Tag Archives: llansawel

Tuesday 11th March 2025 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight but ask me if I care. I have just seen one of the most exciting football matches that has been broadcast on S4C and believe it or not, it was between the teams who are next-to-bottom and third from bottom in the table, Llansawel and Y Drenewydd.

Never mind though about the late night – it will go with the late night that I had last night. It wasn’t until about 01:25 that I finally crawled into bed.

Thinking about it though, when I remember how things were nine months ago when I was crashing out for a couple of hours in the afternoon,staggering into bed like a zombie and struggling to rise up next morning, it does point to something of an improvement the way things are now, and I suppose that it’s the dialysis that is responsible for that. I can’t think of any other reason

So there I was, crawling into bed at 01:25 and there I stayed, flat out without moving until the alarm went off at 07:00. It wasn’t a particularly perspiration-laden night – not as much as some have been just recently – so I suppose that dialysis may not be to blame for the perspiration either.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and clean-up and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back here there was the dictaphone that needed my attention. I was running a wedding car business last night with an old Rolls Royce. At one wedding that I went to, I actually missed it myself because there was some kind of problem going on with the car or with something. While the party was in there marrying I actually had my head under the bonnet of this Rolls Royce so I didn’t make the ceremony. There was a second wedding too and I also missed that but I can’t remember why now but I didn’t go to it. The next one I had all the people on board the Rolls Royce and they wanted to stop at the corner shop so I pulled up, went out and came back with some cans of drink. They climbed back in and we had a chat. The man said “right, let’s go to the wedding. You don’ want to miss this one, do you?”. I made some remark and he replied “yes, but let’s go to the wedding and find a reason for hating him”. We set off and the Rolls Royce turned to the right inside this great big building. I was going straight on for some reason. Whatever it was that I was pushing became bogged down in the carpet and I couldn’t move it and I was still there trying to free it off and free it off.

Sticking my head under the bonnet of a car was something that I spent a lot of time doing, and I would have enjoyed it very much had I had the time, but things always seemed to go wrong at the wrong moment. It was a never-ending story of swimming against the current back in those days, probably very much akin to being stuck on the carpet while everything is going by past me.

Isabelle the nurse was horribly late today. It’s her first day back on duty so I suppose that she has all of the blood tests and injections that have been building up while her oppo was doing the rounds. She breezed in and back out again and hardly had time to draw breath while she was here.

Breakfast was next and then there was MY NEW BOOK. Today we have been examining early English folk-tales. He’s been looking at them in depth and identifying customs and practice in those folk tales that bear no resemblance whatever to real customs and practice, either in the British Isles, traditional Middle Europe or Scandinavia,

His argument is that the English population as we know it, starting with the Celts, came from those areas mentioned. If the customs and practice in the folk tales does not come from those areas, it must therefore come from someone else, which of course is logical. However he suggests that it comes from the race of humans in the British Isles that the Celts found when they arrived in the middle of the first millennium B.C.

This is how he reckons that he will be able to construct something that will give us some idea of the social and interpersonal life of those who were here before the Celts arrived.

Later on I began to revise for my Welsh. I had a good hour at it and made more progress that I thought that I might but it was to no avail because the lesson was not as good as it might have been. However I was relieved (to a certain degree) to find that I was not the only person in the class who is struggling to keep up, and we talked about going on a Summer School together later in the year

After the lesson I was computing again and I now seem to have almost everything that I need. There’s one program that I mentioned that I can’t find, and for some reason, Waterfox wouldn’t connect me to my Welsh lesson and I had to use another steam-driven web browser. I shall have to look into this and find out why.

Tea tonight was a taco roll as usual, a hurried tea in fact because of the football.

Aberystwyth look well-and-truly down, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … but of the other three clubs at the bottom, Y Drenewydd, Llansawel and Y Fflint, they seem to have cycles – one will win two or three game and pull clear, and then another one will do the same and catch up, and then it’s the turn of the third.

Consequently, tonight’s game between Llansawel and Y Drenewydd is of crucial importance to both clubs who are level on points in the table.

Y Drenewydd came out of the blocks at a tremendous rate and it must have been almost 10 minutes before Llansawel entered their opponents’ half. I forget now how many times Y Drenewydd hit the post, hit the bar, had shots cleared off the line, and had Will Fuller in the LLansawel goal not played the game of his life it could have been a catastrophe.

Llansawel had only really one good chance in the Drenewydd penalty area and you surely don’t need me to tell you what happened.

Nevertheless Llansawel have made something of a habit of dropping points by conceding goals in the final minutes of a game and today was no exception. A 1-1 draw was probably a good reflection of Y Drenewydd’s failure to capitalise on the chances that they had and a tribute to Llansawel’s dogged defence. From a neutral spectator’s point of view, it was a thrilling, exciting match.

Tomorrow is shower day of course, and radio day too so I’ll be busy. It will all keep me out of mischief anyway, I suppose.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Rolls Royces … "well, one of us has" – ed … when Tiger Woods came to play at the Scottish Open a few years ago he hired a Rolls Royce from Edinburgh Airport and set out to drive to St Andrews.
On the way he picked up a young girl hitchhiker, and he delighted in showing off all of the luxury fittings in his car. She kept on pointing to things asking "what’s this? What does it do?" and he told her.
She pointed to some plastic things in the tray by the gear lever and asked "what are those?"
"They are tees" he said
"What are they for?" she asked
"You put your balls on them before you drive off" he replied
"Blimey!" she exclaimed. "Rolls-Royce think of everything!"

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Saturday 25th January 2025 – HERE WE GO THEN.

"Mr Hall. As of Monday you’ll be required to attend dialysis for four hours each session".

That’s all that I needed to know, thank you very much. So from watching people come and go for two and a half hours, mine that was originally thought to be three hours and became three and a half before we’d really got going, it has quite quickly become four.

As I said to the driver who brought me home tonight, "I may as well move my bed and computer in there permanently".

Things seem to be going from bad to worse around here.

At least I have my dreams to which to look forward, I suppose. And after the sudden, dramatic appearance of Moonchild the other night I was planning on going to bed full of optimism. But like the old woman with her cock linnet,
"I dillied and dallied, dallied and I dillied
Lost me way and don’t know where to roam"

Trying to summon up the energy to go to bed and I still haven’t unwound from the drive is something that I just wasn’t able to do. Back in the old days when I drove my taxi and still had a few hours to spare, to unwind I’d go running in the evening around the housing estate in Winsford where I lived, but all of that went pear-shaped when I moved back to Crewe in early 1982.

It was round about 01:30 when I finally made it into bed. I was toying with the idea of switching off the alarm and having a long lie-in but I have too much that I want or need to do. And in any case, what if the nurse does decide to turn up? So I set the alarm back to 07:00 etc.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past I had some very restless nights. And so they might be surprised to hear that I don’t recall moving at all during the night. I was dead to the World.

When the alarm sounded I staggered to my feet and went off to look for some clothes so that I could have a good wash and scrub up in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there. After all, I wouldn’t expect to find my cute little Romanian doctoress anywhere in the vicinity.

And despite having had a clothes-washing session last weekend, the amount of dirty clothes is increasing rapidly. I need to do something about that. But in the meantime I hand-washed the undies and so on as usual.

In the kitchen I sorted out my medication and made sure that I took my anti-cancer stuff seeing as it wasn’t available in the hospital so I’ve missed a couple of days of that.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There was a group of very young children with a woman who was probably a teacher. I was there. They were having to sort out some shoes for one of them but when they arrived in Nantwich everywhere was closed so they went for a walk around. The woman talked to them about the different things that they could be doing. Collecting wild flowers was one of them but someone piped up that it was against the law to pick a wild flower these days. They were walking around, and she said that they could go into a meadow and pick the wild flowers but anyway she’ll talk to them about the wild flowers. I said “it’s probably better that she went and took the kids to the shoe shop now”. She asked why that was. I replied “if you’re going to tell them a lot and then go to the shoe shop and come out again they’ll forget all about it and you’ll have to start again. The shoe shops are now open so you may as well go there, buy the shoes, and then with the kids you can start from a more convenient point rather than halfway through the thing and they’ve forgotten all of the beginning”.

As to what’s happening here, I have no idea. I know that hunting for shoes for us as kids was a very taxing operation as my mother dragged us around from one shop to the next looking for a pair of shoes at the cheapest possible price. But then again, feeding all of us must have cost a fortune and every penny counted. As for the issue of kids and concentration, people don’t realise how easily a kid can be distracted, not even some teachers. It’s a real task to keep them focused.

And then there was something happening about football, Wales and a certain goalkeeper. They were translating some document from English into Welsh but there were some words in the vocabulary that they didn’t quite understand that concerned this particular goalkeeper. Again this was one where the alarm went off right in the middle of everything and totally destroyed my concentration and I’ve forgotten most of this.

Now I’m wondering about this dream. The news was announced yesterday that Y Drenewydd, who have had a string of disappointing goalkeepers after parting with David Jones, have signed the Philippines International goalkeeper. He’s been without a club, apparently, since the end of their season and if the story that I’ve heard is correct, he needs to find a club and play regular football to keep his place in the International side. But how come he’s ended up in mid-Wales I really don’t know. But he’ll be quite at home in a league where there’s the New Zealand International keeper and Internationals from such giants of World football as The Comoros and Guinea-Bissau and many other countries too. In fact, at the last count there are 23 International players playing in the JD Cymru League and that took me by surprise too.

It goes without saying that having made a special effort, the nurse didn’t turn up so round about 09:00 I gave up and went for breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

A few days ago I promised to stop posting extracts from his book because I’m sure that I’m as fed up as you are of his abusive manner of writing. But I couldn’t pass over a quote on page 637 where he tells us that one author, "Having obtained, as he tells us, ‘ more accurate information,’ … accordingly transferred Caesar’s landing- place to Hythe … Thus the ‘ explanation ’ which he discovered with such pride collapses".

There really is no place for such catty, abusive remarks like that in what is supposed to be a serious academic work, especially when he is guilty of exactly the same issue.

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d started the other day and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I finished them all off ready for dictation tonight when it all goes quiet.

My cleaner crept in quietly just as I was finishing off and caught me in flagrante delicto yet again. She put on my patches and while we were waiting for the taxi we sorted out the medication and made an up-to-date inventory. Nothing had changed à propos the medication that I need to take so we can go ahead and make an order.

Once again I was on my own in the taxi and the driver and I had a good chat all the way down to the Clinic. We had to stop to pick up someone who lives half a mile from the Centre but that’s OK.

While I was waiting to be seen I saw the guy who usually comes with me. He is indeed on a stretcher and he doesn’t look at all well.

There weren’t many of us there today so I was quickly plugged in and settled down to watch Caernarfon v TNS which was played on Friday night. Only I wasn’t. The game had been postponed due to “storm damage at the Awful Stadium”. I had visions of the grandstand having collapsed but further enquiries revealed that a floodlight head had become unsafe.

Luckily the television lorries had picked up the news and had ground to a halt in … Y Drenewydd. By pure coincidence the home team, second from bottom, were at home to Llansawel, fourth from bottom and so they hastily rigged up something for us to watch

Despite the lowly positions of the teams, we were treated to probably the best football match that I have seen in years. And I really mean that too. I won’t spoil the game by giving you a run-down. Instead you can watch the highlights HERE or the full game HERE if you are feeling enthusiastc. It really is worth it.

After my nurse unplugged me had to wait 10 minutes for a car but it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a good chat on the way home in the rain.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and supervised as she watched me up the stairs. It was a little more energetic than one or two have been just recently when I’ve been feeling quite tired

Back in here I made some naan dough and then had the leftover curry that I should have had in midweek. All my meal plans are up the spout what with this trip to Paris. I need to reorganise, I reckon, and regroup

But the curry was delicious and the garlic naan bread was the best that I have ever made. It would have been even nicer had I remembered to put the garlic in, but you can’t have everything.

So that’s it for tonight. I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m editing and then I have to think of a work plan. I can’t let twelve hours go by at the Dialysis Centre without doing anything. But it’s hard to do very much with just one hand and the other hand clamped by the side of your body, as I discovered when I tried to do a screen print this afternoon.

But on the way to the football on Friday night a group of supporters on the way to Parc Latham in Y Drenewydd were overtaken by a funeral cortège, and one of the supporters took off his hat and bowed
"What a nice gesture" said a friend
"Well, it’s true that we did have 25 happy years together" said the other "but the club wouldn’t postpone the kick-off until after the interment was over."

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Sunday 17th November 2024 – THIS RADIO PROGRAMME …

… was flaming complicated

What I did last night before going to bed was to re-dictate the notes from two radio programmes that I’d recorded previously. I don’t know what was up with my microphone when I first dictated them but they had turned out as if I had my head stuck in a metal bucket while I was dictating.

Nevertheless, I’d done everything and assembled the programmes but I was never happy with them and so yesterday I decided that I’d have another go

Dictating them was no problem and interestingly, the unedited notes of the first programme were only one second shorter than the unedited noted of the first attempt.

Having done all that, and it being later by far than I would have liked, I crawled off to bed.

Once again, I slept the Sleep of the Dead and knew nothing at all about anything whatsoever until the alarm went off at 08:00. Once I’d switched it off i crawled into the bathroom to have a wash and brush up before coming back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

Not that I reached very far because the nurse came early again and I had to go into the living room for the attention to my legs.

The nurse and I had the same discussion about baking a pizza that we have had I don’t know how many other times and I was glad when he finally slung his hook

Once he’d left I could make breakfast and read my book. And I do have to feel sorry for Samuel Hearne. There’s no doubt, reading his story, that he’s at the mercy of his First Nation guides on the return to the fort. He has absolutely no control, no power and no influence over the events that are unfolding.

They are covering incredible distances – 45, 45, 46 miles per day at times – over some of the roughest terrains in the world, distances that are confirmed by modern mapping methods, without stopping for rest. Women are giving birth, people are dropping out, sick people are being abandoned to die and Hearne is footsore and bleeding but he has no choice but to keep up or to be abandoned too.

He describes his diet in some detail and it’s not for the faint-hearted. But he also describes the life, cultures and habits of the First-Nation people and also the animals that he encounters. It’s a fascinating glimpse through a window into a country and a lifestyle that has gone forever.

Back in here I carried on with transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was in my little office at work. I’d been having a meeting with a couple of people. The subject of ages came up because a famous British tennis player roughly my age has married a girl of 26, a Swedish football player who is playing for a club in London. We all expressed our congratulations and had a general discussion about affairs like this. I happened to thumb through a few life assurance files and found that a few of the French sex-symbol women were now well into their mid-90s, something that many people find hard to believe. We all shook our collective heads at the idea of age. As we prepared to leave – or as the two people prepared to leave, some woman walking past my room ended up engaging herself in conversation with another woman. In the end there were three of them. For some reason my office door was open but they were right outside my door. In fact one of them was inside my office leaning on my wall. They were discussing the crisis in the French National Health Service, about how things weren’t the same as they used to be, how operations are being rushed, how people are being left with scars due to imperfect surgery. They were going on like this for about half an hour. When they paused for breath I asked them “what are the three of us – that is, these other two people in my meeting and I – going to do and how are we going to react now that you have told us all of this gruesome story about operations, hospitals etc?”. For some reason they seemed to be rather embarrassed about being overheard (…fell asleep here …) then made arrangements to watch a film, something like that. I can’t remember the name of the film now.

It goes without saying that there’s no crisis in the French health system. Whatever problems there are (and there are problems, to be sure) are as nothing compared to the issues that plague other countries and other health services. Having experienced several of them, I can say without fear of contradiction that i’ve never been so well looked-after as I have been in France.

Football was next on the agenda. There were various highlights from other matches in the Welsh Cup, including a giant-killing act where Y Wyddgrug from the second tier beat Llansawel from the Premier Division 2-1

Following that, we had Stranraer against Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic. Bonnyrigg are in deep trouble right now because their pitch, known with good reason as the “New Dundas Swamp” is probably the worst in professional football and a sad throwback to the bad days of the 1960s and 70s.

The club promised to replace it with a synthetic surface but failed to do so and so have been deducted six points. They have two months to come up with a plan otherwise they will be in even deeper trouble.

But right now Stranraer were entertaining them at home in a match where the weather was all four seasons, terminating in a torrential downpour.

Despite Stranraer having the lion’s share of the game the score was 1-1 going into injury time when Bonnyrigg scored a goal out of nothing to win the game that Stranraer should have won at a canter.

After lunch I made a start on the first radio programme. And, even more strangely, the edited notes ended up exactly the same length as the edited notes the first time round. So how come the assembled programme ended up 17 seconds short of the one hour?

So confused was I that I must have spent well over an hour trying different arrangements but nothing would work so in the end I called up the project files of the first attempt.

To my surprise, I found that I had included a different song from the one for which I had dictated the notes, and that accounted for it. I’m not sure why I did that.

Anyway, there was an interesting introduction on that replacement song so I extracted it and tagged it onto the front of the correct song that I’d used in the revised programme. Now I was 27 seconds over but filtering out some of the applause soon took care of that.

However, I’d spent so much time on that programme that there was no time to start the second one.

There had been a break though for my hot chocolate and crackers, followed by making the pizza for tonight. Just after lunch I’d taken out some frozen dough from the freezer and it had been slowly defrosting during the afternoon. So after my hot chocolate I kneaded it again and rolled it out onto the pizza tray

Later on I assembled my pizza and then baked it in the oven. The base wasn’t as baked as I would like it, which seems to be the fault of my oven which is pretty much hit and miss but it’s the best that I have.

So now that everything is finished for the night I’m off to bed, ready for a fresh start tomorrow.

But talking of Hearne and the animals that he encounters reminds me of the two explorers wandering across the plains of southern Africa in the 18th Century admiring all of the strange and wonderful animals
"Look at that strange male animal" said one of them "sneaking up on that herd of females"
"Wildebeest?" asked the other one
"Any moment now, I reckon" said their guide

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Saturday 2nd November 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… painful afternoon in Ice Station Zebra this afternoon and I really don’t know where it’s going to end. I can’t keep on going on like this, spending three and a half hours in agony and trying to make a good face of it all

Many people tell me that the alternative is far worse but it won’t be long before I’m at the stage where I’ll be wondering if it actually is.

It’s hard to believe that I went to bed last night full of optimism for the day. For once I’d gone through my closing-down procedure quite quickly, even managing to relax for fifteen minutes, and haul myself off to bed within touching distance of my curfew hour.

And I reckon that I had a reasonable (for me, anyway) sleep, just awakening once or twice. I almost made it out of bed early too but I reckoned that 05:38 is far too early to force myself out of bed unless I’m completely awake – and no smart comments about that, please. I’ve heard them all before.

When the alarm went off I crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom to pretty myself up and to wash some clothes. The clothes that need washing in the sink seem to be growing. There are socks, undies, shorts and now one of my Arctic undershirts that I’ve begun to wear in bed. They are very soft and have long arms that cover the patches where the needles go in and stop me trying to rub the spots when they itch or tickle.

They have given me in the past some medication to stop the irritation on my skin, and then gave me three more to stop the side effects. And then, I imagine, several more to stop the side effects of the medication that’s stopping the side-effects of the first

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone. And to my surprise I had a little visitor too – one of my favourite people, as you will find out as you read on. But first, there was a piece of land for sale in Wistaston and we were interested in it so we went to see it, and found out that the auction was taking place. We walked by the side of the canal to where the big house was, a big detached house with a brick extension that I loved, my second-favourite house in that area, and then walked down the road towards the old farmhouse that was part of the sale. My father had a catalogue, a huge catalogue and we began to have a look through it. There was a lovely old woodstove there that was actually built into a sewing machine with treadle table. I said to my sister that she could keep warm while she’s working here. She told me to clear off. One thing that caught our eye was all the bikes. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of pushbikes in all different stages of disrepair crammed into every room and outbuilding of this place. You couldn’t move because of all the old bikes everywhere. I thought that when they put those up for auction it’s going to be total chaos. It looked really impossible that there could be so many bits of bikes, frames, lose wheels, etc. They had all been crammed so tightly into these outbuildings.

Of course, they aren’t my favourite people. But I’m intrigued by all of the pushbikes lying around. Interestingly, that’s a word that I’ve not heard since I left Crewe. I’m also intrigued as to the canal, because there’s no canal anywhere around there at all

And then there was once again … "once again?" – ed … some kind of enchanted person in a fantasy tale. I can’t remember a great deal of this dream except that I had to go to an office building to visit a range of toilets on each floor. I had to make sure that there was no-one about while I did this. On one floor there were some people talking in the corridor so I had to wait until they’d finished. The scene then shifted to some kind of tavern. I was again keeping watch on this tavern from the inside from a secret place. There were several people around there and I thought that I’d come out of my hiding place when most of them had gone. Suddenly I heard someone mention my name so I looked. It was a boy who was in my brother’s class at school, telling everyone how he’d been on a skiing holiday with a load of people from a school and was walking around wit me and another boy from the sixth form and another people from his age, making some kind of allegation that this older boy and I were stoned out of our minds on marijuana or something, and Greg Lake went past on a pushbike, so he said. Greg Lake is alleged to have shouted “hey Eric! Look at this!” and disappeared himself behind a cloud of weed smoke. I couldn’t remember any of this at all. I’d no idea at all where he’d heard this or seen this because I remember nothing about it in the dream.

During my dreams just recently I seem to be spending a lot of my time in offices, something that I tried to avoid in real life. As for being under the effects of any kind of noxious substance, that is something that has never happened. Coffee is about the closest that I have ever come to anything like that. But we have a pushbike again, with Greg Lake of all people riding it. I remember nothing at all whatever about this dream.

While we’re on the subject of coffee … "well, one of us is" – ed … later on I was in a luxury hotel somewhere. It was about 02:00. I was queueing for something to do with the personnel. There was a member of staff in front of me who was waiting to be seen. However suddenly a commotion at the bar so the guy in front of me went off to have a look to see what it was. It was two Americans, who wanted a drink but there was no-one at the bar. The guy said that he was the night shift manager and was responsible for the bar. Could he help them? They were most offensive and I was so annoyed by this so after I’d finished doing what I did I walked over to where these two people were arguing with this guy and said “for God’s sake be reasonable!”. Then I wanted a cup of coffee but I didn’t really want them to make me a whole pot or anything like that so I began to wander amongst the tables looking at people who were drinking coffee to see whether there might have been some left in one of the pots that I could finish off.

A whole pot of coffee? I could finish one of those quite happily, as I do every day, with no problems at all. When at the hospital we went through what I drank every day they were totally astonished by how much coffee I drank

Finally I was giving a concert on the stage in a big hall in front of a few thousand people. I had Castor (so “hello Castor! Long time no see”) who was playing bass guitar and I don’t know what I was doing. Last time I’d been there I’d been booed off-stage so I’d insulted the audience and told them that they ought to behave better than to object again and make such a noise concerning a young person and was nothing to do with the performance. A bouncer came to drag me off and we ended up having a fight on stage. So I was due to go back. I went down by the dressing room at the back of the theatre to find Castor to make sure that she was OK and was ready. The audio technician was there. I asked him if this time we had a drummer or not. He replied “yes you have a drummer but you won’t see him. He’s staying behind in the wings and working from there”. Then I mentioned that I’d lost a shoe – let me put this in the correct order – when I awoke I was wearing a shoe in bed and there was one missing. I found the one that was missing and that was when I went downstairs. By this time the one on my foot had gone. I was going round telling everyone that I had an ear missing. They couldn’t understand what I meant so I said that it’s probably not switched on at this moment, which bewildered them even further. When I reached the doors to leave this particular room I couldn’t work out whether you pulled or pushed them. I was there saying “how the hell do you leave this place?”. Then I had to go to find a lift to go back up to my room to see whether I’d left my shoe there. All in all I could see that this performance was going to end in total chaos before it had even started

That’s quite a typical dream isn’t it, all ending in panic and chaos. Not even the presence of Castor could lighten up my morale. Even though it was lovely to see her again I wish that it had been under better, happier circumstances. That’s despite the fact that my last memory of her was a very sad, tragic one that morning on that windswept airstrip in the High Arctic. Still, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … sometimes, some goodbyes have to be said like that.

The nurse blitzed in and blitzed out again this morning. He clearly didn’t want to hang around so he just spoke some of this inane hairdresser-type of patter and then cleared off quickly once he’d done what he had to. He’s been quick before, but even I was surprised this morning by how quickly he came and went.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading. The report on Beeston Castle is finished, going out like rather a damp squib, and next in line is a thesis about the Marcher Lords.

When William the Conqueror invaded England, his hold was far from secure for all kinds of reasons. One of his problems was the incursions by the Welsh, keen to recapture territory that they had lost to the Saxons and later, Mercians.

His possession of the areas along what is today the Welsh border was doubtful to say the least and so he promoted three of his favourites to hold the title of “Earl” and gave them territories in what is now Cheshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire, lands on which he had the barest control, and instructed these “Marcher Lords” to use whatever means they could to pacify their area and keep the Welsh at bay until he was in a position to conquer the Welsh.

The first thing that is puzzling me about all of this is why an MA student in, of all places, Fresno University in California would want to study the Marcher Lords of post-Conquest England for his MA. The second thing that is puzzling me is how there would be a professor in Fresno University in California competent to mark it.

However, I suppose that I shall find out as I go along.

Back in here I didn’t do much this morning as I had other fish to fry for a change.

And I was still busy frying them when my cleaner came, bringing with her the hair dryer that she promised, which was nice of her. Defrosting the freezer will be a nice job for a Sunday.

The taxi came early today and with no distractions or other passengers to pick up we arrived early and I was the first person to be seen to. No complaints about the anaesthetic wearing off today, but it still hurt like I don’t know what.

My blood sugar level is right down again so they force-fed me three large glasses of orange juice, without a great deal of effect. I suppose that that will be the next thing to give up the ghost in my body

While I was freezing to death in the Arctic temperatures of the treatment room, shivering under a blanket, the doctor came to see me for a few seconds. He wrote out a prescription for the medication that they had forgotten on the last prescription (it’s a good job that my cleaner and I had noticed) and that was that. I was left pretty much alone to carry on reading Richard Hakluyt.

After they unplugged me I weighed myself and I’m slowly coming closer to my first target weight which is good news. I’m hoping that Bibendum, the Michelin Man, is gone for good.

The taxi was waiting when I went outside and we came straight home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. Once more I made all thirteen stairs of the first flight, although the last couple was quite a struggle.

For once I was home in time for the start of tonight’s football, but the match was one of the worst that I have ever seen. Not like last week’s lethargic, pedestrian game but because of the quality (or lack thereof) of skill on display.

It was a match between the two bottom clubs, Llansawel at the bottom and Aberystwyth just above them. It was a woeful match from the point of view of misplaced passes and wayward shooting but bad as Llansawel were, Aberystwyth were even worse and played like a team of strangers, just going through the motions.

The score was 4-0, would you believe, to Llansawel and it wasn’t because they were that good, it was that Aberystwyth had given up playing long before the end On this showing, Aberystwyth are dead and buried and whoever it is who is appointed to the hot seat, if he can’t pull some rabbits out of the hat in the forthcoming transfer window, that will be that.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with vegan salad and baked potato followed by the last of the rice pudding. I’ll bake a cake tomorrow and see what good that will do

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m going to dictate my notes and then go to bed

But not before I tell you the little story that came to mind when I was typing out my dreams. It concerned being on stage and the various one-man shows in which I appeared. I told a friend about them once.
"I thought that there were three of you in your group" he said
"I know" I replied "but when I talk about a ‘one-man show’ I’m referring to the size of the audience"

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Sunday 11th August 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my idea of going to bed at “a reasonable time” last night.

"The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy" as the famous Robbie Burns once said.

However, it wasn’t grief and pain that came my way, but blood. And buckets of it too. In the distance and time that it had taken me to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, I’d knocked my legs somehow and there was blood pumping just about everywhere

Even as I look, there’s a trail of drops of blood leading from my chair to where the big plasters are. And even one of those wasn’t enough to stop or even slow down the bleeding

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, this is what happens when you have all of these blood-thinning products. It’s becoming a rather regular feature, which is regrettable.

So instead of lying down on my nice comfortable bed, there I was, sitting on a chair with a collection of plasters and bandages on an impossible task waiting for the blood to congeal.

For an incident that took place at about 23:45, it was long after 01:00 when I finally went to bed.

Once in bed, I slept all the way through to the alarm going off at 08:00. I don’t think that I moved a single muscle all night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and that’s where the nurse caught me. He’d come early and I hadn’t had time to wash, never mind change my clothes (and I still haven’t)

He talked a little about his holiday but otherwise didn’t have too much to say for himself and was soon gone. I could sit down to breakfast and to read my book. We’re talking about the dismantling of the narrow-gauge railway that ran to Wallace in Montana, a event that took place in 1895. That railway didn’t last all that long.

Back in here afterwards I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’m not sure what I was doing last night but I was with a group of people. There was something going on about a medical issue. We were all being treated one-by-one for some kind of illness, taking it in turns to go to hospital. One of the girls went in quite carefree and happy and we all seemed to make a note “well she’s going to have a good time there in the hospital. They’ll love her”. There was a little old lady who went in. We had to go to her cottage to collect her things in order to send them to the hospital where she would be staying. I was actually at her house collecting her things together ready to go when the alarm went off.

It reminds me of my neighbour. Someone pretty soon will have to come to her apartment and collect her things if she really is going to live in a Home. I always think that for that to happen is a pretty sad state of affairs. From what I know about these Homes, it’s just a place where the elderly go and just wait to die. There’s no dignity or humanity in any of them.

There was football on the internet afterwards – Clyde v Stranraer in the Scottish Fourth Tier. And it was one of those games where Stranraer had 99% of the play, hit the woodwork and did absolutely everything except score, whereas Clyde just had one attack upfield and a lucky ricochet was enough for a sucker punch and send everyone in the crowd home shaking their heads.

Afterwards I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed.

The first lot I had to do again. Somehow I’d managed to miss the first ten seconds of my dictating and I’ve no idea how on earth I did that.

And then I had to re-edit and remix the eleventh track because for some reason it had become mixed up with a pile of dictated notes. I’ve no idea how I managed to do that, but it really was a mess.

As a result, I’d only finished the two “additional tracks” prior to lunch. And it was a very late lunch at that.

Back in here after lunch I sat down – and the next thing that I remember, it was 16:30. I’d been stark out for over two hours and hadn’t felt a thing. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone to sleep. But while I was crashed out I was having a whole series of really exciting dreams but as I awoke the hole lot simply evaporated and I remembered nothing. How sad is that?

For half an hour I bashed away at some more radio notes and then went into the kitchen to make my bread for the week. And in a fit of mad enthusiasm, while the dough was proofing, I made a chocolate cake

While the cake was settling down and the dough was rising I rolled out the pizza dough for tea tonight. I’d taken the last lot out of the freezer just after lunch and it had been defrosting all afternoon.

There was football on the internet. Llansawel’s first game for over 25 years in the Premier League, and against Penybont too.

LLansawel had kept the core of their promotion-winning team and, as we know, there’s an enormous gulf between the Premier League and the second tier. It was quite evident and the score, 2-0 to Penybont, surprised no-one.

However, it was really good to watch a proper footballing duel between Llansawel’s veteran centre-forward Luke Bowen and Penybont’s centre-half, Dan Jefferies. A proper aerial combat of the type that reminded me of watching football back in the 1960s and early 70s

So having seen everyone of importance in the league already after just the first game, it’s going to be a long, hard season for Aberystwyth, Llansawel and FFlint. Those clubs are going to need to find some quality from somewhere, and quickly too.

The dough for tonight’s pizza was perfection itself. It had risen beautifully and was really light. And as usual, the toppings (mushroom, onion and olives with cheese, tomato sauce and cherry tomatoes, was second to none.

The batch of dough that I made where I forgot to add the oil has turned out to be the best that I have ever cooked.

The bread is fine too and my chocolate, orange and coconut cake looks delicious and I can’t wait to try that as of tomorrow afternoon when it’s cooled properly.

So right now I’m off to bed. I have three weeks of Welsh Summer School starting tomorrow at 10:30. Time that I was going to bed.

But before I go, Clayton Green has signed for Penybont from relegated Pontypridd United. He was playing today but his wife wasn’t there to watch the game. She was in church down the road where the vicar noticed her.
He turned to his verger and asked "is that Fanny Green on the front pew over there?"
"No Vicar" replied the verger. "It’s just the way the sunlight comes through the stained-glass window"

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