Tag Archives: home made bread

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."

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… drama, I suppose that I had better take a calmer look at things. We can’t do with having that kind of emotion day after day.

So last night, in the middle of what can be best described as “a bilious attack”, I left the desk and fell into bed. It was all of 22:10 as well, and you don’t have a finish much earlier than that every day of the week.

Once in bed, I was out like a light. I really was exhausted, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that too.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I really thought about going back to sleep. However, one glance at the time persuaded me to stay in bed. It was 01:24 and, much as I like to be an early riser, that kind of thing is ridiculous.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep again because I remember awakening a couple of times during the night. However, at 06:26 exactly (my body clock is working really well these days) I awoke again, and at that point I decided to leave the bed, even though it’s Sunday and I’m entitled to stay in bed until 07:59 or thereabouts.

Saying that I would be leaving the bed is one thing. Actually leaving it for real is something completely different and it was a real struggle into the bathroom. I decided against having a wash as I really wasn’t in the mood, but everything else that I needed to do took quite some considerable time.

So did the medication this morning, and then I had the disagreeable task of doing last night’s washing up. One thing that I really detest is waking in the morning to find a heap of dirty crockery awaiting me but I really was in no kind of state last night.

After all of that, I was hardly back in here when the nurse arrived. He sorted out my legs, did his accounts and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is laying the ground … "groan" – ed … for a chapter on the Roman surveying of Middlesex. I’m really looking forward to that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we discussed Roman surveying or urban areas during one of my University modules, and I even built some Roman surveying equipment such as a GROMA.

Back in here later, there were the dictaphone notes to review. Back in the 18th Century there was a Native American raid on a village somewhere in North America. The residents succeeded in fighting off the invasion and killed several of the Native Americans. There was bound to be some kind of enquiry about it, and the settlers were concerned about what would actually come out in this, so the organised a collection of all of the arms that were in the possession of people. The aim was to try to find somewhere to hide them until the investigation was over. My plan was to put them in a coffin and bury it in the churchyard with the victims of the incident, then it could be dug up when the enquiry is over. However, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant about that idea.

Attacks by the Native Americans on settler communities on the frontier were commonplace in the 18th Century and there were terrible stories of atrocities – on both sides, it has to be said. But the burial of firearms in a coffin in the graveyard relates to an actual event in a village in north-east France just before the arrival of the Germans during their rapid advance of summer 1914.

Did I dictate the dream about me being with the old Ford Escort estate … "no you didn’t" – ed … My friend from Munich was there and he had borrowed it for a couple of days. He had taken my collection of small solar panels and installed them on the vehicle while he was borrowing it. When I went back to pick it up, he’d taken the panels off. I asked him how it went, and he replied that it was extremely good because he’s had a figure of 35 Kilowatts of electricity generated while he’d been borrowing the vehicle. I asked him where he’d installed them, and he pointed to the kind-of ladder rack on the back. He said that he had put them on there and they seemed to work fine. I had the panels and I had another attempt at installing them on there. It was complicated because the mounting blocks that I’d designed for it were fouling the nuts that held the ladder rack on. We had to be very careful about how we fitted everything. I thought in the end that rather than use a rubber sheet underneath the panels, I’d mount them on a sheet of wood or something that would be covered in the rubber sheet. That way, it would be much more solid and the mounting blocks would work better. We were there for quite a while, trying to fit these solar panels back on. He said that in the meantime, I’d lost two more of my volunteer drivers for this scheme. He said that Old man Sinclair was one. I said that I’d never really expected him to take part in it anyway. I said that I suspected that the other one would have been that little Jackie. he agreed that it was she who was the second, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed by those two because I didn’t think that it was likely that they’d take part.

It was the old Escort van that had the ladder rack, bot the estate that I had when I was with Laurence and Roxanne. And of course, the solar panels are on the roof of the Transit. But why Jimmy Clitheroe’s grandfather would be involved in this dream, and also “Little Jackie”, a girl whom I knew in Crewe in 1982/3, I really don’t know.

After that, I began the task of writing up last night’s notes and eventually, after quite a long while, I managed to post them on line, so you can all find out about my horrible day yesterday.

And so it was time for a footfest. There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League, and afterwards there were the highlights of Stirling Albion v Stranraer. Stranraer had about 90% of the play and had a hatful of shots at the Stirling goal, but failed to make any of them count. Stirling only had one meaningful shot on goal, so I shall leave you to decide what the final score might have been.

There were bread and pizza to make later on too. The bread is cooked magnificently, and the pizza was one of the best that I have ever made. My new oven is marvellous and I am almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

But right now, I’m going to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I really could do with a week off. But right now, all I want to do is to sleep. I might be feeling better but I’m still dog-tired.

But seeing as we have been talking about how ill I was last night … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that church in Neston where we went once for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
At the entrance to the church was a box marked "For The Sick" and next to it was a note – "This Box Is Restricted To Monetary Donations Only."

Sunday 24th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… evening that was last night. I can’t think of a time when I have been as tired as I was last night. In fact, I can’t remember whether it was three or four times that I fell asleep while I was writing my notes. One thing was sure though, and that was that I fell into bed almost immediately afterwards and that was that.

It wasn’t as if I had done anything special to warrant it last night either. And I’d had a nice, relaxing if painful session at dialysis too. It must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy that I had on Tuesday and Wednesday, I suppose. That does quite a few strange things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Anyway, once in bed, there I stayed. I knew nothing about anything at all until all of … errr … 06:50. And it took twenty minutes for me to raise myself from the Dead. This might sound late to some people, seeing as the alarm is usually set for 06:29, but in fact Sunday is my Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, so it’s still an early start.

First thing was to go to sort myself out in my nice new bathroom, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was one dream about the hospital and the taxis, and dialysis, all of that, but I had rather a rude awakening and the moment that I basically went to grab hold of the dictaphone, the dream evaporated and I could remember nothing whatsoever except a very little of how it began and what was involved in it. It was a huge disappointment when it happens like this.

It’s obviously preying on my mind, all of this, and it’s no surprise. Over the past twelve months or so, I’ve become a slave to the medical service and I can’t see any way out of it, except to go out horizontally. There is no cure in sight, nor is there ever likely to be, and I shall have to just keep on trudging wearily on until I meet the inevitable.

Although I didn’t dictate it, I have a vague memory of being upstairs, looking at the old apartment and how clean and tidy it was, even down to the polished glass in the old oven. And there was someone there saying “you aren’t really dreaming, you know” or “this isn’t a dream, you know” – something like that. There was also a vague recollection of having to go downstairs, and that I’d taken half a dozen steps to the top of the stairs before I realised that I didn’t have my crutches, and I had to send someone to fetch them.

As it happens, I have been specifically banned from entering the apartment upstairs, on pain of suffering the wrath of my faithful cleaner who has done her best to tidy up after me And I am not alone in that interdiction, because a similar ban has been also placed upon the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Interestingly, how many times is that now that I have been dreaming of going somewhere without my crutches? I hope that this is a positive premonition once I start to have my treatment in Rennes. We can but hope.

Eventually, the sleeping beauties on the sofa crawled back to life and I was looking forward to a coffee but the Hound of the Baskervilles had urgent business to which he needed to attend so he dragged his master off outside.

But not before the nurse had taken us unawares yet again. Not quite as early as yesterday, but still early enough. And once more he didn’t hang around.

While I was waiting for everyone to come back, I attended to the erection of the antenna for the maritime data recorder. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain and operate the maritime data recorder for the Port of Granville, a radio transceiver that tracks the movements of the boats and ships in and out of the port and sends them to a Worldwide central control database receiver in Denmark.

When we had all collected in the kitchen, we had a coffee and a chat, and when they went out again, I attended to the assembly of the hi-fi unit. That involved drilling a couple more holes in the rear and the side of the shelf unit so that I could pass the cables through. It didn’t take too long, and we celebrated our success by eating breakfast accompanied by music.

After breakfast, my friend went to empty out the van while I tidied away the tools that I had been using, but we didn’t get very far because the girls turned up. They checked the books to make sure that I hadn’t rearranged them, and then we sat around for a while and had a really good chat as they are going home this afternoon.

Everyone went off later for a late lunch so I came in here to sit down and relax for an hour or so. I needed it.

When my friend came back, having stuck the girls onto the train, I began the baking exercise – a loaf of bread, and a pizza for tea.

Firstly, my new adjustable stool really is the business. Adjusted to the maximum height, sitting down to knead the dough is totally painless. The stool was an excellent purchase.

Secondly, the oven is wicked. Even with the baking time reduced from 55 minutes to 30 minutes, it still burned the top of the bread. It’s now a glorious dark brown instead of the insipid white of the old table-top oven.

As for the pizza, I cooked it for 15 minutes instead of 25 minutes, and even so, it still burned the edge. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

There was a mountain of washing-up to do and that took an age, but now I’m finished. I’ve written my notes and I’m off to bed in a minute. Tomorrow, the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master are leaving, so I’ll be on my own. There are still plenty of things to do, but they will have to be done some other time, and I don’t think that we’ll be able to take the solar panel off the roof of the van, which is a shame.

You can’t win a coconut every time.

But seeing as we have been talking about the new oven and its cooking capabilities … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was thinking that my mother would really be at home with my new oven.
Back many years ago, I remember telling a friend "my mother treats me like a God"
"Why’s that?" he asked.
"Well, every time we came home from school, my mother served me up a burnt offering."

Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the Welsh football club TNS. Created out of what used in the good old days to be Oswestry Town FC, and bankrolled to an enormous degree by its extremely wealthy chairman, in the last ten or so years the club has won just about every trophy or prize the Welsh domestic league can offer.

Some say that it’s a bad thing, that they monopolise the Welsh football system, but as it happens, I’m in two minds. I’ve seen the dramatic improvement in playing standards and in facilities in the Welsh pyramid over that period as other clubs struggle desperately to try to keep pace.

It’s also quite good for the morale when some lesser football team manages to scrape a win against them and their supporters collapse in a delirium of delight.

Last season, TNS became the first ever Welsh domestic club to qualify for the group stages of a European club competition and against all the odds, they managed even to win one of the group games to ensure that they didn’t finish bottom.

However, the success has gone to their heads. With the 5,000,000€ prize money, they have gone out and bought a raft of top-class professionals who really have no place in this league, and they kicked a pile of their journeymen professionals into touch.

Victims of their own hype, they had a dismal pre-season as their new stars struggle to adapt to the physical nature of lower league competition, and having predicted another successful European campaign, they failed embarrassingly to progress beyond the first round of the competitions in which they played.

Today, the JD Cymru League season began, and they were at home to Llansawel, a team that struggled near the bottom all last season and one of the clubs heavily tipped for relegation this season.

And if you want to see how the game progressed, HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS. You don’t need to be a football fan to enjoy them. TNS are in the green and white.

Just two weeks ago, I wrote an article for a football magazine in which I said "having seen TNS’s performances to date, it’s a certainty that several optimistic managers will be searching desperately for some rapid wingers to exploit the cracks over the top and round the sides of the TNS defence". In this game, you have a perfect example of a manager doing just that – and doing it in spades too. THE KEYSTONE COPS have nothing on the TNS defence.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night was another … well … not exactly “early” night, but I was in bed by 23:00, having once more dashed through everything at another uncomfortable rate of knots.

It goes without saying that I awoke quite early – at about 04:10 this morning. But this tile I was determined to go back to sleep and to my surprise, I actually succeeded, only to awaken at 06:29 precisely.

That’s the time that the alarm is set to sound on six days of the week. Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm is set for 07:59 so in theory I could have tried to go back to sleep yet again, but instead, I decided to raise myself from the Dead.

In the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication, followed by coming back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And who had come with me too, because TOTGA appeared in a dream last night. I was in Crewe, sorting out some food, jars of all kinds of things, tomato sauce etc that we’d collected. I was going to put them into Gainsborough Road. However, one of the jars had leaked so I’d had to clean it. My friend told me to knock before I went in, made sure that the tenants knew that I was there etc. I decided in the end that I didn’t really want to go because being inside that house again would dismay me. By this time, TOTGA had appeared and we were due to go back to Normandy, the three of us. First of all, I wanted to telephone an old school friend. TOTGA knew who he was and she said that he hed been ill, he had depression and all of that kind of thing. As I picked up the ‘phone, I suddenly forgot his number, so I just dialled a number at random and then hung up, saying that there was no answer. Then we decided that we’d ring up Rosemary to see if she fancied a quick visit before we went back. I couldn’t think of Rosemary’s ‘phone number then. Eventually, I managed it so I ‘phoned up and we had a chat. I asked her if she fancied a quick visit and she was really surprised. She wondered where we were and what we were doing, so we agreed to go down there. By this time, some people from the street had come past. They recognised me and came for a chat. TOTGA knew who they were because her aunt had a shop in the street and she had served in there on several occasions. They wanted to be introduced to her of course but she was teasing them with little suggestive hints from back from when she was a kid and worked in the shop. They were scratching their heads trying to think who she was. She thought that it was rather amusing so we left it at that. By this time, we were standing on the edge of a river that ran through a little gorge with a stone arch bridge over it in the background. We were all chatting, and then we decided that we’d better shoot off and visit Rosemary quickly otherwise we’ll be going home without seeing her.

It’s been ages since TOTGA has been around during the night. I thought that she had gone for good, just as Castor seems to have done and The Vanilla Queen did quite a while ago. But it really does make a change to see a dream full of nice people and no member of my family coming along to throw a spanner into the works.

Curiously though, when we were moving jars and bottles and so on downstairs, there was one jar where the top had worked loose and the contents had leaked

Later on, I was somewhere in Africa with a group of people in one of our old Fordson E83W vans. I was trying to find some paper on which to write some notes about a job that I had just completed but the only paper in the van was wet, soggy and mainly had other people’s calculations on it. I couldn’t find a big piece at all. By now I was running behind the van that was driving so I made a signal to the driver to stop. I opened the back door and my notebook was in the back. I rescued my notebook and waved on the van to start off again. Once it was going, I closed the door and carried on running behind it.

We did have a couple of E83W vans when we were kids. The first one was one of the early ones, KLG93, which my motor traders’ handbook tells me was registered in October 1937, and one of the last ones, XVT772, registered in January 1957. And you might think that walking behind one would be ridiculous, with an 1172cc side-value engine, a three-speed crash box and a downrated gearing on the rear axle, these vans would struggle to see 35 mph flat out. In fact, I have very vague memories of all of us having to get out and walk behind one once because it didn’t have enough power, fully loaded, to climb Shooter’s Hill in Blackheath, and when I mentioned it to my parents as I grew older, I was told that my memories were correct.

Isabelle the Nurse was back to her usual routine and back on time. We had a brief chat about one of my neighbours who is now in an Old Folks’ Home and she dealt with my legs, and then she cleared off as quickly as she came in.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, we left our author arguing with the police, having been detained to “help them with their enquiries” and he, in a show of innocence, "of I know not what crime"

Today, however, things become a whole lot clearer. In order to cross a river, "my companion and I clambered down the hill, stole a boat which lay moored to the bank, and with a walking-stick for an oar painfully traversed the river Wey. When we had landed, we heard, from the further bank, a woman, the owner of the boat, protesting with great violence."

Later on, "with Margery Wood it reaches the 700-feet line, runs by what I fear was a private path through a newly-enclosed piece of property. We remembered to spare the garden, but we permitted ourselves a trespass upon this outer hollow trench in the wood which marked our way."

All that I can say is that if those events are samples of his habitual attitude and behaviour, I’m surprised that he hasn’t been arrested a long time before the previous day.

After I had finished breakfast, I came back in here to watch Stranraer lose at home to Edinburgh City, and then I had things to do.

It seems that no-one is interested in the furniture that I have for sale or that I’m trying to give away, so I rekindled my long-dormant on-line auction account. That took much longer than it did in the past, and putting your articles on-line is much more complicated than I remember it.

So after a great deal of huffing and puffing, I managed eventually to list everything that needs selling on. But probably there won’t be anyone from there interested either. It seems that selling on-line isn’t the thing that it was twenty years ago. But then, the internet is nothing like the community that it used to be back in those days either.

After lunch, I had a relax for a while before the TNS v Llansawel game, and then at the final whistle I went to make the bread for next week and the pizza for tonight.

Rosemary rang me for a chat while I was baking, but I couldn’t stay long because there was yet more football. Colwyn Bay, newly promoted to the JD Cymru Premier League, were at home to Connah’s Quay Nomads in front of a massive crown of over 1500 people.

Last time Colwyn Bay were in the JD Cymru Premier League, they didn’t last long. This time though, they have signed a whole raft of experienced players and they looked a much more formidable outfit. They went toe-to-toe with the Nomads for the entire 90 minutes and the 1-1 scoreline was quite a fair reflection of the game.

Almost immediately after the final whistle, the telephone rang. It was one of my former girlfriends from school years ago, with whom I’m still in touch. She’ll be in France in late September, so would I like a visit?

Now that’s a silly question. I don’t have enough visits, and so anyone can visit me at any time they like. If she would like to come, she’d be more than welcome, and so would anyone else (except of course, my immediate family)

Tonight’s pizza was excellent and I shall have to make more like that. There’s already been an order from my fiend from Munich when he arrives here next weekend.

That’s right, next weekend. That’s when my house move begins. Just four more climbs back up the stairs. I can’t wait for the torment to be over.

But right now, it’s over for tonight because I’m off to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about TNS’s laughable performance against Llansawel this afternoon … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a boxing match that I saw years ago where one of the contestants had been very quickly and very badly beaten.
The commentator was doing his best to console him, saying "Never mind. If you hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight."

Sunday 3rd August 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this morning that I have not done for several months, and it took me completely by surprise.

This morning, I awoke early as usual after a dialysis session – 03:10 in fact. But that’s far too early to be showing a leg, even if I am accustomed to some very early mornings these days, and so I decided that I would curl up underneath the quilt and see if I couldn’t go back to sleep for a short while.

And sleep I did. When I awoke, the sun was streaming in through the bedroom window, the birds were singing, and a glance at the time showed that it was actually 07:37. How long is it since I’ve been in bed at that time of the morning (illness excepted, of course)?

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either. I’d finished all of my notes by 22:15, so the timestamp tells me, and after taking the stats and carrying out the back-up of the computer, it was 22:30 when I crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long for me to go to sleep.

On a Sunday, I plan to have a lie-in and so the alarm is set for 08:00 but since dialysis began seriously, I don’t think that I’ve ever actually stayed in bed until then, a far cry from when I had no visiting nurse in the morning, no alarm call and sometimes I’d stay in bed until after midday.

Had it been a normal day with an alarm at 06:29, lying in bed like this would have been classed as an abject failure, but on a Sunday it would be classed as an early start. However, I’m not going to note it as such because it’s disappointing.

Despite it being late, it still took me a few minutes to rise to my feet, and then I wandered off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the medication.

There wasn’t a lot of time for me to do anything much before Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She’d told me that she would be late because of the annual book sale in the walled town but she had the wrong date and it’s not until the 16th of August so in fact there was nothing to interrupt her passage and she was early.

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

Our author is still in Westminster and has gone to the Great hall, where he describes in great detail the origins of the King’s Bench, the system of Courts and Judges that lasted until about 1875. Initially, it followed the King around on his Royal Circuits, trying cases that had arisen since its last visit and which later settled in the Great Hall, with only a part of the Court followed the King.

He tells us that "King Edward IV, in the year 1462, in Michaelmas term" because the Court had four terms, Hillary, Easter, Trinity and Michaelmas "sat in the King’s Bench three days together, in the open court, to understand how his laws were ministered and executed."

Another thing that he mentions is "a cloister of curious workmanship" built by Doctor John Chambers, the King’s physician. How I would have liked to see that!

He’s being continually surprised by the meals and banquets that are being served up, as am I, I have to admit. He tells us of John Mansell, the King’s Councillor, who organised a banquet for "The Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, Edward, the King’s son, earls, barons, knights, the Bishop of London and divers citizens." His house turned out to be far too small and he had to erect "tents and pavillions" and "there was such a multitude that seven hundred messes of meat did not serve for the first dinner."

There’s also mention of another huge banquet with an enormous quantity of food and "sundry wines and plenteous wise" that went on through the night and ended with "the king and queen being conveyed with great lights into the palace."

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was in Canada last night, round at my niece’s. Everyone had gone out and left me on my own for a while. By now, it was almost teatime and I was feeling hungry but it was very difficult to know what to eat. In the end I had a scavenge around and found some noodles and some powdered soy sauce which I thought would probably do for now. Then I found that I couldn’t open any of the tins or bottles. By now my niece and her husband were back and they were watching me as I tried to saw off with a sharp knife the bands that hold things like knives in their sheaths etc to try to have some kitchen utensils. My niece asked me if I wanted something else so I replied that I’d made a start on this so it would do. My niece’s husband asked me if I wanted to listen to any music. I asked him what he had and he read out a whole list of CDs so I mentioned one or two, so he gave them to me. However, he didn’t tell me where to switch them on, where the CD player was. So I was standing there with these useless utensils in one hand and a useless couple of CDs in the other hand and this strange concoction of food on the plaque de cuisson.

So here we go again. I’m feeling nostalgic for Canada again. That’s something that I shall have to chase out of my mind and accept that it’s never going to happen again. However, I did actually find a packet of noodles when I was tidying the kitchen the other day. Apart from the indecision, which seems to happen a lot in my dreams, I can’t fit the rest in with anything else.

Nerina and I had moved house, and we were thinking of adopting a cat. We went to the local animal shelter and the person there listened to our story and offered us a female cat and her five new-born kittens. Much as I liked cats, I thought that that was far too much and so did Nerina but the guy was doing his best to persuade us, saying that all food will be provided etc, but we were still not keen at all on this idea of having this kind of cat family in the house.

Anyone who has ever looked after a cat will know that you don’t actually choose a cat – a cat chooses you. You’ll have an idea about the kind of cat that you would like and go to a refuge to find one but you’ll always come back with completely the opposite of what you would have liked. Your ideal cat would be there, but it would take one look at you and slink off into a dark corner but another cat will cling to your legs and won’t let go.

There was also something about being in Virlet but I can’t remember anything about it now.

After that, I had a very slow start to the day and didn’t do very much at all for quite a while. I had hoped to see the Forfar v Stranraer football match but for some reason, the stream didn’t come online this morning and it’s still not appeared. I’ve no idea why not either because usually, the camera team is quite reliable.

Once I’d decided to start work, I carried on with the radio programme that I’d started the other day. All of the music is now remixed and apart from in one or two places where we had issues setting tone and amending the speed of a couple of tracks, it’s come out quite well and I’m quite happy.

The notes have also been written ready for dictation but I shan’t dictate them immediately because I’m not convinced that they are long enough and they will need reworking.

There’s also a photograph of STRAWBERRY MOOSE doing the rounds of the internet in Granville right now.

The estate agent who came round a couple of weeks ago took a couple of photos of the place and these are being used to advertise my apartment here as available to let, and His Nibs is prominently featured, sitting in the middle of the bed.

In case you are wondering why I’m not posting the link, well, let’s just say that it does not show my apartment in the best of lights. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that tidiness is not my particular forte.

There were the usual breaks in the afternoon for disgusting drinks and also for baking. I needed more bread and a base for my pizza so I dealt with that this afternoon.

The loaf is slightly heavier today, but the pizza base was perfect and it tasted delicious. However, I’m not sure why, but I’ve suddenly developed a craving for Cheshire Cheese. It’s a shame that I can no longer eat it. Since I went onto this vegan diet in 1992 when my pancreas ceased to function, cheese is the one thing that I miss.

So right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …
. Do you realise that there are at most only seven more trips up the stairs after dialysis and then I shall be installed downstairs and shan’t have to worry any more?

And if the plumber, who is coming tomorrow, extricates his digit, there might be even fewer than that. As long as my bed, my desk and my kitchen stuff are down there and the water is connected, I shall cope as best as I can. I really have to move downstairs as quickly as I can because the stairs are finishing me off.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about banquets … "well, one of us has" – ed … some friends of mine once went to a big banquet in Spain where the dish of honour was the … errr … cojones of the bull that was killed in the corrida that morning.
However, at this particular banquet, the main dish was … errr … rather small
"what’s happened here?" asked one of my friends
"Well you see, señor" replied the waiter "the bull, he doesn’t always lose."

Sunday 20th July 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today, and have accomplished quite a lot. It’s not often that I have days as productive as this, so it’s worthy of note.

Not that last night was any indication of how things might have been. It was another one of those nights where things dragged and dragged, and I seemed to be struggling to do the simplest of things.

Even though I’d started my notes at some kind of reasonable time and looking forward to a reasonably early finish, instead it was almost 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

Mind you, I was soon asleep, and I can’t remember anything at all until I had another dramatic awakening at 06:05 this morning. So much for my lie-in until 08:00, and does anyone else apart from me remember my legendary lie-ins until midday and later on Sundays prior to dialysis?

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It was actually 06:20 when I finally staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I ended up buying an old lorry and was looking for work for it. In the end, a place down near Audlem was a tar centre and they were disposing of some of their tar so I bought ten tons of it and put it in a tanker. Then, I was wondering what to do with it because I couldn’t think of how I was going to dispose of it. My father told me that they put it mostly on the roads. I asked him how far he thought that ten tons would go, but he didn’t think that ten tons would go very far. After much thinking about it, he suggested that I head north out of Audlem and look for some of the salt mines that rare around there and see whether their roads need upgrading etc because there were other places in the vicinity where I could have my tank washed and prepared for whatever, a different kind of load. But I was totally bewildered by what I was going to do with this ten tons of tar and couldn’t think why I had bought it. It was just a weird decision to do that but I didn’t know what else I could do

One thing that I could easily have imagined myself doing in the past was owning a lorry. It wouldn’t have been a tanker though – too many safety certificates and the like to obtain, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone out to buy ten tons of tar on spec without having a ready market for it. Mind you, I have done wilder things …

Later on, I’d met a couple of Americans who were in the UK doing business. I wondered whether there might be some kind of opportunity for me with them so I had a little chat and talked about my business, puffing up my affairs a little. They told me that they had two representatives in the UK at that particular time, one of whom was in the area and the other one was in Lincoln, so I was chatting to them. I had to set off in a car and ended up stopping at a motorway service station where I was talking to a lorry driver about all of the changes in the service areas over the years and how he was saying that he would continue having trouble finding the right kind of place. He and I tried to leave the building but even with his pass key it was still a struggle to leave. I told him about the times that I’d been down on a motorway service station driving lorries. I climbed into my car but I drove off the service station without looking. I thought “that was a lucky escape”. I then had to decide where to go. I was heading somewhere down the M1 but I wondered if I should go to Lincoln instead but I thought “what am I going to do when I’m in Lincoln?”. I carried on driving to my destination and when I was there, I created a website and set it up in a foreign country, then sent a link to these American people with the idea that with my business being registered in a foreign domain, it would confuse them. But they were in the middle of the street in Nantwich Road – the middle of the pavement – having a huge discussion. I dropped my coat but even with a big shovel, I still couldn’t pick it up. I was just pushing it farther and farther into the road.

“Commercial puffs” are well-known in business and I think that just about every businessman has engaged in them. Some were so convincing and overwhelming, in the cases of companies like Enron and WorldCom, and individuals such as Bernie Madoff, that when they were finally exposed, they collapsed whole economies. Not, however, that any puffing up that any sole trader on my scale of business could do would ever damage an economy. Chance would be a fine thing.

Isabelle the Nurse was late today, having overslept this morning. consequently she was in and out in a flash and I could carry on and make breakfast.

There was also MY BOOK to read.

Our author is still on the prowl around the churches of London and it looks as if he’s going to be there for quite a while. He does, however, make some interesting remarks about various bequests that were made by the rich in order to aid the deserving poor, finishing by saying "how this … was performed I have not heard, for executors of our time having no conscience (I speak of my own knowledge) prove more testaments than they perform.".

Back in here, I watched Stranraer away to Edinburgh City, and almost fell asleep in the middle, such was the game. I have been to funerals with a more lively atmosphere than the atmosphere at the Meadowbank Stadium during the game.

Next task was to tackle the “Sunday Woodstock” radio programme. I had ten minutes and seventeen seconds to lose so that meant “goodbye” to two groups, whose style doesn’t really fit into our programmes, and a rewriting and editing of certain vocal parts. I’d anticipated some exclusions and had dictated some notes to cover them. There was plenty of applause amongst the tracks too and so I had some room to manoeuvre … "PERSONoeuvre" – ed … in there.

It took an age to do all of that and line up the various sections of the programme afterwards, but it’s now all done and it sounds quite good Even the bad mistake that I had made and which I identified yesterday was patched over.

So that’s a huge weight off my mind, because it has been the most difficult radio task that I have ever performed. The research alone took a couple of months all told.

There was an interruption – I had to pause for a while to sell some furniture. I’m slowly having a clear-out and have advertised some stuff on one of these websites. Today, it was the turn of the four cheap kitchen units, those that I bought a few years ago just before I fell ill and so never installed here, to go out of the door.

Well, they were out of the door already – on the landing outside where they have lived for three or four years – but anyway, they aren’t there now, the ground’s all flat.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another task to perform.

There has been a huge accumulation of paperwork around here that I haven’t filed away for eighteen months and it was completely out of hand, so I sorted it all out into date order and it’s now all neatly filed away in various folders.

At one point I had several piles of papers on the floor and it reminded me of the good old days when Nerina and I were sorting out the paperwork for the taxis. We’d have several piles of paperwork on the floor, and then the cats would come in. They would make a very intelligent and correct guess about which pile of paperwork we were actually working, and then go to sit on it.

And that reminds me – I shall have to think about trying to find a cat for when I move downstairs. I am determined to have one.

Something else that I’ve done is to pack a couple more boxes with things to be taken downstairs. I shall let my faithful cleaner take charge of that.

There was bread to make this afternoon, as well as a pizza base for tea. And that all worked well, except that the bread needed much longer than usual this afternoon to bake. I’ve no idea what was the matter with the oven today.

So now that I’ve had my delicious pizza and tidied up a little, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow, I’m going to be busy. There are my bags to pack, food to make, and then I’m off to dialysis in the afternoon. When dialysis is finished, I’m going straight to Paris for chemotherapy so it will be unlikely that there will be a blog entry for tomorrow night. You may have to wait for Tuesday to read it.

But seeing as we have been talking about wills and testaments … "well, one of us has" – ed … a very true story is that someone was left a sum of money in someone else’s will "on condition that he could prove that he was not dead."
The heritee had to present himself before a Commissioner for Oaths who asked him "Are you Mr …..?"
"Yes I am" replied the heritee.
"Are you dead?" asked the Commissioner
"No I am not"
"Are you prepared to swear an oath to that effect?"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: home made bread

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

Sunday 16th November 2025 – WHEN ISABELLE THE NURSE …

Sunday 26th October 2025 – HAS ANYONE ELSE …

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Sunday 5th October 2025 – THIS BLASTED STORM …

Sunday 28th September 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Sunday 21st September 2025 – ONE OF MY …

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

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

Sunday 24th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

Sunday 3rd August 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

Sunday 20th July 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring