Tag Archives: lie in

Sunday 8th February 2026 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

For a twenty-four-hour period starting this morning, I should have been collecting my … errr … liquid output to take with me tomorrow to the dialysis centre so that they could measure and examine it, but guess who forgot?

What I usually do, and what I should have done last night, is to place the container on the seat before going to bed but, as you might expect, I forgot to do that.

In fact, I was so tired last night that I just wanted to go to bed, and so everything else slipped my mind. I dashed through everything, but it was still about 23:30 or thereabouts when I finished everything that needed doing. And then I crawled into bed, and that was that.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly and there I stayed, fast asleep, until about 07:00. I was debating with myself whether I should leave the bed at that time, but I soon dismissed that silly idea, turned over and went back to sleep.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual at about 08:30. However, I was still in bed and had no intention whatsoever of moving from it. Consequently, she dealt with my feet and legs while I was still lying there half asleep.

And maybe more than half-asleep too because I didn’t hear her leave the premises. For all I know, she might well be still here, hiding somewhere.

It was about 09:30 when I finally left the bed and headed off for the bathroom, completely forgetting about the “collection”. And once in the bathroom, I had a slight wash and then dressed ready for the day.

In the kitchen, I made breakfast (no medication today) of porridge, hot coffee and a couple of my home-made croissants, followed by a read of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

Right now, he’s examining the pottery and other artefacts. He’s comparing them with pottery found in all kinds of hillforts, so I’ve been hopping from one site to another on the internet as I read up about the various places. But I’m surprised that so few hillforts have been properly excavated. I would have expected all of them to have had a good going-over by now.

Back in here, we had a footfest – the highlights of all of the matches this weekend that were played in front of the cameras of S4C. I refrained from watching the game between TNS and Penybont. Sitting through it once was bad enough. and I had no appetite to sit through it again, not even the highlights.

Afterwards, there was Stranraer v Annan in Scotland, and the unbeaten run goes on and on, although we had yet another draw.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night too.

We were doing an archaeological search on a farming complex up on the hills somewhere. It was land that had been farmed from the earliest days until the twentieth century. One of the questions that we had to answer was “how did they manage to access the internet?”. I suggested that they had a C-cable that plugged into the USB port that helped them access the internet in those days. There was much more to this dream, but I can’t remember it now.

This is clearly related to the books that I’ve been reading recently, and the reference to the C-cable and USB port refers to the fact that the laptop on the kitchen table can’t detect the Wi-Fi signal from in the office and so I use my mobile ‘phone as a router, connected to the laptop by the aforementioned cable.

I had a mobile ‘phone and it was charging OK but none of the accessories ever worked with it. I showed it to a friend of mine and she was convinced that the wiring was wrong. She took me over to a musician who was playing guitar who, she said, knew everything. He confirmed that the wiring was incorrect on this plug and that I needed some kind of adapter. I set off to go to my lock-up garages where I had loads of old cars. In the first lock-up garage, there were no cars in it at all. They had all gone. There were still a few bits and pieces lying around but there was nothing that was suitable. I went to the second one but there were only two cars in that, two Ford Cortina pick-ups with truck caps. I didn’t recognise either of those as being mine. I searched around and found something. There was quite a crowd of people in that lock-up, at the counter looking for different bits and pieces etc. As I found my things and walked out, one of these pick-ups started up and reversed out of the yard. I thought “well, that’s certainly not one of my vehicles so where have all mine gone?”.

This accessory plug is a mystery to me, but the rest of the dream relates to another one of these stories that the World is not yet ready to hear

By now, it was time for a disgusting drink break, and then I began to work on one of the radio notes that I’d recorded a while ago. These are now edited and the two halves of the programme have been assembled. I also chose the joining track and wrote the notes for it, ready for the next time that I have a very early start.

A couple of days ago, I had had a surprising letter – an old friend from down in the Auvergne had written to me. He’d heard that I’d been quite ill and so he sent me his best wishes for a speedy recovery, as well as some news about one or two things down there.

He’d also sent me a copy of his registration as a self-employed businessman, of which he was doubtless very proud. I’ve known him since he was a teenager and he was always someone who was on the margins of society, so he has every right to be proud of finally organising himself to do something stable. Anyway, he’d included his e-mail address in the letter so I wrote a reply to him.

While I was at it, I sent a reply to a few mails that I’d received from friends that were on the back burner … "the mails, not the friends" – ed … There are one or two that I still need to answer, but I was sidetracked … "as usual" – ed … by having to go to start baking. The bread and the pizza base won’t make themselves.

The bread is another excellent example, the dough of which went up like a lift when it was standing. Several dessert spoons of sunflower seeds at the second mix prevented it from going up as much as it did at the first mix, but it’s still impressive.

The pizza base was excellent too and it tasted delicious, that’s for sure, with tomato sauce with diced peppers, onions, mushrooms, olives, vegan cheese and thinly-sliced tomatoes. I could only manage half of it, and the other half is in the fridge for tomorrow night when I come back from dialysis.

Back in here, I began to write my notes but I fell asleep in my chair no fewer than three times before I’d even written two hundred words. At that point, I decided to go to bed and I’ll finish my notes in the morning. I’m sure that you can all wait that long.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about archaeologists, ancient farms and the internet … "well, one of us has" – ed … Mortimer Wheeler, digging down fifty feet at Maiden Castle, came across a mysterious network of copper cables. From that, he assumed that even in the Iron Age, they must have had some kind of telephone network.
Meanwhile, James Curle, digging down forty feet at Trimontium, also found a similar network. From that, he assumed that the Romans must have brought the telephone network up into Scotland.
In Crewe, however, they dug down two hundred and fifty feet and found nothing.
"What does that mean?" asked Curle and Wheeler.
"Well," replied the Crewe Town Council "it means that we must have had wi-fi and mobile phones here in Crewe long before you lot had telephones."

0

Sunday 1st February 2026 – SUNDAY IS OFFICIALLY …

… a Day Of Rest, but you would never have thought so after today. I’ve been a busy boy.

Not so much last night, though. Running late as usual and falling asleep for half an hour in the chair while thinking about going to bed, it turned out to be a night much later than I would have liked, and certainly later than some have been just recently.

Eventually, though, I managed to make it into bed and asleep, where I stayed, flat out, until about 07:30. I don’t think that I moved at all during the night.

One glance at the clock made me wonder whether I ought to think about leaving the bed, but I soon dismissed this silly idea from my head, turned over, and went back to sleep.

The nurse woke me round about 08:30 to sort out my legs and, regrettably, I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. Round about 09:00, I hauled myself out of bed and cleared off into the bathroom.

Breakfast today was porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants, which were cooked to perfection. But I was thinking about the process that I use to make them, and I’m going to try something a little different next time to see if it makes a difference.

While I was eating, I was reading Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE.

He includes in his notes probably the longest preamble that I have ever read, and it contains little or no information about what he’s trying to do – it talks merely about the background and the naming of the site. And after the twenty-five pages or so, he reaches the conclusion that the information in his preamble is “not conclusive”.

We haven’t gone very far into the book either before we reach a discussion of climate change, with differing opinions as to whether climate change really exists or not.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall our discussions in the past about William Munn. He was one of the very first people to suggest, in his book “Location of Helluland, Markland & Vinland from the Icelandic Sagas” (long since out of print, but I have a few copies if anyone wants to buy one) that he wrote in 1914, that global warming was a real phenomenon.

He was roundly ridiculed by his peers at the time, most of whom have gone on since to have had omelette sur le visage as they say around here.

But one thing about Mortimer Wheeler is that he agrees with me on the question of civilisation. I’ve long contended that civilisation began as far back as Neolithic times when people were obliged to abandon their isolated hunter-gatherer lifestyle due to pressure of population growth and, instead, settle down, adopt sedentary agriculture and, most importantly, learn to cooperate in order to improve everyone’s quality of life.

Wheeler tells us that a "fortified city was not built in a day; its building involved a disciplined concentration of effort, and its existence was a perpetual symbol of coordinating authority. It implied a specialized and stratified society in which, presumably, the aristocratic traditions of the Celtic tribal structure found expression and at the same time acquired a stability not altogether native to them. It marked the true beginning of citizenship as a substantive element in the development of civilization in Britain."

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d had to go from Morecambe to Shavington village centre for something, but while I was at work, it was another one of these things where I can retire at any moment I want because I’m well over retirement age and if people don’t like what I’m doing, I’ll just leave. I was trying to write a report about a Government investment in an organisation that had control of all of the Hackney carriages in one certain town. They’d had an investment of £1,000,000 or something and then another investment of £300,000, but that was nothing like the amount of debt that they had and they’d carried on trading all the same. It was my duty to make a report to decide whether we should carry on making further investments in this or whether we should pull the plug on it. I was sitting there writing my report and my brother was watching me. One thing though was that my handwriting was dreadful. As I was dictating it, I was writing by hand. It looked nothing like what I was saying and nothing like what was going down on paper. In the end, I wrote down everything that we’d done, I wrote down what had happened, and I was on the point of writing down all of the consequences if we were to pull the plug on it, saying things such as “one whole town would be without Hackney carriages for a while until the council sorted itself out. This was the reason why the councils prefer to issue Hackney plates to individual drivers rather than large companies”. Then we had to go somewhere, but first of all, I had to leave the building for something. I went down in the lift and when I was coming back, it was 10:20 and there was a man banging on the doors trying to enter the building for some reason but I’ve no idea why. I went into the staff entrance and to the lift, and it was something like ninety floors up, my office. I was there with another girl and we were discussing this guy all the way up. Then my brother and I had to leave to go to do something in Shavington so we set out to walk, but we ended up in Nantwich. In Nantwich, I had a fall and I couldn’t pick myself up again at first. It took a great deal of effort to climb back to my feet. I suggested buying something to take back to the office but my brother thought that it was a silly idea. No-one else did that so in the end, I didn’t. Then he said “we have what we need. Let’s go”. It was a bag of spark plugs. I asked “you did buy the correct ones for the Ford, did you?”. He said “yes” so we were discussing the Luton-bodied Ford Transit that I have, and the plugs were probably for that. I came to the decision when I was walking back that I was going to collect all of my cars, all that kind of thing and put them all in one yard and all of the Cortinas except the 2000E saloon and estate, I’d dismantle. I thought of all the lock-up garages that I had with all different Ford Cortinas, spares and body panels etc. I thought that that was going to be some real hard work to move everything over into just one place.

Not that I’d ever be doing anything with my brother of course, but here we go again, working when long past retirement age. That used to be a recurring theme in my dreams at one time and it looks like it’s coming back again. The ninety floors or so of lift reminds me of a building in Manchester in 1974-75. It wasn’t ninety floors up, but it was pretty close.

My handwriting is quite awful too, due mainly to a severed tendon from when I put my right hand through a plate-glass window in 1974.

As for the 2000Es, there are indeed a saloon and an estate. The estate is in the barn on the farm and is worth a fortune, being one of the very few 2000E estates still in existence. The saloon is in the warehouse in Montaigut and while it has a 1600cc engine and manual gearbox that I fitted in 1991, the matching engine (with failed big ends) and auto gearbox is there too. With the matching numbers on the engine and gearbox to go with the car, that’s worth a fortune too but I bet that someone with no idea of the value will come along and heap the lot into a skip. That’s my biggest worry.

And just for emphasis, I did once have several lock-up garages scattered around Crewe with all different Cortinas and bits thereof stored within. And spark plugs for overhead cam Fords are different from the more regular spark plugs. They are “F” series rather than the more common “N” series

There was also something about building a pushbike from a whole pile of bits while we were listening to the news about something but I can’t remember anything more about this. It evaporated as soon as I touched the dictaphone.

My second push-bike was actually one that I built up from bits that I’d accumulated here and there. I had it for years too.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of last night’s matches in the Welsh Cup. And believe it or not, this is A GAME BETWEEN A THIRD DIVISION SIDE (BANGOR CITY IN BLUE) AND A SECOND DIVISION SIDE (CAERAU TRELAI IN RED AND BLACK) in front of a crowd of almost two thousand, nine hundred people.

As promised, here are THE HIGHLIGHTS of last night’s game between Colwyn Bay and Caernarfon, but HERE IS THE WHOLE GAME if you’d rather watch that, and you won’t be disappointed.

There was also Stranraer away at Stirling Albion, and although the unbeaten run goes on, it was yet another draw. I’m not sure how many that is now.

After a disgusting drink break, I finished the notes for the radio programme that I should have finished yeserday and then began to research the next one. That involved tracking down loads of obscure music but to my surprise, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to find everything that I wanted. It’s not very often that I can say that.

When I’d sorted out the radio, I went to make my bread and pizza while I was having an online chat with my friend in Munich. However, I was interrupted when the President of the residents’ committee for the building came to see me to discuss this fibre issue.

She didn’t really understand the issue at first, so I had to take her into the technical cupboard to show her what was going on, and then explain to her the issues. After some considerable time, I reckon that she finally understood the issues.

However, what annoyed me more than anything was that it seems that this problem about the telephone cable trunking being obstructed is something that has been known for ages, and I’ve had to go through all of this just to prove it.

But on a happier note, the bread was easily the best that I have ever made. The pizza not so much, because while the bread rose up like a lift, the pizza base didn’t, and it was too crunchy for my liking. But you can’t win a coconut every time, can you?

On that note, I’m off to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow, and to see what nonsense we come up with there. With a bit of luck, I might have a good night’s sleep, although I doubt it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my bad handwriting … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once wanted to enter an international competition for bad handwriting, so I sent off my entry form.
A few days later, I had a reply. "I’m so sorry, but you are illegible."

0

Sunday 18th January 2026 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… way to start a Sunday. A slow, gentle awakening and a gradual sliding out of bed into the daylight – at 10:00 this morning. I really should do it more often.

Especially if I can manage to be in bed before 23:30 the night before.

Last night, though, I didn’t quite manage it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied while I was trying to finish off everything, and in the end, it was about 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it was something of a disturbed night and I awoke on several occasions. Mind you, I was fast asleep when the nurse breezed into the bedroom to deal with my legs. I actually took no notice so he did what he thought was necessary and then breezed out again. He can’t have been here longer than two minutes.

It hadn’t really disturbed me, and I was soon asleep again, right up to my rather gentle awakening at 10:00.

My clothes were in here from last night so, for a change, I didn’t bother with the bathroom. I dressed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Porridge and piping-hot coffee, and a couple of my homemade croissants warmed in the microwave. What a lovely breakfast that was too!

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

Today, James Curle has been emptying the various wells and pits around the fort and camp. So far, he’s examined no fewer than one hundred and seven, and that’s an enormous number.

Some of them are empty of relics, some have a few, some have more, but some are astonishing.

Take Pit I for example – "Near the surface a fragment of an inscribed table. At § feet, a piece of twisted silver wire, part of a penannular brooch, two bronze rings, and twelve links of a small bronze chain. At 8 feet, a human skeleton, near it a bronze penannular brooch, as well as two pieces of bronze, perhaps part of a second brooch. At 12 feet, an altar dedicated to Jupiter, and below it a ‘first brass’ coin of Hadrian. From 14 feet downwards, bones of animals; the skulls of oxen (Bos Longifrons), and of horses were-frequent ; also soles of shoes, fragments of leather garments, and deer horns. At 18 feet, fragments of stone moulding, pieces of amphorae, and small bits of undecorated Terra Sigillata; also two pieces of deer horn fitted together like a rude pick. At 21 feet, an iron bar. At 22 feet, a human skull complete and part of another skull near it, remains of scale armour of brass, also the necks of five large amphorae, and the bottom of a cup of Terra Sigillata (Type Drag. 33), with the stamp PROBVS-F. At 25 feet, the upper stone of a quern, an iron knife with a bone handle, an iron knife, a linch pin , a bar of iron, a sickle, portions of an iron corselet mounted with brass; the staves and bottom of an oak bucket, 7 inches high, 8 inches in diameter; the iron rim of a large bucket; a large block of sandstone having a rudely-sculptured figure of a boar on one side; a small fragment of stone, with a figure of a boar in relief; five arrowheads of iron; pieces of chain armour; the iron umbo of a ‘shield and fragments of brass, perhaps belonging to its decoration; a brass coin of Vespasian or Titus; a stirrup-like holdfast of iron; a fragment of wall plaster, necks and sides of several amphorae"

That’s just one example of a well-filled pit.

He makes the point that it seems to be the earliest pits that have all of the relics. That would fit in with the idea that the abandonment of the fort was a panic-stricken flight and whatever couldn’t be carried away was cast into the pits and quickly filled in, in the hope that it could be recovered at a later date. However, with the passage of twenty years before the return of the Roman Army to the area, the generation that had hidden it was gone and the whereabouts of the caches forgotten.

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

My friend from Wellington was around last night. He’d come to see how I was and to see how my house move was going. He was having a look and he saw that I had a toolbox. He asked me about the toolbox – it was a dark green cantilever thing. I said that I’d picked it up for a couple of quid with one or two tools in it and I’d gradually been expanding it. I now had about three or four of these toolboxes with different tools in them and more complete toolkits etc. He seemed to be quite interested in it. In the end, he asked me what we were going to do so I replied that we would rearrange the living room and sort out the furniture in there. We decided to go in, and we were looking at the big, black wall unit with mirror doors. I was thinking of putting it across the door to protect everything from the draught but pulling it about four feet forward so that people could slalom around it in comparative ease

The cantilever toolbox that I have here is a light green, but there are several others back on the farm. There isn’t a dark green one though. And my friend from Newport (not Wellington) did come over here to help me design the plans for the new apartment. The large black wall unit with mirror doors didn’t fit in with the plans and that was taken away by the charity shop people. When it was upstairs though, it was across the doorway but pulled a few feet forward. It protected me from draughts when I was sitting at the table.

Did I miss the end of that dream about my friend from Wellington? We went into the other room to rearrange the furniture. We thought that with the black and white shelf unit which was much too close to the porte, it would have been interesting in bringing the certifed form ending and the final reel over to my new address and sharing oil one night. But for some reason, it became very complicated … fell asleep here

This quickly degenerated into a pile of whatever, didn’t it?

When the nurse came, I was somewhere in the Alps. I’d been there before, years ago, and I had plenty of photos, including photos of the boats that were on the lake right up in the mountains. There was even an imitation Spanish galleon on this lake. Don’t ask me how it arrived there. There were several pleasure cruisers. I remember talking to one of the guys in a rowing boat who was just sitting there, lying on his back enjoying the freezing cold weather as his boat followed the current through this lake. This inspired my German friend to go there once he’d seen all of my photos so we’d arranged to meet one day. But he’d met someone the previous day who had some kind of horse-drawn contraption. He became friends with him, and asked him if he could borrow this horse and cart, or whatever it is, and go off camping for the night. We made some kind of strange remark about leaving a holiday in order to go on another holiday, a holiday within a holiday or something. He eventually turned up, and all that he had was a metal chair. He had to try to make himself comfortable on this metal chair during the night but it had casters on it. He was afraid that during the night, if he moved, it would begin to roll and he would be over the edge of the cliff so he was looking for things to try to chock the wheels to make sure that it wouldn’t move while he was asleep.

As for this, I’ve no idea to what it refers, although I have vague recollections of being somewhere similar in a dream several weeks ago. It wasn’t as detailed or as complicated as this, though.

There was also something about being on board a ship. I was the captain of it. It was a cruise ship, that sort of thing. I’d been receiving secret messages by the time the ship went into port, it would go slowly along the docks until it reached its berth and someone would walk alongside the dock and tell me these messages. But when it came to berthing down, the cabin for the captain was also the cabin for the First Officer so we had to share. So I grabbed the bunk on the ground floor for mine and I thought that I’d let the First Officer climb up the ladder to the one on top. It turned out that the First Officer was a woman. I thought that this was going to be rather complicated but neither of us really cared and we both went to bed. We had a little chat about this and that. But while I was trying to fall asleep, I was rummaging through the lockers at the side of the bed. There were all kinds of things in there. There was a huge homemade battery clamp, there were other kinds of bits and pieces in there, but I was going through it, trying to take an inventory while I was waiting to fall asleep.

The First Officer, I can see her now. She was the driver who brought me home on Thursday from dialysis, although why she should pop up here, I don’t know. Walking along the shore at the side of a ship reminds me of being AT THE WELLAND CANAL IN 2010 where I did just that. The rest is about my preoccupation with the untidy state of this apartment, I imagine.

After that, there was football. Greenock Morton were away to Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup yesterday, and I have to say that I have never in my life seen such an inept, incompetent display from a professional club.

Giant-killing acts in cup matches occur so frequently that it’s hardly ever worth mentioning them, but when a full-time professional club in the second tier of Scottish football comes up against part-timers in the third tier and loses, it’s not really headlines, but to lose 4-0? It’s an embarrassment. Morton were really lucky to get nil, that’s for sure.

The rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme. It took an age to find all of the songs that I wanted, and then they needed to be reformatted, remixed, edited, paired and segued. By the time that I knocked off, it had all been done. It just remains now to write the notes, which I shall do during the week.

There was time to make the pizza base for tea – not a loaf, though, because there’s plenty of bread in the freezer that needs using. And for a few minutes, I reviewed my Welsh for Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, and there’s a half left over for tomorrow night. Right now, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Welland Canal … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Welland Canal was built to by-pass Niagara Falls.
While I was there, I went into Niagara where I heard a story about a couple, a 95-year-old man and a 94-year-old woman, who were there on their honeymoon.
"Did they have a good time?" I asked
"Not really" was the reply. "They spent the whole two weeks trying to get out of the car."

0

Monday 5th January 2025 – WHAT A NIGHT …

… that was!

When i checked the time at one point, it was 02:15 and I was still up, working. And it’s been a very long time since that has happened, a very long time indeed.

The irony of it all was that it could have been an early night. I’d finished my notes early and had done everything else quite rapidly that I’d needed to do, but I was … errr … detained.

Earlier in the day on Sunday, I’d been doing some housekeeping on the hard drives and I ended up with a massive 335 GB that needed to be transferred from one external drive to another.

However, I had unfortunately forgotten just how slow this computer is compared to the desktop one. A task that would have taken three or four hours went on – and on – and on, and by about 22:45, when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still grinding away with hours still to go.

It was really out of the question to stop it, because I’d just have to start all the way from the beginning again, so I decided to let it run its course and to find something else to do while I was waiting.

So there I was, trying to find a lot to do because it just kept on going. Round about 02:20, it finally ground to a halt and no-one was more relieved than me to crawl into my bed after all that. I didn’t need much rocking, that’s for sure.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I decided that that was rather over-optimistic so I switched it off and curled back under the bedclothes. I’d reset it for 08:00, but when that went off, I did likewise.

The nurse, surprised to find me still in bed, awoke me to sort out my legs, and then threw the covers back over me and left. I was disappointed that he didn’t read me a bedtime story, but I don’t suppose that you can have everything.

Back to sleep I went, to awaken finally at about 10:00. It took me a good half-hour to summon up the energy to leave the bed, and I crawled off into the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

It was rather late to think about breakfast, so I just had half a bowl of porridge and a coffee to keep the lupus from the porte, as they would have said in Ancient Rome.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and no-one was more surprised than me to actually find something.

I was in my Welsh class last night and we were doing some revision. We came across a revision exercise and I’d had a look at it beforehand so I knew a little bit of the answers. She asked this woman the first question, but th woman couldn’t think of the Welsh word for “couple”. The teacher in the end suggested dyllint or something. So she answered the first question, and I was expecting the second question to be passed on to someone else but instead, she asked the same woman. I thought that if she’s asking the same person all these questions, what does she have lined up in store for the rest of us? If I haven’t revised it, I’m going to be looking very foolish. I was sitting on a bench by the docks and there were fishing rods and everything all around me. There were two little girls sitting on a bench. I knew who they were but i just couldn’t put a name to them. I noticed that every now and again, one of them was giving a glance at me so I gave her a little wave and next time, I gave her a little wave again. She said “Eric, could we come to sit by you?”. I said “well, I have a class exam at the moment but you can come and sit on this bench with me afterwards if you like when I’ve finished this exam.

This must be a premonition because I didn’t have time to revise my Welsh this morning ready for class tomorrow. I’ve no idea who the little girls were, but they obviously knew me. And As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what would I be doing with fishing rods?

By the way, the Welsh word for “couple” is cwpl

Once I’d done that, I went into the kitchen to prepare for dialysis. My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic, and in return I gave her the other half of her Christmas present that had been delivered yesterday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Believe it or not, I’d forgotten that I was going early for this X-ray. But it made no difference because the taxi was late arriving. Apparently, in all the snow that we were having, my driver had taken ninety minutes to come from St.Lô instead of the usual forty-five.

There were two other people to collect too, one in Sartilly where the roads hadn’t been cleared at all, so the time was just out of control.

To make matters worse, there was no-one at reception when we arrived at the hospital and we had to wait fifteen minutes for someone to appear.

There was no-one at X-ray either so it was another long, uncomfortable wait for someone to appear. So never mind my 14:00 appointment at dialysis – it was 15:09 when I was finally plugged in.

While I was there, I was introduced to Julie the Cook’s replacement. Unfortunately, she doesn’t bake so we’ll have to find other things to talk about.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, which was nice. She’d seen the X-ray and there’s no obstruction or infection, so she’s at a loss what to do next.

Eventually, I was liberated and ws able to come home, hours later than usual. It was the young chatty guy who brought me home so we had an interesting conversation all the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me in the sub-Arctic conditions and she helped me home. And after she left, I had the other half of yesterday’s pizza followed by a slice of Christmas cake. I must finish that off too. However, we’re back at the “everything tastes of salt” stage and it was all most unpleasant.

Right now though, even though it’s tremendously early, I’m going to bed. I’m hoping for a good sleep to make up for last night, but I doubt it very much. We can but hope. The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be.

But seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she told me about the results of the x-ray, I asked her "so how do I stand now?"
"Well, " she replied, after a moment’s thought, "having watched you staggering about on your crutches for the last eighteen months, I’ve been wondering that myself."

0

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I went down to town in my van and wanted to park it in an area where parking was free, so I parked up at the back on the way to the Val ès Fleurs. On the way back, into the centre do do my shopping, I bumped into one of the other residents. He was surprised that I had parked so far away, so he took me and showed me where I ought to park, which was right in the town centre but was a “pay and display” park. I explained that this was where I parked in the evenings when there was no “pay and display”, otherwise I’ll look for a free place. He seemed to be surprised that I was willing to walk a little distance rather than to pay a parking fee. After we’d finished our discussion, I asked him if I could give him a lift back up to our building, but he said “no”, he had other things to do.

When I was healthy, whenever that was, walking here and there would never bother me all that much, not even in inclement weather. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that i’ve walked home from my girlfriend’s in Chester, all twenty-five or thirty miles, on several occasions when I’ve missed the last bus, and it’s never bothered me.

The next thing that I remember was being in some kind of hall. I walked in and there were quite a few people around. I went to sit on a bench against the wall, a nice, comfortable, padded bench. Gradually, as more people came in, I moved along to give them space. When it came time to go, and I tried to stand up, there wasn’t enough headroom to put myself straight. In the end, I had to say to a girl who was sitting on the bench a lot further up, if she’d mind if I slid along to sit there because that was where the roof had a greater clearance. She tried to help me to stand up but I explained that it was something that only I could do. In the end, I managed to struggle to my feet with bending my head and back forward. I thanked her for her help anyway. She replied “yes, have a nice time where you’re going. It’s a shame that we are going to be one Welsh person less in this hall. I couldn’t understand how it was that she had guessed that I was Welsh.

That’s something that many people can’t understand. I can’t be helped to stand up because my legs need to lock in one position and if I don’t have that correct, nothing on earth will enable me to stay upright, no matter how much help I have. And I don’t have a Welsh accent either. “Part of Flint” spoke very much with a South Cheshire – North Shropshire accent and my mother was brought up in polite society but nevertheless within the sound of Bow Bells.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I was in hospital in Ancient Rome. I was a member of the military for some particular reason, although I’m not quite sure why. That was really all that I remember except that song again, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN somewhere in the background, sung by a choir rather than a musical piece, that kind of thing, with no music – just the voices singing it.

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

0

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Thursday 13th November 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… it was 11:30 when I finally left the bed this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I was in bed at 17:30 and was flat out, fast asleep until about 22:30. Ordinarily, I would have been tempted to leave the bed but I was feeling even worse than I had done earlier so for a while, I just lay there vegetating.

At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 as usual, and it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed.

Yesterday, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed and that was how I was found this morning. I didn’t wash, which is not like me at all, but simply fell into the kitchen for the lemon, ginger and honey drink with my medication. And to make the drink required another monumental effort.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I can’t believe that after all that sleep, there was so little on it. I was very ill, like I am now. For some reason, I was sitting on the floor, trying to work the computer when I was sitting on the floor. There was a cup of tea there, but it was freezing cold, and a cup of orange. There was a woman talking to me, and I recognised her as someone who had a lot of frizzy red hair and I know her from somewhere but I can’t think who she is. She’s something to do with the Health Service, and she asked me how I was feeling. I said that I was feeling dreadful. I told her that it had happened since roughly 15:00 which she said was the time that we all stop for a cup of tea. Surprisingly then, she left the room without saying anything else or doing anything else and I was still struggling about, sitting there on the floor.

That girl is someone whom I know from somewhere but I can’t place her at all. The hot drink and orange juice does come round at about 15:00 at dialysis and I do sometimes have the opinion that when I talk to the doctors about how I’m feeling, they walk away afterwards without doing anything about it.

Isabelle the Nurse noticed how ill I was looking. She told me to mention it at dialysis, which was what I had in mind to do. She gave me some advice and then left on her rounds.

After she left, do I make breakfast or go back to bed? Seeing as I wasn’t hungry anyway, I set the alarm for 11:30 and crawled once more under the quilt, fully-clothed again.

When the alarm sounded, I went to haul myself out of bed but it took so long that my cleaner was here by the time I was up and about. She applied my anaesthetic and it’s just as well that she hurried because the taxi came half an hour early.

It was a driver whom I hadn’t seen before, and she chatted non-stop all the way to Avranches. I really wasn’t in the mood.

Early at dialysis made no difference because once I’d told them about my health problems, they refused to connect me without speaking to a doctor.

Eventually, the doctor turned up and examined me, and they gave me an electro-cardiac test. It took them three goes before they were convinced that the results weren’t incorrect. They have diagnosed an irregular heartbeat.

As well as that, my blood pressure, low as it always is, was even lower today.

They asked me if I wanted to be admitted to Casualty but I said “no”, so they are going to speak to a few people and then call me in for a hospital stay while they examine me. I might have to wait a few days for that.

When dialysis was finally finished, it was another “Tour of Normandy” to come home, so I was no earlier than usual. My cleaner helped me in, and I sat on a chair and collapsed.

For tea, I tried a home-made mushroom soup but half of it went in the bin as usual.

So having written up last night’s entry and now tonight’s, I’m off to bed. Heaven alone knows what time I’ll awaken tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my electro-cardiac test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked the nurse if she had succeeded in finding my heart.
"Oh yes" she replied. "It’s still there "
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative."

0

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."

0

Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing whatever seems to have gone your way? Well, that’s how it seems to have been today.

Actually, it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and one or two (but only one or two) things did seem to go according to plan, but the rest of the time seems to have been spent lurching from one disaster to another.

There’s no point complaining about last night, because finishing my notes early but going to bed late seems to be par for the course these days and nothing that I seem to be able to do will ever change that, by the looks of things.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly but whatever happened after that was the first entry in this catalogue of disasters.

When I awoke, I had a feeling that there was something totally wrong, so I checked the time. Yes, it was actually 07:10 – some forty minutes after the alarm should have gone off. Did I sleep through the 06:29 alarm and its repeater at 06:33? Or did I forget to set it last night (it should set itself automatically)?

When you consider how loud BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE is, first thing in the morning, it can really only be the latter.

So at that point, I leaped to my feet … “well, not exactly” – ed … and staggered off into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for my medication. That was when Bane of Britain found that he had forgotten to take his Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D on Saturday

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

I was playing American football last night. We were all lined up on the goal line of our team, and someone threw the ball in from the touchline. It landed almost right at my feet so I fell on it to try to kill the ball. For some reason, the referee didn’t call the ball dead so I had to struggle to my feet, with two or three of the opposing players clinging on, and tried to move it away from near the goal. I managed to make about three or four paces before the weight pulled me down to the floor. I thought that that was really impressive, given everything else happening at the time.

Throwing in from the touchline in Gridiron? Somehow I’m confusing my sports here. It might be possible to do so in Rugby Union, I suppose, but then the ball wouldn’t be called dead in that kind of circumstance anyway.

And then there was something else about being in the kitchen of someone else’s house. They had a large white dog that was always hungry, looking for its food, so they simply turned the door of the cupboard upside-down so that the dog’s food was at the top and the dog couldn’t reach it. After a couple of minutes of sniffing around, the dog suddenly began scratching at the bottom of the cupboard door. It had only worked out where the food was, but it couldn’t manage to open the door. The old man of the house was quite comfortable with this going on, although everyone else wasn’t so much. Then this girl appeared. She walked into the kitchen where everyone was sitting. She said something along the lines that she was feeling hungry, but she had to hurry because she was having to go out. The young boy of the family said “the food’s off tonight”. She wondered what he meant. He told her that her father was fed up of the kitchen not actually making a profit so was rather in the way of putting various restrictions on what went on. The dog was amongst the first people to suffer.

That’s another dream that is totally meaningless as far as I am concerned. Whoever heard of a kitchen making a profit? I wish mine would.

But at least there’s no mention of anything to do with the American Revolutionary War.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in as usual, full of good humour and bonhomie. She dealt with my legs and feet, and then breezed out as rapidly as she had come. I could then push on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we’re discussing the British attack on Philadelphia where, for once, it’s the American dilatory tactics that affect the battle, with the British for once pushing on rapidly.

But Henry Carrington’s writing is sometimes, quite unintentionally amusing because of the stance that he takes. He writes pages about the “looting, pillaging and plundering undertaken by the British Army” but glosses over the “American Army seeking forced contributions from the local inhabitants”

Back in here, I had to prepare my timetable for the Centre de Ré-education and then do one or two other things, but the taxi driver rang me to say that he would be early, so I had to abandon everything in order to make myself ready.

At the Centre de Ré-education, my first appointment was with a physiotherapist who gave me a good in-depth examination in order to work out what programme of exercises would do me most good.

The second one was with with someone from the APA – the organisation that deals with autonomy. She wanted to see what I could do and what I needed in order to continue to live alone in my own property.

My next sessions are organised for Friday, so it’s all going to be really quick.

The taxi was due to come to pick me up at 12:30, but by 13:00 I was still waiting, so I ‘phoned them up. Eventually, the car arrived. The driver had had a breakdown … “he means ‘the car'” – ed … and it had taken a while to fix.

Back here, I could hear the computer in the office making strange noises, but I needed a disgusting drink break and to take my midday medication.

My cleaner appeared shortly afterwards and so I went for a shower. It seemed to be easier to climb into the shower today, which made a pleasant change, and it was beautiful. This shower really works and I’m glad that I had it done.

The washing is building up, due to not being able to use the washing machine until the leak somewhere is fixed, so my cleaner grabbed an armful of clothes to wash in her machine, which was nice.

Back in here, we had the ultimate catastrophe. The computer had ground to a halt and wouldn’t restart. There was just an error message “auto-repair cannot fix this drive”. And that’s bad news because I’d only bought this drive in March this year.

This could, in normal circumstances, be considered a calamity but that’s not so in here.

First of all, I keep the system files on one disk and the data files on a second, so that if one fails, the other one still is accessible.

Secondly, it’s the system disk that has failed, and I still have the previous disk, the one prior to March 2025, that I had put on one side after I’d taken it out. So having found it again (which is a surprise after the house move when I can’t find anything at all), I swapped it back and reinstalled it.

But it’s totally disappointing, and it’s shattered my illusions. The drive that has failed is a 1TB Solid State Drive and because these drives have no moving parts, which, according to their publicity, makes “them faster, quieter, and more durable. This absence of mechanical components means SSDs are less prone to physical wear and mechanical failure”

Well, so much for the publicity

In the middle of all of this, I crashed out yet again with another one of these catatonic attacks followed by actually slipping off to sleep for twenty minutes. I hope that this isn’t going to become a regular feature. I’ll be totally dismayed if it is.

Rosemary rang me later for a little chat. And it was a little chat too – only one hour long today. One of the subjects of discussion was the semi-feral cat that has adopted her and has rapidly transformed itself into a pampered domestic feline. It makes me even more determined to find a cat that will adopt me.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and once more, I left food on my plate. This is all rather worrying because it’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that things aren’t as they should be. I’m definitely sickening for something

But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I’ve had quite enough of today, thank you very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about my new computer drive … “well, one of us has” – ed … it’s a good job that I can remember my password.
It takes me back to when my brother first had a computer. When setting it up, he needed to create a password so he asked me about it
My reply was “You need at least six characters, plus one capital and also one special character”
So he replied “How about ‘HawkeyeTheLoneRangerThe VirginianMickyMouseBossHoggGandalfParisHermionebecauseIloveher”

0

Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

0

Wednesday 1st January 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all my readers. Those of you whom I know and those of you who prefer to remain in the shadows of the unknown. Come and say “hello” – I don’t bite. Well, not hard, anyway. Click on the link bottom-right for a contact form.

But anyway, that’s another year done and dusted – another year which, when it began, I thought that I would never see the end. Round about Summer time I was actually writing out my will and making my funeral arrangements, but I seem to be fighting back right at the moment.

So here’s to another year with improved health and prosperity for all of you. And a great big thanks and appreciation for all of the support that you have given me over the years. You’ve no idea exactly what it means to me

For 2025 I wish you everything that you wished on everyone else in 2024 – wishes for the Conservative Party excepted, of course.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, when the alarm went off this morning, I was off on my travels. I was with a group of people. It was something to do with a taxi business. These people were like extra-terrestrials, something like that, who didn’t belong on Earth and were wandering around here trying to find suitable humans to take back with them. There was something about an axe. I know that when the alarm went off there was a discussion going on about this axe. This axe fitted in somehow with the sound of the alarm so when the alarm went off, at first I wasn’t surprised to hear it because I thought that it was to do with the axe in the dream.

That’s right, you heard correctly. “When the alarm went off”. Brain of Britain has struck again.

It was 05:00 this morning and maybe later when I finally crawled into bed. After I’d finished what I had to do, I was playing about with this voice clone program and managed to produce some interesting effects.

But then I had a thought. If I dictated a sound-byte and recorded it, how would the voice-editing program that I use cope with it and transform the sound? After all, the voice-clone program must simply be a script editor that is changing pitch, tone and speed, so why can’t I do some of that by hand?

Admittedly, it’s much more complicated and much slower, but I could see more-or-less exactly how it’s done. In the free program at least. I imagine that the paid version is much more complicated and much quicker.

So there I was, working away producing some good results, and I noticed that it was 05:00. It’s a good job that I told the nurse to clear off. I cleared off too, into the bathroom to find my nightclothes and make myself ready for bed.

Then, of course, we hit a problem. Brain of Britain, who had been looking forward to a lovely, uncluttered lie-in where he could sleep until he awoke, for once in his life, had forgotten to switch off the alarm. That was the last thing that I needed.

But the dream itself was interesting. On our way up the hill from the railway station to the hospital in Avranches, we go past the “Battle Games” place where one of the entertainments on offer is of “throwing the axes” and I’ve often expressed an interest in going there to see what happens.

My taxi business ran in South Cheshire. Nerina and I had cars in Crewe and in Sandbach, so an extra-terrestrial, someone from another World and a more-advanced lifestyle would be anyone who comes from outside the boundaries of the Crewe and Nantwich and the Congleton Borough Councils.

After all of the drama I actually did manage to go back to sleep, and awoke at a much-more-reasonable 11:30. still not exactly the sleep that I wanted but I suppose that it will have to do.

It was 11:40 when I actually made it out of bed so it’s a good job that I told Isabelle the Nurse not to ‘phone me at 11:30.

After the usual trip to the bathroom I went into the kitchen to prepare my brunch.

Unfortunately, the hash brown mix that I made last week hadn’t survived. That’s a shame because I love hash browns, especially the ones that we have in Canada that I can’t find anywhere else unless I make them myself.

But no matter. With the fry-up in the air fryer, along with the sausages and baked beans with cheese I had a tomato and some mushrooms and all of that went down a treat on toast, along with porridge, more toast with cheese spread, grape juice and, of course, loads of strong black coffee. That’s what I call a good breakfast, but it’s still a shame about the hash browns.

While I was eating, I was reading MY BOOK.

We spent a lot of time discussing religion, but now he’s coming round to the first Roman invasion of the British Isles. He’s already mentioned the mass of human bones entangled with weapons, found in the Thames near Battersea, and he speculates that this was where the Romans tried to force a passage across the Thames.

He notes the difficulty of explaining all of the Celtic shields and the like in there, from a period well back from when the Romans arrive, so in the end he considers it unlikely to be the site. However, arms and armour were expensive items and I’ve seen all kinds of early Medieval wills where arms and armour were passed down from one generation to the next, and there’s no reason to suppose that in the pre-Roman days there was any change in this practice. So it’s quite possible that arms and armour from 200 years earlier might have been at any battle against the Romans.

But whatever they were doing in the Thames, some of the artefacts, such as “The Battersea Shield”, are magnificent examples of Celtic art.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night – or morning, more like. I was back in the Middle Ages later. There was something going on about promoting some kind of death insurance. It was the custom to wrap the dead in a shroud and hang them in the shroud from a hook. You would then take the shroud with the deceased inside and carry it to an undertaker. That was the limit of your duties – everything else would be dealt with automatically. I was surprised that there was this kind of thing going on back in those days but anyway …

Can you imagine that – rows of dead wrapped in bandages and shrouds like mummies and people unhooking them to carry them off? It’s a frightening thought and I wonder what on earth was going on during the day to put something like that into my head.

Apart from that, I’ve not done all that much at all today. I just loitered around in a relaxed frame of mind, totally forgetting until just now that I have bills to pay. I’ll have to do that tomorrow morning and I mustn’t forget.

Tea tonight was a taco roll and rice with veg, followed by the last of the Christmas pudding and some custard. There is still plenty of Christmas food left, like mince pies, Christmas cake, dates, biscuits and all of that. In fact I’ve hardly eaten any of my special supplies.

There’s a roll of pastry left which needs to be used, and so I’m going to have a bit of fun one of these days and make some individual vegan pies. We’re at the stage where the stocks in the freezer are running down and I need to be more imaginative with my baking. I’ll make a lentil and tofu mix, with oats to bind it all together, and use it all as filling

So tomorrow it’s the Dialysis Clinic again and I am not looking forward to that. Not even a smile from Emilie the Cute Consultant would persuade me to go there with any kind of eagerness. I’ll do a few things here and there and go to bed. A long way before 05:00 if I can.

And once again, a Happy New Year, many thanks and lots of love to you all.

But going back to the story of the extra-terrestrials, a few years ago they built a big rocket in Crewe
"Where are you planning to go with that?" I asked
"It’s called “Crewe’s Missile”" said the builder "and we’re planning Crewe’s first trip into Space. We’re going to the sun"
"Don’t be ridiculous" I said. "The sun is so hot that you’ll burn up long before you arrive anywhere near it"
"Ohh no we won’t" said the man. "We aren’t that stupid. We’re planning to go at night"
But the rocket still hasn’t left Crewe. Apparently they can’t find a bottle big enough in which to put the stick

0

Sunday 24th November 2024 – RIGHT NOW I’M IN …

… absolute agony yet again, having been standing on my feet for several hours.

It’s the lack of muscles in my knees that is causing the pain. If I want to stand up without my crutches, such as if I want to use my hands, I have to wedge my legs so that the knee-bones lock in a certain way and after a while it hurts like hell

Still the most important job of the week is done, even if several less-important ones have not so been.

Take the radio notes for example. Last night after I finished writing my notes I had the dictating of the radio notes to do – two lots of them. I was also having a chat on-line with my niece from Canada.

Her middle daughter, my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) was married a year ago and now lives in Michigan in the USA and her youngest daughter, another my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) is at “St. F-X” – St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the best University in Canada.

We’re planning a group meeting soon, a video chat on one of the on-line platforms seeing as we haven’t all seen each other for an age.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was invited to the wedding in Michigan last November so I tried a “dummy run” to Belgium last September to see how I would cope with the journey on my crutches with just a backpack, but failed miserably so I didn’t manage to go to the USA.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finished off the dictation, finished off the chat and crawled into bed much later than I would have liked.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off for a quick wash and brush up. It’s Sunday, I’ve had an hour’s lie in and the nurse will be here soon so I need to hurry.

But back in the bedroom I have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. The wind awoke me at 03:00 (not that I knew anything about it) but at that point I’d been off on an expedition with the native Americans. We’d paddled down the coast as far as we could to Florida and then walked back, describing a few of the tribes that we’d met and a few of their characteristics. Several of them were noted as lazy and several others had different epithets. In the end we said that it’s a far better representation of ourselves amongst the native Americans, we want to build a stronger fort to protect our settlement. He goes on to say that although there’s not a lot of land in each settlement they’ve crammed in many men, sometimes more men than the land is worth and they really need more soldiers going to serve as colonists so that they can have some kind of native element to protect the settlements against the French or the French can protect their own settlements against anyone, even the British who were currently their allies at the moment.

This reminds me of the book that I’m reading right now. Our author travels by water all the way down the St Lawrence River and then comes back on land.

But the conflict between the English and the French, with various native American tribes on different sides (or not as the case may be) went on all along the Hudson River valley and out into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee for the best part of a hundred years, on and off. It was a fierce, vicious war at times and was well-documented in stories such as Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED MANY OF THE BATTLEFIELD SITES in the Hudson valley in 2013 when we had that slow drive back to Montreal that took several weeks

We made it to Ticonderoga, Fort William Henry and all of the other places that Fenimore Cooper made famous in his “Leatherstocking Tales” of the Seven Years War in North America.

I’m not sure where I was but there was a choice of two cars. We had to choose one of three cars, An Austin Maxi, an Austin Princess HL and a Marina. I remember thinking that that’s the whole total of the British car output of the United Kingdom represented in that lot. We had a really good look round at them but couldn’t see anything or any reason to break any kind of monopoly position with Ford because there were quite a few issues with the British cars, even coming just straight off the production line and we couldn’t really at the time negotiating and repairing all of the bits that they needed to give us a car that we wanted

In the past I’ve had various cars and vans and I have to say that I’ve always returned to having Fords. I’m not sure what I’ll be having next. It’ll have to be whatever is available at the moment that has hand controls fitted.

The nurse turned up and was in chat mode today. She asked for my Carte Vitale – my health card – because she’ll be off on Tuesday and won’t be back until after the start of the next month so she has to make up her accounts.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I learned something new today.

Over the years, I have always wondered why the “District of Columbia” where the city of “Washington DC” is situated, is not included in the territory of any of the States. And thanks to Isaac Weld who was there at the time of its creation, now I know.

Congress used to meet in Philadelphia but at the end of the Revolutionary War it was besieged by discontented soldiers whose pay was in arrears. And the Pennsylvania State Government, in sympathy with the soldiers, refused to summon up the State’s forces of law and order quell the riot.

Consequently it was decided that there should be a territory created to house the Congress, where Congress itself could act as the local Government, issue by-laws, control the law enforcement officers and so on, and not be dependent upon any State authority.

In HIS BOOK he talks at great length about why that particular site was chosen. He is certainly very informative, if not garrulous.

Back in here, much later than usual thanks to the late arrival of the nurse, I had football to watch.

For some reason I couldn’t find a video of Stranraer’s game against Spartans. I later found out that the match had been postponed.

As for te Welsh football, there was one game missing – Hwlffordd v Y Bala, and it took an age to find that one.

The radio notes that I’d dictated were quite complicated. So far, I’ve only managed to finish editing one and I’m halfway through the other. I’m a long way from being where I wanted to be, with two radio programmes fully completed.

That’s because after the hot chocolate I set about dealing with the freezer.

It took much longer than you might imagine to unpack the two new drawers. Whoever packed them certainly deserves a medal because they would never be likely to break in that box, with all the padding that was around them.

Then I had to switch off the freezer, unplug it and take out all the drawers. Luckily, I’d put ice packs in there and they, being frozen solid, would help keep the contents cold.

Then I could attack the freezer with the hair dryer that I’d liberated the other week.

That took much longer too. I was surprised at just how much ice there was in there. And what didn’t help was that having put a towel at the front to catch the water that melts, the water actually drains out of the back.

For the time that it took, I was on my feet for several hours and hence the issue with my knees. But it was worth it because the freezer is now totally defrosted, the new drawers are in and filled, and you’d be surprised at how much room there is in there now.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and that had been defrosting. When I finished with the freezer I rolled out the dough and later, assembled the pizza.

With no small tomatoes I had to use large ones sliced thinly. Nevertheless it took much longer to bake. However it was delicious all the same. Now I’m going to have a quick tidy-up of the packaging and then go to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow.

But talking about the Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of Hawkeye and Chingachgook on their way to Fort Ticonderoga
After separating for a few days Hawkeye comes across Chingackgook with his ear to the ground.
"What is it, Chingachgook?" asks Hawkeye
"Stagecoach. French stagecoach" says Chingachgook. "Eight horses, two drivers, twelve passengers, five women, seven men. One driver, he have wart on side of face. Other driver, he have patch over left eye. "
"That’s astonishing" said Hawkeye. "You can tell all that by just lying there with your ear to the ground?"
"Oh no" replied Chingachgook. "Me standing here having little pause, and damn stagecoach ran me down"

0

Sunday 28th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… some excellent pizzas in my time but tonight’s pizza has beaten everything that I have ever made.

At first I thought that it was going to be a total disaster. I’d forgotten to add the oil to the mix and didn’t realise until far too late. As a result, the dough for tonight’s pizza was sticking to my silicon baking mat when I was rolling it out and we had something of a struggle.

But when it came out of the oven the base had fluffed up really well and was extremely light. Consequently it cooked even better than usual and if I could make pizzas like this all the time I’d be more than satisfied

Something else that I want to mention is to go back to something that I said a week or so ago about part-time teams playing full-time teams

This morning I was watching Aberdeen, full-time professionals of the Scottish Premier Division v Dumbarton, a part-time team promoted to the third from the fourth tier at the close season.

The first half was pretty even, finishing 0-0 at the break. Immediately from the restart (and I do mean “immediately”) before Dumbarton had come up to speed, they conceded 2 goals.

The score was 3-0 to Aberdeen with just 6 minutes to go, but it finished 6-0, as Dumbarton ran completely out of steam at the end and Aberdeen put them to the sword. It was a perfect example of what I had been saying, and I’m convinced that I’m correct.

Last night I ran out of steam quite late as it happened. Not that I’m complaining though because I dictated a pile of stuff for the radio and I’m catching up rapidly with the backlog, which suits me fine. I now have a pile of stuff ready for editing, which is good news as it will keep me out of mischief for a while.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. I was soon asleep and stayed that way for quite a while.

It was about 06:45 when I awoke but there was no danger of my leaving the bed at that time of day. It’s Sunday and a lie-in, although the days when I could lie in until midday and later are long-gone thanks to the visit of the nurse.

At 08:00 when the alarm went off I fell out of bed and began to organise myself.

And I seem to have lost another clip for my puttees. I’m convinced beyond all doubt that I picked up two in here but when I arrived in the living room I only had one and I’ve no idea where the other one has gone, despite a thorough search. In the end I had to raid the stores for another.

But it beats me how stuff can go missing in here. There’s quite simply nowhere for it to go where it can be missed or lost.

And of course the nurse was early today. I was only half-washed and half-dressed and I had something of panic-stricken five minutes to prepare myself while he was round at my neighbour’s

He seems to think that the wound in my arm has healed so well that in a week or so I won’t need the plaster. But he can have another think about that. I’ve no idea what they did, I don’t want to know and I don’t want to see it.

Yes – when they finally come to try to plug me in we’re going to have a panic attack like we’ve never had before, but that’s a bridge that we’ll cross when we come to it.

After he left I had a very leisurely breakfast and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There was a girl being interviewed on the radio about relationships with her boyfriend. She was regretting that her boyfriend was not the romantic type and recounted an episode where they had once come to some kind of big puddle in their path. While they were debating what to do, a passer-by came past, picked her up and carried her across the puddle and put her on the other side. She said that it was a shame that her boyfriend had never done anything like that. A few weeks later they found a big puddle in their path. He promptly agreed to pick her up to carry her. He stepped into the puddle but it was an extremely deep one that went up to his waist and he was stranded in there with his girlfriend. It just never worked out romantically as it ought to.

That’s a situation with which I can relate. Nothing seems ever to work out the way that I want it to either and it all inevitably ends up pear-shaped. I reached a stage a long time ago where I’d just let nature take its course and so much the better because then there’s far less to worry about. Some people seem to have a natural flair for this sort of thing, but someone somewhere has been given my share as well, I think.

And then I had the football. Stranraer weren’t playing this weekend so I had to look somewhere else for a game, and came across Aberdeen v Dumbarton, as I mentioned.

With a Premier Division team playing at home against a third-tier side there was only ever going to be one winner, but Dumbarton gave their hosts a fright, having the ball in the net after just a couple of minutes, only for it to be ruled out for offside

It took Aberdeen a while but once they were up to speed the inevitable rampage began.

After the game had finished I began to edit the notes that I’d dictated. The notes for the three additional tracks to make three complete programmes were completed first. They are all dealt with and assembled

At this point I broke off and made myself a salad sandwich for lunch, completely forgetting that I have this mushroom soup to make. Ahh well ….

For the first part of the afternoon I had one of the longer radio programmes to edit. That’s all done and the programme has been assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and the notes written awaiting dictation which will happen on Saturday night if nothing else happens to disrupt my plans.

Round about 16:00 I couldn’t decide whether to go to sleep or go for my hot chocolate. I chose the latter which was a good decision.

And then I had pizza dough to make as I’ve run out. As I mentioned earlier I forgot the oil but not to worry – the pizza dough rose like a lift.

Two balls are in the freezer and the third was used for tea tonight and as I said, it was the best pizza that I have ever made.

And so on that note I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight this week. Considering that Sunday is a Day f Rest when I don’t ever work, I have put my back into it today and accomplished a great deal. I ought to have a Day of Rest more often
It makes a change from when I rang up my boss and told him that I wasn’t coming into work today
"What’s the matter?" he asked
"I”m having a vision issue right now" I replied
"What’s wrong with your vision?" he asked
"I just can’t see myself working today" I replied.

0