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Tuesday 17th February 2026 – HAVING WAXED LYRICAL …

… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again.

And it was looking so good too.

Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to stand in my way and I was actually in bed by about 22:15, having finished everything that needed to be done. And it’s not very often that I can say that.

Not only that, I was asleep quite quickly too. However, you don’t need me to tell you what subsequently happened. You’ve heard me say it often enough, and you are probably just as sick as I am of hearing about it.

So there I was, at 04:15 this morning, lying in bed, trying my best to go back to sleep but without any success at all. In the end, round about 05:45, I dragged myself out of bed and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, dictated all of the radio notes that were outstanding.

It has to be said, though, that I made a right dog’s breakfast of more than just a couple of them. Probably because at that time of morning, I can’t see straight enough to read my notes and I’m not awake enough to concentrate. There will be piles of editing to do, but it can’t be helped.

After I’d finished, I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. I really do like this hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, despite all of the rubbish that I’m obliged to take with it.

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

I dreamed that I was working for Birmingham City Transport. I was in a double-decker bus that had Route 454 on the front. I wondered where I was going because no-one had said a word to me. I tried to set the destination board to 000 but I somehow couldn’t manage to do it. It was displaying all kinds of numbers. The next thing that I remember was that I was in the middle of Birmingham Bus Station, in the middle where the buses wait to find an empty bay. Someone came along and said that I was in the wrong place. There were already one or two people on board so I set off to do a lap around the bus station to look for the bay for the 454. Everyone complained that I hadn’t picked up passengers, so I told them that I was doing a lap round to find the correct bay. They explained to me where I had to go, and there were half a dozen people waiting there, so I picked them up and drove out of the city centre. I had no idea where I was going, and we went there and these areas of total devastation where there had been acres and acres of demolition. By that time, there were just these two women on board. They explained to me that I had to take them to some kind of house where they were going to go for a visit. Of course, I knew nothing about this. No-one had told me a thing. I didn’t even know where this house was, so they said that they would guide me. In the end, we ended up walking through the countryside, chatting about all kinds of things, washing clothes in salt to remove bloodstains etc. And the views were wonderful. We met two other people and had a quick chat and just carried on walking into the countryside and we walked for miles. There were these two old Swedish Volvos parked at the side of the road. I noticed them, and they had foreign plates, but I couldn’t identify the plates at the moment. We were just chatting for hours as we walked through the countryside, and I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.

Now, this was a strange dream, if ever there was one. Firstly, I’ve never driven a double-deck service bus. Plenty of coaches of course, and plenty of single-deck service buses but not a double-deck service bus. and as for driving around Birmingham, I know the various ways in and out, but I’d be lost completely if I had to drive a service bus route. However, there was a Birmingham bus route 454 that ran from the city centre out to Smethwick and that way.

So what would I be doing there? And why would I end up walking miles through the countryside with two women past a couple of pale green Volvos, two of the very last 164 models (I can still see them).

As for removing bloodstains, at dialysis yesterday a large load of blood was actually spilled onto my T-shirt and needs to be cleaned.

There was also something about being at home with Nerina. She was drinking a bottle of beer, and she said that this particular beer was really nice. I said that my friend from Munich might be coming to stay for a while, and he likes a special kind of beer, and my brother likes a certain beer, so if my friend from Munich comes to stay we’ll fetch a few beers of each type and we can have a nice night in, and she seemed to like the idea. Then we decided that we’d have to tidy up and she wanted to put some things in the fridge. The fridge was full, so I had to shuffle everything around and in the end, I managed to fit these things in but a couple of bottles of wine wouldn’t fit on the shelves inside so I had to move some things out of the door shelves to put the wine in there and to put the things that were in the door shelves into the fridge somehow. But the bottom shelf of the fridge was full of peat and that kind of thing, composted soil. I had to dig a hole in it to stand these bottles of wine upright in it.

This is probably a little more like it. Nerina wasn’t a beer drinker, but she would appreciate a very good beer very occasionally. I know that my friend does, because there’s a special order here every time that he tells me that he’s coming round.

We were much more into wine back in the old days, Nerina and I, and back in the days thirty or forty years ago, a plate of cheese and a bottle of Burgundy would have been our heaven. Planting a bottle of wine in the soil in the fridge is a novel idea, though.

And why would my brother be rearing his head in the middle of a convivial gathering?

The nurse was really early today – barely 08:00. But the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and that suits me fine. I could push on, make my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And we are reaching a really interesting point in the book, a point that has me fascinated. Firstly, he and his team are able to interpret the climate to such a precise extent that, judging by the state of the soil and vegetation immediately underneath it, they can tell you that the prehistoric burial mound in the middle of the hillfort was begun when it was pouring down with rain. And it doesn’t become any more precise than that.

Furthermore, by examining the mollusc (snails, etc.) remains in the various layers of soil, his team can tell you that the land was first climax woodland, then cleared, then abandoned and returned to scrub and woodland, then cleared again, then overgrazed and overworked, then heavily eroded and left to grassland with occasional farming. Different types of molluscs flourish in different types of soil and vegetation, and examining their remains in the different layers of soil can pinpoint the vegetation (or lack thereof) at the time.

But interestingly, I was dragged off on a tangent to an article about the “Beaker People”. Their culture (there’s a dispute as to whether the people came with their culture or not) arrived in Southern England round about 2500 BC and died out round about 1800 BC, to be replaced by the Bronze Age. What is significant about this period is that during that relatively short time period, about 90% of the genetic make-up of the population of Southern and Eastern England was displaced by an equivalent genetic make-up from Eastern Europe.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then I read a couple more chapters of my Welsh course book to do a little revision. However, what with my Teflon brain, nothing will stick.

After that, I had an important task to perform. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I hadn’t filed away my correspondence for well over six months, and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere. So I sat down, sorted through it, threw away a pile of unnecessary paperwork and then filed the rest.

It goes without saying that I really ought to be much more organised than I am, although I have said that a hundred times before, and still, nothing has changed.

My faithful cleaner turned up later and shooed me into the shower for a good scrub up and so that I smell nice, not that it will make much difference, I suppose. And then afterwards, we did our monthly sort through the medication and organised a few other things too while we were at it.

After she left, I came back in here to sit down, and that was when I was overwhelmed by an enormous wave of fatigue. I crashed out completely, and for over two hours too. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so far out as I was this afternoon. So much so that when I was finally able to move, I had to have one of these caffeine-laden energy drinks.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together again and I finished choosing the music for the next radio programme, reformatting where necessary, re-editing and reconverting it.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. I’ll have to think of a new dessert for tomorrow, but if all else fails, I bought some tinned fruit, having had my taste buds titillated by the fruit that my neighbour brought me the other week.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, later than usual. And who knows? Maybe I might have a good sleep tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about shuffling … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from when I lived in Chester who was bewailing his back luck at the racecourse during one of the racing weeks.
"I don’t understand it" he said. "If I’m having a game of cards, I usually always win, but at the racetrack, I never seem to win anything"
"Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself" I replied. "It’s not your fault that they won’t let you shuffle the horses."

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Saturday 14th February 2026 – I HOPE THAT …

… you all had a nice, romantic day with the one that you love, and that there were hugs, kisses, roses and chocolates galore. For me, I moved the bedroom mirror to where I could gaze into it with admiration. After all, when there’s only me in the apartment, what else could I do?

What I could have done was to have gone to bed early but unfortunately, it didn’t work out like that. As usual, I fell asleep writing my notes and what with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … it was, once again, about 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

One thing’s for sure, though, and that was that I slept right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29. And then we had what has become the usual struggle of trying to find the energy and enthusiasm to leave the bed.

Nevertheless, despite the struggle, I did in fact manage to stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

There had been a whole new series of elections in the European Union and hundreds of MEPs and directors had changed. They were beginning to have meetings with all of the new ones. There were also plenty of staff changes too and it turned out that I was one of those people who had lost their jobs as a result, so I had to leave my job. In doing so, I happened to make my way outside, which meant having to squeeze past dozens of meetings with people sitting everywhere, and basically had to walk along halfway up a fence in order to clear one group of people and was still walking in between them. As I was making my way out, I encountered someone whom I knew who told me that he was starting a new job in some other kind of directorate so I told him that I wasn’t starting at all, that I was on my way out of the building. When I was outside and in the street, I began to wonder what I was going to do. I could retire because I was old enough, but then I thought that there were plenty of employment agencies, so why don’t I go along to see what some employment agencies have, and if they have casual work so I don’t have to stay for too long in the same place. But walking along the street just outside our office where there were all these shops etc, traffic lines, tram lines, I couldn’t see an employment agency so I thought that I’d wait until a couple of days later and then have a day walking around Stoke-on-Trent to see what the agencies have to offer me.

So here we are again, at work long after retirement age. This time though, I’m the one who is being made to leave, rather than thinking about leaving on my own accord.

But the bit about going from employment agency to employment agency reminds me of the author Richard Gordon, who, on going from one shipping office to another in Leadenhall Street to find a berth as a ship’s doctor, also ended up making enquiries in the Leadenhall Street branch of Barclays Bank.

And we were in Stoke-on-Trent, wandering around the other night.

I was out in Shavington last night, walking past some houses where various kinds of actors lived. The first house was occupied by an actor who was starring in many leading roles which had received a really good critique. As I walked past her house, I saw that it was all run down and in need of a good going-over, with dead plants everywhere and long grass. I thought to myself that one day, that woman is going to start to have really bad reviews for acting and how on earth is she going to cope? The next house was someone from a well-known soap opera who was rubbing down his metal fence and preparing it for painting. He was as black as the ace of spades with all of the dust that had come off it. I remember one critic writing something that even if this is Britain’s most popular soap opera, it ought to be shown much less than it is now because the stories are all becoming all the same and there’s nothing ever new in any of them. But back home, I asked the parents how the football went. They just mumbled a few incoherent answers but I didn’t really understand what they were saying so I decided that I’d go to look myself.

Another place where I seem to be spending a lot of time is Shavington, even though we only lived there from 1956 to 1970. And there certainly wouldn’t have been any actors or actresses living there. However, it’s true that my parents showed no interest whatsoever in football so it would have been a waste of time asking them anything.

When the alarm went off, I was singing LIKE A HURRICANE by Neil Young. I’d gone into some kind of building that was a hospital. I’d written a scathing review of a doctor’s intervention but I’d had to go back to the hospital so I’d gone in rather quietly. I’d wanted Floor 6 so I’d gone to the goods lift, but there was someone else there with a trolley so we went in together. I pressed “6” but the lift carried on and went all the way up to the twenty-fifth floor and I had my eyes tight shut from about the fifteenth. This guy left so I pressed any button to take the lift down so that I could open my eyes again. I thought that I’d pressed about “Floor 10” or “Floor 12” but the lift roared on past. It roared on past “6” too so I pressed “6” and it shuddered to a halt and then began to climb up again. I managed to jump out onto the sixth floor as it went past. From there, I was walking across the campus of the hospital. I started off by singing Jackson Browne’s LOOKING EAST and then followed that by “Like a Hurricane”. I noticed that amongst the people on this campus was Castor, but the alarm went off before I had a chance to speak to her.

Actually, I wouldn’t have had my eyes closed if I were going up in a lift. Heights have never bothered me. I remember when Laurence and I went to look at an apartment on the eighteenth floor of a tower block in Brussels. I was out on the balcony looking to see what I could see, but she was pinned against one of the interior walls, far too scared to move. However, there is nothing on earth, not even the combined forces of TOTGA, Zero and Castor, that would entice me into a submarine.

The hospital needs no explanation, and neither does criticising the doctors, but the campus and jumping out of the lift are a mystery.

But seeing as we have been talking about Castor … "well, one of us has" – ed … imagine her appearing in a dream after all this time and I couldn’t manage to talk to her. What kind of tragedy or disaster is that?

But with her being in this dream, the lyrics of “Like a Hurricane” are extremely apposite. After all, it’s one of those rock masterpieces, especially the live version on RUST NEVER SLEEPS.

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

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

The nurse was early yet again, and with there now being the pressure on the streets with Carnaval, he didn’t stay long. I could then push on with breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples

He’s busy picking holes in Mortimer Wheeler’s excavation report, disagreeing with many of Wheeler’s conclusions and accusing him of making reports based on speculation and stating that "it is really a testament to Wheeler’s imagination that any clear pattern could be claimed.". However, he’s not above making a few assumptions and speculations himself.

This book, like almost all of the others that I’ve read, is a digital scan of a hard copy in someone’s library. And interestingly, though, certain entries and references in it have been redacted. I wonder if another author in the field of archaeology has been mentioned in the Epstein diaries, because it’s certainly bizarre. I’ve no idea why the owner of the original book would not want these names and entries revealed.

Back in here, we had a footfest – the highlights of last night’s matches in the JD Cymru League. Nothing much exciting happened, except that Llanelli, hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table, picked up a surprising point away at Cardiff Metropolitan.

Having done that, there were a few other things to do until it was time for a disgusting drinks break.

This afternoon, we had football. Penybont, fresh from their 6-0 mauling by leaders TNS, were at home to second-placed Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Penybont played better today but they were still clueless in attack and for all the work that he had to do on the field, Nomads’ ‘keeper Kit Margetson may well have brought a book onto the field with him and spent the ninety minutes reading it. There were several lengthy periods when he was actually playing centre-half in a back four rather than a goalkeeper behind a back three.

But the Nomads weren’t much better. They made Penybont ‘keeper Luke Armstrong work hard, for sure, but they could be still playing now and they still wouldn’t have any idea about how to score. For a team second in the table, they should be doing much better than this.

The score was a 0-0 no score bore draw, and both sides were lucky to get nil.

Later on, I’ve been in an internet discussion with my faithful cleaner. I’m in the middle of writing out a work schedule for my joiner who will be coming back soon, and my cleaner wants a change to the rubbish arrangements.

No, she’s not talking about deleting the blog, but about a new set of rubbish bins that fit under the sink. So we’ve been discussing different alternatives and when she comes down here on Monday, she’ll be measuring up.

After that, I attacked a set of radio notes that I’d dictated a week or two ago and began to edit them. I’d almost finished too when I had to knock off for tea.

Tonight it was a burger on a bap with salad and baked potato, followed by jam roly-poly from several weeks ago and vegan sorbet. And it was all delicious. And now, I’m off to bed, ready for my lie-in tomorrow … "he hopes" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about not having any particular work to do today "well, one of us has" – ed … the five day week has been around for longer than you might thing. Several centuries in fact.
Someone once asked me "who was the first person to work a five-day week?"
My answer was "Robinson Crusoe"
"Why was that?"
"Well, he had all of his work done by Friday."

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Tuesday 10th February 2026 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible afternoon today. And it was going quite well at first, too.

However, the scene was well and truly set last night because, once more, with not too much food preparation needed, I whizzed through everything quite rapidly, and I was in bed by 22:00, feeling much better than I might have been.

But with having been in bed early, and with it having been a dialysis day, I shall let you lot imagine how the night went. I shan’t bore you by repeating it.

So there I was, at 02:00, tossing and turning, trying to go back to sleep for hours and being totally unsuccessful for quite some considerable time. At one stage, I was even toying seriously with the idea of leaving the bed.

Eventually, though, I must have gone off to sleep because I awoke again. And then back to sleep, to be awoken by the alarm.

It was even more of a struggle than usual to leave the bed this morning but I eventually managed to struggle into the bathroom. But by the time that I’d made it into the kitchen, I was running later than I would have liked.

First this was to make the hot lemon, ginger and honey drink, and the second thing was to take my medication.

While I was at dialysis yesterday, the doctor examined my chest and said that I ought to go back onto the antibiotics because the cough is coming back. So having some left over from last time, I took a couple.

And do you know what? About five minutes later, I began to cough and sneeze, and the streaming nose was back. You couldn’t make up a story like that.

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

There was some kind of dream about some archaeologist or someone talking about a hoard of pottery that they had discovered somewhere. The guy was coming out with a story that it was obviously a gift by someone to someone else whom he loved back in the eleventh century BC. For that reason, it was quite a unique and exciting find. But there was more to it than this and I can’t remember it now.

No prizes for guessing to what this dream relates. But the idea of giving gifts to lovers back in the eleventh century BC is certainly a novel idea and seems to have come from out of nowhere.

I had a girlfriend who lived in Audlem and she rang me up saying that she’d like me to go round. So round I went in the van and arrived at her house. For some unknown reason, I knocked on the fence instead of the front door. I’ve no idea why. She came rushing to the door with a great big smile on her face, really pleased to see me. I’m not used to being greeted like this by anyone particularly but at that point I awoke so I don’t know what happened

As it happens, I had a couple of girlfriends who lived in Audlem, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear. As for the girl in the dream, though, she was a girl whom I met in Brussels who moved to Croydon and then to Swindon. We saw each other once or twice but then she decided that she wanted marriage and a family.

But it’s true – no one is usually as pleased to see me as that girl was last night during the dream.

There was also something about me going away, so I was packing food into the back of the van but I could never get it to how I wanted it to be so I kept on taking it out and putting it back in a different way, but that just seemed to make it worse and worse. In the meantime, while I was doing this, someone shouted something about a black car, saying that it was being wrapped up etc, but someone was climbing into it to drive it away. It turned out that it was a taxi and this guy jumped into it to drive it away. A policeman was there, who tried to stop him but the guy leaped back out again with a huge piece of wood and attacked the policeman, then jumped back into the car and drove off

This is another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all.

The nurse turned up after his week away, and he was rather impatient today. I imagine that he has a lot of patients waiting for him back at his office.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

We finally managed to finish pottery, and we’re now on metal objects, such as rings, brooches and weapons.

Considering that many of his critics claim that there’s no evidence to support his claim that there ever was heavy fighting at Maiden Castle, the collection of arrowheads and spearheads clustered around the entrance to the fort is impressive

But surprisingly, he identifies a brooch and some matching pottery of a type that was common in Dorset and Somerset during the period 400 BC – 250 BC and notes that a sample of an identical type of brooch and pottery was found at a vitrified fort from the same period at Dunagoil on the Isle of Bute in Scotland guarding a seaway. And Dunagoil means, in yr Hen Ogledd, “fort of the foreigners”.

So I wonder what the connection might have been.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. It was another lesson that passed very well due to all of the preparation that I did. And I wish that I could be able to remember it all because it gets on my nerves that I can never ever remember anything half an hour later. I really do have a memory problem.

My cleaner turned up after the lesson and shooed me into the shower where I had a good wash and a change of clothes, and I feel so much better now.

Or, at least I did, because not long after I started to choose the music for the next radio programme (and that’s becoming more and more complicated as the music becomes more and more obscure), I felt the wave of fatigue arrive.

By about 16:00 I was slumped over the desk, flat out asleep, and by about 16:45, I was in bed, fully clothed, even down to the slippers. I just couldn’t carry on.

While I was asleep, Id been off on a ramble, as I found out next morning. And no-one was more surprised than me.

I had an E-type Jaguar, a hardtop. A group of us had gone to some kind of bar in the countryside. I remember running over the pebbles to this bar with no shoes on and it was killing my feet. We stayed there for a while, and then it was about 23:40 so we decided that we’d go into a club. A group of us, we all set out and left the pub and again, I had to run over these pebbles in my bare feet. I reached the car, and one of the doors was open and the toolbox was at the side of the car. There was only one wheel on the car. Then I remembered that my brother had been messing about with it before we went into the bar. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t put anything back nor why he’d taken the wheels off. I had to find the jack and jack up one side of the car, which was not quite so easy because the jack wouldn’t balance correctly – it was one of these peg jacks on a leg. Eventually, I could raise the car off the ground and one of the guys coming behind me slammed the wheel on quick. I could drop the car down on that side then. He asked if I needed wheel nuts, but I had some, but as I was trying to set these wheel nuts going, one of them wouldn’t start. It took me ages to fiddle around with this wheelnut to try to make it start, but it still wouldn’t start

Not that I’m ever likely to own an E-type or go into a bar. But running over pebbles is probably some reference to the pain that I have in my right foot.

As for my brother, you can bet that somewhere along the line, someone from my family would turn up.

It was about 19:45 when I awoke, and had it not been for the fact that the ‘phone rang at that moment, I would probably still be asleep even now. Instead, though, I headed off into the kitchen for tea. Pasta, vegan burger and ratatouille followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And for some reason, I didn’t enjoy it as much as usual.

But right now, if the stabbing pain in my foot allows me, I’m off to bed. I’ve had some of the cough mixture that I’ve been prescribed and apparently you aren’t allowed to drive while taking it because it sends you to …

… zzzzzzzzzzz.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the strange after-effects of the antibiotics this morning … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I once went to Prestatyn years ago.
"Come to Prestatyn" said the adverts. "It’s good for the rheumatism."
"And was it?" asked my friend.
"Absolutely" I replied. "I’d only been there a couple of hours before I caught it too".

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Saturday 7th February 2026 – I HAVE SEEN …

… one of the worst games of football this afternoon that I have ever seen in my life.

When you have the leader of the league against the third-placed team, you expect some kind of tense, thrilling contest. But not today, unfortunately. It was one of those games that is best forgotten.

Just like last night, in fact. That is best forgotten too. Having been endlessly sidetracked when writing my notes, and having fallen asleep yet again in my chair, it was almost midnight by the time that I’d finished everything and crawled under the covers.

And there I lay, without moving, until all of … errr … 04:30 when I awoke. Mind you, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep again and I finally awoke at about 06:25, a couple of minutes before the alarm. There wasn’t even enough time to check whether it was worth making an early start.

It was quite difficult to haul myself out of bed, as you might expect, but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom for a wash, a change of clothes and a handwashing session so that my socks and undies will be ready for next time.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was back playing bass guitar last night in my apartment. I’d been cleaning a few things and was cleaning the case in which the bass guitar lives when something made me stop and take it out. There was a “Man” record playing on the playlist, 7171-551 so I began to play along with it. then the next one came along, and the next one came along and so on. I hadn’t realised at that point that I had an audience. My cleaner was at the door and she was watching. After a while, she came in and said a few words of encouragement but I wasn’t particularly happy, it having been so long since I’d played. I didn’t think that I was particularly good but I did carry on. And once more, I was up on the stage. There was a young country-and-western or folk singer or something like that playing acoustic guitar, and I ended up accompanying him. On one of the songs, I played this really melodic bass guitar solo in the middle of it and it sounded really, really good.

Anyone who has heard my mobile ‘phone ring will immediately recognise the opening bars of “7171-551”, played by the Welsh rock group “Man” when they had the legendary ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina amongst their numbers. It’s said to be (although this is disputed) the ‘phone number of Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, and it’s also my mobile ‘phone ringtone.

But it’s true – I haven’t played guitar for almost two years since I had the implant fitted in my arm. It’s really painful to bend my wrist as I should. As well as that, I can’t stand up to play, and the guitars are too heavy for me anyway.

Did I dictate that dream about the private investigator who had a lot of work on his hands and was finding it very difficult to keep up and organise? … "no you didn’t" – ed …. I was spending a lot of time with him for different reasons. He had an assistant, a young guy. Every now and again, he’d give this young guy tasks to do which had come in which were fairly simple, straightforward etc. This private investigator had to take a few days off and went to Norway in the middle of winter where he sat, sorted out all his paperwork and then came back again. One of the jobs that he had to do was to drive two different Lotus vehicles because someone was alleging that they were the same car and they needed a report to say so. His young assistant chose to do that job so I said that I’d go with him. We set out and met the woman concerned and began to walk with her. We were walking through Chester and came past this music shop where this young boy nipped off to have a play on a guitar. We carried on walking and she said that she thought that he wasn’t the brightest spark in the box. I replied “no, but he’s nice enough”. He caught up with us and we arrived at this place, and she sent him to build some kind of seating area out of metal framework and OSB. When he’d done it, I went back to have a look and I noticed that he had small pieces of wood left over so I told him to use some of the OSB to fill in the gaps so that people would sit down there comfortably to watch this particular trial, but it turned out that he didn’t have enough wood to do that.

The private detective reminded me of Robert Mitchum, who played Philip Marlowe in the film FAREWELL MY LOVELY, one of the best films that I have seen for quite a while.

The street in Chester where the music shop was – I can see it now. It’s Frodsham Street, the street that leads from Foregate Street up to the bypass and then Brook Street. Of course, the rest of it is quite meaningless.

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

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

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to sort out my feet and legs, and after she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

And he’s not above taking a few pot shots at his colleagues, although not in the same subtle manner as James Curle. Re-examining the work of one of his predecessors who had examined the site at the end of the nineteenth century, he says that "Cunnington … found his black and white mosaic (apparently in situ) and a ‘mass of masonry’, 9 ft. by 6 ft. If the latter existed otherwise than in his imagination, it may have supported the cult-statue or altar, but no trace of the mass survived in I934"

He also talks about the pagan temple dating from the last quarter of the fourth century AD at Maiden Castle and examples at other hillforts, and speculates that there was a revival of paganism amongst the native population towards the end of the Roman occupation. He seems not to have considered the possibility that during this period, the Romans had been recruiting auxiliaries from beyond the boundary of the Empire who still adhered to their old pagan cults and had not yet adopted Christianity. And despite what Bede told us back in the eighth century, there is clear evidence that Saxon invaders were settled in parts of England as early as 368 AD, so it may equally well have been that the “Romano-Celtic” temples were built by or for these “foreigners”.

Back in here, there were the highlights of last night’s football, and that took me up to a disgusting drink break. Then I made a start on the radio notes that I need to finish, although I didn’t go very far because there was football on the internet – a game between TNS in first place and Penybont in third place.

And as I said just now, it was an appalling game. Penybont have been out of sorts since before Christmas and have not been doing very well. But today, they were the worst that I have ever seen.

Their manager said before Christmas that they need to strengthen the squad in the winter transfer window, but instead, they sold their two best players and recruited poorly to replace them. The fire has definitely gone out in their team. No team in third position in the league should EVER lose 6-0, no matter what the circumstances. And had it not been for an inspired display by their goalkeeper Luke Armstrong, the result could have been much worse

The thing, though, is that after a few really excellent games that have been a credit to the league, I was bound to come unstuck at some point. Who would have thought that it would have been at this game, though?

The rest of the afternoon was spent finishing writing the notes for that radio programme, and then I edited the notes that I’d dictated previously for another one.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger on a bap with salad and baked potato, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And delicious it was too.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a really decent sleep and a lie-in, but we shall see how things unfold.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the imagination … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of my brother at one of his many jobs.
The boss asked him "what are you doing?"
"I’m working" he replied.
"You’re only pretending to work!" roared the boss
"Well, you’re only pretending to pay us" replied my brother
He didn’t last long in that job.

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Thursday 8th January 2026 – WE HAVE ALL BEEN …

… bombarded with alerts and warnings from just about everyone, from the French National Government down to the corner shop, about the storm that is heading our way. And the siren … bombarded with alerts and warnings from just about everyone, from the French National Government down to the corner shop, about the storm that is heading our way. And the siren sound that the Government and Préfecture use on your mobile ‘phone to alert you will do much more than John Peel’s “View Hullo!” ever did to awaken the dead and the fox from his lair in the morning.

But anyway, more of that anon.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, it was another late night for no particular reason. Everything seemed to drag on and on and to complete some of the tasks, this steam-driven computer is simply not rapid enough. For example, I’m having to type my notes into a text file and then upload it via “cut and paste” because it’s quicker than watching the cursor crawl along as I type into the interface.

So it was 00:10 when I finally made it into bed last night, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. And although I awoke once or twice during the night, I was flat-out asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As seems to be usual these days, it took a while to pluck up the courage to leave the bed and head to the bathroom for a wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

After the hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And despite it being only a short night, I had travelled miles.

I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were discussing religion. She was concerned about the number of visits that priests and people were obliged to make to their congregation, rather than the congregation going to see the priest. I explained that, in general, the people who required the visit of the priest were the dissenters. She asked what I meant by that. I explained that these were people who did not necessarily believe in the literal word of the Bible and didn’t take the literal word to be the exact truth. I gave her a couple of examples, such as when Jesus said “go forth and multiply”, that didn’t mean that you had to leave the meeting and go out and have sex, or anything like that. It was a case of putting some kind of logical interpretation onto those words. As we were doing that, we were walking round the side of the church, then round and into some kind of hall. There were lots of people there, and I noticed that a couple of them were girls whom I knew. They were secretaries for someone or other, so I wondered what they were doing here and why they had come. Had they come with their boss or anything like that? However, the dream drifted away before I reached the point of asking them.

Religion is, for some reason, a very touchy subject for some people. The number of people in the World who have been killed because of religion must be horrendous. It’s sad that many religions that preach “tolerance”, “understanding”, “respect”, “peace” and “love” will massacre at the drop of a hat anyone who interprets the religion differently. Everyone reads their sacred text and interprets it differently, and there is not one single way that is “right” or “wrong”.

We were going to watch a Welsh Premier game between Y Bala and another team. It was the biggest crowd that I’d seen for years. There were probably three or four thousand people there. At one corner of the ground, there was a group of noisy fans who were chanting and shouting, and creating a great atmosphere. I even saw my oldest sister’s husband. I thought that this would be something if he’s coming to watch a game in Wales. Y Bala ran out onto the field, to lots of applause, but the other team came out in some sort of horse-drawn caleche. When it reached the centre of the field, a group of about eight or nine people went to take the body off the wheels to put onto the floor, but it was too heavy and at one end, they dropped it, so of course everyone cheered. Eventually, the teams lined up for the start and the game kicked off. I was standing on the side of the ground. The game had only been going for about five minutes when suddenly, there was a huge torrential downpour. There wasn’t very much in the way of cover at this ground so the whole crowd practically dispersed. I went and stood inside some kind of in-let in a wall, chatting to someone else who was there. Gradually, my attention was distracted by some kind of newspaper article about, how at Wells Green, a huge quantity of gold had been dug up. Apparently it was the contents of some kind of ship and had been collected between the period 1810-1816 and had been buried when there had been some kind of problem with the ship, whether it was towing another one or whether another one was towing it. I thought that it was an astonishing thing and I was determined to find out more about it. In the meantime, the rain stopped and the crowd slowly gathered again, but the players were off the field. Presumably it was half-time. When a player came out from the back behind the bar and was ready to merge into the crowd, someone asked him what the score was. He said that it was sixty-five for six sixty-seven for eight, whatever that was supposed to mean. We couldn’t understand it. The player was dressed in his civilian clothes, almost as if he was no longer going to take part in the game, and no-one seemed to have an explanation for that either

You aren’t ever likely to find a big crowd at a game played at Y Bala. With a population of only two thousand or so, they could all fit into the ground at Maes Tegid, and with plenty of room to move around. The fact that the club has made it to the Welsh Premier League is an achievement in itself. You will, however, find plenty of rain. It’s one of the wettest places in the UK , with, on average, about fifty-three inches of rain each year.

Incidentally, Wells Green is about sixty miles from the sea, so any ship that found itself there really would have a problem.

I was doing another pick-up for Shearings, picking up in three or four towns. I had the coach ready and was ready to go. It was a route that I knew quite well and I’d done it on several occasions. I knew that today there were going to be problems because in one of the towns, there was a market and all of the town centre was closed up, so I was trying to work out how I was going to arrive at the pick-up place. One of the guys from the office came along and said “never mind. I’ve drawn a plan for you and I’ve put it in your paperwork”, which was nice of him. So I set out and went to the first stop where half a dozen or so people boarded. On the way to the second stop, I had to stop at a road junction, but for some reason the brakes were really heavy on this vehicle. I just managed to slither to a halt right on the line. Some tractors coming across from the right-hand side of this junction had their indicators on for turning right, but instead of turning right into the road that was directly opposite mine, they turned right into a particular field on that corner. Then, we set off when the lights changed and I had this really long sweeping curve which I took far too wide and almost ended up in the hedge but I managed to keep going. We stopped for two minutes at someone’s house, I’ve no idea why. The mother came out to talk to the daughter who was on board the coach, but the coach was now a little Renault 4 type of van with a rollback canvas hood. I went round and quickly dusted off the vehicle, which caused some amusement from this mother. I explained that it had to be done. Then, ready to go again, I climbed into the vehicle and looked at the map that this guy had drawn for me. It was nothing like useful because he’d assumed that I went into the town a certain way, but he’d just shown me a quick diversion around one particular street, but that was nowhere near where I actually do go into the town. I go in a different way. This map that he’d drawn was of no help to me whatsoever. So we set off, and we were coming into the edge of this town. We could see all of the ancient fortifications and the city walls, a really heavy, complicated thing all overgrown with mould and ivy. As we approached the city wall, ready to go into the medieval town, I was still wracking my brains as to how I was going to arrive at this pick-up point.

This is becoming a regular theme these days, isn’t it? Driving coaches to towns where there are all kinds of chaos in the town centre on a market day or something like that.

I had a vague memory of Emilie the Cute Consultant. She was telling me that my weight had climbed right back up again. I replied that I was convinced that the weight reading the last time was incorrect, rather than being a problem with my weight. However, I didn’t write that down and that’s all that I seem to remember of that.

This is connected to a discussion that I had on Monday. There is less and less liquid to extract these days. It’s true that I’m controlling my liquid intake very carefully, but that’s not the whole story. I’m eating less and less so I’m sure that my “dry weight” is going down. But as they only check it once a month, I shall have to wait for the next control.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving today. Apparently, she’d bumped into my cleaner outside and they had had a little chat. I have heard a little rumour that all is not well in certain quarters and that there is a story likely to unfold at some point.

She caught me in the bedroom working, and that was inconvenient for me, but there is no argument when she has made up her mind about something.

After she left, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and managed to eat everything today, which makes a change. But I was running late for just about everything. There was plenty to do after breakfast, which meant that there wasn’t much time left to work on my radio programme before my cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic.

It was round about then that the ‘phones went berserk with alerts. Major storm warning, batten down the hatches, 18:00 curfew, no-one moves. Gusts of wind up to 160 kph expected.

Bearing that in mind, she applied the anaesthetic quickly and shot off to do her afternoon’s work to be back before the storm hit.

As usual, when there’s a rush on, the taxi was late. We also had to go to pick up someone else so we really were late arriving at dialysis.

Luckily, I was seen quite quickly and I managed to persuade Emilie the Cute Consultant to reduce the time. After much discussion, she agreed to knock fifteen minutes off, so that I would be finished before 18:00.

No internet today for some reason, so I watched NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH, another Launder and Gilliatt film with the dynamic duo of “Charters and Coldicott”, followed by half of ROME EXPRESS starring one of my favourite actors, Gordon “Inspector Hornleigh” Harker.

In the end, I was disconnected at about 17:50, which made a nice change, but the panic amongst the taxi companies to deal with the unexpected flood of passengers meant that I had to wait half an hour for mine to turn up. Luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a nice chat all the way home.

At Granville, the wind had already sprung up, so I had to be dropped off at the rear entrance to the building where there is the fire escape. The car can come right up to the door there, so it saves me the twenty-metre walk in the teeth of the gale.

My cleaner helped me into the building (and I needed it too) and after she left, I made tea – pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a vegan burger. But once more, I left some on my plate.

Back in here, I had a little “relax” for fifteen minutes, and then, hearing the wind increasing in velocity, I made an executive decision, which for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be the wrong decision, the person who made it is executed, and decided that I’d go to bed while the going was good. If the velocity increases, the chances are that it will be too noisy to sleep later on.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … they were still out on the golf course playing away as the wind velocity increased
One player was taking an age measuring up his shot, calculating the wind and the direction from which it was coming.
"Get a move on, can’t you?" urged his partner
"My wife’s over there" said the other. "I have to make this shot absolutely perfect"
"Does it really matter that much?"
"Ohh yes. If I don’t get it right, I might miss her."

0

Saturday 3rd January 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I had a rather wild idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Tuesday 30th December 2025 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… catastrophe, I’m feeling a little better again today. However, it will be interesting to see if I can keep on going until I finish everything.

Not like last night, when I ground to a halt round about 22:00 and couldn’t carry on. That was the quickest slide into fatigue that I have ever had, because half an hour earlier, I was feeling quite sprightly.

Anyway, after I’d fallen asleep in the chair yet again, once I’d awoken, I decided to go straight to bed and finish off everything the next morning. That’s why those of you who came to read my notes overnight may have found some rather terse notes instead of the entry that is there now.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I stayed, flat out and dead to the World, until all of … errr … 03:20. Mind you, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly until at least … errr … 03:50.

That was, unfortunately, my lot. Despite trying everything that I could, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep so round about 05:45, I gave it up and arose from the Dead. That was when I attacked the rest of the notes.

As well as that, I was chatting online to Alison, who is also ill and can’t sleep. We really are a right pair. There’s no hope for us. What a way to spend the Christmas break – flat out ill in bed!

While I was pondering over the aforesaid, I was beginning to wonder. Falling asleep at 22:00 or thereabouts and waking up at 04:00? Has my body clock reset itself somehow? So how do I reset it to how it was before?

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up and then into the kitchen for the medication. Everything today, though, was done at a rather leisurely pace. I was in no mood to hurry.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were in my car heading back towards Crewe when the song THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN came onto the radio. We were listening to that on the way home. That’s really all of this that I remember. It’s another one that evaporated the moment that I grabbed hold of the dictaphone.

She’s a girl who fascinates me. She’s small, with masses and masses of wild, dark hair, and I could easily imagine her playing a demon violin. That’s why the song is so relevant. You probably know the song – it’s based on a traditional American folk song from the Nineteenth Century and first recorded by Buster Carter and Preston Young in 1931 under the title “A Lazy Farmer Boy”

It was popularised by Alison Krauss and Union Station, but you have never ever heard it played quite like in the video clip. Along with Le Vent du Nord’s “Forillon”, which you can find AT ABOUT 49:00 ON THIS VIDEO CLIP, it’s probably one of the most extraordinary pieces of music you’ll ever hear. If you don’t know what the French word ‘déchainé’ means, just listen to, or watch, the solos in the songs, and you’ll need no further explanation.

And later on, I was up in the High Arctic, up in Goose Bay with someone else. It might even have been the aforementioned nurse from dialysis. We had to go back to Québec, so there’s a bus that leaves, and we climbed aboard the bus, an old yellow school bus, and it set off. There were about half a dozen passengers on it and there was a woman driving it. But before we climbed on board, we were sitting in another bus somewhere. As it pulled into Goose Bay, whoever was with me was asleep at the other end of the bus. We saw a VW camper with a caravan on the back pull off the road into a rest area. Instead of going in a complete arc and round, the driver tried to cut off the arc to make the entry smaller and became stuck on a rock. I nudged whoever was with me, or shouted to her, or gesticulated to her. As she turned round, the driver tried to go a little further on, but he overturned the vehicle. Our bus stopped and the driver alighted – it was a woman – and she helped them roll this camper thing back onto its four wheels. Then, we drove into the town where we picked up some more people. It was school chucking-out time and the kids were all there in British school uniforms, hanging around on this corner by this petrol station. I thought that this was weird for Labrador. On the bus back, we were talking, and some people were saying “whatever would we have done before we had the current crop of social media?”. I asked “does anyone remember ‘MySpace’?”. Apparently, no-one did, and I felt terribly old at that point. Then someone mentioned that it might have been the first, so I asked “what about First Class that we had at the university? The only thing was that all of the computers had to be physically connected by a server. If they were all working off the same server, you would have a really impressive social network, which many of us did at the time”. Then it began to go dark and I began to feel tired. I was thinking to myself “how long is it going to be before we reach Québec? Should we have brought some food with us?. I thought that I’d go down to the front to talk to the driver to find out if there’s any chance of stopping somewhere, maybe at Labrador City, to go to buy some food, but I fell asleep at that point.

It’s impressive that I could recognise in a dream that some British school uniforms would be totally out of place in Labrador. Not so impressive, though, that I thought that Goose Bay was in the High Arctic, which of course it isn’t.

Does anyone else remember social networks like MySpace? Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, my Myspace account was still active after all these years. And “First Class” – that was the university’s social network. It was quite primitive but still, thirty years ago, what did you expect? And it was designed by one man and one man only, whom I actually met. You didn’t have to be physically connected to the university’s intranet to use it, but it was only accessible by logging in to the intranet, which you could do via an internet connection.

And those were the days, weren’t they? Internet at 9.6 kbps. But then again, in the 1980s I was running a taxi business on an Apple II computer, and all that had was 2 x 5.25-inch floppy discs. Look at my setup now!

The nurse turned up, still as cheerful as ever. We had a brief chat and then he cleared off, leaving me to make breakfast.

And I’m still reading about Roman military engineering, although what the book on “Congreve’s Rockets” that I was reading had to do with Roman military engineering I really don’t know. It shows just how easily I can be sidetracked.

After breakfast, the chiropodist arrived. She took one look at my feet and sighed with despair. But in the half-hour that she was here, she did a really good job on my feet and toenails, and I was so impressed. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Back in here, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme, and by the time that I’d knocked off for a disgusting drink break, all of the music had been chosen, edited, remixed, paired and segued.

After my drink, I was sitting here slowly sinking into a semi-daze when the door burst open and in came my faithful cleaner. Any chance of a rest evaporated at that moment and when she’d done her stuff, I was ushered into the bathroom ad stuck under the shower. So now, I’m a nice, clean boy again … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

While I was in the shower, my cleaner was changing my bedding, putting my new sheet, quilt cover and pillowcases on – my Christmas presents to myself. And the setup is beautiful. It’s a very dark blue with planets, stars and asteroids all over it. I saw it in an online store and had a coup de coeur. I’m glad that I did. It goes really nicely with the dark blue of my bedroom curtains.

After she had left, I began to write the notes for the music that I’d just sorted out. I also had a chat with Liz too but she disappeared before I’d had a chance to tell her that Santa had paid me another visit last night or early this morning.

Tea tonight was the last of those strange curry-filled burgers with rice and veg followed by Christmas pudding and … CUSTARD! As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends in the World. No-one could wish for better

What I wish for now, though, is my bed. I’ve managed to fight my way through to the end without falling asleep, and seeing that I’ve been awake since 03:50, that’s something of a miracle. And a nice clean me in a nice clean bed is something to anticipate, that’s for sure. Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about asteroids … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once told me that Asterix the Gaul went into the European Space Centre.
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some asteroids" he replied. "And then a polar bear went into the optician’s"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some polaroids" he replied. "And then hurdler David Hemery went into the waste room at the local hospital’s surgical centre"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"I don’t know" he replied. "He didn’t say."

0

Tuesday 23rd December 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a very busy boy today?

It’s been non-stop from start to finish here today and I’m thoroughly exhausted after all of it. And the worst of it all is that it all started at about … errr … 04:30 this morning too.

Last night was busy too. Apart from falling asleep several times while I was trying to write out my notes, there were the usual man-made distractions and everything else. What should have been an early night ended up at 23:15. Still, it’s earlier than some have been just recently.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. Mind you, 04:30 is later than some have been just recently too.

Round about 05:30, I gave up any further hope of going back to sleep and heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the notes for the joining track for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, edited them and then assembled the programme.

This one was just about eleven seconds over the hour, but editing that out is no real problem.

Just as I was finishing, the 06:29 alarm went off so I scurried off into the bathroom to organise myself and then into the kitchen for my medication and hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was out at my niece’s and my father was there. A couple of years ago, my brother had been to visit but no-one had seen hide nor hair of him since then. My father and everyone else were talking about going off on holiday – they’d arranged a camping holiday for two weeks, leaving the following morning. I had to go down to Sartilly to pick up their tent ready for an early start. Just at that moment, the door burst open and my brother walked in and said “hello” to everyone. Of course, everyone was pleased to see him but the timing was all totally wrong. Everyone would be off on holiday that following morning. He’d come all this way and no-one was going to stay with him. He said that it didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t stop because the alternator on his car was giving up. My niece’s husband turned to me and said “while you’re out at the shop picking up the tent, pick up a voltage regulator 1071. That’s the one for his alternator”. I walked out and left them to it and set off for Sartilly. For some reason, I was in a coach, and when I reached Sartilly I found myself going to reverse all the way through the town centre. It wasn’t the real town centre at Sartilly but somewhere else. I was trying to reverse this coach and making a real dog’s breakfast of it. A few people on board were talking about another coach driver, a woman who owned her own business so I immediately thought of Dolly Barratt. I was busy trying to sort out this coach, reversing through this town centre in all this kind of chaos, but eventually I arrived at the shop, which was something like Boots in Crewe. I went in and found the counter. There was a guy serving behind it, and he had a port wine birthmark on his face. Where it was was not in the car part or the camping part, but his post was surrounded all by seeds of flowers and vegetables

The chances of us all being together and pleased to see each other are … errr … somewhat remote, especially as spread out as we are. As for my father, someone would have to drag him up from shovelling the coals in the depths of Hades and that would be rather a complicated task for someone.

What else impressed me was how much of that dream was actually based on real events, people and situations too.

Another thing is that, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we had another dream, only a few days ago, where I was with my brother and trying to reverse a coach through another city centre. There’s obviously some kind of significance here.

Isabelle the Nurse beamed herself into the apartment at that point. I asked her how her week’s break had been, and she told me that she’d spent the week ill in bed. Now that’s what I call sad. However, she was still smiling, so I definitely want a mug of whatever she drinks before she comes out.

After she left, I went and made breakfast and then started my new book – A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

This is the report, all seven hundred and more pages of it, of the archaeological excavations of the Roman fort of Trimontium near Newstead in the Scottish Borders by James Curle at the start of the twentieth century. The book has been described as " … a standard reference work, ahead of its time and still the most decisive work published in Scotland covering this period of Roman occupation, expansion and retreat."

It was an outlier fort, built beyond Hadrian’s Wall and after the Antonine Wall across the Forth-Clyde gap was abandoned, it was heavily fortified, presumably because then it was deep into enemy territory. It was finally abandoned, presumably as untenable, round about 184 AD.

After breakfast, I began the hard work. The first task was to make my vegan Wellington for Christmas and New Year. It’s a roll of flaky pastry filled with a stuffing made of chestnuts, mushrooms and sweet potato. I made one a couple of years ago and it was delicious, so I hope that this one is as good. It took several hours and a lot of hard work to make.

After I’d finished and it was all nicely baked, I was about to move on to the next task, but my faithful cleaner appeared and chased me into the shower. Not that I felt much like it but there was no possibility of argument. At least I’m nice and clean now … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

She had remembered to buy the tomato passata so after she had left, I could make the sauce for the baked beans. I have a feeling that it’s not going to be much of a success, because the recipe seems to need much less soy sauce than the instructions said. But you can’t win a coconut every time. At the moment, it’s all sitting simmering in the slow cooker where it will simmer away all through the night.

Finally, there were the hash browns to make. And after a very hit-and-miss start, I finally got to grips with it and understood what I was supposed to be doing. And these seem to have turned out to be a roaring success by the looks of things, much better than any attempt that I have made in the past. They even held together when I turned them over in the oven.

On top of all of this, the postie arrived with two packages. There still seems to be one missing, but now I have my new quilt cover, veggie knives and giant-sized sieves. My previous giant sieve is destined to go to that great kitchen in the sky because the paint has come off and when I drain my carrots for freezing, it’s leaving rust stains on some of them. These new ones are stainless steel.

All of that had completely worn me out and when I finally came back in here, I sat in the chair and crashed out for an hour. I was totally exhausted.

For tea, when I eventually made it into the kitchen, I made pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a vegan burger, followed by fruitcake and vegan sorbet.

Back in here, late as usual, I ended up having a good, long chat with Liz and so I’m running horribly late yet again. But I don’t mind. I’d rather talk to friends than do anything else so I’m not complaining. It’s nice that my friends still think about me.

But right now, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow , I have a radio programme that I want to do from start to finish if I can. there are also several other tasks too but I’ll worry about those in due course.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my dreams … "well, one of us has" – ed … something in that dream reminded me of something many years ago.
Back in Crewe in the olden days, we had a man who was one sandwich short of a packed lunch (Crewe is full of those) and who thought that he was a suicide bomber. He’d creep up unawares on people and shout " BOOM" down their ears quite loudly
When I went back to Crewe once, after I’d left to live in Brussels, I didn’t see him so I asked one of my friends "whatever happened to the man who thought that he was a suicide bomber?"
"Oh, him!" she replied. "He’s gone off on holiday."

0

Wednesday 17th December 2025 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… we had another horrible night, when I was awake at some ridiculous hour.

Don’t ask me what time it was, because I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to demoralise myself even more than I already am, but judging by how long I remained awake afterwards, it can’t have been any later than yesterday.

It’s difficult to understand why I’ve woken up so early just now. I’ve been really exhausted at the end of the last couple of previous evenings – last night, I crashed out for forty-five minutes as soon as I’d finished writing my notes – and so by rights, I ought to be flat-out until the alarm goes off, as on Sunday morning.

And so, what with my unexpected forty-five minutes away with the fairies, yesterday was another late night, much later than it should have been.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long and I was soon awake. And there I lay, just as on the previous morning, tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable so that I could go back to sleep again.

It must have worked to some degree because the alarm going off at 06:29 awoke me. I’ve no idea when I fell asleep, but it can’t have been very long beforehand.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead, and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up.

After the medication and the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was at a football match somewhere in Scotland. When I saw the reports of the game afterwards, I saw that the number of points that each team had gained at that game was 224. I thought that it was a really unusual number so I wondered how they had managed it. I remembered bits about the game but not very much, but most of the action was on the terraces between the spectators, where there were some confrontations. I remember two opposing supporters being frogmarched up to the back of the stand by a group of the other supporters and pinned against the wall there. The thing that really caught my eye about this was, just outside the ground were some tenement flats, and a group of football supporters made a couple of kinds of these human pyramids up against the wall, as high as the fifth floor of these tenements. When someone had climbed up to the top, they could knock on the window and some other young kid living in that tenement could wrestle a window open because it was really tough and climb out, climb back down the human pyramid and go off with his friends. And it wasn’t just once that it happened – it was twice.

Football is another one of those subjects that seems to be recurring quite often in my dreams. The rest of it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but the story of the human pyramid reminded me of a real event in Crewe forty or more years ago when a new “singles disco” opened in the town. There were fifteen guys and just one girl who attended, so we all had visions of the men forming a human pyramid to dance with the girl.

I had a visit from Zero last night. There was a lot of tidying up that needed doing in the basement so I was down there moving all the books around. One box of books fell from the top shelf so I picked it up and threw it back. However, it didn’t land quite correctly – it fell down again. When I picked it up and went to throw it for the second time, I didn’t have the strength. My brother came down with another box of books. I told him to leave it here and I’d throw it onto the top. We began to talk about the work that I was doing down there, which was tidying up the clothes and tidying up the face image gallery. He wondered whether I ought to be doing something else, but I told him that this was what I had been told to do and this was what I was doing. So I was busy trying to sort out these boxes and everything else, and then I decided to spend ten minutes on the clothes. I began to sort them out and move them around and came across some of Roxanne’s dresses. I put them on hangers and hung them up in the cupboard. Just then, Zero came down in this beautiful, gorgeous peacock-blue dress, a kind of formal attire. While I was sorting out these other dresses, I handed a hanger to her to put her dress on. She told me that she wanted to keep on wearing it. I told her that it might be damaged if she’s playing about in it and it will be ruined. She’d be far better off hanging it up. She replied that she’d go to check with her mother. She left and then came back five minutes later while I was still sorting out these dresses and these faces and throwing these boxes of books onto the top and not being able to. She said that her mum had said that she can continue to wear it throughout the evening. In that case, I gave her a peck on the cheek and we carried on talking for a while.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see you again. I can still see the dress that she was wearing, and it really was lovely. Far too nice to wear as a casual dress. But we actually did find a few of Roxanne’s dresses – her confirmation dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and an evening dress with a jacket – here when we unpacked an old suitcase that had been lying around for ages since the Duysbergh days. There were a couple of her dolls too.

And as usual, someone from my family comes along to spike my guns just when things are becoming interesting.

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. I asked him if he knew of any chiropodists because I have a prescription for one to come here to sort out my feet. He said that there’s one with whom he co-operates, and he’ll put her in touch with me.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re at the Wansdyke in South-West England and he’s going against the prevailing trend at that period, suggesting that the dyke was built after the road, rather than before it, as most people back then thought.

As it happens, he’s probably right, because when part of the dyke was excavated in modern times, they found a couple of late-Roman coins on top of the level of the underlying ground underneath the dyke, indicating that the dyke was built on top of the coins.

He’s still struggling with his forts on one of the Itineraries – trying to locate them somewhere along the southern shore of the Severn whereas today, they have been pretty well identified with places in South Wales.

After breakfast, I came in here where I had things to do, and then I set about writing the notes for the radio programme for which I’d chosen the music the other day.

There were numerous interruptions, such as the disgusting drink break and a telephone call from the chiropodist. She’ll be coming round on 30th December at 10:00, which is good news.

When the notes were finished, I had a letter to write and an order to send off to an online retailer for some more supplies, including the handrails for the shower. I’m hoping to have those fitted in early January so that I can be much more autonomous in the shower. In fact, there are a few things around here that need doing, so I’ll need to contact the guy who installed the kitchen.

With the time that was left, I began to choose the music for another radio programme. I want to try to do two programmes a week now that I’m settled back in here and there’s no chemotherapy or Centre de Ré-education to worry me.

In the end, I only finished about half of that because, as you might expect, I fell asleep for forty minutes on my chair.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It should have been with ratatouille, but to my surprise, I found that I’d forgotten to order any tins just now. The fruitcake and soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …. but before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my visit from Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember saying to her how much I missed her.
"I love you terribly" I said
"I know" she replied "but I’m sure that you’re doing your best."

0

Tuesday 16th December 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

The last thing that you expect when you go to bed at 23:30 is to be wide awake again at 02:45, with no possibility whatsoever of going back to sleep.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been tired on Monday evening. I was in fact in something of a state when I was typing out my notes and I fell asleep three or four times—on one occasion almost falling off my chair. I was desperate to go to bed.

When I finally did make it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. What was even worse was that it wasn’t a drowsy me lying there in bed but a wide-awake, fully alert me … "within certain limits, of course" – ed … I was even contemplating leaving the bed, but much as I like having these early starts, 02:45 is something of an exaggeration.

So I lay there, watching the clock go round – 03:30, 04:00, 04:30, 05:00 – resolving that at 05:30 I would leave the bed and start to do some work. However, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so at some point between 05:00 and 05:30 I must have fallen asleep again.

You’ve no idea just how difficult it was to haul myself out of bed at that point. I would have given all that I own, and more besides, to have been able to crawl back in under the covers. But that’s not getting the baby bathed, so in the end I summoned up the strength …

… Or, at least I thought I had, but I couldn’t pull myself up off the bed into an upright position this morning. I mentioned the other day that I noticed yet another problem with my leg, and here we are again this morning. This is going to turn out to be something serious.

Eventually, I made it into the bathroom and had a good scrub and then into the kitchen for my medication and hot ginger, honey and lemon drink. But while I was taking the meds, I was thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m going to keep a note of when I have these really bad nights and compare them with my dialysis sessions to see whether there is any connection.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, not that there had been much time to go anywhere. We were in the USA last night at the house of some people. There was an American football game on, so we were watching it half-heartedly, although there was one of the classic comedy films on the other channel. I would have much rather watched that, but “when in Rome” and all that. The conversation began to become rather political and began to become somewhat extreme. After a couple of people had left, I said to one of the girls who was staying behind “I hope that those people aren’t going to get into trouble for what they have been saying. I don’t really want that to happen”. She said something like “things aren’t as bad as the media make out”. Then I was looking at some stuff from the university. It turned out that there had been a scandal about the production of some of the documents, so I actually tracked my way down into the university’s intranet system using my old identity and password to find out what was happening. The first thing that I’d noticed was that the system had changed dramatically. It was no longer the free-for-all that it used to be, but it was very closely structured, and there was very little on there that was not to do with studying. The one particular chat group on there was discussing this situation but very obliquely. No-one seemed to be getting down to the serious issues that had taken place, despite how hard I looked, so I posted one or two messages on there, but no-one seemed to respond. Eventually, I found out that it seemed to have been, in the view of one or two people, more of an administrative issue than a question of personal incompetence or something. But then we were deciding that those of us who were remaining were going to paint some furniture. I had a paintbrush in my hand to paint some kind of primer on the wood. When it had all been primed, I went to wash the paintbrush to put on the top coat, but the two sinks in the kitchen were full of dirty water and full of dirty crockery. In the end, I rinsed out the brush in the dirty water. One of the other girls came in. She looked at what I was doing and said “don’t go busting a gut, Eric, will you?”.

Leaving aside my current health situation, there are other reasons too why I won’t be going to the USA any time soon, so this dream is unlikely to repeat itself in real life. However, it’s usually quite true that the media quite often exaggerate and blow up out of all proportion many of the events that take place in the World, but nevertheless, there’s an undercurrent of suppression, oppression and unpleasantness currently unfolding in the Western World and I’m glad that I shan’t be around to see it unfold. I feel sorry for those people younger than me who will have to live through it when it reaches its climax.

As for the dirty sink, that’s just how my style of living used to be before I cleaned up my act – and cleaned up my kitchen.

Another thing that I’d discovered was that in my rush to go to bed last night, I’d forgotten to note the statistics.

The nurse turned up as usual, a big smile on his face. He certainly seems to be a lot happier since he went on his holidays back in the summer. He sorted out my legs, and then I could push on, make breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re poring over Devon at the moment, and he’s making a couple of assumptions about certain Roman forts that he believes to be there, namely Leucarum. and Moridunum, but modern thought is that these places are in South-West Wales, at Llwchwr and Caerfyrddin respectively.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson, once I’d remembered to plug in my webcam. We had an informal Christmas party today as we were doing some work, and the atmosphere was quite relaxed. In fact, it was another lesson in which I did very well and it goes to show the benefit of taking some time to revise. Now, if only what I had learned would succeed in staying in my head…

After the lesson, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the door and organised the shower for me. So while she was cleaning the apartment, I was stuck underneath the shower having a good hose down. But it’s certainly true that I’m not as well as I have been. I had one or two uncomfortable moments under there this afternoon.

After she left, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme. And now, that’s all chosen, remixed, edited, paired and segued. That took until about 17:30 or thereabouts, and at that point I couldn’t keep on going any longer. I decided to close my eyes and relax for five minutes.

The next thing that I recalled, it was 19:20. My new office chair is certainly comfortable, and I’m glad about that.

While I was asleep, I was on a coach trip. I’d ushered everyone on board and was looking for a friend of mine, but couldn’t see her. Instead, I found an empty seat so I asked if it would be OK if I were to sit there. It was a young blonde-haired girl and she said “yes”, so I sat down and we drove off. leter on, we came to some kind of halt where a couple of people alighted from the coach. I went round to look at a cylinder head that I was bringing with me, went in to fetch a can of oil, and then squirted some more oil onto the valve gear I then put the oil back. i was going to fetch a cup of coffee so I asked the girl, who was sitting in her seat, if she’d like a coffee. Se siad “yes”, and after much debate, she decided that she would like it with sugar but no milk, and in a large cup. I went and found the coffee, but the coffee was cold so I asked one of the guys behind the till whether there was any objection if I were to make a coffee because I’d missed the coffee from earlier. He asked me whether I could do it from an urn with a spout or would I like him to do it? I said that he could do it. In the meantime, I’d organised two large fibre cups and . One of them already had somehow some coffee in it, but it was cold. I explained that the coffee was cold because I was doing other things, so he went off to make some

Whatever this is all about, I really don’t know. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything at all.

Tea tonight was mashed potato, veg and one of these strange, spicy burgers that I bought a while ago, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. It seems that I have no trouble eating mashed potato so I had a 5 kg sack delivered the other day. As long as I can eat that with plenty of vegan butter, I’ll be doing OK, I reckon.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover after that wicked night last night. But we shall see how it works out. Things never seem to go to plan when I’m talking about sleeping.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about Welsh and that untidy kitchen … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from Chester who married a Welsh girl.
He told her "the secret of a happy marriage and a happy home life is to have a happy husband. And what makes me happy is coming home to a kiss and a cuddle, my slippers waiting by the fireside, a hot mug of coffee and a nice tidy house instead of this mess in which we seem to be living right now."
For the first two days, he didn’t see any improvement. However, on the third day, things were a little different. The swelling began to go down and he could open his right eye a little.

0

Saturday 13th December 2025 – I HAVE JUST …

… seen probably the most exciting game of football that I have seen for a long time.

It’s Welsh Cup today, the last sixteen, and with many of the big guns already eliminated, there’s a frantic race to the final when some unsuspecting and unprepared club will win and find themselves playing in European competition next season.

Consequently, it’s been “no holds barred” with a ream of sendings off, and in the game that I was watching, we had three yellow cards in the first fifteen minutes.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, last night was another late night. Not as late as some have been just recently, because I did actually put my foot down and dash along with the stuff as quickly as I could, but it was later than I would have liked.

And there I lay until all of … errr … 04:40, when I had another dramatic awakening. After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep and at about 05:37, I called it a night and left the bed.

Thinking that I may as well take advantage of an early start, I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working, and then I dictated them so that they are ready for editing.

Once I’d finished, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication. While I was there, and seeing as I wasn’t in a rush, I decided to fix a couple of the drawers that had fallen apart. These cheap and nasty IKEA drawers really are getting on my wick.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in to sort out my feet and to give me my ‘flu injection. She had to sit with me for fifteen minutes afterwards to make sure that I had no after-effects, so we talked about nothing much in particular.

Then there was breakfast and some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re now in Silchester, or Calleva Atrebatum as it used to be. It’s a well-known ruin, well-mapped by different archaeologists, so it holds no surprises for us

The shopping from LeClerc turned up, so I put most of it away, and then I had 2 kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch. That took longer than it ought to have done.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were quite busy at home – well, at the place where I was living. It was like a big collective place with lots of different people living there. I was busy with a friend of mine. Early in the morning, we’d had a delivery of food from the supermarket. My friend brought it in and she put it down by the side of my desk. However, I wasn’t at the side of my desk for ages so it sat there for a while. As time drew on, I began to think about making tea so I went into the fridge, where I noticed that the carrots were all soft and inedible. I wished that I had some fresh ones. Then, I suddenly realised that I had because the order had come from the supermarket earlier. I dashed over to my desk but the bags had been moved again. Eventually, I found them, but of course there was the frozen food which was now all defrosted. I thought “never mind. It can’t be helped” and went to put it in the freezer. The freezer was, as usual, crowded out with stuff and there wasn’t really any room for it so I had to do my best to invent some room. Then, there were all of the other things too so I went to put them on the shelves. I was surprised at the number of sweets that I already had in boxes on the shelves, and I’d ordered some more, and I thought that this was never going to do because I was going to be here forever trying to sort out all of this. And the frozen food, having melted, just about put the tin hat on everything.

The part about the shopping presumably relates to this morning’s delivery. However, that passed OK, except that both the freezers are now full to overflowing and there’s no room to swing a cat in there

Later on, I decided that I’d go off on another trip to the Arctic so I contacted the people with whom I went last time and booked some kind of voyage with them that they were making up to some of the old Arctic exploration camps. I packed my suitcase and packed a smaller one and set off on my crutches to the bus station. When I arrived at the bus station, I had to look around for the buses that would take me to the airport and climbed on board a bus. The bus set off, and when I alighted at Manchester, I only had my small suitcase with me. I suddenly remembered that while I was looking at the bus timetables, I’d let go of my larger one and I must have forgotten it. I thought that there was no time now whatsoever to go back and pick it up and I was on a ‘plane to Montreal right now. At Montreal, I alighted, still with my small suitcase and walked round to my hotel. We were told that we were leaving in half an hour so that gave me half an hour to go around the shops to see if I could find some clothes, because I’d freeze to death in the Arctic like this. Of course, it was 08:30 and I found the big Army and Navy Stores where they would have most of what I’d need but it was still closed. It wouldn’t open until 09:00 and by then we’d be leaving. So with reluctance, I set off back to the hotel where we were meeting and came across an open-air market. I had a quick look around there but still couldn’t find anything so I set off back to the hotel. On the way back, I realised that I’d left my small suitcase at the market so I had to go back. Luckily, it was still there and I carried on back to the hotel. People were already congregating outside. A few people knew me and asked me how I was doing, so I made a grimace. One of them said “never mind, Eric. You’ll be great once you are on board the ship with us”. I thought to myself “if only they knew what kind of disaster this is going to turn out to be”.

It seems that I’m definitely yearning for Montréal and the High Arctic again, but of course there is a good reason why I’m not going. My health won’t stand it. However, being absent-minded and distracted away from my luggage is nothing new. As for the clothes in the Army and Navy store, back in the distant past, had I gone to the one in Crewe, I would have equipped myself with Arctic gear with no problems. What I should have done in this dream was to simply ask the organisers of the trip to postpone the departure until I’d kitted myself out. It would only have taken half an hour.

As for the open-air market, the one in Crewe closed down in 2016. That’s a really sad state of affairs. The whole town seems to be dying. It was bad enough when I lived there. It must be a hundred times worse these days.

The next task was to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated. And by the time that I’d knocked off in mid-afternoon, the notes had been edited and the two halves of the programme assembled. The final track has been chosen and the notes written, and they are awaiting dictation.

Back in the kitchen, I iced my Christmas cakes. And what a mess I made of that, especially when I was whisking the aquafaba and let go my hold on the bowl. We had aquafaba all over the kitchen, walls and worktop, the clean crockery and cutlery and also all over me. It’s a good job that I had some more in the freezer.

The icing sugar ended up being too runny and it ran down the side of the cakes, so I had to leave it to set a while before I could give it a second coat.

Not to worry, because we had Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon in the Welsh Cup.

With only five Premier League teams left in the competition, and with two matches featuring games between four of them, there will be only three, or maybe even two in the next round if Greford Athletic of the Second Division knocks out Barry Town. So it’s anyone’s cup, and a cheap passport into European competition.

So the Met and the Cofis were going at it hammer and tongs, with the game swinging like a pendulum from one end to the other throughout the match. The Cofis scored first, but the Met equalised. The Met scored a second but the Cofis equalised almost straight from the restart.

With the game heading towards a penalty shootout, a moment of magic from the Cofis’ Portuguese midfielder led to a third goal, and with the Met throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Cofis’ defence in the final seconds, they left themselves wide open to a rapid counter-attack, with the inevitable results. Hats off to Cofis manager Richard Davies for introducing a new, rapid pair of legs up front in the final minutes.

So what with Bangor City of the Third Division despatching Trefelin, second in Division Two, and Trearddur Bay of the Third Division hitting five past Newport, fourth in Division Two, we are going to have some interesting cup matches in the next round. And who knows? maybe a completely unexpected winner, especially as another one of the early favourites, Penybont, was bundled out by lowly Y Fflint this afternoon.

Tea tonight was baked potato, vegan burger and the rest of the baked beans. And then I had an enormous amount of cleaning to do in the kitchen to make the place look vaguely presentable. Hence I’m running incredibly late tonight. I hope that my lie-in works tomorrow morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about playing in European Competition … "well, one of us has" – ed … these European competitions have been around for millennia.
In fact, in 33 AD, a very important match was played just outside Jerusalem at a stadium called Golgotha. Someone called Jesus was actually playing in the defence, and when Billy Graham wrote his match report, he mentioned that at one stage, Jesus had joined in the attack.
He wrote "and Jesus went up for the cross".

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Tuesday 9th December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. It’s pointless rushing through everything in order to finish early, because all that it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

You are probably fed up of hearing me say that, given the number of times that I’ve repeated it, but believe me – I’m totally fed up of breaking my neck to be in bed before 22:00, only to wake up the following morning at … errr … 02:35. It’s going beyond a joke.

And indeed I did break my neck trying to finish early. Tea – the other half of the pizza – was all cooked from Sunday and just needed warming in the oven so it didn’t take too long at all to prepare. And with there being no preparation, there wasn’t very much washing-up and tidying to do.

Back in here, struggling desperately (and failing every now and again) to stay awake, I dashed through my notes, which went online at 21:43 and it wasn’t long after that that I crawled under the covers, with the bedroom heater turned up so that I won’t freeze to death like the previous night.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all of that. There I was, wide awake at 02:35. There was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how I tried, and I couldn’t make myself comfortable. At one point I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed but instead, I just lay there in a kind of semi-conscious daze until the alarm went off.

As is usual these days, it took a good while for me to summon up the energy to head into the bathroom and sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen to sort out the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had my old Ford Escort estate and I was in Northwest Scotland, wandering around the surfing paradises there. I had someone else with me. We were looking at everything that was going on and just walking along the beach. The beach was beautiful, but there was some kind of haze although it was cold, well, not cold but not that hot either. The islands offshore were all shimmering and glimmering in the haze. The guy with me pointed to the one nearest to us and said that he didn’t remember that being there. I said that as far as I was concerned, I remembered it from the previous times, but I thought that the one next to it was new. They were all chalky islands, like a chalky peninsula that had been sliced by the tide and the waves. We walked along this crowded beach, and for some reason, I slipped and fell down the beach. I managed to stay on my feet, but he came down to see how I was. I told him that it was one of those inexplicable things, but I was sure that I’d torn a ligament. I had to scramble as best as I could up to the previous level where we were walking. We’d been looking at those islands and they had all been painted white with lilac roofs, and he was looking at the statistics for them. He said something like there were one hundred and seventy-eight houses and one hundred and ninety-three people plus thirty temporary accommodations. I was thinking that it would be nice to have some kind of holiday or break in a small house on a little island like that somewhere.

In the mid-seventies, I often used to wander aimlessly around Scotland, but mainly in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van. And I did once go with a friend.

However, in this dream, I imagine that it’s the houses on the island that are painted white with lilac roofs, not the islands themselves.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the wind and she was impressed with my Christmas tree and my Christmas lights. I’m glad about that, because I’m impressed with them too, almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

She sorted out my legs as usual and then with a cheery wave, she carried on with her rounds. I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we didn’t go very far, because I was sidetracked down a blind alley. Something to do with an old railway station led me astray and I wandered off – I suppose you might say “down a branch line somewhere”.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then go for the lesson. It passed quite well again today but I don’t know why. However, it’s all very well learning the stuff for the actual moment, but remembering it ten minutes later is what is causing me most of my problems.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner came along and caught me by surprise. She’d bought my vegan butter from the supermarket and now she’d come to help me into the shower. And I needed it too – the help as well as the shower.

Although it takes a lot of motivation to force me into the shower, I always feel better afterwards and today was no exception. I wish that I could have a shower more than once per week but that’s not really possible

My cleaner and I had a nice, lengthy chat afterwards as we sorted out the medication, and I even played doctor for a few minutes while I was examining some of the boxes.

After she left, I came back in here and worked on one of my radio programmes. That’s now as complete as it can be, with the extra tracks chosen. All that is needed for it is the text for the extra tracks writing and dictating, which I can do tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, followed by the last of the coconut soya dessert with a couple of biscuits. I’ll bake another cake tomorrow, if only I knew what to make. I’ve run out of ideas.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my appalling memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once mentioned it to Nerina, and she took the mickey by saying that I had a teflon brain.
"Teflon brain?" I asked.
"That’s right" she replied. "Nothing sticks to it."

0

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to have a day off without having to rush around to various medical appointments, physiotherapy and all of the like?

It was definitely what I would call a “relaxing day”.

Having said that, of course, it would have been nicer had I managed to have had an early night to go with it (regardless of whether I wake up early or not) but that was, unfortunately, rather too much to expect. By the time that I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing-up and been to the bathroom, it was as near as 23:30, which makes no difference

That’ll teach me to fall asleep when I’m writing my notes.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but I awoke on a couple of occasions at some crazy time of early morning. Although I managed to go back to sleep on a couple of occasions, the final time, at 05:40, I was not so fortunate.

After tossing and turning in bed for a while, at about 06:10 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. A stagger into the bathroom to clean myself up, and then another stagger into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was out walking again and came over the top of a hill and was walking down this cobbled road that took me into this medieval town. It was a steep hill down, and from the top, I could see right over this city. I slowly reached down to the bottom, where, lying on its side, was this absolutely enormous motorbike scooter type of thing that was being used as an advertisement but had fallen over. They had five or six motorbikes that were attached to it by a rope. What they did was to set off on the motorbikes and begin to pull this motorbike. It went upright and it pull-started the engine. When it pull-started the engine, someone climbed up onto it and they disconnected all the motorbikes. Someone was extremely angry because what had happened had wrecked his Honda Benly. When I looked, there were three or four Honda Benlys, two of them with police fairings on. I’d never seen that many Honda Benlys in one place at any one time. As I walked off further on, this scooter had now become a huge articulated American bus which was being transformed into a hot dog stand or something like that. There was a message painted on the side of it – “why don’t you Europeans realise that we Americans love ‘great’?” It was certainly huge, this thing.

This was a surreal dream, that’s for sure, this giant scooter or motorbike. You wouldn’t be likely to see a Honda Benly being used as a police bike, though. They were the first of the high-revving 125cc twins that Honda imported into the UK, back in the early 1960s. I had one even earlier than that, a grey import that came into the UK as a personal possession of a sailor. I wonder where it is now, though. A friend of mine was looking after it while I sorted myself out during an “accommodation crisis”, but we had a dispute over some matter or other and I haven’t seen him, or the bike, since.

I was with a group of people and we were pulling some horse-drawn waggons. We went up this really incredibly steep hill, these waggons struggling to move up, but when we reached the top, we could see that there was one of these small Mexican towns below us so we went down very carefully. The contents of our waggons excited some kind of attention but we were sufficiently armed to keep everything at bay. We noticed that there were a few white women down there being mistreated. They had obviously been caught during some kind of border raid etc by these bandits. At first, we ingratiated ourselves with the bandits, but somehow at night, we managed to slip out. By this time, we had an armoured column with a jeep, a few lorries, several tanks and a couple of support vehicles and we headed off towards Granville. I remember saying to someone that all this action is going to take place in an area that I know really well. We drove north, and there was some kind of incident at a cross-roads but whether that was before we climbed that hill or not, I don’t know. We carried on travelling north, and at a fuel station at the side of the road, we pulled in and refuelled all the vehicles. One thing that I noticed was that we fuelled the vehicles from our own supplies and not from the fuel in the fuel station. I thought that that was a strange decision to make. As we were about to rejoin the road again, we saw another column in the distance, so we waited. It was the column of an American general, so we waited until his column had passed and we slipped into the rear of it. In the meantime, these bandits had recovered and were absolutely furious that we’d managed to escape and taken their prisoners with us. So that set out on our tail. Being much more mobile than we were, they were very, very likely to catch us before we’d gone very far

When I was typing this out, I had a feeling of déjà vu and I’m surprised that I mentioned it in the dream. I know where this road junction is – I can see it now. It’s the one in between the hospital roundabout and the roundabout at the start of the ring road. And what I can see in my mind is a pile of dead bodies scattered about all over the place as if they have been caught in an ambush.

The bit about the waggons and the Mexican village seems to relate to the film THE WILD BUNCH, which, despite the negative rating given by many critics, is in my opinion one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Fleeing from the Mexicans in an armoured column means nothing to me, though.

The nurse turned up early and sorted out my legs for me. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone, leaving me to make my breakfast and to read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

At the moment, we’re stuck up on the Yorkshire Moors, trying to decipher the story behind Wade’s Causeway. This is a metalled road that leads to precisely nowhere, as fas as anyone has ascertained. Geographically, its line seems to point towards an empty bay on the coast, which is in a straight line from the end of the known road. Codrington thinks that that’s bizarre because there was a known Roman signalling station at Whitby, just along the coast, so why didn’t the road point in that direction?

In fact, every historian has a different opinion about the road, and some don’t even think that it was a road but a collapsed border wall of the kind of Hadrian’s Wall. Others are not convinced that it’s Roman, and that it might even date back as far as Neolithic times

After he left, I came back in here.

While I was going through the football news, I came across A MOST AMAZING INCIDENT IN WELSH FOOTBALL. at Mochdre along the Welsh coast.

Like everyone else who has read the article, I am gripping the edge of my seat in eager anticipation of finding out just exactly what the referee did or was alleged to have done!

To celebrate my day off, there was a pile of soundbytes of quite some length that had accumulated over the last couple of weeks so I set about cutting them into individual soundbytes. That took an age and it wasn’t until about 17:00 and two disgusting drinks breaks that I’d actually finished.

Mind you, I could have finished earlier but unfortunately, round about 15:00, I’m afraid that I crashed out for an hour or so. I thought that with dialysis and having organised a less-active life for myself this last few days, I would have been over all of this, so that was a disappointment.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting out the music for the new radio programme, editing, remixing, pairing and then seguing the songs. Tomorrow, I’ll start to write the text and hope that I’ll have the time to finish it so that I can dictate it for the next early morning.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed.

Dialysis in the afternoon tomorrow, so I’d better be in good shape for it. I don’t want to go back to three times per week if I can possibly avoid it.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about motorbikes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll tell you a true (and it really is true, too) story about a friend of mine on the Wirral who is a big biker-type of person.
He had been complaining for quite a while about how his wife didn’t understand him. But one day, things began to improve and he began to feel much better.
"What’s cheered you up?" I asked him.
"Well, our marriage has been on the rocks for a while because of her lack of interest in my hobbies, but things have changed" he replied. "I had a long talk with some friends, and I ended up getting a Harley-Davidson 883cc Sportster for her."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck" I replied. "That is just one hell of a good swap, that is!"

0

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

0

Tuesday 18th November 2025 – PART TWO OF …

… my offensive against all of these medical appointments went onto the attack this morning.

It involved a flank attack on the Chemotherapy section of the Centre Hospitalière Universitaire de Rennes. It was unfortunate that my target this morning was a young intern called Jade, but you can only fight those whom they send out to fight you.

Anyway, it’s the turn of Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre de Ré-education to come under attack tomorrow afternoon.

So last night, feeling definitely not like it, I dashed through my notes and everything that went with it, and ended up in bed at 22:40 hoping for a good sleep. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s something of a forlorn hope these days. For all kinds of reasons, I had a very difficult time dropping off.

It wasn’t as if it was a good sleep either. I awoke a few times during the night, and I was up and about by 05:50 this morning.

In order to be ready for the nurse and the ambulance, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed last night. It was a pointless exercise though because although the nurse told me that he’d be around at 06:30, it was 06:40 when he finally turned up and I’d already given up hope by then

Last night, when the driver dropped me off after dialysis, I joked that it will probably be him who will be coming to pick me up in the morning so I may as well sleep the night in his taxi. My faithful cleaner told him, on the other hand, just as jokingly, to make sure that he would bring the croissants round in the morning.

That was all said as light-hearted banter, and no-one seriously expected it to be him who would come to pick me up. But truth is stranger than fiction.

We made good time down to the edge of Rennes when a collision on the motorway produced a tail-back of about fifteen kilometres. We were consequently twenty minutes late arriving.

The intern was waiting and she grabbed me as I walked onto the ward, before I’d even had time to register.

She examined me and asked how things were. I told her that there had been a marked deterioration in my condition, and I repeated what I had said yesterday at dialysis.

Being young and impressionable, she was shocked to learn of my series of appointments – six days with no rest. I asked her why everyone was expecting me to recover from the treatment that I’m having when the sheer fact of travelling to and from it is killing me off.

Of course, she had no reply to make to that, but it gave her food for thought and she promised to discuss it with her superior and my consultant in Paris.

One thing that was confirmed at the interview, as I had known all along but it’s difficult to impress upon the minds of those at dialysis, is that the reason why my chemotherapy can’t be done locally in Granville or Avranches is that the use of one of the components of the chemotherapy can only be authorised and under the supervision of certain hospitals.

The local hospitals are not authorised to use it, so although it would be a good solution, there’s no point in the dialysis centre trying to promote it.

Anyway, the folder that I gave to the intern was missing the blood test, so they had to ‘phone up Avranches for it. And then it showed an anomaly … "one of many" – ed … in my blood so they had to contact Paris. Eventually, Paris authorised the chemotherapy and it began at 11:10, a far cry from the 08:30 appointment.

During most of the session, I was fast asleep. I was so totally exhausted that it was untrue. But even the sleep wasn’t enjoyable. Every few minutes, someone would come along and check something, which would awaken me

They brought me lunch as well, boiled potatoes with a vegan burger. When I’d had the burger before, I’d enjoyed it, but this time I didn’t like it at all. My taste buds are awful right now.

Eventually, though, the session was finished and by 15:30 I was in the taxi, along with another passenger.

Since I’ve been ill and have had to travel in a taxi, I’ve seen parts of Normandy that I didn’t realise existed. That was certainly the case today. And dropping off a passenger in the wilds well at the back of Avranches, we passed a garage with a few old cars, one of which was a Ford Cortina mkIV.

Those cars were responsible for the successes that I had with my taxis and I haven’t seen one for years. I’ve a couple of mkIIIs and mkVs down on the farm, but no mkIVs. How I was tempted to go back afterwards and spirit it away, but I can’t even walk to the van these days, never mind drive anywhere in it.

In any case, all of my towing tackle (the “A” frame, the towing dolly and the trailer) is still down on the farm, not up here.

Back here I crashed out in the chair in the kitchen for a while, having a good chat with my cleaner, when we were interrupted by a rather angry nurse. He wans’t happy that I hadn’t ‘phoned him as soon as I arrived, because he was in the area and it would have saved him a trip across town.

Well, it’s not my fault that the batteries were flat in my crystal ball, was it?

After he left, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was something going on about my brother and his wife buying a new house. When I was talking to my new boss at work, he told me that he had agreed that my brother could have two days off work in order to sort out all of the necessary paperwork. I asked about his wife as well, whether she would be entitled to a couple of days off because I reckoned, knowing them, that she’d be the one actually involved in doing most of the work with regard to the purchase of this property. He smiled and said that he probably agreed. Then, he asked about my brother’s complaint to the office, how he complained. I replied that he probably complained via AI up to the Cloud. The boss asked whether there would likely be any follow-up to that. I said that I thought that AI was supposed to be much more intelligent than any other form of computer contact, so it would seem very likely. But that’s all that I remember of that dream.

Artificial Intelligence is in the news quite a lot these days but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not infallible. I’ve managed to trip it up on a few occasions without trying too hard and I’m sure that the experts can make mincemeat of it much more efficiently than I can.

However, I do use it on occasion, even if I will admit that I much prefer Natural Stupidity.

Team was a nice, thick mushroom and tomato soup with pasta and I managed to eat all of it. My soup-making is improving, that’s for sure.

So now, later than I would like, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for my early start in the morning. My driver is coming round at 06:50.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going onto the offensive … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned this to my cleaner this afternoon when I arrived.
"Offensive" she replied. "That’s certainly the correct word to use with anything that you do, Eric."

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