Tag Archives: naan

Thursday 26th December 2024 – MY CHRISTMAS PUDDING …

… is just as excellent and tasty as last year.

For pudding tonight I tried a helping with some nice custard and it really was delicious. This lot will be all gone at the end of this holiday season and I’ll have to make some more for next year if I’m still here, and I hope that if I do, it will be just as tasty as that which will have gone before.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Last night, it was quite late by the time that I’d finished my notes and done my backing-up, but I didn’t go straight to bed. It’s the holiday season so I stayed up and listened to some of my live concerts from the past.

One of them that came round was a Lindisfarne concert, the one at Newcastle upon Tyne City Hall in either 1977 or 1978. It’s the best time to listen to Lindisfarne, Christmas-time, especially with one of their Newcastle ones.

And they have some very happy memories for me. There was a big Lindisfarne fan club, of which I was a member, at school and I went to see the group in 1971. That was the famous concert where most of the group were locked out, leaving the harmonica player alone on stage playing his 10-minute harmonica solo for 25 minutes, and where I led my rather young girlfriend astray, much to the anger of her parents.

OH WHAT IT IS TO BE YOUNG, hey?

So somewhere round about 02:00 I called it a night and staggered off to bed, and there I stayed, sound asleep until about 07:40.

Yes, 07:40. I’d decided that as it was a Bank Holiday I’d set the “Sunday” alarm, which goes off at 08:00. However something rather dramatic awoke me. Once more, I’ve no idea what it was but I was awake, bolt-upright, with no possibility of going back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about, having a good wash and a good shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. Then back in here to listen to the dictaphone and await the arrival of the nurse. There was a group of natives wandering around somewhere. I happened to join them as part of their trip was taking me past one of the sites that I wanted to visit. I noticed that for breakfast every morning two guys there ate nothing but breakfast so I asked the chief what was the story behind this. He replied that whatever it was (…fell asleep here …) anyway the special meal that they had was taco rolls. They made the taco themselves by heating oil in a pan and dropping a few spoonfuls of this liquid in it. The heat caused the liquid to solidify into the taco and was really quite nice and was going to save me all of £20:00 on the delivery

So I’m now writing cooking recipes in my dreams. But that recipe is pretty much like a Breton crèpe recipe or even how bread would be baked out on the trail in the Nineteenth Century in North America and elsewhere, and probably even today in certain places. And if it’s going to save me twenty quid with every LeClerc delivery, then I’ll certainly be trying it.

The nurse didn’t stay long today. He was in and out and that was that. Then I could make breakfast and continue to read MY BOOK.

We’re now wandering around Dartmoor, where "like the people who dwelt on the Yorkshire Wolds, the inhabitants were poor and backward ; for the extreme scarcity of spindle- whorls and the abundance of the flint scrapers used for leather-dressing that lay scattered in their abodes seem to show that they were commonly clad in skins"

One thing that the upland areas of the British Isles, like Dartmoor and the Yorkshire Wolds, had in common and in abundance, was wildlife. Down in the fertile valleys and lowland plains, the pressure of population would have meant that most of the wild animals would either have been driven off or hunted. There would still be plenty up in the hills, so there would be plenty to skin and catch, and no need to make clothing out of cloth

This way of thinking can be seen in places like Canada. Stone and then brick have long-since been used in the construction of houses in most Western countries but they are still built in wood in rural Canada because there is just so much of it so close by.

After breakfast I came back in here for a relax for a couple of hours and then had to go to prepare myself for departure.

It’s a good job that we were ready early tonight because the taxi, booked for 12:30, turned up at 12:08. The driver has to go up the coast to pick up someone else and seeing as he was already in Granville, he thought that he may as well come here first.

Not that I’m complaining. These new Social Security rules means that I’m having loads of guided tours of all different parts of Normandy, seeing the sights and so on. It’s getting me out of the house and, as regular readers of this rubbish have remarked, I ought to get out more often.

Having picked up our passenger we had a belt all the way down the express road south and then off towards Avranches, where we arrived early.

Just for a change, I was one of the first to be plugged in and although the first pin was totally painless, the second one killed me. I have never had such a painful experience in the Dialysis Centre as this one, and I can still feel it even now.

There were no interruptions today, which was just as well. After I’d had my usual doze, I watched the football – Caernarfon v TNS.

Caernarfon were doing really well at one stage, with the score at 2-2, but two killer goals in just a couple of minutes killed off the tie and TNS even scored a fifth later in the game.

TNS’s play was much more technical and competent, but Caernarfon’s tactics of the long ball over the top for Louis Lloyd, their lightning-fast winger to chase, had TNS’s rather pedestrian defence in a few difficulties here and there.

After they disconnected me I went to look for my taxi and it was already outside so, for a change, I was home really early after all of that. The driver who brought me home was the young, chatty lad and we had an interesting conversation all the way home.

Coming back up the stairs was easier tonight than it has ever been in recent times, and I was soon back in here where I watched the highlights of the rest of today’s games. And today’s results, with Llansawel’s dramatic victory against Cardiff Met, means that Y Drenewydd have been sucked into the relegation dogfight.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by a delicious Christmas pudding and custard (I still have a small amount of custard powder left)

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to hang around for a while before going to bed and have sweet dreams of Castor, Zero and TOTGA.

But talking about that dream of making taco rolls and home-made field bread … "well, one of us is" – ed … the recipe is actually in the Boy Scout cookbook
The Scouts were introduced by Lord Baden Powell when the British Army was blockaded by a group of recalcitrant Dutch farmers in Mafeking in South Africa. He became a War hero and later went on to write a book to encourage young boys to take up the outdoor life.
One day, someone went into a bookshop in London and asked "may I have a copy of Lord Baden Powell’s autobiography, please?"
"He never wrote an autobiography" said the sales assistant. "He only ever wrote one book. It’s called ‘Scouting for Boys’"
"Isn’t that his autobiography then?"

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Wednesday 18th December 2024 – IT’S REALLY HARD …

… to believe that this time next week we’ll all be sitting around stuffing ourselves with mince pies and turkey.

Well, you might but you can rule out the turkey from my point of view and if I don’t find any motivation from somewhere very soon, I won’t be eating any mince pies either. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt less like Christmas than I do this year.

At least the Christmas cake is something worth eating. I opened the oven door this afternoon and the whole building was overwhelmed with the smell of fresh-baked spices, and my faithful cleaner had something to say about it. So at least there will be something for Christmas.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve told the nurse not to bother calling on Christmas Day. I’m going to have a lie-in and savour the day at my ease.

That is, unless the lie-in was anything like this morning’s.

Last night wasn’t all that late going to bed – about 23:30 or something like that, and once in bed I was asleep quite quickly.

And there I lay, without moving a muscle or anything else until all of 06:45 when for some unaccountable reason I sat up bolt-upright, wide awake. I’ve no idea at all what disturbed me, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty good.

Just as I was deciding whether or not to leave my stinking pit, BILLY COTTON made up my mind for me, bellowing his raucous rattle loud enough to awaken the dead.

Once I’d managed to stagger to my feet I wandered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then into the kitchen for a drink to wash down my medication.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night but to my surprise there was nothing on it at all. It must have been a deep sleep

However, do not be downhearted because when I awoke this morning I was actually away on my travels and I remember everything so clearly too, even now. What I remember was that we were in some kind of derelict, run-down city and we were going to a party. We were four of us, and three were going in one car with some members of someone’s family, not mine, I was going in another car with another group of people. We were waiting in this street for this taxi to arrive. There was me, a friend of mine and a girl, and the friend of mine was dating her. We were waiting in this street for a car to come to pick us up. We saw something that was of interest a little further down the street so we wandered off down there. We went past an Indian restaurant where there was a waiter outside trying to entice us in. For some reason the prices were hanging from an awning above the door. We couldn’t reach it or see it so we carried on walking a little further and then a little further. We came to a T-junction with an Insurance Company across the street. It didn’t look like an Insurance Company – it was several shops. Then I happened to look up and I could see the name of the Insurance Company in a window so it was obviously in the offices that were above the shops. We went over there, past another Indian Restaurant where there was another waiter outside trying to cajole us in. Again, the prices were out of reach so we couldn’t see them. This girl remembered something about one of the addresses in this street so she went over to have a look at the numbers so we followed her. The number that she wanted was 200-and-something but we were in the 120s or something. We had a look, and it was a run-down street with all kinds of old terraced houses of all different styles. We turned round and slowly began to walk back. Suddenly this girl took off like a rocket to run down to the far end of the street where we’d been waiting at first. The guy, he asked “what’s the matter with her?”. I didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t said a word but she just took off. The thought went through my mind that maybe she’d seen the car in the distance that had come to pick us up. I was totally unable to run and having trouble walking so there was no way that I could run after her so I really had no idea what was going to happen next. And it was right at this point that I sat up bolt-upright

And if anyone wants to know where this took place, it was in Stoke on Trent, on one of the side streets off Campbell Road near the old football ground. I can see it quite clearly in my head even now. However who the people were, I have no idea about them either but the girl was dressed all in red, a red tee-shirt and red shorts. It was a totally bizarre dream.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t stop here long this morning. She admired the decorations again, oiled and greased my legs, fitted my compression socks and then cleared off. In and out in just a couple of minutes.

After she’d left I made breakfast and carried on reading the report of this excavation.

They are slowly coming round to the idea that the farm and its buildings were demolished with purpose, rather than being a random act of wanton and gratuitous destruction. Non-reusable material seems to have been put carefully into a ditch rather then being left scattered around, and there is no trace of anything lying around on the surface that might have been useful.

In one of the cellars though, it’s a different story. There, they have found a rather large grinding wheel of the type that would be used in a mill for grinding corn. It’s hand-powered, so that was probably a task undertaken by slaves.

Slaves would have been plentiful back in those days. There were no such things as prisoner-of-war camps and a victorious army would have a pile of useless mouths on its hands. Anyone important would be ransomed, sometimes making his captor a very rich man indeed. But if there was no-one to ransom you or you weren’t wealthy, then if you were lucky you’d be sold into slavery by your captor. If you were unlucky, you would be slaughtered.

And believe it or not, there were also people who gave themselves voluntarily into slavery. In a society were there was no welfare, if your crops failed, you and your family would starve to death. However, a slave-owner had the obligation to feed, clothe and house his slaves which, let’s face it, wasn’t much less than the life of an early medieval peasant anyway. So if the alternative was to starve to death, then slavery was an option that some people considered.

Back in here I had a few things that I wanted to do and that took me up until lunchtime. The after lunch my cleaner came round to do her stuff.

One of her tasks, according to this Association thing that has taken me in charge, is to help me with my grande toilette. We interpreted that as being the shower and so every Wednesday is shower day.

It was beautiful in there again today and I really enjoyed every minute of it. I didn’t really want to climb back out.

Still, back in here I began to find the music for the next radio programme and by the time I was ready to knock off for tea, not only had I found what I wanted but it had been remixed, paired off, segued and some of the notes had been written.

There had been a big interruption too. There was the afternoon hot chocolate break and then I made some dough for the naan bread for the next few weeks. But we’ve hit a tragedy, and that is that the soya yoghurt has frozen in the fridge and when it does that, it all separates out. I must order some more if I can.

Nevertheless, my leftover curry tonight was another good one, and the naan was cooked to perfection. Things are looking up around here and will be even better when I’m downstairs. Pretty much like only five months to go and then I can install myself in my own place. Won’t that be good?

So tomorrow I’m at the Dialysis Clinic and what I’ll do will be to prepare my order for LeClerc. I may as well make some good use of the time that I’m there

But the cleaner, when she came up, brought me a pile of post that had accumulated in my mailbox downstairs.
There were a couple of bills that needed paying so I had a close look at them, because I like to try to keep on top of things like that.
One of them concerns my taxe foncière from my current département of La Manche
"Please connect to the internet at the following address and make a bank transfer by electronic means"
The other is from from the Crewe Municipal Council where I used to live years ago.
"Please take the enclosed stone tablet, chisel your bank account details in block hieroglyphics thereupon and send it by native bearer to the Council’s Accounts Cave, situate …."

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Wednesday 11th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy again today and accomplished quite a great deal of stuff. So it’s hardly surprising that I’m feeling pretty much whacked right now.

Not that it’ll make much difference as I have a great deal to do tomorrow and Friday, and maybe even Saturday morning too. It’s all go here!

What I need is another early night like the one that I had last night where I was in bed a good few minutes before 23:00, and when I can do that, things are looking up.

Last night, for some reason or other I was finished by 22:20 and even hanging around for a while didn’t make it too late. I was asleep quite quickly too, with the hatches battened down until the morning. I don’t think that I moved at all

At some point during the night there was a young girl who was living on her own and having attendants, rather like the juvenile Queen of a country somewhere. I don’t remember very much and I can’t have gone very far into this dream when the alarm went off. However it was another one that could have been extremely interesting and it was a shame that it finished so abruptly.

It took me a while to gather up my wits – I can’t believe that they spread out so far so quickly – and when the room stopped spinning round I could stand up and head to the bathroom.

After the bathroom I headed off to the kitchen for my morning drink and pile of medication, which doesn’t seem to be shrinking any

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what happened during the night. I was back in the early modern era. I was in bed and trying to rise up but every time I tried to dress something came along to interrupt me, like a visitor or something like that so I had to dive back into bed as they came. This happened two or three times with someone like that coming along and me having to dive back into bed

Later on I was out walking with someone last night (so I’d obviously managed to finally leave the bed) and we’d walked miles. We’d been in the hills and had slowly started to come down out of the hills, just following a map. We hadn’t really all that much idea of the terrain at all or of the route except that which the map showed us. There was a path shown on the map so we followed it as best as we could. We didn’t meet anyone at all until we’d come down quite low when we saw some people wandering around. They took a track which led down into the valley. I asked my friend if that was ours. He replied “no, it’s the next one”. Then we had to think of a way to cross the motorway. We looked down and there was a motorway along the floor of the valley. We pushed on and when we were a little further down we saw a path that branched off from our farm track or cart track and this went straight down to the valley. There was a fence and then a footbridge over the motorway. We thought “we’re obviously not the first people to have come this way and to have found the utility of there being a bridge across the motorway here”. This bridge took us to the railway station which was on the other side of the motorway. We said to ourselves “well, when we arrive in town we’ll deserve a really fine meal. We’ll have a right slap-up nosh at tea-time after all our exertions”.

There was also something somewhere about going back to the family (as if that is ever likely to happen), wondering how long it’s going to be before they actually notice that I’m walking without using my crutches and things are all back to normal but I don’t know where that fits in at all

My long-term ambition, whether it’s feasible or not, is to recover the use of my legs and walk again. No-one seems to be able to work out what’s happening to my legs, or if they have, they haven’t told me. But every six months, as regularly as clockwork, they change the medication in the hope that they stumble on something that works, and who knows? One day they might!

The nurse was early again today. Of course, he doesn’t have any blood tests or injections to do. His poor oppo has been loaded with all of that and so she runs about half an hour behind.

The first thing that he did was to grab hold of my bread with his fingers, so he departed quite quickly with a flea in his ear. I couldn’t believe that he did that and he won’t do that again and walk out of here unaided.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

He’s still shacked up with the First-Nation people, observing their habits. He notes that "It is a very singular and remarkable circumstance, that notwithstanding the striking similarity which we find in the persons, manners, customs, dispositions, and religion of the different tribes of Indians from one end of the continent of North America to the other, a similarity so great as hardly to leave a doubt on the mind but that they must all have had the same origin, the languages of the different tribes should yet be so materially different. No two tribes speak exactly the same language; and the languages of many of those who live at no great distance asunder, vary, so much, that they cannot make themselves at all understood to each other."

That’s something that I could readily understand. When I was in the Arctic I tried to learn some Inuktitut but it wasn’t really helpful because the Inuit in one bay would speak one language, you’d go 100 miles into the next community and they would speak a different form, and then a third further on, and then a fourth and so on. I was always one bay behind.

It was quite astonishing really that even in the 21st Century there has been so little mixing of the different Inuit communities up there in the Arctic. But I suppose that with the rapid warming of the climate, so evident up there in the North, it’s even less easy to move around than it was, as the ice doesn’t freeze over so much.

Once my leisurely breakfast was over, I came in here and began work. And by the time that I’d finished for the evening, I’d bashed out all of the text for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night for editing and finishing on Sunday. That was some work, I’ll tell you.

There were several interruptions too. A friend of mine from school who now lives in the Orkneys wanted to test whether or not he’d configured an on-line video program correctly so we’d agreed that he could use me as his test bed.

Sure enough, he’d done what he needed to do and we had a really nice video chat, seeing each other for the first time for about 45 years. It’s really nice to see and talk to old friends, and new technology makes it oh! so easy.

Lunch was next – a slice of flapjack and some fruit, with water to wash down the midday medication.

My faithful cleaner turned up too, of course, to do her stuff. And that included helping me to have a shower. That was lovely of course and I can’t wait to be downstairs in my own place with a proper walk-in shower where I can shower whenever I like

After she left I went one better than Dave Crosby, presumably because it’s getting kind-of long. I could have said it was in my way. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear, because I promised myself this year I feel like I owe it to someone

And then Rosemary rang for a chat. And we’re definitely losing our touch. That chat was just 46 minutes long. More like a nod and wave across the street rather than a chat.

As far as the Christmas cake goes, I tried to explain to my cleaner what sugar I needed to make the icing for my cake, and Rosemary helped me out too. So hopefully, next week I’ll end up with what I need. It’s really awkward when I’m not able to go out and about.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. And for once, the naan was deliciously cooked to perfection. I think that after all these years I’ve finally cracked the method of cooking them. You fry them, of course, but on a low heat, neither too low or too high. And don’t over-fry them

The ginger cake and soya dessert were lovely too.

So now I’ll loiter around for a short while before going to bed. I might even read some more of Isaac Weld.

He talks about religion and the conversion of various tribes to Christianity but notes that "some of the tribes have much less devotion than others; the Shawnese, a warlike daring nation, have but very little fear of evil spirits, and consequently have scarcely any religion amongst them. None of this nation, that I could learn, have ever been converted to Christianity"

Missionaries have been sent among the Shawnee and, commenting on another vice of the First-Nation and Native American people, "great pains have been taken, both by the French and English missionaries, to represent to them the infamy of torturing their prisoners;"

However, even the missionaries were not spared this. Amongst the Shawnee the first missionaries who went there ended up in the cooking pot hung over the fire.
The Shawnee performed a ceremony of dancing around the fire and the pot to celebrate the arrival of their next meal, but every few minutes one of the Shawnee would break off to slap the missionary across the face.
After a while the chief called him over and shouted "Stop that! We don’t humiliate our captives in that way!"
"But chief!" exclaimed the brave
"What’s the matter?"
"It’s that missionary!" said the brave. "Every time your back is turned he starts to eat the potatoes!"

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Wednesday 4th December 2024 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… chat with Rosemary this evening. Just a short one this time – only one hour and forty-eight minutes. We are definitely losing our touch these days.

But as a result, I am running horribly late tonight and I’m glad that it’s the Dialysis Centre tomorrow morning – for the simple fact that I can have a good sleep there if I’m tired.

It was also late when I went to bed last night, but there again that’s only to be expected these days. It wasn’t all that late when I finished everything, but I hung around for a while afterwards doing not very much at all.

When I was in bed it didn’t take long for me to go to sleep and once more, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 07:00. Mind you, I was awake a few minutes beforehand but not even if TOTGA, Zero or Castor (whatever happened to them?) were beckoning from the doorway would I be enticed from the warmth and comfort of my own wonderful bed

It was, as usual, a struggle to rise up when it was time to do so but I managed to beat the second alarm by a short head and once the bedroom stopped spinning round I could make my way into the bathroom.

After having had a good wash I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I dreamed that I’d taken some sandwiches to bed with me. I’d been missing a meal here and there and my body was going totally out of synch. One night I was going to bed at about 23:00 and realised that I’d had no food so I made myself some sandwiches but I fell asleep. When I awoke I had an insatiable thirst so I began to look around for the sandwiches (…fell asleep here …) so when I awoke I was looking around for these sandwiches under the bed. Of course I realised then that I was actually in a dream and there were no sandwiches at all

Now that’s a novelty, isn’t it? Dreaming about food and especially bringing it to bed with me. But could you imagine leaving the sandwiches under the bed? It’s a good job that I fell asleep mid-search. But the sandwiches wouldn’t help me with my insatiable thirst.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a chatty mood this morning and had a lot to say for herself. We talked about economics and other exciting subjects this morning and I seem to be putting the World to rights with a lot of people these days.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

Today he’s arrived at Kingston and has been escorted across the lake to the town of Niagara in a fleet of canoes with several traders. He’s still obsessed with the idea of Canada as the best country in the Empire and with the preoccupation of Americans with money, but he tells us that "the town of Niagara hitherto has been and is still the capital of the province of Upper Canada ; orders, however, had been issued, before our arrival there, for the removal of the seat of government from thence to Toronto which was deemed a more eligible spot for the meeting of the legislative bodies, as being farther removed from the frontiers of the United States. This projected change is by no means relished by the people at large, as Niagara is a much more convenient place of resort to most of them than Toronto; and as the governor who proposed the measure has been removed, it is imagined that it will not be put in execution."

Well, the less said about that prophecy of his, the better.

He did much better with something else that he mentioned in his book. "It is to be lamented that the Indian names, so grand and sonorous, should ever have been changed for others. Newark, Kingston, York, are poor substitutes for the original names of these respective places, Niagara, Cadaragui, Toronto." although he had to wait two hundred years for the beginning of the restoration of First-Nation place-names.

And while I’m in complete agreement with the process of the restoration of the first-Nation names, it is nevertheless confusing when I’m trying to follow the trail of the European explorers of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, where the names that they gave in their memoirs to places that they visited have now been erased from the map

Today, I’ve been carrying on my hunt for music. I didn’t realise yesterday how much I didn’t have and seem to have fallen way short in my estimate. So much of the day has been spent tracking it down and then trying to identify it, because as I mentioned yesterday, the program that I use is mixing up the names of the tracks

My cleaner came in this afternoon to do her stuff and she changed all the bedding. That’s good because with having had a shower, there’s now a nice, clean me to go into a nice, clean bed.

The shower was wonderful and now it’s less that six months to go until I’ll be able to install a shower in the bathroom downstairs. Time is going quicker than I would have thought. But when I do have the shower installed, I’ll be having one every day – at least, at the beginning.

There will be a much-improved kitchen too if only I can arrange to have the kitchen units removed from the van and put in the apartment. I hope that the oven in there still works.

There was the usual interruption for the hot chocolate, and then another one with Rosemary, who rang just as I was preparing to stop work.

As a result, I has about an hour late going for tea tonight. It was, as usual, a leftover curry with rice, veg and naan bread. Spoiling myself yet again.

And the ginger cake was excellent. It tasted just as it should, and could even have been somewhat spicier

So now, much later than I intended, I’m off to bed. It’s the dialysis tomorrow morning and the X-ray in the afternoon. I wonder what they are going to find. There’s definitely something that’s not correct.

But while we’re on the subject of things being spoilt … "well, one of us is" – ed … the Headmaster of a local Primary School rang up Little Johnny’s mother and said "your son is spoilt"
"No he isn’t" said Little Johnny’s mother
"Yes he is" retorted the Headmaster
"No he isn’t" insisted Little Johnny’s mother
"Well, you come here" said the Headmaster "and see what the groundsman’s industrial lawnmower has done to him."

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Wednesday 27th November 2024 – I’VE DONE IT AGAIN.

It’s strange, isn’t it? That it always seems to happen on a Wednesday. But once again I had a very late night, or more like, an early morning because it was long, long after 03:00 when I finally crawled off to bed.

And when I was in bed I can’t remember if I went to sleep or not. I have vague memories of being awake throughout the night last night.

However when the alarm went off I was asleep and what surprised me was that it wasn’t as difficult as I thought that it would be to raise myself from the bed

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up to keep me going until this afternoon and then came back in here to see if there was anything on the dictaphone from what little of the night there was.

And to my surprise there was something on there too. But I’m not going to mention it because you are probably eating your meal at the moment. It actually concerned the South-Eastern USA and slaves. I’ve been reading too much Isaac Weld, I reckon.

The nurse came early today and he didn’t hang around for long. And so it was earlier than usual when I sat down to eat my breakfast.

However, I was engrossed in ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

He’s still having issues on his travels, and he must have had some unfortunate run-in with some more American people because he writes "Intoxication is very prevalent, and it is fcarcely poffible to meet with a man who does not begin the day with taking one, two, or more drams as foon as he rifes. Brandy is the liquor which they principally ufe, and having the greater abundance of peaches, they make it at a very trifling expence."

As well as that, he’s also continuing on his favourite subject, the quality of the accommodation on offer in the USA.

He writes " The accommodation at the taverns along this road I found moft wretched ; nothing was to be had but rancid fifh, fat falt pork, and bread made of Indian corn. For this indifferent fare alfo 1 had to wait oftentimes an hour or two."

Nevertheless, Weld would have been glad of that because next day, having arrived late at his next lodgings and having to argue for an hour to be let in, "returning to the houfe, I was fhewn into a room about ten feet fquare, in which were two filthy beds fwarming with bugs ; the ceiling had mouldered away, and the walls admitted light in various places … Unable therefore to procure any food, and fatigued with a long journey during a parching day, I threw myfelf down on one of the beds in my clothes, and enjoyed a profound repofe, notwithftanding the repeated onfets of the bugs and other vermin with which I was molefted."

It sounds vey much like THAT MOTEL IN FLAGSTAFF ARIZONA, where I stayed in 2002.

His observations throughout his journey are fascinating and I’m enthralled by his book and its contents. He tells us "the people in this part of the country, bordering upon James River, are extremely fond of an entertainment which they call a barbacue. It confifts in a large party meeting together, either under fome trees, or in a houfe, to partake of a flurgeon or pig roafted in the open air, on a fort of hurdle, over a flow fire; this, however, is an entertainment chiefly confined to the lower ranks,."

However, his cynicism is wonderful and I’m appreciating his book more and more. He finishes his talk of “barbacues” with"like moft others of the fame nature, it generally ends in intoxication."

Back in here I had a slow start to the day, which is not surprising given the night that I’d had last night (or this morning) but once I’d organised myself I set about finishing off the radio programme that I’d started to edit yesterday (was it yesterday?).

There were several interruptions of course. Lunch was first and then my cleaner turned up to do her stuff.

Once she’d organised the bathroom I went to have a shower. And how much I enjoyed it too. It really was lovely and what was even nicer was that I climbed in and out without any help from my cleaner . However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not a good idea to try it on my own with no-one about.

There was the hot chocolate break too. I didn’t forget today, which is just as well because I do like that.

While I was at it I began my order from LeClerc. My cleaner had told me of a few things that we need so I may as well begin.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. I’d taken some naan bread dough from the freezer and it had been defrosting throughout the afternoon.

The curry was delicious as usual and the chocolate cake, with lemon-flavoured dessert tonight, was just as nice.

Bedtime right now, ready for the next lot of issues at the Dialysis Clinic. And there’s really no end to all of this and it’s something that I’ll have to suffer for the rest of my life, if I live that long.

However I did feel sorry for Isaac Weld, on his travels confronting yet more intoxicated Americans. "Whenever thefe people come to blows, they fight juft like wild beafts, biting, kicking, and endeavouring to tear each other’s eyes out with their nails. It is by no means uncommon to meet with thofe who have loft an eye in a combat, and there are men who pride themfelves upon the dexterity with which they can feoop one out. This is called gouging … But what is worfe than all, thefe wretches in their combat endeavour to their utmoft to tear out each other’s teiticles."

He met one of these intoxicated Americans in the street. "You’re drunk!" he roared
"No I’m not!" replied the American
"Ohh yes you are!"
"I’m not at all" replied the American. "I know full well when I’m drunk"
"When’s that?" asked Weld
"It’s when I start to see double" replied the American "like when the two of you become four"

0

Wednesday 20th November 2024 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from the night just now.

But that’s not surprising because I didn’t go to sleep at all. It was what the French call a nuit blanche.

And if you think that going to bed at midnight or thereabouts is bad, then how about at 02:00 and I was still awake and not in bed?

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s a pretty miserable affair when I’m awake like this and can’t sleep but it’s just another one of those little things sent to try me, I suppose, and I have to make the best of it, such as it is.

So after finishing off my notes I was somewhat tired, but more physically tired than a sleep kind of tired. I couldn’t find the strength or the will to haul myself out of my chair and move the few inches or so into the bed. I just sat here and vegetated for all that time.

Eventually I managed to pull myself together and headed off to the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, thinking to myself that it wouldn’t have been so bad had I been able somehow to do some work in the time that I was still awake.

Once in bed I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep at all, and that was probably the most depressing part of the night. I began to reminisce about things that I should have done, or ought to have done, and that’s bound to bring me out in a depression.

And that’s how it went on for most of the night. I was too far wrapped up in the past to think about the present, and that’s definitely the wrong way to be doing things.

When the alarm went off I crawled reluctantly out of bed (and you’ve no idea just how reluctantly) and headed for the bathroom and a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone and, as I expected, found nothing. So instead I had a look at my shopping list ready to order things from LeClerc on Friday.

However it’s difficult to make up an order this week. I have a lot of things in stock so I don’t need much. In fact, I can live without everything for the next week or two (except the soft vegetables of course) so I made an executive decision and decided that I won’t sent off an order this week. What I do need, like the mushrooms, tomato and cucumber, I’ll ask my cleaner to fetch them.

And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed.

Isabelle the Nurse had news for me today. Firstly, they are moving the War Memorial while they renovate the town centre and secondly, snow is forecast for tomorrow. And I’m going to Avranches and the clinic in a taxi too.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with my book.

Hearne is now writing his summary. He writes about the people whom he meets, their lifestyles out in the peri-Arctic tundra and their habits, and it’s all extremely interesting. About his guide he says "I have met with few Christians who possessed more good moral qualities, or fewer bad ones" and "his scrupulous adherence to truth and honesty would have done honour to the most enlightened and devout Christian, while his benevolence and universal humanity to all the human race, according to his abilities and manner of life, could not exceeded by the most illustrious personage now on record"

If that’s the case, then having read about some of the antics of his guide and party on the way back from massacring the Inuit, it tells me so much about the behaviour and morals of England and the English at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

We’re also being treated to an account of the wildlife and vegetation that he encounters on his trip. And his discussion of the food that they ate on their journey has revolted my stomach. It makes my meals sound positively appetising. Hearne however claims that he quite enjoyed some of them and in that case he’s welcome to them.

And when he describes the contemporary meals that are on offer back in England in the 1770s, that’s enough to get me going too. They make my mother’s meals sound delicious.

After breakfast I came in here and assembled the radio programme. Despite the speech being longer this time for some reason or other, it all went together quite nicely and I ended up being thirteen seconds over the one hour allowed for the programme.

But that’s not a problem. I can just cut out some of the applause and move some of the sound-bytes up a little and then it will all fit. And in fact, it all fits quite nicely

After lunch I had things to do. A friend of mine was on-line so we had a chat. We have a project going on together that is becoming quite involved and so it was good to have a chat about it.

There were a few on-line orders to make too. I need to overhaul the freezer here because it’s iced up and the drawers have collapsed. I’ve found a supplier of the drawers in Rouen so I had to organise an on-line order. They’ll be here by the weekend, I hope, and with the hair dryer that I liberated with the help of my cleaner, it will be “all systems go” with the freezer.

While we’re on the subject of the cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed … she turned up to do her stuff this afternoon, part of which was helping me into the shower.

Well, watching, actually, because I managed to climb into the bathtub and sort myself out totally unaided, and isn’t that a change? It’s not all that long ago that I couldn’t even lift my leg up, never mind climb into the bathtub.

The shower was delicious too. I stayed in there for much longer than I should, giving myself a good hosing-down in nice hot water. And I enjoyed every minute of it too

So a nice clean me climbed out of the shower and tidied the bathroom to match the rest of the apartment, and then came back in here to choose the music for the next radio programme.

After the cleaner left I took some naan dough from the freezer and left it to defrost and then made some dough for the next supply of bread.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by chocolate cake and the last of the strawberry-flavoured soya dessert which is a shame because it was so nice

While I was having tea the bread was baking in the oven. And at 160°C for 15 minutes and then turn over for another 15 minutes at 160°G, we have the most perfect loaf that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. I need it too after last night. Dialysis tomorrow but I don’t know how I’m going to go there. All public transport tomorrow is cancelled due to the wave of bad weather that is expected to hit us tonight so I imagine that the taxis won’t be going either, but we shall see.

But before I go let me say something else about Hearne’s trip to the Coppermine River.
One night he and his guide, Matonabbee, were lying there looking at the stars in the sky
"Look at that shooting star, Matonabbee" said Hearne. "What does it signify?"
"It represents the spirit of one of our tribe on his way to join his ancestors in the sky"
"And the stars?" asked Hearne. "Do they represent our ancestors?"
"They do indeed" said Matonabbee. "They are happy with us so they have come out to dance with joy"
"And look at the Aurora Borealis" said Hearne. "And the moon. It’s all so wonderful. And here we are, staring up at it through the night. What does it all mean?"
"It means" said Matonabbee "that earlier this evening some thieving b@$t@rd stole our wigwam."

0

Wednesday 13th November 2024 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… the second radio programme, the notes of which I also dictated on Saturday night.

This one was much more complicated than the last one but because of my little program it was all done, finished and dusted off much quicker.

It helps having used an array for the numbers rather than entering them manually whenever they needed to be changed, so let’s all give it a big hand … "hip, hip, array" – ed …

Last night I had a lot of things to do and as a result I didn’t go to bed until late, long after my ideal time of 23:00 but one thing that I can say is that I had the best sleep that I have had for ages. I awoke once during the night as far as I can remember, but I was asleep very quickly afterwards so I didn’t pay much attention

When the alarm went off, three girls had just come round to my apartment. I was still in bed but I was wide-awake. I was making plans for the immediate future, what I was going to do. Then one of the girls came up to me, ripped the bedclothes off and shouted “wakey wakey”. At that moment the alarm went off and Billy Cotton REPEATED THE CALL.

But can you imagine that? I suppose you can because it’s pretty much par for the course. 3 girls come into my apartment and just as it’s about to become interesting, Billy Cotton spikes my guns. It’s a change for him to do it though. Usually it’s one of my family who would put the spanner in the works, just like they did in real life.

So there I was, sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the World to stop spinning around and then when it stopped I got off and headed off to the bathroom to clean myself up.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My girlfriend had come round with her mother, and we’d left her mother in my apartment while the two of us went to a kind-of party in the afternoon. When we came back, the taxi dropped us off by the club on Nantwich Road and we walked down the side street there to the side door of my building. The first thing was that we couldn’t open the padlock. It was as if something had been stuffed down the keyhole but eventually I managed to open the padlock and could unlock the place and walk in. At the first glance I thought that her mother had died, the way that she was lying on the sofa, but she was lying there chewing, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was chewing a chocolate. My girlfriend went over to talk to her to make sure that she was OK while I prepared the papers and so on from this party/reception type of thing to which we’d just been.

Who this girl was, I have no idea at all which is a shame. Some kind of company would be a nice thing to have in a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have met some really nice girls on occasion during the night. It would be nice if I could do that today but first of all I don’t go anywhere these days and secondly I’m far too old for any of that kind of nonsense.

The nurse came early again today and after making the usual remarks, saw to my legs and then cleared off. He can’t have been here ten minutes. Not that I’m complaining though. It suits me fine.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book.

Samuel Hearne is on the move again, out on his third trip to find the Coppermine River. He makes some very prescient and penetrating remarks about the First-Nation women whom he encounters which, if read in the wrong spirit, would not be appreciated. He likens them to nothing more than beasts of burden

However, it should be remembered that if the men are out hunting for food, chasing deer around and hoping to catch them, they need to be able to move quickly so someone else has to do the heavy lifting and carrying. Life on the Barren Grounds is really tough and in fact a guy from Nantwich, John Hornby, starved to death with two companions out there almost 100 years ago. It’s a fight and only the toughest survive. Co-operation and partnership is essential.

Back in here, I had some editing to do. Listening to the radio programme that I’d prepared yesterday, I found that I’d left in there a reference to a track that I’d cut out. So the reference had to go too, which meant that I was now 2.23 seconds short.

Not a problem though – just add in some applause at an appropriate moment and we’ll be fine.

Then I began to prepare the next programme by editing the notes that I’d dictated.

Having done that I broke the finished sound file up into segments for each track and then entered the times of the sound-bytes and tracks into my little program and the machine did the rest.

It found me a selection that ran out to one hour and twenty-eight seconds – not a problem – except that one track wasn’t what it was supposed to be and by the time I’d edited it to represent what I wanted, the batch was short by several minutes. And there was, regrettably, an error in my programming that caused one track to be counted twice.

In the end, I was nine minutes short so I had to go again. This time I was one minute and twenty seconds over, but editing that much out is no problem at all.

There were several interruptions.

Firstly, there was lunch. I can’t go without food and I had a slice of the flapjack that I’d made a while ago.

Secondly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and that meant a shower for me this afternoon. And although she stood and watched, I did absolutely everything on my own today and you’ve no idea how proud I felt.

She cautioned me about attempting a shower when I’m on my own. There might be an improvement in my mobility and I’m right to push myself onwards, but I mustn’t take any risks. I’m not out of the woods yet. I have simply moved into different woods.

We then spent a pleasant half-hour going through the medication and you wouldn’t believe (or maybe you will) the amount of medication gathering dust around here that is long out-of-date. There’s some stuff dated 2017 and I bet that I can find stuff older than that if I look around. It’s high time someone got to grips with this over-prescribing of medication.

After my hot chocolate I had naan dough to make because I’ve run out. This lot is extremely garlicky which is just as well. I’m not going to be bothered by werewolves and vampires, especially when the garlic naan is smeared in my garlic butter

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, as usual. It really was delicious and I reckon that it was the best that I have ever made. My chocolate cake, with lumps of real chocolate, is also excellent, especially with a pistachio soya cream

So that’s enough for today. Tomorrow I’m off to dialysis so Heaven help me. I can’t take much more of this.

But I’m still having a laugh at some of the comments made by Hearne in his book.
Apart from his beautiful quote "they never give themselves the trouble to acquire what they can do well enough without" to describe the philosophy of the First-Nation people in the Barren Grounds, something from which many people in Western society would do well to note, he records a conversation between several of his First-Nation guides
Sitting around the fire late at night after a heavy meal of venison they jokingly ask each other whether they would ever consider having "an intrigue with a strange woman"
It reminds me of a party in Munich to which I went several years ago and an Italian girl asked me "tell me – would you ever consider making love to a perfect stranger?"
"Madam," I replied "the way that things have been just recently, I would even consider making love to a bloody awful stranger"

0

Wednesday 6th November 2024 – I’VE GOT A LUVVERLY …

…. bunch of coc … errr … I have a lovely clean bed in which t climb later tonight.

And in fact, there’s a lovely … "well, maybe not" – ed … clean me to climb into it too. It’s Wednesday and with my cleaner giving me either the grand toilet or the soutien moral, one or the other, I’ve had a really beautiful shower.

And while I was under the shower she went and changed the bed for the clean bedding that was washed a couple of weeks ago. It does look lovely, fresh and inviting, and I shall be doing my best to be in there at a reasonable time tonight.

Not like last night. Having crowed yesterday about my reasonable night and early start, I couldn’t find the energy to go to bed last night and it was quite a way after 01:00 when I finally made it into bed

And there weren’t ‘arf some strange goings -on last night. At one point I was away with the fairies, being careful not to do anything that would earn reprobation from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, when I used a certain word. Someone else in my bedroom repeated it loudly, but in an interrogative way as if questioning why I’d used that word, and that awoke me. I sat up, bolt-upright, and of course there was no-one there. I looked at the watch and it was 06:57 and the alarm was due to sound any minute now. I wish that I could remember what the word was now because it must have been really important and significant.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out with a good wash and scrub up, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

To my surprise there was something on there from last night. I was trying to kill some kind of insect that was living inside the kernel of some nut. I put it in some kind of heated – what would you call it? – a heated kind of pair of scissors that make an impression on a piece of paper or something on a wax seal … "an embossing stamp" – ed … I tried to press it with that but it didn’t seem to work. In the meantime there was someone else, some woman, who was trying to sort out the decoration of some of the rooms in this palace. I was supposed to be helping her but I was too busy with a little task. She said that she’d have to go off and find a stronger ladder to do one particular job. I looked at this press that I had and squeezed it but the kernel was burnt and whatever was in it was burnt to a crisp. The pair of scissors thing had become so hot that whatever it was that would melt the wax seal had melted away itself so I doubted it these would be any good. Then I noticed that up in the building, higher up, there were some lights that had come on in one room so I went up there. There was someone else there decorating and they had two rooms on the go at once. I could see that they were busy so I helped them with the masking tape to hold down some of the paper that was being used to protect the woodwork and the drawings on the walls from being painted over.

It’s not as if I would have volunteered to do any painting and decorating back in the old days. But when I had finished the attic and the first floor back at the farm and it was time to wallpaper and paint everywhere, I found that I quite enjoyed doing it. However, it’s certainly different when you have the time, the space and the proper tools and material to do it. Cheap white emulsion with some coloured dye in it makes a lovely surface on top of some of that glass-fibre paper. MY BEDROOM DOWN ON THE FARM looked wonderful when it was finished. It’s a shame that I only benefitted from it for four months. I hope that the mice are enjoying it.

Isabelle the nurse came round again, slightly less rushed than yesterday. She had some news to tell me and taught me a new useful phrase which I promptly forgot. That’s just how it is, I reckon.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with this thesis that I’ve been reading. Our American friend tells us that William the Conqueror must have had some genuine belief that he was overlord of Wales, because of a remark that one of his chroniclers said.

Apparently, William’s defeat of the English was equated to Caesar’s defeat of the Britons and our friend thinks that the “English” refers to the people living in England but “Britons” means the people living in Great Britain – the whole of the island – and so equating the two events means that William considers himself to have the same rights over all of the island.

That’s a perfectly true situation today, this definition of “English” and the one of “Britons”, but that certainly wasn’t the case in 1066 and in 43AD. In 43AD there were no English people in Britain so it’s quite natural that Caesar didn’t fight them. The Angles and Saxon who made up the roots of the English people didn’t begin to flood in until the 5th Century.

Consequently Caesar was not differentiating in his speech between the “English” and the “Britons” as our American friend seems to think

And that is one thing that really gets on my wick, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … People should stop looking at historical events and people from a modern perspective. They need to be judged on the standards, opinion and perspective of their time.

Back in here I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with the radio programme that I mentioned yesterday.

This one was extremely complicated. There were only four tracks, one of which was 21 minutes long, and there could neither be any more nor any less. And even finding the four that I ended up choosing was complicated

With that kind of constraint I had to have the text to approximately the correct length right from the very start because there was no other music that I could add in, and nothing that I could take away.

When I write out the text I calculated who long it would run when dictated and I planned it to be 30 seconds over, in case of emergencies. But by the time that I’d finished merging it into the music I’d trimmed off 25 seconds off the time and I could find plenty of speech to edit out to lose the extra five seconds.

But it didn’t ‘arf take some juggling about.

After I’d finished that I chose all of the music for the next programme. That’s going to be a return to the boring, run-of-the-mill programmes because there was nothing special to celebrate or to remember on the date for which the programme is being prepared.

There were several breaks in the proceedings.

There was lunch of course – one of my flapjacks and an apple. later on there was the hot chocolate and crackers with hummus as a mid-afternoon snack

But there was also the shower, and you’ve no idea (or maybe you do, I dunno) just how good it feels to be in there. I had the water really hot and I loved every minute of it. And I took my time, washing my undies while I was at it.

But my faithful cleaner gave me a good scrutiny going in and coming out. She noticed that this week I didn’t need any help, and I was moving so much better, climbing in and out without aid. I might be tempted to have a go on my own one day when she’s not here.

One thing that was quite important was that I managed finally to have a telephone conversation with the hospital at Paris.

The secretary assured me that I hadn’t been forgotten even though I’d had no contact with them since June and the promised appointment at the end of August had come and gone and nothing had happened.

She said that only a week or two ago my case was discussed and there are plans to bring me back for a week. I replied that that was what they said in June about coming at the end of August, but she promised me that it really was on the cards this time.

We shall see.

With no leftover stuffing, tonight’s curry was a leftover curry from several weeks – even months – ago that had been in the freezer. It was still just as good, even if the naan bread fell apart

So tomorrow I’m being dialysed again. I wonder if it will hurt as much as the last few times.

But right now, there’s clean bedding, clean clothes and a clean me and we are all looking to unite in bed tonight even if it’s somewhat later than intended

But seeing as we have brought the Romans into the story … "well, one of us has" – ed … Caesar is walking around the Forum when he sees a young man who looks exactly like his son.
So Caesar goes up to him and asks "Young man – I don’t suppose that your … errr … mother ever worked in the Imperial Palace on the night shift, did she?"
"Ohh no" replied the boy "But my father did"

0

Wednesday 30th October 2024 – I HAVE FOUND …

… my missing sock

When I put my hand down the sleeve of my jumper this morning, there it was. Don’t ask me what it was doing there or even how it came to be there because I couldn’t answer. It’s just another one of life’s little mysteries, I suppose.

Like managing for once to be in bed before 23:00. That’s a mystery too but nevertheless, for once I managed it last night.

It took me longer than usual to go to sleep and I don’t know why because I was quite tired by the time that I hit the hay. And it was something of a depressing night because, unlike some nights just recently, I was tossing and turning all the way through the night and it seemed that I didn’t have any sleep at all.

However when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was totally dead to the World and it was a struggle to beat the second alarm five minutes later out of bed. And so I gathered up my clothes and headed for the bathroom.

It was only a cursory wash this morning because I’m having a shower later (I hope). And when I dressed, then I found my missing sock, stuck in the sleeve of my jumper.

As I said earlier, don’t ask me how it managed to find its way there. On Monday night I wasn’t even wearing a jumper but the fleece that I wear when I go out. I suppose that I could say that I did it while I was away with the fairies but doubtless the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would find something to say about the situation that would have been quite normal 150 years ago but would be bound to be misinterpreted today.

Back in here, in my own private version of 1876, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And there was quite a lot on there, which took me by surprise.

We were going to the car racing somewhere – at Silverstone. It had been for saloon cars. One of the vehicles that was putting up a show was an old white Ford Anglia van. Of course we were all keen to urge it on. There were several unexpected vehicles there. There was someone racing a Bentley etc. The race in which we were interested was the saloon car championship where anything could go if it had four wheels on the road and was a production line vehicle. That was basically it. We were there watching this Ford Anglia that was doing quite well but there was someone in a lorry – a tipper – and he was racing up through the field. In the end he overtook some vehicle that pulled off the road with mechanical issues and he was actually in front. He was later stuck in a pack of about three or four vehicles which gave everyone else time to catch up with him so the final five minutes was really exciting. This lorry just managed to have enough going down the final straight to push his nose in front to pass. But we were there cheering on this Jeep that was in fifth place, fourth place was this aubergine thing, third was I can’t remember now what was after that. We were talking about it on the way home, that the first second and third had all been found from the air and as they slowed down after the final lap they all passed a road sign that said “slow”. We thought that it was extremely funny and typical of the USA as well as all the bandages done in squares and useless road markers. Of course I’ve just come back from the USA so I found it funnier still. When we were talking about how funny it was because of the road sign my friend from Atlanta in Georgia joined in too. She was there watching her daughter race.

Why would an aubergine suddenly appear in this dream? Is it anything to do with Monday night’s evening meal? And we seem suddenly to have gone from Silverstone in the East Midlands of the UK to the USA. Anyone coming with me during the night had better have a good passport and a love of travelling.

And then I was in Crewe. I’d finished work early so there was plenty of time for me to wait for the bus to take me home so I went for a wander around the shops. At the bus stop there was a long line of people and a bus pulled up. It was the K39 to Shavington and I wanted the K44. All these people waiting boarded the bus and it pulled away. I went into a local supermarket. I had to leave all of my things in a luggage locker and just go round with one of their trolleys. There was someone on duty searching people as they went in which I thought was a strange thing to do. After I went in I was looking around. I’d met one or two people who had a little chat with me for a couple of minutes about how I was feeling. That’s all that I remember about this dream

Actually I would sometimes take the K39 home. That would go to Shavington and then out to the Hough and Basford. The K44 would go to Shavington and then out to Nantwich via Stapeley. We’d also have the K29 which would alternate between going to Shavington and turning round or else continuing on to Wybunbury and the Whore’s Bed at Walgherton. I’m surprised that I can remember all of that – back in the 1960s we had buses that would run all the way to after 23:00, but now most of these buses have been suppressed and nothing moves at all after 19:00. Such are the benefits of privatisation

After that the contemporary Press has been very kind to me. They were saying that the remains of my noble Lord Shrewsbury could be seen for months afterwards scattered on the ground and various other things that were rarely polite about me as a Duke of the Realm, extremely unpopular with the local peasantry, even though I’d tried my best to alleviate the suffering of their time and making things easier for them

The “contemporary Press” is obviously a reference to Aunt Judy’s Magazine making spurious allegations about what I get up to when I’m away with the fairies, but if I ever an ennobled then you know that there’s something rotten in the State of Denmark right enough

There was a film starring Louis de Funès and during this film a woman invited him back to her apartment. In fact he resembled very much a friend of hers and she thought that he was this friend so she invited him back. He was rather astonished but he went back all the same and managed quite well whatever was requested of him. The next time they met, they both were present at the same time. She was talking to one and then the other, then the first one again and ended up inviting them both back to her flat thinking that it was the same person. It wasn’t until halfway through the evening that she suddenly realised that she had two men in her apartment and one of them was a stranger. She began to have all kinds of doubts and all kinds of questions. At that moment there was an accident. Louis de Funès had hurt himself and there was blood all down his shoulder. Everyone gathered round to try to clean it. In the meantime – no, it wasn’t Louis de Funès, it was the other one who had the bloody shoulder. While they were treating him they discreetly ushered him out of the apartment until in the end there was just Louis de Funès, the woman and the first-aid staff there. At that point I’d gone off with some friends including my partner. We’d parked at some kind of park. We’d been away for several days. I fell asleep and when I awoke I was there on my own with these two dogs. To pass the time I was throwing a frisbee to these two dogs and they were bringing it back again. Then they all came back from their walk through the forest. My partner saw the mess that I’d made. I’d been eating a tomato and I’d unpacked one or two things to look for something. She had a really good moan at me about it. I couldn’t understand because it only took 30 seconds to put it all back again. Then she came across some meat in the van She said “we have some meat to eat. We have to eat that before Saturday”. I suddenly realised that I’d bought that for my sandwiches but I’d never had it on my sandwiches. I didn’t really say anything because it did have to be eaten but it was still something rather difficult etc.

The first part of this dream sounds like the kind of plot that Louis de Funès would relish. He’s played many comic roles where he’s found himself in impossible situations and had to work out a way to extricate himself. As for the second part, I could easily see myself in a similar predicament without very much effort at all

Finally I was with a girl in Scotland. She was a Scottish girl. I’d been going through, doing my accounts, looking through some of the accounts that I’d kept as a child about what I did and what I spent. We were having this discussion about childhood. She asked how much pocket money I used to have so I told her a figure and said that my elder sister had the same. She asked about the younger children. I said that it might have been more because we were a little richer in those days but I didn’t know. She was telling me about her childhood. It was a very difficult one because his father used to drink. There was this alcohol culture in Scotland – people used to drink and quite often became violent if they had a drink. She was saying that her childhood was one of violence and she was quite happy when she left. I could sympathise with her for a variety of reasons. We carried on talking about our childhood as we were walking down a hill through this Scottish town. We came to the big dual carriageway by-pass and had to wait for the lights to change and we could cross. She began to tell me something about her brother who was a car paint-sprayer, in particular one of the jobs that he had done. He’d had a row with the owner of the vehicle over the price. It was something to do with a joke that he’d told about making the calculation and the owner of the vehicle completely misunderstood it and took it the wrong way and it led to this argument.

As if I’m ever likely to be talking to anyone about my childhood. I can’t even talk to myself about it.

When I was driving coaches up to Scotland I had a good chat with someone about the alcohol issue. When I first went to Glasgow in the early 70s when I had to go to the Insurance company’s head office in Perth we were told in no uncertain terms to take a taxi between the stations regardless. But when I began to go again, driving for Shearings, the situation had changed dramatically.

Her take on the issue was that with the pubs closing at 21:00 people would pour out of work straight into the pubs without eating, drink as much as they could and then pour out onto the streets with plenty of energy left, fuelled up ready for a fight. However, when licensing hours were relaxed in line with the rest of the UK, people would go home after work, have food and then have time to go out later for a drink. They would then be too tired at closing time to involve themselves in any extra-curricular activity.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in, her usual chatty self. It’s her last day now until next Tuesday so tomorrow we’ll be back amid the chaos and confusion. I shan’t be looking forward to that but there we go.

The it was time for breakfast and my book. Alfred Watkins is busy setting the scene for his theory about ley lines and there’s a lovely photo in his book that shows Hereford Cathedral with a pond and a hill, all three in direct line, and you can make out in a field in the foreground what looks like a trace of a sunken road that has been abandoned hundreds if not thousands of years ago.

Interestingly, he talks about the Four Stones of Radnor as being some kind of prehistoric marker. So I went to have a look for myself. I came across THIS PHOTO on someone else’s website and you can see an example of the point that he was trying to make – the way that hill in the distance lines up almost perfectly with a track that might go between the stones.

Back in here I had a slow start to the day and then bashed on with writing the notes for the radio programme on which I was working. By the time that I knocked off for hot chocolate I’d finished everything and it’s ready for dictation.

There had been a couple of interruptions – firstly for lunch and secondly for a shower when my cleaner turned up.

The shower was beautiful and I enjoyed every minute of it. Once a week isn’t enough of course but it’s the best that I can do right now until I’m downstairs and have a walk-in shower installed.

However it is becoming easier and easier to climb into the bath and it’s quite probable that I’d be able to do it without any help, bit it’s folly to try it when I’m alone

After the hot chocolate I made a start on the next programme. Once again, I’ve not chosen anything easy but it remains to be seen how this one works out. We’re bang in the middle of Summer next year so there’s so much going on that we need to celebrate and commemorate.

There was almost nothing in the way of leftovers tonight but I had sent half a surplus curry to the freezer a good while ago so I went and had a search around to bring it back out tonight.

It should have been so nice but we had an accident with the naan bread. Having rolled it out and left it to rise, I put my elbow into it when I bent down to tidy up the baking stuff.

The last of the apple cake has now gone so it looks as if I’ll be trying a rice pudding in the air fryer tomorrow

But that’s tomorrow. I’m off to bed now, ready to gather my wits for another afternoon of torture at the Dialysis Clinic.

And while we’re on the subject of my friend from Atlanta … "well, one of us is" – ed … she once told me an interesting story about her daughter when she was aged ten. I’ve probably told it before but if I have, please excuse me.
Anyway; they live in a complex of several apartment buildings in a suburb of Atlanta and when her daughter was aged ten, she asked if she could go to see a school friend who lived in another one of the buildings.
"Of course you can" said my friend "but what do you do if someone tries to grab you?"
"Kick him in the b*ll*cks and shout ‘fire’" replied the daughter brightly
"What a horrible word" said my friend. "The correct word that you should use is ‘testicles’"
"OK" replied the daughter. "So I kick him in the b*ll*cks and shout ‘testicles’ then"

0

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 – PHEW! I’M EXHAUSTED!

That’s hardly any surprise because not only did I have an early start, I have been working all day practically non-stop and have done not only tomorrow’s, but almost all of Friday’s work too. I don’t know where all of this energy has come from.

And last night I was actually in bed before 23:00 which is a very pleasant change. That’s not something that happens every night, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

It seems to me that I managed to finish my notes earlier than usual despite all of the distractions that there are, and then I crawled off to the bathroom to sort myself out ready for the night

Once in bed, going to sleep seemed to take much longer than usual though, and that’s something that I’ve noticed over the last few weeks too. I don’t seem to fall asleep as quickly as formerly.

But once asleep, I stayed asleep for almost all of the night, and awoke at about 06:15. I couldn’t remember anything at all of the night so it must have been a really sound sleep for a change, and that probably did me the world of good.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep so after a while of tossing and turning I left the bed and headed to the bathroom where I had a quick wash. Not a full wash as I’m showering later. And when the alarm went off I was busy drying myself.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. To my surprise there was plenty of stuff on there so the night can’t have been as sound as I thought. There had been a girl who had been taken prisoner by a couple of men. She had her mother and a couple of friends etc with her when she was taken prisoner. They were all locked in this house. After a while it became clear that the guy was not interested in her as such but interested in the money that she could bring him. She eventually ended up by barricading herself in the bathroom. Eventually, after a couple of days and all kinds of entreatments and threats etc she reluctantly agreed and eventually opened the door at which point the guys took the information that she had and left, saying that they’d be back. In the meantime all of the girls had been in communication while all of this had been happening. Once all the men had left, the girl having sent them on a wild goose chase she took the money that she had hidden in the house and went to see her friends. Her friends had managed to make some really old car in the garage start. While these men were away looking for something that they’d never find the girls piled into this old car and drove away to make good their escape

There’s nothing in this dream that reminds me of anything. I can’t imagine what’s going on here with this.

That conviction just then … "what conviction?" – ed … rendered me liable to three points taking me up to nine and I was within touching distance of losing my driving licence. When I was out again in my J4 van with things not quite right about it I was beginning to become really worried because I was so easily going to end up on my feet and walking if I wasn’t very very careful and I only had myself to blame. I was driving my J4 van up some street between Oak Street and Chester Bridge that doesn’t exist and I know that coming out of that corner would be extremely complicated especially as I was driving on the left in a right-hand drive vehicle and anything would be likely to happen as I tried to pull out into the traffic just then

So I imagine that this road comes in over my left shoulder, and anyone who has ever driven a right-hand drive van knows just how difficult it is with roads like that. As for the van, I had an old J4 van for a couple of years. Rough as anything and as rotten as a pear, in today’s climate I would lose my licence for ever if it were ever inspected but back in 1974-75 there was nothing wrong with a van like this from a police point of view. As Sir Daniel Gooch once famously said, "whatever would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

However it seems that there’s a lump missing from the start of this. I wonder what was happening that I haven’t recorded. But certainly back in those days we were far too cavalier for our own good and we ran a great risk of falling foul of the law in many ways. I had a very hard time adjusting to the new way of thinking that took root in the 80s and 90s

Finally, I’ve just been in a car sales room, a huge place and there must have been about three hundred cars in there. There were probably fifty motor bikes too. One of them was a Velocette Venom 500cc combo. Ohhh! That took me back to 1973 and John Stigter etc. I just sat on this Velocette and wheeled it up and down in this little area in this car sales place. I was as happy as Larry on this. I just wished that I had the strength in my legs to be able to give it a kick-start and take it for a ride

That brought back many happy memories. It was John’s brother Ray who had the Velocette Venom but John had a combination of some description and we’d throw our gear into the box and go off camping for the weekend at the drop of a hat back in the early 1970s when I was living in Chester. Unfortunately that was a way of life that was destined to be eliminated as society became more and more paranoid. I remember going with a schoolfriend to the Lleyn Peninsula and spending the weekend dossing in the open air, walking through the deserted streets of Portmerion (where THE PRISONER was filmed) at 03:00. "Whatever would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

It’s a shame but I really miss those carefree halcyon days. Many of my dreams seem to reflect that period of happy adolescence (and the unhappy parts of it too) and when I talk about “young ladies” in my dreams, I actually see myself as still either in or just having left that period. Take the J4 van for example – I was 20 then and still naught but a pup.

Isabelle the nurse came to see me to sort out my legs. I told her that I was going to have a shower later on, even if Emilie the Cute Consultant no longer loves me and she asked "is your engagement definitely broken off then?"

Another thing that I mentioned is that her colleague told me that I had to try to put on my own elasticated socks so I was going to try this afternoon. She thinks that I won’t be able to manage it and even if I were to manage it, I shouldn’t be doing it.

There’s also the question of the ‘flu jab. I’ve had the voucher from the Social Services and my cleaner has taken it to the chemist. Isabelle told me to let her know when I have it and she’ll inject me.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book.

The naturalists are having their annual meal and making all kinds of self-congratulatory speeches to each other. But this is the important bit because they have begun to discuss mushrooms.

The speaker tells us "It was really a great pity that so much good food should be lost. The waste was due to the very great prejudice existing against Funguses" and the President proposes that there should be "a paper on the Edible Funguses of Herefordshire."

The preparation of this document led to a publication that became famous – a legend in fact in the UK, a bible to mushroom hunters everywhere that transformed British cuisine and British diet.

But it’s interesting to see how times have changed from the 1860s. Ladies were not allowed to attend the outings, except on a special Ladies’ Day once per year, however, in connection with this document, the President goes on to say "it would be impossible for them to do this, however, without the assistance of ladies to colour them—that is to say, the club could not afford to pay for their being coloured. The ladies had done much for last year’s volume, and were most kindly again prepared to help with this one, so that the committee did not despair of accomplishing it."

We’ve also had a lecture on tree-pruning and members of the club have produced their weather statistics of the kind that I kept down on the farm in the Auvergne.

Back in here, I started work. And I cracked on today. Not only have I finished to notes for this radio programme, I’ve also chosen the music for the next one and written most of the notes. And that was a Herculean effort too, fighting my way through all of that.

There was the usual interruption for lunch, and then my cleaner turned up with the medication and the injection

Now that she was here doing her stuff, I could proceed with my shower, under her supervision.

The shower was glorious and I enjoyed every minute of it. I’d prepared everything beforehand, clean clothes, refilling the soap pump, all of that kind of thing so it was a simple manner of climbing into the bath,

That was much easier too. I’m really getting the hang of this, although I find it still rather strange to have a crutch in my hand as I stand in the bathtub But it’s better than falling over, I suppose.

What’s most important is that I’m all clean and proper. Once per week is not really good enough but it will have to do until I’m downstairs and can have a walk-in shower fitted

Back in here and fully-dressed, I tried to put on my elasticated socks. And it worked really well too. I can manage that without too much difficulty. So does this mean that I’m slowly working my way round back to my Sunday lie-ins?

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry livened up with a chili now that I have some. And it was delicious too, especially the naan bread. And the dessert was really good too.

But now I’m off to bed, early again for a change, and still having a smile about some of the comments of the Woolhope naturalists in 1867.
Before they could eat their meal they said “Grace” which was something that we used to do at home as children.
One day I was invited to a friend’s for tea after school and they just tucked straight into their meal without saying anything.
Back at home later I told my mother about what had happened.
"Didn’t they say a prayer before eating their meal like we do at home?" she asked
"Oh no" I replied. "His mother knows how to cook."

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Wednesday 16th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN ..

… a very busy boy today.

And not only that, I’m a very clean busy boy too because I have had another shower today. And not only that either, but I have a lovely clean bed to dive into tonight because while I was soaking myself down, my faithful cleaner was changing the bedding on my bed and sweeping out the room.

Yes, this is a luxury to which I’m not all that accustomed. At this rate I shall be learning to become civilised, far too late to do me any good.

And while we’re on the subject of lateness … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was late again going to bed last night. Not by much, I have to say, but enough for me to complain about it – as if I don’t do enough complaining anyway.

In actual fact I’d finished fairly early and could I suppose have made the bed prior to 23:00 but instead I followed a few distractions to relax myself before I finally hit the hay. We’ve been studying different dialects in our Welsh class and she found an interesting article on the subject so she sent it to me.

The dialect that I know is rather confusing. My grandmother’s family came from Penrhiwceiber in South Wales, she grew up in the borderlands near Wrexham, I worked with a Welsh-speaking colleague from Caernarfon when I was on the buses in Crewe, I study with Coleg Cambria in Mold and I’ve been on Summer Schools in Gwent and Caerfyrddyn, and so I have a bit of everything.

Going off to sleep seems to be taking a little longer than in the past so the fairies had to loiter around for a little longer, but once I was gone, I was gone. I awoke once during the night round about 05:00 (yet again:) but soon went back to sleep again.

That seems to be quite a popular time to awaken. I wonder why it is. I know that I’m a very light sleeper but that time or thereabouts is just too regular to be a coincidence.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I went off into the bathroom to have a really good scrub, and then came back in here to see what was on the dictaphone from the night. We’d set up a business with a couple of different people concerning an estate agency. We’d managed to secure a couple of clients and had gone into partnership with a couple of different people for a couple of different things. My partner was wondering about how progress was being made because we’d been away for a couple of weeks and there had been no contact. We went back to meet everyone again to see how things were. My partner wanted to make sure that nothing that we had done before we went away had been compromised. It was left to me to do the distasteful tasks of asking these other people who were in partnership with us. One guy said, rather offendedly, yes, he’d sold twenty-one apartments in the time that he’d been away but the two that we’d seen with him and organised, they hadn’t moved. Then he buttonholed my partner and asked “when are you going to come along and do this work that you promised?” so the two of them marched off somewhere. He was determined to make her work. In the meantime, the woman of another partnership with whom we’d gone into partnership at the beginning asked “when’s your partner going to deal with this examination and homework that we have to do? It’s already a week overdue now. I went with her we sat down, we each took a paper of this homework and she did one while I did the other. We then swapped papers to look at it and check each other’s work. I didn’t really know very much about what I was doing and was having to interpret it on the basis of what I’d seen in the question. That’s all I knew. It looked very common-sense to me but it was difficult for me to wrap my head around it because I didn’t know any of the technical terms however I did what I could and hopefully it was OK but the dream ended before we had the results of the checking by this other girl

“I didn’t really know very much about what I was doing” – that’s the story of my life, isn’t it? I seem to make it all up as I go along and hope for the best. When I rely on my intuition it works pretty much OK most of the time. Sometimes though I’ve had some spectacular successes but, on the other hand, once or twice I’ve had some miserable failures. Anyway, I’m far too old to change my ways now

Later on I’d been in the USA for some kind of work and was flying back to Canada but I’d looked in at a DiY shop on one occasion just before coming back and they had some 1.6Kw heater elements in there. There was also this beautiful kitchen unit in a flat pack. I looked at this kitchen unit and thought that it was lovely so I bought it. I bought my heater element then I realised that I couldn’t pick up the kitchen unit because it was too heavy so I took the obvious solution and just pushed it in its box. I pushed it all the way to the airport and all the way through the departure. It went into the hold of the ‘plane. When we arrived in Canada it was somehow with me on the ‘plane so I pushed it all the way through. Before leaving the USA I took this heater element and changed the plug on it for a Canadian plug. When I arrived back in Canada I left the ‘plane and pushed this through the airport, half expecting to be stopped at “Passports” but there was no-one on duty at Passport Control – we just pushed our way through into the main hall. I was there putting my things into some bags when someone came up to me and asked me why I’d changed this plug over to a different plug in the USA. I explained that I wanted it to work here in Canada. They asked “couldn’t you have waited until you arrived in France to do that? ”

Canadian plugs are the same as USA plugs, but let’s not bog ourselves down with trivialities. I would have loved to have worked in Canada but I was stuck in the “age gap”. Over 55 and you can’t have a work permit, and under 65 you can’t be a dependent. Now that I would qualify, I’m too ill to go. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WHEN I WAS ON A BUS IN MONTREAL IN 2013 the driver of the bus had lived for years in Brussels and worked the route that I used to take to go to see Marianne. He encouraged me to apply for a job as a bus driver with the Montreal City bus company and reckoned that I’d be certain to be accepted, but I fell right into that age gap. I would have loved to have lived in Montreal although THE OLD FAMILY PILE IN DRAPER AVENUE in the Côte des Neiges has long-since been demolished and redeveloped. The only place our family still owns in Montreal is the six feet of earth in the Mount Royal Cemetery where the bones of my great grandfather lie.

The nurse today was quick and efficient and had very little to say for himself except the usual patronising remarks that get on my nerves. He soon cleared off and left me to make a start on breakfast.

As for reading matter, Old Sarum was the last place that we visited with Thomas Wright. I’m now on the annual report of the Woodthorpe Naturalists’ (not “naturists”, Rhys) Club from (thinks) 1867. Why that’s interesting was because the club was the organisation that pushed forward the idea of gathering mushrooms and this report was the first document to actually identify and catalogue the different types. It’s the mushroom gatherer’s bible.

After breakfast I tidied up in the kitchen and dining area for a while and then came in here. Firstly, there was football to watch. There had been a whole programme of matches last night in the Welsh Premier League, unfortunately not shown live but the highlights of every game were shown.

To be honest, I’m glad that they didn’t show Y Bala v Connah’s Quay live. The highlights ran for 1 minute and 37 seconds, and I counted two shots on goal. Y Drenewydd threw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 against y Barri but the surprising scoreline was that Aberystwyth, dead and buried at the bottom of the table and now managerless, stuck four away from home against 3rd-placed Caernarfon. And of course, we had yet another “let’s play it out from the back, boys” moment too.

Then I started work. And busy boy that I am, not only did I finish off the notes for the next radio programme, I chose the music, paired it off and segued the pairs for the one after too. And even wrote some of the notes too

This next one is another complicated one too and it’s going to be so easy for me to find myself carried off on a tangent if I’m not careful. I’m not allowed to be partisan or adopt a polemic stance, so we’ll have to see how well I can control myself.

There were several interruptions too. Firstly there was lunch. And then there was the shower.

That means washing my socks and undies etc first. And then stripped down and put on my shorts. My faithful cleaner stood by in case I needed her and then, propped up with a crutch, I gave myself a good scrub down as best as I could, and it was wonderful.

There’s some kind of pivoting chair available to help me into the bath and it costs about €300. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in March someone came here with one to try out, but chipped the bath, promised to come back, and I haven’t seen him since.

So €300 for that. My cleaner and I found that a dining room chair and two wooden boxes do the job just as well, and cost nothing.

While I was hosing myself down she was in here changing the bedding and brushing out my room. And it is nice. In fact it was a wonderful hour or so all told and I hope that I feel the benefit of it tonight, even though it’s going to be late yet again.

Once I was out of the shower and dressed, I had a sort-out of my travelling rucksack that I take when I have to go to hospital.

The reason is that I’m running low on my anti-cancer chemotherapy medicine. They gave me a prescription for that at Avranches the other day but it’s a strictly-controlled medication that can only be prescribed by certain consultants, and there are none at Avranches (which is why I go to Paris).

Anyway, the pharmacy rejected it so so I rang them at Paris.
"Didn’t the doctor give you a prescription when you came?" asked the secretary.
"Yes" I replied. "But that was in June, it was only for three months and now it’s run out"
"I mean, when you came just now"
"I haven’t been just now" I replied. "The last time that I came was in June. The doctor said that he’d call me back there for a biopsy at the end of August but I’ve heard nothing since June."
"But surely you … didn’t you? …You must have … Let me see …Can I call you back? I need to speak to the doctor"

As a result, I’m expecting a call to go to Paris some day very soon. God alone knows when ‘ll be able to fit it in. Dialysis, 30 sessions at the Centre de Re-education looming, a series of 30 sessions of physiotherapy waiting for a place. It’s worse than when I was at work.

That’s not all either. The post has been building up and there have been several bills to pay to the Government for one thing and another. So I was busy setting up accounts on the Fench Government web-page so that they can use direct debit to take payment.

The good news is that I’m entitled to a tax refund. It’s only e40:00 but it’s symbolic

After all of that I reckoned that I deserved my leftover curry and naan bread, followed by apple cake and coconut soya cream. Another excellent meal that I really enjoyed. Tomorrow I might try a slice of pie warmed up in the air fryer with potatoes, veg and gravy.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, late again, I’m off to bed, a nice clean me in a nice, clean bed.

But talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the man who went to the Marriage Bureau
"You’ve been married before" sad the interviewer
"Three times" said the client "but I’m a widower"
"I’m sorry to hear that" said the interviewer. "What happened to your first wife?"
"She died from eating poisoned mushrooms"
"Oh dear" said the interviewer. "And the second?"
"She died from eating poisoned mushrooms"
"And the third?"
"She died of a fractured skull"
"A fractured skull?"
"Yes" replied the client. "She wouldn’t eat the mushrooms"

0

Wednesday 9th October 2024 – I DON’T KNOW …

… where all this energy is coming from, but I know where it’s going. I’m about three quarters of the way through tomorrow’s work already.

The way things are going, I’m beginning to wish that I’d had this dialysis a long time ago. It’s quite constraining of course but if I can keep on going like this, even in the short term, it might even be worth the disruption. I only wish that it wasn’t so painful.

But there’s one thing that can be said for it, and that was that with having finished everything at a reasonable hour last night I was in bed before 23:00. And that doesn’t happen very often.

It wasn’t long before I was away with the fairies either, although I did refrain from engaging in anything on which the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine might comment.

Asleep I stayed too for quite some considerable time, which was just as well given the events of the previous night. I’ve no idea what time it was that I awoke briefly, but I was soon back to sleep again.

It was a struggle to raise myself from the bed this morning when the alarm went off and I almost missed the second alarm. That would have been a cardinal sin, right enough.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was working on a car last night, a Ford Cortina MkI, changing the front wheel bearings. It was interesting to say the least watching me try to stand up after lying on the floor. I spent hours but I couldn’t set the adjustment of the wheel bearings correctly. In the end I set them to “something like” and gave up. While I was repairing it I was thinking “who’s going to fix Nerina’s car after I’ve died?” and “if the head gasket blows on this I’d have to go round to see my father but he’s really not likely to be interested – maybe after supper I think but I’m on the way of dying and I have to think about things like this”. While I was working there there was this young Chinese girl looking at me from out of a window. I thought to myself that sometimes it’s very nice to have an audience and maybe she does this kind of thing, watching people all the time – she might know (…fell asleep here …)

Back in the past I had a couple of Cortina Mk Is. The first one was great. Back in 1973 I was working for an insurance company and this car was a write-off. It had been hit in the front offside and was judged to be beyond economical repair. It was in our car park on its way to the scrapyard and owed the company £12:50. Nevertheless it was taxed and MoT’d for seven months so I bought it, patched it up with body-filler, stuck a headlight in the mess and ran it. When the MoT ran out and it wouldn’t pass the next, I loaded a friend and her baby into the car and drove it to the scrapyard to weigh it in. The owner looked at me, looked at the girl, looked at the baby and said “I’m terribly sorry son. I can’t give you any more than £15:00 for this”.

As for having my father fix my car, the highlight of my life was my father once asking me if I’d fix his because he couldn’t manage to do it. I treasured that moment for years.

Later on I found a job working in an Old People’s Home thanks to an agency. I had to start at 08:00 so I set out at 07:40 and parked where I thought this Home was. It turned out to be a big, expensive hotel so I roamed around for a couple of minutes and couldn’t find anything. Somehow I ended up in the basement and asked one of the personnel there behind the desk. He took me to the fire door, opened it and pointed to a building and said “it’s that one” so I set out to walk. It was much further than I anticipated. When I reached the building I went in. The ground floor was like a storage area. There was a couple of people wandering around so I asked them. They said that the Old People’s Home is further up. I looked around but there was no lift so I thought “how do these old people leave if they want to go for a walk or go out in a wheelchair?”. I walked up two flights of stairs – I was walking quite easily. I finally found the Old Peoples Home and the reception desk where they were very pleased to see me, saying “oh good, you’re here at last”. I thought about whether I should recount my adventures to them but I decided against it.

As if I’m ever likely to be working in an Old Person’s Home. But strangely enough, even though I can’t remember anything about the dream itself, I can still see the buildings. The hotel was a huge chalet-roofed place on the type in which I’ve stayed at Lech in Austria. Lech of course was a small town in Austria through which we drove on our honeymoon on our way to see Nerina’s relatives in Milan. It was such a beautiful town that we vowed to go back there again. I don’t know if Nerina ever made it back but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been back there ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS and of course, it is the favourite town in Europe OF STRAWBERRY MOOSE where he runs A TAXI SERVICE advertising his favourite hobby.

Isabelle the nurse came along and took a blood sample from me. Hit the vein straight away, totally painless and no drama either. She has “the touch”, quite unlike her colleague, so it’s no surprise that she gets to take all of the samples. Everyone waits until its her turn on the rota before they ask for their blood samples to be taken.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY BOOK. Today we’re wandering around Aldborough in North Yorkshire and looking at the remains of the Roman town of Isurium. What’s interesting is that back in the 1850s there wasn’t a railway station anywhere near the town so he and his friends thought absolutely nothing of alighting from the train at the nearest railway station and walking several miles to the town and then back again later. These people were obviously made of sterner stuff than people today.

It’s also interesting that, in the days before preservation and museums, many of the householders who had uncovered mosaic floors in their gardens were quite happily exhibiting them, “price sixpence” but, as he says, "as all these inscriptions have followed each other within a few paces , we shall become alarmed at the expensive character which a visit to it is likely soon to assume , if an additional sixpence is to be levied on every fragment of building that turns up . The remains indicated by these inscriptions are so far , however, of sufficient interest to repay the visitor for the small sum demanded for showing them ."

Back in here I attacked the outstanding notes for the radio programme that I was preparing yesterday and now these are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That meant a stop for lunch – a slice of flapjack and some fruit. The supplies of fruit are running low so tomorrow I’ll have to think about preparing a supermarket order for Friday afternoon

This afternoon, having completed the day’s work already, I was planning on relaxing but instead I had a fit of enthusiasm again and carried on working.

Sometime next year, the International Day of Refugees falls on a day that my programme will be broadcast, and you’d be surprised just how many refugees there are in rock music

Edgar Froese and Johannes Krauledat fled from the Russians in Tilsit in the same column of refugees as my friend Lorna’s mother. Holger Czukay was expelled from Danzig, the parents of Gary Weinrib and Chaim Witz were survivors of Auschwitz and Belsen, Cait O’Riordan fled from Nigeria, and that’s just a handful of names.

It seems to me that a programme of music recorded by refugees would be a good idea for a programme. So accordingly I’ve been tracking down music recorded by refugees or their offspring and I’m now at the stage where I’m pairing it off and segueing it

That was tomorrow’s task but I’ll finish it off and start to write the notes. If I can finish early on Friday I’ll have a couple of hours off which will be nice.

During the proceedings my cleaner arrived and she helped me have a shower. I had a good idea too – if one wooden box on the chair made things easier, two boxes would make it easier still. And so it was too. I could swing into the bath with a lot fewer problems.

You have no idea just how wonderful it is to be under a shower after all this time. I really do feel so much better and so much happier with having had a good soak. Just wait until I’m downstairs and I have my walk-in shower

There was an interruption for the hot chocolate and coconut cake of course, after which I made a batch of dough for the garlic naan.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry of course, with rice, veg and a naan bread, delicious as usual. In fact it was one of the best that I’ve mad. The naan was cooked to perfection, for once in my life. The rest of the dough is rolled up into individual balls and stuck in the freezer for the future.

So now I’m off to bed for some beauty sleep before my trip to the Dialysis Centre tomorrow

But the story of the admission fees reminds me of the time that the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station were built. There was an official inspection followed by a guided tour for the public.
The leaflet that was prepared to announce the showing proudly advertise the price "two shillings and sixpence – or two shillings and sevenpence if you want to see all of it"

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Wednesday 2nd October 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… shower today. And you have absolutely no idea how nice it was and how much better I feel having had a really good soak under the jet of water

And I needed it too. Because I had a wretched night.

As I was finishing off the notes last night I began to feel that mysterious stabbing pain that I sometimes have in my right foot. Within half an hour I was absolutely doubled up in agony. It was the most severe attack that I have had to date and I have never hurt so much in all my life.

It was round about 01:30 when the need for sleep was such that it finally overwhelmed the pain and agony of what was going on and I could crawl into bed.

Despite the pain I did manage to fall asleep but it was a fitful, pitiful sleep that didn’t really do anyone, least of all, me, any good at all
.
When the alarm went off I crawled out of bed, still wracked by pain, and made my way into the bathroom where I had a good wash and scrub up despite everything.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my surprise, there was something recorded on there. It can’t have been such a bad night after all. I was with Roxanne and Laurence. We were wandering somewhere around Avranches and it was lunchtime. I was having health problems with this really bad attack of pain in the foot so I decided that I would have to sit down. I couldn’t walk any further. So we were sitting down on a chair alongside a wall somewhere. Suddenly I felt a splash on my shoulder. We were right underneath a bird’s nest. The two of us moved and sat at another table and had a chat for a while. Then she announced that she was going to have to go because she had to go to look for a job etc. She wasn’t sure how long it would take, whether her gran would help her but she needed to begin to move. She stood up and I pointed to a petrol station, the one that we had visited the other day, and said that I’d be waiting there if she decides to come back this way and Roxanne can meet me there if she likes. She said that she’d make a note of it and wandered off one way and I hobbled down to this garage as best as I could

What’s surprising about this is that even in a dream, I could remember an earlier dream. And it’s hardly likely that, even in a dream, I’d forget the pain that was stabbing my foot and running through my body along the central nerve

When the nurse came I mentioned to him about the pain in my foot but he didn’t seem to be interested. I think quite honestly that his heart isn’t in his work and he’s just going through the motions. It’s no surprise that his oppo is loaded up and snowed under with little tasks because I can’t be the only person who thinks like this.

After he left, I made breakfast and MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, is visiting the Medway Megaliths, a collection, of which Kit’s Coty House is one, of prominent megaliths in the Medway valley in Kent.

There’s a delightful, whimsical account of the excavation at which he assisted, of a prehistoric barrow on the chalk uplands at Holborough. They didn’t find much in the barrow but I carried out some further research, and it turned out that, unbeknown to them, while they were looking at the barrow they were standing on top of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

This only came to light when the Portland Cement company, who had bought the land to quarry the chalk for cement, began to unearth human bones in the 1940s. They stopped work and called in the archaeologists who uncovered 37 graves from the early Saxon period.

However, Thomas Wright had every reason to fear for the future of historically important artefacts. I tracked down the report of the excavation of the graves and there, in back-and-white, in chilling detail, is written that the archaeologists had learned that in 1943 a grave was uncovered and in there, apart from the human remains, there were two iron spearhads “that were disposed of to a scrap-metal merchant”.

That’s the Portland Cement company in 1943.

But that aside, here’s another little conundrum

A couple of days ago we were visiting all of the Roman ironworks around the Weald in the South-East of England, and that made me think.

Interestingly, our hero observes that Roman ironworking stopped practically dead in the Fifth Century and there was nothing for several centuries until a very primitive Saxon forge was uncovered, using nothing like the comparatively sophisticated techniques of the Romans.

In the days of the Romans the ironfields down there were the third most important iron-producing area in the whole of the Roman Empire, and once they restarted they slowly set off and as techniques evolved, still nothing like what the Romans could manage, they kept on going with a massive output almost until the 19th Century when coke replaced charcoal as the preferred fuel and the big Black Country industrial centres took off.

The current way of “politically-correct” thinking is that the Saxons, when they arrived, didn’t massacre the native British population but everyone lived quite happily side by side and gradually assimilated into one coherent race.

But leaving aside the absolutely overwhelming preponderance of Saxon place names in most of England and parts of Eastern Wales, all writing suddenly came to a dead stop until the monks like Alcuin and Bede began to assert themselves, urban life in the Roman towns came to a dead stop and the major, important Roman ironworks suddenly came to a dead stop and never really restarted.

It seems to me that there was a massive loss of all of the proto-Roman skills, most of which never ever restarted restarted. Take concrete, for instance. The Romans made massive use of concrete but it wasn’t until John Smeaton developed a technique in the 18th Century that it became a reliable construction material again. And the rediscovery of seawater-proof concrete is comparative recent.

All of this seems to suggest to me that there was a complete ethnic cleansing of the type that Pol Pot and Hitler would have been really proud. Even they managed to keep alive enough intellectuals to run the very basic needs of the societies that they had taken over.

Of course, “absence of evidence” is a totally different thing than “evidence of absence” but had here been some evidence, I’m sure that it would have been unearthed by now. But there’s nothing.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment I wrote off to the Centre de Re-education to say that I can’t come on 2nd December. They wrote back to tell me to communicate with them again when my programme is more clear, so I sent them another message to say that it won’t ever be any clearer than it is and presumably they are still thinking about their next move.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent finishing off the notes for the radio programme and doing some more stuff about my visit to Jersey two years ago, one of my very last adventures.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came in to do her stuff, and she helped me organise myself so that I could have a shower.

Putting the wooden box on the chair so that I could swivel myself into the bath easier was a master-stroke and worked perfectly, and much easier than last time when it was something of a battle to find my way into the tub.

Propping myself up with a crutch could soap myself down as far as I could reach, and I relied on the force of the rinsing water to clean the rest.

With the seat of the chair much higher because of the box I felt much more confident about sitting down from a standing position and it was much easier to swivel myself out of the bathtub.

So now here I am, a nice clean boy with nice clean hair and how nice it all feels. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to be downstairs, rip out the bath and have a walk-in shower installed. Then it will be a shower every day

Regrettably, for the first time for several days, I crashed out. But only for something like half an hour and after the wretched night that I’d had, it really wasn’t any surprise so I’m not disappointed.

Tea tonight was a beautiful leftover curry with rice, veg and a naan bread. That’s the last of the naan bread dough and I’ll have to make some more next week.

So now having finished my notes, I’m off to bed to catch up on my beauty sleep now that the pain has subsided somewhat. And don’t I need it?

But all of this talk about archaeology and graves reminds me of the archaeologist who had been on an excavation of a historic cemetery.
He wrote to his parents about his discoveries, saying "in one grave we found a skeleton wrapped in an ermine cloak with a big gold chain around his neck and a crown on his head. He was all dressed up like a Count."
His father turned to his mother and said "Look at this! All that money we spent on his education and he still can’t spell!"

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25th September 2024 – YOU WON’T BELIEVE …

… this, but this afternoon, I have had a shower. In my apartment.

Had you been here, you would have laughed, watching my faithful cleaner and me struggling to help me climb over the side of the bath into the basin and, with even more difficulty, climbing back out afterwards.

Many people have a life that is full of nothing but problems, but it seems that my cleaner and I have lives that are full of solutions and we managed it in the end.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that was that I was so exhausted afterwards that I almost fell asleep standing up while I was making my hot chocolate. And I did crash out later for half an hour or so on my chair in the office.

However I put that down to the miserable night that I had last night. When it came round to bedtime I was too exhausted to stand up from my chair (and I’m not sure why, as I’d done nothing strenuous all day) but not tired enough to go to sleep.

In fact I was so exhausted that I didn’t even have the strength to perform my daily back-up of the computer. Instead I just sat here with a blank expression on my face … "so what’s new?" – ed … just like Chris Isaak, WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO FALL

It was about 03:20 when I finally fell into bed. That was what I call “ridiculous”. But it’s no wonder that I fell asleep this afternoon, and it’s surprising that it was only for half an hour.

At least it didn’t take me long to drop off and there I stayed, totally out of this world when the alarm went off at 07:00

When the alarm rang I was away with the fairies. I was carrying out some kind of investigation into a General who had recently come out of hospital, I don’t know why, whether it was for an operation or a war wound. But this was coming back to Roman times, and as they began to tell me the story about the General I suddenly realised that I’d heard all this before some other time and this was a repeat of a previous incident that had taken place. So I wondered what on earth was going on about this because this sounded just far too unusual to be any kind of coincidence

And I’ll tell you exactly where this took place too. On the way to Avranches, half a dozen kilometres from the railway station, there’s a roundabout with a petrol station just past it and a wood to the eastern side of the road. It was in that wood, looking north-east where this went on. Obviously the stress and strain of hitting the road three times per week to Avranches and back is starting to take its toll.

It won’t surprise you to learn that I had a struggle to haul myself out of bed when the alarm went off. I really didn’t feel much like it at all but it’s one of those things that the longer I leave it, the more difficult it becomes

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back to listen to the dictaphone. There was nothing else on it so I carried on with tagging the videos. And that’s difficult too because for many of the videos, the metadata is locked and I can’t edit it.

When the nurse appeared she sorted me out and gave me a few instructions about this and that. She didn’t stay long either so I could carry on quite rapidly.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY BOOK. And the more I read, the more I like the author, Thomas Wright.

Today we’re wandering around the remains of Verulamium. And if you think that I’m far too cynical for my own good, you ought to read his account of the history of the Abbey of St Albans and the founding of the town
"The monks who built it wanted a saint; they found in a then popular Christian Latin poet, Fortunatus, mention of a man named Alban, who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Britain. The Saxon monks accordingly dug up some Roman bones, declared that they belonged to the martyred body of St.Alban, and built their church upon the spot"
And later on, when King Offa decided to found a monastery on the site in penance for the murder of King Aethelbert –
"More bones were dug up, and these were miraculously shown to be the same relics of the saint which had been lost since the first church was neglected"
And I thought that I was cynical. I tell you – I have nothing whatever on him

But all these little anecdotes from people who were there at the time or who interviewed people who were, they are all in danger of being lost as modern research is just centred around Wikipedia and nothing else, and the old books are abandoned.

Back in here I went to pair off the tracks ready to write the notes but I hit a problem. The audio-editing program that I use has had an upgrade, and all of my settings have been set to default. That means that when I’m editing, the program is doing things that I don’t want it to do.

This issue cropped up previously and I asked for help in the users’ forum and we managed to resolve it. And here it is again, I can’t remember what I did and I can’t find my original request in the forum.

It took me an age to find my question and once I had the answer it took just seconds to fix. And then I came across more issues but I had an idea of what might be causing them and I was able to fix them with e little persuasion and a lot of time.

It wasn’t until after (a late) lunch that I began to write the notes, and it took an age to finish them, what with all of the interruptions.

Firstly, I had to hunt for my swimming trunks. In the end after about half an hour I gave up. They aren’t in here. However I did find the missing pair of shorts which is good news. And that’s what usually happens with me. You never find what you are looking for but you always seem to find what you hunted and gave up looking for last time.

It’s like when I was rebuilding the house. I’d seen stuff on sale at a bargain price and think “I’m going to need that in six months time” so I buy it at the cheap price. And then when I come to need it, I can’t ever find it, have to buy a full-price article and then find the bargain price one two weeks later.

Anyway, now that I have two pairs of shorts, I can wear one in the shower. I don’t want to frighten the cleaner.

Helping me into the bath was one thing. I sat on a chair at the side of the bath, lifted my legs over the side and then tried to stand up. At first I almost fell over but the cleaner caught me and I struggled upright with the aid of a crutch. Imagine that – a crutch under the shower!

The shower wasn’t all that good, mainly because I couldn’t stand directly in the stream, having to lean against the wall. But it was so lovely just to be there with the warm water cascading down onto me.

There were many things that I could have done better, and I will do next time. Because there will be a next time. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make a mistake. I just learn a lot. I can’t remember who said it but I do remember someone saying "experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted". … "It Was Randy Pausch" – ed …

Helping me out of the bath was even more fun. As the bath is higher than the floor, the chair on the floor at the side of the bath was too low for me to sit on. My cleaner had the bright idea of fetching a wooden box and putting that on the seat. I could manage that and I gradually managed to lift my legs out of the bath, dripping water everywhere.

But at least I managed it

We did have quite a laugh though. "Imagine if someone came to the door now" said my cleaner
"Yes" I replied. " ‘Just give me a minute to put on my trousers’. They’ll wonder what on earth we’ve been doing"

After she left I carried on with the notes and then had a pause for my hot chocolate and coconut cake. And it’s quite nice, my cake. It really is. The coconut oil works really well. I’ll make this cake again, that’s for sure.

As I mentioned earlier, I almost fell asleep standing up while waiting for the chocolate to heat up, and back here, I didn’t hold out long before I was gone.

While I was asleep I dreamed that I’d gone to look at someone’s ‘H’ registered Volvo 7-series estate that was for sale. There was some kind of comparison run by the local newspaper. They had a total of 5 adverts for similar cars and compared the prices. They thought that one at €1895 by a private seller sounded like a good deal. And then We ended up somehow in the tundra and someone was driving a green industrial machine down along the railway track through a pine forest.

And I almost had a Volvo 7-series estate too once. Not long after I’d started chauffeuring in Brussels the garage where we bought our petrol had one on the forecourt at a reasonable price, a diesel, so I took it for a drive. It was a lovely car but it was at the wrong time. I couldn’t really afford it. But it’s true to say that I am yearning for the tundra. A trip to Upper Labrador, every night, “sleeping out” like I did in Strider, listening to the timber wolves howling. I’ve told my niece and her husband to make sure that there’s a cross planted for me at my favourite spot in the Mealy Mountains.

After I’d finally finished the notes I went for tea. Tonight it’s a leftover curry with rice and a naan bread, and there was enough leftover to make two helpings. And I’ll be looking forward to the second helping because it really was good. Right now though, it’s freezing to be put aside for another time.

The spotted dick with coconut soya cream for pudding was lovely too and I’ll make that again as well. My cooking is improving and I reckon that I’ll go berserk when I finally have a decent oven, whenever that might be. It’s a shame about the one in Caliburn.

So right now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. And I need it too.

But talking about miracles … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the Priest who came back from a trip to Lourdes. At the airport coming home he was stopped by Customs who searched his belongings.
"What’s that in that flask there?" asked the inspector
"Holy water from Lourdes" replied the Priest.
So the Customs inspector opened it and sniffed it. "No it isn’t!" exclaimed the Inspector. "It’s brandy!"
"The Saints be praised!" shouted the Priest. "Another miracle!"

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Wednesday 18th September 2024 – THE LATEST NEWS ..

… coming out of the UK is that you can’t be prosecuted for implying that someone is a coconut.

It was news to me that you could, and if you think that it’s a joke, as I did when I was told, I can assure you that IT’S PERFECTLY TRUE. Someone was prosecuted for implying that someone was a coconut.

The interesting part about this is that it wasn’t the “victims” of the “insult” – the then-Prime Minister and the then-Home Secretary – who made the complaint, but a third party who was offended that that the two people concerned were so attacked.

The implications of this are quite frightening. If cases like this can be brought in re, it means that there doesn’t have to be any proof of offence. It just has to “appear to the judge that …”

Not only that, I can only think of countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Thailand where it’s an offence to make any criticism of the ruler. And that looks just like what is happening in the UK right now.

Really, when I think of some of the names that I have been called in the past and none of you lot have rallied to my defence and lodged a prosecution, I would have been happy to have been called a coconut instead.

As yet, as far as I’m aware, no-one as yet has been prosecuted for calling someone a banana. But wait until someone calls the current incumbent of the Prime Minister’s office a lemon. Then we’ll see some legislation.

In East Germany years ago they had an approved list of insults. And, for example, it was against the law to refer to “Americans” without using the adjective “degenerate” or to refer to the British people without using the adjective “servile lackey running-dog”.

So is the UK going to go down the East German route and publish an approved list of fruit?

Years ago I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain with its strict and invasive border controls, and how the West spent 35 years trying to persuade the Eastern bloc to dismantle its controls. And 30 years later we have controls at western borders that are far stricter than anything that I ever encountered in the East.

And the west spent 35 years trying to persuade the East Germans to demolish a border wall, and then 30 years later the Americans build their own.

And now we have people prosecuted for calling our leaders in the West a fruit … "are you allowed to use that word?" – ed …

The West is becoming more and more like the Old East every day and one of these days I’ll finally after all this time hear someone in the West (apart from me) admit that maybe the Soviets had a point.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finally made it to bed before 23:00 last night.

And it was just as well too because I was exhausted. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and apart from the odd bit of tossing and turning I slept right through until the alarm went off.

At the first raucous rattle I staggered to my feet and when the bedroom stopped spinning round I headed for the bathroom to sort myself out

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. While I was asleep a voice said “are you into …?” and stopped there. I asked “into what?” but of course no-one replied. But there was something going on about the army again. I’d taken some kind of food mixture and assembled it to make some kind of pudding and taken it in what would have been a third of my work to somewhere where this dream paused and I fell asleep. But I had this altercation and I’ve no idea what’s going on here but here I am regarding a couple of railway locomotives somewhere on the edge of town outside Scotland, a strange man asking me strange questions but as far as I can see there’s no-one about at all, in the street, in the shops anywhere. It’s totally deserted

That sounds as if it might have been really exciting and it’s a shame that it didn’t continue because I would have loved to have learned more about what was supposed to have been happening here. Who the man was, what he was saying and what he was meaning, that was bizarre too. But I definitely heard him quite distinctly.

Since he and his mates have moved out of their headquarters at 2011 he’s not really had a base to work from. Places always being obstructed by something or other but here where they are now it seems to be their home for good and they are pretty permanently installed. All the local village tribes are taunting them out and trying to make them come out and attack them the same way that the Native Americans did to Fetterman and his mates

It looks as if I’ve missed off the start of this dream or else it refers to another dream at some time. I’ve noticed that a few times – that a dream that I have seems to refer to one that I had a few days earlier. But then this is the point of this exercise anyway.

I was somewhere in North America and had been given a job. I had to write out the different types of driving licence, different types of vehicle and the type of licence that you need to drive each type of vehicle. There was a group of people around there and some guy was giving me instructions and another guy, he’d already made a start and said “it should take four seconds for each entry”. I thought “what planet is he living on?”. When he dictated what he’d been writing it was much longer than four seconds for a start. Eventually everyone cleared off . There was just a girl and me left behind. She ws doing something there similar. I sat down and made a start. It was much more complicated than I imagined and took much longer than four seconds for each entry. She kept on coming up with small problems in the work that she was doing, stopping asking me for help and advice. I thought “we’re going to be here for ever at this rate doing this. Nothing like four seconds per entry at all”. There was someone in fact who was a famous Creole restauranteur person who’d imported cookery into the USA. I had to write a little biography about him and how he was killed, and someone else with their Harley Davidson motor cycle. It was the kind of thing that was taking for ever. I could understand why no-one else wanted to do it.

30 or 40 years ago I would have welcomed the opportunity to go to work in the USA and in fact in 1998 I was on the shortlist to fill a vacancy at the New York office. But these days it seems that a monster has been let loose. 20 or so years ago someone opened Pandora’s Box over there and now they can’t fit the lid back on.

The nurse came around later and we had an exciting conversation.
"Which do you think is more effective?" I asked. "The anaesthetic cream or the patches?"
"You’ll find the patches easier to apply" he said
"That’s not what I asked" I retorted. "Which is more effective?"
"The patches will be easier for you to apply" he replied

And so we went on, getting absolutely nowhere.

Then he cleared off, left me on my own and I made breakfast.

My book is talking this morning about the Traprain Hoard, how the latest coin in there has been dated to AD425 and how there are religious relics in there that bear all the identity of having come from Gaul.

The speculation is that it’s loot from a pirate raid on a church in Gaul, but that seems totally bizarre to me. Why go all the way there at all kinds of risks?

AD425 corresponds very well with the collapse of organised proto-Roman society in the north of England and so my theory is that someone, maybe a Roman soldier, brought the religious relics from Gaul when he was transferred to the north of England, and left behind when the legions were withdrawn in AD410. The undefended north of England then fell victim to a series of raids from the north that destroyed organised society and carried off anything and everything of any value.

Back in here I’ve been radioing today. I’ve written all of the notes for the music that I chose yesterday. I’ll dictate that on Saturday night and edit it on Sunday in between all of the baking that I need to do.

As well as that, I’ve been doing some work on my Jersey notes, trying to tie them in with the relevant photos and write some text. I need to get back into all of the good habits that I used to have 20 years ago

Another thing that I did was to try to arrange some physiotherapy. My preferred place won’t take me because the taxi wouldn’t be authorised to take me there, but the one that I tried that was within the authorised range never returned my calls.

And that’s not the first time that I’ve tried to spend money somewhere and no-one seems to be bothered enough to want to earn it.

My cleaner came round too to do her stuff and the place now looks as if someone lives here. It’s nice when it’s clean and tidy, and it’s a shame that I have to go to spoil it.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry with naan bread and I ought to make this more often because it’s really nice, especially when there’s some soya yoghurt mixed in with the curry.

So I’m off to bed, where someone is bound to call me the name of a fruit during the night. Rather like when I first came to France on a school exchange in 1970 we Brits were described by the locals as les Rosbifs – “the roast beef” – and no-one was in the least bit offended.
"Do you call us that because we’re strong, muscular and tough?" I asked in all innocence
"Ohh no" came the reply. "You want to look at yourselves after you’ve been lying in the sun for half an hour"

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