I did too, with a full little oven crammed to the gills with food happily baking., I’ve been a busy boy this afternoon. And just as well because I’d run out of flapjack and of biscuits and I needed some more.

It was a busy night last night too with everything that I needed to do and once more it was midnight or thereabouts when I finally made it into bed. I really need to be much better-organised than I am in the evening if I’m going to be in bed at a reasonable time.

It took much longer than I would have liked to go to sleep too so I didn’t have much in the way of decent sleep and I was really in no mood for anything when the alarm went off this morning.

Nevertheless I made it out of bed and the first thing that I did was to check the blood pressure. 15.9/10.0, compared to last night’s 17.4/12.0. That was quite high for last night so I wonder what had wound me up before I went to bed

Next stop the kitchen to sort out the medication, and then to arrange everything for Isabelle the nurse. And it’s a good job that I did because she was early for once and she doesn’t ring the doorbell downstairs to give me advance warning of her arrival as does her compadre.

She seems to think that there’s an improvement with my legs, but I can’t see it. I’m sure that she’s exaggerating, or maybe she’s just fed up of coming here every day like this.

After she had left I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. Nerina and I had been apart for several years. I’d been working in the Social Services with children. After she’d been wherever it was that she’d been she came back. She was in a Ford Granada saloon, sitting in the front on the passenger side. When the car came and the driver stopped the vehicle she just sat there. I carried on with what I was doing outside. After a while she came out of the car and came over to see me. She said “after all these years that we’ve not seen each other, I’m here now and you ignore me”. I replied “I’m waiting for you to adjust yourself and get used to the idea of being back etc”. I also said that I was rather scared. She replied “you tell me your story now about all these disadvantaged children”. I wondered how I was going to tell it – which children I was going to mention because there were so many and different kinds of confusion that I didn’t really need because I wasn’t in any state to cope with this kind of issue at the moment

And if Nerina were to turn up here now after all this time, whether in a Ford Granada saloon or not, I’d certainly have a shock and probably wouldn’t be in any state to cope with that kind of issue.

But I do have to say that it wouldn’t be unwelcome in the sense that it would be if it were someone of the family in which I grew up. After all, I actually chose her so I must have liked her and you can’t unlike someone just like that. We were just driving down a very bumpy road and bits of our relationship simply fell off

Add to the fact that I was in a very dark place at the time and had so many problems of my own to deal with that there was no room in my head in which to fit any other problems.

As long as she doesn’t want me to tell her about Zero, Castor and TOTGA.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that there’s more chance of her turning up at the door than anyone else of my family, I can say without any fear of contradiction.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was in the office at work. Someone rang up and asked to speak to “Paul”. I asked “Paul who?” because there were three or four but he didn’t know. He couldn’t read the writing so we stayed on the phone and deciphered the scrawl for a couple of minutes and found out who we thought was the correct Paul and I transferred the call. I had some post to distribute around the office so I went to take it before I went home. A couple of the girls were in so I asked them why the girls didn’t wear their school uniforms to work any more. They replied that the boss didn’t like it. I replied “never mind” and handed out the post to the correct people then came back into my room ready to pack up my stuff and leave. Someone, a guy, came into the office and asked “you aren’t leaving yet, are you?”. I replied “after I pack up, I am. Why?”. “I want to talk to you about a phone call I’ve just had”. “That’s nothing to do with me” I replied. “Someone asked to speak to ‘Paul someone’ and we worked out who it was and it was you so I passed the call through. That’s all that I did about this phone call. The rest of it is nothing to do with me whatsoever”. He began to search through the post on my desk as if he was looking for something so with nothing better to do I let him carry on and hoped that he’d be satisfied and clear off, and I could go home.

That’s usually the way to deal with people like that – let them get on with it and ignore them. It’s his time that he’s wasting, not mine. I’d just grab my coat and go home, and leave him in possession of whatever he would want to possess.

There was plenty of time to review my Welsh stuff for the course today but it didn’t go as planned as even though I felt keen and enthusiastic, which is a very rare situation these days, I still didn’t make much progress and in fact made something of a dog’s breakfast of my course.

It’s just that I simply can’t think, and when I can I can’t think quickly enough. And then nothing whatever is sticking in my teflon, non-stick brain

And that totally beats me into a state of despair. I’ve no idea how to fic it, no idea how to cure it and no idea how to cope with it either. In fact, all I know is that I’m a bit of a mess right now.

Still, as Bob Dylan said, "The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on"

And whose hair used to be a lovely, gorgeous shade of red when I knew her? But we won’t meet again some day on the avenue, unfortunately.

When the Welsh lesson was over I came to make my stuff.

For the flapjack it’s basically a mixture of oats, flour, butter, sugar and seeing as I don’t have any syrup, some honey. And there’s all kinds of seeds, dried fruit and chopped nuts in it too

It’s quite simple to make and very nutritious. It makes a change from the fruit buns that I usually make for breakfast.

And then the biscuits. That’s just a basic 10/8/4 mix of flour, butter and sugar, and added in were a pile of chopped almonds and brazil nuts and chopped figs, with some vanilla and orange essence of course.

Had there been room in the oven I could have added many more things in too such as oats, honey, coconut, other fruits. Your imagination can run totally wild with biscuits. A couple of dessert spoons of cocoa powder make nice chocolate biscuits too but that’s for maybe next time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll, delicious as usual with some of the stuffing left over from last night. There’s plenty left for a leftover curry too. I need to lengthen it I reckon, so there will be a small can of lentils or chick peas added in. I’m rather low on potatoes right now and I need my chips at the weekend.

So right now I’m going to hit the hay and home for a better day at my Welsh class tomorrow. I’m working on the principle that if you throw enough whatsit at a wherever, some of it may stick eventually. But it’s taking a long time.

And time is something that I don’t have much of. I feel like the actor that I saw in a film as a child – "Oh Lord give me patience! And hurry!"

But it’s not patience that I need. It’s success and achievement, rather like the kamikaze pilot from Crewe who flew 17 missions during World War II.

There was actually a Japanese kamikaze pilot in World War II who went to his instructor to complain. "I don’t know what it is" he said "but I keep on missing the ships. What am I doing wrong?"
"That’s not a problem" replied the instructor. "I’ll show you how to do it. But I’m only going to show you the once, and then you’re on your own."

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Sunday 25th December 2011 – A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS …

… to all my readers.

I didn’t get that line from a Christmas Cracker or from an Annual, but from off the back of the door of the Public Lavatory on Crewe Bus Station. That was a good source of reading material for a spotty young teenager and I certainly learned a good deal about anatomy there.

In fact, I reckon that it was thanks to there that I passed my Biology ‘O’ Level with the best result I ever had.

This morning we had a lie-in and so it was about 10:00 when we finally struggled into the kitchen. Breakfast was flapjacks made with flour, soya milk and a little sugar, and then we went to the church at the Abbaye de la Cambre.

I have issues with churches, though.

Someone once tried to drown me in a church, and the next time I went there someone stuck this woman in my hand. I swore that they next time anyone of my acquaintance went to a church it would be over my dead body.

All in all, I’m surprised that I wasn’t struck down by a thunderbolt

I made Christmas dinner as well. We had seitan slices in onions and gravy, boiled and roast potatoes, sprouts (well, we ARE in Brussels) and mixed vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding and custard.

And even though I say it myself, it all tasted very nice.

This afternoon though, we listened to our Christmas Radio Programme on Radio Arverne, watched “Dr No” and that was that really – just chilled out.

But tomorrow we are starting work in earnest. after all, that’s why I’m here.

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