Tag Archives: lie in

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again today. You wouldn’t believe that it’s a Sunday, which is supposed to be a Day of Rest for me.

Not that it was much of a rest last night because it was another really late night again. I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers, but it certainly wasn’t 23:30 I’d seen that come and go some time earlier.

It took longer than usual for me to go off to sleep, which appears to be par for the course these days. And although I have a vague recollection of waking up once or twice during the night, the next thing that I remember was the tail-end of the doorbell as Isabelle the Nurse announced her arrival.

She found me in bed, of course, and as well as sorting out my legs and feet, she also had to take some measurements of them too. That was complicated enough, and as much as I wanted just to go back to sleep, her irrepressible good nature meant that she talked all the way through the procedure.

After she left, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards and so, about half an hour later, I raised myself from the Dead and went off to the bathroom.

In the kitchen later, I remembered to take some of my medication, and then I made breakfast. Porridge, strong coffee and two of my home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it — these croissants are some of the best that I have ever made.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the (brief) Venetian recapture of some of the Greek territory from the Ottomans.

But it’s the same story as usual — disputes among the conquerors, disputes among their subjects, disputes between the conquerors and their subjects. Here, you have all of the ingredients that you need to ensure that, once the Ottomans gather up their strength and their resources, they will simply walk back into their former territories.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d been chatting to a taxi driver around Granville, related to a company that had a lot of Mercedes cars and a few odd, indiscriminate ones. At the end of the shift, I was talking to this taxi driver and looking through the window of the garage where you could see all of the vehicles there. He asked if I would go in to see if he’d been given credit for the final job that he had done. That meant going up and touching the taxi plate, pushing it and the last job would appear in the windscreen of the car. I went in, but I couldn’t find his particular car. There were all sorts of cars in there. The dream then moved on to something about the work in the European Union and an article on the chauffeurs. I was really disappointed to see that my name wasn’t mentioned, but it described some of the work that we had to do. It said that only two of the chauffeurs were authorised to take the luggage down to the south of France. This dream carried on, discussing the work, and then there was an article that the chauffeurs had decided to stop issuing certain visas to certain people. The company that controlled the issue of visas agreed with them, so these visas were stopped being issued

The first part of the dream relates to the taxi company that takes me about to my hospital appointments. I’ve been to their premises a few times late at night, and seen through the window their taxis parked up in the barn until next morning. Pressing the taxi plate wouldn’t do anything, though, because they don’t have plates — they have stickers.

As for the second part, we did have the press round the EU on several occasions and on one of them, I was actually filmed. Not that I ever denied anyone a visa though — I don’t understand that. It was however my responsibility to take one of my boss’s subordinates around for visas when someone from that office was required to travel.

There had been a rise in pilgrims from the Latin, the Frank and the Byzantine communities heading towards Jerusalem, and their habit of lying prostrate on the floor and kissing the soil when they arrived was inciting a lot of comments. It was therefore decided that they would stop the ferries that were bringing the pilgrims over by sea and the Byzantines were delighted by this.

This presumably relates to the book that I’m reading right now.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League yesterday. However, there was nothing interesting or controversial in there.

Afterwards, there was Stranraer once again losing — this time to Clyde 2-1 in a game that they should have won had it not been for them falling asleep for five minutes shortly after the start of the second half.

We then had Greenock Morton recording a surprising away win against Ayr United. The way that Morton have been playing just recently, I wouldn’t have thought that they would win a raffle, even if they were the only entrants.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I attacked the new computer. Yesterday, I couldn’t seem to make it read the disks in the array, so I concentrated on that for several hours. In the end, I managed to make it function, and now I have most of what I want in the way of disks connected to the computer.

With what time was left, I was uploading my entire suite of programs to the computer, and now, that’s pretty much how I would like it to be.

At about 17:00 I knocked off for cooking. Firstly, I made the dough for my pizza base and then secondly, I made my really thick custard.

While I was baking my pizza, I poured the cooled custard all over the vegan jelly. Now it’s beginning to look like a trifle. I hope that it actually tastes like one too. I shall find out on Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, though. I experimented by using sliced cheese that I grated rather than the grated cheese. And indeed, it was much nicer. It’s more time-consuming though, but you can’t win everything.

And now I’m off to bed if this appalling cough will let me. It’s really bad tonight. I just hope that they will be impressed by it at dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the disk array … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was speaking to one of my friends about it, and I asked her to send her congratulations to the array now that the computer can read it
"Certainly" she replied. "Hip, hip, array!"

Sunday 15th March 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… many requests, most of which are physically impossible, but one of them has been for the recipe for my vegan cheesecake.

So here goes –

235 grammes of biscuits. I used the really cheap “Speculoos” biscuits which are vegan.
100 grammes of vegan butter.
400 grammes of soya yoghurt. I used my last “soya nature” and two pots of fruit yoghurt.
100 grammes of fruit purée. I had some pear purée on hand.
2 ice cubes of aquafaba (chick pea juice).
30 grammes of cornflour.
10 grammes of sugar.

whizz up the biscuits into a powder.
melt the butter gently and then thoroughly mix it with the biscuits.
line a baking dish and then press the biscuit/butter mix firmly onto the bottom and some little way up the sides.
mix all the rest of the ingredients thoroughly and then pour onto the biscuit base.
bake at 160°C for about 35 or so minutes.
when it’s cool enough, put it in the fridge and leave it to set.

It really is as easy as that. Let me know if you made it, if you have any suggestions for improving it, and if you enjoyed it.

As long as you enjoyed it more than I enjoyed last night, because it was another of what you might call a “turbulent night”. I was in bed by 23:30, which was later than I would have liked it to be, of course, and I went to sleep quite quickly, but I was wide awake again at 23:53.

There was a dream that I wanted to dictate but the batteries had gone flat in the dictaphone. Groping around in my sleep for the spare batteries, I managed to knock everything onto the floor, so in the end I had to wake up, look for them and swap them over.

But in my dazed and hazy state, I must have put in the wrong batteries because when I went to dictate a dream at 01:03, the batteries went flat in seconds and I had to wake up again. Luckily, I’d put on charge the batteries from earlier and although they weren’t as yet fully-charged, they would do. And then I could go back to sleep.

Sunday is a Day of Rest and it always starts these days with a lie-in. But a lie-in until … errr … 07:53 is good for neither man nor beast. I was hoping for a much later sleep than that.

When the nurse turned up, I was awake, but I pretended to be asleep because I wasn’t in the mood for any social chit-chat or recriminations about still being in bed.

However, after he left, I did manage to go back to sleep, and there I stayed until 09:30, which is much more like it.

In the kitchen, I made my breakfast. Hot black coffee, porridge and home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it— this more expensive flaky pastry is much better than the really cheap stuff. My croissants were superb, just like they ought to be.

While I was at it, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve left the outlying Greek islands and we’re now discussing the situation in Thessaloniki under its Latin conquerors, and our author makes a very interesting observation, with which I concur wholeheartedly. He tells us about the fate of many of these Crusader States that, in his opinion "should be a warning to those who believe that nations can be partitioned permanently at congresses of diplomatists."

You’ve no idea, no idea at all, how many conflicts in this World have been caused by the way that the Western powers divided up Africa and the Middle East by using geographical lines, splitting up ethnic groups and dividing them between two (or more) different countries, or forcing different ethnic groups who have a historical hatred for each other to share the same country. And these conflicts are still going on today.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. And I was astonished by the amount of stuff that was on it.

I was with two girls last night. We were talking about my blog and the artificial intelligence program that I run as well. For some reason, we ended up talking about their boss at work. They were talking about some of his particular personal habits, that he never uses a toilet. He just goes outside and does what he has to do and then covers it with soil when he’s finished, and a few other things like that. I asked them basically why they still had him as their boss. They replied that first of all, he has some connections with a really big record company. Secondly, the big advantage that he has is that he never seems to remember everything or anything, so he’s not very demanding from that point of view.

This presumably relates to A SCURRILOUS RUMOUR BEING SPREAD AROUND WALES AT THE MOMENT BY A CERTAIN EXTREME FASCIST RIGHT-WING POLITICAL “PARTY” that a school in Wales is allowing children to self-identify as cats and instead of toilets, has provided litter trays for the pupils.

Not that there’s anything new in kids identifying themselves as cats. I’m sure that untold millions of children have gone through a phase of doing that sort of thing.

While we were dealing with this case of the teacher who had disappeared with this young girl, we’d been sorting out some clothes that related to the affair because part of the clothing was missing. Maybe we’d have a skirt or something but no blouse, or a blouse and no skirt, something like that, and we were trying to assemble all of the clothing so that we knew what we had and what we could list as missing. However, there was some small girl who was hanging around at the foot of the stage, but she didn’t really need to be there – there was somewhere else for her to go but no-one seemed to take any notice of her, so I decided that I would have to do that if no-one else would. I went to the edge of the stage to jump down, but it was probably two hundred feet down to the ground. Without thinking, I swung myself over the edge and spun round so that I was facing the side of the stage and went to climb down like a kind of monkey or something, but I’d totally miscalculated everything. Everyone gasped as I swung out over the stage and tried my best to slide down by digging my hands and fingernails into the wood as I slid down. I’d just miscalculated completely everything.

The first part of this dream presumably relates to the song CHILD BRIDE, a song that had been recorded by Bruce Springsteen for his album NEBRASKA but abandoned.

The part about sorting out the clothes is part of the plot of the Agatha Christie novel SLEEPING MURDER

As for the rest, it’s the usual panic-stricken nightmare that reoccurs every now and again at some point during the night.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Il y a quelque chose qui se passait avec les Beatles … I’m dictating in French, aren’t I … There was something happening concerning the Beatles as well last night. We were keeping some garrisons equipped and furnished with men in certain places, but with regards to one of them, we began to ask ourselves whether it was cost-effective to keep that particular one on or whether we should disestablish it. Someone mentioned that a couple of years ago, a few people had been injured there when the building had caught fire. Someone asked, rather tongue-in-cheek, although I suspect that there was more to it than this, if the Beatles had actually set the fire in the building themselves.

This presumably has a connection with the book that I’m reading at the moment. Several of the major fortresses had smaller outliers, but dividing a garrison is never a really good idea. The smaller one can be easily surrounded and overrun, and that would be a waste of manpower, supplies and ammunition. Everyone should be manning just one set of defences in order to concentrate the manpower and firepower.

Where the Beatles came into all this, I really have no idea.

We were going off to the university’s annual general meeting, so a large group of us piled into a coach and set off. We went down the autoroute into Paris and eventually came into the centre of the city, then round the périphérique and back out again. Then we all had to leave the coach and walk to the hotel, which was a couple of miles through the open countryside. It must have been midsummer because the hay was really high. We walked down these footpaths by these fields, and someone came across a booth that had all brochures in there, most of which were kiddy-designed. Someone even said that their father had, once many years ago, found one of these leaflets or magazines in there that they had prepared a long time ago when they were small. There was all this talk about the people we were going to meet. Several people mentioned the names of two girls who would be there, whom they were looking forward to meeting. I was feeling a little jealous because I was looking forward to meeting those two as well. There was also talk on the way down about the Americans who were going to be there. They were saying that on no account should we say anything about the war to upset the Americans. My opinion was that if the truth had to be told, it had to be told, and I didn’t care who was upset by it, so I calculated on my stay being a rather short one. There had also been some talk about “benzine” all the way down, and I was going to be drinking “benzine”. That was bewildering. As we walked, I came across a different two girls whom I knew from the university, so I walked with them into the hotel, but they disappeared as soon as we came in. As soon as I walked up to the reception, everyone recognised me – hotel staff etc. The first thing that they did was to pour a drink for me, some kind of fizzy drink with lemon and ice cubes in it. Someone shouted across the room “don’t forget that Mr Hall will have a ‘benzine’ as soon as he arrives”. Someone else replied “well, I’ve already poured it for him”. While we were waiting for everyone else to arrive, I had a chat with the manageress. She was saying that she admired the university and admired the people who were studying at it, such as me, which made me laugh. I replied “well, I admire you and I envy you and this lovely business that you have”. There was something else about an extra night’s accommodation. I seem to think that I’d paid for an extra night’s accommodation, but I wasn’t going to use it. I wondered how the refund would work if I were to leave without actually saying anything about cancelling this extra night.

The covers for the brochures for the Carnaval de Granville are designed by the local kids in some kind of competition, and the winner’s design will adorn the brochure for that year.

But I loved the comment that we must not upset the Americans, and so “I calculated on my stay being a rather short one”.

The “jealousy” part is quite interesting too. After all, there have been a number of times during my various dreams that I have been about to Get The Girl and someone comes along and spikes my guns. It’s no surprise that I’d be affected by people planning on spiking my guns before I’ve come within grasping distance of The Girl.

And once more, we end up with me dithering about this refund.

There was a campaign to put a bypass around Montaigut and St Eloy. They had built one around the eastern side but there was a campaign going on for one around the western side to link up with the other at both ends. I hadn’t been there for a while, but I drove down the road and saw that they had built a viaduct over a valley and had tarmacked it, but that was everything so far. I spoke to my architect friend about it, and he said that he had sent some plans to them about ten months ago and they’d built it, but at an old farm somewhere along the line, they had discovered a major water source, so they couldn’t really build it very far. He quoted some official as saying that the situation was much calmer now, there aren’t quite so many cars on the road, people don’t see the utility and they have become more accustomed to death since last time, and so it seems as if they were cancelling the project. I went along to the meeting about this, and they had several tape recordings of discussions between various people. For some reason or other, they had been recorded on string, not tape. They wanted to play these recordings to the people. I was asked if I’d hold the tape recorders while they did it. They gave me one to hold while the guy on the podium had a discussion with the people in the hall and then to play the string. There was definitely sound on it, but it was muffled and we could hardly hear a single word that people were saying, so after a while, he stopped it. At that point, I noticed that everyone had disappeared from that room, and I was there on my own. I didn’t have a clue what to do with this tape machine or anything. But one thing that I’d noticed when I was driving out that way earlier was that the skyline had changed completely. It was much higher away to the south than it used to be, so I wondered what had been going on there that had caused all of that.

They have in fact built a bypass around the eastern side of Montaigut and St Eloy, and not long before I left the area, they had built a segment around the north-western side of Montaigut, but it hadn’t gone any further than the road to Pionsat.

This part about everyone disappearing from the hall reminds me of a scene in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL when they had been consulting an ancient sage, when suddenly, he vanished in the fog.

“I didn’t have a clue what to do with this tape machine” – I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few suggestions, and I bet that I’ll receive more than one or two of them in the post overnight.

After all of that, I was quite exhausted, so I had something of a relax by having a footfest.

There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League and then I went, with some trepidation, to watch the Stranraer v league leaders East Kilbride game.

The wheels had well and truly come off Stranraer’s season after the defeat against Clyde that had ended their long-unbeaten run. But today, they managed to find some of their missing form and they ran out 2-1 winners. And well-deserved too.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I went through my e-mails and replied to everyone who needed a reply to some earlier correspondence. So if you are waiting for a reply from me and haven’t had one, send me a reminder because I have probably missed your message.

For the rest of what little time remained (apart from the ten minutes or so when I fell asleep … errr …. riding the porcelain horse), I occupied myself with a task that I should have started fifteen years ago. It’s going to take an eternity to do, so I hope that I’ll have enough time to finish it. As to what it might be, well, you’ll have to wait and see.

There was baking to do this afternoon. I didn’t bake a loaf – I simply took a half-loaf from the freezer in the bathroom. But I made myself a lovely pizza.

And it was lovely too – one of the best that I have made, and there’s another half left over for Monday night when I come home from dialysis.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … right now, I’m off to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about children identifying as cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was such a story doing the rounds not so long ago.
And when the child came downstairs to the dining room at teatime, it was surprised to find that no place had been set for it at the table.
"Where’s my tea?" asked the child.
"If you want some tea" said the father "go outside and catch it yourself. There are plenty of mice in the barn. And when you come in, you’ll find some Munchies in a bowl by the door."

Sunday 8th March 2026 – THAT WAS …

… much more like a game of football today. And I hope that those of you who watched it via the link that I posted yesterday (the link is still active if you want to watch it later) enjoyed it just as much as I did.

So last night, I went to bed, looking forward to today’s game of football. And as usual, I was later going to bed than intended. It was actually 23:40 when I finally crawled into bed after finishing everything that needed finishing.

As usual, I seemed to go to sleep quite quickly, and when I awoke (without the benefit of an alarm) it was just becoming light outside. I made no effort whatever to find out what time it was, because whatever time it was, I had no intention of leaving the bed. Sunday is a Day of Rest and these days, it begins with a lie-in.

When Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance, I was fast asleep in bed, and quite rightly so. She massaged my legs and feet with the oil etc while I was lying there immobile, and then she wandered off on her rounds. I went straight back to sleep.

When I finally awoke, it was 10:10 – what a wonderful way to start the day, and I wish that I could do it more often. I went into the kitchen, made my breakfast, forgot my medication and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

He’s now winding up the affairs of the Frankish nobles, recounting how, even in danger of annihilation by the Ottomans, they refuse to form a united front to defend their territory. They seem to be content with plotting, counter-plotting, invoking the aid of different factions such as the Genoese, the Neapolitans, the Venetians and even the Ottomans themselves to aid them in their selfish ambitions, not realising that the only winners in this scenario will be those who are giving the aid and, ultimately, the Ottomans.

But breakfast was nice, though. Porridge, hot black coffee and the last of the home-made croissants. I’ll have to make some more on Saturday. And while I’m at it, there’s only enough birthday cake to last until Friday evening. I’ll have to make some more dessert on Saturday too. Anyone have any ideas? Some kind of trifle sounds nice, but I don’t have any vegan jelly. Would agar-agar do the job, do you think? And I could top it with the vegan cream mix that I used for my birthday cake.

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

There were some photographs of some certain people going around that were dated back to the Roman period. Then, they came across a few more. One of them was interesting because it showed some Roman or other with an apple or something on his head as if it were a precursor to a story about William Tell. This became quite a well-known photo. Then they came across a few more which showed a couple of small girls, maybe eight years old or something, and they had that particular guy, who was asleep, and they were busy balancing these apples on top of his head. So they began to realise that the photo with the apple was not exactly a fake but was an involuntary one while this guy was actually asleep.

That would be quite something – photographs dating back to Roman times. Although the technique of using light to create images has been known since at least the fourth century BC, no one succeeded in capturing an image until 1777, and then they didn’t take the idea any further.

The allusion to William Tell is bizarre, though.

There had been some kind of archaeology carried out on a site. They had come across a woman, or a skeleton of a woman, who had been subjected to all kinds of atrocities and so on. A couple of years later, working in a similar place, they came across the same skeleton but much more modern, one that had also been subjected to a lot of atrocities. So we were busy trying to investigate it, so we had a small team. But there wasn’t much to do for entertainment there in the evening so one of the guys and I were talking about boxing. We agreed to have a three-round boxing match between us. This took place in the roadway up near the roundabout near the sports centre in Granville. We put the gloves on etc. and went to compete. It was obvious that this guy was in quite a different class to me and I was floundering around somewhat but he never actually laid a glove on me because my defence was quite good, but I couldn’t attack. At the end of a few rounds, he was rather dismissive about the affair and made one or two rather offensive comments, but I told him that I wasn’t in the least offended because we had to do something to pass the time, but I don’t think that he was all that entusiastic. He didn’t really appreciate anything, but I suppose that he could quite easily have had me on the floor in the first ten seconds if he had really tried. I forgot to mention in this boxing dream that the discussion about it came because we were discussing what to do to pass the time and the question of boxing came up. I said that I had brought it up before, but they hadn’t seemed to be very interested, much as I would have liked to have been involved in it.

If we go back to Mortimer Wheeler and MAIDEN CASTLE, there’s a report in there about a skeleton that they found which seemed to have been hacked about and cruelly treated round about the time of death.

As for boxing, I would have enjoyed maybe having a go once or twice, but I wouldn’t have been any good at it.

I’d had to go somewhere for some reason and I’d borrowed someone’s old pedal moped. I’d travelled all the way to wherever it was that I’d had to go and went to do what I had to do. Coming out of it, I bumped into the owner of the moped, a huge, big guy, so we went to go back home. He said that he hoped that the moped had been OK. I hoped that it was and went to look for it. But I’d left the keys in it and the ignition turned on, but it started up. He climbed on the front to ride and I sat on the pillion and we set off. Later on, I was driving, and he was talking about changing into his shorts, so I said that it’s probably not a good idea and tried to discourage him. We carried on riding and came to a town centre where there were roadworks. There was a diversion posted, but we reached a point where there was no diversion so I went straight on, but realised that this wasn’t the road. It was an old residential area full of terraced houses, some of which had been demolished. He was talking about a row of terraced houses somewhere that hadn’t been demolished because the Beatles had bought it after they had gone the wrong way down what had been supposed to have been a diversion and seen these houses standing on their own. Eventually, I tried to return to where the main road would be. This involved driving across a piece of wasteland. But there was a big fence at the end of it and a workers’ canteen. When the workers in the canteen saw me coming, they dismantled the canteen so that I could drive this car through and back onto the road. They asked if I would be OK from here. I said that I would have been OK had I seen the diversion sign. They replied that they had taken the diversion sign away thirty seconds ago because the diversion had finished. The guy on the back of this moped was now talking again about changing into his shorts even though he said that I had stopped him. But I hadn’t stopped him – I’d just tried to discourage him

This is a strange dream, right enough, hopping about from moped to car and to moped again. And, incidentally, there wasn’t a pillion seat on such things as an old NSU Quickly, a Phillips Panda or a Raleigh Runabout.

However, the demolition site seems to be a flashback to that dream about a disappeared sports stadium a couple of months ago, and while the Beatles never owned a stock of houses (as far as I know), I do know of one group that did, a most surprising group as well, given their ethos. However, professional secrecy impels me to keep that news to myself.

Having brought everything up-to-date, I watched the highlights of Stranraer’s game against Edinburgh City, bottom of the table. And I wished that I hadn’t because Stranraer were awful and suffered their worst defeat of the season, which is pretty hard to bear after some of their recent positive results.

Next on the list was the Welsh homework, which I almost finished before the football came on.

And while the result was predictable, given the gulf in class between a team in the Premier League and another one in the second tier, Y Rhyl gave Caernarfon a good run for their money and pushed them all the way. The game finished 2-1 to Caernarfon, and it could have been ohh! so different if the referee had awarded the penalty that I would have awarded to Y Rhyl in about the fortieth minute when the Cofis’ ‘keeper, Connor Roberts, hauled Y Rhyl’s Somali international Mohamud Ali to the ground.

But what has annoyed me about all of this is that I didn’t notice a single representative of the FAW at any of the games this weekend. It’s a well-known fact that the FAW is a very Cardiff-centric organisation and rarely wanders outside its home territory, but not being present at a Welsh Cup semi-final is appalling.

In a fit of pique, I wrote to the FAW to ask "Where was Noel Mooney" the CEO of the FAW "this weekend? I didn’t notice him at either of the semi-finals this weekend. Did he slip by unnoticed and unannounced, or did he simply not turn up? What was the matter with him? Was he ill? Or could he simply not find enough native bearers to carry the FAW drinks cabinet north of the Heads of the Valleys and fight off the sheep and druids who are all that occupy that forbidden and unknown (to the FAW) territory?"

As well as that, I added a few bells and whistles, but I don’t expect that I shall receive a reply.

Once the game was over, I went to make my bread and pizza. And I have never had a loaf of bread rise up as much as this one did today. It looks wonderful. The pizza was good too, and there is, as usual, half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis … "I don’t think" – ed … tomorrow

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about photography … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends is a professional photographer.
One day, he was walking along a beach when two girls from Crewe came walking by the other way.
As he reached for his camera to take a picture of them, one girl said to the other "keep still! He’s going to focus!"
And the other girl replied "What? Both of us?"

Sunday 1st March 2026 – DYDD GWYL DEWI …

… hapus iawn, pawb!

Did you all enjoy your leek soup? And did you arrange your daffodils neatly in your living room? And did you give your pet dragon a little treat? As long as you did all of that, you aren’t likely to receive a visit from an angry druid today.

As for me, I’m afraid that I didn’t. Sunday here is pizza day, and as well as that, I can’t go out hunting for daffodils, although Rosemary did send me some virtual daffodils via an internet chat program.

Instead, I’ve had something of a lazy day, and you’ll be surprised at just how productive I have been, because I know that I am.

Last night wasn’t as I had planned it either. It ended up being horribly late, just after midnight, when I stopped letting it all hang out and went to bed instead. And instead of the decent sleep and long lie-in that I wanted, it was one of those mobile nights where I was tossing and turning, half awake and half asleep, without actually going into a really deep sleep.

When the nurse put in an appearance, I was actually awake, and so I pretended to be asleep so that I didn’t have to leave my comfortable bed. He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. I curled up under the bedclothes and tried my best to go to sleep, but with no luck at all.

Eventually, round about 09:15, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead. I gathered up my clothes from the chair and, throwing my slippers in the general direction of the bathroom, I scored a beautiful hole in one, right into the toilet bowl. What a way to start the day!

In the kitchen, I forgot my medication, but I had a lovely breakfast of porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants. That’s a really nice way to start the day, especially when you take your time and don’t go into your office to start work until 10:45. I wish that every day could be like this.

What took me so long was that I was engrossed in my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the complicated relationship between Thebes, Athens and Sparta, a relationship that sporadically erupted into warfare, with any two pitted against the third. It’s helping me brush up on my classics from when I studied Latin at grammar school, and it’s amazing just how much of the old classical stories have been proved by modern archaeology to be true.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was living in some kind of communal living thing. There were lots of different people there doing lots of different things. There should have been a meeting late one night before going to bed, but it turned out that the guy on whose behalf the meeting was being held had simply gone ahead and applied the texture mix to his skin, which meant that he’d be busy recovering or whatever, changing or something, and so the meeting was cancelled. That was extremely disappointing, so I gathered up a couple of things from the radio, some old English-language programmes that I’d done years ago and went to see the girl in the next room who worked for the local radio. She thanked me for coming but said that they were doing things in a different way these days and didn’t need the programmes that I had. However, there would be plenty of opportunity to do stuff in the future. She was thinking of having some kind of doll or something and she would want me to write the speech for it. I took my things to go back to my room, but on the way back, I heard that there had been some kind of announcement that Jim Dale, one of the CARRY ON stars, had been seen hiding in a tree near the old airfield up near Wardle – it was described as “Stoke Bank” in this news report. He’d been repeating one of his “Carry On” speeches from out of this tree and it had made the local news in all the papers.

Whatever the significance of the first part of this dream might be, I have no idea. As for the second part, I have a whole stock of English language radio programmes that Liz and I prepared when we were running “Radio Anglais”, programmes that were broadcast on French local radio. A short while ago, a radio station in Nantwich was calling for radio presenters and programmes, so I sent them one or two as tasters, to see whether they might be interested in a programme from me every now and again. It goes without saying that they never replied.

There is a “Stoke Bank” along the A51 a couple of miles from the old Wardle Airfield, which was my home … "the airfield, not Stoke Bank#34; – ed … for a short while when I was a baby. But there aren’t any trees there in which Jim Dale could loiter, whether or not he might be repeating a “Carry On” speech.

And I did once live in some kind of commune. But not for long, though. Firstly, I’m not a sociable animal, and secondly, most people in that place preferred to live off the backs of other, hard-working people. In the end, I preferred to live in my van.

There had been a couple of girls who had come over for an environmental conference. I’d been chatting to one and I was getting on extremely well with her. For some reason, my brother ended up with their contact details, but I didn’t. On the Sunday, we had various things to do, like we had to pack our place up as we were moving house that weekend. We were busy organising everything, and there was this beautiful cupboard that I’d had my eye on for ages with several drawers in it. It just looked like a huge bass speaker. The price on it was something like £275.00, which I thought was too much. Someone whom we knew came along and asked about it. The woman said “if you take it now, you can have it for £180.00. He paid her cash on the spot, and I felt really annoyed because I would have had it for £180.00 any day of the week. I told her to wait a minute because it had some of my paperwork in it. I had to go through and find somewhere to put this paperwork. I asked someone if they had a sack, and my mother made some kind of comment about that, but I wasn’t in the mood to joke. In the end, someone found a large paper sack and I began to put my things into it. One thing that I’d noticed was that a plot of land on which I’d had my eye too, which was formerly a garage in Audlem, had come back onto the market. The announcement from the paper was that there was a confusion about the closing date of the auction. Of course, I was far too busy to concentrate on this and we were still putting away our things. I came across a press cutting that showed that this conference to which we’d been was going on today, and there was a chance to meet all the contributors. That really annoyed me because I could have gone along and seen that girl again. Then my brother came up with some kind of story about how his car, with a trailer on it, had an electrical fault and he’d had to manually flash the rear lights to make some kind of brake lights every time he stopped. I was still in no mood for any kind of joke

This is quite a regular theme, isn’t it? Here I am, just about to Get The Girl, and a member of my family comes along and throws a spanner into the works.

The chest of drawers sounds interesting, and had I been healthy, I would have gone all-out to make one. And moving house, cars with electrical faults and looking for plots of land were habitual themes in real life back in the day.

There was also something about a Grand Prix around by Monte Carlo, the Monaco Grand Prix, twisting and turning through the streets with all of these cars taking part. We were watching it from a distance, and suddenly, after about half of the cars had gone past, there was complete silence and nothing. Then, all of the Grand Prix drivers who hadn’t gone through in their cars, they came through, and they were running. Apparently, there had been a major accident somewhere and they couldn’t proceed any further with their cars – this major accident behind the leading group so they couldn’t proceed with their cars, so they were going to run the rest of the course.

Before I went to bed last night, I was reading a news article about Cadillac’s entry into the Formula One circuit, but that their engine is not considered to be as reliable as it needs to be. Running the course on foot would be a novel way to proceed, though.

There was some kind of dream going on about a football competition. One of the teams had been relegated. There was something about a particular match and it involved my vegan ice cream somewhere, but I really can’t remember any more about it because I awoke as it was under way and it all evaporated … "the dream, not the ice cream" – ed …

Llanelli has just been relegated from the JD Cymru League, and lest night, we were watching the Welsh League Cup Final, complete with its very emotional ending, followed by vegan ice cream for dessert.

Seeing as we have been talking about the Welsh League Cup Final … "well, one of us has" – ed … this is the LINK TO THE HIGHLIGHTS. This is the LINK TO THE FULL MATCH. If you have the time, it’s well-worth it from a footballing point of view. The highlights don’t really show anything like a fair representative proportion of the game.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, there was yet more football. Morton were comfortably beaten by Airdrie after going down to nine men, and then Stranraer’s long unbeaten run came to an end as they were beaten at home by Elgin City.

After a disgusting drink break, with some of the medication that I’d forgotten, I had a pile of *.html coding to edit.

First thing though was to upload my graphics program onto this laptop. That’s easier said than done because there is no DVD drive on it. I had to rummage around deep in the bowels of the box where all of the redundant hard drives are hiding, and there it was, right at the bottom. And to my surprise, the USB cable and power pack were with it. Usually, knowing me, I would have expected them to have been scattered to the four winds a long time ago.

The next step was to open the drive. With not having been opened for years, the springs had seized. Luckily, there’s an escape hole, and a straightened paper clip fitted in quite nicely to lever down the internal catch.

Having uploaded the program, I could then go ahead and prepare some graphic images. And then I had to hunt down a few web links to tie to the images, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

The next task was to edit the *.html coding to include the images and their links, and I was dismayed at how much *.html coding I’ve forgotten. Turn the clock back thirty years, and I was writing web pages by hand in “Notetab” and even teaching basic web design to a couple of interested people, but I couldn’t do it now.

There was an hour to spare, so I made a start on the Welsh homework. I’ve done about two-thirds of it, and as it doesn’t have to be done for two weeks, I’m glad that I’m well in advance because I can have a relax at some point.

At 16:30 I knocked off to go a-baking. A loaf of bread and a vegan pizza were today’s output. The bread rose like a lift and looks excellent, and the pizza was absolutely delicious, with half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … and to reflect on what a busy day I’ve had, considering that Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Monaco Grand Prix … "well, one of us has" – ed … Percy Penguin once told me that she’d like to go there to watch the Formula One race.
However, I told her "we don’t have the money to go to watch the Formula One race in Monaco. And in any case, it’s pronounced Gron’ Pree."

Sunday 22nd February 2026 – WHAT A NICE …

… way to start the day today. By the time that I came back in here to start work after breakfast, it was 11:15. That’s about two and a half hours later than usual, and if every Sunday could be like that, it would be wonderful.

Mind you, it wasn’t an early finish last night. By the time that I’d completed everything that needed completing, it was once more just coming up to 23:30, and I would have loved to have been in bed an hour or so earlier. But simply, I don’t know where the time goes these days.

Anyway, once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. However, it was something of a mobile night. I definitely remember waking up briefly a couple of times, although it wasn’t for long and I can’t really remember all that much about it.

One thing that I do remember, though, is that when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, I was fast asleep with my head under the covers. And while I was submerged at that end, she unsubmerged me at the other end to deal with my feet and legs.

After she left, I curled up again and went back to sleep. However, round about 09:30 I was found sitting on the edge of my bed. Much as I would like to, I can’t spend all day lying in my stinking pit. I have to make a start sometime.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen. First task was to bake the croissants that I’d prepared yesterday. And this new technique seems to have worked. The presentation was so much better today, and they looked like real croissants.

So a couple of those along with my porridge and hot black coffee, and I was well away. It really was a nice breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

Yesterday, I mentioned that this section about pottery was going to be a very long job. And I was right, too. Today, we’ve been discussing the lugs that appeared on different kinds of Neolithic pottery – just the lugs. This book is going to be a very long read.

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

I’d heard a report that in the near future they would be bringing out a new version of the Berlingo. It was going to be a long wheelbase type of thing with more room inside. That became immediately more interesting to me because I would have liked to have had something like that at some point. I thought that if it was long-wheelbase, it would still be suitable for sleeping in if necessary when I was out on the road. I tried to find out more about it but apparently it was not being distributed for quite a while yet and that was disappointing news because I had a feeling that I was going to be needing a new vehicle fairly rapidly and this would probably have been ideal for what I wanted.

Back in the late 1990s, I needed a car in a hurry after the Mercedes went the Way of the West. With nothing better on the horizon, a friend at work sold me an old Volkswagen Passat diesel estate. Only just a few weeks later, Citroën announced the end of the run of C15 diesel vans, and they were selling them off at just €4995 plus VAT. One of those would have been perfect for what I wanted at the time.

There was also something going on about the Epstein affair. People had suddenly realised that the one important person, the former wife of Epstein, had not yet been arrested despite her name appearing in the files on numerous occasions. The official reason given was that although her name appears in the files, there’s no allegation of any wrong-doing and no-one has made a complaint against her. In that case, as far as the police go, there’s nothing to investigate until something is discovered in the files that implicates her in a crime.

With all of the revelations of the Epstein files and the aftermath, I’m just wondering when my name is going to appear in them. Everyone else’s has, for one reason or another, and I’m feeling left out.

As for the subject matter of the dreams, there was something the other day about AFKAP – the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince – and I imagine that that particular dream was in some way related to the revelations in the files.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, we had a footfest, with all of the highlights of the matches from the JD Cymru League over the weekend. And the unbeaten run of Connah’s Quay Nomads came to a shuddering halt as they were beaten by Y Barri 1-0.

And things are going from bad to worse for Penybont. With yet another player dismissed from the field, they crashed 3-1 away at Colwyn Bay. For a team that a few months ago was a comfortable second in the league, they’ve only won once since 21st November, and that game was against struggling Llanelli, where they scraped a narrow 1-0 win.

The next game was Stranraer v Spartans in Scotland. And at last, after a run of I don’t know how many draws, they managed to win. Mind you, it took A WONDER GOAL DEEP IN INJURY TIME by Aaron Quigg to break the deadlock.

A little later, after a little relaxation, I spent a couple of hours revising my Welsh ready for Tuesday, and then it was baking time.

No bread today, though – I took half a loaf out of the freezer ready for next week because I was going to bake a cake and didn’t have the time for everything.

For reasons that shall become apparent in early course, I really fancied a strong ginger cake. As well as that, Rosemary had found an obscure recipe that suggested that desiccated coconut and ground almonds were a suitable substitute for sugar when baking.

That sounded absolutely excellent, so I ground a couple of handfuls of almonds and added a cup of desiccated coconut instead of one cup of sugar in my oil cake and used coconut oil instead of the vegetable oil. With enough ginger to sink a ship, I mixed up all of the ingredients and poured the mixture into the baking tray.

After I’d made my pizza base, I started to make the layering cream for the cake. I’d found a good recipe with butter, icing sugar, coconut yoghurt (I mixed soya yoghurt with coconut oil), maple syrup and spices. I whipped it all up and put it in the fridge to stiffen.

But this filling and the consistency of the sauce looked excellent to me, and I was thinking that I could adapt it to almost any kind of filling, especially chocolate. I shall have to make further plans.

While I was assembling the pizza, I had the cake baking and it was done to a turn – maybe a little too much on top and not enough on the bottom – and I wish that I knew how to deal with that because it’s not the first time that it’s happened.

When it was ready, I took it out of the oven and put the pizza in. That was done to a turn fifteen minutes later, and as usual, I ate half of it, with the other half for tomorrow after dialysis.

Once I’d finished and tidied up everything, I cut my cake in half and went to put the layering mix in the middle in order to make a sandwich cake with the two halves. However, it wasn’t cooled enough and it began to melt the layering mix.

Next time that I make a sandwich cake, I shall have to stick it in the fridge for several hours to make sure that it’s properly and thoroughly cold. One thing, though, and that is that I’m certainly learning a lot as I go on, and that’s the whole point of doing it.

But right now, I’m going to finish everything off and go to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about baking a cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of Zero and her mother when Zero was at a young and impressionable age.
They had been baking a cake together and were relaxing in the living room when the timer sounded in the kitchen.
"Be a dear and go and see if the cake is ready" said Zero’s mother.
"How do I do that?" asked Zero.
"Take one of the meat skewers from the cutlery tray, poke it into the cake a few times and see if it comes out clean."
So off trotted Zero into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, Zero came back in. "Yes, mum, it’s cooked."
"So what took you so long?"
"Well, the skewer came out so clean that I stuck the rest of the dirty cutlery from lunchtime in the cake too."

Sunday 15th February 2026 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest, and so it turned out to be today. Leaving the breakfast table at … errr … 11:30 underlines that fact perfectly.

Add to that a little trip away with the fairies … "although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … for twenty minutes round about 18:30, and you have all of the makings of a perfect Sunday.

Last night, though, it wasn’t quite so relaxing. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … including a little crash out while I was writing my notes, it was 23:30 or thereabouts when I finished and finally crawled in underneath the covers ready for my Sunday morning lie-in.

There were a couple of the vaguest memories of waking up at some point, but it was the arrival of the nurse that shook me out of my slumbers. He dealt with my legs and feet and then cleared off. I threw the covers back over me and went back to sleep.

When I staggered into the kitchen, it was 10:18 precisely, according to the time on the microwave. And so followed a leisurely breakfast of porridge, strong black coffee and the last two homemade croissants. Next weekend I’ll have to make some more, and I shall try a revised technique to see if it makes any improvement. I’m determined to crack this croissant thing one way or another.

While I was dining, I was reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples

His team has come across a couple of house remains from what he calls “Phase Six” of the occupation. “Phase Six” was classed as the Late Iron Age immediately preceding the Roman Invasion of Britain in AD 43.

He tells us that the earliest house was built in phase 6F, and east of the hearth he discovered … "… a pile of slingstones"

He then says that the second house was built in phase 6G and the silt was covered by slightly more stone, "… including a patch of slingstones."

Periods G and H were amongst the very latest periods of “Phase Six”, immediately before or during the Roman assault on Maiden Castle.

As far as I would say, you wouldn’t need a pile of slingshots at your immediate disposal if you didn’t think that you were likely to need them, so while the presence of slingshots in a heap in a couple of houses doesn’t in itself imply warfare, it does imply that the households were prepared for war at the time that the Romans arrived.

It also should be said that several other houses of the same period or slightly earlier were excavated, but there was no evidence of slingshots in those.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that these adverse comments of “no evidence of warfare at Maiden Castle” are somewhat wide of the mark.

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

My brother and I were in the Auvergne and we began to cycle from the Puy de Dôme. We cycled all the way through the Cher and came to the next Département. The border between the two départements was a huge river, and it was along this bridge that you had to change over from driving on the left to driving on the right. So we cycled over the bridge and there was this town, a small French town called Lutu. We carried on cycling and we noticed in the distance a series of bridges. One was a road bridge, the other was a railway bridge and we assumed that the third was a canal bridge. As we looked, on the railway bridge, which was quite high up, a coal train ran past. My brother held that there was a coal train on this line every five minutes. He then asked why there was such an extensive canal network. I told him that the canal network was the same as the railway network in the past. It was built to move the coal to market. We then came to a part where there was a very steep hill so we had to dismount and push our bikes up this hill. We met a local guy, so we had a chat to him for a while. When we reached the bypass that had gone round the town, we could remount our bikes and pedal off. Then we came into a big city. I knew the name of this city, but I couldn’t think of it. We had to rush to pass a green light, and then my brother pointed to one of my tyres. It had gone down and the rear tyre was flat. We cycled for a while until we came to near where our hotel was, and there was a bicycle shop. We went in to ask the guy if he could change the tyres but he said that he was closed – he’d only come in to collect some things. But he gave us an address, which was 499 some street, and it was also the place where the dialysis took place. We found the street, which was only around the corner, and down at the bottom, we came to 499, but it was a big gate and the street was closed off. We opened it and went through, and it was a huge rough patch of ground like a demolition site but it seems to have all little units around it. We heard someone talking about bikes from one so we went over. He pointed us to a place in the corner. We went over to the corner and a guy in there was preparing to go home, but he agreed reluctantly to change my tyres so he began to take the wheel out of the frame.

It was really the Creuse, not the Cher, where we arrived at the large river marking the border. And the only Lutu that I could trace was a small settlement near a river in Fiji.

But once again, my brother turns up in a dream, but while I cycled for miles and miles as an adolescent, I wouldn’t have done it at all after I had my driving licence. This wasteland is familiar, though, and it reminds me of the football ground that wasn’t there that we visited a couple of months ago.

There was some kind of music school or music shop somewhere and I was making enquiries. It seemed that it was something to do with Castor and Pollux, so naturally, I went along there. It was a modern guitar and music shop so I had a wander around as best as I could on my crutches and had a play on one of the six-string guitars. When I came to put it back, first of all, I tried to stagger in the wrong direction, then I ended up staggering in the correct direction to put it back. It was all very complicated because I had my crutches, but, of course, carrying a guitar, I was in a great deal of difficulty on crutches. I heard them talking in the shop that they used to use Marshall amps and speakers but after the death of Jim Marshall they carried on for a short while, but now, they use something called Vose that are light brown in colour. We were listening to some music through the speakers that they had. Someone had ordered a pair but only one had come and he was disappointed, complaining at the shop counter. I went through into the back where there were the basses but I couldn’t play a bass because it was too heavy for me. I heard some kind of laughter coming from the front room and one of the guys running the shop came into the back. He said that there had been a competition for people to vote for the guy with the best bassist in the area. I had a look, and my name was on there once. He said that it was a guy called “Ace” who had won. He should be coming in a little later. He still had the Rickenbacker that he had in the very beginning years ago. I asked if he was still playing these days and he said that he was and that was why he couldn’t come in tonight to receive the reward. I asked about this reward, and it was one of these “write in” answers and thousands of people had written in for this “Ace”. I asked “who on Earth has done that?” and he replied “those lunatics in Italy. They are the ones who have done this”.

Castor would be the kind of person to have a music shop, bearing in mind her interest in guitars and music.

But apart from that, my guitars are too heavy for me to hold and play these days. And “Vose” speakers. I’m not by any chance thinking of “Bose”, am I?

Strangely, back in the early/mid 70s in Crewe, there was a bassist called “Ace” and I know his real name too. And he did actually own a Rickenbacker 4001 bass, to the envy of all of us back in those days. A beautiful guitar.

This voting thing seems to be rather strange but it’s true to say that there was a “Merseybeat” poll back in the early 60s for the best Liverpool group, and the magazine never ever sold out so quickly. All of the groups bought as many copies as they could and, of course, voted for themselves.

Did I dictate the dream that I was on holiday down in Kent and I walked with my crutches down to the beach? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … I could see in the distance the coast of France and down towards Dover. I could see the ferries crossing over and also the odd hovercraft or two. Then it was time for me to leave so I managed to stand up but I couldn’t reach my crutches which had blown over. I went to try to grab them but there was a young lad there watching me. He said “are you going to haul your crutches then?”. I replied “I have to try to resolve this myself”. He answered “yes, it’s good for you if you do”. Eventually, I managed to reach my crutches and I hobbled off to the hotel. There was a long queue waiting for lunch but suddenly everyone surged forward as if they had opened the doors to the dining room. I went in, and I had a lot of trouble trying to find vegan food because there were no labels on anything and I didn’t know what it was. It was mostly a salad buffet where people helped themselves. At some point, some girl, while my back was turned, dropped two pieces of meat onto my plate so I made her move them. She couldn’t understand why I’d made such a fuss. I told her that since she’s been at this school for three years, she should know by now that I’m a vegan. She said that she hadn’t realised, and actually, she was a vegan too. Trying to find some food at this buffet was really difficult. In the end, there was some blue grated vegetable that looked like grated carrots or something like that. I was still trying to debate whether there was anything else that I could eat when I awoke. But one thing was bothering me and that was “how was I going to manage to carry my plates when I need both hands to work my crutches?”.

There are several places along the East Kent coast where you have a similar view.

It’s also correct that I need to struggle on as best as I can because it will help preserve my autonomy for as long as possible. However, serving myself at a buffet when I’m on crutches is something that has come up on a couple of occasions.

After this, we had another footfest. The highlights of the remaining games in the JD Cymru League had been posted online so I sat and watched them for a while. That included the Battle of Essity Stadium where Y Fflint and Llansawel went for the best of three falls, three submissions or a knock-out after the final whistle.

No Stranraer game, though. The pitch at Dumbarton was frozen so the game was called off. And that reminds me of back in the mid 70s and my potential one-and-only appearance for Nantwich Town Reserves when they were desperately short of players, and so I turned up at the ground to find that the pitch was frozen and the game was called off.

After a disgusting drink break, I finished off editing the notes that I had started yesterday for a radio programme, and now, the two halves are all assembled. The joining track has been chosen and the notes written ready for dictating at the next early start.

By now, it was time for baking. We had a pizza base and also a loaf of bread, this week with ground Brazil nuts instead of sunflower seeds. I’m told that Brazil nuts are an excellent source of selenium which reduces the likelihood of infection and heart disease. They also help bone formation.

The pizza was delicious and the bread looks excellent too. I hope that it tastes as good as it looks. But I wish that there was something that would reduce the likelihood of this stabbing pain in my foot that seems to be worsening. But having already fallen asleep a few times this evening (once while I was making my tea!) I shall go to bed and worry about it then.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about voting … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling one of my friends that the High Court has thrown out a demand for there to be an intelligence test for potential voters to pass coming into force before the next election.
"Why is that?" she asked.
"Apparently the judges didn’t think that it was fair to slash the Reform Party membership like that so early in the campaign."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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"

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!

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.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: lie in

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

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Sunday 22nd February 2026 – WHAT A NICE …

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Monday 5th January 2025 – WHAT A NIGHT …

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

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

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