Tag Archives: vegan chocolate cake

Tuesday 4th November 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely chat this afternoon.

It’s been ages since Liz and I have had a good natter over the internet, but this afternoon she came online and we had quite a discussion. It’s really nice to catch up with old friends.

Something else with which I shall have to catch up is my sleep, but that’s not going to be for a day or so, the way that things are panning out right now.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s totally pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the next morning. And so it was today.

Last night, after tea, I rushed through everything. My notes were on-line at 22:07 and it didn’t take long to finish off everything. By 22:40, I was tucked up under the quilt and already half-asleep. It didn’t take very long at all to go the rest of the way.

And there I lay, flat out and dead to the World until … errr … 03:15. I’ve no idea what awoke me, if anything actually did, but I couldn’t go back to sleep despite all of the trying.

By 05:15 I had given it up as a bad job and left the bed. Taking full advantage of the unexpected early start, I dictated the radio notes for the additional track on the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

Once I’d done that, I uploaded them to the computer, edited them and then completed the radio programme. It over-ran by nineteen seconds, which is better than under-running by nineteen seconds. I can edit out an over-run but there’s not much that you can do to an under-run except to slow the speed of the recording.

The editing took a while, but now it’s all up and running at exactly one hour in length, which is what it’s supposed to be.

The nurse turned up as usual today. His happy, cheerful self seems to be continuing, which is very pleasant. He’s much nicer than this.

To cheer him up, I told him that I’m going out at 07:30 tomorrow morning. He told me that he can’t make it by that time so I should have to sort myself out. That’s not too much of a problem, as it happens. I’m sure that I shall manage.

After he left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. It was some guy’s party for a birthday, a wedding or something, so everyone had gone to town with him. When they were outside a pub, they were awarded a free kick, so one of their friends took the kick and hoisted it really high towards them. The commentator said something about “this is a typical gentleman’s wedding-type ball, this one”. Anyway, they all dispersed themselves, walking away. But before that, though, when the ball was played into the air, everyone ran forwards towards the ball except for two guys who stood waiting at the back. They were the ones who were able to get the ball and head it towards the goal, or towards the pub etc, and the commentator was saying something about it being a proper wedding ball. But these players who ran forward trying to get the ball, it was like a stampeding herd that you’d see in a couple of these other games. Anyway, later on, there was another free kick that needed to be taken, so the same player who took the previous one again kicked a high ball into the centre of the town where everyone was waiting outside the pub, trying to head it in.

Whatever that’s about, I’m sure that you can work it out for yourselves. I can understand the football part, but why they should be doing it in a town centre in the middle of a stag night is anyone’s guess.

Someone had made a cheese soup and they had brought it into the kitchen where we were all waiting. So I went into the cupboard and brought out a pile of bowls and began to hand them round to people who went up to be served with it. However, the woman in charge took a great deal of exception to the idea oof me handing out bowls. She told me quite simply that bowls were not allowed. I replied “I don’t know how else we’re going to eat this meal”. But she dispensed everything to everyone else in the bowls and just put the soup down. Then they all wandered off. As I wasn’t allowed a particular bowl, I picked up the big bowl that was already there and wandered off with that. I just sat in my car outside and ate it, or, at least, ate some of it. The next thing that I knew, I was surrounded by these two angry women who wanted to know what was happening with the soup. I explained that I couldn’t supply myself with a bowl from which to eat it, so I just ate it out of the main one. That made them even more angry. In the end, they took the soup. They wanted to know what had happened to the tickets that I must have taken from the people to whom I’d handed out the bowls. I replied “no-one gave me a ticket” so that made them even more angry. In the end, they searched through the car to see if they could find any tickets but all they found were two sets of ear-studs belonging to children, who must have been children who were at this meeting or whatever it was and had come there in the car. They were so angry, but I didn’t care at all because if I hadn’t been allowed to eat the soup out of a bowl that I’d supplied from my kitchen, then I was going to eat it out of the main bowl whether they liked it or not.

It’s not as if I have any interest whatever in cheese soup – it sounds disgusting to me – but this kind of situation where I’m excluded from something that I’ve organised on my own premises is nothing at all new to me.

One of the guys from the Welsh class was saying that he wasn’t here last week because he’d had to go to some small place on the Bristol Channel somewhere. There was a mutual Society there called something to do with the Bristol Concessions. They owned property and that kind of thing in their settlements, and everything was done on a very co-operative basis. It was very cheap to live there and one of the shares had come up for sale, so he went to see it to see if he could buy the share and move to the village. He was telling us all about this place and we all decided that we’d go with him to have another look around. He took us and showed us around the village. My eye immediately fell on someone’s workshop, which was full of motorbikes, many of which, I imagined, had never been used. He was saying that this was the guy to whom he’d been talking. There were even cars that that belonged to the Society that go back eighty years that are still active today, and there were many that they had bought that had never even had their engines fitted yet. This particular guy owns one of them. We carried on walking around the village and came to a field where there were about a dozen old cars, one of which was one of the vehicles that he mentioned. I swarmed in there and began to take photos. There was even a rare Audi van from the late fifties or early sixties. I was enthralled by this. For some reason, I couldn’t make my camera work to take photos on it. I was distracted by the city walls of this place. Having to take a photo, I found that to take a photo, I was far too faraway because I was used to having my big camera. I had to change my photography technique, and in doing so, I forgot to take half of the photos. I had to run back to where this Audi van was so that I could take the photographs of it that I wanted

This one is quite confusing too. For example, the car wasn’t an Audi (it would have been an Auto-Union or a DKW in those days anyway) but a Volvo PV544. I can still see it now, even though I can’t remember the dream. And how I wouldn’t mind finding one of those in a field.

A workshop full of old motorcycles would be my dream too. It’s been a while since I had my last proper motorbike – a Honda CX500 30-odd years ago.

However, this part about the camera not working at a crucial moment – that was a recurring dream at one time too.

After that, I … errr … crashed out for ten minutes, and then had a mad panic to revise my Welsh for the lesson.

However, I needn’t have bothered because there was a power cut in Yr Wyddgrug and the College was closed, so we had no tutor and the lesson was abandoned. Instead, I had a couple of hours of nice, personal relaxing time.

After the disgusting drink break at midday, I attacked the next radio programme and by the time that I had knocked off, I’d finished them and they are ready for typing when I next have an early start.

There were several interruptions today and all of them were very welcome.

Firstly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and, once more, she ushered me into the shower. That was really nice. And now that the plumber is finished, I can call the joiner and have him install the handrails in the shower so that I can climb into and out of the shower without any assistance.

Secondly, as I said just now, Liz and I had a chat that went on for quite a while and was only finished because I had to go to make tea.

Tonight I had a taco roll with rice. The filling consisted of lentils, mushroom, garlic and tomato sauce, and it was delicious. Nevertheless, there was some left on my plate yet again tonight. Not to worry though, because chocolate cake and soya dessert filled the home that was left.

Now, I’m off to bed. It’s a 06:00 start tomorrow because I have dialysis in the morning. My hours are messed up so that I can have a free weekend with my niece, which is nice.

But seeing as we have been talking about my niece … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine from Crewe told me that his sister was going to have a baby.
"What’s she going to call it?" I asked.
"If it’s a girl, she’s going to call it Denise " he replied.
"And what if it’s a boy?" I asked.
"I don’t know for sure" he answered. "I think she’ll call it Denephew."

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Monday 3rd November 2025 – NEVER HAVE I …

… felt less like leaving the bed than I did this morning. For two pins I would have switched off the alarm and curled up back under the covers, and had it not been for the impending arrival of Isabelle the Nurse, I would have done too!

Mind you, it was somewhat late last night when I went to bed. Being delayed because of the length of time that it took to bake my cake, it was much later than usual by the time that I’d finished tea, and there was plenty of washing up to do too.

By the time that I’d finished my notes, it was after 23:00 and what with everything else that needed doing, it was much closer to midnight by the time that I crawled under the covers. And what with the early start, I was well and truly ready for it.

Once in bed though, I was out like a light and remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 06:29.

As I said just now, I didn’t want to leave the bed. It took me a good while to summon up the courage to leave the bed, and even longer to haul myself to my feet.

After the bathroom, where I had had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later today, I went into the kitchen where I made another one of these hot lemon, ginger and honey drinks to take with my medicine.

And I needed it too, because I was coughing like nothing on earth.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. In this dream, I was back in Crewe again. I was working in an office somewhere, and part of the work involved dealing with different issues that arose from different situations, such as the question of certain meals. We made a series of cards by typing on a sheet of paper and then sealing it inside one of these laminated pocket things so that we had all of the instructions and the regularly-occurring companies, their desires and demands all done like that so that we could follow them up quickly. There was one where they were always asking for certain more information about a certain product. Another one was asking if there was an instruction book to go with the DVD that they had received. I was on my way home and was walking up the bottom of Edleston Road towards Market Street over the Chester Bridge. It was early evening but there was no-one about. There were very few cars at all. I’d probably counted two or three along the whole way. As I walked up Chester bridge, I went to cross over to the north side. There was a little baby, running around on her tricycle thing. It started to talk to me so I talked back to it. But her mother called her, so she ran to her mother, but she had left her doll behind so I had to call her back to pick up her doll. As I crossed the road, I noticed a car coming towards me from my left, quite a way back. Its headlights suddenly disappeared, and I put it down to the fact that it had gone down a slip road down to the road that now runs along the old railway line under Chester Bridge, so I thought that I’d meet it down there when I go down the pedestrian steps.

This idea of cards made of sheets of paper and laminated pouches is nothing at all new, and back on the farm I have a laminating machine for just that purpose.

But if I were going home, I certainly wouldn’t be going down Edleston Road, over Chester Bridge and into Market Street. I’d be going in the opposite direction.

As for the road that runs along the old course of the Chester line past the old General Offices, there is indeed a road these days, but it starts further along the line at Wistaston Road, not at Chester Bridge.

Isabelle the Nurse was bright and breezy and cheerful this morning. Not surprising, seeing as it’s her last day today for a week. We had a very chatty ten minutes while she fixed my feet, and then she disappeared on her rounds.

It was boring old toast with my breakfast today – the croissants have all gone for now, but I’m going to make another batch, don’t you worry. How could I not? But regardless, it was a very slow, leisurely breakfast that I enjoyed immensely.

Back in here, there were things to do which took some time, as usual. While I was doing them, I listened to the radio programme due to be broadcast this weekend to make sure that it was OK, and then I sent it off.

However, I was interrupted by the arrival of the plumber. He finally appeared, after all of his vicissitudes, to sort out the water leak.

It didn’t take him long either. It turns out that there was a faulty gasket in the U-bend for the waste pipe. There’s an inspection trap that can be undone so that the waste pipe can be cleaned, and the gasket was the wrong size. It was the work of ten minutes to change it.

While he was at it, he reset the hot water timer for me. It was a common error, so it seems, committed by many people, mainly because the instructions aren’t clear. You don’t just set the start time to “on” and the stop time to “off”, you have to set each half-hour segment individually to “on” or “off”.

After he left, I made a start on combining the radio programme on which I’d been working, but I didn’t do much before my cleaner came to apply the anaesthetic on my arm.

She stayed for a while for a chat, and then after she left, I awaited my taxi driver.

It was my favourite taxi driver too, and we had a lovely chat all the way to Avranches. We picked up another passenger en route but I’m not going to talk about him because one day, I might be like him too, although I desperately hope not. I’m not exactly the tidiest or cleanest of people but I do try to take some pride in my appearance when I’m out and about.

At the dialysis centre, I was on time for once and didn’t have long to wait before I was coupled up. And once I was coupled up, they left me pretty much alone throughout the session.

The boss turned up and had a little chat with me, but I suspect that it was more to show willing rather than anything else.

They unplugged me quite rapidly too, and I had a lovely chat with a very lovely driver all the way home. There are some benefits of this dialysis and I have to do my best to find them.

Being home early, I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote the notes ready for dictation. That should be out of the way the next early morning.

Tea was a vegan burger with rice, veg and gravy followed by cake and soya dessert. And the cake is as nice as it looks too.

As you can see, I’ve gone back to having puddings. The reason is that they are high calorie and high carbohydrates, so that if I can’t manage a main course meal very well, topping up with a pudding packed with these sorts of things will help me maintain some form of nutrition, even if it’s not all that healthy. Adding fats will at least give the muscles something on which to work.

So now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow.

However, in other news … "he said, blowing his own trumpet" – ed … I have been informed today that I have been elected to fill a vacancy on the Cymru Leagues’ Supporters Panel.

It’s not actually the first time that I’ve held such a position. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was on the panel in 2006 and was nominated by the supporters to attend a meeting at FAW Headquarters with the Competitions Secretary to present the supporters’ view of the proposed changes to the league structure.

But that was a long time ago and since then, there have been many changes, both to the league structure and to my life too. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the situation this time.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the other passenger in the taxi … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I met a couple of friends in Brussels once, whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time.
"Epic!" one of them said. "We thought that you’d been dead for years!"
"Of course he isn’t" said the other one. "He just smells like it!"

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Sunday 2nd November 2025 – MY VEGAN PIZZA …

… was absolutely excellent this evening. The chocolate and coconut cake that I have made is also excellent too, although it’s a little burned on the top – only natural while I try to figure out the characteristics of my oven.

Today, I’ve been making meal plans for when my niece and her daughter come for this weekend in just … gulp … five days time. They will need to eat something so I need to plan and send off a food order later in the week.

Yesterday at dialysis I’d already started to food order, as I had said yesterday, and it was my intention to finish it yesterday evening but "the best-laid plans o’ mice and men etc. etc." intervened as usual and by the time that I’d finished everything else, it was already horribly late without having to worry about staying up to finish the shopping list.

Instead, still with the stabbing pain in my foot, I crawled off into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and the next thing that I remember was sitting bolt-upright at 05:20. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I felt bitterly disappointed because Sunday is, after all, a Day of Rest.

In the end, after an hour of trying, I crawled out from under the covers and dictated the radio notes for one of the programmes that I’ve been preparing. I may as well make the most of the early start. Mind you, it wasn’t easy because of the howling gale that has sprung up outside yet again.

Once I’d finished, I went into the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication. To wash it down, I made another one of these drinks of honey, ginger and lemon. It’s a case of “kill or cure” with this throat.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I hadn’t gone very far. I remember something about needing help to dress. Someone came to see me from the top end of Granville, the part from near the roundabout by the football ground. I asked them if they had come far, and they replied “not ‘far, far'”. But that’s all that I remember of that

They keep on asking me at all of these assessment interviews whether I can dress myself or not. My usual answer is that it’s undressing myself, where I have problems, and if they have a nice young, nubile assistant who would like to help me, then I would be grateful.

Their usual response is to throw me out.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with the hurricane this morning. Her irrepressible good humour continues, and we had a very pleasant chat for five minutes while she sorted out my feet.

After she went, I made breakfast, and ate the other two home-made croissants. That really was quite a success and I shall make some more.

Back in here, the footfest began. Firstly, we had the highlights of all of the other games in the JD Cymru League. No surprises there, though. Everything went according to plan. Not like last night in the Second Division where third-placed Llandudno thrashed unbeaten leaders Airbus UK Broughton 5-0 -a result that surely must stand out as one of the highlights of the season.

Following those games, we moved on to Scotland.

The first game was Stranraer v Forfar Athletic. Forfar always has been Stranraer’s bogey side, but Stranraer put that to bed this weekend. This strange upturn of form continued with a comfortable 3-1 victory to move clear of the bottom two for the first time this season.

Two leagues higher up the pyramid, Greenock Morton were away at Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy. Following their disastrous 0-4 defeat at home against St Johnstone last week, we were all expecting the worst. However, the game ended 1–1 thanks to a bizarre, improvised shot on goal by central defender Kris Moore.

After a disgusting drink break, I began to edit the radio notes and, despite chatting online to someone while I was editing, I managed to complete everything. It’s edited down to six minutes and forty-six seconds, which is one of the shortest that I’ve done.

All I need to do now is to join everything up, choose the final track, and then write and edit the notes for that. The work of an hour, if I’m allowed an hour to spare in which to do it.

It was then time to go into the kitchen to do some work.

No bread today because the freezer is full of it, and I’ll be taking half a loaf out to defrost later before I go to bed.

To start, I made the dough for the pizza base, and then I attacked the cake. It’s a chocolate oil-cake made with coconut oil and desiccated coconut.

When it came to bake it, I reduced the time from how I would have baked it in my old oven upstairs.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long enough and I had to leave it in there for another fifteen minutes. By now though, the top was overcooked so next time, I shall have to bake it in a lower position in the oven. However, it rose up beautifully and looks quite impressive from that point of view.

The pizza itself was delicious – another candidate for “one of the best” and I shall think about the pizza when I’m in bed, which is where I’ll be going as soon as I’ve finished these notes.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizzas … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went into a pizza restaurant and ordered a pizza.
She could only eat half of it, and asked if she could take the rest of it home.
The waiter asked her "do you want a box for it?"
She replied "no thanks. If it means that much to you, you can have it. I’m no good at fighting."

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Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

… at the dialysis centre today.

Well, not exactly. Whatever they did there seemed to be okay, but it was almost everything else that was associated with it that all seemed to go pear-shaped. The fates really do seem to be conspiring against me right now.

And not only that, but the stabbing pain in my foot that died down earlier this morning is now back, and with a vengeance too and it’s really stressing me out that I can’t seem this time to shake it off.

It seemed to begin to quieten down late last night which was just as well because I managed to find my way into bed at something like a reasonable time. Not before 23:00, it has to be said, but not all that far off. I was asleep quite quickly too and I remember nothing at all about the night until all of … errr … 05:40.

Even worse, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and when the electric water heater switched off I was already in the bathroom having a wash, a shave and a wash of the undies.

After the medication I came back in here for a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was down in the town during the night, having a wander around in the evening. It was a cool, dry night and there was a guy down there busking, playing the guitar and he had a friend with him. The guitarist was quite simple but quite good. I had the idea that maybe why didn’t I bring my guitar and I could do one morning on one street corner and another morning on another street corner and move around as much as I possibly could to play at different places. I walked down past where the new War Memorial is and came eventually to a restaurant. This was a well-known restaurant for being very close to its hours and not serving very close to closing time. I looked in and it wasn’t as crowded as it might have been so I walked through and walked out of the back door onto the car park. But the back door didn’t lead onto the car park. It led into another type of café that was facing the sea. It was pitch-black in there but there were still people. I heard the voice of the woman who owned it asking “did someone call me?”. Another voice from the far corner replied “yes, we were trying to order a pizza”. The woman answered “yes, but give me five minutes and I’ll organise it for you”. I thought that that was quite strange because normally, if you went in there shortly before closing time, they would refuse to serve you. In any case, I didn’t recall this room at the rear at all. I used to walk through there and out of the door at the back and find myself on the car park.

Believe it or not, I know where this restaurant is but I just can’t place it. And the back door does lead out into a little square or car park where there’s a quayside across the way. But there’s a story about a restaurant where Nerina and I went once (only once) where they refused to serve even though we were there ten minutes before “last meals”. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had similar problems once IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Another thing that I did was to fill in the forms from that electrician and pack it in an envelope with a cheque on part-account for my cleaner to post. I may as well sign him up and set him to work so that at least something will be done fairly soon.

Isabelle the Nurse was in chat mode today but she didn’t stay long all the same. And I still didn’t manage to see her photos of Copenhagen.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Richard’s Castle and we’ve now moved on to Rochester. There would usually be a lot to say about Rochester Castle, but it remains to be seen if our author is going to say very much about it.

So far, he’s admiring the civilian architecture of the place, having noted that "the architrave has a bold chevron moulding." and that "the north loop, which opened into the bridge-pit of the main entrance, has been converted into a rude doorway,". How I would have loved to have seen that and to find out what it was doing.

Back in here I made a start on my Welsh homework and by the time that my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches I’d done about two-thirds of it. It’s not due for another couple of weeks but I want to push on ahead if I can.

After my cleaner left, I cut up my ginger cake and put it away. And if the crumbs taste anything like as good as the cake does, it will be wonderful.

However, even though I had the cake as low down in the oven as I possibly could, I ended up with a hard crust on the top and the base is slightly undercooked. I can’t wait to have a decent oven and try some proper baking with proper facilities instead of trying to make do with a very unsatisfactory tabletop oven.

The taxi was late again – except that it wasn’t. It should have been here at 12:30 but it turned up at 13:05 with another passenger, well within the 45-minute Social Security guideline for combining passengers.

It was my favourite driver too and so we arrived at 13:28 which is some good going. I didn’t have to wait long to be connected up either.

No-one bothered me this afternoon but with the pan returning to my foot I didn’t feel like working too much. It’s difficult to concentrate at these moments.

After I was unplugged and weighed I found my taxi already waiting, with another passenger on board. He wasn’t going far and when we arrived at his residence, one of the assistants asked "where’s his wheelchair?"

How could it be possible for someone to forget his wheelchair? It beats me, especially as we had to go all the way back for it and drop it off on our way past again. Therefore it was once more late when I returned home, in agony with my foot and totally exhausted.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with the last of the chocolate cake, so ginger cake tomorrow for tea if I feel like it which, right now is debatable. I’m going to try to go to bed but this pain in my foot is driving me berserk.

And seeing as we are talking about pains driving us berserk … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that famous incident when Brian Close, fielding in close to the wicket was hit by a vicious drive from an Australian batsman
The other players dashed around him. "Does it hurt, Brian?" asked one of them
"Of course it hurts" he replied. "It always hurts when you tell a bowler to ‘pitch it up’ and he totally ignores you."

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Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

… that I have a sense of humour meltdown, but today has been one of those days, right enough. Nothing that I have done seems to have gone as it should.

Last night’s activities set the scene somewhat for today’s disasters. What with the football and everything, I ended up being really late going to bed when I could really have done with going to bed early.

Once in bed though, I can’t remember all that much. I have the vaguest memory of waking up, noticing that it was still dark and so going beck to sleep pretty much straight away.

Be that as it may, I awoke at 06:40, 20 minutes before the alarm and when the alarm finally did ring, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. Not as early as some, but an early start all the same.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a public ward in a hospital after an operation on my leg. I found it really difficult if not impossible to walk around at the moment but being in this ward with all these other people made me realise just how healthy I was. It was probably the best reason that I could think of for actually leaving the bed but it was so painful trying to move. There were examples being shown on the television of other people who had had this kind of operation to their leg, mostly foreigners, people from abroad. It was interesting to spot their places where they were actually going to fit into this hospital regime as far as needing help and lack of autonomy went. They would be cruising so many hours of their own private life for so many hours per day on dialysis and was it worth it?

If you want to know my opinion about this, read on. But once more, I was dismayed that I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about medical issues.

Later on, my brother was talking to a girl from his class whom I recognised and to whom I used to chat occasionally. When they finished I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was at Manchester University. I took hold of her and pulled her so that she sat down on the edge of my bed and asked her what she was studying. She said, with a strange look on her face, “geography”. I asked how she meant. She replied “different parts of Europe and Dalmatia – I moved my bath the other day and there they were, all of them on the floor. I was horrified”. I said “had I known, I would have let you come and share my bed”. We had something of a laugh, a joke and a flirt around. I thought to myself “this is yet another good chance of actually trying to build on something, some kind of relationship for the immediate future”.

Even now, I can still see this girl. I’ve no idea who she is but in the dream I knew that I knew her. She was wearing a red and white gingham school dress too, so what she was doing at University I really don’t know. However, there is some kind of undercurrent to this story but the World isn’t ready to hear it. And what a shame that the dream finished when it did.

There was something going on with a Native American tribe in North America of which I was a member. I was there, I suppose, because I respected the people, liked them, liked their culture. A group of Native Americans from outside my group were not content with everything and were trying to incite my group of Native Americans into rising up and rebelling whereas our opinion was that rising up and rebelling is OK in books and folk songs but it’s much more complicated than that. In the end the situation became so severe that those from outside our group were expelled from the tribe. There was talk that I would be expelled too because my position was seen as being something of an anomaly and I was being seen as a position of suspicion by some people from within the group.

What immediately came into my mind when I was typing out these notes was my visit in 2019 to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site where the US Army massacred what was left of the Lakota Sioux people, where I went for a walk around the site of the slaughter and visited the mass grave of the victims.

This is what the author of “The Wizard of Oz” had to say at the time about Wounded Knee "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth".

Nothing has changed in the USA.

The nurse had very little to say for himself, which suited me fine. He was soon in and gone and I could carry on with making breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’re pushing on with our visits, dashing from one site to another in some kind of indecent haste. We’ve been to the castle at Oswestry, such as it is, and then back across the dyke into Wales for a couple more places. We’re pushing on at quite a rate and there can’t be all that many places left to visit.

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and then I had an electrician to see.

Not that I know an awful lot about electricity – I do it all by trial and error – but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a disgraceful estimate. To supply and fit a new power board (that isn’t necessary) that costs €199:00 at Brico Depot, he’s quoted €2,000. For changing eight double sockets for multiples and wiring up the oven, microwave and hob, he wants another €2,000.

What beat me though was that he had the quote back here in less than the time that it would have taken to go back home to type it, and he rang me up thirty seconds after the quote arrived, to tell me to sign it and return it quickly. I’m not sure from which tree he thinks that I fell, but I feel really sorry for any elderly person who comes across him.

Next task was to finish my Welsh homework, which is now ready for a final check tomorrow morning before I send it off for marking.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait, and wait, and wait. Round about 13:00 I ‘phoned them up to enquire and was told that "he’s running a little late."

These new Sécurité Social regulations allow a 45-minute window in order for the vehicles to carry multiple passengers, and when my vehicle did turn up, 44 minutes late, it already had one passenger in it.

The driver and the other passenger chatted like long-lost buddies so I relaxed and enjoyed the view, knowing full well that by the time I arrive, my anaesthetic will have worn off.

As I was leaving the car, my telephone fell out into the footwell, as I found out later when the driver brought it back. And an envelope in my pocket with a prescription for a blood test became dislodged and I won’t tell you where it fell, because you are probably eating your tea right now.

There was a new patient today and all of the nurses were congregating around him, sorting him out. It was 14:20, 50 minutes late, when I was finally plugged in. painful yet again

There were plenty of things for me to do, right up to the moment when the needle ceased to work and my arm began to swell up. By that time though, the new patient was having a crisis and the entire medical staff, doctors and nurses, were congregating around him so I had to wait.

When the crisis began, my nurse was standing by me bed, dealing with an infusion. When the alarm sounded, she dropped the infusion pouch – right onto my leg where the wound is.

Later on, moving the table with my computer, she banged the wound yet again.

Everyone finished at the same time today but while most of the staff were dealing with this emergency, there was just one nurse unplugging everyone. So guess who was last?

By the time that I made it back home it was 19:20 and I was thoroughly fed up with everything. So in answer to the question that was asked during one of my dreams, it’s certainly not worth it

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up with today. Gotthold Lessing once famously said "Better counsel comes overnight " and that is for what I am hoping.

But seeing as we have been talking about transport issues … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not by any means the first that I have had.
Several years ago I was waiting for a train in Canada – the 11:55 from Calgary to Regina – when at 11:42 exactly it pulled into the station.
It’s never happened like that before so I went to express my admiration to the driver.
"It’s not like that at all" he replied
"Why not?" I asked
"Because, if the truth be known, this is the 11:55 train from a week last Tuesday"

0

Friday 16th May 2025 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… have guessed already, it was rather more of the same again this morning. Yet another early start.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early because all it seems to mean these days is that it’s a correspondingly early start the following morning.

The benefit is probably something to do with the fact that I’m usually so tired in the evening that going to sleep at that point is a good idea, but would I be so tired in the evening were I not to awaken so early in the morning? It’s one of those conundrums that ca go on forever.

So last night after tea, I put my back into everything and had finished all of my notes as early as 22:30. There was then the statistics and the backing-up to do and after the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, I was under the bedclothes by 22:50.

And that reminds me – seeing as we are talking about the statistics … "well, one of us is" – ed … the ones that I take here are a far cry from what I used to take down on the farm. I counted once and there were at that point no fewer than 22 readings to take, and quite a few of those involved a lengthy trip down the field to take readings of rainfall and of the temperature in the greenhouse, etc.

Those were the days, of course. I had a huge pile of notes that I was slowly entering into a spreadsheet ready to publish a report, but alas! I was overtaken by events, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

So once under the covers I wasn’t awake long. Not at all. And I can’t remember anything until I awoke.

It was vaguely becoming sort-of light outside so I looked at the ‘phone to find out the time. It was just about 05:29, far too early to leave the bed. I tried to go back to sleep again but I gave that up as a bad job and at 06:10 I was up and about.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen for the medication and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was a friend’s birthday and he was going to have a big party round at his house. Unfortunately, for some reason, I couldn’t go so I was spending the weekend doing something else. I lent him my vehicle, a Triumph Herald estate, for a short while while he organised himself. While I was in my little apartment in Manchester on the edge of the city somewhere, I happened to look up and there on the flyover going past in the distance was my Triumph Herald Estate with this guy driving it and someone whom he’d picked up from the railway station. I thought “how surprising. That’s really a coincidence”. As it happened, seeing as this birthday party didn’t work out too well and I spoke to my friend later on, I asked him how it went. He said that the guy whom he’d picked up from Manchester was OK for a while but once we came round to the subject of birthdays and wrapping presents he had a meltdown. It didn’t go down very well at all. I told him that that was a shame. I asked him if he had been in Manchester on the Friday evening. He replied that he had. I told him what I had seen of this Triumph Herald estate and two people who looked like him and his colleague etc. He agreed that it could well have been his … fell asleep here … so that was the situation. He told me that it was in fact him – that it may well have been him who was coming back from Manchester on that Friday with that guy in that vehicle

This actually does remind me of a real event, except that it was a different friend whose party it was, I was the one who went to pick up the other friend, it wasn’t the railway station in Manchester either and it wasn’t my Triumph Herald. I did have a Triumph Herald estate once, in the days when I was going through about one car every week, recycling cars that were on their last legs before they eventually made their final trip to the scrapyard

He also explained that things didn’t go very well in general, that he had ended up with all of his possessions out all over the floor while he was trying to sort things out. His friend tried to help him a little with some architecture and some property renovation but to no success. He was perfectly glad that today was on the point of drawing to an end.

This is presumably related to the first dream, but the people are actually the wrong way round in it

That dream went on and I could also use my own plate and the car as something from under my netball work tournament that in the 258 cars and the 278 cars that could be pieced together and never go very much but he got away with this but was extending by whose place he was going to use for camouflage but he wanted to hand the car back to the previous owner to mark him right again

As for whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea.

In the end I had my light blue Opel Ascona as a taxi. The area where I operated was round the South of Wales. The plate had gone back to its owner and I was making do with a fitted kitchen and the escort who looked very much like Marie Rhiwabon was looking at her charms saying that she wasn’t ready to come home for at least another hour which disappointed me because I was in a hurry to be home

This story has a great deal of actual significance, even down to the car, but it didn’t take place in South Wales.

The third and fourth dream are quite interesting. For the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, although I’m asleep when I’m dictating these notes (and “falling asleep” means that I go silent and after a minute or so you can hear the heavy breathing as if I’m talking to some strange woman on the telephone) when I come to transcribe them, I usually have a slight recollection of the events coming back from the depths of my subconscious. However, for these latter two, there was absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The nurse turned up as usual and I told him about the quote that I received from his friend. "But you don’t understand how prices have rocketed since Covid and the war in Ukraine" he said. He really does talk the most extraordinary bulls … errr … nonsense.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve now left Montgomery Castle and having passed by Morlais Castle (which is in that part of England known as “Glamorgan”) we’re now at Norham Castle in Northumberland.

Norham is an important castle situated on the English side of the River Tweed. It played an important rôle during the conflicts between the English and the Scots. The town itself is the site of a well-known Saxon Church in which are said to be the remains of the Saxon Bishop Saint Ceolwolf, translated there at some date in the first half of the Ninth Century,

A curious fact about the town of Norham. It was a personal possession of the Bishops of Durham so even though it is right at the far north of Northumberland, it was considered to be an enclave of the County of Durham until the passage of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.

So when will we begin to talk about the military architecture of the castle?

Back in here I sorted out a few things that needed my attention, and then for the rest of the day I’ve been Woodstocking. I’ve now finished all of Saturday and I’m well on the way to dealing with Sunday – the final day.

Saturday’s programme should be interesting though. For a one-hour programme, I’ve one hour, twenty-five minutes and six seconds so far and by the time that I will have finished reading it though again, it’s likely to expand even more. The big question is not “what to include” but “what to leave out?”. That was the story of my life when at University – word-counts were the bane of my life.

There were the usual interruptions too. My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment, there was lunch, there was a disgusting drink break or two too. But for a change, no-one bothered me on the ‘phone.

Tea tonight was falafel with chips and a vegan salad followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. The chocolate cake is running low and I reckon that next weekend I shall have to make another cake. If I remember, next week I’ll ask my faithful cleaner to find some fresh ginger and I’ll make a fiery ginger cake.

But right now, I’m off to bed, to see if I can actually manage a nice, long sleep. It’s dialysis tomorrow so I’m likely to be pretty wasted afterwards.

But seeing as we have been talking about word counts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of something that I heard a long time ago while I was at school.
"There was a young man from Japan
Who couldn’t make limericks scan
He said “my old bean
I know just what you mean
But I always do my best to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

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Wednesday 14th May 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

And so it was last night and this morning. After breaking my neck to be in bed by 22:45, I awoke at … errr … 04:05 or so this morning. So how miserable and depressing is that?

It’s perfectly true that I did do everything that I could so that I could finish early. I rushed through my notes, rushed through the back-ups, rushed through the stats and staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out. After all, despite the ninety minutes in bed in late afternoon, I was feeling quite exhausted and I’ve no idea why.

Nevertheless, it took a while to go off to sleep. There was too much rubbish churning around in my head. In the old days when I was taxi-driving or when I moved to Brussels, I used to go running before going to bed. It was a great way of dealing with the stress. It’s rather out of the question right now though, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually though, I dozed off, hoping for a really good sleep. However it didn’t happen quite like that. I awoke quite suddenly yet again. It took a few minutes for me to come to my senses (which is a real surprise seeing how few senses I have these days) and when I looked at the ‘phone to see the time, it was 04:10.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I drifted in and out of a kind-of semi-consciousness where I was neither here nor there (a usual state of affairs these days even when I’m awake) but I was wide awake by about 06:00 when I made the decision to leave the bed. And that wasn’t easy either.

After the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. There was something about having some kind of lime-green football kit last night. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure where it came from. This led on to another situation where there was a woman who was in the hospital who was a client of the two nurses who visit me. They had heard that she had been allowed to leave her bed. One of the nurses said that she had better go to the hospital to help her fit her compression socks for when she stands up. I thought that that was rather strange because I was sure that the nurses in the hospital could do that but the visiting nurse was insistent that she was going to go to the hospital to do it.

For the lime green football kit, this does in fact relate to something that happened to FC Pionsat St Hilaire when I used to hang out there. Three of us decided to do something for the club so one of us bought a full set of shirts, the second bought a full set of shorts and I bought a couple of full goalkeepers’ kits. The footballing shirts that were bought were a kind-of fluorescent lime green.

As for the visiting nurses going to visit a patient in hospital, that is most unlikely. I couldn’t imagine that ever happening.

First task was to send off my anti-cancer medication prescription to the pharmacy. My faithful cleaner asked them for their e-mail address so that I could forward it to them rather than printing it out and physically delivering it.

Second task was to review and then print out some documentation that I’d been sent. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, due to my state of health, I’m being supported by an organisation that strives to do all in its power to keep people in their homes. Apparently, even with some kind of financial assistance, it’s cheaper than having them put into some kind of residential care.

With my proposed bathroom conversion, there might be a grant because that is the kind of thing that is covered. They had sent me some information and an application form, so I needed to read it and fill in the form.

This also involves scanning and sending a photocopy of my last income tax statement to them. That took some organising too, mainly because I couldn’t find it at first. I must sort out my filing system.

The nurse told me once more about his friend who is a handyman. I told him to tell his friend to contact me. After all, you never know. And maybe he will. Stranger things have happened.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’ve left Middleham Castle and have arrived at Mitford Castle in the North-East, near Morpeth. That was the ancient pile of the previous generations of the family that later produced the disgraced Mitford children of the 1920s and 30s, although all of that was after the time of our book.

There’s not much to see of the castle these days, and I bet that we won’t be having much in the way of discussion about Medieval military architecture.

Back in here, I had a few things to sort out. It turns out that a well-known internet reseller had made a total mess of a repricing issue and instead of reducing its sale articles by 60%, it was offering them all for sale at $0:60. If something is too good to be true, it usually is and that was the case here, which was a shame. What surprised me was that it took them so long to notice. Needless to say, they voided all of the transactions.

Later on, I finished off the selection of music for programme 260417, remixed it, paired it and segued it ready so that I can write the notes for it.

After lunch, my cleaner turned up and we went through the medication that seems to be all over the place in this apartment. The stuff we found too, including the medical kit that I’d brought from England in 1992 with stuff so old that it didn’t have a “best by” date i.e. it was prior to the European Union Labelling Directive of 1979.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat too. She thinks that she’s found the oven that would go nicely in my new kitchen, if ever I have one installed. It costs about €20 over my budget but she thinks that it’s worth it. And who am I to argue? What do I know about ovens anyway?

It was quite a short conversation too, only about fifty minutes this afternoon. However our conversation carried on in a desultory fashion via an internet chat as she sent me photos of the produce growing rapidly in her garden. It made me quite nostalgic for the Auvergne and my potager down on the farm.

There was naan bread dough to make too, seeing as I have run out. And it was probably the best batch that I have ever made too. I made it with more flour than usual and the consistency was just right. I remembered the garlic too.

In between everything I sent off a few more enquiries to builders and electricians, tried to speak to the hospital in Paris (without success) to find out why they have arranged an appointment for me on a dialysis day, and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm that I still can’t understand, wrote all of the notes for the radio programme 260417 ready for dictation on Saturday night (or at some unearthly time in the morning if I have another early start).

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with garlic naan followed my vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, delicious as usual.

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep at long last. I’m certainly tired enough.

But seeing as we have been talking about that organisation that deals with personal autonomy … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told by my faithful cleaner that each member of that organisation wears …. well … special underwear.
"Why is that?" I asked. "What’s it like?"
"They’ve gone back into the Middle East and North Africa, rounded up all of the abacuses and transformed them into brassieres for the ladies" she replied.
"Yes, but why?" I asked
"It’s so that all of their clients can count on their support."

0

Tuesday 13th May 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, they can sling their hook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 12th May 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… one of those days that has been a disaster from start to finish, a day when nothing has gone right at all.

At least, that’s how it seems The truth is that most of the disasters relate to this afternoon and concern the dialysis centre. The rest, well, ça va as they say around here.

The morning actually started quite brightly, but before we arrive at that point, let’s just mention last night, which was another late-night calamity when I couldn’t summon up the energy to go to bed early.

Not that it would have been early either. It would have been about 23:30 by the time that I finished my notes and that’s not early by any means. And even then, it took me over half an hour to stagger off into the bathroom and then into bed.

Nevertheless, I was asleep quite quickly though, but not for long. And I tossed and turned throughout the night until round about 06:30 when I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and headed off back into the bathroom.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. We had some silver pie base container things. For some reason we were going to have our evening meal in them. The girl who was nominated to do it had first of all to fetch our knitting files from Sam Apple Pie or wherever into the mix and merged properly. That took her a while. The supper came and it was leek soup … fell asleep here … I’m sure that one of the players playing alongside me was Adam Davies but anyway, going back to the story, these pie cases were flattened by some kind of road roller and we had to have them so that the sides came up again. We were managing a block of three hundred houses and apartments so imagine the cheer when one of them was rectified. Then it would go dark again and it, it would join one of the others that had yet been seen with floodlights and this carried on all the time. It was very, very rare that the product … fell asleep here … but we had these silver dishes and looking for one that we’d thrown out and trying to find one that was this Adam Davies, trying to make the sides stand up for some usage.

Adam Davies is of course centre-forward for Caernarfon, whom we watched yesterday, and “Sam Apple Pie” is the group in which my friend Dave Charles, the recording engineer for Rockfield Studios, played before joining “Help Yourself”. As for the rest of the dream, I’ll let you lot work it out and if you come up with an answer, don’t forget to let me know, because I don’t have a clue … "nothing new there" – ed ….

By the way, seeing as we are talking about Caernarfon … "well, one of us is" – ed … HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF YESTERDAY’S GAME

And next, we were offered a pile of dressed stone for two shillings apiece so we arranged for them to have these stones delivered to the Haurace (?). They brought it in through the ice and deposited it just by his front door so he couldn’t move it and couldn’t open his door. He had to start to put it away quickly and do it well so that we could press on but that wasn’t his speedy work at all, wasn’t his thing. He’d seen the things that take the ghost when he played with the cards from Metz and he wanted to go to … fell asleep here … and we were peddling works after six series of taking it, I suppose you’d call it, where each club has been on it for over a month. It doesn’t work beforehand like that.

It seems that I have ashlar … "and rubble" – ed … on the brain right now with all of this medieval architecture that I am reading. As for the rest of it, this is something else that seemed to degenerate into the usual load of … errr … nonsense.

Finally, I went for a walk with a couple of friends of mine. One of them might have been Cécile. We’d been strolling over this agricultural area where she said that she had bought some land. The further we walked, the closer we came to something that looked like an old mill with a big, tall chimney. It was an abandoned place in this field. I went to look at it, but as I did, my attention was distracted by something in a quarry that was covered in rocks. I climbed up this ladder into this quarry. There were these two boys playing at the foot of the ladder. In the quarry it turned out to be an old American 6×4 lorry, camouflaged by being covered over in rocks. I took a couple of photos of it and had a good look around it, then climbed back down. I nearly put my foot on the hand of one of these boys. I told him that it was dangerous, playing around like that. I walked off to rejoin my friends. They had come to some kind of ruined house of the kind that you find in North America. Cécile, if it was Cécile, was extremely depressed because she’d bought it thinking that it was a place to live but it was in fact a ruin. We had a really good look around inside it. There was abandoned furniture and everything and the floors were unsafe. It was in a terrible condition. The two girls decided that they would go upstairs so I said that I’d stay down here to take some photos because there was a really good view of the mill from up here on the top of this hill where we were at this house. I walked out onto the verandah ready to take some more photos of the mill while they were upstairs looking around.

Cécile of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, featured in my life quite significantly for a six-month period. And the American army lorry presumably relates to the one in the Grès de Lapeize … "we’re talking “ashlar” again" – ed … quarry at … errr … Lapeize where Clotilde lives, the quarry that we visited BACK IN 2010 and found the lorry. However, climbing up on a ladder to the quarry is a new departure.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up early. "I can’t stop long" she said. "There are plenty of blood tests to carry out back at the office". Of course, it’s her final day today before her week off, and her colleague’s “reluctance” in this respect is well-known.

After she left I made breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve had the guided tour of Ludlow Castle and we’re now having the potted history of the place. What this has to do with the “Medieval Military Architecture” I really have no idea.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and I actually managed to complete three-quarters of it. It was quite difficult too, especially seeing as I had missed the one-and-a-half lessons that covered this section.

When my faithful cleaner turned up, I was still bashing away at it, so I gave up and went to have my patches fitted.

And just as well that I did, because the taxi came early – 12:20. And it was my favourite driver too. After she installed me, she told me "we have to go to the Centre Normandy to pick up another passenger". So much for my hopes of an early arrival.

Even less chance too. The other passenger was in a wheelchair and he took some rounding up. It was 12:45 when we drove away from the “Normandy”.

And when we arrived, they weren’t ready for us. They had been explaining to a new stagière how to clean and then calibrate the machines.

There were some additional tests to perform on me too today, which meant that I wasn’t finally coupled up until 14:15, fifteen minutes after the effectiveness of the anaesthetic patches has worn off, so you can imagine how the coupling up went.

At least they left me alone pretty much once the machine began to work, although there were still some tests to carry out. But everyone finished at roughly the same time, so guess who was left until last.

Once I was finally sorted out, I went outside to find that the vehicle sent for me was the minibus. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have an extraordinary amount of difficulty climbing into it. In the centre, I’d banged my wounded leg putting on my shoes, and now I banged it again trying to enter the vehicle. And it was so complicated and difficult to climb in.

The torrential rainstorm didn’t help. I was soaked to the skin trying to climb in.

To cap it all, the guy in the wheelchair from the “Normandy” was in there already, and the driver wanted to drop him off first. Not much that I can do about it.

It was 19:30 when I arrived home, soaked, uncomfortable, in pain and completely fed up.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left for the rest of the week, followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

So now, thoroughly fed up and thoroughly exhausted, I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a hundred years.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about “Sam Apple Pie” and “Help Yourself” … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of when I was arranging my CDs on shelves down on the farm.
Half-way through the exercise I burst out laughing.
"What’s so funny?" asked Cécile
"Have a look!" I replied.
I’d been labelling the shelves with the musician at the start and the musician at the end, and one of my shelves was labelled "Help Yourself to Kate Bush."

0

Saturday 10th May 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to switch the alarms back on this morning? That’s right. Bane of Britain has triumphed again.

Consequently I had a nice, long sleep until all of 07:31 when I suddenly awoke with one of these dramatic awakenings that I have every now and again. It was nice, bright sunlight outside so I immediately guessed that there was something wrong, so I glanced at the time.

And after another late night last night a really good sleep probably did me some good too. I was exhausted after the journey back and by the time that I’d finished my meal and was back in here I wasn’t fit for very much.

Nevertheless I wrote the notes and performed some of the backing- up and then crawled off to bed at about 23:40 or something. I was asleep quite quickly and, for a change, I was dead to the World throughout the entire night. I remember nothing whatever until I awoke at 07:31.

Once I’d realised exactly what time it was I dashed … "errr … quite" – ed … into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and sorted out the washing. Far too much to put in one machine so I just put the important things into the washing machine and set it off on its routine.

In the kitchen I had my medication, forgetting the vitamin D and the vitamin B12 that the hospital wants me to take and then back in here I was just about to check the dictaphone when Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She admired the huge plaster on my leg and read the prescription attentively. She made a list of what she needed and ticked off what we had, indicated on the hospital’s prescription what she needed, and then issued instructions as to what else she needed, promising to write a prescription for tomorrow.

After that, it was breakfast. And then I read more of MY BOOK. Except that I didn’t. I was side-tracked yet again, firstly reading about the curious antics of Ranulf Flambard, the treasurer of William Rufus and imprisoned by Henry I, only to become the first-ever prisoner known to have escaped from the Tower of London, and then of the downfall and subsequent resurgence of William de Forz and the siege and subsequent capture of Castle Bytham by Henry III.

You can probably understand why I was no good at being a University Student. I was always wandering off down alleyways that led me far away from my course syllabus.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about a ferry – a small one like one of the ones that they have here in Granville that go out to the Ile de Chausey. In some kind of tempest or hurricane it had been badly damaged. The ferry company had one of their previous ferries – it was sitting on a plinth outside their office. What they did was to take the boat off the plinth and put it in the water and began to use that. The damaged one, they hauled it out of the water and put it on the plinth. The owners of the company decided that they would give it a thorough overhaul and repair it. Then they would check it every three years for any kind of deterioration and keep on repairing it if it needed it so that if something similar happened again they could take the one off the plinth and drop that in the water and it would be ready to go without any problems whatsoever

There was a similar story about the “Gate Guardians”, the Spitfires and Hurricanes that stood on plinths outside former World War II airfields. When we were kids, on our way to North Wales, we always noticed the one at Hawarden Airfield. However, when the film BATTLE OF BRITAIN was proposed, all of the Gate Guardians were rounded up and where it was possible to do so, were put back into the air.

There was also something about being in hospital and a nurse doing something to me which impressed me so I said something. She replied that she was only a student nurse, which surprised me. I wonder who she was. I’ve had several student nurses attending to me in the past

After that? I had some e-mails to write. There is a mountain of correspondence here going back weeks that I really must answer. However, I must have let the time slip away with me because my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches when I was nowhere near ready.

She turned up, but the taxi didn’t. After waiting half an hour, I ‘phoned them up. "Ohh merde!" said the dispatcher in a voice loud enough that even my cleaner heard it. "I’ll find another vehicle for you".

We decided to go outside and wait, and we had a lovely forty minutes under the sun until an ambulance turned up. I hate them – it’s quite a fight for me to put myself inside – but if it’s the only vehicle available I can’t complain.

It was driven by the driver who took me to Paris. She told me that they had been on the autoroute not far from St-Lô when the call had come through. No wonder that it had taken so long to arrive. I told her that I didn’t understand any of this – after all, the taxi company had brought me back from Paris yesterday so they knew that I was at home.

Hours late at the dialysis centre, and what made it even worse was that it was a three-and-a-half hour session today. Had the taxi been on time, I could have had a very pleasant late afternoon back at my place.

The consolation was that I had Lexi and Océane dealing with me today. All of the nurses there are wonderful but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Lexi really does have the most delicate touch.

Who cares whether or not the coupling-up was painful? After Tuesday afternoon and the muscular biopsy, nothing else is painful. I had plenty of work to do, apart from sitting there watching the blood pressure slowly sink through the floor to a rather dangerous 88.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too, but she remained stoically in her little glass cage. If she wanted something, she sent one of the girls for it. It’s a shame that she’s no longer speaking to me after my revolt the other week.

This evening, I was the last one there so they were both dealing with me. While Lexi was compressing me, Océane was inspecting my feet. I told them that I had delayed my arrival on purpose so as to have the undivided attention of both of them.

The taxi was waiting for me to bring me home and we had a very silent drive back. My cleaner was waiting and she watched and helped a little while I struggled up the stairs. She’d been to the chemist’s to buy what was needed and had bought a lettuce and some potatoes for me.

After she left, I made tea. Baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and almond soya dessert.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. I have plenty of work to do tomorrow, and there’s footy too – Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro, the winner going on to meet Hwlffordd to compete for the vital third European spot, accompanying TNS and Penybont.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about student nurses … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not made correctly and taking a blood sample from me is not easy.
Nevertheless, I always encourage the student nurses to have a go. After all, they have to learn somewhere.
One of them was having so much difficulty that I told her "cheer up! If I leave this hospital alive, you won’t need to sit your exams. You will have earned your diploma by default."

0

Saturday 3rd May 2025 – THAT WAS SUPPOSED …

… to be one of the easiest sessions of dialysis that I have ever had, with only 1.6 kg of fluid to be removed. However, it’s totally exhausted me and in a few minutes I shall be off to bed.

It probably wasn’t the early start that did it – after all, being up and about at 06:20 is pretty much par for the course these days. And as well as that, it was a comparatively early night last night – in be by 23:30.

What with one thing and another, I had had a good session at the work that I needed to do after tea last night and I didn’t hang around at all. I suppose I could even have been in bed before than had I applied myself.

Once in bed though, I remember very little of the night until, once more, I had rather a dramatic awakening for no good reason at about 05:55.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and, checking the time once more, I nipped out of bed just before the electric water heater switched off.

After a wash and shave (in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon) I went for my medication, sitting at the table when the first alarm sounded at 07:00.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us, including my father, in a car driven by some young lad whom we knew. We’d come by Leighton Hospital and on the old road cut-off there was a Sherpa minibus. It had a taxi radio aerial on the roof and another one bolted onto the back door. I had a quick look but couldn’t see a taxi plate on it so I suspected that this one was operating illegally. We carried on down the hill towards Pym’s Lane, and this Sherpa caught us up. It was probably half an inch from our back door but we were probably doing about fifty mph. As we reached the bottom and began to come back up the hill the Sherpa became even more aggressive. We told the driver “take your foot off the throttle”. The driver took his foot off the throttle and the Sherpa drove straight into the back of it. Of course, we stopped and he stopped and we all alighted. We could see the driver of the Sherpa beginning to panic. He tried to escape but my father reached in through his window and took the keys out to stop him driving off. We made him alight from the vehicle to talk to us about the accident. In the meantime the young lad who owned the car had set up some kind of workshop at the side of the road with all his tools. He was busy preparing stuff to make a running repair of the damage. I was impressed by all of this. He said “well, I have nowhere else to keep it except in my car”. I replied “it won’t be long before you have your own place, and then you’ll find somewhere”. I’d been to the new place that he had bought. It was a tiny two-bedroom flat much smaller than mine. He would have a great deal of difficulty putting stuff into it. He took the top off a tube of something or other but dropped the top and someone nearly walked on it. We were all there, becoming busy while my father and one or two of his friends were stopping this guy from driving away.

This was an extremely realistic dream. The road layout was just as I remember it from when I lived in Crewe and Winsford and travelled that way regularly back in the 1970s and 80s. But once again, someone from my family seems to be involved in one of my dreams, even though there was nothing at all from which I might have needed saving.

Then later on, there had been a group of us. We had been for a walk in the hills over by Macclesfield. We were walking around there looking at all the mountains on the horizon, trying to identify them, which was which, which were the fields beyond it. We were trying to identify where the Salt Way, the ancient road over the hills between Cheshire and Derbyshire went. We were all pointing out amongst this group of people what we’d seen and where we’d seen it. I’d had a really good view five minutes earlier and I told everyone about it. They all came back but we couldn’t see it, or I couldn’t find it again. We ended up on a pub car park, looking. Just then, a group of five motorcyclists and their pillion passengers pulled up. The riders alighted and we noticed that one of the riders had the most enormous feet you have ever seen. They parked their motorcycles anywhere, one of them in the middle of the road. We thought that it wasn’t the best place to leave it. They went in but we were all sitting around a table outside. The manageress came out with the notepad and wanted to take our orders. She ran through the menu. One of the girls with us said that she would have a “Vegan Delight” but she would be horrified if she knew how much it was going to cost. The woman said that the devilled kidneys alone were £31:00. nevertheless the girl ordered it. I ordered the “Vegan Delight” but without the kidneys.

A few of those people I recognised – members of my Welsh class. What we were all doing walking over the moors at the back of Macclesfield I really don’t know either. But the biggest puzzle about this, something about which I am still shaking my head, is whatever would devilled kidneys be doing anywhere near a “Vegan Delight”. It’s no surprise that I eschewed them.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning, although he was not at all happy when I told him that he needed to be here at 06:45 on Monday morning at the latest. He told me to go to bed in my compression socks, which was what I suspected that he would say.

After he left I made breakfast. And my new mini-loaf is really, really nice, just as it should be. As far as MY BOOK goes, we are still in the Tower of London having the guided tour. I’ve long-since abandoned any hope of having any military architecture explained to me.

Back in here, I had a few bills to pay. There’s still no earthly reason why this monthly standing order won’t go through. Whenever I go to pay it manually, it automatically inserts my bank details so it must have them on file somewhere.

There was also a sum of money to transfer from my Canadian bank account for my great little niece (or little great niece)’s graduation from University, which is tomorrow.

There was time to start writing the notes for radio programme 260403 but I didn’t go very far before my cleaner came round to fit my patches.

After she left, I waited (and waited, and waited) for the taxi to turn up. Eventually it arrived and we set off, picking up someone else along the way. I was the last to arrive and so was the last to be connected. But there was only 1.6 kg of fluid to lose today so it was a session of three and a half hours. Imagine how early I could have been out had I been first to be connected up.

For a change, it wasn’t me who had a crisis in there. It was someone else. The nurse explained to me afterwards that she had been coming for several years and was now on the final downhill slope.

No-one bothered me and the machine behaved itself. I revised my Welsh while I was waiting.

Julie the Cook uncoupled me and while she was compressing me, she showed me some photos of a cake that she had baked. It looked lovely, a kind-of flan with fresh summer fruit on a cream base.

The boss came to pick me up this evening, and the poor woman who had come down with me had had to wait half an hour for me to finish. I felt awful, even though it’s not my fault.

After the taxi driver drove away, I realised that he had taken my jacket with him in the boot of his car. He brought it back later on, full of excuses. I told him that my cleaner was most upset about it and wanted a word with him so he made a quick getaway.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan salad, delicious vegan mayonnaise and breaded quorn fillet followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

That was followed by a lovely chat with my niece and her three daughters who are in Antigonish ready for the Graduation Ceremony tomorrow. How I wish that I could be there. Antigonish is a lovely little town – I went there on several occasions when her elder sister was studying here – and it would be a lovely day. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I remember bouncing Amber up and down on my knee as a tiny baby (Amber, not me) when she was just a couple of months old in 2003 that winter that I spent in Canada. It’s hard to believe that she’s graduating from University.

Right now though, I’m feeling pretty miserable so I’m off to bed. It’s a good job that there’s nothing to dictate because I would not have felt much like doing it.

But seeing as we have been talking about Julie the Cook … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she appeared a couple of weeks ago in one of my nocturnal rambles.
So this afternoon I told her "I dreamed about you the other night"
"Did you?" She asked
"No" I replied. "You wouldn’t let me"

0

Friday 2nd May 2025 – AS I HAVE SAID …

… before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s not much point in going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early.

So when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00, I was already in the kitchen sorting out the medication, having already done the necessary in the bathroom.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night I really was feeling quite queasy and uneasy and after I finished my notes at 22:20 and it wasn’t very much later than that when I hit the sack.

Once I was in bed it took a few minutes to settle myself down and once I did, then that was that. I remember absolutely nothing else.

That was until 05:50 when I had another one of those dramatic awakenings that I have sometimes. I lay in bed tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, but when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I gave up the ghost and arose from the Dead.

After the good scrub and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Unfortunately, there was no Zero last night. However, there was a rock festival taking place. I was asked if I would deal with the sanitation issues so I tried several aspects of the toilets, several different designs, and in the end I simply went for the large pit with a big wooden board with holes over it. I had to supply all of the paper and everything like that, arrange to have the pits pumped out and it began to become extremely complicated. I began to wonder whether or not I’d bitten off more than I could chew with this. First of all, of course, I didn’t know how many people were going to attend – if it would be something like Woodstock with a 50,000 crowd limit but half a million people who appeared.

It’s a little-known fact that as part of my Degree in Environmental Technology, I have a Diploma in Environmental and Pollution Control so not only can I design a fantastic waste disposal site for you, I would be quite happy to design a sanitation system for a major festival. It’s clear though that I have my Woodstock Festival on the brain right now. I really ought to crack on and finish it instead of messing about so much.

And then I stepped back into that dream later. After we’d installed what we needed to do, a couple of other people and I, we went for a walk into town. We could see the crowds coming away from the festival behind us. They had obviously just installed their things. We thought that seeing as we were ahead of the queue coming up the hill, maybe we should go to the shops and buy some food because we had a suspicion that the food was not going to last anything like as long as the festival. We saw all kinds of things. We even saw them digging holes as if they were ready for graves. We entered a supermarket and began to look around and select things to put in a small basket. They had some of these iced buns with white icing crosses on them. They looked really nice so I said that I would have one. The girl with us put her hand inside and grabbed hold of one. She began to eat it. I thought “this is probably not the best advertisement for us that there could have been”. She was telling us that in the local paper that day there was a letter from a guy who had tried to come to the festival but couldn’t make it. He had written a huge, enormous letter of complaint to the shop that the shop had published in the newspaper.

One thing that you will find, if you listen to my radio programmes on Woodstock this coming August, is that food was a major issue at the festival. Many people gave no thought whatsoever to food, and the organisers had counted on 50,000 people, not 500,000 turning up.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning or, if he did, I paid no attention. And after he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We are, as I expected, still in the Tower of London and so far, there has been nothing controversial in what he has said. That is rather disappointing.

Back in here, there was plenty to do today. The first task was to finish off choosing the music for programme 260403. That took longer than it ought because I didn’t have half of what I needed and some of it took some finding.

While I was at it, I also took the opportunity to research for the programme for the following week, 260410. That should be an interesting programme and no mistake.

Once I’d assembled all of the music I went for a disgusting drink break and then my cleaner appeared to do her stuff. After I’d prepared for my shower and washed my clothes, she helped me into the bath to have the shower, and it was delicious.(the shower, I mean).

While I was under the shower the ‘phone rang. So after I was out and my cleaner had gone, I rang the number back.

It was the taxi company who had ‘phoned. Apparently my authorisation from the Social Security only lasts for one year and it had now expired. I needed some more paperwork from the hospital.

Not exactly sure of what I needed, I rang the hospital. It sounded so complicated to me that in the end I gave the hospital the taxi company’s ‘phone number and left them to fight it out between them.

Liz rang me after that and we had a Rosemaryesque chat of over an hour, split in two because the hospital ‘phoned me back midstream to tell me that they had sorted it out between them, the paperwork had been e-mailed and everything was to go ahead as normal. And so I could continue my discussion with Liz.

It’s been ages since we chatted but she’s been up to her eyes in grandchildren for the last while, what with one thing and another. We had a really good chat about lots of different things, which was nice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I was having “another think” about my apartment renovation. Liz and Terry have an “in” on a certain Social Network group so between us we worked out an advertisement that we could publish on there about the work that needs doing. And not only is it now published, it’s also had some response.

It’s just a shame though that they don’t live in this area otherwise I would have had them come and do it in a heartbeat. We all worked so well together as a team and in that really hard winter of 2010-2011 when it was too cold to work in the Auvergne, we went up to Brussels to my centrally-heated apartment and blitzed it from top to toe in just six weeks.

Liz has really good taste too and that helped a lot, to add some nice little touches to the place. And between the two of them, they managed to keep my feet firmly anchored to the floor instead of soaring off on some flight of fancy. It would be worth any price whatever to have them here doing the work, even if I had to hire a holiday let for them for a month on top of whatever they would want to do the job. However, you can’t turn the clock back and once people have retired, they want to enjoy themselves.

Having sorted out everything else I went one better than David Crosby, probably because last night I wasn’t feeling up to par. It increases my paranoia like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year. I feel like I owe it to someone.

Finally I could sit down and edit, remix, pair off and segue the music for programme 260403, miles behind time as usual, but ask me if I care..

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, vegan salad (with more of my delicious home-made vegan mayonnaise) and some of the vegan nuggets that I’d bought from Noz the other day, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

In between preparing and eating the food I made myself a very small 200-gramme loaf. I’m out of bread at the moment so until I have the time to make something on Sunday afternoon, that will keep me going. With the new water gauge, the loaf turned out to be spot-on. That was a good purchase.

So now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon (I don’t think). However, it’s the Welsh Cup Final between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads.

The Nomads are desperate to win as it’s their only avenue into Europe but they are currently managerless after a very poor season by their standards so we shall see. There were three clubs in the Welsh Premier League, The Nomads, Y Drenewydd and Aberystwyth, who lost several of their bigger names in the last close season and their recruitment was simply just not good enough. They have all paid the price for that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about me being able to build a decent waste disposal site … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that to Liz
"You’ll need to go out on the street and collect some rubbish then" she said.
"I refuse" I replied.

-1

Monday 28th April 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting at my desk in my office.

And there’s a huge red mark on my file “Leaving the Hospital Against Medical Advice”.

What has happened is that they want me to stay for another scan on my stomach. So I telephoned the hospital myself and spoke to the scanner and asked him "when could I have an appointment for a scan? I have a prescription from Doctor …" (luckily it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant who saw me)
He paused for a minute and said "The next appointment is 1st of June".
My response was "Doctor … says that it’s urgent".
"It doesn’t matter" he said "We can’t do it any earlier".

So if anyone thinks that I’m going to sit around for five weeks kicking my heels in a hospital when I have so much to do, they are out of their tiny minds.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the medical staff and I have different aims. Their aim is to keep me alive as long as possible, clinging on by the end of my fingertips while they pump me full of morphine to deaden the pain. For my part, I wouldn’t care if I were to die tomorrow if I had had a full and active life up to that point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the hysteria that took place at Leuven in 2019 when I told them that I was abandoning my treatment for three months while I went on an expedition to the High Arctic.

Anyway, that’s another story completely. Last night I had a much better night and after I finished my notes etc I went almost straight to sleep and there I stayed until all of 06:00 when they awoke me for a blood test.

After that I actually went back to sleep and stayed there until about 07:55.

When I awoke was in my Ford Transit. I’d been talking to my youngest sister. She wandered ff saying that she’ll be back in a minute. Ten minutes later she still hadn’t returned so I drove round to the club on Nantwich Road where she had gone. After another ten minutes she still didn’t come so I buttonholed one of her mother’s friends who was standing by the door. He told me that she was busy and wouldn’t be finished for a while. I was extremely angry and told the guy to tell her that she would have to stay there because I had things to do, and drove off down one of the side streets on the south side of Nantwich Road.

That sounds just like my family, but again, that’s all water that floated under the bridge a very long time ago. But I’ve still no idea why I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about Crewe. In total, I only lived there for about 12 years of my life.

After I’d washed and shaved (and went in search of my gant de toilette that the cleaner had taken by mistake) they served me breakfast. And once again, it was starvation rations and there was nothing that I could do about it. Apparently, the staff had been warned.

Next were the dictaphone notes. And there were piles of those last night. I was doing something with … I can’t remember what now but it was involving my brother and his wife and it was something to do with being disabled and someone at the centre turned up. In the end no matter what we were doing a friend of mine, a young girl who had a car, she said that she would take us all home. I was sitting in the back with someone and the girl was sitting in the front and there was a seat next to her. The disabled woman came out. She said that she could travel with us so she put her walkframe in the back of the boot so she told her that she could sit in the front so she ran round to the front so what she was doing with a walkframe ….. She had a big stool with her but found that it wouldn’t fit in so we said “why don’t you give it to us and we’ll hold it?”. So she climbed in and the girl drove and dropped off the two of us who were sitting in the back and went on to take Mrs Whateverhername is back to her bungalow. And the thing about this is that I was telling my brother about the dream and he was in it, telling exactly this dream to him

My family again, God bless them. And one of the women now from dialysis. This story is going out of hand, there’s no doubt about that. The interesting part though is that I was dreaming within a dream. That’s not something that happens very often with me. However, it does show that my nocturnal rhythms are settling down after a major period of disturbance.

There has been a lot of further contact between people in many of these dreams and that dream just now involved a girl who could play the violin. I didn’t particularly like her all that much but we needed a flute player as well and this girl could do them both so we had to be nice to her. That meant that she’d even come to see me in the hospital and when she went back to the hospital administration offices at the other side of the road from here there was no way of going home so we offered to drive her if she was feeling willing

There’s an interesting story about the girl with the violin but the World is not ready to hear it. However, her second instrument was the piano and maybe some power chords on a Fender Telecaster. I can say though that if in the dream I said that I didn’t like her, that is being somewhat “economical with the truth”.

And later on I’d gone to volunteer for certain hospital tests and they were busy taking some pulse from me. I was told that it would be a morning session and an afternoon session so I’d gone in the afternoon and time was really dragging on, like it was 18:00, 19:00, 20:00. I mentioned this to the doctor who was taking some samples from me. He eventually went to the ‘phone, by which time it was about midnight and telephoned someone. He told them the situation and I heard the reply, which was “these people come as volunteers and volunteer for certain tasks and so they have to stay until they are done. If he doesn’t like it he can clear off and never come back again, particularly after all of the trouble that we had last time with him”. I tried to think of the last time that I was here and what trouble I had caused, but I couldn’t think of any. Then I was put into a car, the car that does the hospital transfers. We drove into the town centre. There was a taxi parked at the side of the road. I wondered if the taxi had been ordered for me to take me home and they would drop me off here or whether I was expected to stay in the one that I was with and carry on. However the traffic lights were red and we had to stop and wait until they turned green before we could move on

It beats me, the significance of this dream. I’ve offered my services as a guinea pig to a couple of hospitals where I’ve been staying, but when it presents to you the possibility of having several handfuls of student nurses crawling all over you, who wouldn’t?

Later on I was in Chester. I was talking to some guys about music. We were working out some songs with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. We decided that the big solo that he would play would make a great track on its own so we were busy thinking of ways to expand the first track. I walked down by the river and walked to the car park and there was my car there, the old Mercedes that I had once. Parked next to it was a sleek black limousine with a chauffeur by it. I looked at the driver and I knew him from when I was chauffeuring. He looked at me and said “chauffeuring again?. I said “yes”, yes because I was driving for. So I told him that there was a British trade delegation. He looked at the car, this old Merc, and I said “yes, because they don’t have very much money because they didn’t do very much. I opened the door and there was a couple of people inside – the boss and one of the girls. I asked them if they were ready to go. They replied “no” – they were waiting for a third person. Meantime, the little girl who was in there, she opened her rucksack and pulled out a computer. “It’s not mine” she said. “It’s one of the training ones. I said “you’ll have to take it home and look after it tonight and take it back in the morning”. She was annoyed by that because she had all her contacts on it for chatting etc. I replied “it can’t be helped. You should really check your things if you put them away in the bag.

There is also a story about walking down by the river but the World is not ready to hear that one either. As far as Ian Anderson goes, the Ian Anderson may well be another Ian Anderson, a folk singer with whom I have had some correspondence at one time. He has an interesting claim to fame which listeners of my radio shows at the end of August may well discover. The story about the chauffeuring and the computer is bizarre and I don’t know to what that relates, except that I still have my old Mercedes, festering down the field on the farm next to a Ford Cortina and a Ford Transit ditto.

Meantime, the doctor came to see me. I told her that I wanted to leave after dialysis this afternoon
"You can’t" she replied
"Can’t I?" I said. "You just watch"

And then the argument began.

She gave me a very long speech about everything, the highlight of which was "this is not a prison, but …". When she finished, I replied "I’ve listened carefully to you and I’ve understood everything that you have said. But nevertheless I am still leaving."

The truth of the matter is that I have had news that my locataire loaded up a van with half of her possessions early this morning. She might even (although it’s doubtful) finish tomorrow and leave the apartment. Secondly, I have a visitor coming from this evening for a few days. Thirdly, I have a builder coming round on Wednesday morning. Fourthly, I’m going to Paris for a week at the other hospital on Monday.

And so the argument raged on and on until in the end she left. She came back with a sheaf of my discharge papers with the prominent red stamp upon it.

It was an ambulance with a stretcher that took me over the road to the dialysis centre where, apparently, amongst the nurses my rebellion is headline news. Julie the Cook, my allocated nurse, came for a chat to “make further enquiries”.

But proof that the hospital regime has done me some good is that there was only 1.4 kilos of water to remove from me so it was a three-and-a-half hour session. And afterwards, I had never felt so well for quite some considerable time.

While I was there I was in an exchange of messages with a friend of mine. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an ongoing major project in the UK and a friend of mine from my Manchester days is handling it. He has a few days spare so he wanted to come over to see me.

He turned up at the dialysis centre just as I was being thrown out and he brought me home. We came the pretty way by the coast because it’s been a while since I’ve passed that way.

My faithful cleaner helped me up the stairs and after I left, I made stuffed peppers for two followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert, all of which went down a treat.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about walkframes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine telling me "Sony has brought out a new product for our generation"
"Ohh yes?" I replied, bitterly regretting it thirty seconds later
"It’s called ‘The Sony Walkframe’"

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Thursday 24th April 2025 – ONCE MORE, JUST …

… like yesterday I was op and about before the alarm went off. Not quite as early though. It was about 06:20 when I hauled myself out from underneath the bedclothes.

Considering that it was almost midnight when I went to bed last night, that’s some good going too. After my Herculean effort in the morning, staying awake and up and about until then was pretty good too.

So after I finished my notes, the stats and the backing up, I loitered around for a few minutes … "more than a few minutes" – ed … before crawling off to the comfort and safety of my own bed.

Once in there I was soon away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and only have the briefest of recollections of anything going on during the night.

It was a different matter round about 06:05 when I awoke. I couldn’t go back to sleep and I was actually crawling out from under the covers when I heard the water heater switch off.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina had a Ford Cortina MkIII, a gold one. She wanted to keep it or she wanted to sell it – she couldn’t make up her mind so I advertised it for her to have some people come round to look at it to see what they thought, to make an offer and she could decide and take it from there. But everyone seemed to think that there were some pieces missing from it. I explained that we did actually have everything – it probably just wasn’t to have at the moment. I’d be able to sort it out in a short space of time

That’s something about which I know a great deal. I have four Cortinas down in the Auvergne, three of which are basically quite good. There are plenty of bits to fix those that need fixing but ask me where they are. I know that they are all there somewhere.

Later on, when I awoke I was back at home, Shavington or Davenport Avenue, with a huge bunch of screaming kids, some of whom were ours and some of them weren’t. One of them seemed to take quite a fancy to me and hung around with me for a while. However I awoke in the middle of all of that and so never found out what was going on.

With plenty of time left before Isabelle turned up, I did some housekeeping on the computer to bring that more up-to-date. But like most things around here, I seem to be taking one step forward and two straight backwards.

Isabelle breezed in and didn’t stop long, just enough time to deal with my legs and admire my new compression socks.

When she left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK. We’ve finished Leicester Castle, breezed through several minor piles and now we are at Lincoln. I’ve no idea what we are going to find there but we probably won’t be there long trying to find it.

Back in here I attacked the notes for the radio programme and in a mad fit of effort I almost finished them too. That was some effort, I can tell you.

My cleaner was late today and so it will come as no surprise to learn that my taxi was early. I was nothing like ready when he arrived and we had to keep the two other passengers in the car waiting for a while.

We arrived early at the hospital but then again so did everyone else so I was still last to be coupled up. Luckily it was Julie the Cook who saw to me.

They set the blood pressure alarm higher than usual so every half-hour or so, one of the nurses came over to check me. It was just as well because I hadn’t been feeling well at all all day, aching in every bone and muscle, out of breath and so on.

One of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) came to see me today. I managed to obtain from her a prescription for an occupational therapist to come to my new apartment to give advice about installations for the handicapped and disabled.

This evening I was one of the last to be unplugged, and then I had to wait around for fifteen minutes for the last person to finish so that we could leave the dialysis centre and drop her off on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was there and watched as I staggered up the stairs into my room. First thing that I did was to have a disgusting drink break seeing as the taxi came early and prevented me from having one before leaving.

Something else that the taxi prevented me from doing was taking a naan dough out of the freezer. And so I’ll have that and my leftover curry for tea tomorrow. Tonight I had sausage and mash with vegetables and it was delicious.

It’s really early but I’m still not feeling very well so I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep for a week if I have the chance

But seeing as we have been talking about Ford Cortinas … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when I was welding up the floor in someone’s Cortina when she was off to her mother’s.
She saw the legs sticking out from underneath the car so in passing, she reached under and … well … you can imagine.
When I came out of the garage with a G-clamp she had gone and my friend John from Stockport was nursing a lump the size of an egg on his forehead.

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Wednesday 23rd April 2025 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE …

… that has been today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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