Tag Archives: home made bread

Saturday 17th January 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… late again this evening!

Not that I’m complaining, though … "for a change" – ed …. I’ve had a lovely tea tonight. It took an age to prepare, but it was well worth the effort.

It was a late night too last night. I ended up being in bed at about 23:30 after everything that needed to be done. I could have finished a long time before I did but, as usual, I was sidetracked by all kinds of odds and ends that spun it out forever.

Once in bed, despite the non-stop coughing fit, I managed to fall asleep quite quickly, and there I lay until all of … errr … 04:20. Not that it bothered me for long because I was soon back to sleep again, and I was dead to the World until the alarm went off at 06:29.

As usual, it took an eternity for me to summon up the courage to leave the bed and I was late going for my hot drink and medication. That took longer than it ought to have done too.

Mind you, the nurse was late today, so I had plenty of time to transcribe the dictaphone notes after the medication.

We were living in some kind of chaotic circumstances, a huge group of us. The place was untidy etc., and no-one seemed to be making an effort to tidy up. We were told that there was going to be a huge spell of nice weather. I remembered that last year, I had a tomato plant that I’d put by the back door. It wasn’t very successful but I was hoping that this year, it may be better. I went to find it, but it was looking rather sad but I watered it heavily and fetched a foot pump and began to pump it up. People were encouraging me, saying that these plants needed a start to be going. But while I was there pumping it up and people were there watching me, I noticed that there seemed to be much less soil than usual, so I said that I’d need some more soil. Then they replied that I just needed to sweep the soil that was stuck around the edges of the pot – it was one of these huge, oblong pots. So I went and knocked it in with a small spade and it really did fill the bac and a couple of people who were sleeping in it were swamped and made some kind of remark. So that was my tomato plant, and I went and installed it by the door. Then I went for a walk down the garden, and I could see the derelict parts of the house, derelict parts of the building and what a mess it was looking. I was wishing that I lived somewhere else. In another part, just the other side of the raised-up ring road, there was a huge, derelict complex going back to the seventeenth century. I could see the date that was written – 1655 but in Latin. There was a big name on the side of one of these buildings, something like LA MAGNALAISE. There was a plaque fixed to the building with some names on it, so I supposed that “La Magnalaise” had been a battle or something and this was a plaque in memory of the people. The building was all overgrown with weeds and mould etc. and it looked in a terrible mess. It made me feel rather depressed to see it. But then one of the people began to sing “Happy Birthday.” It was the birthday of a retired naval officer who lived with us. It appeared that they had all had a whip-round to buy him a present. What they’d bought him was a tiny hand-brush for brushing the hearth or a coal or wood fire. He seemed to be delighted to receive it, but if I had received it as a present, I’d have been insulted. I could see that all of this was starting to make me depressed.

The idea of pumping up your plants with a foot pump sounds interesting and I wish that it would have worked when I was living down on the farm. But living in chaotic, untidy circumstances is nothing new anywhere around me.

It’s certainly true too that there are a great many memorials scattered around all kinds of different areas that are ignored by the locals, who either don’t understand what they represent or, worse, couldn’t care less what they represent.

There was also something else about a new hospital that had been built somewhere along the coast in South Wales. It had just opened, although the works on the road outside hadn’t been finished. As I was walking along this road past the hospital, there were loads and loads of buses coming from South Wales, and they were having to do a U-turn in the road to drop off their passengers. I thought “there’s a roundabout one hundred yards further on. If they went one hundred yards further on, they could swing round the roundabout and come back down the hill, but they wanted to turn round in this place outside the hospital. I was in my taxi and wanted to go back up the hill but the number of buses coming up and swinging round in this place made it extremely difficult. At one point, I had to drive on the pavement because a bus was blocking the road and a coach was coming down the hill and went onto the wrong side of the road to pass everything. While I was there, I was having to drive on the pavement to drive round all these obstacles and I remember saying to whom I was with that this is going to be absolute chaos in the summer season and I can’t think what on earth was going through their minds when they built a system like this.

A new hospital – now that’s a real dream, isn’t it? But I can still see one of the buses. It was a red “Leyland” double-decker from the early 1960s with “18 – MARGAM” on the destination blind. And the coach coming down the hill was a white, Duple-bodied vehicle from the early-mid 1970s.

And it goes without saying that I’m back in a taxi at one point too.

The nurse eventually turned up and asked me how I was. I told him that I’m freezing cold. I actually have been for a couple of days and I just can’t warm myself up. According to the thermometer, it’s twenty-four degrees in my bedroom/office but I’m shivering.

Actually, I don’t know why I told him because nothing will ever happen about it. As a nurse, he’s not actually all that involved in the evolution of his patients’ illnesses, even though I suppose that he ought to be.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is currently excavating the old wells and pits, and has found evidence (skeletons, skulls, broken weapons, charred beams etc.) to suggest that at least one of the earliest of the five periods of occupation ended in violence, after which the fort was abandoned for at least a generation.

This suggests that it was sometime in between the end of Gnaeus Julius Agricola’s expeditions into the Highlands of Scotland in the period 83-87AD and the campaign that led to the construction of the Antonine Wall in 142-143AD

The construction of the first phase of Hadrian’s Wall in 122AD implies a retreat from places farther north, and if we knew why they retreated and built the wall, this might explain the destruction at Trimontium. The timeline would fit nicely, with both the destruction and the reoccupation on the march north twenty years later.

However, while he was exploring a well in what seems to be the communal bathhouse, I couldn’t help but laugh. He tells us that the likely shape of one of the rooms is due to "having at one end a bath of warm water, and at the other a great vase or basin filled with cold water, with which to douche the bather before he passed out again."

It must have been really hot in the caldera – the “hot room”.

Back in here, there was a football match to watch. I’d forgotten that Stranraer were playing Ayr United on Tuesday, so I caught up with the match this morning.

Stranraer lost 4-1, which is no surprise as Ayr are several layers up in the pyramid, but I’m convinced that the referee was refereeing a completely different game to the one that the commentators and I were watching. If you like, you can SEE THE HIGHLIGHTS HERE and let me know what you think.

The rest of the day had been spent editing the radio notes and assembling the two halves of the programme. Then I chose the joining track and wrote the notes for it.

That was another job that took much longer than it ought, but I had a couple of interruptions.

This weekend, I’ve been expecting a package, containing my equipment to convert my internet to fibre-optic, to be delivered. It didn’t turn up yesterday as promised, but when my faithful cleaner checked my mailbox, there was an avis de passage saying that the postie had been but had been unable to deliver the package.

Yet I’d been in all day and had heard absolutely nothing.

So this morning, I wrote a notice and stuck it on my door. The notice read “knock hard and give me time to come to the door. I can’t run as I’m on crutches. If you can’t wait, open the door, come in and shout”.

Round about 13:30, a note on the internet (not in my mailbox) said "the postwoman tried to deliver your parcel. She rang the doorbell, but there was no-one at home".

So if she rang the doorbell, how come she didn’t see the notice on the door? I suspect that she wanted to be at home early, so she only did half of her round, so I went on the warpath with everyone with whom I could.

Eventually, the manageress of the post depot rang me back and promised to have it delivered by Monday midday at the latest.

There was also a break to make some really fresh bread – to bread rolls, in fact, because for tea tonight, I was going to have soup.

There were some leeks left over from Christmas so I made a thick leek, potato, mushroom (I had plenty of those), onion, garlic and soya yoghurt soup with small pasta elbows.

With the fresh bread, it was delicious, and there’s enough soup left over for another meal too.

But right now, having finished my notes, I’m off to bed and hoping for a lie-in tomorrow. The nurse can wake me up if he likes, but I don’t care.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Roman bathhouse … "well, one of us has" – ed … the baths were usually a male prerogative.
However, on one occasion, ladies were allowed in.
After she came out, I asked a friend of mine how she found it
She replied "well, I found out that the Bible is incorrect"
"How do you mean?"
"This ‘all men are created equal’ – it’s not true at all."

Sunday 11th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a miserable day today. Partly for reasons that I’ll mention in due course, and partly for reasons that I won’t mention. Either way, once more, it’s quite obvious that I’m ill again.

With this new computer, everything happened so much faster, as I briefly mentioned last night. Instead of grinding out the time until after midnight, everything was finished by 23:10 and I was soon in bed under the covers.

And there I lay, with something of a disturbed sleep. I’m not sure exactly how many times I awoke, but it was more than just a few. Even so, I was fast asleep when Isabelle breezed in on the latest storm. And it was a storm too – not quite on a par with that a couple of days ago, but even so …

She hardly awoke me, which was good. She peeled back the quilt, did her stuff and then left, while I went back to sleep.

It was 09:35 when I finally left the bed, and after a quick wash, I went into the kitchen for breakfast.

First task was the croissants. And I remembered to fold them the correct way today. They didn’t come out too badly, I suppose, for an amateur process. I had two with my porridge and coffee and left the other four for subsequent Sundays.

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

I was in hospital, and I heard about the plan to restrict the password to exclude certain patients who were presumably no longer of any medical value. It’s a password that the nurse uses when she comes on Sundays for that really long word with whatever it is that is supposed to awaken me. They couldn’t work out which word to use instead of it. There were several that they also used on Sunday morning so there wasn’t really one that was memorable or instantly used in the way that 999 was so they weren’t able to access it.

This is an intriguing dream. I can see some kind of logic in it, but I’ve no idea where it came from or where it was going.

There was a girl from school whom I was seeing. I’d just started work and we were still drifting around together. After lunch, on my way back to the office, I’d get whoever it was who was with me to drop me off at her house so that I could say “hello” and have a little chat, then I’d dash on down the street to try to make up the lost time. This went on for several weeks. But one day, I was running a little late and when I turned up at her house, her mother was there but she wasn’t. She was in one of the bedrooms, standing on a ladder doing something in the attic and saw me arrive. So she came downstairs and said that she’d gone into town with someone. It wasn’t her father or something like that but I can’t remember who. She was on a red bicycle and the other person was on a bicycle of some odd colour. At that point, her father arrived. He gave me a really heavy pair of gauntlets and wheeled out a form of three-wheeled tricycle, with a seat at the back on which to sit and pedal and a seat in between the two front wheels facing forwards for a passenger. He urged me to climb in but for some reason, I took some time and he made a sarcastic comment, and then he pedalled off with me, trying to find where this girl had gone, his daughter.

This is another intriguing dream. Who is the girl? The girl whom I was dating after leaving school while whe was carrying on was one of the girls who came to see me a few weeks ago. She was three years younger than me. However, I’m certain that it wasn’t her, even if she did fit into one or two of the characteristics of this dream.

As for the rickshaw, a friend of mine in Munich has – or had – a 1920s rickshaw that he used for running around the town, and I’ve been driven around a local town in it.

Did I dictate that dream about the girl whom I used to go to see at lunchtimes? I’m sure that I did, … "yes, you did" – ed …but later on in that dream we were all sorting out a few kinds of things and my stepbrother Paul had had a bang in the back of his car so we’d been ordering bits and pieces for it as well as ordering other things. And sure enough, little by little, the packages came. I was half-expecting to have a package from this girl who had disappeared because I didn’t know if I’d said that I’d gone up there once afterwards and the house was empty and they had all gone. I never heard from her after that. So these parcels kept on arriving and my mother was rather frustrated because she was having to run around. One day she came in with an enormous parcel tucked under her arm. We said “oh, that’s the rear valance”. but when we unwrapped it, it wasn’t just the rear valance but the whole rear panel. It was painted the correct colour for the car and the number plate was already installed. It even had “Jaguar Ford” written on the back in some kind of stylish graphics instead of just the plain, ordinary “Ford” Of course, we all made some kind of remark about that to my step-brother, about the posh car that he was going to have There was a rear bumper too, and he looked at it and said “no-one’s going to bend this if they drive into it” Then he started to make arrangements with someone whom we knew to cut out the old, damaged bodywork. And then up the back gardens from down the street came some young woman. She looked at us all and said “lounging around again, are you?” She saw me with a mug of coffee in my hands and said “and time for tea for you”. So we all had a little social chat for ten minutes.

The colour of the car is actually the colour of my father’s MkV Cortina, which is languishing down the field on my farm waiting for me to pull out the engine and gearbox, although this will never happen now, of course. The back panel has another significant meaning, and it breaks my heart to think of how stupid I must have been one evening in 1983, when I acted decisively without thinking things through, and made the totally wrong decision that ended up costing me far, far more than I saved. If I could turn the clock back in time, it would have been to that moment.

As for my stepbrother, he was a lovely guy and would do anything for you. However, he fell in with the wrong crowd, was taken to the cleaner’s and died of a brain aneurysm, the same as his father.

I didn’t dictate that dream about that girl leaving. I’d gone up to her house to see her but she’d gone, the house was all closed etc. so I had to set off for home. What I had was one of these butcher’s bikes, the tricycle thing with the seat at the back and in between the two wheels was a large box where the butcher would put the meat in for deliveries, etc., one of the earliest versions of the bakfiets. I had to go home, and I was trying to think of how to go home without encountering any hills because it was difficult to manoeuvre up and down and I came up with a way back via Warmingham without going up any hills. So I set off, and I’d been going a couple of hundred yards when I thought “this is crazy because I’ll be going about seven or eight miles round and my house is only about a mile and a half from here, if that, so why don’t I just go home and struggle with the one hill that’s in between it?”. So that was what I decided to do. When I was back home, I didn’t remember how I’d actually arrived. I couldn’t remember the route or anything and I didn’t recall being out of breath. But this was when these parcels began to arrive, and I was there, hopeful that something would happen with a parcel for me. But there was something somewhere about after I’d been to that girl’s house and gone to the end of the street, there was a huge slope down to the left. You’d have to go down this cutting, down this slope to reach the railway station, which was one of these provincial things with just two platforms. If you were to cross the line to the other platform, that was actually down on top of an embankment because the slope was that steep and the embankment was quite high too. At the bottom, there was a road and I walked down this road somewhere somehow, and there were lots of people walking up it. There were the substantial ruins of a castle, one of these medieval, fourteenth-century Edwardian castles, and they were almost intact. You’d see all the carvings in the brickwork to make it look like a piece of beauty as well as a fortress, and lots of people were making comments about it and so was I. It looked wonderful, but I carried on walking and I’m not sure where all of this fitted in.

It’s disturbing me deeply, this story about the girl who keeps on appearing in my dreams and then disappearing. I’d love to know who she is. The butcher’s bike is quite an interesting object to appear in this dream, that’s for sure. I worked out that I was somewhere round by Hungerford Road in Crewe, so I could have come down and up Macon way which is much less steep than either Mill Street or Edleston Road. And then, even less steep, I could have gone the other way down to Crewe Green roundabout and then along Crewe Green Road.

The medieval castle and the footpath alongside it relate to the city walls at Leuven, although they are alongside a river, not alongside a railway station in a Welsh valley, the name of which totally escapes me at the moment.

This took me up to a disgusting drink break, following which I dismantled an external drive box to rescue the hard drive which has now handed in its hat and which I’ll have to rescue one of these days, and carried on with the updating of this computer.

There was football too – Forfar v Stranraer. And while the Loons had the lion’s share of the play in the first half, Stranraer wiped the floor with them in the second and were 2-1 up and cruising, only to be undone by a sucker-punch deep into injury time.

After that, there were the bread and pizza to make. And for a change, instead of sunflower seeds, I ground up a large handful of Brazil nuts and used them.

While I was at it, I baked the vegan pie and that looks lovely too. I’ll slice it into eight in the week and put seven slices in the freezer ready for another time.

The bread looks wonderful and the pizza was nice too, although I only ate half of it again.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow afternoon and then Paris on Tuesday. We seem to be back where we were a couple of months ago.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval castles … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of tourists were being shown around Caernarfon Castle not so long ago..
"This castle is unique in history" said the guide. "In the seven hundred years that it’s been here, there have been no repairs and no restoration project carried out on the building."
"That’s an amazing coincidence" said one of the tourists. "It must have the same landlord that we do."

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

… parcels delivery this morning, on a Sunday! What kind of strange idea was that? There was nothing in my e-mails to suggest that one would be arriving today.

Not only that, I wasn’t anything like prepared for its arrival either. What with one ting and another, like a late restart after tea, falling asleep on my chair for almost an hour, all of that, it was long after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was probably 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s why I was so surprised and disappointed to be awake at 03:20. There was something about being in a strange place and some American expected me to be in charge of the gentlemen’s restroom when I knew nothing at all about the exact situation.

The next time that I awoke, it was 07:50. I was in two minds whether to leave the bed at that point but I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and went back to sleep.

At about 08:15, there was this insistent ringing on the doorbell. The nurse usually rings when he arrives to make sure that I’m about, but I ignore it as he has a key to the building and my door. And then it rang again. “Don’t worry” I thought. He’ll work it out.

But a third time? And a fourth one? At that point, streaming profanities and vulgar abuse, I began to leave the bed but the door opened and in came the nurse, carrying a parcel. I quickly nipped back under the covers.

"Parcel delivery for you".
"Where was it?" I asked. "On the doorstep?"
"Oh, no" he replied. "The courier was ringing your bell to deliver it when I arrived"

So a courier delivering parcels at 08:15 on a Sunday morning? Whatever is going on here? It’s rather an extreme way of behaving, dragging people from their beds at silly times on a Sunday morning when all respectable people should still be asleep.

The nurse fitted my socks while I was lying in bed, and after he left, I have it a few minutes and the left the bed.

This morning, I didn’t bother with a wash. I just sorted myself out and then went to make breakfast – porridge, coffee and the last of the inside-out croissants. I must make some more next week, but I’ll make them the correct way round this time.

Back in here, there was some football from last night. I started off with Connah’s Quay beating Y Barri 3-1, despite being 1-0 down with only twenty minutes to play. And that’s as far as I went because this computer is just not up to watching streamed programmes

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of party going on in Stoke-on-Trent and I’d been invited by my friend. So I turned up, and I was in my van. I had some things in the back to drop off. He noticed the spare wheel in the back and the large sheet of wood – pallet wood made into a sheet.I explained that one of my tyres was down somewhat on tread so I need to replace it. He said that it’s no surprise that it’s down on tread because it’s always sagging down to one side He had a look inside and said “yes, we have a jack. Yes we have a wheelbrace. There’s a DC socket in the back for the compressor and a few other things”, and he said that we’ll deal with it, but right now, there were other things to do. We had to go round to the front, but people kept on appearing with things wrapped in towels. They were unwrapping the towels and handing them to us. There were all kinds of different food supplies, piles and piles of stuff, loads and loads of loose mint sweets in wrappers. There was so much that we were just dropping it on the floor because we couldn’t carry it all at once. We decided to make a couple of runs and then come back for it, hoping that no-one else comes back for it in the meantime. Some of the people coming back were my youngest sister and her husband. They were dressed as if for Hallowe’en, with blackened faces. I went in to drop off these things, and all my family was in there. My mother said “oh Eric, you’re looking smart today”. I replied “meaning that I don’t look very smart any other day?”. There were all these children around, children whom I knew, children and grandchildren of all the people whom I knew in my circle of friends. There was one particular girl whom I would have liked to have seen, but she hadn’t come. I was particularly disappointed, but so was everyone else. However, she had sent a letter saying “don’t think that I am being rude but ..” and I didn’t manage to hear the rest of it. I was quite disappointed. We dropped these things off, and all these children whom we knew milling around. A couple of young teenage girls came over to chat. I thankedt one of them for doing something for me in the past, but I can’t remember what it was. She went to pat me on the chest and I replied “be careful. I have a catheter port in there” so she apologised. We began to chat, and that was that.

“all my family was in there” – how about that for a scary nightmare Hallowe’en scenario? But this was a dream with all kinds of things going on. A friend and I had had been talking about her children and grandchildren a day or two back, and this probably is where the scenario about all these kids comes from.

As for the missing girl, I am sure that you can all guess who it was, so I’m going to award Zero marks for that.

Caernarfon were playing in the Welsh Premier League and were very close to the top. With the final game to play, it was extremely important. If they were to win, they would qualify for Europe. However, they were hemmed in and surrounded by a large force of Apache warriors and i was very difficult to do anything under these events. The captain of the fort found two of his players fighting . He broke them up, and gave them a lecture about tomorrow being the most important day in the club’s history, all of this, In the meantime, he sent two people out during the night through the enemy lines. They were successful and managed to meet up with a large force of cavalry that was heading their way to try to relieve them. Having been told of the forces and their positions etc, the cavalry commander decided to sleep the night in a dry gulch in the immediate area so that his troops would be fresh and rested ready for battle that he would give on the first of the month as soon as it becomes daylight

If you think that the previous dream was all mixed up, then this one was even worse. The root of the word “Caernarfon” – “Caer” – implies a Roman fort or camp of course and there was a Roman camp there, but they were hardly likely to be defending it against Native Americans. The idea of resting after a march and launching an attack at daybreak was quite a common US Army military tactic in those days.

Did I dictate the dream about the guy going on the bus to the neighbouring town? … “No you didn’t” – ed … He was disabled too, just like me, and couldn’t walk properly. He had no force in his legs. He managed to climb aboard the bus and it set off. Its destination was this town and was going no further so it didn’t pick up anyone as it entered the town. When it came to the edge of the pedestrian area, the bus stopped and everyone alighted. The disabled guy went up to the bus driver and asked if this was where they would come back on board later. He replied “yes” so the guy said that he wouldn’t manage to climb back aboard. The driver recommended that he go to one of the bus stops a little further out of the town centre where the pavements were raised. In the meantime, back at home, there was an absolutely tremendous shower of snow. Within half an hour, there was maybe half a metre of snow everywhere. Some was some poor guy, a footballer, standing by the door of his apartment looking very miserable because he had been planning on breaking some kind of record for his team that afternoon but all the matches had been postponed. People began to shovel, but it wasn’t really much good because the snow was coming down too fast. They wondered if they should bring in some professional snowmen. They thought that that might be a good idea, but they remembered reading that one professional snowman had been killed a couple of days earlier during an incident involving heavy snow. Someone else had the idea of picking up a couple of laptops and taking them outside to put on chairs so that when the snow fell down, the warm laptop would actually melt it and it would be somewhere for people to sit while they were taking a little break from shovelling snow.

We’ve had a few dreams abut buses in built-up areas just recently. And having difficulty climbing aboard a bus is another one of those issues. Here in Granville, some of the pavements have been raised to bus-door height but, ironically, the ones outside the medical centres and in the town centre, where most disabled people are likely to go, have not.

Leaving a laptop outside to melt the snow that falls on it is an interesting idea. It might work for te minutes, but it would be an expensive way of doing it.

The rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon were spent doing some housekeeping on the travelling laptop and the external hard drive, trying to tidy everything up before the new computer arrives.

Later on, I tried a different way of making bread. I’d seen a “no-knead” recipe for making bread in the air fryer, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

It’s very long-winded and takes a fair bit of time and the result wasn’t anything spectacularly good. It was only half a loaf too (my air fryer is quite small) so I might persevere and next time, make a full-sized loaf but bake it in the conventional oven.

While I was at it, I baked a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. I’ll save the other half for tea tomorrow night. But it was a weird pizza, because I had no fresh mushrooms. My cleaner hadn’t been to the shops this weekend.

Instead, I used frozen mushrooms, a great big handful, and I simmered them to dry the water out. And when I’d finished, there were hardly any mushrooms left. You’ll be amazed at how much water thee is in frozen mushrooms.

So right now, I’m off to bed, if the pain in my foot will subside. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately. We are back in our usual routine. And my new laptop might be here for Wednesday so that I can start working again. Steam-driven computing is not an ideal way forward.

But seeing as we have been talking about dreaming … “well, one of us has” – ed … one of my friends told me about a dream that she had.
"I dreamed that I was to have a new washing machine" she said. "If I went to sleep on my right side, I dreamed that I would have an Indesit, but if I went to sleep on my left side, I dreamed that I was t have an Electrolux."
"So what happened?" I enquired wearily
"I woke up my husband and told him"
"And what did he say?"
"He said ‘if you lie there on your back like that, quite still, I’ll give you a hotpoint"

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that starting work at 11:00 on a Sunday morning was some good going, how about starting at 12:00 today, then?

Not that it felt like it was going to be anything like that. As usual, thanks to drifting off to sleep on a couple of occasions while I was typing out my notes, it was another night where I failed miserably to beat my 22:30 deadline. In fact, it was so long ago that I was in bed before 23:30 that I can’t even remember when it was.

Anyway, when I had finally finished, it was more like 23:30 and I was really glad to be tucked up in my little cot. However, as seems to be the case these days, it wasn’t for long. It was 03:44 in fact when I opened my eyes, although a few coughing fits earlier had awoken me for a brief moment here and there.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at that point. I lay there tossing and turning and watching the time on the ‘phone advance round to about 05:00. I began to think “give it half an hour and I’ll get up and do some work, like dictate the outstanding radio notes”.

The next thing that I remember was the nurse shaking me awake. Apparently I’d gone back to sleep again at some point. He sorted out my legs but wasn’t very happy about doing it while I was in bed. Mind you, neither was I. I’d have much rather been up and about and working rather than lying in my stinking pit, but there you go.

After he left, I reckoned that I’d give it a few more minutes and raise myself from the Dead, but it was somewhat more than a few more minutes. Actually, it was about 10:15 when I next awoke, and at that point I decided that I’d better shoot into action, otherwise I’ll be in here all day.

It was a quick nip into the bathroom and then a slow stroll into the living room to check the washing and to make breakfast. More porridge and coffee with two of the strange croissants that I made last Sunday. How could I possibly have rolled them inside out?

There was no rush at all this morning, and so it was midday when I was finally back in here. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was still on the taxis last night, and so was Nerina. There was something happening about a coat of hers that had had a bowl of porridge fall on it so she was thinking of throwing it away. However, her mother, even though she didn’t really know what was wrong with it, said that she’d have a close look at it and see what she could do. That’s all that I remember of this.

There’s definitely something of an obsession with taxis right now, and I’ve no idea why. Those days are long behind me and they can stay behind me for all that I care. By the way, Nerina’s mother was a tailoress and she could work miracles with a piece of cloth.

Later on, I was in Crewe doing my shopping last night. I’d been to Woolworth’s to buy a few things. I’d sorted out what I’d needed and the shop assistant came along and tipped them into my bag and I paid for everything. I was then supposed to go to Marks and Spencers, but when I looked, I didn’t have very much time and had to go to the railway station. I picked up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and set out to walk. I found myself a couple of minutes later on a motorway interchange, the one up near Northwich. I had to walk all the way down the motorway to come off at Sandbach and then walk across to Crewe and had about fifteen or twenty minutes to do it so I thought that I should have to hurry. I set off down the slip road and there was a policeman there with his dog. The dog barked, which frightened the policeman. I walked past them and was looking at the traffic on the motorway bridge a little further down the hill. They were driving along normally on this bridge when suddenly, they leapt into the air and landed again as if they had hit a large object on the road. I was wondering what was happening there, but I thought that I didn’t have the time to stop and look because I had my train very shortly.

Those were the days when Woollies was next to Marks and Sparks. Woollies has long since closed down and Marks and Sparks has moved onto the new retail park where we used to go speedwaying and banger racing all those years ago. What a sad state of affairs that was when they demolished the old railway sports ground thirty or so years ago.

However, imagine walking down the motorway from Northwich to Sandbach, especially in about ten minutes.

There were also a few things going round in my head when I awoke that I didn’t dictate. Two things that I remember, so I don’t know if they were dreams or not, were firstly, there was some famous TV presenter sitting at a table with us who suddenly started to spout off a vicious anti-Welsh rant, to such an extent that I became violently angry. The second was being in a pub with friends of mine when suddenly one of them put on the table a very large and very dangerous-looking knife in a sheath. I remember saying that I’d told him on several occasions not to bring it out with him and that he was risking seven years in prison carrying it about with him.

Next, we had a footfest. Stranraer v Dumbarton. And while the unbeaten run goes on, it was a very poor, lacklustre performance that saw them creep to a very unsatisfactory 1-1 draw against Dumbarton. But with a squad containing five strikers, every one of whom is out injured right now, it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t manage to launch any kind of attack at all.

After that, I had the misfortune of coming across the St Johnstone-Greenock Morton game. And it was embarrassing to watch Morton slither to a miserable 5-0 defeat. Their squad just isn’t up to Championship-level football and I’ve noticed in a couple of previous games that several of their players look less than interested in what’s happening out there on the field.

For some reason, it was as quiet as the grave out there right now, so I decided to dictate the radio notes before the endless streams of tourists go strolling past.

When I’d finished, I edited the notes for the joining track for one of the radio programmes. That programme is now assembled and ready to go. It was actually thirteen seconds over the hour, but a judicious piece of editing enabled it to fit the timescale exactly.

Next task was to edit the other notes, which are the major part of the following programme. I didn’t get very far into those before it was time to knock off and go a-baking. Homemade bread and homemade pizza were on the list for today, so I made a couple of piles of dough.

While it was all festering, I came in here and did a few more bits and pieces of my Welsh homework. And this is a really difficult exercise because it’s revising a lesson that we learnt when I was absent in chemotherapy a few weeks ago.

So back in the kitchen, the bread and pizza were all made, and the pizza, such as I ate, was delicious. But once more, there’s half of it left that I shall finish off for tea tomorrow. All that remains to cook for Christmas now is the vegan Wellington, for which Liz sent me a recipe a couple of years ago, and the hash browns.

As well as that, I might try a little experiment. I’ve received a recipe for homemade baked beans and, struggling to find any good ones here, I might give it a try and see how they work out.

But that’s for Tuesday. Tonight, I’m off to bed, probably to dream about more taxis and wake up at some silly time in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about cleaning clothes and porridge … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a late working session in the White House, Monica Lewinsky went into the local dry cleaner’s to pick up a dress she had left behind for cleaning.
As the cashier handed her the dress, she said "Thank you Miss Lewinsky. Come again!"
"No" replied Monica. "Porridge this time."

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… found me in bed, fast asleep, this morning when she arrived to sort out my legs. For once, I’d actually managed to have a decent … "kind-of" – ed … lie-in.

And I needed it too. Yesterday evening was another difficult night when I kept on falling asleep while I was trying to type out my notes. It took an age to finish everything.

There was another difficulty too. When I went to stand up, I couldn’t manage to keep myself upright and it was the most uncomfortable feeling that I have ever had. Even worse, I couldn’t walk either. It seemed that my right leg had now totally ceased to function, and if that were ever to happen, it would be the end of the world.

Eventually though, I managed to make it to the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I crawled into bed. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

The next thing that I remember was Isabelle the Nurse’s cheery greeting as she breezed into the bedroom at about 08:40. I’d been flat out, fast asleep for a little more than nine hours, and it’s been a very long time indeed since anything like that happened.

She sorted out my legs and feet while I was in bed, half asleep, and then she disappeared again. But not before admiring my Christmas cakes and the icing thereupon. But how disappointed was I that she didn’t bring me a nice, hot mug of coffee?

After she left, it took me a good twenty minutes to decide that I wanted to leave the bed. I could quite easily have stayed in bed all morning, but anyway …

The first thing that I did was to make the croissants because I have run out. And what a mess I made of those. I rolled up the pastry with the points inside rather than on the outside so they went berserk when they began to bake.

While they were baking, I made the rest of my breakfast, and the porridge boiled over in the microwave. It really wasn’t my morning. At least the croissants tasted nice, no matter how they looked.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s now down in Southern England and, as this is a region that has been thoroughly explored and catalogued, there’s really nothing new about any of it. He makes one or two educated guesses about a couple of places, but subsequent research has shown that he was somewhat wide of the mark.

Not that it’s a problem. Modern archaeology has many more tools in its inventory than he had in 1909 and in many cases, he really was groping around in the dark.

After breakfast, there was tidying up to do. I found a couple of empty biscuit tins and, having cleaned them out, put the cakes in them. They are now on the cake shelf with all of the other baking products.

There were the leftover croissants to put in the fridge for another time, and then the kitchen needed another clean because yesterday, I hadn’t done a very good job.

Back in here, it was 11:04 when I finally sat down to begin work. And that’s a luxury and no mistake. I’d enjoyed my really slow start to the day.

First thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had been invaded by the Nazis so we were going through our house, destroying any incriminating paperwork, hiding our guns etc., so that we had a purely clean house when they finally arrived. When they did arrive, it was two women. The first thing that they did was to compare the marking of the deer with the deer that we’d had previously. It matched, so it was obviously our deer that we had killed. There was no problem there. Then she began to discuss the famine. I told her that that was two hundred years ago and had nothing to do with me. Eventually, I managed to convince her that it was an epoch in history and nothing particularly recent. She began to ask questions about my private life etc. We told her that we’d prepared a list ready for baking with all the details of our homes and our cookery on it so she told us to bake it, so we did. She had a good look around … fell asleep here …. Anyway, it was going back into that girl’s room for quite some time, and then one day we heard that he had taken her in his car to the beach and that was considered to be excessive and inappropriate, so he was summoned before the bishop.

The opening part of the dream reminds me of a story that I had heard once in North-Eastern France in 1914. When the Germans invaded and the British and French troops were in full retreat to the Marne, an undefended village found itself right in the path of the advancing German Army. Having heard of the atrocities committed upon the civilians in Belgium by the Germans, the mayor of the village ordered that all firearms be surrendered to him. And then, in consultation with the priest and the local undertaker, they put them all in a coffin and then had a formal “burial ceremony” in the cemetery.

The end of the dream refers to the case of the notorious headmaster Neil Foden, who is currently serving seventeen years in prison, but if you want to know more about that, you can look it up yourselves. The rest of the dream means very little.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am actually asleep when I’m dictating these dreams. But what I mean when I say that I fell asleep is that my voice tapers off into silence, and you can then hear the heavy breathing.

Next on the agenda was the footfest of matches from yesterday. And HERE are the highlights of last night’s game. They don’t actually do anything like justice to the game, which is a shame.

And while we’re at it, THIS GAME is between a Third Division club (Bangor City) and a Second Division club (Trefelin), and I reckon that it would do justice to any fixture played in the Premier League.

When all of the Welsh football was over, we had Stranraer away at Elgin. And this run of Stranraer’s keeps on going. They ran out 2-1 winnsers, making five victories in a row. For a team that, at the end of September, were hopelessly anchored, well adrift, at the foot of the table, they are now up to fourth.

The bubble will have to burst sometime, but we are all enjoying it while it lasts.

A few months ago, my friend from Munich gave me an old 2012 2TB hard drive that had become corrupted. One task that I’ve been meaning to do is to have a look and see if I can fix it. Anyway, I stuck it into a spare bay in the array and had a play about.

In the end, after a little bit of messing around in the BIOS, I managed to make it fire up and then I could format it. It seems to be working fine now.

Interestingly, it seems to have corrupted itself into two partitions, one of 500GB and another one of 1.31TB. I’ve only ever seen one hard drive do that before, and even as we speak, that one is sitting on my desk, where it has been for a couple of years.

While I had the array switched on, I began to do a little housekeeping. I found an empty 4TB drive and fitted that in, so now, every bay is full. Then I began to shuffle things around somewhat to make my backing-up much more efficient

At 16:30 I knocked off in order to go bread-making and pizza-making. They both turned out to be excellent, mainly due to me having added a little more liquid than usual and letting them bake for a few minutes longer.

So now, having finished my notes, I’ll check the stats, do the backing-up and then go to bed. There won’t be a lie-in tomorrow morning, which is a shame, but we have dialysis instead. But as a footnote, I’ve not felt at all tired today and have kept on going remarkably well, considering. It seems that a really good sleep is what I’ve been missing.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking and tidying up etc … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone what was the secret of a happy life.
He replied "finding a woman who can bake, who can keep a tidy house, knit and sew, look after the kids and run the finances"
"And did you?" I asked
"Ohh yes" he replied. "But it was a nightmare."
"Why was that?" I asked
"Arranging things so that those five women never met each other."

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a nice uninterrupted sleep all the way through to when Isabelle the Nurse would shake me awake by the shoulder when she comes in to sort out my legs.

And so waking up at 01:06 this morning was something of a disappointment.

It wasn’t as if I had gone to bed early either. It was well after 23:00 by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and crawled in under the covers. Mind you, I fell asleep quite quickly with the kind of sense of relief that you have, knowing that a good sleep is just about the ideal solution for all known ills.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at 01:06 and when I noticed the time, I was devastated. I was not expecting this at all. However, I was lucky in that I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

But only until 07:46 though. I might not have moved a muscle in the intervening period, but it was still not long enough to have really enjoyed it. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

In the end, round about 08:00, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

It would, of course, happen to be a day when Isabelle the Nurse decided to reorganise her round in order to give me more time to sleep, so she was rather put out to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

She had something of a mumble about it, sorted out my feet and then went to carry on with the rest of her patients.

It took me about fifteen minutes to summon up the courage to rise from my chair in the kitchen in order to make my breakfast – coffee, porridge and home-made croissants from the batch that I had made last weekend.

While I was eating, I was reading more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. I mentioned the other day that he had put me on the track of John Horsley’s BRITANNIA ROMANA. Codrington is not very impressed with Horsley’s interpretation of the Iter Britanniarum though, saying that "the way in which he dealt with the Itinerary distances is remarkable.".

Codrington talks about a Roman camp called Epiacum up on the northern edge of the Pennines. It’s described as "not rectangular but lozenge-shaped, with probably the most intricate system of defences of all the known Roman forts". So I had a little search around on an on-line aerial map, and what do you think ABOUT THIS? Isn’t it magnificent?

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there. We were trying to smuggle someone out of mainland Europe last night into the UK. We had something of a trial run at one of the border posts but it didn’t work very well because he had a kind of wrong attitude towards the Customs officers and it rather shattered his nerve somewhat. So rather than adapting his behaviour and comportment, he just sat there like a clam and refused to co-operate. We tried everything we could to cajole him to coming along and crossing the border but each time, he refused. When we told him to prepare himself a drink, he’d prepare a drink and then pass it to one of us instead of bringing it with him. In the end, full of frustration, we decided that we’d leave him and go back on our own. There was no point trying to force someone. But there was some kind of dispute at the border between him and one of our army officers. It seemed that the guy at one time had stolen the girlfriend of one of the army officers, and that was what made one of the army officers in our group rather bitter and terse with him.

This dream probably relates to some of the issues that the Secret Intelligence Service had with trying to bring out their agents from occupied Europe in World War II. They had many different escape routes, but going over on a ferry would have been novel, especially as no ferries ran during wartime.

There had been talk of a giant whale stalking people in London. Things came to a head when it appeared before a group of Year Two children, so Holmes and Watson set out on the trail. They waited until it was a foggy night and then took a boat, and rowed to a wharf where this school was. These two young boys who were rowing were telling them stories about it. They climbed out and went for a little walk themselves, and stopped to have a bag of chips each. They put their chips on their plates and were sitting there outside, waiting. Suddenly, out of the mist, the whale appeared. The first thing that it did was to launch itself at the plate of Sherlock Holmes. He quite simply cut a piece out of it with his knife and fork and ate it. That was basically at the end of the drama.

There have been dreams involving Holmes and Watson before, but this one was one of those surreal ones that has no explanation at all.

I was somewhere in France. There was a road down which I had driven hundreds if not thousands of times, only today, I found that I was walking down it. When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed that there was an old car just at the edge of the field with a sign pièces detaches written on it. I’d not noticed it before, so I went through into the field and at the back was a kind-of wood or coppice. There were probably about thirty or forty old cars scattered around there, and there was some kind of workshop. Someone came by and asked me what I wanted. I asked if it was OK if I were to have a look around. The guy told me to please myself, so I did. Eventually, someone came over to me to chat. He pointed to an old 1930s-type car that was there. He said “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this because the cylinder block has cracked”. He couldn’t find anyone to weld it because it was such a long crack. I asked him if he had thought about re-sleeving the bores and putting smaller pistons in. I thought that when he had an idea that I knew what I was talking about, he began to chat with me. I told him that I had one or two old cars andA TRACTION. He replied “we have four around here”. I noticed that there was one that was being restored and painted. I told him that I would give my right arm to have a Traction that was running but he didn’t really hit on anything like that. We had a long chat, and then I found myself driving back into town again afterwards. I wasn’t thinking, and I was following two cars. One was a Rolls-Royce and one was something else. I suddenly realised at some point that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. I hoped that no-one was watching and that there were no cameras. Eventually, I found the supermarket and grabbed myself a plate of chips with some weird Indian accompaniment. I had to struggle to find a seat in the café but I did in the end, and the chips were nice. But these Indian things, I wasn’t all that impressed. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat them after I’d tried a couple. Then I looked at the time and it was almost 18:00, time that I was due home, so I had to hurry up and move on.

This dream reminds me of that time ON LONG ISLAND when I stopped at this warehouse where I’d seen an aeroplane parked outside. I spoke to the manager of the place who interrogated me on my knowledge of the history of early aviation and, satisfied that I knew my stuff, allowed me in to see their prize exhibits, including a replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis and sit at the controls inside it.

The Indian meal reminds me of tea last night.

Going back to that dream about the abandoned cars, later on, I was driving around somewhere in the USA in a hilly area. I found a nice patch of green at the side of the road where I thought that I’d pull up and I could eat my sandwiches there. I noticed that there was a group of kids in the field at the side. They were all playing about. One of them came over to say “hello”. I had a little chat with her, and it turned out that she was in Year 6 and was going to High School soon. She was talking about her new English teacher, that he was always crying and becoming angry. I explained that not everyone is always very happy and in a good equilibrium. Sometimes, people are like that and you have to push the emotions aside and push on with what you are doing. Learning English is fun. We carried on chatting and we talked about sports. It turned out that she wasn’t American at all. She was from somewhere else. She was saying that one thing she hated about the Americans was how they blew themselves up into something that they weren’t. They were always showing off etc, and how she couldn’t really cope with it. I told her a story about one of my niece’s children who played sports. They were playing against some team from a High School on a Native American reservation. There was one young lad who was winning everything, and no-one knew why he was so good until a few days later when they checked the results and discovered that he was an Olympic champion in some kind of events. That was much more like the way that people should be. She agreed. Then, one of her friends came over and the three of us began to chat. I said how well they had done, that they had gone through elementary school so quickly and were nearly ready for the High School, and I hope that they’ll enjoy it. Then, the school bell rang and they had to leave. I said goodbye to them and “maybe I’ll see you again”. I drove off and back over the hills with this beautiful view in the distance of what was going on in the valley.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a lot of time for kids. I think that they have a really raw deal in life. They have such a lot to say, much of which is interesting, yet no-one wants to listen to them

There was football next. Stranraer v Clydebank in the Scottish Cup. The third round was full of shocks and surprises, with many clubs being knocked out by lower-league opposition, such as Dumbarton losing 4-0 at home to West of Scotland League side Auchinleck Talbot, for example.

And we almost had another one here at Stranraer, where but for several slices of good fortune, the score could have been 2-1 to Clydebank rather than the 2-1 to Stranraer, as the match finished.

This afternoon, I tackled my Welsh homework and waded through it from start to finish. I just need to review one or two questions and then I can send it off.

While I was at it, I was chatting to my friend from Munich, but I had to abandon that because Rosemary rang with a computer issue and needed help. It was another one of those long conversations where we can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it made me late for my baking.

The loaf that I made looks to be excellent, and the pizza really was delicious. However, I could only eat half of it, so the other half will do for tea tomorrow. Based on the weight, I’m eating between about a third and a quarter of a pizza that I would have comfortably eaten six months ago.

While everything was cooking, I wrapped my two Christmas cakes in baking paper and tinfoil, and they are now cooling in the fridge ready for marzipanning next weekend.

So now, horribly late, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately, but at least I’m only out twice next week, which is a major improvement. I can get on and do things.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to Holmes not so long ago and I asked him how his crime investigations were going.
"Ohh, I’ve retired now" he told me. "It’s only the elderly who remember me and appreciate me. The young people don’t know me at all."
"So I suppose you’re really an Old People’s Holmes" I replied. "But do you keep up with the news from London?"
"Watson still lives there" he replied. "He keeps me up-to-date with the news."
"So he’s your ‘Watson in London’ then."

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off.

Now, you are probably thinking that it has happened a fair number of times just recently. However, that was during the week when the alarm goes off at 06:29. Today is a Sunday, a Day of Rest when the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, and lying in bed asleep at that time of the morning is a very rare event.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. Although it seemed to be later than usual when I finished everything that I needed to do before retiring, it was actually 23:20 when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed without moving until the alarm at 07:59.

There was nothing on the dictaphone either. That gives you an idea of how deep the sleep actually was and how tired I must have been last night.

With awakening so late, it was a mad panic to wash and dress before the nurse arrived, and I was only just leaving the bathroom when he came in. He sorted out my legs, took my medical card to swipe so that the Sécurité Sociale can pay him for his visits, and then he left.

Once he’d disappeared, I did the washing-up from last night and then made some more croissants. While they were baking, I made coffee and breakfast. The two fresh croissants from the batch that I’d just made were delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

The other day, I mentioned that there were inconsistencies in her book compared to the book of the first Mrs Carrington, AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

There are some more that reared their ugly head today. The first Mrs Carrington tells us that at Fort Laramie, they had only been supplied with one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of the hundred thousand that they had been promised. Colonel Carrington tells us, via Mrs Grummond’s book, that they were "given only one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of twenty thousand promised"

His speech, given at an anniversary reunion of the soldiers at the fort in 1909 is recorded by Mrs Grummond and includes the fact that "Upon reaching Powder River, where the little post of Reno had been held for a time, I found awaiting my arrival only seven thousand rounds of ammunition.". This isn’t mentioned by the first Mrs Carrington.

However, this makes sense because although Carrington complains persistently of a shortage of ammunition throughout his period at Fort Phil Kearny, he’s able to send to Captain Ten Eyck, who is leading a rescue party in an attempt to save Fetterman’s patrol "forty men and ten thousand rounds of ammunition." If he was so short of ammunition, he certainly wouldn’t have had ten thousand rounds to spare.

Back in here, we had a mini-foot-fest. I’d seen all of the Welsh football yesterday, so today it was the turn of Stranraer to feature. They were away at Spartans this weekend, Spartans being top of the league.

The score was four goals to nil at half-time but surprisingly, despite having very little of the play, it was in favour of Stranraer! The second half was much more even, but Stranraer managed to hang on to their four goal lead and severely embarrass the title favourites.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen Stranraer play much better than this and somehow manage to lose, but for once, everything seemed to go in their favour today.

This afternoon, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went off to do some baking.

Today’s loaf is easily the best that I have ever made. It had risen up to an incredible height and I can’t understand why it’s done so well. The pizza was really good too, but I only managed to eat half of it. Not to worry though. I’ll have the other half for tea tomorrow night.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I’m still exhausted after this last week, despite my long sleep today, and I can’t wait to go and try to sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about Spartans FC in Edinburgh … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked a friend of mine who lives near there if she went to the match this weekend.
"I wouldn’t waste my time" she replied. "If I really wanted to watch someone struggle to score during ninety minutes, I’d come with you to the disco."

Sunday 16th November 2025 – WHEN ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… came round this evening, she made some remark about the delicious smell in the kitchen.

It wasn’t me, of course. I was in the office. However, I did reply, saying "I’m not surprised. There’s a cake baking in the oven."

That’s right, people, I’ve been a busy boy yet again this afternoon.

Not that I felt much like it, however. I’ve been feeling better today than I was yesterday and on Thursday, but not by much. However, if I don’t do things around here, no-one else will.

With it being a Sunday, I was anticipating having a decent lie-in. After all, Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59. And if it wasn’t for the nurse coming round, it wouldn’t be going off them.

So last night, I made a determined effort to be in bed rather early, and once again, I failed miserably. By the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing, it was just after 23:15 when I finally slid in between the sheets ready for my long lie-in.

But so much for that. Despite going to sleep quite quickly, it was all of … errr … 06:15 when I finally awoke. That’s an early start for a weekday, never mind a Sunday.

Anyway, I hauled myself out of bed and into the bathroom for a good scrub up. Next, I went into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink, and used it to wash down the medication.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with someone, a guy. We’d been roaming around everywhere. He suggested that we went round to the house of his family to stay the night seeing as we were in the area. We made our way to his house and walked inside. I went in, “I’m so-and-so’s friend. My name is Eric” but I stopped in mid-speech because there were probably about thirty people in this living room, young people of all different age groups. It seemed that they were spread out over sofas and chairs and everything as if they were somehow camping there to spend the night. We had a brief chat with them, and people squeezed up to let us perch on sofas and arms of settees. Somehow, we all managed to drop off to sleep. Next morning, it was fairly late when I awoke and there were a few other people still asleep, a few people awake and talking. I remember someone saying, while pointing to a young girl at the far end of the room, that she spent much of the middle of the night talking about her family in Australia. I replied “I don’t remember anything about that because I crashed out straight away until right this minute”. They all replied “yes, we noticed”. Later on, we were out and the guy with whom I’d been wandering around the previous day was showing his photos to me, all these beautiful buildings. I didn’t remember passing those buildings with him, and I wish that I had taken some of those photos because the buildings were really beautiful. We ended up in some kind of big shop and I bought a baguette, a long baguette but it was very soft. Then, I looked around and one or two other people from this had bought baguettes too and were walking around with them. But I’d been nibbling mine in between because I was really hungry by this time. The dream then moved on and I was in a hospital. I took advantage of an empty bed by sitting in it, starting to write my blog for the previous night because I remembered that I hadn’t written it yet. I began to write it out by hand but then thought “should I fetch the computer?” but I looked around, and no-one else in this ward had any computer or anything like that so I went back to start to write it out by hand. However, I wasn’t comfortable and couldn’t read my own writing in the end. I noticed that one by one, these people were being called for interviews. I thought that these beds must be here for a doctor’s queue or something, and people could lie down on the bed while they were waiting. I wondered what would happen to me once everyone in this hospital realised that I’d been there for a long time trying to write out my blog and didn’t have a single medical appointment at all.

Later on, I remembered that one of the reasons why we’d gone out next morning was for me to go to the van to fetch my rucksack with the computer etc in it.

This was an interesting dream, right enough. Regular readers of a previous version of this rubbish will recall that I once stayed in a house like this with so many other people staying there that we had to chisel out a little corner of floor space for ourselves.

The hospital, I imagine, relates to how we are arranged at dialysis. But the photos and the baguette don’t seem to relate to anything much, although in the past, I’ve been on trips with people and their photos have been so radically different from mine that I was certain that they had taken them in different places to those that we visited together.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and took my blood pressure while I was seated in the office. It saves her having to wait five minutes after I’ve moved about, because if I move, the blood pressure needs time to stabilise.

She also sorted out my legs and left to carry on with her rounds. I could go to make breakfast – porridge with two of the croissants left over from last weekend. And the croissants were delicious. I shall definitely make more of those.

After breakfast, I had a footfest to watch. I’d seen all of the matches in Wales, but there was Stranraer v East Kilbride. East Kilbride, having been promoted from non-league for this season, are making Scottish League Two look easy.

And despite Stranraer’s improved form of late, East Kilbride hardly broke into a sweat but still managed a comfortable 3-1 victory.

Greenock Morton are also having a poor season. They were playing Ross County last night and the game was televised. Once more, Morton made it look easy and ran out comfortable 3–0 winners. So why can’t they play like that every game?

After a disgusting drink break, there were things to do.

The array of back-up disks isn’t working very well at the moment. It’s switching on, but cutting out before it begins to run. It’s difficult to know which USB cable powers it because there are (at the last count) fifteen plugged into this computer.

Consequently, I unplugged all of them and, by plugging in one at a time and checking the File Manager, I managed to work out which was which.

And so I unplugged them all again and this time, I labelled them before I put them back. And having plugged the array into a USB 3.0 connection instead of a USB 1.0 as previously, everything worked fine.

For half an hour or so, I played with the radio programme, dictating the notes that I wrote to the other day ready for editing.

Later on, I went into the kitchen. I had bread, pizza and cake to make. I’m going to keep up with this idea of a high calorie, high carbohydrate cake to fill me up when I’m leaving other food on the plate.

Today’s cake was ginger, almond and coconut.

The bread and the pizza were excellent, and the cake is magnificent. When Isabelle the Nurse came back for the evening’s blood pressure, she said that she thought that it smelt excellent. When I took it out of the oven, she said that it looked excellent too.

While I was eating my pizza, I was chatting to my niece’s eldest daughter. She was at home, sitting on her sofa with her dog just chilling out before she goes to make supper – roast chicken with mixed vegetables. I haven’t seen her for ages, and it must be her turn to come to see me soon.

But I’ll worry about that another time because I’m off to bed for a good sleep … "he hopes" – ed …

But seeing as we have been talking about cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went to the doctors.
"Doctor" she began "It was my birthday yesterday and my friends made me a cake. But ever since I ate a slice, I’ve lost the vision i my left eye."
"I’m not surprised" said the doctor. " I can see what’s wrong from here. When you go to eat another slice, blow out the candles first and remove them from the cake."

Sunday 26th October 2025 – HAS ANYONE ELSE …

… experienced any problems with Windows 10 today?

Updating and revisions for Windows 10 stopped being produced yesterday, and this morning, when I switched on the big computer, I had the error message “no operating system found”. After some coaxing, I managed to make it fire up but it went down again shortly afterwards and that, dear reader, was that.

Luckily, I have an old disk with a locked version of Windows 10 on it, and that fired up and seems to be running quite well at the moment, although it’s old and slow.

It could, of course, be nothing whatever to do with Microsoft’s policy of making all computers obsolete so that everyone must buy new computers, and be a simple technological fault. However, I seem to remember the exact same problem with an older laptop running Windows 7 on the day after upgrades stopped being supplied for that operating system, and so my curiosity has been aroused.

But it’s a good job that I have organised my computer as I have.

There’s a 1TB (although at the moment it’s a 256GB) solid state hard drive with the operating system and the programs

There’s a 4TB data drive, which is where I keep the data

There’s another 4TB data drive that is a mirror of the one above

There’s a 128GB memory stick in a USB port that I use for backing up every evening, or more often if I’ve been working a large number of files

There’s a 64GB memory stick in another USB port. That’s attached to my house keys. It’s another daily backup device and I use it as a travelling drive to update the travelling laptop.

Apart from that, there are several external drives and an array with several hard drives in it, all of which represent the complete history of my computing since I had my first 386SX in 1993. Wherever the stuff is for the old Apple 2 that we had before that, I really don’t know.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, last night should have been an early night. And it would have been too, had I not fallen asleep while riding the porcelain horse, yet again. Honestly, I was dead to the World last night.

No-one could ever have been more pleased than me to crawl into bed last night, even if it was as late as 23:30. Surprisingly, given how tired I was, it took a while to drop off to sleep, and it was a rather turbulent night too, thanks in the main to the howling gale that had sprung up outside again.

Round about 03:10 (well, 04:10 had we not put the clocks back) I awoke definitively, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there dozing for quite a while until about 05:20 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit.

After a good wash and scrub up, I came back in here to watch yesterday’s live football match – Cardiff Metropolitan v Y Fflint.

And what an exciting match that was! The two teams are low down in the table but they both play exciting, attacking football, and the game lived up to expectations. For about 80 or so minutes, the two teams slugged it out toe to toe with the game roaring from one end to the other.

The final ten minutes were something else entirely, and the game finished with one of the most astonishing goals that I have seen for a long, long time. EDRYCHWCH A MWYNHEUWCH – “watch and enjoy”, as the commentator said.

The nurse came at his usual time, and didn’t stay long. He was soon in and out and off on his travels again. I could then take my medication and make breakfast. With it being a Sunday, I had a very slow, relaxing morning.

Back in here again, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise, there actually were some. There was a problem with one of the Ford Transits that I had. It had to be moved so I towed it all the way from France back to the UK. I reached about two miles from my home before I started to have a few problems. I was quite annoyed about that, being so close.

There is a story behind this kind of dream too, but the world isn’t ready to hear it.

But earlier, there had been something to do with ships etc on the Great Lakes where I’d been weighed. I had four kilos to lose but again, they had to cut short the session. That left the ship in the Lakes top-heavy and in the first storm afterwards, it turned over and sank. That was another piece of work that needs to be doing that I didn’t have the time or the energy to face.

This dream seems to include a little piece of everything, including THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

Later on, I’d been working away somewhere and my desk, as usual, was a total mess, my office was a total mess. The boss one day came in and she decided that she was going to help me organise everything. She asked me where I intended to put the spare battery for the car. I told her that I could put it in the bottom of the big black cupboard. Instead, she found a place at the side where there was a plug to plug in the charger. She was coming up with suggestions like that. Then it was time to go home. I filled up my suitcase with all kinds of rubbish that I didn’t particularly want her to see while she was tidying up, including three spare batteries for the cars. I set out, and I had my mother with me. When we came to near where we lived, she wanted to walk the rest of the way so we climbed out of the car but she couldn’t find her shoes. Eventually, when she did, the soles were wafer-thin, which hurt her to walk on the asphalt. We continued on down to my house, pulling my huge suitcase with me. When we reached the house, we could hear the taxi office working, but there was music coming from somewhere else in the house. The first thing that we did was to go in. We were met by someone working the radio. The house was, as usual, in a total tip. They were saying that they hadn’t been very busy at all while we’d been away. This was just how things were as usual while we hadn’t been there.

Everywhere I go seems to finish in total chaos and disorder. Someone once paid good money for a birth chart for me, and this was mentioned quite firmly. However, it went on to say "but that probably disturbs the people around you far more than it does you."

Having finished that, we had more football. There were the highlights of the other games in Wales over the weekend, and then there was Stranraer in the Scottish Cup against non-league Glenafton Athletic.

Stranraer ran out in what would appear to be a comfortable 4-0 victory, but a more experienced professional side would have capitalised on several of the errors made by the Stranraer back line during the match.

In the afternoon, I attacked the rest of the Welsh homework, which is now finished. And then I went a-baking.

Not only do I now have a lovely loaf of bread and a wonderful pizza (well, I don’t now, because I’ve eaten it), I have some croissants.

With visitors being here in two weeks time, I need to think about breakfasts, and so in my delivery from Leclerc I ordered a roll of vegan puff pastry and had a go at making croissants.

They were not very successful, but it was “encouraging”. At least, I know how to improve them.

While I was at it, I was looking up recipes for aquafaba – the juice out of a tin of chick peas. It’s an acceptable egg substitute so I’ve been trying to find something interesting to do with the aquafaba that came out of last week’s chick peas.

If anyone has any useful suggestions, let me know. I’ve found a recipe for meringues but I shall pass on that for now.

So having eaten my pizza, and hours later than usual, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow (I don’t think).

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about aquafaba … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what’s made of egg-whites and sugar, and when you throw it away, it comes back to scare you?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "What is made of egg-whites and sugar, and when you throw it away, it comes back to scare you?"
"A booh-meringue."

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… I actually managed to have a lie in. And I really needed it too.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night last night either. After finishing off everything that I need to finish, and sorting myself out in the bathroom, it was just before 23:00 when I crawled into bed under the covers, and went to sleep quite quickly.

During the night, I awoke just once – at about 04:10. And although I did think for a moment about leaving the bed, I turned over instead and went straight back to sleep.

It was 06:20 when I awoke next. And had this been a weekday, I would have been straight out of bed. However, it’s a Sunday when there’s a lie-in until 07:59 so I curled back up under the quilt. I tried to go back to sleep but without any luck. Nevertheless, I stuck it out until about 07:10, when I finally abandoned the effort and left the bed.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hospital somewhere where there were a great many sick patients for all kinds of reasons. One of the things that this hospital did was to give abortions. There was one of the doctors who was violently opposed to the idea of abortions, and he and his wife made themselves extremely unpleasant on the subject. They had to be diverted away from the other services. There was an issue with the woman, something to do with packing a baby away. They were in the middle of doing this when suddenly they announced that one of the baby’s left hand had disappeared and there was a feeling that it had its arm wrapped around its neck. They had to stop the procedure and examine it. However, this doctor was quite angry, violently so, against some kind of situation that was taking place between the hospital and his wife of this affair. I had to go along and check on something, and it was not a situation that I liked very much. He and this other woman were sitting there discussing this case, and I was trying to work in this room in the background, but it was not very encouraging. I wasn’t really able to complete what I was supposed to do while he was there. He was running back and to, doing things in connection with this issue, and I couldn’t really have some kind of minute to myself to do what I needed. I had a feeling that I was going to be discovered any minute now, and this was going to lead to an extremely violent confrontation.

As if there’s any chance of me working in a hospital. The story about the baby refers to the daughter of a friend of mine in Florida whose mother had a very uncomfortable birth with her. The doctor referred to seems to resemble someone whom I knew in Crewe fifty years ago. He wasn’t a doctor and he had no opinion on abortion, but the rest of his character and personality fits.

We were then having a little get-together in Gainsborough Road. I’d invited a friend of mine round, and she came because her husband was working on nights and he had gone to bed. We were there having a chat, and the woman from next door was here. As we had a close look at the houses, we saw that next door’s house had a cellar, or seemed to have a cellar – there was a small window underneath the living room window whereas mine didn’t. This was probably accounted for by the slope of the land. We were intrigued by this and had a discussion. In the end, we asked the lady next door “how do you go into the cellar?”. She couldn’t remember, but she said that she had been in there once. She thinks that she remembers that you collapse the side of something and open a window. From outside, she shone a torch in through the cellar window, saying “I wonder what’s happening here now?”.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. But there is no cellar at the next-door house in Gainsborough Road and as far as I am aware, there are no cellars anywhere in the vicinity.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and breezed out again shortly afterwards. It didn’t take her long to sort me out, and she gave me my instructions – or, should I say “orders” – for the dialysis clinic tomorrow. I have to make sure at all costs that they examine me.

After breakfast, I came back in here and spent the morning catching up on the football highlights, including Stranraer’s monumental morale-boosting win against Edinburgh City. And not just a scrappy win either but a resounding 3-1 win away from home.

After the disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I had work to do. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain the shipping beacon for the port. It’s mounted in my apartment with the antenna on the shutters. Its purpose is to detect the shipping identification transmissions from the equipment on board the ships moored here and transmit them to a central control in Denmark.

A few weeks ago, the beacon ceased to function, and closer examination revealed that the beacon was of an obsolete type that should be replaced. They had sent a new one during the week so this afternoon, I assembled and installed it. It now seems to be working fine.

While I was doing that , I was chatting with several friends on line It’s nice to interact with people like that, although of course it’s not as nice as to chat face-to-face.

There was bread to make and a pizza to make too. The bread didn’t rise as high as usual, which is a disappointment, but the pizza was excellent once more. I was really impressed with that.

But now I’m off to bed, early enough, to prepare for my busy week next week.

But seeing as we have been talking about babies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a guy coming out of the chemist’s with a baby under each arm.
"Where are you going with those?" I asked him.
"Back to the factory" he replied.
"The factory?" I queried.
"Yes" he replied. "I’m the local Durex representative and these are two complaints that I’m taking back with me."

Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But then what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you are wide awake again at 01:30, you don’t really have time to go very far.

As you might expect, it was a horrible night last night – one of the worst that I have ever had. Having noted how much better I was feeling over the last couple of evenings, last night saw the collapse and I was back to where I had been earlier last week, struggling desperately (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to stay awake.

It was definitely one of those nights where I could have done with being in bed much earlier but as usual, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the time simply drifted away to nothing.

Once in bed though, I don’t even remember being awake for a minute. I was out like a light, only to be awoken a couple of hours later by a dreadful attack of cramp in my thighs, an awful cough and a powerful urge to vomit. These sensations kept on coming and going, making things most uncomfortable for me and the pain and inconvenience was such that I abandoned all hope of going back to sleep.

For the last couple of nights, I’d been awake quite early but had gone back to sleep again without very much effort. But I tried – oh, how I tried – this morning and nothing would seem to work … "he was very trying" – ed … . So round about 05:30 I gave up the ghost and left the bed.

After a good wash, I went for the medication, and it was a very leisurely medication too. I wasn’t in any rush at all this morning, what with feeling as ill as I was. In fact, it was quite a struggle to keep the medication down.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, I started my little footfest.

First match up was at the top of the JD Cymru League – TNS, who are leading, against Penybont who are second. It should have had all the air of being an exciting game, but quite frankly, Penybont were abysmal. The TNS attackers were going through the static Penybont defence like a knife through hot butter and the final score – 6-2 to TNS – didn’t do TNS any justice.

If Penybont are serious about mounting a challenge for the title, they are going to have to organise themselves much better and play much better than this.

In the middle of all of this, the nurse turned up. He sorted out my feet and then helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education gave me. But he didn’t really have much of an idea how to fit them, and neither did I, so after he left, I removed them.

After breakfast, which I really didn’t feel like eating, I came back in here to watch the highlights of the rest of the games, not that there was anything of interest to report.

All of this was followed by Stranraer v Queen of the South in the Scottish League Cup, and Stranraer ground out a very respectable draw against a team that is comfortably in mid-table in the league above.

What was interesting ABOUT THIS GAME was that we had another one of these exciting “let’s play it out from the back” moments that so entertain the crowd.

This afternoon, I’ve had a whole raft of exciting things to do, such as to sort out my tax affairs which are proving to be more complicated than I could ever imagine.

There was my Welsh homework to do too, and that’s almost finished. Half an hour on that tomorrow will see it ready to go off.

The printer needed a good overhaul too, as some of the stuff that I’ve been printing just recently isn’t as it is supposed to be. In the end, I changed a couple of ink cartridges and it seems to be working a little better, although the Magenta is still being troublesome.

And that reminds me – I need to order some more ink cartridges.

This afternoon was beautiful and sunny, so seeing as I didn’t have my shower last week and I shan’t be having one for a couple of weeks with all of these medical appointments, my faithful cleaner came down and helped me organise the shower. At least, now I smell nice and sweet for Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow, although how long it will last, I really have no idea.

There was bread to make, and pizza to make too. I really didn’t feel like doing anything, but it has to be done. I was in total agony while I was making it, but I forced myself to carry on, and in the end I managed to produce an excellent loaf and an excellent pizza.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me for a chat. She’s had her car serviced just recently and she didn’t understand a few things on the bill.

It wasn’t one of our usual chats though – my voice was giving out and in the end, I had to terminate the chat as I couldn’t keep on going.

Throughout the whole of the day, I could feel myself becoming worse and worse. By teatime, I was feeling totally dreadful. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as bad as I was feeling just then. In fact, halfway through my pizza, I just couldn’t go on any longer.

The pizza was abandoned on the table. And even though I hate waking up to dirty dishes all over the kitchen, so was the washing-up. I came back into the bedroom and simply climbed into bed, probably the best decision I had ever made.

But seeing as we have been talking about the difficulties in going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed …, apparently one of the best ways to fall asleep is to try counting sheep.
I asked one of my friends if this were true.
He replied "I’m not sure. I tried it the other night, starting off with one sheep. By the time that I had to leave the bed to go to work, I had ten thousand sheep, a huge farm in Australia and I was busy constructing a meat-packing factory"

Sunday 5th October 2025 – THIS BLASTED STORM …

… has only just died down.

It was hard at it again during the night, rattling and shaking just about everything that wasn’t tied down (and some things that were too) with an intensity even more powerful than yesterday.

The list of damages is going to be quite a long one by the time that it finally blows itself out, whenever that might be.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night, I was hoping for a decent night’s sleep to make up for Friday night’s lost sleep, but it wasn’t to be. I was in bed just before 23:00, which is something to celebrate these days, I suppose, and I was asleep quite quickly. But that’s about as good as it ever was.

Several times during the night, I was awoken by an extremely savage gust of wind. However, the one that awoke me round about 05:15 while I was presumably OUT OF MY BRAIN ON THE TRAIN was definitely impressive. There was no chance whatever of going back to sleep after that.

Although I did try, round about 05:45 I abandoned the attempt and went to the bathroom, and then off for the medication.

Back in here afterwards, my footfest began. And what on earth has happened to Caernarfon? Leading the league and looking unbeatable just a couple of weeks ago, defeats at home to Penybont (when the whole team looked totally disinterested) and next-to-bottom Cardiff Metropolitan, today they played with that fighting spirit for the first twenty minutes and then went back to sleep.

Colwyn Bay scored a simple goal that should have been defended, and threatened on several more occasions, especially after Caernarfon were reduced to ten men after thirty-five minutes. The Cofis didn’t awaken until about ten minutes before the end, by which time it was far too late to do anything at all.

This should have been Caernarfon’s season, but somehow they seem to have come totally off the rails this last few weeks.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with Storm Amy, sorted out my feet and legs, and then blew out again. She didn’t hang around for long. I made breakfast and carried on reading BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Once more, the British are retreating from some more good positions, and the American army is far too slow to follow up. The tactics of the British are totally bewildering. They win a few battles, capture a couple of towns, and then retreat.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you aren’t going to win a war unless you can bring the enemy’s army to battle and soundly defeat it. And the best way to bring them to battle is to occupy more and more of their territory until they are cornered, not to keep on retreating.

But the fact is that the British Parliament won’t send reinforcements. It seems that back at home, the politicians are no longer committed to the war and they were leaving Cornwallis to do whatever he could with whatever he had. And that’s a situation that’s not going to last too long.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, I was in a hospital bed. The poor patient in the bed on the left of mine was having a really, really difficult time and the nurses were around there all the time looking after him. But next morning when it came down to the ward inspection, the matron asked me about the spare bedding and implied that my bed had been changed only the previous day. As far as I was aware, I knew nothing about the spare bedding at all. After she left, a few minutes later, a couple of the nurses came down carrying some planks. They put them on the framework at the side of the beds so that they were over the top of our heads. Then they came back with a pile of sheets and blankets and pillow cases etc and began to distribute them out, putting them on the shelves above our heads (…fell asleep here …) so they were spreading out these sheets and pillow cases, blankets etc and putting them on the planks that they had erected over our heads, so that there was spare bedding at every bed in this particular ward.

These days, I spend a lot of time in a hospital bed, and I’ve seen them bring the clean bedding into the ward in some kind of trolley. It’s certainly not stacked up over our heads.

But when I say (…fell asleep here …) – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am actually asleep while I’m dictating, but what I mean here is that suddenly, I stop speaking and you can hear the sound of heavy breathing. Sometimes you can even hear my snoring and I’m sorry, Percy Penguin, for doubting you.

Later on, there was something about a foreign tourist who came over to Europe in the 18th Century or something like that. He had an accommodation of £100 at a local bank which of course he began to spend. But it wasn’t until the end of his journey and he was preparing to return to the UK that he realised, or someone else realised for him, that he hadn’t actually paid for his return journey and that would have to be paid out of his accommodation of £100, which he no longer had. And so he began to have a panic about this. But at that point a large gust of wind awoke me and we didn’t reach any further than that.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to find out how that dream continued? But that gust of wind just then was, as I said earlier, something completely special. No-one could sleep after that.

Once I’d finished, I carried on with my footfest. There were the highlights of the other matches in the JD Cymru League and then Stranraer v Annan Athletic in a local derby.

That latter match was quite interesting because, being played almost on the seashore, the storm was playing havoc with the ball and I’m surprised that the referee allowed it to continue. It was a game of two halves, with the team playing with the wind having all the advantages. Annan however made the most of it and ran out 1-0 winners in a match that should never have been played.

After a disgusting drink break, I carried on with the reorganisation of the computer hard drive that I changed the other day. It’s turning out to be much more complicated than it ought to be, considering that it was only removed in March this year. I’m sure that I didn’t do all that much organisation of the replacement hard drive.

Later on, I knocked off and went to make the bread and the pizza. The bread is excellent and the pizza is, once more, a candidate for the best ever that I have made. I love my new oven and the new water measuring gauge. They are contributing a great deal to the success.

So right now, I’m off to bed. The storm has subsided and if it continues like this, I might be able to sleep at last. I crashed out for fifteen minutes earlier, which is no surprise, but I can’t keep on going like that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about people going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was discussing death with someone not so long ago.
She told me "when I die, I want to die in my sleep, just like my grandfather"
"I must admit" I replied "that’s a lovely way to die"
"Ohh yes" she answered. "Much better than screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."

Sunday 28th September 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless going to bed and going to sleep early, because all it means is that you awaken correspondingly early too.

So, having dashed all the way through my notes and all of everything else that I needed to do, I crawled into bed just before 22:30 – some kind of record these days – thinking to myself how glad I was to be in bed at something like an early night, with the prospect of a nice lie-in until 07:59 awaiting me.

And there I was, after my nice, long sleep, wide awake at … errr … 04:11, trying desperately to go back to sleep and failing miserably.

Round about 05:00, I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed. And for the first time this year, I put on a dressing gown because it was definitely colder than I would like it to be.

Today, we have had a footfest. Well, actually yesterday, because yesterday evening there was a live televised match Y FFLINT V LLANSAWEL in the JD Cymru Premier League. However, as I had missed the first hour or so of the game, I had deliberately kept away from anywhere where the score might have been displayed, and waited until this morning so that I could see all of it non-stop.

There have been many, many more skilful matches than this that we have seen, but this match was by far and away the most exciting that I have seen for a long, long time. It ranged from end to end at 100 mph and the entertainment was a credit to the league.

Whether or not there are any football fans reading these pages, I really don’t know, but if you have a couple of hours to spare, have a look at the game. The link is a few lines higher up.

At the final whistle I went for a wash and then for the medication, and finally came back in here to listen to the dictaphone while I awaited the nurse. In the vicinity of where this second battle was taking place, some British troops had installed themselves on the high ground nearby so that they could shoot the battlefield and keep a fire of stready maleiks or mareiks or something onto the dug-in soldiers. They did this as best as they could and managed to advance almost two hundred metres, and were then sent to bomb the English positions so they gored over a late attempt to cross by Proncis Richards take of work, although she’d long-since retired and seeing if they couldn’t between them manage to push this guy Simpson out of the post that he’s occupying.

What happened to the first part of this? It sounds as if it might have been really interesting, even if it did descend into a pile of utter gibberish towards the end. And what is a stready maleiks or mareiks or whatever?

We were back in North America last night. The Americans had dug themselves in somewhere and the British were on the point of advancing towards them. The British notes were quite unclear about this but they must have set out, for bloodstains along the way indicated that they had had little battles and skirmishes. The Native Americans were interested in what was happening but were remaining neutral. The results of this advance were that the American positions fell to the British. But there was no account of the battle or anything ever prepared by anyone.

This dream and the previous one must relate to Colonel Carrington’s BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION that I have been reading recently, when the British tried without success between 1776 and 1783 to suppress the colonial revolution.

Nerina and I had been living apart. I’d come back to Crewe to find a whole pile of stuff, old furniture and things like that, put on my driveway around the back of the house. I asked Nerina if she knew of anyone who would come along and remove it – she knew people who had a van – but no-one heard at all. I never heard anything from her. I was walking around the town late at night, wondering what to do. There were crowds of people drifting around, and I remembered that there was a nightclub on the corner of Market Street and Victoria Street where I could make a ‘phone call. I passed through these crowds of people going home, but when I arrived at the nightclub, it was far too noisy and far too loud to make any kind of ‘phone call. As I walked in, I met a friend of mine carrying a double-bass. He was dressed in a red velvet jacket. We began to talk, and asked him how he was, what he was doing. I told him that I was living in France, which he knew. He said that it had been the talk of all the clubs after I left. We carried on chatting and he introduced me to his friends. We had a chat, and I asked them if they knew anyone. They replied that with the sheerest bad luck, they were supposed to be meeting someone that evening who had a van but he hasn’t turned up. I persuaded them that if they could think of anyone, to send them round to my house. I prepared to leave but they offered to give me a lift. Parked outside across the road were several coaches, some with foreign number plates. They had a van out there. When we arrived at the van, there was a pile of rubbish in the back of it. It was a pick-up. Someone set light to the rubbish, and the woman of this group thought that this was a dangerous thing and she wanted to unload it and let it burn off the back of the van. When the lorry behind moved, she began to think of how she was going to do it, but it was well-ablaze by now. Someone reminded her that every community was obliged by law to appoint a fire warden. She replied that she was the one for this community. Someone thought “wouldn’t it be a good idea to write spoof orders and spoof instructions for spoof fire wardens in spoof villages, and publish it in all of the local papers?”. She wasn’t too happy but everyone else thought that it was a good idea.

The guy in the dream is – or was – actually a drummer and used to play in a cabaret band whose van and equipment I drove around from gig to gig in 1974 and 1975 after I left my job in Chester. And another dream about things burning? It’s becoming a habit. It must have some significance somewhere.

And the “nightclub” in question is the former Burton’s menswear shop, on two floors, that is currently up for sale. Its corner situation would make it an ideal spot for a café, bar, and games venue and I’ve often pondered about what I could do with a place like that.

Finally, in the back of my van was a whole pile of furniture equipment moving stuff and a whole pile of things that had accumulated over the years. I wanted to dispose of it but no-one would come along and lend me a hand. The van’s controle technique had expired and I couldn’t drive it, so I came back from Europe after four years to try to organise something. I couldn’t even find the van so I began to hunt around. Nerina was with me but she was living somewhere else – she’d just popped by. In the end, we went upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and in the bedroom at the rear of the house, there was the van. I thought “what on earth was it doing in the bedroom? How did I bring it up here?”. It was buried in the hedge in the bedroom. I had a look around it, found the keys, unlocked the back door, and the whole of this furniture stuff was in there. One thing that I noticed was that the light came on, so I went round to the cab, put the key in and turned it, and it started. I thought “that’s not bad for four years being away”. I worked out that I must have brought it up into the bedroom by winching it up on a couple of planks, making a kind of ramp, so I need to find those planks and then I could winch it back down to the street again. Once it was down on the street again, then never mind the controle technique, never mind anything, I would nip out one night down a really dark road that I knew and just drop everything off because I was beyond now thinking of any kind of reasonable or logical way and with no controle technique on the van, I couldn’t go anywhere in daylight where there was a waste recycling centre open

Can you imagine it? Winching a van up to the first floor bedroom on a couple of planks, and losing it in the hedge inside the room. But it’s true that there are many things that I’m having to consider and having to think about winding up as my health deteriorates from day to day.

There are also many things that will have to be wound up by other people as there are simply not enough hours in the day to deal with them. It will be an extremely sad and emotional moment, but at least I won’t be around to witness it.

The nurse finally turned up at 09:45 this morning, ninety minutes or so late. He’d been to another client and had no answer at the door when he knocked. However, he could hear noises from inside so, not knowing what to expect, he called the emergency services. When they arrived, they broke down the door and found the client on the floor, where, apparently, he had fallen yesterday and was unable to stand up. The nurse had to reanimate him and then he … "the client, not the nurse" – ed … was rushed off to hospital.

That, by the way, is the reason why I’m here in Granville. In the Auvergne, one is totally isolated if anything goes wrong. An old English guy with whom I was very friendly had a fall down his stairs and lay there at the foot for five days in temperatures of minus 10°C until someone found him.

He was still alive, but he didn’t survive long. And that was the fate that awaited me if I were to have a health issue.

After breakfast and more of my book, I came back in here for part II of my footfest – Stranraer away at Dumbarton.

Stranraer are having a wretched season so far and up at The Rock in the driving rain, things weren’t looking much better. A penalty had put them in the lead, but Dumbarton had equalised shortly after. However, a wonder goal in stoppage time from James Dolan gave Stranraer their first win of the season.

During the week, Stranraer had played against the Motherwell junior team and those highlights were online too, so I watched that game. How nice it was to watch Stranraer amble on to a comfortable 3-0 win for once.

While I was at it, I picked up a few other matches from Saturday, and it made a nice morning’s relaxation.

After the disgusting drink break, I spent some time working on my Welsh and then went to make the dough for the pizza and for the loaf.

The pizza was perfection itself – absolutely wonderful – and having read the instructions closely and adhered to them, the bread turned out to be marvellous too and it even looks like a proper loaf.

So now, I’m off to bed, trying … "in vain" – ed … to catch up with my beauty sleep ready for dialysis tomorrow.

And seeing as we have been talking about difficulty sleeping … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not like the hill farmer in Cumbria being interrogated by someone from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
"And how many sheep do you have?"
"I’ve no idea" replied the farmer
"My goodness!" exclaimed the official. "Don’t you ever count them?"
"I try" replied the farmer "but I get just so far and then I fall asleep."

Sunday 21st September 2025 – ONE OF MY …

… WEB PAGES is going berserk right now with hits, and the hit counter is rolling off the page through sheer weight of numbers.

The tiny little village of St Paul’s River, or Rivière St Paul, on the Forgotten Coast of Québec close to the border with Labrador has become famous overnight. It seems that a consortium of fourteen residents of that tiny place have won the latest round of Canada’s national lottery, a prize of no less than $50,000,00 or, as the Canadian national newspapers have to explain to their intellectually-challenged audience, about $3.4 million each.

When I say “the Forgotten Coast”, I really do mean the “Forgotten Coast”. Totally isolated from the rest of Québec, pretty much ignored by the Province and with its only road connection being east into Labrador. There is so little known or written about the place, and as I seem to be the only person on the whole of the planet who has ever researched and written about it, everyone seems to be coming to me and my web page for newsworthy snippets.

Not that I mind, of course. Everyone should be entitled to his five minutes of fame, especially me. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed.

But thinking about it – which I always do, of course – if I live for another year or so, I will have more than five minutes of fame. I was told right at the start of this illness that no-one had ever survived more than eleven years with it. I was diagnosed in November 2015 and in principle, based on the Law of Averages, I should have been pushing up the daisies, or “eating the dandelions by the roots” as they say around here, a long time ago.

In fact, when I was ejected from the hospital in Leuven after eighteen months and told to find somewhere civilised to live, I asked the professor if I should buy myself a nice little apartment somewhere.

"You won’t have your money’s worth from it" the professor told me brutally. But here we are.

Mind you, we won’t be here much longer if things carry on like last night.

Once more, I sprinted right the way through all of my chores and ended up nicely tucked up in bed by 22:30. And how I wish that I could do that every night.

The next bit isn’t so clever, though. And that is that at 02:30, I was wide-awake. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep so eventually, round about 04:15, I left the bed.

Yesterday evening, I’d missed the live Caernarfon v Penybont game so I found the link to the game and sat back to watch it.

It’s really difficult playing football in a tropical monsoon, especially when it’s accompanied by a hurricane, and I could tell after five minutes that most of the Caernarfon team was wishing that it was somewhere else than on a football field. They really did seem quite disinterested.

After about 75 minutes, they totally fell apart and Penybont were striding through the Cofis’ defence with monotonous regularity. They scored two quick goals and could easily have three or four more.

Caernarfon pulled one back late in the game when Adam Davies latched on to an underhit backpass, and even had the ball in the net a second time in stoppage time, only for it to be controversially ruled out for offside.

Seriously though, I was convinced that the referee was refereeing a totally different game to the one that we were all watching.

After the final whistle, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I had this desire to turn round in bed but try as I might, I just wasn’t able to move. I kept on trying to think how I could bring everything that I wanted down towards where I was, which was in bed with some trees that had been planted to celebrate some kind of victory growing all around me if I was unable to change my position. It wasn’t until I awoke at 02:11 that I was able to move into a different position.

Reading this back, I have no idea whether or not it was true because I have no recollection of any of this. I’ve certainly no idea why trees should be growing all round my bed, planted to celebrate a victory.

Isabelle the Nurse was next to interrupt my train of thought. She was grateful for the prescription that I had obtained for her, and so was I because, without it, she couldn’t give me my injections. We had a friendly chat as she dealt with my legs, and then she disappeared off on her rounds.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

We’re not discussing the American invasion of Québec which Colonel Carrington, our author, describes as strategically correct but with enough tactical and logistics shortcomings to short-circuit the entire procedure. And I do have to say that I agree with him in this respect.

It was a slow start to the day. I was a couple of hours in the living room doing not very much at all, and then I came back in here for a footfest of highlights, including Stranraer gaining only the second point of the season.

But what a flukey equaliser the Elgin City goal was. I reckon that Kane Hester will TRY THAT SHOT a thousand times over the next ten years and not put the ball anywhere near the goal, never mind in it.

After the usual disgusting drink break, I came in here and began to work on the next radio programme, being interrupted by my visitor for tomorrow asking me to confirm my address.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off and went to make a loaf of bread for next week and some pizza dough for this evening. I was however interrupted by Rosemary, who ‘phoned me to say that she was back home after her mega-adventures in Italy.

She told me quite a bit about her holiday, but it was only a short ‘phone call today, just one hour and five minutes. Not up to our usual standard at all.

While I was at it, seeing as I had some vegan pie filling in the freezer, I baked a vegan pie for my guests for tea tomorrow. They have to eat, after all. For Tuesday night, I might ask my faithful cleaner to find a small aubergine and then I can cook one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits.

Tonight’s pizza was totally delicious, another candidate for one of the best that I have ever made. And now, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow, I don’t think.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the football highlights … "well, one of us has" – ed … a footballer from one of the games was injured and carried off the field.
They took him to hospital and while he was sitting there in the Accident Department, the registrar came over to check him in.
"And why have you come to the Accident Department?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" he replied
"What do you mean?" she asked
"One of the other team kicked me on the knee" he explained. "But it wasn’t an accident. He did it on purpose."

Sunday 14th September 2025 – THERE ISN’T MUCH …

… at all on the dictaphone from last night, unfortunately. But then, that’s hardly a surprise. If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 but then are wide-awake again at 03:15, you don’t have all that much time to go very far.

Yes, it wasn’t as early as I was hoping last night, once again. And that was despite making an effort, for once. But as usual, I was one of the ones who fell by the wayside.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly but, as I said earlier, not for long. By 03:15 I was wide awake again and, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep, despite trying my very best.

Round about 04:30, I threw off the covers, but it took me another good fifteen minutes to find the energy to rise to my feet.

After a good wash and scrub up, I went to take my medicine and then I came back here to listen to the dictaphone, which didn’t take long as I said earlier. I was back having a dream that I had a few nights ago where I had some kind of robot that was going to act as my servant. I had to train it to listen to my voice and understand it, and also I had to program it so that it would do what I wanted and do it efficiently. It’s quite similar to one that I had a few days ago.

That was what I dictated, but now that I’m awake, I really can’t recall any such dream in the past. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were dreams that I’ve had that, for some reason or other, I haven’t recorded. That wouldn’t be a great problem, except if they were to concern TOTGA, Zero or Castor, and then I really would be annoyed.

For the past few days, I’d been wishing for an early start so that I could dictate the radio notes that have been building up. No time like the present, seeing as it was quiet outside and the wind had died down, so I set to work.

As it happened, I was glad that I had plenty of time to dictate them, because for some reason, a whole pile of notes had been missed off the front of one of the ones that I had dictated, as I found out when I checked, and I had to re-dictate those notes.

Uploading them to the computer seems to take a lot longer than it should, and I hadn’t quite finished when the nurse arrived. It really had taken me much longer than I had thought.

He was in his usual good humour, which is nice these days, much better than he was before he went on holiday the other week, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I hope that he keeps on going. It’s his last day tomorrow, I believe, and then Isabelle the Nurse will be back for her week’s duty.

Round about this time, I had a message on the ‘phone from the taxi company – "confirming your pick-up for Rennes on Wednesday at 07:00.". Seeing as it’s no more than 90 minutes to Rennes and my appointment is at 09:00 it looks as if I’ll be sharing a taxi with someone who has an earlier appointment.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. Because I’m a terminally-ill patient, these trips in taxis to my medical appointments cost me nothing at all, something that I wouldn’t have anywhere else in any other country, so I’ve no right to complain.

Once the nurse left, I made my breakfast and read some more of Carrington’s BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

We’ve passed through many interesting battles, some through which I travelled and visited on my trips around Upstate New York, and we’re now coming up to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the event that effectively sealed the fate of the British in what was to become the United States of America.

Back in here, I had a very leisurely ramble through the radio notes and edited them. One of the radio programmes is completed ready for broadcast – except that there’s a glaring error in the text that I shall have to change before it goes out.

As for the second programme, the two halves are prepared, the joining track has been chosen and I’m in the middle of writing the notes for it. It won’t take long to finish, always assuming that I can find the motivation.

In fact, I might have been able to finish it today but my early start caught up with me and I had a little half-hour curled up on my chair. I didn’t begrudge it today either. After all, I can’t be expected to keep going when I’ve had less than four hours sleep.

There was a break to make some bread and a pizza. The bread was magnificent – once I put it in the oven it went up like a lift and it looks really good. The pizza was excellent too, as usual.

And so I do have to say that this new oven really is the business, and I wish that I’d had one like it a long time ago. It would have made things so much easier when I’d been baking, and it might even have helped with my sourdough experiments, which were a dismal failure in the tabletop oven upstairs.

So right now, totally exhausted after my long day, I’m off to bed. Dialysis Monday, Chemotherapy Tuesday and Wednesday, dialysis Thursday. I’m just going round and round from one medical appointment to the other, so there’s not a great deal to which I can look forward these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about loaves of bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … the other day the local priest walking to church saw one of his parishioners walking towards him, one hand nonchalantly in his pocket and the other clutching a baguette.
"Ahhh " said the priest "Luke Chapter 11 Verse 3 – I see you have the staff of life in your hand. What do you have in your other hand?"
"Why, a baguette, my Father."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: home made bread

Saturday 17th January 2025 – HERE WE GO …

Sunday 11th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

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Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

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Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

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Sunday 26th October 2025 – HAS ANYONE ELSE …

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Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

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Sunday 21st September 2025 – ONE OF MY …

Sunday 14th September 2025 – THERE ISN’T MUCH …

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