Tag Archives: taco roll

Tuesday 1st July 2025 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today, and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Not only am I not feeling very well, and haven’t been ever since the first drip of chemotherapy went in, I’ve done rather a lot over the last couple of weeks and I need a rest.

My rest actually started last night. I’d finished everything that I needed to do by about 22:30, and very shortly afterwards, I was in bed.

From what I remember … "which isn’t an awful lot" – ed … I must have been asleep quite quickly. I didn’t even start my nighttime mantra that helps me go to sleep when all else fails.

It was something of a turbulent night though. I remember being awake at 01:40 and again at about 04:20 but it was at about 06:15 when I finally decided that that was enough sleep. Not that I was out of bed quickly though – it took me a good ten minutes to summon up the energy.

The first thing to do was to watch a football match. Penybont had been playing a friendly against Airdrie in order to warm themselves up for their European Championship match. Whilst Airdrie had most of the play, Penybont’s desperate defending only allowed them to score one, whereas Mael Davies and Gabriel Kircough scored two of the sweetest goals that you are likely to see at this stage of the season.

The next thing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I was in a hotel with someone. It was one of these plush places where everyone dressed for dinner. I couldn’t be bothered to dress for dinner so my friend and I came downstairs and found a table where we could just sit anywhere, expecting at any moment to be shunted off into a side gallery or somewhere like that out of everyone else’s way. I began to look through the menu to see what we could have when a young couple came down. They were very much like 1920s socialists with the cloth cap and all of this kind of thing. They chose to sit down at our table, not that we minded, of course. We began to chat, and I asked the girl what she would like for her meal. She said that she would like some really typical English sausages. I replied that there were some very, very English traditional sausages in the freezer but they were vegan ones. If she didn’t mind, she could have some of those. She asked if I could fetch two for her so I went off into the kitchens to find these sausages and to find one or two things that I needed too. I couldn’t find a plate so I opened the door to the cupboard and began to rummage through it. The noise that it made was absolutely awful so everyone looked around. I said “if you wanted to see what I was doing to make this noise, you are a little too late”. A few people made some kind of comment. I then had to go to fetch a ramp, and I really had no idea where a ramp would be. There were still one or two people making a few comments so I lay on my back and pushed myself along with my feet arched and my elbows dug in so that I could move quite quickly. Everyone was impressed by that. Then I came to a trailer that had exactly what I wanted as part of the floor bed on this trailer, so I lifted out the appropriate piece. It was really heavy. I then set out on my back propelling myself with my feel and my elbows to go back to my table.

When I was skiing in Bulgaria with my cute little Irish friend, we met another young couple (I wasn’t all that young actually) in our hotel and had a little chat with them. The guy was one of these clever types who knew everything … "like someone else we all know" – ed … and so it was hard to have a chat with them, but the girl, although she wasn’t my type and in any case, I was with my friend, was quite sweet. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have shared any of my vegan sausages with her. Coming from the kind of family that I had, “sharing” was a phenomenon that was quite unknown.

And then I was at school, and it was school lunch break. I met up with a friend of mine and we had a really long chat. It wasn’t until later in this chat that I realised that the time was now 15:35 and we were an hour and a half late to go back for our lessons. He thought that he’d better rush so I decided that I’d rush too. But I couldn’t go back to lessons at this time of the afternoon because it was nearly home-time. Besides, it would look silly just going in for the final thirty minutes, so I decided to loiter around. So when my friend disappeared around a corner, I hung back to wait until he’d gone but instead, he came back to look for me. I reluctantly followed him until we came into the school hall, where I took my leave of him and looked as if I was going to climb up the stairs to go upstairs. Instead, I went to hide in the bottom of the stone stairs that were in an artificial turret to wait there until the final bell went. However, a class came downstairs into the hallway, looking around. I recognised the teacher, who was one from whose class I had dropped out a while back. She was discussing certain things, but must have seen me somehow because she stuck her head in the door and asked “could you take these books back up to my room please?”. They were apparently books that she had been showing to this class but they decided that they weren’t of any use in this course. I began to collect the books but as I started to go, she called me back to take her handbag. I had to go upstairs and hope that the classroom was empty and that there was no-one in there; otherwise it would be extremely embarrassing, just walking in in the middle of a lesson with things to leave behind, and then to go again. They would all be wondering what I was actually doing.

Being in school was at one time a regular subject during my nocturnal rambles. Not that I enjoyed school – not at all – but when you spend seven years in a place during your formative years, it figures quite intensely in your make-up. Strangely though, I very very rarely see any pupils whom I knew. Quite a few “mystery girls” though, including the famous “girl from Worleston” whose appearance overwhelmed me for several months, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I never did find out who she was.

There was something somewhere about another friend of mine who had moved back to live with his parents. They had a large house on the edge of a wood. With another friend, we were wandering around and I pointed out this house. I said “this is where so-and-so’s family used to live”. He replied “so that was the house that he was hoping to have as his inheritance. What a shame he isn’t going to have it now”. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say that he was still living there, and I don’t know why I couldn’t say it.

This is a wood through which we’ve walked on several occasions in the past during our nocturnal rambles. But once again, here I am stuck in some kind of dilemma. Why take the easy route when there’s a way of complicating matters?

Finally, there were three of us on somewhere like a motorway services or airport concourse. We’d booked a room in a hotel on site. We found the hotel, which was enormous, by far the largest I had ever seen, but we couldn’t find the entrance. After walking all the way round, we found the entrance and found that we had room n°80. We set out to find the room, walking through crowds of people, several bars and so on, down several series of steps one after the other, until we came to a series of what looked like bathrooms. Even then, right at the end we still hadn’t found the bathroom for n°80,but there was another door with several more bathrooms beyond, and maybe n°80 was through there. But even so, we were still nowhere near finding our hotel room in this labyrinth.

This is a place that we have visited on several occasions during the night too. And dreams about hotels seem to be commonplace these days. I wonder why. Am I missing the fact that I’m not going away at all these days? And yet another dilemma?

Isabelle the nurse came round later to deal with my legs and to give me my injection. She tells me that it’s another one of the “injections of last resort” as I used to have all those years ago. It seems that we really have gone round full-circle.

She also seems to think that it’s a good idea to go to Rennes for chemotherapy rather than Paris. So does everyone, a sit happens, which is a change to find so many people agreeing with me.

After she left, I could make breakfast and then, now that I’m alone, go back to reading THE SURVEY OF LONDON.

There’s a beautiful example of the confusion caused by the calculation of the “old year” of the Julian calendar. Our author, John Stow, has been talking about the Rebellion of Thomas Wyatt.

He tells us that Wyatt and his men marched on London on 3rd February 1553. However, under the old calendar with the New Year beginning on 26th March in those days. In modern times the march on London has been dated as 3rd February 1554 because of the change of the date of the New Year to 1st January.

Back in here afterwards, I vegetated around for quite a while, chatting to my cleaner on the internet as she was doing a couple of laps around LeClerc.

When she returned, she came with a pile of shopping that she had found for me, including a shed-load of vegan cheese. Also two litres of olive oil on special offer at €13:20, a price that you won’t find bettered anywhere else.

This afternoon, I did something that I should have done a couple of months ago and filled in my tax return. This involves printing off a pile of supporting documents and luckily, my printer seems to be working properly for the moment. However, the ink is running low and we shall have to see if it continues to like these ersatz ink cartridges.

There were a few other letters to write. I’d been letting the correspondence run astray for a few weeks and it needed bringing up to date. No time like the present, before it goes completely out of hand.

For a change, there is some good news too. The plumber tells me that he’s coming to start work on Thursday, and won’t that be nice if he does? And not only that, the kitchen-fitter is starting on Wednesday next week and the way his programme is panning out, he thinks that he’ll be finished by the end of the month.

And so this move might be on much earlier than I thought. At least, I shall move my bedroom and office downstairs as soon as it’s possible. The rest can follow when there are people available to bring it.

As seems to be the case these days, I didn’t feel much like eating anything. However, I can’t go on not eating anything so I made a small about of stuffing and prepared a taco roll with some rice and veg. Even though there wasn’t much, it was still a struggle to push it all down.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if I’m off my food, then there’s really something wrong with me. I’ve been off my food ever since chemotherapy, and I wonder if my appetite will return before the next session. If not, I can see a huge load of complications arising.

So now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m restarting work tomorrow, and it’s also shower day, at long last. A good scrub will do me a lot of good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed … he is actually famous for other things. And another poem has been written about him.
"A mathematician named Hall
Went to a fancy-dress ball
He thought he would risk it
And went as a biscuit
But a dog ate him up, crumbs and all."

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Wednesday 11th June 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that I’m going to have my shower installed for when I move downstairs, unfortunately.

Having had a good chat this afternoon with the guy who is going to fit the kitchen, he’s not convinced that he’d be able to do the work that I want. He’s happy to do some of it but not the rest. He really thinks that we ought to have a professional plumber on hand, and he’s probably quite right too.

But you try to find one. I shall ask around and see who knows one, and maybe trouble my friend Liz to put another advert on that Social Media page. Maybe there might even be someone on one of these tradesmen’s sites who has a week or two free. There is bound to be a solution somewhere.

Anyway, last night I had another fairly late night, not being able to motivate myself sufficiently to have everything done in any kind of urgency. It was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing at all. I must have gone to sleep quite quickly, and there I lay until about 06:15 without moving at all.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was in the bathroom sorting myself out. Then after the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night.

There was a police investigation taking place last night and I was in charge of the enquiry. It had taken place in a large house where a lot of people were staying. We’d had a stroke of luck in that someone had identified a coat, a blue and white checked coat. This was not general knowledge so I kept that to myself but I arranged for the rooms of all of the people to be searched. We found someone with a blue and white checked coat, so we decided to keep an eye on her. There were one or two other things too that led us to believe that she was the one who committed the offence but we wanted to make sure that we had all the evidence that we needed. That involved taking her coat and examining it so we had to wait until she was ready to go into the bath. We arranged to send some young girl around who was to tell everyone that she was looking for a blue and white checked coat so that it would divert suspicion if the girl was found carrying one, or if someone else was found carrying one. Then this woman decided that she was going to have a shower. I waited until she went and then I collected my shower things ready to go into another bathroom but she stepped out of her bathroom and saw me. She asked me if I was going for a shower too. I told her not to worry because the two showers were on different circuits. In the meantime, the young girl was coming upstairs and was asking if anyone had seen a blue and white checked coat. I suddenly realised that I had a blue and white checked coat and this could be complicated if the two became mixed up so I had to think of how to say something, but the girl was wandering around the corridors asking everyone whom she met and I thought that she was going to be up to me fairly soon so I need to be able to have some kind of story ready for her

This is a road down which I’ve travelled during the night on many occasions – the one where I’m full of doubt and indecision, just as I am with the kitchen and the rest of the apartment right now. I’ll be really happy when it’s all done (if it ever is) and I don’t have to do anything else. However, being involved in a murder case during the night without Holmes and Watson being present is quite unusual. They’ve joined me on a few trips in the past.

Good Queen Bess (that is, Queen Elizabeth I) was having to choose a new personal confidante and admirer because her previous one, with whom she got along really well, was suspected of being in the pay of the French and all the British secrets were being passed over to the French before the English could do anything about it. Anyway so it was all possible to talk about having a new set of official suites during the interval between the terms but she is believed not to be very happy about that.

Whatever this is all about I have no idea. Apart from a brief reference in passing to a couple of the books that I’ve been reading, it doesn’t appear to have any relevance at all.

The nurse was even earlier this morning. Not that it’s a surprise because he probably doesn’t have much to do. He was soon gone too and I could make breakfast and carry on reading MY NEW BOOK.

Once more, we’re stumbling on little-known facts. John Stow has been describing the rivers, stream and wells that ran through the City of London in the past. Although the existence of one or two of them is disputed today, he’s quoting charters and deeds that refer to many of them, and even gives an inventory of people who contributed money towards their upkeep, and how much they donated.

We then moved on to bridges, and there was a lot of information about those too, doing back to the time of the Saxons.

Interestingly, he talks about a siege of London in 1471 by an army led by someone called, rather eloquently, “Thomas the Bastard Fawconbridge”. With a name like that, he sounded as if he was well-worth tracking down. It turns out that it’s a reference to Thomas Neville, son of William Neville, Lord Fauconberg and a leading supporter of the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses.

For much of the day, I’ve been dealing with a radio programme. There’s the anniversary of a concert coming up soon and I found the recording that we made of it so I’ve been editing it, remixing it, cutting out bits that we don’t need and merging the joins together so that it all runs smoothly and seamlessly.

Then I needed an introduction so I sat down and wrote a couple of thousand words that will make a nice lead-in to the music. And that’s all ready for recording on Saturday night, or maybe even earlier if I have any more really early starts.

My cleaner turned up this afternoon to do her stuff. We went downstairs to the new apartment and took a few more measurements that the kitchen fitter needed. Back up in here, I had a nice shower to try to make myself pretty for dialysis tomorrow, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, even though she doesn’t love me any more.

The kitchen fitter rang me afterwards. We had a lengthy, Rosemaryesque chat and he now seems to have all of the information that he needs. He’s going to stick his head into IKEA to find out the answers to a few questions that I can’t answer, and then we’ll move on and order the product and have it delivered ready for installation

There was time to make a start on another radio programme. Another day that is coming up in due course is “International Biodiversity Day” and with musicians such as Robert Plant, Herbie Flowers and Kate Bush, and groups such as Porcupine Tree, there is the basis of a programme already suggesting itself

If I were to play Herbie Flowers’ song DANCE OF THE LITTLE FAIRIES, I wonder if the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would make any comment.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and very nice too, s usual.

So now, having wasted enough time this evening, I’m off to bed. I have a visitor tomorrow morning, dialysis in the afternoon and another visitor tomorrow evening. I seem to be in great demand right now, which is nice, if it weren’t for the dialysis of course. But at least I’ll smell nice for Emilie the Cute Consultant.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about Thomas the Bastard Fawconbridge, it reminds me of when Nerina went for a job interview.
They asked about her family life, and she replied, mentioning "my husband" quite a few times
"But what’s his name?" asked the interviewer. "What do you call him?"
"I call him quite a few names" replied Nerina "but if I told you what they were, I wouldn’t get the job."

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Tuesday 27th May 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been moaning … "surely not!" – ed … about the yeast available for bread-making – how I can no longer find any of the neutral yeast that I like and how all that seems to be available is the smelly stuff.

So there she was in Leclerc this morning browsing around, like you do … "like SOME people do" – ed … and she suddenly came across some packs of six of the small sachets of neutral yeast, put on the shelves totally out of order, miles away from where they were supposed to be.

There were six of the packs altogether, and it goes without saying that there are now none left on the shelves. So what with the coconut oil that she found for me and liberated, and the tahini that she found ditto, she is certainly keeping me going with all kinds of stuff, and that’s something that’s extremely useful. She’s a handy person to have around.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night I tried my best to go to bed early but somehow, once again, despite being in a comfortable position at one time, I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and it was another night rather later than I liked before I finally crawled into bed.

Despite the pain in my foot, I was asleep quite rapidly, which was no surprise considering how tired I was, and I didn’t move at all until … errr … 05:50 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep after that and so I seized the opportunity and, in the peace and quiet of the moment, dictated the notes for the two additional tracks for the two programmes for which I had edited the rest of the notes on Sunday. I may as well take advantage of some of these early starts if I can.

When the alarm went off, I was already sitting in the dining area taking my medicine, following which I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina and I had been apart for a while now. When I met her, she was with someone else. She hadn’t known him long but they were planning to marry. She asked me if I would like to come to the wedding. I thought “why not?” but then I had to find someone else to come with me, and I didn’t think that that was going to be particularly easy. I could think of maybe one or two people who would but I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about inviting anyone

And that’s half the problem these days. I’m not really enthusiastic about anything any more. My idea of a good night is a comfy chair, a good film on the computer and a mug of really hot chocolate. And these days, I can manage the chair but I no longer have the time to watch a film and instead of the hot chocolate that I used to enjoy so much, I now have a disgusting drink break.

Then I had to go outside to fuel up the van. The fuel was in jerry-cans so I began to pour them out. One of them didn’t seem to be open. It seemed to be sealed so I thought “how did I manage to fuel this up?”. I cut a hole in the top and smelled it. It didn’t smell like anything particular so I poured it into the van anyway and it started, so I set out on a drive. I had someone with me but I can’t remember who it was. I was in the North of England and I was going down this narrow, narrow track between all these rocks. Then I came to where there was a dam that was being restored. That was what I had come to see. I stopped the van and took the camera to take a few photos, but the wind was getting up. The water was behind some kind of small retaining wall to my left. Every now and again a gust of wind would bring some water over the top. As I was standing there, the water was coming over the top of this retaining wall quicker and quicker. It was being very difficult to stand there and take photographs because I was being soaked in this water. The dam was a kind-of stepladder arrangement made of old stone and was being covered in earth presumably to reinforce it but the water behind this retaining wall was only – I dunno – twelve feet high and I thought that this doesn’t look right at all

Even now, I can still see the dam. It’s made of large sandstone blocks in the form of a series of steps, and there is a covering of red powdered sandstone being laid over the slope. For some reason though that is not obvious, the drive to the dam and its surroundings reminded me of when STRAWBERRY MOOSE, Strider and I went for a wander around THE OLD IRON MINE IN THE ABANDONED TOWN OF GAGNON in the peri-Arctic tundra of Upper Québec.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and didn’t stay for long, just long enough to change my dressing on my leg, deal with the usual treatment and fit the compression socks. She’s told me that she’ll try to be here by about 07:00 next Tuesday when I have to go to Paris.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still exploring the (civilian) architecture of Rochester Castle, but we have yet to find any more rude doorways, although there are bold mouldings and architraves a-plenty. It must have been an exciting place in the Thirteenth Century.

Back in here I made a start on the Welsh homework that I had missed while I was in hospital and I’d managed to do most of it by the time that I knocked off for a disgusting drink break.

My cleaner breezed in shortly afterwards with my soya yoghurt and with six packs of neutral baking yeast. Now I’m set up for the next couple of months, which is good news. I’m not a big fan of this other yeast that I’ve been having to use.

This afternoon I’ve attacked my Woodstock programme. There are just two groups for whom I need to write notes, and then there’s the summary so it’s not going to take too long.

However, that’s the easy bit. The difficult bit is going to be to decide what to leave in and what to cut out. That will be a decision and a half, and no mistake. And whatever I include or leave out, it will always be the wrong choice. You can’t satisfy everyone all of the time.

There were a couple of ‘phone calls. Firstly, the hospital in Paris rang to see how I was doing. Secondly, a plumber called. He was interested in my project but his idea of a rapid start is in November, which is not much use to me.

Tea tonight was a taco roll followed by my ginger cake. And the cake is wonderful, really spicy just as it ought to be. But I shall be intrigued to see how all of this turns out when I have a real, decent oven to use. I can’t wait for that.

So I’m off to bed at last, tired and weary, and hoping for a better sleep that will last through until the alarm goes off

But seeing as we have been talking about castles … "well, one of us has" – ed … 20-odd years ago I took Roxanne with me to visit an old castle in Belgium
As we climbed the stairs, I said to her "just think. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago there would have been Kings and Queens and Lords and ladies climbing up these very stairs just like we are doing right now."
"Of course there would have been" she replied, shaking her head in bewilderment.
"Aren’t you surprised?" I asked her
"Of course not" she replied. "There would have to have been. They didn’t have lifts in those days."

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Tuesday 20th May 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely afternoon out this afternoon. A nice drive out in the sun with a chatty, pleasant driver, all the way down to Avranches for a scan.

And then a nice drive home ditto, having been told that the scan had been cancelled by the doctor. What a shame that the doctor never thought to let the ambulance company and me know before we upset everyone.

It seems that my run of bad luck that I mentioned yesterday is continuing into today.

Last night I was thoroughly and completely exhausted after another gruelling dialysis session. It was a real struggle to finish my notes and to do everything else that I needed to do before going to bed, and I was out on my feet.

It was late when I ended up in bed too, not too far short of midnight despite all of my best efforts. And I don’t even remember going to sleep. I must have crashed out immediately.

And during the night, I remember nothing at all. It must have been one of the deepest, heaviest sleeps that I have had for quite some considerable time. Having said that though, nothing in the foregoing prevented me from being awake at … errr … 06:15, just to keep up the tradition of an early start.

When the alarm went off at 07:00, I was in the kitchen sorting out the medication, having already dealt with the bathroom situation. And it’s certainly true, what they say about these new calcium tablets. I have proof.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone, and found that there was nothing on it at all. That left me with somewhat mixed feelings. Part of me was grateful for having had a really deep, undisturbed sleep for once, but the other part of me was disappointed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I seem to have these days is what happens during the night – and that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

Instead, I found a few things to do although my heart wasn’t really in it. I wasn’t feeling too well this morning for some reason.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in to start her week on duty. And breezed out again just as promptly. "I can’t stop" she said. "There are people waiting for me down at the office".

Yes, it’s her first day back, so all of the people who have postponed their injections and blood tests over the last week are now clamouring to be caught up.

After she left, I made breakfast, not that I was feeling much like it, and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our whistle-stop tour is continuing and, after passing by a couple of somewhat minor piles, we’ve arrived at Penrith Castle. But there doesn’t seem to be much to see there either, so I suppose that we shan’t be there for long.

The history of many of these places is interesting, but that’s not why I’m reading the book. I’m here for the military architecture and in that I’m disappointed. It’s just becoming an endless, repetitive litany of mullions, corbels, pilasters and architraves.

After breakfast I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off to be marked. It came back with a "excellent as usual" which took me quite by surprise. I often think that I wouldn’t mind a sip of whatever our tutor has in her water bottle.

The preparation for the lesson passed well enough and I was surprised by how much I – well, didn’t know, but could make a reasonably-accurate guess. Mind you, the subject this week is the story of Saint David and seeing as I have been spending an awful lot of time just recently reading about the Sixth Century, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I could probably have written the article myself.

As for the lesson itself, it passed really well and I was quite pleased with it. However, I learned something new today that had nothing to do with my lesson, and that is for all my talk about rubbing shoulders with rock stars when I used to drive my sound engineer around, one of my classmates is related to DJ “Spot On” John Morris and was chatting at his funeral to PJ Proby and also Uli John Roth of The Scorpions.

After the lesson was over I went and had a disgusting drink break and then prepared myself for my scan.

It’s a good job that I did too because the taxi was early. And we had a lovely, chatty drive down to Avranches and the hospital.

It was there that I was told that my appointment had been cancelled. And cancelled on the 8th of April too, the day after I walked out of the hospital after having discharged myself. So if this is someone’s idea of a joke or an act of petty revenge, then I am not impressed at all.

It’s not that I mind them cancelling my appointments, but more the fact that they don’t tell me and, even worse, don’t tell the taxi company. I can’t afford to be in their bad books. Still, it was a lovely drive out and a lovely drive back with pleasant company.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I made my weary way upstairs. Not too long to go now before I plan on moving. I’ve decided that even if I can’t find a plumber and an electrician, then as long as I have the basic kitchen installed, I shall go with that and like it for now.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll, with loads of stuffing remaining for a leftover curry tomorrow. But I need to think about emptying the freezer at some point, although it won’t be long before that’s a thing of the past when I eventually have my new fridge-freezer. There will be tons of room in the new set-up, but I bet that it won’t take me too long to fill it.

But I can worry about that again because right now I’m going to have an early night, even though this is the least tired that I have felt at this time of night for quite a while. That good sleep last night really did do me some good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pointless journeys … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the guy who went into the ticket office of Crewe Railway Station.
"I’d like a return ticket, please" he asked
"Certainly, sir" replied the clerk. "Where to?"
"Why, back here, of course."

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Tuesday 13th May 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this afternoon that I vowed never to do unless there was a dire necessity to so do, and that was to go back to bed for a while.

Mind you, there actually was a dire necessity this afternoon. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s absolutely pointless trying to go to bed early. All it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

Not that last night was all that early either. It was quite a struggle for some reason to keep my concentration going and I kept on drifting off down little side alleys when I should have been working and finishing everything off.

Once I’d finished doing what needed to be done, it was quite another matter to find the energy to haul myself out of my seat and head off into the bathroom to prepare for the night. However, once I finally made it into bed, I remember nothing. I must have been out in an instant.

And as I implied just now, we had another early start. We’ve had some early starts in the past, that’s for sure, but awakening at 03:05 is something like extremism. It’s not as if I went back to sleep either, but I was tossing and turning for quite a while to no good purpose.

Eventually, round about 05:00, I gave up the struggle and raised myself from the Undead. In the bathroom, I sorted myself out and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

It was about 05:45 when I finally came back in here. It was deadly quiet outside – not even the goélands were cackling – so I made the most of my early start by dictating the radio notes that I had written on Sunday for the eleventh track of programme 260313.

Pressing on, I remixed and edited them and then combined them with the two halves of the programme that I had already assembled. I ended up being, would you believe, as much as twenty-eight seconds over. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s enough superfluous stuff in what I dictate that can be edited out without changing the sense, the meaning or the rhythm, that it was no real problem to cut the programme down to exactly one hour.

So that was a job well done, making the most of the unexpected hour or two.

There was time to transcribe the dictaphone notes, and I’m still scratching my head about these. Firstly, over the fact that there were some. Less than four hours’ sleep doesn’t give you very much time to wander off, but somehow I managed it. The second surprising thing is the actual contents of the notes themselves. What on earth must I have been doing?

Starting off, I dreamed that I was in hospital, having to be compressed at the end of a session of dialysis but there was much more to it than that because I had to have some kind of other treatment too. This meant that I couldn’t really leave the bed so they had to take me home on a stretcher. From where I was in the hospital, all the windows looked out into the mountains. You could see cars in the distance simply by the reflection of the sun in their windscreens. This went on for miles. We were there, trying to guess which one was our vehicle that would be picking us up. I ended up trying to sit up, which I managed, and they gave me some kind of programme towards when I should be able to walk and when I should be able to leave the bed etc but I was convinced that I was going to complete this programme much sooner than they wanted me to and I was already making plans to rise up and leave the bed even though I shouldn’t be able to do that, I wasn’t going to let this illness get in my way of getting up.

This reminds me of when I was in North-Eastern USA in 2019. I’d been reading John Bourke’s book ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK about his spell serving with General Crook on their mission to pacify … "you mean ‘exterminate’" – ed … the Native Americans. Bourke tells of the success that they had in tracking raiding parties … "you mean ‘groups of people defending their homeland’" – ed … thanks to the use of the heliograph. The air was so clear up there that a heliograph message flashed off a mirror could be seen fifty miles away. When I was up there in Montana looking for the remains of Fort CF Smith, I saw the sunlight reflecting off the roof of a corn silo, all of forty miles away.

As for hauling myself out of bed when I’m not supposed to, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have “previous” in this respect. I’m determined not to let this illness get the better of me and I’ll fight until the end

And then I stepped back into that dream again. After they had given me an injection, they said that I could go home. I had to take my time really slowly to sit up in bed, by which time my neighbour was eating a meal and it must have been really difficult for her to concentrate. She kept on looking round and I could see the shelves and the parcels shelf behind the rear seat. She wondered how I was going to travel six hundred miles on that … fell asleep here … it came to the point that I’d had to walk and was going to do my best to do it properly on my béquille.

Whatever that dream is all about, I don’t have the faintest idea. Although I do have to say that if I’m sharing a room with a charming young woman, I wouldn’t be in any great rush to leave the hospital, that’s for sure.

It was nearly time to leave the hospital. I was dressed and all my things were packed etc. I knew that it wasn’t going to be as simple as it sounded because of the distances that these drivers have to cover every day. They couldn’t be here on demand like you might think that they would so I was prepared for a wait. There were a couple of young nurses assigned to help me climb into the van but I didn’t really encourage them because I knew that it was going to be far simpler the … fell asleep here … I had these nurses assigned to me to help me climb into the car but I didn’t know where or when or whatever that was going to arrive. There’s much more to it than this but I keep falling asleep so I can’t dictate it and I can’t remember most of it anyway but it was about me being prepared to leave the hospital in a taxi.

This is clearly related to the struggle that I had to climb into the minibus yesterday. I wish that they had allowed two nurses to come to help me into the thing. They could have come home with me too and helped me out of the vehicle, up the stairs and into the bed.

Well, there’s no harm in wishing, is there?

It’s the male nurse’s turn to work for this coming week. He duly turned up and tried to begin a discussion about my stay at the hospital. I’m not sure how many times I had to tell him that I didn’t want to discuss it and he was still going on about it when he left.

Once he’d gone I could press on and make breakfast, with my lovely fresh bread from Sunday, and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’ve now left Ludlow Castle after having had a good chat about the history, and having passed by several minor edifices, we’re now at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire where, doubtless, we’ll have another guided tour of whatever is left of the castle without any kind of discussion about the military architecture of the place.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh class until the lesson began and then, to my surprise considering that I’d been absent for two weeks, I had a rather successful lesson and I was quite pleased with what I had accomplished. So what’s been happening here?

This afternoon, I had a visit from one of these agencies who responded to my advert about my new apartment. After only thirty seconds of discussion, I decided that they were not for me. It became evident only too quickly that it wouldn’t be my project but theirs.

We had fatuous questions like "what about the insulation of the apartment? That will need checking" and "those radiators will have to go" and "it’ll all need a good coat of paint too" etc etc.

The crowning glory was the discussion about the kitchen
"What’s your budget on the kitchen?"
"The apartment is rather a budget apartment, 40m². It’s pointless, if not ridiculous, putting a deluxe kitchen in there. But on the other hand, I don’t want a ‘bargain-basement, economy’ kitchen"
"I see" she replied. "So you’re looking at about €15,000 then. And we can sort out some nice electromenager too."

In other words, they can sling their hook.

This renovation is turning out to be much more complicated than I ever imagined, simply because I can’t persuade tradesmen to turn up. I would give all that I had … "and more besides" – ed … to have a reliable artisan who would be happy to do just what I wanted him to do.

Throughout the afternoon I’d been going colder and colder until I was feeling really uncomfortable. My head was spinning round and I could feel myself sliding into one of these spells that I have where I’m not able to function at all.

That was the cue to set the alarm for ninety minutes hence and climb into bed underneath the bedclothes, fully clothed. I blame it on less than four hours sleep last night, myself.

After I awoke, it was a struggle to leave the bed, but once I was up and about I concentrated on choosing the music for programme 260417. There are quite a few gaps in the series but I’ll start to fill those once I finish my Woodstock weekend, whenever that might be.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, delicious as usual. And now I’m off to bed, hoping to have a decent night’s sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about our Welsh class … "well, one of us has" – ed …one of my classmates had said earlier that she would be late as she had to go for a memory exam at the local hospital.
However, as the lesson began, there she was.
"What happened to the memory exam?" I asked her
"Ohhh damn!" she replied. "I’ve forgotten to go".

0

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE …

… that has been today!

It actually started off quite well this morning but as seems to be the usual situation, it didn’t take all that long for it to descend into chaos.

For a change, last night I was in bed fairly early – round about 23:30. And that is early too, considering how things have been in here just recently. It’s even more surprising when you consider the wretched night that I had had after dialysis on Monday.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, although I didn’t stay asleep for long. I have vivid memories of awakening a couple of times during the night, although they were just something brief and of the moment.

By 05:30 though, I was awake, and wide awake too. After a while of gathering my wits (and you’ve no idea how long it takes to do that, seeing as I have so few left), I gave some serious thought to leaving the bed and just as I was about to throw off the covers I went back to sleep again.

Once more, I awoke quite soon afterwards but even so, I had had time to go off for a wander around. I was making a start on digging the Dee Navigation, the stretch of the river that runs between Chester and the Dee estuary that was built in the – was it the Sixteenth Century? … "Eighteenth Century" – ed …to avoid the parts of the River Dee that had become silted up.

That’s why the border between England and Wales up around Queensferry and Shotton is nowhere near the river. It used to be, back in the days of old, but when that baron whatever-his-name-is … "Hugh Lupus" – ed … constructed the weir in Chester to power his water mill, the speed of the water slowed down dramatically and the Dee began to silt up with the incoming tide. Digging the new channel was a desperate final gamble to revive the fortunes of the port of Chester.

So when the alarm went off at 07:00 I had already been up, washed, had my medication and was sitting at my desk working. First task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. Isabelle the Nurse came round last night. She wanted to treat me with something to do with my legs. I had to put on my shorts before I went for a shower so that she could sort out my legs. The only pair of shorts that I had were an orange pair. She made some remark about “flesh-coloured” that I didn’t understand. When I had my shorts on I then went to put on my trousers but I suddenly had a realisation that she was going to treat my legs so I took off my trousers again. Then we had a chat about the bathroom and various kinds of things. Then she wanted the living room tidied – it was rather a mess. I had a look inside and thought “where has she put the stuff that she’s just brought in?”. No-one seemed to know. I thought “never mind, I’ll pick up the vacuum cleaner and begin to vacuum”. I pressed the foot switch for the vacuum cleaner but it wouldn’t work so I began to go round and pick up things by hand. There was a kitchen roll of orange paper and a ball of wool on the floor behind the sofa. The kitchen roll had been savaged by the cat and the ball of wool had been spread everywhere and looked as if it had also been savaged by the cat. I picked that up and the cat was still in it. It was struggling so I tried to put it down on the floor and let the cat find its own way out of the mess that it had created. We began to talk about cats. There were these cats that lived on some kind of marsh. One had just died that had been born in 1993. I thought that that was an incredible age for a cat to have.

Yesterday, I forgot to mention that I’d been talking to my little great-niece (or great little niece) in Canada. She’s back home from University for a couple of weeks and when she arrived, she was mobbed by the three cats. When she went up to the mill to see her parents she was mobbed by all of the mill cats. Consequently she spent all yesterday filming them and she was sending me her little videos for me to approve and to go “aww”. I would love to have another cat but I shall have to wait until I’m downstairs before I make any plans. As for wanting the living room tidied, so do I but somehow I have a mental block when it comes to things like that.

Later on I was on board a bus or train last night with some people, some of whom I knew. We’d been discussing various things. I’d been sorting out my papers. I had a look through – it was all my Welsh homework. I saw that it was a real mess, totally untidy and scrawly and I couldn’t read some of it. I just wondered what was in my mind when I had written some. The handwriting was just a jumble of straight lines. We were sitting there talking and I was putting away my things. I suddenly looked at the clock. It was after 18:30 and our train to take us home comes at 18:45. I said “shouldn’t we better be moving?”. Everyone began to make themselves ready. I began to put away my computer. Someone asked “why are you putting away your computer? Why not leave it here until the morning?”. I thought that that was probably the strangest thing that I’ve ever heard, leaving a laptop lying around on the seat of a bus so I carried on trying to put it away, panicking about the fact that we are going to miss our train if we aren’t ready in a minute.

Are we having another panic and bout of indecision again? It seems to be happening more and more often, although this is the first “train” dream that we’ve had for a while. We were having them quite regularly at one time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and out again in a matter of a couple of minutes. She didn’t hang around long at all today. I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK. We have finished at Knaresborough and are now in Leicester, having made a very brief stop at Leeds Castle in Kent.

We seem to be covering quite a bit of ground on our travels and we aren’t a quarter of the way through the book yet. At some point we’ll have to be spending a long time somewhere, even if just to fill out the pages of the book, and hopefully, we might even begin to discuss military architecture.

After breakfast I came in here to begin work. First task was to look for some music that I had been trying to find yesterday. And this was when all of my troubles began.

Some friends of mine, who have been very helpful to me in some of my certain endeavours, had, well, let’s just say “a certain issue” and as a result, everything went with its mammary glands pointing towards the sky.

Between us all, we had to end up rebuilding a computer program, and it took us about seven hours to do it. And to write a computer program of 121mb in seven hours is some going.

In the meantime, I was desperately looking around for another alternative to keep me going, without a great deal of success, and I ended up falling miles behind in the work that I had to do today.

There were the usual interruptions. There were a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner put in an appearance, and there was also the shower, nice as it was. However, I had to put the heater back on in the bathroom for half an hour.

There was also a ‘phone call that needed my attention. Another builder rang me up to talk to me about my little project downstairs. This lot sounded frightfully professional and I have a feeling that their prices will reflect their professionalism. None of this “I’ll just nip round for five minutes with my tape measure” lark.

By the time that I knocked off for tea, I had all of the music that I needed, all edited, remixed, paired and segued. No notes though – I’ll have to dictate them tomorrow, I suppose.

The computer program is up and running too, and it works. Although for how long, I really don’t know. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon, I don’t think. I’m really not looking forward to it at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about falling behind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling one of my friends about my problems earlier.
"Just like my local butcher" she said
"How do you mean?" I asked.
"Some woman came in and sat down on his bacon slicer" she replied
"what happened then?" I asked, bitterly regretting having done so.
"The butcher didn’t notice" she replied "and he ended up getting behind in his deliveries"

0

Tuesday 8th April 2025 – I WAS ON THE PO …

… dium again today in the quiz in the Welsh class. I really don’t know what’s happening to me these days but I seem to be getting to grips much better with my Welsh than I was a year or two ago. Let’s hope that I can keep it up for the rest of the course. We’re so far behind on this one (Unit 11 out of 25) that I reckon that we’ll have another two years to do instead of the one that was programmed for the final course.

Perhaps my improvement was due to the better night that I had last night. I finished my notes, my statistics and my backing-up fairly early and in principle I could have been in bed by 23:00 but I can always find other things to distract me when I’m supposed to be doing something important, and it was almost midnight when I finally made it into bed.

As for the night itself, I remember nothing whatsoever. I must have been dead to the World and slept all the way through until the morning.

When I awoke it was still fairly dark so I was wondering what time it might be. I was giving the idea of looking at the time some serious thought when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE rent the heavens asunder. And so it was probably about 06:55 when I opened my eyes.

It was a struggle to my feet but I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in a class last night working on some kind of project. It was something of a mixture between a maths class, a language class and a logic class. We were going through a text, I suppose, and then we were moved into small groups and we had to discuss certain elements of what we’d been doing. One of these pieces was so complicated with these enormous words in it that it took absolutely ages for us to read it. It was very difficult to understand. Trying to make any headway on this project with this piece of work was extremely complicated. I think that everyone was in despair by the end of it. With five minutes to go before the end of the lesson the teacher said that we would concentrate now on doing something else. The first thing that she did was to ask us the answers to a couple of questions that she’d set before we’d been moved into groups. Of course, at that moment I couldn’t find my papers where I’d written the answers. I had a feeling that this particular lesson had been a total disaster today.

We’ve all had disasters like that in the past – missing out on something really important that has completely derailed a whole series of studies and left us stranded halfway back down the course. I’ve still not really recovered from missing all those weeks of my Welsh course in the autumn of 2022 when I spent two months in hospital in Belgium I used to try to make up for everything by going on a Summer School but dialysis has rendered that almost impossible now.

Isabelle the Nurse put her sooty foot in the door this morning. She’s started her week’s activity today. We talked about having some new compression socks, and it appears that her oppo has overlooked to tell her about it so we started the discussion again and she’ll see my doctor’s secretary to ask for a prescription.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY NEW BOOK. Our stay at Durham was very brief indeed and after passing by the castles at Eaton Socon and Ewyas Harold, we’ve now arrived at Exeter Castle.

At the moment, he’s setting the scene and I imagine that in a few days we’ll have the guided tour. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m disappointed by the fact that although he goes to great lengths to tell us what there is or was, he does not mention why they did it. I’d love to know more about the military principles that went into the design and building of all of this.

Another thing that I find confusing is his method of dating. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the change of calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752, the loss of 11 days, and the change of the New Year from 25th March to 1st January. Prior to that, it was the custom to date events by what they called the “regnal year” – such as “in the third year of the reign of Richard III” or “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth”. However, after 1752 it became the practice to date events by the actual calendar year, such as 2025 or 1939 or 1900 etc.

Not our author though. He’s insisting on using the regnal year to date almost everything, even though it had been out of fashion for 150 years when he started to write his book, and I’m having to exert myself in order to carry out some rapid mental calculation as I carry on reading.

Back in here I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off for marking, and then set down to revise and prepare for my lesson later this morning.

By the time that the lesson began I’d prepared almost the entire unit which is good news because the more I do today, the less I have to do next week. But it was just as well that I did because it was quite a short unit and we’ve almost finished it.

We had a quiz about the things that we should have learned last week and, in contrast to how my dream went, I finished on the podium. At one stage I had a run of eight questions correct, and I’ve never done that before in any Welsh class.

And my Welsh joke – it went down really well and if the tutor laughed out loud at it, then it must have been good.

After the disgusting drink break (we actually had the prescribed two today) I had a few things to do and then I began to choose the music for the next radio programme.

The very next one will be very easy because it relates to a concert. I already have all of the music and I wrote the text years ago when Liz and I were running “Radio Anglais” in the Auvergne, so I concentrated on the one after.

This one is another one that will be complicated because there are so many anniversaries that took place on that date. It will take careful selection to sort it out.

My cleaner stuck her head in the apartment too. She’d been to LeClerc and had found some slices of vegan cheese for me, so cheese on toast will be back on the menu for lunch on Sunday.

There should also have been a lengthy chat with my friend in the UK who is handling this ongoing project but he was unavoidably detained elsewhere with another matter so we agreed to continue our chat tomorrow.

Tea tonight was as usual a delicious taco roll with rice and veg followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing left too so seeing as how things are unfolding here, I might lengthen it and divide it into two so that there will be one for next week

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because I have bread to make. I forgot that this afternoon so I’ll rustle up a 300-gram loaf in the air fryer and then go to bed.

But before I go, I bet that you are all wondering about the Welsh joke that I told in class.
It’s not easy to say it in English because with Welsh being an ancient language, it follows really ancient grammar rules that were in place long before the Romanisation of modern Western European languages. One of those rules is that where a noun is “feminine”, the first letter of the adjective used to describe it may mutate
So – "Mae dau o blant yn cerdded yn y goedwig"
Two children are walking in the wood
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘edrych ar yr aderyn fawr yn y goeden’ "
The girl says ‘look at the big bird in the tree’
"Mae hogyn yn dweud ‘Aderyn MAWR – aderyn yn wrywaidd’ "
The boy said ‘Big bird – bird is masculine’ (so the adjective ‘big’ doesn’t mutate)
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘mae gen ti lygaid rhagorol’ "
The girl says ‘you have really good eyes’

0

Tuesday 1st April 2025 – I HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

… lie-in this morning.

Every now and again, except that it’s more often than not these days, the battery in my mobile ‘phone is evaporating before my eyes.

Now that has taken me quite by surprise because it’s not as if it’s all that old. I only bought it in March 2017 so it’s really quite new. Anyway, yesterday it was doing it again so I switched the battery saver to “maximum” and charged it up from the travelling laptop while I was at dialysis.

It goes without saying that I was aware that quite a few of the services would be disabled while the battery saver was at the max, but I really and honestly didn’t expect the alarm function to be one of them. I can’t believe that my own telephone would play a poisson d’avril on me!

It was therefore actually quite a good night for sleeping. In principle I could even have been in bed by 23:00 but as usual, I loitered around for a while. Nevertheless, it was still before midnight when I crawled under the covers.

As far as the night went, I can’t remember very much at all. I was well away with the fairies, although not in any kind of fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

One thing that I can definitely say is that there seems to be nothing at all wrong with my body clock. In real money, the time is one hour less than the time on the clock since the clocks were altered at the weekend, so it was really 07:02, not the indicated 08:02, when I opened my eyes this morning.

Once the actual time had registered in what remains of my brain these days, I leapt to my feet … "not exactly" – ed … and staggered off to the bathroom. Of course, it had to be the day that the second nurse starts his round, so with no injections or blood samples to take, he arrived quite early, long before I was ready.

After he left, I could finish my scrubbing, change my clothes and then wander off for breakfast. And armed with my porridge, toast and coffee (and orange juice, and medication) I could read MY BOOK.

We’re reaching the end of the book now. He’s finished his exploration of stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in Cornwall and Devon and we’re now off to Egypt where tomorrow we’ll be comparing the sacred sites there with those that we’ve encountered in Britain.

What I have to say though is that, enjoyable and informative the book may have been and I don’t regret reading it, I expected a book entitled “Stonehenge and other British Stone Monuments” to have much more than 60 pages out of 332 pages of content devoted to the principal subject.

And having spent so long before coming round to the important issue of cultural migration, he abandons it and moves on much too quickly. In my humble … "?!?!?" – ed … opinion, whilst all of the physical details of the monuments are important, it’s even more important to consider the progression and evolution of the monuments in general, either in a time-basis at the same location or a place-location at various different times so as to see how the various cultures have migrated, bringing their gods and so on with them as they travelled

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there must be a lot of mileage in plotting the spread of cultures from their original place and throughout their track to their point of arrival and final settlement.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was telling one of the nurses to be careful of this guy from the Wild West who started to appear. It seemed that he had chosen a couple of my clothes to wear to make his first appearance. That was very confusing because one of the nurses undid the wrong set of clothes for me so I warned them about it and warned them that this person would be coming in to dialysis. I would be stopping two days and taking a little more out each day. The dialysis for me went OK but everyone else was bothered by the noise coming from the bathroom where this little guy had come into the World and now wanted to go out again and go away. They asked me (…… fell asleep here …) it seemed that the guy had actually come into dialysis wearing a pair of my clothes and that’s why he wasn’t noticed. It wasn’t until they’d shaken them that he fell out. By that time the dressing room was closed and locked etc – no-one could go in. They had to find someone who had the key to the place to let him out.

If I’m dreaming about my dialysis sessions, it really IS the end of the world. I want to forget all about them when I’m not there and to relax, but I can’t do that if it’s preying on my mind like this. Especially when it all deteriorates into some kind of incomprehensible mutterings. However as for the guy who had just come into the World and wanted to leave and go away again, I can’t blame anyone for wanting to go out of this World once they’ve seen what’s going on in it.

Next stop was to prepare for my Welsh lesson, and there was a lot of ground to cover. It had to be thorough too because there would only be a couple of us today, what with ill-health, holidays and the like. So for once, I had to exert myself.

It’s not very often that I’m right, but there were only three of us today (a fourth arrived half-way through). We worked hard and quickly, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it and I thought that I did quite well, which makes a change. Since I’ve been using the dialysis as a kind-of enforced revision period, I seem to be making better progress.

After I finished, I had a disgusting drink break and then there were things to do. I needed to contact the Canadian Border Security people about that strange letter that I had the other week. That was quite important.

There were also some bills to pay, including the rates on my Canadian property. They have increased to their highest level ever this year, and for my couple of acres of North American hillside, I’m having to pay the massive sum of $145.60 – just under £79:00.

That was an interesting exercise. It took me an hour all told – five minutes to connect with my Canadian bank, five minutes to make the bank transfer and the remaining fifty minutes to look for my Canadian bank card.

There was a hospital bill to pay – there’s a daily charge of €20:00 for your food etc but as I’m classed as terminally ill, I can claim it back from the Social Security later.

Finally, there’s the indexation increase for my rent here. It’s now increased by €2:70 per month. But not for long, because I’m hoping to be out of here by the end of summer.

Having put all of that out of the way, I put another plan into action. I mentioned my failing telephone just now and as it’s the anniversary of my contract, I’m entitled to a substantial discount on a new ‘phone. I had a look on my provider’s website and saw that they had the “previous model” of the latest 5G ‘phone.

It has 128Gb of internal memory and also a compass, something that would be useful if I install the “Skymap” and some other geographical features. Last year, when it was the latest model, it was selling at an “upper three-figure” price but because of my contract renewal, it was available to me for just the two final digits. That has to be the way forward, I reckon, and so it’s on its way even as we speak.

The rest of the day has been spent on starting the next radio programme. This is going to be an interesting one because there are quite a few birthdays, deaths and album releases to celebrate. Some of the stuff that I need I don’t have, so I spent the latter part of the afternoon tracking it down.

Tea tonight was of course a taco roll with rice and veg followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Delicious as usual. However, I am going to come across a problem, namely that I shan’t need a LeClerc order for another few weeks, with the amount of stuff on hand, but I shall be running out of peppers to stuff – there’s only one left in the freezer.

That means that for once in my life I shall have to use my imagination and make several meals that aren’t on the programme. That should be interesting, to say the least. But it’s high time that I varied my diet.

But that’s something to worry about later. Right now I’m off to bed.

But not before this subject about people leaving this World because of the mess that we have made of it, about which we were talking just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … has been explored.
A few years ago a couple of extra-terrestrials came down to Earth to look for intelligent life on our planet, but they soon departed.
"Did you find any?" asked the commander of the expedition, back on their spaceship
"Intelligent life on Earth?" retorted one of them. "You must be joking"
"What do you mean?" asked the commander
"They have these incredible nuclear weapons" replied the extra-terrestrial visitor " and they can defend themselves to the death with it. Anything that comes close to them, they can exterminate it and everything for thousands of miles around, simply at the push of a button"
"And who are they pointing them at?" asked the commander. "Mars? Jupiter? Alpha Centauri? Sirius?"
"You won’t believe this" replied the visitor "but they are pointing them at each other!"

0

Tuesday 25th March 2025 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… good day in my Welsh lesson today and I’ve no idea what happened. In fact, we had another quiz and I finished in second place. That was something that took me completely by surprise. And had I realised quicker that I had to press “send” to register my results, I might even have finished first.

No danger of me finishing anything like first last night. Another long night dragged on and I was still letting it all hang out after midnight. In fact, it was shortly after 00:30 when I went to bed and, asleep quite quickly, I remember nothing whatever until the alarm went off at 07:00 – nothing at all.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was out and about on my travels, somewhere with some kind of tropical situation going on, I’m not sure exactly what and I can’t really remember very much of it now but it was certainly one of these tropical scenes with palm trees and all of that kind of thing

However, that was that. I can’t remember any more at all. However, I wonder if the tropical setting of that dream relates to the tropical years that we were discussing … "well, one of us was" – ed … yesterday.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then went for my medication. Back in here there was nothing on the dictaphone – it really must have been an undisturbed night – and so i checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off

Hurricane Isabelle the Nurse blew in, later than usual on her first day after her rest, what with all of the injections and blood tests that people won’t let her oppo do. She was her usual cheerful self but didn’t hang around long, soon back out on her travels.

Once she’d left I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Having discussed the Tropical and Sidereal Years yesterday, we have moved on. Today, we started off by discussing the Metonic Cycle, which has nothing whatever to do with bicycles.

In fact, it’s an ancient Babylonian period of time of nineteen years, with twelve years of twelve lunar months and seven years of thirteen lunar months. According to Titus Livius a Roman historian, "in the twentieth year the days should fall in with the same position of the sun from which they had started".

We talked about the Hyperboreans just recently. It was said in the myth that Apollo visited the Hyperboreans every nineteen years. We also talked about the Antikythera Computer, and it is said that that machine could calculate on the basis of the Metonic Cycle in addition to its other functions.

Surprisingly, the Metonic Cycle was still being used as recently as 1752 for the calculation of Easter, although the inclusion of Leap Years subsequently has confused the cycle.

From there we went on to discuss the Callippic Cycle, discovered by the Greek astronomer Callippus who worked out that if we had four Metonic Cucles and took one day away from the final Metonic Cycle, it would be more accurate. Modern calculations indicate that the Metonic Cycle loses one day every 219 years, whereas the Callippic Cycle loses one day every 553 years

From there, we went on to discuss the Hipparchic Cycle, calculated by the Rhodian astronomer Hipparchus about whom we have talked recently. He took four Callippic Cycles of 304 years in total, removed one day, and thought that it would be totally accurate. Actually, it isn’t. It’s out by all of 33 minutes every 345 years, and not even modern calculations were not that accurate until NASA’s eclipse computer came on-line.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went for my lesson. It actually passed very well which was surprising. We’re discussing crime and punishment this week and the tutor gave us an assignment to discuss, about the times that we might have broken the law.

The examples were things like cycling on the pavement and that sort of thing and I was sorely tempted to throw a shark into the swimming pool.

However I restrained myself and talked about the time that I (at just seventeen) and my girlfriend (not quite fourteen) borrowed the ID cards of my sister and her husband to go to see Lindisfarne at the local nightclub. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t realise that they wouldn’t go on stage until 22:45 and not finish until 01:00 (she had to be in by 22:30), or that my girlfriend had never drunk alcohol before that night. So at about 02:00 I was probably the most unpopular person in Wistaston and I never saw her after that.

After the lesson I had a disgusting drink break and then my cleaner put her sooty foot in the door. And what a marvel she is. A few weeks ago they had on special offer at LeClerc some large plastic boxes with lids, the kind that you hide under the bed. I’d given up hope of ever receiving any, but she turned up with four or five, which is marvellous.

So all of the cables and so on that are lying around here that I only ever use once every Preston Guild, so they can be stuck in a box out of the way and hidden under the bed until needed.

What I’ve been doing for the rest of the day is tracking down the music that I need for the next radio programme. One or two of the tracks were, as usual, difficult to find but eventually, by the time that I had finished, I had managed to lay my hands upon them and now I have a full selection from which to choose.

Tea tonight is, of course, taco roll with some of the stuffing, accompanied by rice and veg, followed by the last of the date bread. Tomorrow I’ll start on the ginger, orange and coconut cake.

The problem with what to do with all of the stuffing that I made yesterday has been resolved. LeClerc has tins of chick peas on special offer this week so I’ve ordered a couple. Tomorrow I shall throw in a tin that I have here, along with a jar of sauce that has been here since Noah brought it down from Mount Ararat, and there should be enough for several servings, some of which I can freeze for another time.

So right now I’m off to bed ready for a day of radioing and showering.

But seeing as we have been talking about me coming second in the Welsh quiz … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of Job, who in his Book, Chapter 23 Verse 10, said "I shall come forth as gold". Hovever he actually came fifth and was silver.

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Tuesday 18th March 2025 – THEY HAVE HAD …

… the results of all of the tests and examinations that I underwent at hospital in Paris several weeks ago, at long last.

"And Mr Hall, we need you to come to see us as soon as possible." said the secretary. "And bring your jammies."

"You’ll be seeing Professor Roos-Weil" (my haematology specialist) "and Professor Maisonobe" (my neurologist). " They both want to see you. I’ll talk to the dialysis people tomorrow and arrange for some of your sessions to be undertaken here."

All of that sounds quite ominous to me. Heaven alone knows what’s going on and why I need to be away from home for so long that they are arranging dialysis sessions in Paris. But never mind. I have so much going on right now to worry about that it will be at least another three weeks before I’ll be able to spare the time to worry about this latest development.

One thing that can be said for all of this though is that they are actively doing something and that can only be good news as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t leaving me to stew in my own juice.

So having pushed that out of the way I can go back to doing what I ought to be doing, and that is to write up the notes of today before I forget.

As usual, we’ll start (or maybe finish) with yesterday. After writing up my notes and backing up, I stayed up for a while, wandering around in cyberspace having a good look round before I went to bed. And it was 00:30 before I knew it. That was the cue to sling my hook and I crawled into bed.

Once more, it was another good night’s sleep where I hardly moved a muscle as far as I’m aware. However when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about, and had been for a good half an hour. It’s the morning following a Dialysis Day so no surprise there.

There was the good scrub up of course, and then into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

To my surprise there were some items on it. It had obviously been a busy night. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were driving a taxi. They had to go to pick up someone at 25 Vincent Street Crewe. That was a house that I had bought and was waiting for the tenant to leave so I thought that it might be interesting for me to go along to see and have a look at the tenant. I turned up and it was a younger woman and an older woman. The younger one helped the older one down towards the car and helped her climb in. She told them that she had to go to the pharmacy rather than mess around with the British Government’s telephone health service. The only place where there was likely to be a pharmacy was the airport. I said “I think that its 24 hours at the airport, the pharmacy” but they weren’t so sure but we took the lady and set off. Holmes and Watson had noticed that she looked like a typical alcoholic and they’d been whispering amongst themselves about it. It turned out that she had been out last night and someone had put some pills in her drink, I’m not quite sure why. They set off in the car and reached the airport. She told them to wait in the waiting room while she went to the pharmacy. Watson told her to be careful not to go back on the stage again. Holmes and Watson were waiting there, waiting for quite a while but the woman never reappeared. They slowly began to realise that it was they who had been taken for a ride. They began to discuss the woman and noted a few of her identifying characteristics which were almost certainly false. When they began to talk about her voice, which was disguised, they suddenly realised that they had taken Professor Moriarty to the airport. He’d enticed them there by the story that they were at this house that I had bought and it would give us an opportunity to see the tenants. Holmes and Watson were then wondering what would now happen that Moriarty had planned for them while they were at the airport.

It’s interesting that Holmes, Watson and Professor Moriarty should appear during the night. They aren’t my usual night-time companions by any means and I wonder what has happened to drag them out of the woodwork. As for Vincent Street, it’s certainly not the type of house that came into my mind when I transcribed the notes (distant recollections like this are triggered off when I write them out) but the parallel with “waiting for the tenant to move out” is quite clear. However, why Vincent Street?

A little later I’d been out with some guy from University, a student who was a disabled campaigner. We’d been seeing people and he’d been driving the car and had come back home. Then there was something else that needed to be done so I said that we’d go in my car. He replied “we could always carry on in mine”. I answered “it must be my turn to drive”. He opened the door to climb out of his car. At that moment a big old Ford came past. I expected him to climb back into the car to let it go but he just climbed out in front of it and made the car swerve round him. But the car didn’t. It drove very close to him and brushed him as it went past. He walked after the car to have a word with it which I found amazing because he’s usually in a wheelchair. They began to have an argument in the street. I went to the house and picked up some slices of apples that I’d been preparing and put them in a plastic container and swirled them around with a little water to keep them fresh while I was waiting for him to come back. However, in all the time that I was waiting he never returned.

Knowing the guy concerned, it really would be just like him to go waging war on innocent motorists and other people who have unwittingly trod on his rather principled toes. He was a lovely guy and I liked him a lot, but he had become disabled following a “serious incident” involving a representative of a group of people of whom one would expect much better behaviour, and he was rather bitter about it, which is no surprise. He had my deepest sympathy, but I wish that he would have restrained himself once or twice instead of taking far too personally everything that happened subsequently that had no connection whatever with anything that had happened previously.

Not so much though as another former friend of mine, also disabled and on crutches, who once left his car and was on the point of hobbling over, on his crutches, to a motorist who had blown his horn at him in order to give that motorist something rather more than a piece of his mind. At that point I decided that this was an association that ought to be wound down. I suffer enough from my own issues as it is, without suffering them by proxy on behalf of someone else.

This morning I also had a lovely chat with a friend, at it looks as if the Hound of the Baskervilles might be paying me another visit, dragging its master behind it all the way from Memph … errr … Munich. That will be nice.

The “other” nurse started his round today. He picked on my choice of a variety of food, complaining that it was industrial not good for the health, and he had a friend … etc … I explained to him that I didn’t like it either, but when you are housebound as I am, all that you can do for shopping is to buy whatever is in the catalogue of the supermarket’s deliver service. If it’s not in there, you can’t buy it and that’s an end to the matter.

It was a rather disappointing breakfast today – no book to read. As a result I was finished much more quickly and came back in here to revise my Welsh.

The lesson passed quite well today, presumably due to the extra time spent in revision. We had a quiz today and I even finished on the podium. It’s very rare that that happens. One of the things that we had to do was to summarise a newspaper report on infectious diseases. I found it really difficult to translate it word for word but it was quite easy to pick up the sense and I was surprised to find that my summary was quite accurate.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door later on. She’d been to LeClerc and bought my coconut oil and Brazil nuts. So the baking will continue for the next few weeks. But as for that flapjack that I made two weeks ago, I’ve still not eaten any of it.

And while we’re on the subject of food … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked my Artificial Intelligence search engine about suitable vegan foods to take to hospital that will be nutritious, filling, and keep at room temperature for a week. It came up with a list of about a dozen. So it’s clearly doing its stuff. I’ve already taxed it with several complicated questions and I’ve only managed to confound it a couple of times.

But while we’re on the subject of Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s quite a thing going on in cyberspace about it. I’ve been hunting things down and I’ve come across an Artificial Intelligence web browser that accesses an enormous suite of Artificial Intelligence programs that is absolutely frightening in what the programs are capable of doing. I’ve been manipulating … "PERSONipulating" – ed … photos and voices and produced some really good results.

For some light-hearted relief this afternoon I found an Artificial Intelligence chatbot, invented for myself a fictional scenario, and had a very lengthy and in-depth conversation with it. What I intend to do when I’m at dialysis next is to use the travelling laptop, create another account and, using the internet connection there (which of course has a different IP address) to have a similar conversation, but with the completely opposite viewpoint to that of today. I’ll compare the comments from the bot, to see if it criticises the opposite of what it praised today. If it does, then we know that we are on to something. But if it keeps on agreeing with me, then we know that it’s really not up to all that much.

As for the voice manipulator … "PERSONipulator" – ed … whilst it has a very good front-end, I’ve found that I can produce very similar results with the audio editor that I use. So the AI program, good though it might be, is not everything that it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve also been working on the radio programmes and I shall carry on there tomorrow and complete another programme ready for dictating on Saturday night.

Tea was, as usual, a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now I’m off to bed, ready for work and a shower tomorrow. We’ll have clean bedding too (I hope).

But seeing as we were talking about Holmes and Watson just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … Watson came back to 221B Baker Street to find Holmes sitting by the fire.
"Now, let me see" said Holmes. "You went to the Capital and Counties Bank in the Strand. You stood in the queue for ten minutes, then you went to window number three. You wrote out a cheque for £10:00. The cashier gave you two x £5:00 notes, the large white variety. You folded them in four and put them in the left ticket pocket of your waistcoat. You chatted to the cashier for two minutes and then left. You forgot your umbrella at the window and had to come back for it. "
"That’s amazing" Said Watson. "It’s all incredibly true too. How on earth did you deduce that?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson" said Holmes. "I was standing in the queue behind you."

0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Tuesday 25th February 2025 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I …

… call a wasted day today. I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done exactly three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing.

Some of it has been my own fault, as you might indeed expect, but some of it hasn’t. I really need to motivate myself better if I am ever going to accomplish anything.

The most obvious excuse to use is that I was thoroughly, completely and utterly exhausted. The other day, returning from dialysis, I was in bed at 21:30 and last night it was 22:20. and I was lucky that I made it that far because I really wasn’t in the mood.

Once in bed though, going to sleep was another matter. “At least, being in a horizontal position is resting and relaxing” I kidded myself.

Eventually though I dozed off into oblivion and had yet another turbulent night. For a change though, following a dialysis session, I was actually asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00

At that moment I was with a friend of mine and we were trying to go into her office. There was a security reception desk and the girl on there was known to be rather strict so it was necessary to fill in an application form, and when you went for an eye test, the optical test, it would come up with several people similar and you had to guess which one you were. The aim was that I would find someone similar to me and say that I’d lost my card. She would give me a new card and I would go in. This however wasn’t working and there was nothing very similar to me at all so my friend had to think of another excuse. The girl at the reception desk took an absolute age to deal with all of this before she finally handed me a duplicate card. My friend said “this is just typical of this girl. She knows that this is a fraudulent application because we have thousands, and she’s just taking her time about it as she always does”. We went in a walked down a corridor, then we had to climb down into a courtyard and up the other side. Climbing down was fine but climbing up was almost impossible for me so I had to think of another way of doing it. At that moment a man came down and sat in the corner to begin to smoke a cigarette. I thought that the easiest way was to strike up a conversation. This place looked rather Asian so I talked about having a Japanese garden in here. My friend came back to look for me. He asked her “how long have you worked here?”. She replied “oh, years. I came here in August” and said which year it was. He asked “how do you find it?”. She replied “I made a mistake because I came here in a jumper and I regretted it”. She wandered off and he said to me “she’s a tough girl, isn’t she?”. I said “someone who had had the problems that she had had and survived, anyone would be tough”. He was looking at me and could see that I was disabled and said “oh please sit down”. I replied “I can’t because if I sit down I can’t stand up”. Then he began to panic saying “oh please sit down, sit down, sit down”. I wondered what was going on. This place where we were was like a volcanic crater although it was a garden with pavilion-type Japanese buildings in it, all ringed by a really jagged range of mountains in a huge circular form that looked just as if it was inside a volcano but with a garden inside instead of a crater.

That’s an interesting idea for Security, isn’t it? Being able to choose who you were. After all, NAMES ARE FOR TOMBSTONES, BABY. And I had a friend for a while in Brussels who had been a diplomat in Japan, but it wasn’t she. But if I’m going to be disabled and handicapped in my dream, then it rather defeats the point of them, doesn’t it? Not much point in escapism if you can’t escape.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for medication; Finally back in here to listen to the dictaphone because there was much more than just the above. I’d been working on a radio programme and I couldn’t ever make it right. It never seemed to go anywhere as how it was supposed to do. It was continually failing the quality control check. After several weeks of editing I finally had it something like and was ready to send it off. The recording engineer and some of the producers were however rather fed up of having this come up on their desks every week so they were determined to stop it but I sent it off anyway but they still came back and refused it. What should have been a deadline for the 28th of April was now running into May. They basically said that they wouldn’t edit it again and it was finished. I replied “well for failing it this last two or three times on tiny issues, it shows a serious lack of goodwill particularly when I have worked as hard as I have done over the past day or two to put the issue right. If there was nothing substantially wrong with the last one you should have accepted it” but they were still very unwilling to move on this particular issue and I could see this programme running on and on and on.

There have been radio programmes that have taken an age to do because the editing has been so complicated. There was the one a few weeks ago that took several weeks, and the worst part of it was that it overran so I had to edit it, and one of the bits that went was the bit where I’d had all of the difficulty

There was a girl from school directing a film last night. She was running through the scenes. I had a look at the scenes and towards the end of the film there were thousands of scenes every second, so many scenes to go through and they lasted a blinking of an eye. I was appearing as an extra in it and so was a friend of mine. We’d been to makeup and we’d been dressed up and put our costumes on. As the film was being filmed it was passed through some kind of computer animation so people became like cartoon characters as they were going through the motions for real. When I looked at my image and the vision of the girl who was with me, the images were horrible, the faces were all distorted and nothing seemed to be correct at all. We were standing on the set waiting to be directed. The girl from school came along, took one look at us, took one look at the screen effects and told us to leave the stage. We thought “that was a waste of an entire day. What a shame. Our chance for fame and fortune”.

This is another girl about whom I haven’t spent a day thinking since I left school. So why she would put in an appearance right now I really don’t know.

Later on I was with another girl. We’d stopped somewhere to look at something that we’d seen earlier. All of a sudden I had a horrible realisation that I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t have a clue as to how I’d arrived at this place, or the name of the place or what I was doing here anyway. I left the girl with the car and walked a little way up the road to see if I could see anything. On the left-hand side of the road was a funeral director’s place with gravestones in it but it was all closed, dusty, and hadn’t been open for years by the looks of it. I decided to turn round and walk back to the car and drive until we find a village and see the name. What I could also do later was to look through the dashcam videos and see if I could identify the route. As I was walking back a lorry that was coming up behind me stopped at the side of the road behind me. The driver alighted and stood by the side of his cab. A lorry that was coming towards me, he stopped too and he alighted from his cab. He was carrying a small puppy and he stood by the cab. I was effectively blocked in between these two lorries, and my car and my friend were beyond them. As these two guys stood there I had this horrible menacing feeling that something pretty awful was about to happen.

So who are all these girls who keep on appearing? I wish I knew. Some nice, charming, pleasant company would be just what the doctor ordered and to actually have them present and allow them to slip away so easily like this is something of a shame. And I know that regular readers of this rubbish will recall saying on many occasions that I never “know where I was” but in this dream it was for real. As for those two guys in the lorries, I know THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM .

isabelle the nurse breezed in this morning, late as usual due to having to do all of the blood tests that her oppo doesn’t want to do. She had a few cheery words of greeting and then rushed back out. She’s been working on her float for Carnaval and making the costumes and she’s promised me plenty of photos after the parades this forthcoming weekend.

Then it was breakfast time and MY BOOK time.

Today we are discussing miscellaneous earthworks again and despite his dismissal of much that has been assumed or inferred on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, he seems to conclude that everything uncertain is “probably” something astronomical or astrological, or both. However, he is yet to post one single piece of evidence to suggest what it is that is supposed to be indicated or observed, and the position of the stars and planets in the sky hasn’t changed that much in the last 5,000 years. The earth rotates through something like 1° every 7000 years.

His “pottery works” on the shores of the Thames estuary in Essex was excavated in the 1930s and identified as an Iron Age or Roman salt evaporation site, and not only did I manage to find the report of the excavation, I found a treatise on the operation thereof and now I would be quite confident in running my own sea salt production facility if the need ever arises. It would have been the kind of thing that, had I found it 20 years ago, I would have gone to try it to see if it would work.

Back in here I had all of the replies to deal with, and you’ve no idea just how many there were. Do I owe you all money or something? Once again, a great big thank-you for your continued support.

No Welsh today, so I decided to deal with the “Taste of Woodstock” radio programme. First task is to see what “songs played at Woodstock” I have in my live music collection As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t use material actually performed at Woodstock unfortunately.

The answer to that is “not as much as I need” so I edited what I had and then set out to hunt down more music but I was waylaid. One of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee, wanted to come to pay me a visit. She’d left me a birthday present yesterday, which was nice of her.

She came along and we had a very nice chat for a while and discussed several issues, one of which was, surprisingly, one of the topics that I’d discussed with Rosemary the other day. It seems to be something that’s on the minds of a lot of people right now.

Next was my little great niece (or is she my great little niece) who arrived back home in Canada last night from Ecuador. She showed me all of her photos and videos of her trip and I told her how impressed I was with her. And I am too. These opportunities for travel only come along once in a lifetime and you should seize the moment. Sitting there with her feet straddling the equator beats the one that I took of Alison straddling the driehoek – the three-cornered border between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and also beats the one of Rosemary, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me straddling the Arctic Circle.

Had His Nibs and I been able to reach the North Pole in 2018 I might have trumped it but, regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we stopped 700 miles short. My niece has 50 years ahead of her to do that, and good luck to her.

And while we’re on the subject of Rosemary … "well, one of us is" – ed … she rang me again today for a short chat. And it was short too – only fifty-three minutes. She needs the birth certificates of her parents and didn’t know how to go about finding them. Consequently I had a very happy time delving deep into the bowels of the Public Records Office in Kew and to my delight, I came up trumps too. When I was in Wandsworth working in that Italian restaurant I spent a lot of time in the PRO

The radio programme for this coming weekend needed chaeking too. That’s now done and sent off, but there was no time left to carry on with any more work. I was late as it was. But making a taco roll with rice and veg followed by date bread and soya dessert doesn’t take long.

So now I’m off to bed ready for shower day tomorrow. And I hope that I have a more productive day than today was. I can do without too many days like that. However, I’ll never turn down an opportunity to talk to a friend when the opportunity arises. There are more things in life than working.

But while we’re on the subject of working … "well, one of us is" – ed … One of my friends had sent me a message for my birthday, saying "I hope you managed to lay your hands on something tasty for your birthday"
And so I replied saying "unfortunately not. The nurses at dialysis kept well out of my reach."

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Tuesday 18th February 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little better today. I can tell that because earlier this evening I began to look forward to eating something. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have any lunch today, but then again I’ve not had lunch for a few days either and I’ve still not felt all that hungry in the evening.

Even though I was late going to bed last night, I didn’t hang around after I’d finished work and was soon tucked up in my little cot where I was asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though. At 00:39 (I checked the time) I was wide awake. And awake for quite some time as well but I’d obviously gone back to sleep at some point because I awoke again, this time at 05:44 (I checked the time again).

Despite everything that I tried I couldn’t go back to sleep this time and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about. I seem to be making a habit of this.

After a wash and good scrub up, I went into the kitchen and sorted out the medication. While I was there I checked the loaf that I’d baked in the air fryer the previous evening.

This one is yet another candidate for the best ever loaf of bread that I have ever made – even better than the previous best. So much so in the sense that it had risen so much that I had difficulty lifting it out of its mould.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There wasn’t much on there, but after the wretched night that I’d had, I was surprised that there was anything at all. I was dreaming about the Middle Ages and the knights on horseback etc with some kind of fortifications in the centre of something going back to that particular period but again, when I went to reach for the dictaphone the story evaporated and I could hardly remember a single thing about what I had been dreaming of up until that moment.

Judging by the timestamp, that was at the first awakening at 00:39. I’ve no idea to what this dream relates but my book’s author Arthur Hadrian Allcroft is nowhere near approaching anything vaguely near the Age of Chivalry.

Later on I was doing some 3D modelling during the night based on some human figures. I was trying to make something extremely lifelike and I must have spent hours at this dream just looking at this one particular figure trying to make all of the parameters exactly correct but it just didn’t seem to want to go. I stood there looking at this feeling that the more I did, the more it was all going wrong.

That’s a situation that I know only too well. quite often trying to amend something simply seems to make it worse and I’ll end up with something irrecoverable. There have been more than just a few occasions in the past where I’ve ended up scrapping some work and starting again from scratch. I went on an on-line course several years ago to perfect 3D animation but that was not really one of my more startling successes, to be honest. I don’t really have the patience for work like that.

The nurse was early today. He’s heard that it has been suggested that I go four times per week to dialysis. He’s a former dialysis nurse and he reckons in his experience that I should resist at all costs. He’s not surprised that I’ve been feeling so ill after all of the extended hours and rapid pumping just recently.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

Our author tells us on page 382 that "neither record nor tradition speaks of any walls of Ida or fortresses of Penda, and the name of Alfred himself attaches to no earthworks such as are claimed by Caesar, by the Danes, or by the Devil. Even the arbitrary imagination which allotted all ” camps,” round, rectangular, and oval, to Briton and Roman and Dane severally made no provision for the Saxon. ^"

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of months ago we read the “mushroom report” of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Club and I quoted a discussion that had been reported there during one of their field outings, where at least one person claimed that some of the Iron Age hillforts around the Clun area of Shropshire were Saxon in origin.

Regardless of the fact that his opinion was dismissed at the time and subsequent events have shown that they indeed were not Saxon, Allcroft’s dismissal of “arbitrary imagination” making “no provision for the Saxon” is clearly unjustified.

Back in here I began to prepare for my Welsh lesson. What with one thing and another, at the dialysis centre I hadn’t done as much as I would have liked to have done so I was rather running behind.

However, we didn’t go very far into our course today. We’re running slightly ahead so we ended up having several very long discussions. I’m sure that we are shunted off into breakout rooms in little groups so that the tutor can go off to have a coffee.

That was the same with afternoon sports at school. When I learned subsequently of how much sports coaching children at other schools received, we were simply turned out onto the sports pitch and left to our own devices. I bet that the sports teachers disappeared inside for a smoke and a coffee too.

On the whole, the lesson passed really well and I was impressed. One of the things to which we had to listen was a television programme about sports for disabled people, and answer twelve questions. I really struggled with this but in fact not only did I come out top, but I even picked up a nuance that the tutor missed. I might not be doing too good overall with this course, but years of listening to these football commentaries is improving my aural skills.

That’s right, people. If I have my own trumpet I’m darn well going to blow it.

After the lesson was over I didn’t feel like any food so I had a relax for a while. Several whiles actually. I wasn’t in any hurry and I ought to be able to relax every now and again.

Later on though, I made a start on the next radio programme. This one is going to be complicated, and not helped by the fact that I don’t have to hand much of the music that I need. Even so, that won’t prevent me from planning it out and writing the notes. It’ll be a nice job to attack tomorrow, I reckon.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg. Not much of anything, but it was all the same nice to eat something that I enjoyed. The date bread and soya dessert was quite nice too, although the bread is too well-cooked on the outside. I was hoping that it would be something like a fig roll that I used to like. Never mind – Rome wasn’t built in a day.

For a change, I’ve finished everything quite early. I suppose that I may as well go to bed and try for a good sleep, and see how I feel in the morning. We’ll probably find that my health will pick up, only to be knocked back again in the dialysis centre when I go back on Thursday.

But while we’re on the subject of medieval knights and the Age of Chivalry … "well, one of us is" – ed … a few weeks ago I mentioned the story of the stately home just outside Crewe where a major pharmaceutical company has its laboratory.
With the big square tower on the corner, it’s ideal for these jousting tournaments that take place, and one of the regional heats of the North-West Area Jousting Competition was held there recently.
A few days ago I talked to one of my friends in the town. "How did it go?" I asked him
"Overall, very well" he said. "But the competitor from Crewe was disqualified"
"Why was that?" I asked him.
"Apparently he slew the damsel in distress and rescued the fiery dragon."

0

Tuesday 11th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anything that happened today. It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go to plan, even from the very start. In fact, this is probably going to be a week to forget, all in all.

Last night was rather later than I intended it to be, what with one thing and another. Well after midnight, in fact. And not everything that I wanted to be done was done either.

It had been my aim to finish off the Welsh homework before going to bed but with the head full of spaghetti that I had on my shoulders, I abandoned the plan and left it for another day. There was the radio programme that I’d edited at the dialysis centre that I wanted to send off, but that was left too.

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep and then it was a very disturbed night as is usual after a dialysis session, waking up here and there and perspiring like there is no tomorrow

When the alarm went off I hauled myself out of bed with the utmost difficulty and then staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I started to transcribe the dictaphone notes but was surprised by the amount of stuff on there. I’d only finished about half of it when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, and she wasn’t early either. I’m not going to have the homework done this morning either, am I?

She and I had a little chat about nothing much and after she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK

Our author has made a couple of points that are extremely curious. He notes that at Worlebury Camp, overlooking Weston-Super-Mare, where there are according to him, unmistakeable signs of Roman siege and conquest, the skulls of the deceased, complete with battle-wounds, are "the long-headed (Iberian) type, and suggest that at the date in question the dominant race in south-western Britain were the descendants of those Iberians who had preceded the round-headed Brythonic race, and who had been ousted by them from the more easterly parts of the island."

Anyone remember when we were discussing stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and none at all?

Secondly, "Incredible as it must seem to anyone who tries to realize the labour involved in the building of any great camp, it seems none the less to be the fact that many of them were planned and constructed according to one original design."

And if that really is the case (and after all, he’s the expert), given the number of different races and tribes, the time period and the distance to travel, it’s probably the most interesting thing that I have read on the whole subject.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh, complete with a full pot of coffee because I needed it. And I don’t know what I would have done without it because even so, the lesson, well, let’s just say that it did not go as I would have wished, and I was glad when it was over.

After lunch I came back in here and carried on with the dictaphone notes, and as I said earlier, I was surprised by how many there were. I dreamed that I was in a scrapyard looking for all bits and pieces of a car. I couldn’t see what I wanted. It was the springs that retained the headlight in. They were tiny micro-springs. I’d had three and I had put them down but when I went to look again I couldn’t see them. They were so small. I was hunting again. In the meantime two guys turned up in a red MkIII saloon with a black vinyl roof. They had parked their car on a trailer while they had gone off to the pub. Someone told them about their car on someone else’s trailer so they just took their car off the pile and just rolled it down the hill into the scrap. They said “well never mind. We only paid £50:00 for this. Immediately everyone swarmed over to it to strip it for spares as they did in the old days. I went to have a look and someone asked me if I needed anything. I told him that I was looking for an old tax disc holder, the type that suckered on to your window but which had an aerial connector in it. People remembered those from years ago but no-one had seen one. I’d looked at a couple of car tax discs of cars that were ‘S’ reg in 1977/78 but there was nothing around there at all. In the end I left and had to stop at a road junction while a big group of soldiers who were on a military parade marched past where I was standing.

Cars for £50:00. Anyone remember those days? And Nerina and I once drove all the way around Central and Eastern Europe in one that cost £25:00, and on another occasion in a different car at the same price all the way round the South of France.

‘And ‘S’ registered cars from 1977/78? I’m really impressed that I could remember that in a dream as well. But as for cars in scrapyards, I’ve done more than my share of scrapyard scavenging in the past

Later on I was with a group of people. One was a small girl. It was a girl whom I’d seen so many times before and we’d always had a laugh and a joke. Then I mentioned something about taking her out and she said “yes, fine!” she said. “When should we go?” or something like that so I hadn’t realised that she was serious but I was ready to take her then and there practically

There is more to this than meets the eye too. However, let me guess. Small as in “one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed” I suppose. But me Getting The Girl in a dream? It’s a good job that this dream ended before my family came along to spike my guns as they usually do at the crucial moment

There was also something else about buses in Alsager, driving buses out towards Kidsgrove and the back of Stoke on Trent at Werrington, etc, but it was something to do with the arrangement of fares, keeping fares down and buses not going into anyone else’s territory but I can’t remember that

Later yet, I was living in an apartment in a modern block of flats in Brussels but I’d bought the apartment downstairs to where I’m going to move, so I’d given my notice to the landlord. He’d put the property in the newspapers and was arranging visits. The first visit came when I was really unexpecting it so the place wasn’t very tidy at all. It was a nice youngish guy, quite tall, who was shown around. He noticed the Tesla that I had in a wooden box that was a pre-war spark generator sitting in the bottom of the room on top of the piano so we had a discussion about that. Then he asked me a few more questions then he decided to leave. He talked about decorating but I told him that I moved here and didn’t do anything. It didn’t bother me, the decorations being a little tired but he said that maybe he could move into one room and decorate all round him. As he left the Estate Agents gave me all of the duplicate keys that I’d never actually had to the property. As he left he asked me a question about the television. Were the “Free” company’s services available here? I told him that I didn’t know. As he left I noticed another couple waiting in the hall. I thought that I wished that I’d known that there were going to be all these visits because I could have tidied up the property. He did ask me before he went if he could come back and have another look. He wanted to come back at 07:30 so I shuddered but said “yes, it’s not a problem” so at that point he left.

Me? An untidy apartment? Perish the thought! And I wish that I had a pre-war Tesla spark generator lying around here somewhere. But the apartment – we’ve been in that apartment before in another nocturnal ramble, a long time ago when I drove a car into the centre of Brussels round the big Basilica. It’s strange how these things crop up so far apart in time.

Did I dictate this dream where I was in a cheap hotel somewhere? … "no you didn’t" – ed … There was a crowd of people in the room with me. The bath was across the end of the room and there was a glass partition in it that only covered a part of the bath. I decided that I’d take a bath. I went in there and began to run the water but the bath didn’t fill up. Then I found that the plug wasn’t in so I had to put it in. It was still not filling up. I saw that the water was cascading out of the joint of the immersion heater. By the time that there was anything like some water in the bath it was cold. I didn’t really fancy the bath but I thought that I needed one. There were all these people there too. Next thing that I remember, I was outside. It was 18:30. I didn’t have time for the bath because we were going to a nearby café for a meal, so I thought that I’d have to hurry up

The idea of me having a bath is interesting too. Leaving aside the fact that I couldn’t climb out of a bath these days, I would prefer a shower any day of the week. And a cold bath? In my case, that’s water at 36.9°C

Later, I was with Zero’s father and a couple of small boys was asking me that he had to go to school and tell them how a carburettor worked . I asked him if he knew how a carburettor worked. He said a few words but obviously didn’t understand the basic principles. We went down to one of the cars. Zero’s father handed a set of keys to me but I couldn’t make them work. In the end I put the key in the other way round. It worked so I could open the bonnet and we began to discuss the carburettor. Zero’s father was there but he kept on confusing the matter. I was trying to make things as simple as possible for this little boy and he was just complicating them by giving long technical explanations that were not really what was needed, not for a boy in Primary School anyway.

There are always some people who will take a simple explanation and complicate it unnecessarily, who don’t seem to realise exactly who their audience is and the purpose of what you are trying to explain. It’s like our author, Arthur Hadrian Allcroft, who is writing for an audience that excludes about 75% of the population. I realise that the aim of any kind of education is to bring people up to a higher level, but how far up are some of these people sitting?

How depressing is it though that Zero’s father is there and not Zero herself?

Believe it or not, that took me up to afternoon nasty drink break and then I had bread to make as I have all-but run out. That took longer than anticipated but I do have to say that the loaf that I made is perfection itself. It couldn’t possibly be any better. I’ll go with that any time.

There was just time for me to finish the Welsh homework before going to make my tea. And why it was so difficult I have no idea. My brain, if that’s what you call it, has ceased to function, and ceased a long time ago.

Tea was as usual a taco roll with veg and rice, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. Just as nice as ever. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t make it.

So that’s the end of another depressing day. I’m glad that it’s over, Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. I shall have to try to be more optimistic

But seeing as we have been talking of cold water … "well, one of us has" – ed … those crazy Canadians with whom I spent a lot of time up in the Arctic used to love to leap into the cold water from the loading platform of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at every available opportunity
On one occasion deep in the North-West Passage Castor and Pollux were going to leap in with them – at MINUS 0.5°C in the water. It was about minus 10°C in the air
Castor came to look for me and asked "are you going to come and jump in with us, Eric?"
"I can’t, pet" I replied. "I have this catheter port in my chest and it can’t be immersed in salt water"
After she left, a guy who had overheard the conversation asked me "if you didn’t have that catheter port in your chest, what would you have done?"
"What would I have done?" I said. "Simple. I would have thought of another excuse."

0

Tuesday 4th February 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that the notes that I edited at the Dialysis Clinic for that radio programme are going into the bin.

As I said before (but only once) I had to dictate it in two parts. However, for a reason that I have yet to understand, the parts sound so different that no amount of editing and remixing is going to make them sound similar.

All this afternoon I’ve been working on it without success and if I spend any more time on it I’ll go spare

The stage has been reached where I’ve downloaded some Artificial Intelligence to see if that comes up with any better luck than I’m having, but I doubt it very much. What I need is a copy sampler where I can analyse automatically a sample of one batch of sound and transfer the settings to the second to equalise the tracks but that’s unlikely, so I reckon it’s either the time to learn all about AI or else re-dictate the notes.

But anyway, that’s for another time. Let’s turn our attention to last night and, for a change, I wasn’t all that late going to bed.

It was 23:20 when I hit the sack but I was totally exhausted. I wasn’t sorry at all to be in bed at that time.

Once I was in bed and settled down I wasn’t long in dropping off to sleep. And there I stayed until the alarm went off, although I do have a vague recollection of being awake for a moment at 04:00.

It was a desperate stagger to beat the second alarm this morning but I did (somehow) manage it, and I had a good scrub up in the bathroom before going into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at work and for some reason I had the diary open. There was something going on on one particular date about some meeting or other. having seen whom it concerned, I wrote something rather indecent in the entry instead. Just then however the boss came along. He saw me writing and then rapidly closing it, and insisted on seeing it. I thought “this is going to be the end of the line now, isn’t it, for me in this place?”. In the end, the diary fell over haphazardly and there was a comment in there from another day that was that was fairly indecent but nothing quite as bad as that which I had written. He had a look at it, and I said “yes I know, and I’m ashamed of myself for doing it”. He wanted me to carry out a few tasks and gave me some things to do. Then I happened to mention a friend of mine who had been involved with one of our sister offices in the rural area. He had been telling me how they were all big supporters of a certain political party. The boss said “there’s no accounting for taste is there?”. I replied “no. It’s going to be pretty much of a shame if they ever find their way back into power”.

As to what this relates, I have no idea. I do know that one of my “contacts” has revealed himself to be an out-and-out Tory of the extreme type and is flooding with all kinds of extremist nonsense a page on the internet that he keeps, far worse than ever I have seen any left-winger or immigrant type

But as for writing anything abusive at work, then despite all kinds of provocation when I was at work I managed to restrain myself, and just thought abusive thoughts instead. I was going to say that “your thoughts never got you into trouble”, but while that may well have been true fifty years ago, it’s certainly not the case today, with the Thought Police out in force everywhere you go. and, believe me, you will even find yourself in trouble if they THINK that you are thinking, whether you are or not. And ask me how I know.

There was also something about Roxanne last night. I’d been away somewhere for a fair while and when I came back Roxanne threw her arms around me and hugged me.

And how nice to see Roxanne in a dream. 26 years it is since I’ve seen her in real life, so she’ll be 35 now, married I suppose, with a couple of kids. We had loads of fun together during that three years that I was her father. It made me realise what I was missing but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the big issue about this would be enticing me into the delivery room. I just couldn’t do it.

And finally I was in the USA with a friend. He had some kind of waste land, a demolition site that was a former service station. We were sitting there talking and the question of guns came up. He was talking about something about obtaining new licences for his guns. Another guy who was there said something along the lines of “your guns already have licences for Alabama and Arkansas. If you want another licence you’d have to hand some of those back”. We’d been out for a walk and came back to his property. There was a young girl sitting there. This guy totally ignored her so I did too. We began to discuss about where I certain place was in Ireland so we found an atlas and had a look down on the south-east coast but couldn’t see it. Then we went to have a look to see where this place was in the USA. We looked on the map but the map was such a short scale that it was totally useless. Then he was telling me about his life back at home and how he’d somehow managed to accumulate £10,000,000 and he was hoping to buy some property in the UK because the whole of the city centre was being demolished and he thought that it was being crazy. In the end we agreed that we would go for a walk. We set out and after a while I asked who this girl was. He replied “that’s one of Lesley’s mathematics clients. She teaches maths to her but the problem is that she has so many things going on in her mind that she can’t sit and concentrate at all”. As we carried on walking I was thinking “this demolished service station here – I need to keep in contact with the owner because if ever I have to come to the USA again I could drop a static caravan onto this place. That would act as a home for me for quite a considerable time”.

There’s a lot going on in this dream that can have some kind of connection in real life. For a start, the town centre of Crewe, having been demolished ready for an HS2-funded rebuilding and regeneration HAS BEEN SCRAPPED with the cancellation of the HS2 project, so Crewe Town Centre will be a hole in the ground after all.. And that makes a change, because up until recently it’s just been a hole.

There are several other items in there that have a meaning for two or three people who follow these notes, and they know who they are, but as for a mobile home on a demolition site in case I ever visit the USA, I’m going nowhere at all except to the Dialysis Centre and to the apartment downstairs, and that latter only if I am lucky. I have to work out how this move will take place. I have a couple of people who have kindly volunteered to help, for which I am extremely grateful, but it’s still going to be a nightmare, I reckon.

That’s not all that was in the dream, but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse was early today and once more, didn’t hang around long, which is good news. So I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

So far, it’s been two days since I began to read it and we’re still in the Introduction. It seems that our author is not in a hurry to discuss the subject but is more interested in setting the scene, down to the minutest detail. Never write one word when a hundred would do the same job … "and you don’t, I suppose?" – ed …

But I have a basic disagreement with modern research into hillforts. You look at them with their three and sometimes four concentric rings of fortification, deep ditches, scarp slopes, drystone walls, strong gates made of oak and all of that. I cannot see them as anything but defensive works, and major defensive works at that.

Neolithic and Iron-Age man didn’t have any free time. Their life was a desperate hand-to-mouth struggle. If they had to abandon food production for as long as it took and all of the effort that was required in order to construct their strongholds as they did, they must have been seriously concerned, if not frightened, for their own safety. It’s doubtful that any attacking force could have overwhelmed a determined defence in what they managed to build, until the arrival on the scene of Roman siege artillery. These forts are impressive even now, never mind what they must have been like 2500 years ago.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh lesson and then went to class. It wasn’t a rousing success today but it wasn’t a dismal failure either. It’s all a question of concentration and memory and I have neither right now. In fact, it’s been quite a while since I last did have any. We had a quiz today on identifying Welsh foods. It goes without saying that I was not at the top.

When the lesson was over I went for a break for a while and then came back to play with these sound files. There are two of them because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had to stop the dictation in midstream and rewrite part of it.

What I don’t understand though is that the tone of each part is so different, and no amount of post-production will equalise it. Consequently, after several hours of trying, I decided to abandon it while I still had some sanity left … "??" – ed …

My cleaner stuck her head in the door this afternoon. She’d brought more cheese and a few other things from the supermarket, as well as a letter from the hospital in Paris. It’s the results of the EMG test that I had, and they tell me that there’s no improvement – just a very slight deterioration. This nervous attack that has wiped out my leg muscles is completely baffling medical science.

Before I went for tea I checked a few other sites that I visit, and discovered that, after Y Drenewydd’s signing of a Philippine International the other week, Connah’s Quay Nomads have signed a Sri Lankan International. The JD Cymru League is definitely looking up these days.

But that signing is not really a surprise. The manager of the Sri Lankan national side until Christmas was Andy Morrison, former manager of the Nomads.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, just as delicious as always. And there’s plenty of stuffing remaining for a leftover curry tomorrow. So I must remember the naan bread.

It’s shower day tomorrow too, so I might even be clean by tomorrow night. That’s some hope, isn’t it?

But while we’re on the subject of the hospital and baffling medical science … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s a big stately home just outside Crewe that’s used as a medical laboratory by a well-known pharmaceutical concern
There were some headlines in the local newspaper "major medical breakthrough in Crewe".
Being bewildered, I contacted my friend in Crewe to ask him what was going on.
"You won’t believe this" he said "but they have developed something that will completely transform all medical science and procedures for the future"
"What’s that?" I asked
"One of the laboratory assistants has invented a cure for which there is no known disease"

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