Tag Archives: rosemary

Friday 23rd January 2026 – EVEN AS I TYPE …

… these notes, I really ought to be making tea. But the truth is that I have a churning stomach right now and running through a list of possible menus that I might eat, there isn’t one that appeals to me. All it seems to do is to make my stomach churn over even more.

As well as that, although I’m feeling somewhat better than I did this time last night, I’m still feeling a lot worse than I ought to be, so the aim is to do what I have to do as soon as I am able to do it and then head off to bed again, in the hope that yet another good sleep will do me some good.

Not like yesterday, which, despite my early, really early night, didn’t go according to plan.

As I mentioned yesterday, despite going to bed at 19:25 or thereabouts, I was awake again four hours later. And although I said that “I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep”, I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and showing no sign of dropping off.

At some point though, I must have gone back off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm, and it took me completely by surprise. And I must admit that I have never felt less like leaving the bed as I did this morning. It took me an age to rise up to my feet and head off to the bathroom. As a result, I was running really late for everything else.

In the bathroom, I changed my clothes, having been in the same clothes without a change for forty-eight hours and I washed my undies. I like to keep on top of my clothes like that, having spent years living out of a suitcase. And then, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

I was in the Soviet Union last night in my van. There had been some kind of concert supposed to take place, so I was in this village or small town down in the south of the Soviet Union on my way to Asia and I bumped into these two American girls who were also going to this concert. We went into this room and there were probably thirty or forty people standing around. So we sat down and waited for something to happen. We were expecting this music concert and then perhaps a discussion about what came out in the songs, that kind of thing. But I fell asleep, and when I awoke about ten minutes later, everyone else was asleep too except these two American girls. They were looking at their watch and one of them said “well, we may as well go. There’s a bus back to the USA in an hour. In the end, the three of us left, with all these other people asleep. Outside, there was plenty of snow, and we walked, and where the bus was due to be picked up was at this car park and there were two white MkIII Ford Zephyrs there with the word LEI written on the badge instead of “Ford Zephyr”. The girls went to stand there, and in the end, I invited them to come with me to Asia, but they were reluctant. They asked me if I’d ever been there before. I replied “no, but I have travelling in the blood”. I said that I’d been a taxi driver, coach driver, chauffeur and I’ve travelled the Northern Hemisphere all on my own in the past, and my father was a lorry driver so it’s all in the blood. But they were very reluctant, so in the end I left them and climbed over the roof of one of these Ford Zephyrs to head back to the van. I heard one of them say to the other one “it’s a shame that he’s such an untidy person” so I was thinking that maybe if I’d been more tidy, they might have come. I walked over to where I’d parked the van but couldn’t see it. This looked nothing like where I remembered having parked it. I thought that I must be in the wrong place so I tried to retrace my steps and ended up miles out of town trying to find the van. Where I was, all the snow had melted and it was an urban scene with trees in the distance. I wandered through all of these buildings, trying to find my way out to see if the van was behind them, but I couldn’t find my way out of these buildings. I was wandering around for ages. In the end, I found myself on a train. I was standing by a window, looking out to see if I could see the van somewhere, but I heard a commotion behind me. It was a teacher with a bunch of maybe ten girls. She’d gone to find the ticket controller. It seemed that some English-speaking people were sitting in these girls’ seats and she had to make them move. She spoke to them in English, so I spoke to her about the van. She said that she couldn’t help me. I need to see the police. I replied that the van hasn’t been stolen – I just can’t find it and in any case, I can’t speak Russian. I tried to speak some Russian from what I remembered but made a mess of it and she really wasn’t able to help me at all.

What a strange dream that was! For a start, I did learn to speak Russian, although I’ve forgotten most of it now. That started off when I was working for Shearings and I’d heard that they were trying to win a contract with an American travel agency to transport American tourists behind the Iron Curtain to “visit their roots”. It sounded probably the most fascinating coach-driving work ever, so I found a local Russian exile who taught me over a period of six months. When the company announced that they were looking for drivers to go behind the Iron Curtain, I naturally volunteered.
"Why should we select you ahead of everyone else?"
"Well, actually, I can speak some Russian"
It was the most fantastic work that I have ever done, and I enjoyed every moment of it, even if it did mean a relentless diet of wiener schnitzel.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dream, I could easily imagine myself at one time driving through the Soviet Union to Asia, somewhere like pre-revolutionary Iran, but the political climate east of Poland and Romania these days would put anyone off. And wandering around aimlessly looking for my van because I’d forgotten where it was parked is just like me, especially these days.

As for the white Ford Zephyrs, I couldn’t ever imagine them being in the Soviet Union, whether under a different maker’s name or not. They are much more likely to have been ZIL 111G vehicles, although if you were to see one of those, you would know that you are in trouble, because they were only ever given to members of the Politburo.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise this morning. Fitted with a mask, she stormed into the apartment and attended to my legs. She had a go at measuring my temperature with my thermometer and it’s still quite high. However, she doesn’t think much of my thermometer and she’ll bring her own tomorrow.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still discussing pottery, and now, we’ve moved on to how we are able to identify the different potters. There’s a fascinating list of potters’ marks and some equally fascinationg comments such as "this little fragment is an example of pottery classified by Dragendorff as ‘Dragendorff 37’, and there is a sample of this ware in a museum in (some obscure town in) Bulgaria."

Back in here, I had a variety of things to do, not having attended to my affairs as I should for the last forty-eight hours, and then I had last night’s notes to write.

They are now online, and then I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working.

In the meantime, I was having a good chat with Liz, who was giving me loads of motherly advice about how to find natural remedies to deal with my current health issues, and later on a brief exchange of messages with Rosemary.

There was football too. On Tuesday night Stranraer had played Queen’s Park of the second tier in the Scottish Cup on a swamp in a monsoon and had beaten the Spiders 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw during one hundred and twenty minutes.

In theory, they now have a match at Ibrox against Glasgow Rangers, but the behind-the-scenes and off-the-field controversy after the game will need to be resolved first before it’s confirmed.

But that’s about everything, really. I suppose that there’s much more about which to write, such as my faithful cleaner coming down to do her stuff, but instead, I’m going to bed. And good riddance to me. I really don’t know how to cope with this latest illness. It’s getting on my wick and it’s high time that something happens before I go berserk.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Soviet Union … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a man in the Red Square holding up a pice of paper.
I asked a local – a very vocal local yokel – what he was doing, and he replied "protesting, of course."
"But what about?" I asked.
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Why would he need to put that on his sign? Everyone knows what’s wrong! ".
Two minutes later, a police van pulls up and they drag him inside.
"So what’s he done now?"
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Everyone knows what he did!".

0

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

… this has been today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I had a rather wild idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… this has been today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I had a rather wild idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a nice uninterrupted sleep all the way through to when Isabelle the Nurse would shake me awake by the shoulder when she comes in to sort out my legs.

And so waking up at 01:06 this morning was something of a disappointment.

It wasn’t as if I had gone to bed early either. It was well after 23:00 by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and crawled in under the covers. Mind you, I fell asleep quite quickly with the kind of sense of relief that you have, knowing that a good sleep is just about the ideal solution for all known ills.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at 01:06 and when I noticed the time, I was devastated. I was not expecting this at all. However, I was lucky in that I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

But only until 07:46 though. I might not have moved a muscle in the intervening period, but it was still not long enough to have really enjoyed it. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

In the end, round about 08:00, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

It would, of course, happen to be a day when Isabelle the Nurse decided to reorganise her round in order to give me more time to sleep, so she was rather put out to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

She had something of a mumble about it, sorted out my feet and then went to carry on with the rest of her patients.

It took me about fifteen minutes to summon up the courage to rise from my chair in the kitchen in order to make my breakfast – coffee, porridge and home-made croissants from the batch that I had made last weekend.

While I was eating, I was reading more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. I mentioned the other day that he had put me on the track of John Horsley’s BRITANNIA ROMANA. Codrington is not very impressed with Horsley’s interpretation of the Iter Britanniarum though, saying that "the way in which he dealt with the Itinerary distances is remarkable.".

Codrington talks about a Roman camp called Epiacum up on the northern edge of the Pennines. It’s described as "not rectangular but lozenge-shaped, with probably the most intricate system of defences of all the known Roman forts". So I had a little search around on an on-line aerial map, and what do you think ABOUT THIS? Isn’t it magnificent?

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there. We were trying to smuggle someone out of mainland Europe last night into the UK. We had something of a trial run at one of the border posts but it didn’t work very well because he had a kind of wrong attitude towards the Customs officers and it rather shattered his nerve somewhat. So rather than adapting his behaviour and comportment, he just sat there like a clam and refused to co-operate. We tried everything we could to cajole him to coming along and crossing the border but each time, he refused. When we told him to prepare himself a drink, he’d prepare a drink and then pass it to one of us instead of bringing it with him. In the end, full of frustration, we decided that we’d leave him and go back on our own. There was no point trying to force someone. But there was some kind of dispute at the border between him and one of our army officers. It seemed that the guy at one time had stolen the girlfriend of one of the army officers, and that was what made one of the army officers in our group rather bitter and terse with him.

This dream probably relates to some of the issues that the Secret Intelligence Service had with trying to bring out their agents from occupied Europe in World War II. They had many different escape routes, but going over on a ferry would have been novel, especially as no ferries ran during wartime.

There had been talk of a giant whale stalking people in London. Things came to a head when it appeared before a group of Year Two children, so Holmes and Watson set out on the trail. They waited until it was a foggy night and then took a boat, and rowed to a wharf where this school was. These two young boys who were rowing were telling them stories about it. They climbed out and went for a little walk themselves, and stopped to have a bag of chips each. They put their chips on their plates and were sitting there outside, waiting. Suddenly, out of the mist, the whale appeared. The first thing that it did was to launch itself at the plate of Sherlock Holmes. He quite simply cut a piece out of it with his knife and fork and ate it. That was basically at the end of the drama.

There have been dreams involving Holmes and Watson before, but this one was one of those surreal ones that has no explanation at all.

I was somewhere in France. There was a road down which I had driven hundreds if not thousands of times, only today, I found that I was walking down it. When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed that there was an old car just at the edge of the field with a sign pièces detaches written on it. I’d not noticed it before, so I went through into the field and at the back was a kind-of wood or coppice. There were probably about thirty or forty old cars scattered around there, and there was some kind of workshop. Someone came by and asked me what I wanted. I asked if it was OK if I were to have a look around. The guy told me to please myself, so I did. Eventually, someone came over to me to chat. He pointed to an old 1930s-type car that was there. He said “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this because the cylinder block has cracked”. He couldn’t find anyone to weld it because it was such a long crack. I asked him if he had thought about re-sleeving the bores and putting smaller pistons in. I thought that when he had an idea that I knew what I was talking about, he began to chat with me. I told him that I had one or two old cars andA TRACTION. He replied “we have four around here”. I noticed that there was one that was being restored and painted. I told him that I would give my right arm to have a Traction that was running but he didn’t really hit on anything like that. We had a long chat, and then I found myself driving back into town again afterwards. I wasn’t thinking, and I was following two cars. One was a Rolls-Royce and one was something else. I suddenly realised at some point that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. I hoped that no-one was watching and that there were no cameras. Eventually, I found the supermarket and grabbed myself a plate of chips with some weird Indian accompaniment. I had to struggle to find a seat in the café but I did in the end, and the chips were nice. But these Indian things, I wasn’t all that impressed. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat them after I’d tried a couple. Then I looked at the time and it was almost 18:00, time that I was due home, so I had to hurry up and move on.

This dream reminds me of that time ON LONG ISLAND when I stopped at this warehouse where I’d seen an aeroplane parked outside. I spoke to the manager of the place who interrogated me on my knowledge of the history of early aviation and, satisfied that I knew my stuff, allowed me in to see their prize exhibits, including a replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis and sit at the controls inside it.

The Indian meal reminds me of tea last night.

Going back to that dream about the abandoned cars, later on, I was driving around somewhere in the USA in a hilly area. I found a nice patch of green at the side of the road where I thought that I’d pull up and I could eat my sandwiches there. I noticed that there was a group of kids in the field at the side. They were all playing about. One of them came over to say “hello”. I had a little chat with her, and it turned out that she was in Year 6 and was going to High School soon. She was talking about her new English teacher, that he was always crying and becoming angry. I explained that not everyone is always very happy and in a good equilibrium. Sometimes, people are like that and you have to push the emotions aside and push on with what you are doing. Learning English is fun. We carried on chatting and we talked about sports. It turned out that she wasn’t American at all. She was from somewhere else. She was saying that one thing she hated about the Americans was how they blew themselves up into something that they weren’t. They were always showing off etc, and how she couldn’t really cope with it. I told her a story about one of my niece’s children who played sports. They were playing against some team from a High School on a Native American reservation. There was one young lad who was winning everything, and no-one knew why he was so good until a few days later when they checked the results and discovered that he was an Olympic champion in some kind of events. That was much more like the way that people should be. She agreed. Then, one of her friends came over and the three of us began to chat. I said how well they had done, that they had gone through elementary school so quickly and were nearly ready for the High School, and I hope that they’ll enjoy it. Then, the school bell rang and they had to leave. I said goodbye to them and “maybe I’ll see you again”. I drove off and back over the hills with this beautiful view in the distance of what was going on in the valley.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a lot of time for kids. I think that they have a really raw deal in life. They have such a lot to say, much of which is interesting, yet no-one wants to listen to them

There was football next. Stranraer v Clydebank in the Scottish Cup. The third round was full of shocks and surprises, with many clubs being knocked out by lower-league opposition, such as Dumbarton losing 4-0 at home to West of Scotland League side Auchinleck Talbot, for example.

And we almost had another one here at Stranraer, where but for several slices of good fortune, the score could have been 2-1 to Clydebank rather than the 2-1 to Stranraer, as the match finished.

This afternoon, I tackled my Welsh homework and waded through it from start to finish. I just need to review one or two questions and then I can send it off.

While I was at it, I was chatting to my friend from Munich, but I had to abandon that because Rosemary rang with a computer issue and needed help. It was another one of those long conversations where we can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it made me late for my baking.

The loaf that I made looks to be excellent, and the pizza really was delicious. However, I could only eat half of it, so the other half will do for tea tomorrow. Based on the weight, I’m eating between about a third and a quarter of a pizza that I would have comfortably eaten six months ago.

While everything was cooking, I wrapped my two Christmas cakes in baking paper and tinfoil, and they are now cooling in the fridge ready for marzipanning next weekend.

So now, horribly late, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately, but at least I’m only out twice next week, which is a major improvement. I can get on and do things.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to Holmes not so long ago and I asked him how his crime investigations were going.
"Ohh, I’ve retired now" he told me. "It’s only the elderly who remember me and appreciate me. The young people don’t know me at all."
"So I suppose you’re really an Old People’s Holmes" I replied. "But do you keep up with the news from London?"
"Watson still lives there" he replied. "He keeps me up-to-date with the news."
"So he’s your ‘Watson in London’ then."

0

Wednesday 12th November 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… quite ill at the moment and have gone to bed.

At 17:30 too. How about that for an early night?

But seriously, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so ill, and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, sleep is my cure for all ailments. I’m far better off in bed than struggling onwards, although I doubt if I could have struggled onwards for much longer.

To tell the truth, I’ve been feeling more and more fatigued for about the last week, and I spoke about it to the doctor on duty at dialysis on Monday. She reduced one of my medicaments, one that is known to produce fatigue as a side effect, but with it being a Bank Holiday on Tuesday, it wasn’t until this afternoon that I received it.

Despite the foregoing however, there wasn’t the least suspicion last night that it was going to end up like it has done. It wasn’t a particularly late night, not by some recent standards anyway, and I was still asleep when the alarm sounded.

One thing that I noticed this morning was that I seemed to be even slower than usual in preparing myself. It was difficult for me to make my honey, ginger and lemon drink and it took longer to sort out my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, we were talking about the development league in women’s football, where dozens of teams and their organisations had decided to launch a women’s football team and the FAW had arranged some regional competitions. One of them was a team from Shell in North-East Wales. The problem with this, with arranging it in regions rather than divisions is that there are some very big scores and heavy defeats that were discouraging to a lot of teams. If they had been playing in divisions where the standard was more equal, they would have had much more of a chance and much more of an enjoyable game.

This is actually a hot topic right now. Apart from the Ladies’ Premier League, the rest of the “pyramid” that has been formed just recently is indeed divided into regional competitions rather than ladders, and there have been some embarrassing scorelines. I recall one score of 21-0 and there have been many others where one team has scored in double figures. It can’t be very good for the motivation

There was something going on that happened in Crewe. At the end of that particular day, we had to leave. I was with this woman and her two children, and we were walking to Stafford. The son was rather mentally-challenged and was quite a difficult proposition to look after. When we arrived on the edge of Stafford, we had to decide which road to take. It meant dashing over this road at the roundabout in front of a black Mercedes, then walking along a huge council estate that at first had houses like the one in which we lived in Shavington, and then there were a couple of big blocks of council flats with a lake around it, but it was all polluted and full of rubbish. We ended up back at their house where there were several home helps there who were trying to organise this boy. By now, he was in a wheelchair and passing stuff around between everyone was complicated because there wasn’t much room. The girl had decided that she was going to make some icing sugar so she had a pan of boiling water and a pan of sugar. She set the water to boil, but when it was boiling, there was no-one else around so I took the boiling water and poured it into the pan with the icing sugar in it. But there was far too much water and it overflowed slightly before I could stop it. It set into a horrible concrete mass. I thought that this isn’t going to be particularly good.

Not that I’m likely to be walking from Crewe to Stafford. My long-distance walking back in the olden days was always in the opposite direction between Crewe and Chester. The rest of the dream doesn’t mean all that much either.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up on time and sorted me out, and then I made breakfast, the usual porridge, toast and coffee.

Back in here, no sooner had I sat down when Rosemary rang. I’m certain that she’s installed a camera here because her timing is impeccable.

She wanted to chat about cars because her current one is becoming long in the tooth. She doesn’t know what to buy, and everything seems to be so expensive. It’s not as if she does much mileage these days either to justify a major expense.

It needs to be a 4×4 with her living where she does, so after a long chat, I told her to check out a Subaru. Their 4×4 technology is one of the best and the vehicles themselves are much better than they used to be.

When I awoke this morning, I had set the SSD from yesterday to format, and by now, it was ready. I installed it into the computer and uploaded Windows 10 onto it as a “clean install”.

Next, I searched the updates and that immediately told me what had gone wrong yesterday. Apart from the fact that there were about twenty updates, one of them was “a patch for repairing Windows C++ libraries”.

It took about three hours to download and install everything, but in the meantime, I had a visit. I’d ordered a new chair for the office, seeing as the hydraulic piston on this one has collapsed. It had been delivered while I was at dialysis last week and as there was no-one here to accept it, it had gone into store.

There’s not much that I could do about collecting it so I asked one of the guys at the radio if he could, and so he turned up with it. We had a nice little chat too, which I enjoyed, because I’m not seeing enough people these days.

Once the computer had finished installing everything, I checked to make sure that it was working correctly and then began to upload the various programs that I use.

Round about 15:00 I began to feel tired and I actually crashed out in the chair for half an hour. When I awoke, I couldn’t keep on going so after a while, round about 17:30, I realised that it was quite pointless.

Wracked with coughing and wracked with the pains again in my foot, I crawled into bed, fully clothed, thinking that after a couple of hours, I’d awaken and feel much better. However, it didn’t quite work out like that. I’d had no food either since breakfast.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my new chair … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when Nerina brought me a new chair for my office at home.
"Shall I sit in it now?" I asked.
"Just give me a minute" she replied. "I have to plug it in first."

-1

Friday 24th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I’ve left the table, leaving a pile of food on my plate. This is something that is beginning to worry me. It seems that these days, I’m living on a few mouthfuls of food and a pile of protein drinks, and that can’t be good for me.

And neither is going to bed late either, but here we are. last night, it was just after 23:30 when I finally made it into bed. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. It’s not as if there’s a great deal to do when I have finished my tea.

So after writing my notes, checking the statistics and backing up the computer, I went and sorted myself out in the bathroom and then a very weary me headed off to crawl underneath the covers.

For a change, I had a decent sleep. I remember tossing and turning a few times during the night, but that was about everything. At least – until about 06:20 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

Only nine minutes to go for the alarm so I hauled myself quickly out from underneath the covers and switched off the alarms. The storm seemed to have died down somewhat, which was good news. One of the ideas going through my head was that if the wind was blowing anything at all like yesterday, I was going to cancel my trip to the Centre de Ré-education.

Being out of bed at 06:20 is one thing. Actually standing up and heading to the bathroom is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And it was rather disappointing. Nerina and I had had a friend come round to visit us. We went for a drive into Crewe – the town centre. As we turned into Flag Lane, there was the Workingmen’s Club place on the right-hand side in the old temporary buildings so we stopped and went in. The person with us was extremely impressed. He’d never seen a place like this before – hundreds of people lounging around, playing darts or snooker, carpet bowls etc. I said that I’d been here a couple of times to give talks on different things. It’s the kind of place where you would come where there was a big football match on the TV and it’s a place where you would have plenty of atmosphere in here with the crowds watching it.

In Crewe, there were plenty of Workingmen’s Clubs and Family Social Clubs, although a lot less these days than there used to be. In my mis-spent youth I used to go to play snooker and table tennis (and have the occasional drink) in one or two of them, and I’ve even played in groups that have played in them. The buildings to which I’m referring though are the old Catholic primary school which, according to one of these street view things, has now been demolished and replaced by a flock of bats.

There’s an interesting story about the communal TV though. When I was very young, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, there was a cup game featuring Crewe Alexandra being televised. The parish council hired a television for the night and there were probably a couple of hundreds of us crammed into Shavington Village Hall watching the game on this tiny 405-line TV screen.

“The Good Old Days”, anyone?.

The nurse was early today. Apparently another one of his clients has been hospitalised … "what’s he doing to them all?" – ed … so his round is rather shorter. We talked about dialysis and the blood clot. He was formerly a dialysis nurse, and he told me that had it happened when he was working there, they would have cleaned the needle and re-inserted it, rather than abandon the procedure.

After he left, I made breakfast, even though I wasn’t all that hungry, and then came back in here to work.

There were a few things that needed doing, and the rest of the morning was spent sorting out some more music for a couple of radio programmes.

There were a few interruptions. Firstly, my cleaner came in with the injections for next week, and then Rosemary ‘phoned up for a chat. Just a brief one, because I needed to prepare my things for going out.

My cleaner came back a little later to do her stuff, and when the taxi arrived, she helped me out to the car although the wind was nothing at all as bad as yesterday.

At the Centre de Ré-education they put me through my paces.

Firstly, they had me working on a kind of press, sitting down and pushing weights with my feet.

Secondly, they attached a length of strong elastic to a pillar and I had to pull on it, keeping my upper arms parallel to my torso.

Those exercises were for fifteen minutes each

Thirdly, I was worked over by the physiotherapist who had me doing all kinds of things, even walking on my hands and knees. Thirty minutes of all of that was more than enough, thank you.

After a rest, during which I was drifting in and out of semi-sleep, I was given twelve minutes on the exercise bike. That was really tough, given the state of my knees and lower legs, but I managed to travel 1.3 theoretical kilometres. At one stage, I was developing as much as eleven watts of power.

It wasn’t just the exercises either. For many of the exercises, they had me sitting in low seats, from which it is almost impossible for me to haul myself up. It was a real gymnastic effort to do that, but, as they say, if it’s not hurting, it’s not doing you any good. I reckon that if that’s the case, then today I must have done a lot of good.

Just like chemotherapy, you don’t have a minute to recover before you are turfed out. It’s a labyrinth in there and you have to walk miles to where the taxis wait. Being disabled and in an exhausted state, it’s no picnic. When I arrived back here, I fell straight into a chair for an hour to recover.

Once I’d caught my breath, I came in here to sort out some more music and then went to make tea.

Tonight, I had a stir-fry of noodles, vegetables, bean sprouts and chick peas in soy sauce, but as I said just now, half of it went into the bin. I’m really not doing too well with my food and I can foresee serious problems ahead if I can’t find my appetite from somewhere.

But since chemotherapy, everything tastes of salt, I have the most incredible wind and I feel full all the time. What on earth is going on with my body?

Anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow. It’s dialysis, though, and we’ll see how the events of the last few days have affected that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to a doctor at dialysis the fact that I have wind.
"Can you give me anything for this wind that I have?" I asked.
He went away, and came back five minutes later with a kite.

0

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… I actually managed to have a lie in. And I really needed it too.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night last night either. After finishing off everything that I need to finish, and sorting myself out in the bathroom, it was just before 23:00 when I crawled into bed under the covers, and went to sleep quite quickly.

During the night, I awoke just once – at about 04:10. And although I did think for a moment about leaving the bed, I turned over instead and went straight back to sleep.

It was 06:20 when I awoke next. And had this been a weekday, I would have been straight out of bed. However, it’s a Sunday when there’s a lie-in until 07:59 so I curled back up under the quilt. I tried to go back to sleep but without any luck. Nevertheless, I stuck it out until about 07:10, when I finally abandoned the effort and left the bed.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hospital somewhere where there were a great many sick patients for all kinds of reasons. One of the things that this hospital did was to give abortions. There was one of the doctors who was violently opposed to the idea of abortions, and he and his wife made themselves extremely unpleasant on the subject. They had to be diverted away from the other services. There was an issue with the woman, something to do with packing a baby away. They were in the middle of doing this when suddenly they announced that one of the baby’s left hand had disappeared and there was a feeling that it had its arm wrapped around its neck. They had to stop the procedure and examine it. However, this doctor was quite angry, violently so, against some kind of situation that was taking place between the hospital and his wife of this affair. I had to go along and check on something, and it was not a situation that I liked very much. He and this other woman were sitting there discussing this case, and I was trying to work in this room in the background, but it was not very encouraging. I wasn’t really able to complete what I was supposed to do while he was there. He was running back and to, doing things in connection with this issue, and I couldn’t really have some kind of minute to myself to do what I needed. I had a feeling that I was going to be discovered any minute now, and this was going to lead to an extremely violent confrontation.

As if there’s any chance of me working in a hospital. The story about the baby refers to the daughter of a friend of mine in Florida whose mother had a very uncomfortable birth with her. The doctor referred to seems to resemble someone whom I knew in Crewe fifty years ago. He wasn’t a doctor and he had no opinion on abortion, but the rest of his character and personality fits.

We were then having a little get-together in Gainsborough Road. I’d invited a friend of mine round, and she came because her husband was working on nights and he had gone to bed. We were there having a chat, and the woman from next door was here. As we had a close look at the houses, we saw that next door’s house had a cellar, or seemed to have a cellar – there was a small window underneath the living room window whereas mine didn’t. This was probably accounted for by the slope of the land. We were intrigued by this and had a discussion. In the end, we asked the lady next door “how do you go into the cellar?”. She couldn’t remember, but she said that she had been in there once. She thinks that she remembers that you collapse the side of something and open a window. From outside, she shone a torch in through the cellar window, saying “I wonder what’s happening here now?”.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. But there is no cellar at the next-door house in Gainsborough Road and as far as I am aware, there are no cellars anywhere in the vicinity.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and breezed out again shortly afterwards. It didn’t take her long to sort me out, and she gave me my instructions – or, should I say “orders” – for the dialysis clinic tomorrow. I have to make sure at all costs that they examine me.

After breakfast, I came back in here and spent the morning catching up on the football highlights, including Stranraer’s monumental morale-boosting win against Edinburgh City. And not just a scrappy win either but a resounding 3-1 win away from home.

After the disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I had work to do. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain the shipping beacon for the port. It’s mounted in my apartment with the antenna on the shutters. Its purpose is to detect the shipping identification transmissions from the equipment on board the ships moored here and transmit them to a central control in Denmark.

A few weeks ago, the beacon ceased to function, and closer examination revealed that the beacon was of an obsolete type that should be replaced. They had sent a new one during the week so this afternoon, I assembled and installed it. It now seems to be working fine.

While I was doing that , I was chatting with several friends on line It’s nice to interact with people like that, although of course it’s not as nice as to chat face-to-face.

There was bread to make and a pizza to make too. The bread didn’t rise as high as usual, which is a disappointment, but the pizza was excellent once more. I was really impressed with that.

But now I’m off to bed, early enough, to prepare for my busy week next week.

But seeing as we have been talking about babies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a guy coming out of the chemist’s with a baby under each arm.
"Where are you going with those?" I asked him.
"Back to the factory" he replied.
"The factory?" I queried.
"Yes" he replied. "I’m the local Durex representative and these are two complaints that I’m taking back with me."

0

Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But then what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you are wide awake again at 01:30, you don’t really have time to go very far.

As you might expect, it was a horrible night last night – one of the worst that I have ever had. Having noted how much better I was feeling over the last couple of evenings, last night saw the collapse and I was back to where I had been earlier last week, struggling desperately (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to stay awake.

It was definitely one of those nights where I could have done with being in bed much earlier but as usual, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the time simply drifted away to nothing.

Once in bed though, I don’t even remember being awake for a minute. I was out like a light, only to be awoken a couple of hours later by a dreadful attack of cramp in my thighs, an awful cough and a powerful urge to vomit. These sensations kept on coming and going, making things most uncomfortable for me and the pain and inconvenience was such that I abandoned all hope of going back to sleep.

For the last couple of nights, I’d been awake quite early but had gone back to sleep again without very much effort. But I tried – oh, how I tried – this morning and nothing would seem to work … "he was very trying" – ed … . So round about 05:30 I gave up the ghost and left the bed.

After a good wash, I went for the medication, and it was a very leisurely medication too. I wasn’t in any rush at all this morning, what with feeling as ill as I was. In fact, it was quite a struggle to keep the medication down.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, I started my little footfest.

First match up was at the top of the JD Cymru League – TNS, who are leading, against Penybont who are second. It should have had all the air of being an exciting game, but quite frankly, Penybont were abysmal. The TNS attackers were going through the static Penybont defence like a knife through hot butter and the final score – 6-2 to TNS – didn’t do TNS any justice.

If Penybont are serious about mounting a challenge for the title, they are going to have to organise themselves much better and play much better than this.

In the middle of all of this, the nurse turned up. He sorted out my feet and then helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education gave me. But he didn’t really have much of an idea how to fit them, and neither did I, so after he left, I removed them.

After breakfast, which I really didn’t feel like eating, I came back in here to watch the highlights of the rest of the games, not that there was anything of interest to report.

All of this was followed by Stranraer v Queen of the South in the Scottish League Cup, and Stranraer ground out a very respectable draw against a team that is comfortably in mid-table in the league above.

What was interesting ABOUT THIS GAME was that we had another one of these exciting “let’s play it out from the back” moments that so entertain the crowd.

This afternoon, I’ve had a whole raft of exciting things to do, such as to sort out my tax affairs which are proving to be more complicated than I could ever imagine.

There was my Welsh homework to do too, and that’s almost finished. Half an hour on that tomorrow will see it ready to go off.

The printer needed a good overhaul too, as some of the stuff that I’ve been printing just recently isn’t as it is supposed to be. In the end, I changed a couple of ink cartridges and it seems to be working a little better, although the Magenta is still being troublesome.

And that reminds me – I need to order some more ink cartridges.

This afternoon was beautiful and sunny, so seeing as I didn’t have my shower last week and I shan’t be having one for a couple of weeks with all of these medical appointments, my faithful cleaner came down and helped me organise the shower. At least, now I smell nice and sweet for Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow, although how long it will last, I really have no idea.

There was bread to make, and pizza to make too. I really didn’t feel like doing anything, but it has to be done. I was in total agony while I was making it, but I forced myself to carry on, and in the end I managed to produce an excellent loaf and an excellent pizza.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me for a chat. She’s had her car serviced just recently and she didn’t understand a few things on the bill.

It wasn’t one of our usual chats though – my voice was giving out and in the end, I had to terminate the chat as I couldn’t keep on going.

Throughout the whole of the day, I could feel myself becoming worse and worse. By teatime, I was feeling totally dreadful. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as bad as I was feeling just then. In fact, halfway through my pizza, I just couldn’t go on any longer.

The pizza was abandoned on the table. And even though I hate waking up to dirty dishes all over the kitchen, so was the washing-up. I came back into the bedroom and simply climbed into bed, probably the best decision I had ever made.

But seeing as we have been talking about the difficulties in going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed …, apparently one of the best ways to fall asleep is to try counting sheep.
I asked one of my friends if this were true.
He replied "I’m not sure. I tried it the other night, starting off with one sheep. By the time that I had to leave the bed to go to work, I had ten thousand sheep, a huge farm in Australia and I was busy constructing a meat-packing factory"

0

Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, so much for the publicity

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

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

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

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

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

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Sunday 21st September 2025 – ONE OF MY …

… WEB PAGES is going berserk right now with hits, and the hit counter is rolling off the page through sheer weight of numbers.

The tiny little village of St Paul’s River, or Rivière St Paul, on the Forgotten Coast of Québec close to the border with Labrador has become famous overnight. It seems that a consortium of fourteen residents of that tiny place have won the latest round of Canada’s national lottery, a prize of no less than $50,000,00 or, as the Canadian national newspapers have to explain to their intellectually-challenged audience, about $3.4 million each.

When I say “the Forgotten Coast”, I really do mean the “Forgotten Coast”. Totally isolated from the rest of Québec, pretty much ignored by the Province and with its only road connection being east into Labrador. There is so little known or written about the place, and as I seem to be the only person on the whole of the planet who has ever researched and written about it, everyone seems to be coming to me and my web page for newsworthy snippets.

Not that I mind, of course. Everyone should be entitled to his five minutes of fame, especially me. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed.

But thinking about it – which I always do, of course – if I live for another year or so, I will have more than five minutes of fame. I was told right at the start of this illness that no-one had ever survived more than eleven years with it. I was diagnosed in November 2015 and in principle, based on the Law of Averages, I should have been pushing up the daisies, or “eating the dandelions by the roots” as they say around here, a long time ago.

In fact, when I was ejected from the hospital in Leuven after eighteen months and told to find somewhere civilised to live, I asked the professor if I should buy myself a nice little apartment somewhere.

"You won’t have your money’s worth from it" the professor told me brutally. But here we are.

Mind you, we won’t be here much longer if things carry on like last night.

Once more, I sprinted right the way through all of my chores and ended up nicely tucked up in bed by 22:30. And how I wish that I could do that every night.

The next bit isn’t so clever, though. And that is that at 02:30, I was wide-awake. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep so eventually, round about 04:15, I left the bed.

Yesterday evening, I’d missed the live Caernarfon v Penybont game so I found the link to the game and sat back to watch it.

It’s really difficult playing football in a tropical monsoon, especially when it’s accompanied by a hurricane, and I could tell after five minutes that most of the Caernarfon team was wishing that it was somewhere else than on a football field. They really did seem quite disinterested.

After about 75 minutes, they totally fell apart and Penybont were striding through the Cofis’ defence with monotonous regularity. They scored two quick goals and could easily have three or four more.

Caernarfon pulled one back late in the game when Adam Davies latched on to an underhit backpass, and even had the ball in the net a second time in stoppage time, only for it to be controversially ruled out for offside.

Seriously though, I was convinced that the referee was refereeing a totally different game to the one that we were all watching.

After the final whistle, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I had this desire to turn round in bed but try as I might, I just wasn’t able to move. I kept on trying to think how I could bring everything that I wanted down towards where I was, which was in bed with some trees that had been planted to celebrate some kind of victory growing all around me if I was unable to change my position. It wasn’t until I awoke at 02:11 that I was able to move into a different position.

Reading this back, I have no idea whether or not it was true because I have no recollection of any of this. I’ve certainly no idea why trees should be growing all round my bed, planted to celebrate a victory.

Isabelle the Nurse was next to interrupt my train of thought. She was grateful for the prescription that I had obtained for her, and so was I because, without it, she couldn’t give me my injections. We had a friendly chat as she dealt with my legs, and then she disappeared off on her rounds.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

We’re not discussing the American invasion of Québec which Colonel Carrington, our author, describes as strategically correct but with enough tactical and logistics shortcomings to short-circuit the entire procedure. And I do have to say that I agree with him in this respect.

It was a slow start to the day. I was a couple of hours in the living room doing not very much at all, and then I came back in here for a footfest of highlights, including Stranraer gaining only the second point of the season.

But what a flukey equaliser the Elgin City goal was. I reckon that Kane Hester will TRY THAT SHOT a thousand times over the next ten years and not put the ball anywhere near the goal, never mind in it.

After the usual disgusting drink break, I came in here and began to work on the next radio programme, being interrupted by my visitor for tomorrow asking me to confirm my address.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off and went to make a loaf of bread for next week and some pizza dough for this evening. I was however interrupted by Rosemary, who ‘phoned me to say that she was back home after her mega-adventures in Italy.

She told me quite a bit about her holiday, but it was only a short ‘phone call today, just one hour and five minutes. Not up to our usual standard at all.

While I was at it, seeing as I had some vegan pie filling in the freezer, I baked a vegan pie for my guests for tea tomorrow. They have to eat, after all. For Tuesday night, I might ask my faithful cleaner to find a small aubergine and then I can cook one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits.

Tonight’s pizza was totally delicious, another candidate for one of the best that I have ever made. And now, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow, I don’t think.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the football highlights … "well, one of us has" – ed … a footballer from one of the games was injured and carried off the field.
They took him to hospital and while he was sitting there in the Accident Department, the registrar came over to check him in.
"And why have you come to the Accident Department?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" he replied
"What do you mean?" she asked
"One of the other team kicked me on the knee" he explained. "But it wasn’t an accident. He did it on purpose."

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Sunday 7th September 2025 – WHAT A BUSY …

… afternoon I’ve had today.

It’s been one ‘phone call after another after another, all three of which lasted for hours, and for a very, very welcome change, they were all from people from whom I wanted to hear. It’s really been my lucky day.

Not so last night, though. It was another one of those nights where everything that I tried to do dragged on and on. I finished writing my notes unusually early but even so, "the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley" as Robbie Burns once famously said, and all kinds of things came along to interrupt me before I finally fell into bed, much later than I had planned (as usual).

And as usual these days, it was a very mobile night. Although I was asleep quite quickly, I awoke soon after, round about 01:30, and then spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of some kind of weird semi-consciousness, without actually being awake but without actually being asleep either.

Round about 06:20, I have up the struggle and, even though it’s Sunday, a Day of Rest where I allow myself to have a lie-in until 07:59, I arose from the Dead.

At least, that’s one way of putting it. Hauling myself out from underneath the quilt is one thing. Standing up on my own two feet is quite another thing entirely.

Once I’d finally made it into the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here later, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And it sounded as if I’d gone miles. All the way to Avranches by the sound of things. I was back at dialysis last night. Again, it was a pretty bad session and I noticed that I was nothing like as autonomous as I am now. I had to have all kinds of help for this, all kinds of help for that, and that really disappointed me. However, one of the aides infirmières there was in something of a panic so I asked her what was happening. She replied that for some reason she had been the only aide infirmière who had been rostered that afternoon when there were usually five or six so she was expecting to be run around like nobody’s business and wasn’t really going to have the time to do all that she was supposed to do during her working hours.

Losing my autonomy is my major fear right now. At the moment, I can still move about, cook, wash and so on. But one of these days, I won’t be able to and that will be the end. As for the aides infirmières, they are all very nice but there are a couple of them whom I find very sweet and who seem always to be the ones doing the running around.

Later on, we were going somewhere again, a great big group of us, and we had several old cars, Cortina MkIIIs, that kind of thing. We were slowly packing them with what we needed and making a list of things that we didn’t have that we ought to buy before we went. Then, into the place where we were loading the cars came my father with a wheelbarrow. In it was all the frozen food out of the freezer. He’d obviously had it out there for so long that it had all melted. I went berserk at this and called him all the names under the sun for being so stupid as to take the stuff out of the freezer but he didn’t seem to be bothered but I was really annoyed about this. We had to take it all out of one of the cars again, take it away and put it back into an empty freezer for now for a place to keep it until we come back and sort it through. We had to load up the car with things like an old car carpet and one or two other bits and pieces. One of the women with me was again really angry by something. It turns out that because of some way that we’d packed the cars and some way that we’d organised the passengers in each vehicle, it was now up to her to take out insurance for everyone as some kind of group leader rather than the cars themselves having their own individual insurances as usual.

This is another one of these weird dreams that would appear to have no significance. Of course, I made my money with MkIII Cortinas, running a whole fleet of them and their MkIV younger sisters on the taxis for a number of years. There are still a couple of MkIIIs, and also the newer MkVs, down in the Auvergne that will be worth a fortune to whoever has to clear out my farm and warehouse when I am no longer here.

One thing though is that I couldn’t ever imagine bawling out my father in real life. He certainly wasn’t stupid, not by any means.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in again, giving me another dire warning about accepting the “dialysis at home”. She really thinks that I ought to formally inform them that I’m declining the offer before I’m railroaded into accepting it. And she’s probably right too.

Once she had left, I made breakfast and began to read a new book. I started off by reading one of Nietzsche’s books. However, after about half a dozen pages, I found that it was like trying to wade through spaghetti so reluctantly, I abandoned it.

Instead, I turned my attention to ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

In the late Eighteenth and early 19th Century, the fur trade of British North America was being effectively shared out between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North-West Fur Company of Canada.

The American Jacob Astor wanted to break into the trade so he had to start off from a point that none of the other two had yet reached, so he sent a party overland to the mouth of the Columbia River in what is today the North-West USA but in those days was still part of British North America, and also a party by sea to navigate through the Straits of Magellan and up the Pacific coast.

This book is the story of the seaborne party, its voyage and its arrival and establishment ashore.

It’s a fascinating book, for a variety of reasons. For instance, when sailing past the Falkland Islands, the author notes "Although the Falkland Islands occupy in the Southern Hemisphere a similar degree of latitude to that of Ireland in the northern, still they possess none of the characteristic fertility of the Emerald Isle. Of grass, properly so called, there is none in those islands. In vegetable and animal productions they are also deficient ; and the climate, generally speaking, is cold, variable, and stormy : yet for such a place the British Empire was on the point of being involved in a war, the preparations for which cost the nation some millions !"

That’s what I call a “prescient” remark.

But to show that nothing has really changed since the voyage in 1811, in the Sandwich Islands, "Several quarrels occurred among the men, which were settled à l’Anglaise by the fist.". That’s a tradition kept up by the English even today, and it goes to show that it has long, deep roots.

He also mentions "stupendous enterprise lately set on foot of forming a junction between the Pacific and Atlantic by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Darien.". How about that for predicting the future? This book was published in 1831.

What’s interesting about this comment is that he goes on to say "It is probable they will ultimately become tributary to Great Britain, Russia, or America; and in the event of war between any of these nations the power in possession of the islands, from their commanding position, will be able during the continuation of hostilities not only to control the commerce of the Pacific, but also neutralise in a great degree the advantages likely to be derived from the Grand Junction Canal.".

That was exactly the motivation for the Americans building their great naval base at Pearl Harbour in the Sandwich Islands, and the motivation for the Japanese to attack it.

Incidentally, see if you can guess the modern names for these places that our author records in the Sandwich Islands –
Whytetee
Whoahoo
Owhyee
Honaroora

After breakfast I did some more tidying up and then I had a task to perform. The water heater timer is all over the place and so I’ve been switching it on and off manually … "PERSONually" – ed … but the last two nights, I’ve forgotten, so I had to reprogramme it correctly.

That took quite a bit of studying and then quite a bit of trial and error but now I think that it’s working correctly – at least, I hope it is.

After a disgusting drink break, I came in here to begin to work on a radio programme at long last, but I hadn’t gone far when someone called me up on the computer. An unknown number, so I answered it and it was a former girlfriend of mine from my school days. At long last, she’s downloaded an internet chat service provider.

She’s talked in the past about coming up to see me sometime, and it looks as if it might be coming to fruition. She’s talking about some time the end of September, so we had a good chat about it.

After she had hung up, I had my next ‘phone call. And it was Liz, calling me for a chat. And how nice it was to hear her voice after all this time. We had so much to say to each other that the chat went on for almost the whole afternoon and, using the video attachment, I gave her a guided tour of the apartment.

But how nice it was to chat to Liz again.

Afterwards, no sooner had I put down the ‘phone than Rosemary rang. She’s just arrived in Italy to see her God-daughter who has recently had a baby, and so she told me about her drive down. As usual in a chat between Rosemary and me, a simple chat like that can last for … gulp … one hour and twenty-one minutes.

It’s hardly surprising that after all that and my bad night, I crashed out for half an hour later.

Tea was a delicious pizza, made in my wonderful new oven, and now, later, much later than I would like, I’m going to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about telling the future … "well, one of us has" – ed … two men met in the street.
The second man replied "yes I can"
And the first one asked him "can you foretell the future?"

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Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed – and had been for ten minutes – trying to summon up the force, the energy and the courage to leave the bed.

Well, in fact, the alarm didn’t go off at all. I switched it off when I rolled out from under the covers, but you get the idea.

It was quite astonishing that I was up so early because it was a horribly late night. Feeling rather depressed and miserable, a concert by the Phil Beer Band came onto the playlist and there are several songs on there that seem to affect me like that and I really don’t know why.

However, I’ll always make time for the group to play THE BORDER SONG and, as you might expect, when you want to go to bed and there’s a concert of one hour and forty-three minutes, that’s the song that they always play to close the show, so you have to wait up.

Once in bed though, I was soon asleep and although I was tired, I awoke on two or three occasions. When I awoke just after 06:00 this morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep again and for twenty-odd minutes, there didn’t seem to be much point so I forced myself out of bed.

After I’d had a good wash and clean up, I went for the medication and then, changing the habits of a lifetime, I quickly tidied up the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Isabelle the Nurse starts her round today and I expect that she’ll want to examine the apartment.

Back in here, while I waited, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. And to my surprise and delight, I’d had a special visitor last night.

There was a group of us going off again. I first of all had to go to collect one of the girls who had a shop in High Street in Crewe. So she locked up her shop and had to go to the nightclub next door for the keys, but then found that there was a light on further back in the shop so she had to run down there to switch it off and then run back to hand in the keys. Meanwhile, my brother went across the road and fetched Zero. She was coming with me. Eventually, we all gathered in the car park and climbed into the van that I had. There were a couple of girls sitting in the front and I was driving. Zero was sitting right behind me, leaning over my shoulder. As we were driving, I made the remark that she looked rather like a parrot sitting on my shoulder, to which she replied in a bad temper that she wasn’t a parrot at all. I asked her what she was to which she replied “a bad-tempered, rude-mouthed girl” which made me laugh. After we had been driving a couple of years … "don’t you mean ‘hours’?" – ed … we pulled up at the side of the road to sleep for a few hours. I curled up in the back and Zero came to curl up next to me.

So after having mentioned yesterday one of my special young ladies, another one came to see me last night. And what’s more, she curled up next to me in the back of the van and for once, my family didn’t intervene. But the story about curling up in the back of the van with a young lady reminds me of another occasion that is much more recent, and just about as ethereal as curling up with Zero.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to complain at all.

When Isabelle the Nurse came in, she inspected the apartment and promptly fell in love with it. I’m not surprised, because I love my little apartment too. She sorted out my legs and then we discussed this “dialysis at home”. She gave me a very stern warning against it, for a variety of reasons.

Apparently, the people at dialysis describe it in one way that makes it sound attractive, but Isabelle described the same procedure in a totally different way that made it totally unattractive to someone as nesh as me.

And that reminded me of my first introduction to propaganda. When I used to drive taxis, I would always drive at night and the BBC would finish its broadcasts at 02:00 with a news bulletin.

Turning the dial slightly, you would then pick up the English language broadcasts of Radio Free Bulgaria that would start at 02:00 with a news bulletin. They would say the same news, but by changing the stress and the pronunciation, they could make it sound exactly the opposite to the BBC.

So the same news, told the same way but with different stresses and emphases to make it portray the opposite viewpoint. Who was right?

After Isabelle left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now discussing the Saxon overrunning of Middlesex, with a highly fanciful account of the invasion that is backed up by almost no evidence whatsoever. Our author seems to like this flights of fantasy into unrecorded territory.

Modern research seems to discount almost all of his theories in this respect, but then again, modern research also seems to discount or deny the ethnic cleansing of the Romano-British population by the Saxons. However, ss I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the sudden and dramatic end of writing, of ironworking, of urban dwelling and of many other skills and habits cannot really be attributed to anything else. We have the classic example of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields and the “Back To The Land” movement in this respect.

After breakfast, I changed the habits of a lifetime and began to tidy up. Having spent hours trying to find certain herbs and spices yesterday, that was the focal point of my attack and eventually, I’d managed to sort them out as I would like them to be.

There were a few other things too but I didn’t go too mad in this respect. However, I am having difficulty finding things, like the power pack to drive the little Roland bass cube for example.

There was a disgusting drink break of course and then I came in here to deal with a problem concerning the data senders for the fleet monitor, the transmissions for which are not being received at the Head Office in Denmark. The warning lights seem to be flashing as normal, so I took a one-minute video of the senders and the flashing lights.

There followed an interruption by the usual Wednesday visit by my cleaner. First thing that we did was to sort out all the bedding and I found a quilt cover and sheet that I didn’t know that I had.

She arranged the shower for me and I went and had a really good soak too. You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a lovely, warm shower in a lovely shower cubicle. But it’s rather precarious and I need to sort out the handrails so that I can have a much better purchase for pulling myself into the cubicle.

After my cleaner left, I came back in here and crashed out in one of those sudden, dramatic crashes that I have sometimes. I was out of it for an hour or so, which was disappointing, but even more disappointing was that when I awoke, I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was, and I was half-expecting to go for breakfast at that point.

Not that that’s any surprise. I don’t know where I am or what day of the week it is even when I’m wide awake.

At that point, Rosemary ‘phoned me for a chat. Just a short one today, only one hour and thirty-six minutes. It’s nice to chat to people like that and thanks to these internet chat applications, it’s all free too.

One of the things that we discussed was how good friends seem suddenly to drop off the radar and you never seem to hear from them again after a while. That’s something else that is perfectly true. Having said that of course, I still have a friend and a former girlfriend from Grammar School with whom I’m regularly in touch

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. Tomorrow, it’s dialysis and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about propaganda … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the greatest exponents of the art of propaganda was General Hindenburg of the Imperial German Army, who claimed all of the credit for the battles in Eastern Europe that destroyed the Russian Army in 1914, much to the disgust of General Hoffman who had actually led the German troops into battle.
Years later, Hoffman used to take official visitors around the battlefields there, and he would always point out three particular farmhouses.
Of the first one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept before the battle"
And of the second one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept after the battle"
But of the third one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept during the battle"

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Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tuesday 15th July 2025 – SATURDAY’S WOODSTOCK PROGRAMME …

… is now finished, and what a nightmare it was to complete it.

In fact, it took so long, and there were so many other interruptions throughout the day that I ended up not going to my Welsh Summer School. But more of that anon.

By the time that I’d finished writing my notes last night, it was quite late. And then I had the backing-up to do, the stats to record and the heat treatment and ice pack to apply to my leg, so I may well as to say that it was midnight by the time that I finally crawled into bed

It was a very strange night last night. At some point, I was convinced that I was up and about, wandering around the bedroom, but I’ve no idea why I should be thinking that.

The next thing that I definitely remember is being awake at 06:10 – another one of these dramatic awakenings that I have sometimes. It didn’t take long to leave the bed either this time, and after a good wash and the medication, I was back sitting at my desk transcribing my dictaphone notes.

I was at hospital again at Avranches. I had been staying in for a couple of days, for one reason or another, and then they came to try to set me free. The first thing that they did was to lower down the bed after I’d spent half an hour setting it correctly for me, something that didn’t please them at all. There was a new sheet of the Temisartan and a new sheet of the third medication there too and we were flying out on a freighter that belonged to the air force. But while I was packing, my efforts ended up being a total dog’s breakfast of a job. A little student nurse had unpacked it during the morning and when I looked … fell asleep here …

This is exactly how I feel at times when I’m at hospital or having dialysis – I wish that someone would come along and librate me from my tubes and pipes. The “dog’s breakfast” refers of course to that shambolic way that they connected up the intravenous pump at Paris, the Temisartan is the medication that Avranches wants me to stop and Paris wants me to continue, and Heaven alone knows to what all the rest refers.

I was being unplugged after another dialysis session. There was one nurse quite close to me who was dealing with some kind of equipment that was a lemon yellow colour that I had never seen before in my life. The other nurse came over to see me and to disconnect me. She was another nurse who was fairly impatient and who wanted me to do more than I would normally do under any other circumstances.

The impatient nurse reminds me of course of Marion who wants me to organise myself ready for dialysis and to compress my punctures myself afterwards. But as I told you yesterday, that’s simply not going to happen.

There had been a big group of us away on holiday. I was sharing a room with someone – it was a girl but I can’t think who – and someone brought me another suitcase. I wondered what was in it, and when I opened it, it was full of my disgusting drinks. Anyway, we returned to the UK and landed at Manchester Airport. There were twelve of us in total and we had to go back to the North of Scotland. I asked one of the taxi drivers in the queue what his best fare would be. He gave me a pretty good price for that so I told him to find two friends and to meet us at a place in the City Centre in half an hour’s time. Back at the City Centre we sorted out our luggage, and this girl and I went for a walk. We were walking through the streets looking at the shop windows and the decorations. She hadn’t been to the UK before and she thought that it was wonderful. When we returned to the place where we were supposed to meet, the first car was already there and the four youngest ones were in it ready to set off. However, we couldn’t make anyone inside hear us so we shouted and shouted. In the end, someone opened the door and asked “who’s that?”. My friend said her name and she said that she had me with her. We were let in, but we were given some kind of lecture about disturbing people from their meals. We didn’t understand why these people were having a meal. I expected that we would all be ready to go straight off back to the North of Scotland. This idea about meals completely confused me.

The only person to whom this dream might apply is my Greek friend from Brussels. She’s probably been to the UK previously but I can’t remember her ever saying so. Nevertheless, I have no idea why I would be heading to the North of Scotland. Dingwall, and especially Ross County’s football ground, is the farthest north that I have probably been by land, although, of course, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we went round John O’Groats on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when we sailed the Atlantic Ocean and through the North-West passage almost to Alaska on one of our Arctic expeditions

The rest of that dream, though, is quite confusing and doesn’t seem to relate to very much.

Isabelle the Nurse is back on duty and it was nice to hear her cheery greetings. She caught up with my news, rubbed the heat treatment into my knee and finally dealt with my legs before she breezed off.

After she left, I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author is in his element today, diving into all kinds of gossip. He talks about the dissolution of Augustinian priory in London and how the "Marquis of Winchester sold the monuments of noblemen there buried in great number, the paving stones and whatsoever (which cost many thousands) for one hundred pounds, and in place thereof made fair stabling for horses."

He also talks about the rapacious Thomas Cromwell who stole the rights to several acres of land belonging to local landowners, including part of the garden of the house of our author’s father. "this house they loosed from the ground and bare upon rollers into my father’s garden twenty-two feet ere my father heard thereof. No warning was given."

Finally, there’s a delightfully whimsical passage about the powers of the watchmen of the city, and how in the year 1383, "the citizens of London … imprisoned such women as were taken in fornication or adultery … and after bringing them forth in the sight of the World, they caused their heads to be shaven." And that’s something that many women in Europe experienced in 1944 and 1945. It wasn’t a new custom at all.

After breakfast, I tried to settle down to revise for my Welsh but just as the lesson was starting, the doorbell rang. It was the delivery man with the new microwave and he took a while to sort out.

Just as I was settling down to restart the lesson, the telephone rang and that preoccupied me for quite a while.

What with Rosemary calling me later for one of our “little” chats, it was by now far too late to join the class and so I have decided to abandon it. What with visits tomorrow, dialysis on Thursday, the couturière coming some time to measure the windows for curtains, it’s going to be nothing but a distracting series of interruptions.

Instead, I attacked the Saturday Woodstock programme.

When I’d finished editing the notes and assembling the programme, I ended up with one hour and twenty-seven minutes. That’s not bad for an hour-long radio programme.

That called for some ruthless editing and cutting out of certain songs. I chose songs that are either not suitable for the style of music that I broadcast or else musicians and songs that are so well-known that it serves no useful purpose to include them. Consequently the programme focuses on some of the more obscure groups and songs

By the time that I knocked off, I’d finally managed to make it fit exactly one hour. But it did take a lot of time and a lot of effort.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with rice and veg, and now that I’ve written my notes, that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow, I have visitors but I’m going to try to make a good start on Sunday’s Woodstock programme and see how far I can go.

But right now, I’m going to go to bed. That will do me for today.

But seeing as we have been talking about tombstones … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of the story about St Walpurgis’s Night, when all evil known to man … "and presumably to women too" – ed … is known to walk abroad.
Two dead bodies buried n a cemetery decide to go for a walk so their ghosts rise up out of the ground and set off.
Before they have gone twenty yards, one of the ghosts runs back to his grave, rips his headstone out of the ground, tucks it under his arm and goes back to his friend.
"Why on earth did you do that?" asks the friend.
"I was thinking" said the first. "If we’re stopped by the police tonight, we’ll need to show some proof of identity."

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Friday 4th July 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… where to begin today’s account. Bo I begin it when I awoke at 01:01 this morning? Or do I begin it when I awoke for definite at … errr … 07:59?

Well, anyway, after last night’s disaster when I fell asleep, fully clothed, into bed and didn’t move a muscle, I awoke at 01:01 exactly, according to the time on my ‘phone.

Despite trying everything that I could, by about 01:40 I gave up the struggle and heaved myself out of my stinking pit, never having felt less like doing anything in my whole life.

Once I was (sort-of) on my feet, I staggered over to the chair and when the World finally stopped spinning round, I began to plan my day.

The first thing to do was the statistics and then the backing-up. I can’t ever forget them. Next thing was to write up the notes for Thursday, and they are now on-line, with apologies to anyone who was disappointed when they came here looking for them.

There was nothing on the dictaphone from the night at that particular point, so I spent a while trying to concentrate on doing some stuff but in the end, round about 04:30, I gave it up as a bad job and went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 06:30, I’m afraid that I simply switched it off, set the alarm to 07:59 and then went straight back to sleep.

Once again, it was a very weary me that fell out of bed a couple of minutes after the alarm had sounded. I couldn’t hang about, because Isabelle the Nurse was on her way so I had to struggle into the bathroom as best as I could.

When Hurricane Isabelle blew in, she found me trying to take my medication. She couldn’t hang about long, for various reasons, but she took away “War and Peace” – the summary of my visit to Paris last week that had arrived in the post yesterday – for a read when she’s at home tonight.

And that reminds me – when it comes back, I need to scan it and send it to my health insurers because it’s quite comprehensive.

Incidentally, I note from the report that they confirm that I was given Retuximab and “some other product” twice back in early 2016 but they withdrew “some other product” because of the dreadful and insupportable side effects. However, here I am nine years on, much older, much more ill, much more unfit, and they are giving me the same “some other product” again.

So what’s happening here? Haven’t they realised what happened, or is this some desperate last throw of the dice? I think we should be told.

After Isabelle left, clutching my papers in her little mitt, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about medieval money, and there’s a beautiful paragraph or two about the history of the various coins of the realm of that period. It all ends with the delightfully modest statement "This much for mint and coinage, by occasion of this Tower (under correction of others more skilful)".

Why can’t modern authors be so modest? … "Why indeed?" – ed …

Back in here, it took a while to come round to my senses, and then I finished off paring and seguing the music for the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

My cleaner stuck her sooty foot in the door at some point to do her stuff for the day and after she left, I read through my Woodstock notes for the Friday, performed a few corrections, added this in, took that out, and that will be dictated at the next opportunity. Then I’ll do Saturday’s, and then Sunday’s.

At some point Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a short one today – one hour and twenty-three minutes. She’s offered to come all the way up from the Auvergne to help me if ever I need it and can’t find any more help else where. It’s a lovely offer, but it’s totally impractical for her.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t have many friends … "and fewer and fewer these days" – ed … but those whom I have are the best in the World and no-one could wish for better.

At another point, I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and I was surprised that there were so many. I was down at Virlet. I noticed that there was smoke and a small electrical fire coming from one of the electrical anchoring points on the roof of one of the lean-to sheds. I was looking at it for a couple of minutes wondering “how on earth could this have happened?”. I filed up a bucket with some really dirty water and threw it onto the roof. It seemed to dampen it down somewhat so I threw another one or two on top too. I noticed that there was still a light burning in the upstairs part of the lean-to so I had to climb up an ad-hoc kind of ladder in the pitch black with a couple of the local kids wandering around, to stick my head in to see whether that had caught fire too. When I looked inside, I found that I’d left a light burning from all those years ago, so that was probably the reason for that. I climbed down and was back inside my garage where these two kids and their father wee wandering around. I was chatting to these two kids. Just to make sure, I took another big bucket of filthy water, told them to keep out of the way and went to throw it up onto the roof a final time but then I couldn’t see where the fire had been and from where the smoke was coming. There were a few bits and pieces of smoke but these were fumes from different kinds of things. They weren’t a fire-type of smoke. I looked on the roof but couldn’t see any sign of anything so I was sitting there pondering what to do with this bucket of water.

Whatever happens now at Virlet is long out of my hands and I need to forget all about it because I can’t ever go back there in my state of health and I’m not expecting any miracle from this treatment that will enable me to be mobile again. In fact, I’ve been wondering if this treatment isn’t simply a case of postponing the inevitable. Then it will be u to my heritees … "God help them!" – ed … to sort it all out.

Later on, I was on a train going somewhere – a German or French type of railway carriage. I noticed that it was measured. There were the little marks every so often, every 50 cms or something so we could see immediately where we were sitting because of the length numbers written on the ticket rather than the seat number. I can’t remember what happened after that.

So we’re back on the train again, are we? This seems to be something of a regular occurrence. Fans of these German psychoanalysts will doubtless say that it’s a subconscious wish to be away from my present mode of life, and who can argue with that?

And finally I was back on the taxis again. We had a fare to pick up at some medical centre at about 08:30. Nerina was with me and so was my step-brother. We went round to pick up these two people and dropped Nerina off at some place on the way – it might have been her mother’s – and then dropped off these two people in Sandbach but they just ran off. There was no point going chasing after them so we set out to come home. There were by now three of us – my brother-in-law was there. We were walking around a seaside town looking for a police station, looking at the yachts and everything. We’d had the freezer opened to sort everything out. We wandered around this seaside town but couldn’t find anything, and ended up throwing a ball at each other until someone broke his glasses when the ball hit him in the face. We climbed into the car and came home. The stuff from the freezer was still out on the shelf. I thought that I’d better put that away before everything melts. While I was doing it, there were loads of stuff in the fridge, sandwiches from several weeks ago etc. I was busy trying to sort out all of these. It seemed that the tidier I tried to make the fridge, the worse it became. Then I suddenly realised that there was a football match that I wanted to go to see, the final match of the season where TNS were playing at somewhere like Pontypridd. I was really hoping that I would have a chance to see it. Instead, I don’t know what happened. I was far too busy trying to sort out this fridge, I was driving a taxi too, I had the stuff to put back in the freezer. I reckoned that it was going to be one of those days when I’m going to end up doing nothing even though I had far too much of other things to do.

The motto of the long-departed and long-lamented “News of the Screws” was “all human life is here”, and this dream is certainly a microcosm of all of my life. I don’t think that it needs too much explanation or examination because you can see the parallels for yourself.

Tea tonight was a dish of left-overs. There had been some mushrooms festering in the fridge for a week and I’d been eyeing them keenly for a few days. There was also half an onion and half a tomato, so, with a little garlic … "he means ‘a lot’" – ed …, I chopped them all up and fried them in vegan butter.

And when they were nicely cooked, I tipped them out of the pan all over a couple of slices of thick toast. However they tasted nicer in my imagination than in my mouth. That’s not a criticism of the food by the way. Everything that I have tasted since chemotherapy has tasted as if it’s been laced with a shed-load of salt. I’m not enjoying my food at all right now, and that’s a sign that I am really ill.

But before I go off to bed, that medical report sounds like the old Kenneth Williams-Sid James exchange in one of the medical “Carry-ons”.
Dr Williams "give him a colostomy, an x-ray, a thoracotomy, a bioscope a … "
Patient James "what was all that?"
Dr Williams "and while you’re at it, wash his ears out."

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Thursday 3rd July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that when they pass by during the night, those from the far-flung corners of the Globe (and a few from closer to home too), they usually find that the latest instalment has managed to crawl on-line at some point, and they can sit and peruse it at their leisure while those readers closer to home are still in the Land of Nod.

And so last night, or this morning, they are probably wondering what has happened that there was nothing on-line for them to read.

The truth was that I was in bed, and had been since 19:30 in fact, for at dialysis yesterday afternoon I had another malaise and went into a coma again.

Not that any of that is a surprise. It was well after midnight when I finally went to bed last night, and I was awake again at about 02:40. This time though, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep and lay there tossing and turning until about 05:30 when I finally gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

It’s dialysis day of course, so I went to have a good scrub up and shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication so that I would be ready to Fight the Good Fight.

Back here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but as I was expecting, there was nothing on it. That’s no surprise, seeing that I only had two and a half hours’ sleep. Instead, I found a few other things to do while I awaited the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

When she arrived, she gave me the next of this series of injections. If it is indeed to stimulate the red blood cells in their fight against the carcinogenic protein in my blood, it’s a mystery as to why they are only giving it to me for five days, without any other kind of control. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when this cancer was first diagnosed back in the winter of 2015-2016 when I was also taking this Retuximab, they were injecting me twice per day

After she left, the plumber turned up and we had a lengthy discussion about my plans. He seemed to be much more amenable to my ideas so I gave him the keys and let him loose downstairs to do his thing.

Now that he was downstairs, I went to make breakfast, but I found myself confronting a major problem. The fridge door was part-open, an enormous mound of ice had grown inside and the door wouldn’t close. Add to that the fact that the soya milk inside had “turned”.

Fearing all other kinds of problems, I turned off the fridge for the moment and made breakfast, and then sat down to eat it and read MY BOOK.

Our author tells us that "Henry I built his manor at Woodstock, with a park … He placed therein … divers strange beasts to be kept and nourished such as were brought to him from far countries, as lions, leopards, linces, porpentines and such other" – presumably, the UK’s first safari park.

He goes on to say that "King Edward II … commanded the sheriffs of London to pay to the keepers of the king’s leopard in the Tower of London sixpence the day for the sustenance of the leopard and three halfpence a day for the diet of the said keeper … More, in the 16th of Edward III, one lion, one lioness, one leopard and two cat lions in the said Tower were committed to the custody of Robert, son of John Bowre."

So London Zoo has a very long history indeed.

After breakfast, I had to empty the fridge and attack the ice mountain with an old hair-dryer, but I couldn’t do it for long because, with my head upside down, I was losing blood pressure and my head was spinning round.

There were several interruptions while I was trying to work. First, the plumber came up to give me a progress report, and then Rosemary ‘phoned about a problem that she was having with a tyre on her car.

After half an hour I had to give up the cleaning of the fridge until my head cleared, so I came back in here to do some work on the radio while I calmed down, but I could feel a wave of ill-health slowly sweep over me.

When my cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches, she noticed the mess in the kitchen so after having sorted me out, she waded into the kitchen, took all of the food off the worktop, and said that she’d be back later.

The taxi came early for me, and I was soon at Avranches with a very chatty driver entertaining us (we were two passengers) with conversation almost all of the way down to Avranches.

For a change, I was early at the dialysis centre, and for another change, I was connected up quite quickly. However, I didn’t even have time to switch on my laptop before I’d gone into a coma – blood pressure down at 8.8, apparently.

When Fleurette noticed, it brought her running and she quickly flattened my bed and raised my feet, and that was how I found myself ten minutes later, totally unaware of what had happened.

Everyone was, as usual, quite concerned about me and did their best to do something to help the situation, but I just wanted to go to sleep, which I did for about ninety minutes. But one of these days, I’m going to go into one of these comas and not wake up out of it.

The doctor came to see me and changed my prescription, telling me to cut out the blood pressure medication on the grounds that it’s working too well, and to see what happens over the next few days. I don’t know why they even gave it to me in the first place.

When it was time to unplug me, they were all worried once again and tried to make me use a wheelchair but I refused yet again. And for once that I was ready quite early, the taxi was quite late. I had to wait over half an hour before it turned up and that was just about the end.

It was the young, chatty guy who brought me home to where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and we went to have a look at the bathroom in the new place.

And what a shambles it is. Behind the bath, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed – it’s just bare hydrofuge. The floor under the bath hasn’t been made good either, never mind tiled, and the pipework is all non-standard size, as if someone has wanted to use up a batch of ancient out-of-date pipe.

On the wall behind the bathroom cabinet, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed and in places, not even painted.

All in all, I don’t think that my Barratt House of 1979 was as poorly-prepared as this.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. When I work out how much I paid for the place, I still have a bargain, and the work to put everything right is work that I would have had done anyway when the shower unit is built.

By now, I was feeling so ill that I could only struggle up the first flight of stairs, and I failed dismally on the second. I ended up having to go up from the half-landing in the lift and come back down the stairs from the half-landing above.

Once back in here, I had a brief look at the nice clean fridge that my faithful cleaner had cleaned while I’d been in dialysis, and then I went straight to bed. That was about that for the day.

Seeing as we have been talking about my bathroom … "well, one of us has" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and have it painted, I suppose.
And when I see the cabinet-maker who is going to paint everywhere, I shall have to tell him to put on two coats.
"Why two coats?" he asked.
"Well, it needs to be ready for winter."

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