Tag Archives: early night

Wednesday 13th August 2016 – NOW, ABOUT LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed by about 21:30 and it didn’t take all that long at all to drop off to sleep. And the next thing that I remember was that it was 05:35. I can’t have been for a wander during the night and I vaguely remember only the basics of some kind of nocturnal ramble going on during the night. It concerns Renown Garage where my taxi business was based during the late 1980s. They had dug up the petrol pumps and were concreting them, with this huge cement mixer. However, instead of water, they had mixed the concrete with petrol which had infiltrated into the foundations from the old petrol tanks. This had the effect (at least, it did last night) of making the concrete set quickly and super-hard, and they had far too much of it that they didn’t know what to do with it. I immediately seized on the opportunity to offer my back garden as a dumping ground for the concrete – with the aim of course of covering it over as a place to park my vehicles.

I felt quite better this morning, and even had an appetite for breakfast. And afterwards, now that I’ve bought some soap, I went for a shower and sorted out all of my clothes for washing. And this was when I realised that I only have one spare pair of undies and trousers – no socks, tee-shirt or jumper. Nevertheless, I put everything ready to wash.

I had to wait hours for the machine to free itself, seeing as the cleaner seemed to have gone berserk with the cleaning cycle, but it didn’t take long to wash. Meantime, I’d gone round to the supermarket for my baguette, tomato and banana, and as well as that, bought myself a bag of sweets and a bun because I was starving. This is definitely an improvement.

And my relentless thirst seems to have calmed down too, which is a good thing. You’ve no idea how much liquid I’ve demolished this last few days.

This afternoon I had a doze again for an hour or so and later on went out for tea. Thanks to all of the vegan cheese that I have, I went for another pizza and I polished that off quite comfortably.

Yes, definitely feeling a little better.

But you missed all of the excitement while I was out. Some young guy thought that he would be clever by cycling on the pavement around a traffic queue in the street. Instead, he cycled right into a grid in the gutter, his front wheel jammed and he went head-over-heels right over the handlebars.

Yes, I did have to laugh.

But tomorrow I’m back at the hospital. I’m having a blood test at the day centre and that will tell us whether I need another transfusion, or whether the chemotherapy is actually working.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s going on, and I hope that it’s working because I don’t want to go through too much of this under any circumstances whatever. It’s horrible.

Tuesday 12th APRIL 2016 – I’VE BEEN OFF AGAIN …

… on yet another mega-ramble during the night. I must be sleeping a little better, which must be a sign of something, I suppose.

Last night, I started out with a girl who was supposed to be Amber, my niece’s daughter (but who bore a startling resemblance both in looks and character to my younger sister) and her friend Julianna. And we were in Canada, on our way west towards Centreville to be reunited with Amber’s grandmother. But Amber (or my sister, take your pick) was certain that her grandmother wasn’t there and that when we arrived she and her friend would have to take the ‘plane to fly on to wherever her grandmother was staying. I was surprised at this because it was the usual time for me going to Canada and she was always at home when I arrived (and why we didn’t telephone to check up was something that I don’t understand either). By now, it was late at night and we stopped for the night at a motel. We had our beds in the foyer so everyone had to go past us to enter their rooms and with me and two young girls the place soon became a real dump, with stuff everywhere for I had had to turn the luggage inside-out to find the food to make sandwiches and I’d been finding all sorts of things. But Amber (or my sister) mentioned the name of the town where her grandmother usually stayed so I looked for it on the map but couldn’t find it. But in a moment of inspiration I looked inside the front cover of the map and there was a rubber stamp from a used-car salesman from the town where she might be. I couldn’t read the writing so I asked one of the girls to look. Amber (or my sister) had a look and told me the full address, and the nearest city happened to be about 250 miles in the opposite direction right near where Hannah goes to University at Antigonish. I told Amber (or my sister) to telephone straight away to her father to see if grandmother was at this address, because now that we had it, we could have a good night’s sleep and head down there directly in the morning. And it was here that I noticed that Amber (or my sister) was having a crafty smoke of a cigarette, so did I have words to say to her about that at her age!
From here, the action moved on to Brussels and a group of Russian “nouvels arrivants” living there. Some of these Russians were fairly young but they were all quite street-wise, and everyone seemed to be concerned with some kind of storage of illicit spirits. One of the girls, called Alina (and who bore more than a passing resemblance to girl called Alina whom I once met) was more determined than the rest and was keen to secure her independence. She had once been dared to work out how to break into one of these secret warehouses and much to everyone’s surprise she had managed to do so. Now, she intended to break in for good and clear out all of the stock and, unsurprisingly, in a fit of boredom and lack of excitement in my life, I volunteered to help her. Terry and Liz offered to help as well. So she turned up, worked her way into the warehouse and we loaded up a van with all of these spirits and Terry quickly drove it off while Alina and I sorted out the finances. When I met up with Liz and Terry afterwards, they were both keen to know all about Alina and my involvement with her and how come she felt so confident as to be able to handle all of this at her age, and on reflection I had to admit to them that I knew nothing really concrete or substantial about her and I couldn’t really see how I had come to let myself be involved in all of this, knowing what the Russian Mafia could be quite capable of “arranging”.
After this, it was the turn of my middle sister to make her debut in my nocturnal ramble. There she was with another girl and both had babies in pushchairs. We were all planning to go off somewhere and the bust was at 08:13 but they were taking far too much time to prepare themselves and their charges and I was trying to urge them on. It was a good 10 minutes walk to the bus stop and I looked at my watch – it was 07:56 and I was feeling that if they don’t organise themselves right this minute, we wouldn’t be going anywhere at all.

It wasn’t 07:56 though because I checked. It was 07:23 when I awoke and, much to my surprise, I was feeling a little (but only a little) better. I actually managed to attack my breakfast with much more confidence. I had the usual repose during the morning, being evicted by the cleaner while she did the room and that gave me an opportunity to do some research into the laundry room. There’s a washing machine there that for €2:00 will do all of your clothes so I’ll be sorting that out tomorrow.

I felt a little better going down to the shops for my bread and when I could finally bring myself to eat it, I felt much better after that. So much so that I postponed my afternoon nap until 16:30 and was back up and about at 18:00.

For tea, remembering to go out early so as not to end up locked out like last night, I had pasta and tomato sauce – to take away – for a mere €5:50. Living in an area overrun with students is paying massive dividends with deals like that. And for once, I really enjoyed it and managed to eat it all without any hesitation.

So I’m off to bed in a couple of minutes. I’m glad that I’ve been feeling better today and I hope that I can maintain the improvement tomorrow – especially if I can keep eating like this.

Monday 11th April 2016 – IF I’M TOTALLY OUT OF IT TODAY …

… then there is a very good reason for this, because I was well away with the fairies during the night.

“Away” was not the word. I must have crashed out listening to the radio because I awoke at about 01:30, in the middle of the night, to the sound of the Clitheroe Kid.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I had companions during all of it and I started off with none other than Nerina and my brother. He had a Ford Fiasco which had a luton body on it (don’t ask me how – or why) and he was out and about on his travels when he bumped into me, somewhere on the corner of Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close in Shavington. As we were talking, a police car loomed over the horizon and he beat something of a hasty retreat away from his Fiesta. I asked him why but he didn’t give a convincing reason and in the end I cornered him over the fact that it wasn’t insured. “Don’t you remember that as soon as I got my licence I was planning to go off on that drive across Europe but in the end I had to cancel it. That was because the insurance hadn’t come through”.
So from there we made our way into the company of Nerina who wanted some stuff moving. She didn’t care about how ill I was, and I couldn’t make her understand. We ended up bringing a quad motorcycle down some narrow stairs from an attic, getting it stuck at every turn, and once it was down, off we set. We carried on arguing all the way to where we were going, to Hankelow Hall, to my house in France, and even arguing in some roadside petrol station near Audlem (which was nowhere near Audlem of course) and I’d lost patience long ago.
After a trip down the corridor I was at the seaside. Only a teenager, I was with a group of others and there was a huge storm raging sending spray everywhere and one girl of our party was out running around in it. I went out to bring her inside but I ended up being overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all too and staying out with her. As the storm subsided we went for a walk and ended up taking a short cut through someone else’s garden . I asked her if she knew the people to which she replied that she did. I had no intention of meeting them so I persuaded her to retrace our steps and we were met at the gate by a crowd of people including the fire brigade. Apparently the place had caught fire and so we were asked what we had been doing. I replied with the first thing that came into my head – that we were collecting the pools money – but that was clearly the wrong thing to say because there was some scam going around about the Football Pools and I’d put my foot right in it. Nevertheless, an elderly couple whom I knew saw me with this girl and gave me a “knowing wink”.
And later still, I’d been out with a friend and her husband to a local bar. The husband was quite the worse for wear so she asked me to escort him home. I agreed, provided that she would bring a few bottles back for me to take to my friends. However, outside the bar, husband jumped on a bicycle and despite his wife’s most earnest entreaties, he wouldn’t get off and wobbled off down the street. I grabbed hold of the nearest bike, a kind of Moulton mini-bike with a flat rear tyre and weird handlebars, and shot off after him. But I was so impressed by this bike. Even with a flat rear tyre, the gearing was such that the momentum of going down Vine Tree Avenue took me all the way back up the bank in Chestnut Avenue, and I remember thinking that I shall have to look much more closely at modern bicycles

No wonder that I’m exhausted – but I’m curious to know what Shavington doing featuring in all of this these days.

I slept almost right through to the alarm this morning but it was a slow crawl to the breakfast room. And back here, I crashed out again for an hour straight afterwards. It took me ages to come round sufficiently but the cleaner threw me out of my room at about 11:00. This gave me an opportunity to go to the office to pay for my accommodation. I’ve paid up until Thursday morning because I’ve no idea where I’ll be after then. Will I be detained in hospital or will I be released?

As an aside, the receptionist complimented me on my Flemish. I suppose it must be returning by now but I don’t feel anything like as confident – or as competent – as I think that I ought to be.

I crawled to the supermarket to buy food for lunch and then crawled back here afterwards to eat it and then have another crash-out for a couple of hours. But at 20:00 I staggered out to the fritkot – not feeling very much like it at all but I have to eat and frits are full of fat which, apparently, I must have.

I was in luck at the fritkot – it was the anniversary of the opening of the place and so a medium portion was free. How often does this kind of thing happen to me? I had a struggle to eat them but they all went down and they must have done some good because now it’s 22:00 and I’m still awake.

But not for much longer. I’m off to bed and I’ll see where I end up tomorrow.

Sunday 3rd April 2016 – I DIDN’T FEEL …

… much like it this morning, that’s to be sure. I was awake at 07:20 but that is of course not the same as getting out of bed. In fact it took me a good hour to summon up the courage to leave the bed. But once I was up, I started to collect all of my affairs together and it didn’t take too long to be ready.

And I discovered why the internet had dramatically reduced in speed and strength. It seems that the repeater for the wi-fi was in my room underneath the bedside cabinet and I’d unplugged it in order to plug in my laptop. It didn’t half work better once I’d reconnected it

I picked up Caliburn and then headed for the Belgian border, stopping off o pick up a baguette on the way. And then I had a nice drive along the Meuse where I stopped at a good spec somewhere just north of Profondeville to admire the view and have a little kip. Crashed out again!

My baguette was enormous and I struggled to eat it all, and then once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) I set off. And by the time I got to Phoe … errr … Namur, the sun was out and everywhere looked so nice.

I had an uneventful drive back to Alison’s, stopping for a couple of hours on the Motorway Service Area at Heverlee to crash out for a while in the glorious, warm sunshine, and then to bring up-to-date the paperwork. And to have a coffee too, which is the first coffee that I have had since Thursday, would you believe.

But with the internet at the Motorway crashing out, I lost interest after a while and headed back to Alison’s. She loved her tree, which pleased me greatly because I don’t really ever know how to thank people properly, and we ended up having a good chat.

But now I’m off to bed because I have an early start in the morning. My treatment begins at 09:30, so they say, which means that I need to be signed in at 09:00. But I want to be there much earlier than that because, firstly, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish and secondly, I’ve no idea how long this treatment is likely to take, there will be side-effects so I’m told, and I have to see the Social Services people. I need to be on top form.

So I’ll see you all tomorrow and let you know how it went.

Saturday 2nd April 2016 – NOW, HERE’S A THING.

Even though I’d had an early night last night, I slept right through the night and didn’t remember a thing. I didn’t leave the bed once and it’s been a long time since that has happened. I did have some kind of nocturnal ramble though, but all that remains in my head is meeting Sue, a girl whom I knew from Swindon, taking her by surprise as I stuck my head around the door where she was working, and there was also some kind of road transport that consisted of a vehicle from the 1920s but with no engine – instead there was some kind of rotary pedal arrangement that required two people to operate it – something similar to a pedalo.

It took me ages to pluck up the courage to leave my comfortable bed – I’m feEling the strain now, that’s for sure. But then I went for something of a walk to find a boulangerie , without a great deal of success. There was a street market today, and an artisan-baker had a stand there, but she was selling “normal” bread by the kilo and not a baguette in sight.

I ended up at the little Carrefour supermarket in town and bought a baguette and a couple of other things from there and then wandered off to the car park to pick up from Caliburn what I need for lunch, falling almost immediately upon a boulangerie – and then another one about 100 metres away. But that wasn’t all that I fell upon. Around the corner at the back of the hotel is an Indian restaurant. They advertise a vegetarian curry with plain rice, with side dishes such as a garlic naam, and the prices looked so reasonable so that I’ll be going that way tonight to see what it all tastes like. It’s been years since I’ve had a good meal from an Indian restaurant – Montreal last August in fact.

From what I saw of Givet, it’s a pretty little place. A small French town with a maze of narrow streets. It’s clearly seen much better days, like most places in France, but its history is impressive. There’s a huge citadel that is perched on a headland and overlooks the town and in ordinary circumstances I would have gone up there. But these, unfortunately, are not ordinary times as we all know.

Back at the hotel I didn’t move very far at first, but at 13:20 they came around to clean the hotel room so I had to wander off outside for half an hour to take the air and go for a stroll along the river. And after lunch, I crashed out for a couple of hours, despite my mega-sleep last night.

I didn’t do very much at all later on, except to go out for my meal. And I need to be careful about saying that it was something of a disappointment. Stoke on Trent it isn’t, of course, and it’s something astonishing, as I will be the first to admit, to find an Indian restaurant in a town like Givet. That’s a fact worth celebrating on its own and I don’t regret having gone there for my evening meal. These kinds of places deserve all of our encouragement and support.

Back at the hotel, I climbed wearily up the stairs and into my bedroom. I switched on the laptop and discovered that the internet speed and strength had collapsed. I waited for about half an hour to load up the internet but I crashed out long before anything had loaded.

About an hour later, I woke up with the radio still playing, so I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

Friday 1st April 2016 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again today. I was awake early enough but when I switched on the laptop, there was someone on line with whom I wanted to have a chat. Consequently it was about 09:30 when I went downstairs and I hit the road straight away.

My first stop was at the town of Ramillies, the site in 1706 of one of the major, if not decisive battles of the War of the Spanish Succession. And it was here that I realised that I had forgotten my mobile phone and camera. Still, start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

Instead, I went shopping at the Delhaize at Inhout so as to stock up with food for my couple of days, and here I received a lovely smile from a young girl. I suppose that I’ll have to add it to the list of places to revisit. After all, it’s not every day that I have such a nice smile like that and I need to remember these places.

I called at a nursery on the outskirts of Namur. Alison is a very keen gardener and I want to thank her for being so kind to me, so I managed to pick up a young almond tree that will look really nice when it starts to blossom. I hope that she’ll like it.

Fuel at Namur was a mere €0:97 per litre, which is the cheapest that I’ve seen it for about 15 years. Caliburn was running quite low and so I profited by fuelling him right up, as I’m sure you would have done too at that price.

I missed the turning that I wanted at Namur and ended up on the wrong side of the Meuse – the eastern bank which is quite industrialised. It took me ages to find a crossing over onto the western bank, by which time I reckon that I had missed all of the picturesque hotels. but not to be outdone, I carried on southwards to Dinant, where the streets were undergoing a total renovation. There was nowhere to park, nowhere to move around, and walking around the town didn’t look very easy at all.

As a result, I pressed on towards the frontier, stopping for my butty somewhere where there was a lovely view across the river. Having no answer at a couple of bed-and-breakfasts, and at yet another, being told that it was full and I should refer myself to the other two in the town.And so I eventually found myself across the French border, in Givet. The first hotel that I found had transformed its rooms into apartments.The prices at the next few that I found frightened me to death and so as a last resort I found myself at the Ibis Budget on the outskirts of the town. I had no luck here either as the computerised registration system was down.

From here, I decided to cut across country to Rocroi where I knew that there were a few cheap hotels, but instead, negotiating the narrow one-way streets of Givet I found another hotel, the “Reflets Jaunes”. They were busy too and all of the cheap rooms had gone, but when I moaned about the price they allowed me a 20% discount which made it much more like my kind of place. There was secure vehicle parking too round the corner which was very handy because the streets weren’t half narrow.

Once I’d installed myself, I crashed out for an hour or so and then had a shower and washed my clothes. And I do have to say that I wasn’t disappointed with my hotel. I’ve been obliged to decline breakfast because it’s so expensive, although had I been a meat-and-dairy eater, I wouldn’t have complained for a moment because it really did look excellent, the way the receptionist described it. But the room is nice, warm and comfortable, and the towels are so fluffy that I’ve no idea how I’m going to close my suitcase when I leave here. The shower is lovely too and the internet connection is superb.

Later on in the evening, I went to see what there was to eat. There are several fritkots in the town but none of them sell falafel from what I was able to see. One was however next to a Carrefour “City” so while my chips were frying, I went next door and bought a cucumber salad to have with the chips.

After tea, I started to watch an Inspector Hornleigh film but my heart wasn’t in it and I’d gone in about 15 minutes. I’m definitely noticing how much I’m struggling now so I hope that the next few days will start to see a slight improvement in my health. It’ll be three weeks since I will have had a blood transfusion.

Monday 28th March 2016 – I’VE NOT TAKEN …

… any photographs today. But that’s because my sorties outside have been few and far between.

The hurricane really hit us during the night and I’m sure that the roof of my little room was about to be torn off. I had a really bad night because of that, and this didn’t bode well for the daytime.

I managed to go off on a couple of nocturnal voyages though. We start off with a group of three men who had gone west, intending to settle somewhere out there. They had come across a town where they intended to settle but it turned out that the town was very conservative and the people there were very unwilling to accept new arrivals. The people were very set in their ways and any new arrival had to conform to the way of life of the existing inhabitants. In the end, these three people were effectively driven away. About 10 or 20 miles down the road was a ruined barn-type of place with living accommodation on some kind of abandoned farm and so they restored it to its original purpose and settled there. These people were hard-workers and so the place prospered. There was a river on the boundary of this property and this formed the border between a couple of States. As these three people prospered, the area slowly opened up and many more people came to the area to settle and a small road network was created. A short-cut of the road network was proposed, that would go right past their house and cross the river right there, making their site into a little gold mine when it came to redevelopment as a town site. This was good news for them and good news for people in the neighbourhood, but what they wanted was merely to live in peace and quiet and not become involved in politics of any kind. But this news about the road would affect the existing town, which would be by-passed, and the town would decline rapidly. Not only that, the long-time inhabitants had imposed some kind of two-tier society where they had much more say than the new arrivals and this too was causing a great deal of discontent. The people in the valley around this farm decided that they would organise a huge protest march against the townsfolk, and they all congregated at the farm to go into town to confront the townsfolk and this was the last thing that these three people wanted. He couldn’t extract himself from the protest, being swept along by the tide and found himself right at the front, leading the march, which was what he didn’t want to do. When he and this march arrived at the town, he found that one of his brothers, who had stayed behind at the town, had been forced to lead a counter-march of the town’s senior inhabitants. The two of them walked quickly to try to get ahead of their respective marching bodies to meet up and discuss the situation, and try to find a way out of the impasse before the two parties clashed.
Woken up by an extremely violent gust of wind, I then went back to a James Bond or Avengers situation with me as the hero and I had a female sidekick. We’d been trying to break up this gang of violent crooks for ages, and all of a sudden we’d had some kind of breakthrough. My sidekick had been captured by one of the gang, a leading female figure, at gunpoint and this had left a couple of men. I had one of the men cornered and I hit him with a pistol and he was flat out so I stuck him in my car and chased after the two women. The unconscious man slowly started to come round so I sloshed him again. In the meantime, I was overhearing some discussion about all of the evidence that we’d somehow overlooked and left behind at this place that we had just visited. As a result, I reluctantly abandoned the chase and went back to this house to collect all of the evidence. I completely lost the trail of these two women, but at least I had one guy and all of the evidence, and while I was there at the house, I captured the other guy. So the case was complete, except for the woman, so I took everything down to the police station where the men were formally charged. They were then ushered away from the charge room, giving me looks of hatred and anger as they walked past me. A couple of other people then asked me what I was going to do about my female companion. I replied that to be honest, what I was really hoping for was that they have both made their peace and are now quite happily in a relationship with each other and live happily ever after. That would be ideal. From here, I wandered back into Crewe town centre where this girl of mine had a flat and sure enough there was the girl’s mother and also Alfie Hall of the Clitheroe Kid. They were emptying out this apartment and packing up her stuff making it ready to be sent on. They asked me if I minded, and of course I didn’t mind at all. I was happy that things had turned out fine for her in the end. It was really nice to see this and I hoped that once they were settled, she would write to me to tell me where she was living, and I’d go round to see her in the summer.

I was up early this morning and was in fact the first in for breakfast. After that, I went for a walk to the supermarket while the housemaid made up my room. And the wind was astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like it – dustbins (and I’m proud that I could remember the Dutch for dustbin – it’s vuilnisbak – right off the cuff without any prompting at all) all over the place. I’ve stocked up with supplies (although I forgot the hummus) and Raak Campagne Pils, and I’ll be going there tomorrow on my way out because – booh hoo hoo! – I’m leaving ehre tomorrow morning.

Back at the hotel I crashed out. Firstly, the bad night had really disturbed me and secondly, I can feel myself going downhill little by little. In fact, my eyesight is starting to go now.

After lunch, and another crash out, I went for a walk and found out why the town was so full of people when I tried to stand up on the top of the dyke. I say “tried” because it was impossible in this wind and there was no-one else up there either.

The ice-cream parlour was a disappointment – there was no dairy-free ice cream on offer and I’m depressed about that, I’ll tell you.

Tonight, I had a pizza again and I’m now very low on vegan cheese. I hope that I can get into Brussels on Wednesday to find some more. But now I’m crashing out again. I really am feeling dreadful right now.

Sunday 27th March 2016 – MY POSTILION HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Well, not quite, but round about 16:30 this afternoon, in the middle of a thunderstorm and hailstone fusillade, there was a dull thud, the building shook a little and all of the power went off.

I went for a walk a little later and this was what I saw in the distance. Huge massing storm clouds over there, hanging over the North Sea.

In fact, we had heavy storm clouds all over the place and in the distance to the south (remember that Zoutelande is on the north-west coast of the Schelde estuary were some very clear thunder flashes. It is therefore very tempting to suggest that the hotel had been struck by lightning.

That wasn’t all that was going on either. I’d been for a walk earlier while the housemaid made up my room, and was lucky enough to see a ship sailing up towards Antwerp, just offshore.

And excuse the lack of focus on the image – the wind was terrific and blowing me around like nobody’s business. This was the best of the images that I took, and that doesn’t say much for the others.

But talking of the housemaid, we had a little chat this morning. And the only language that we had in common was Italian. Imagine that in the Netherlands!

But those storm clouds that we saw gathering off the coast yesterday early evening finally arrived during the night. They hit my little room with such a force that I was immediately woken up, and when I went back to sleep, then half an hour later I was awoken once more.

This accounts for the dreadful night’s sleep that I had last night, and also for the number and variety of my nocturnal rambles. And believe me, there were dozens, quite a few of which didn’t make it to the dictaphone because either I fell straight back to sleep or else by the time that I found the dictaphone, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

Anyway, from what I do remember, I was in XCL, my red Cortina, and back at school (or, rather, a school in France, not my old one). I was an adult by this time and I only went back to school very occasionally, because I was studying Geography and History in my own time, but I would call in to the lessons if ever I was going past the school because I wanted to take the school exams and I needed to make sure that I was in touch with the course. As a result, I didn’t really know any of the children there. One afternoon, I’d bought something – some new seat covers or something for XCL so they needed wrapping. I had my yellow rucksack with me, which had now transformed itself into a school satchel. I’d turned up at the school and I can’t remember now how I had arrived but as I arrived, I remembered that there was something that I wanted. I had to walk all the way back to the car in order to get what it was that I wanted. As I walked out of the class there were all of these kids hanging around the door like you find at a school. It was the afternoon so there was a triple-period, but it was only the final two lessons, a double-period, that were history lessons but I had plans to do something in the period immediately after lunch. As I walked out of the school towards my car, I was singing “Daydream Believer” or, at least, trying to because I couldn’t hit the notes. I was devastated because I was hoping to sing it really well and show these kids a thing or two, but I just couldn’t get the notes.
A little later, I was back playing cricket and our team had unfortunately been skittled out. I was the last batsman remaining and I had to survive the last over so that our team would win. But it was now pitch-black and you couldn’t see a thing, and the bowler was bowling from around the corner behind the wall. All that I could do was to put my bat in the way and hope that that would block the wicket. For the final over, we started to have some friendly banter and the bowler said that he was going to bowl underarm at me. He took up a position about a foot from my wicket ready to bowl. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t do that – it was a no-ball. He could bowl underarm at me as much as he likes and no-one will say a thing, least of all me, but you have to bowl from back at the other crease, 22 yards away, just as you would do for bowling any other kind of ball in a cricket match. But it took me ages to get this to sink into this flaming bowler’s head.
A little later, I was back at work driving my car about and I’d been summoned into the office – it was a Sunday morning – but there had been some war that had gone on and it had been won by we westerners. However, there had been a few bits and pieces of unpleasantness that had come out of it. I needed to go to use the bathroom but for some unknown reason I had forgotten all of the vocabulary so I said what I could remember. This didn’t, for some reason, go down very well so I thought “sod them! I’m doing the best that I can and no-one can do more than that and it’s their look-out if it doesn’t suit”. But it was a bright sunny day and so I went on my motor-bike from the north-west of the city and there had been a heavy rainstorm earlier that day and now everything was flooded out. Now I couldn’t come my usual way into work because of this and at one stage I was riding through a park and on a pavement and then down the wrong way in a one-way street with water up to the axles on the motorbike, following some kind of lorry that was tearing up the roadway in this park. I’d finally arrived at work, and found that my boss had been searching through my drawers for something. He found some of Roxanne’s clothing that I was keeping there and he was proudly displaying it all around. I asked him “is this all yours?” to which he replied with a ribald joke. I said to him that it was Roxanne’s and I would like to have it back so he eventually gave it back to me and I stuck it back in my drawer.
After the next bout of thunderstorms I was back at another place of former employment with someone who was formerly a very good friend of mine. We were visiting the richest farm in the UK, run by the richest UK farmer and his wife. There were some tunnels that had been discovered on this farm and having inspected them, we noticed that they had been lined and that there was electricity going right down there. I immediately thought of a tourist attraction and so I button-holed the woman when I saw her and asked her about them. She replied that the intention was indeed to make them into a tourist attraction and so I wanted to know more? Was it World War II? Was it the Vietnam War? She replied that from what she had been able to find out, they went back to the 5th Century, which immediately suggested the collapse of Roman Britain to me. I was immediately aroused by this and so I intended to be the first person to go down there. I asked her if she knew to where these tunnels led, but she didn’t. However, it was her intention to explore them one of these days, so I immediately pencilled myself in to go and explore these tunnels with her. We would travel miles and I would invite someone from the University – I’m not sure now if I mentioned the OU – to accompany us. To me, it was absolutely marvellous and exciting.
After a very brief return to the arms of Morpheus, I was awake again thanks to the storm. And I can recount that I had been to see the Queen. I’d taken this puppy, which was really the star of it all, although I’m not sure quite why and so we were going to do a stage show with it when the puppy would be presented to the Queen. We were hoping that this puppy would be house-trained and behave itself in view of all of the excitement and not let itself down. This led on to a debate about cleaning. Tourism was still in its infancy and no-one really seemed to know how to clean up a place properly (as if I’m any expert) except for a dustpan and brush. Everyone was hoping that everyone else would prove to be the expert on cleaning up the building.
But the final part of my night-time voyage was easily the most exciting and astonishing. You remember yesterday that I mentioned the navigator whose body is in the Commonwealth War Graves part of the local cemetery? Well, last night, whilst deep in the arms of Morpheus, I set out to find his pilot. The voyage, which started out to be simple enough, took me, and two Ministerial cars and assorted Government officials to a small urban cemetery in the East End of London (where, incidentally, the pilot was not buried and I knew this, yet my journey still took me there) despite the obstruction of a well-known London solicitor who had instructed the two members of his staff who were assisting me not to give me too much help in my enquiries because, as I was later to discover, he was interested in the case from a personal point of view. In fact, being early for a 13:00 appointment, I suddenly made a decision to divert to this small cemetery one more time as I had suddenly made a dramatic realisation. I ended up inspecting the paperwork of an old woman who had just been laid to rest there, and was just about to make an Executive decision (and executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed) when the alarm went off. And how frustrated was I?

But none of it was wasted because this morning while waiting for the weather to brighten up, I did manage to track down some further information. Flying Officer Angus Peter MacLeod (for it is he), service number 63376, was flying as navigator in Mosquito Night-Fighter II serial HJ935 for pilot, Flight Lieutenant Basil John Brachi when they were lost over the North Sea on 29th January 1944.

And now that I have found out the serial number of the aeroplane, I can tell you even more. The plane took off at 01:15, one of seven from West Raynham in Norfolk on a “Serrate” mission, which was to pick up the radar emissions of the German night-fighters’ “Lichtenstein” equipment, and then follow the emissions to the source (ie the night-fighter) and shoot it down. However, the starboard engine of the Mosquito failed and so Brachi turned for home. A short while later, the port engine failed and so Brachi and MacLeod bailed out. No trace was ever found of Brachi or of the aeroplane, but the body of MacLeod was washed ashore near here on 5th May 1944. And here he lies.

I’ve not done too much today – not even been for my mid-morning (or mid-afternoon) coffee. I didn’t have the courage to go outside very much. Mind you, this weather didn’t encourage me too much.

but I did go out this evening and one of the little restaurants here directed me to the fritkot which is now open. And I had fritjes for tea, just for a change. And tomorrow, the ice-cream parlour in the town opens up. Of course, I shall have to go to give it an official visit.

apart from that, I’ve had a shower today and washed my clothes. And depressingly, I find that I’ve only bought two polo shirts with me, not three. So I’m going to have to stay in this one while the other one dries. Let’s hope that that will be tomorrow.

And I know know why next-door neighbour’s 06:30 alarm didn’t wake me up this morning. The hour has changed, hasn’t it. I didn’t realise until this evening when I thought that it was quite light for 20:00 when i went out for my fritjes. My telephone is automatic, and so is my laptop, so they got on with the job of changing the hour without me knowing anything about it. No wonder I was rather tired this morning.

But now I’m off for an early night because I can’t keep up the pace. Only a few more days now before my second hospital appointment so I hope that they will have some news for me.

Saturday 26th March 2016 – I’VE NOT GONE OUT …

… for any tea tonight. I’m not feeling like it.

I had a good breakfast this morning and then went for a walk to the supermarket to buy the stuff for lunch. After a lunch (which was rather late as I wasn’t all that hungry) I went for a long walk along the prom southwards towards Vlissingen. That tired me out and so that was that.

I’d been on a good wander around during the night too and travelled miles. I started off being involved with a young English girl (and I know who she is but I just can’t think for the moment) who owned a jet aeroplane like a flight trainer that had been built in 1962. She had bought it at an Air Force liquidation sale with the aim of restoring it but she had fallen into the clutches of some evil English guy. Her aeroplane was stored in his hangar and the body had been taken off the chassis (it really is an astonishing aeroplane!) ready for restoration. He was annoyed intently with her because of the fact that she was now seeking her independence, but seeking her independence she was. We all thus dashed off to this hangar at this small airfield and managed to recover the chassis from the hangar and were pushing it onto the airstrip. As an aside, I was amazed at how corroded it was, especially around the body mounting points and I remember thinking that I wouldn’t want to go very far off the ground on that. But we had to – we had to bolt the body onto it and all clamber inside so that we could fly away. As we were moving the chassis, the man turned up. I was all for cracking on, doing everything for ourselves but he wanted to help us by holding open the gate while we pushed the chassis out. However the girl started to talk to the guy and began to discuss all of her future projects with him so he was there giving her all kinds of advice which was based on his own self-interest and not on anyone else’s. I could see that this girl was starting to waver again and I reckoned that we would never ever get away at this rate. The discussion then turned to stories about other planes that were lying abandoned on other airfields all over France and throughout the world and it soon became clear that this was how she had acquired this aeroplane. But we needed to hurry up before she swayed completely, but no matter what I said and how I encouraged her, I couldn’t get her to hurry. And I couldn’t get her to slip out of the clutches of this other guy. I could see her ending up by putting this chassis back into the hangar before much longer and going back off with him. How I wished that she would get a move on.
In this little bit we featured three girls, one of whom was my elder sister and another was my youngest sister. I was running some kind of Health-visiting team in Northern Austria and they had come to join it, working as Health visitors. It was very difficult work so I couldn’t understand why they had come, and my youngest sister had the worst round of them all. And then we had the 06:30 alarm of my neighbour in the next room and that, I’m afraid, was that.

But really, I’d had a bad night. it was like being back just after my operation and the severe compression in my chest that prevented me from settling down. I suppose that I should be worried about this but I’m not really. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life, no matter how long it might be, wrapped up in cotton wool.

I was about to go for an early breakfast when a friend of mine appeared on line for a chat. Consequently it was gone 09:00 when I made it down to breakfast and that may account in part for my lack of hunger this evening. As usual, we had an excellent breakfast with plenty of juice and coffee as well as some lovely Dutch bread and strawberry jam.

On the way to the supermarket (where the coffee machine is still “defekt”) I went past the cemetery and there is a Commonwealth War Grave in there.

I meant to go in to have a look at it on the way back, but what with the savage, biting wind that we were having, it slipped my mind.

It could be a victim of the Battle of the Schelde that liberated the area in November 1944, or a body washed up from the sea from maybe a naval operation or a downed aeroplane – or maybe even someone from the First World War – a victim of the sea or an internment victim (hundreds of British soldiers were interned in the Netherlands from 1914 to 1918, having fled there from the Germans after the Fall of Antwerp)

In fact, a search on the Commonwealth War Graves site discloses that it is the grave of a Flying Officer, a navigator of 239 Squadron RAFVR who was killed in January 1944.

239 Squadron was equipped with Mosquitos and flew night-time operations within the bomber stream to hunt down and attack German night-fighters that were targeting the bombe

It occurs to me that I haven’t yet posted a photo of my hotel, the Valkenhof. It’s a bit pricey as I’ve said before, but it is Easter weekend and the place is crowded.

My little room is one of the three in the annex to the side and it’s that window just there underneath the pointy roof. No, I have no real complaints about the place and as I have said before, you definitely win with the breakfasts.

Yesterday, I’d seen a strandcafé away in the distance to the south and so this afternoon I braved the savage wind to go for a good walk in that direction to see what the possibilities were.

It took me ages too because I wasn’t really up to much. This is definitely proving to be too much for me but I’ll gamely struggle on as the sea air will only do me good, and this is why I’m here.

One thing that I shouldn’t have done, I suppose, was to walk right up to the top of a huge sand-dune.

That certainly ook a lot out of me but it was well-worth the effort because the view from up here was absolutely stunning and I regretted not having the Nikon D5000 in working order. Away in the distance is the town of Zoutelande, so you can see how far I’ve walked, and you can also see the storm clouds gathering out there in the North Sea.

But there was a good reason for coming all the way up here and I’m glad that I did, because there are a couple of bunkers that relate to World War II, relics of the Atlantic Wall.

The big Commando raid on Dieppe in August 1942 was, from the British point of view, a huge fiasco but it had one very important side-effect in that it frightened the Germans to death. As a result, millions of Reichsmarks and tens of thousands of men and tens of thousands of tons of vital war materials were diverted from the German war effort in order to build huge concrete fortifications all along the Occupied coast from Norway to the Bay of Biscay between 1942 and 1944, and weren’t properly finished when the invasion took place.

Here, these two huge bunkers guard the entrance to the Wester-Schelde and the port of Antwerp and are now a museum, although it goes without saying that it was closed today.

I had my coffee, taking my time in case a ship came past (but I was out of luck) and then walked slowly back along the beach to my hotel.

One thing that caught my eye was this row of beach huts. From what I can tell, people rent (or own) them and store their beach material in them. Then they sit around their beach hut on deck chairs (even on a devastatingly-windy day like today) surrounded by windbreaks and sit and absorb whatever sunlight lught be about.

So now that’s all I’m doing. I’ll have another early night and try to have an early breakfasT

I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… that I have my defining interview at the Universiteit Ziekenhuis Leuven – the University Hospital of Leuven.

And so this morning I was up fairly early, bumping into Alison on the way downstairs.

I’d been back on my travels during the night too. Back to the UK in fact. There I was, rushing to catch a train at what was supposed to be Stafford railway station and my brother was there with me and he was holding me back by trying to have a discussion with me, talking to me about all kinds of stuff and I was rushing to catch this train and I wished that he would shut up and let me get on with it. Next to get in my way was a plant seller going on about how we all ought to buy plants and how everyone in the USA ought to learn gardening and all of this kind of thing and I wished that he would shut up too. There was then some American with a small wicker basket full of growing plants and a British guy was there with an almost-identical basket of plants that he had bought somewhere for just 3p more. And as I rushed for the train, a train was pulling in so I burst into the station and towards the stairs but then I realised that I didn’t have a ticket so I had to run off to buy one for Crewe. And then I ran down the stairs to the platform where the train was standing – a train of old-stock maroon coaches. The guard was leaning out of the window of a first-class carriage saying that it was full in there and then he stepped down from the train to a group of his colleagues led by a young female platform manager. I asked if this train was going to Crewe to which they replied that it was going to Birmingham which is of course in the opposite direction. But there was another train pulling in behind and the guard suggested that this might be the one. I asked the female manager if this was the London train (even more in the opposite direction to Crewe) and she came out with a sarcastic comment. I told her to stop making these witty remarks designed to do nothing but bring a smile tothe face of her sycophants and answer my question. And there I was, wanting to go on to Crewe and no-one would tell me which train I wanted to go to Crewe.

Alison had taken a day off work to look after me, which was very nice of her, so after breakfast we went into the centre of Leuven for a look around and a coffee. It’s been years since I’d been there and I couldn’t remember the place all that much, but Alison knew of a café where they served decent coffee so that did us fine for the morning, just chatting and watching the world go by.

At lunchtime, seeing as we were in Belgium, there’s only one place to be and sure enough, we soon found a fritkot. That would do us fine and it goes without saying that the chips were beautiful.

As for the hospital, it’s absolutely HUGE, and I do mean that. So much so that you could fit the hospital in Montlucon into the foyer and instead of having a trolley park like they do in a supermarket, they have wheelchair parks where you can borrow a wheelchair.

I had to be registered, which took ages, but at least everything was properly explained to me, not like Montlucon. They even gave me a brochure and I had a choice of language – Flemish, French and English.

“Follow the blue line” said the receptionist once she had finished with me, and about two hours and three miles later we arrived at another reception desk. My documents had arrived by internal intranet quicker than I had arrived on foot so I was told to take a seat in the waiting area. This was the corridor facing a row of doors which were the consulting rooms – 15 in all, which is a massive improvement on Montlucon.

I was summoned into n°13, which I found rather ominous, and I presented my papers. Not all of them, I have to say, because I was selective in what I let them see. Anything that might have prejudged the issue, I selectively held back as I don’t want the results from Montlucon to influence their minds. They can see all of the scans and all of the reports and all of the examinations, but nothing that suggests a diagnosis. I want them at Leuven to make their own diagnosis.

But I did let them see a letter which I personally think is quite infamous and which has annoyed me greatly. It’s a letter from the surgeon to my own doctor saying “the operation is a success and there are no after-effects to consider. Mr Hall can slowly pick up his former life bit by bit, the only constraints being the effects of his severe anaemia”.

That’s right – the only thing that is holding me back is my severe anaemia, and that’s what I went into the hospital for in the first place, and there’s no mention of them now looking for a cure for it. It’s as if they have abandoned hope of dealing with it, and that has upset me enormously. Hence my visit to Leuven.

As expected, the doctor picked up immediately on this, and was also totally confused about my 3.8 blood count. “Do they measure the blood on a different scale in France?”. But when I reassured her, she too was horrified by my problem.

After a good hour there of tests and examinations and questions (and a blood test) she excused herself, saying “I’ll have to go and have a word with my professor”. And that filled me full of optimism. You wouldn’t get this in Montlucon. And when she came back, we had a discussion and a debate, and the result is exactly the result that I wanted. I could have been detained for two or three days there, which I didn’t really want. I could have been told to go home, and come back in three weeks (or maybe not at all) qhich I am, quite frankly, not up to. But instead, they took all my papers away to read and told me to come back on 31st March at 15:30. That’s exactly what I wanted and it means that I can have a nice relaxing week by the seaside.

Alison and I then came home via the scenic route and after another lengthy chat – that took us up to about 22:30, I went off to my attic and to bed.

So why, I hear you ask, have I chosen Leuven for a second opinion?

There are a variety of reasons and I’ll do my best to explain them.

The first of which is that France, like many countries in the world (including the UK and the USA, before anyone says anything) is very chauvinistic. If I were to ask my doctor to recommend someone for a second opinion, he would probably send me to someone whom he knew in a neighbouring hospital. That’s no good, because he would only have had the same training and experience as my doctor.

The hospital at Leuven is huge, as I have said. It’s a teaching hospital – a University Hospital – so it’s constantly at the forefront of the latest news and development in medical treatment. It will(I hope) know everything about new discoveries and techniques long before the news filters down to a small rural hospital in France.

Alison was treated successfully for a very serious illness, as were a couple of other people whom she knows, and I’ve heard good things about it from my time in Brussels.

Furthermore, my experience is that the Belgians are much more cosmopolitan than most people in the world. They have no false chauvinistic national pride as such and so it’s much more likely to be the place that, if they can’t help me with my problem, a doctor would say “well, I heard about this illness being treated successfully in Los Angeles or Vladivostok”, without a hint of misplaced national pride. And with my medical insurance, I can travel the world looking for treatment.

Of course, having said that, I bet that it won’t work out at all like that. But it’s clear that Montlucon isn’t working and I’m going nowhere there. I have this medical insurance that entitles me to treatment anywhere and so I may as well make use of it. I’d be silly not to. And here in Leuven, I can speak the language after a fashion (and after a week here, I’ll speak it better too and I love the Flemish language) so all in all, it’s the ideal place for me to take my first step on the road to what is likely to be a very long and interesting journey.

And, of course, I’m amongst friends too and that’s very important. I may not have many friends but quantity is not important, it’s quality and I have some of the best friends that anyone could wish for, as events since November have proved.

Where would I be without you?

Friday 18th March 2016 – DAY FIVE …

… of my hospital marathon began with yet another early start, long before the alarm went off. And what’s more, there is cause to celebrate because today is when I start the “once per day” injections. No more evening visitors! Wha-hey!

I had a nice leisurely breakfast and then set off for Montlucon. My appointment isn’t until 10:30 but I left with plenty of time because I had plenty that I needed to do.

And while I’m on the road to Montlucon, let me tell you about my voyages last night.We started off tonight with some kind of middle-class family. Their house was built over a stream and so they had had to line the stream with rocks especially up the sides of the banks so as to make some kind of solid foundations for the house to be built on. But they couldn’t find any hydrofuge cement – the cement that’s used for making waterproof joints in building materials – so we could join and then point the stones without there being any problem about the joints being affected by the damp and the water in the stream.
I was then off with Pete Dillon from London whom I knew from a few years back. We were chatting in this house somewhere and then Pete had to go off and give a quote for a job. it was one of these jobs like The 39 Steps job – the “fourth at bridge” scene from Carry On Regardless but it was to do with a position as a butler. So off he went for his interview and I stayed behind to watch another Carry On film about a girl who had to catch a train. The train was about to pull out before she could board it but she grabbed hold of some kind of trolley and her suitcase was handcuffed to her other wrist. She had to run along the platform, up in the lift, across the bridge and down the lift on the other side and back down the other platform with this trolley and her suitcase, and then make a valiant leap on board the train, trolley suitcase and all. And then there was another man also late for the train and he helped her board the train. After all of this, Pete came back, waking me up for I’d fallen asleep, and it turned out that despite all that this company had said, it was Terry who was trying to put together a team to do this job. They’d been off to this big white house to have a good look around it. Terry had given a quote that worked out at about 6 hours per person in this team, about £800 in total. I said to Pete that this worked out at quite a decent rate and he agreed with me. So off we walked, down this lane and onto this 1910s type of housing estate nominally at the top end of Crewe off to the east of the top end of Underwood Lane. This was a really nice, pleasant area, especially in the sun, with nice pleasant gardens and fronts of the houses. I remember saying that if I were ever to want to come back to live in Crewe, this would be an area that would be high on my list. I told him that I lived in Gainsborough Road and he told me that he lived in Fallowfield. I said that there were some nice areas of Fallowfield, so he challenged me to name any. Of course, knowing Fallowfield, I couldn’t even think of one and I was really struggling about this.
It was now Day Three (of what, I have no idea) and we were doing something about testing cricket bats and we’d become quite good at this. In the end, our batting techniques were being used by the England cricket team and they got up to quite a quick score in one of the matches. They then realised that they had left part of their equipment behind so someone had to return for it. This person discovered that someone had left his mobile phone behind and the sound recorder was running and you could hear all of the antics of the team. This led to it being called “Whacko” after the Jimmy Edwards radio programme.

First stop in Montlucon was the Laboratory. I have to pay them for their services since I came out of hospital and they need to be up-to-date as I won’t be using them now for a while. And next stop was the surgical equipment shop. I hadn’t realised that I had had to pay for the surgical stockings that I had had to wear while I was in hospital. But they had sent me a bill and all of this was in the vicinity.

Round the corner to the hospital and I couldn’t resist taking this photo of part of the building, even if the camera on the phone didn’t do it justice. This must be where old-timers like Yours Truly bring our fizzy pop so that it can be examined.

And so reflecting upon this, I went off for my scan.

This injection that I had to have for the scan was just like something for a cow. It was huge. But they fitted me with a drain so that they could let it into my bloodstream as required. It took ages to do and it wasn’t until 11:20 that I was turfed out. Chief body-scanner hadn’t had chance to look at my photos but he promised to ring me (not that I would be there) to tell me what he had seen.

On the way out, I was buttonholed by the receptionist of the body-scanners. They had realised that I’m a private patient and so I needed to sign a form so that they could submit it to my insurance company for reimbursement. I thought to myself “at last! An efficient hospital department with its finger on the pulse!”.

I nipped upstairs to pick up my papers but the blasted, perishing doctor hadn’t done them despite me 10:30 au plus tard. I had to wait until – yes – 12:25 before he let me have my papers – a whole hour and more and so I had missed the Tax Office and I needed to pay them too for the consultations. Totally pathetic!

And that’s not all that is totally pathetic either. I’m supposed to be taking things easy and not exerting myself, and here I am, on my FIFTH day back at the hospital for something that is nothing whatever to do with my illness either. This is just completely miserable. I won’t ever recover like this!

Anyway, I went off to LeClerc for some shopping and then back to the Carrefour for some chips and vegetables – and much to my surprise the chips and veg were warm. And then I had to loiter around until 14:00 and the opening of the Tax Office.

They were very friendly in the Tax Office but that didn’t alter the fact that I had to wait half an hour for them to try to make the printer work so that I could have some receipts for my payments, but that didn’t work either. It just wasn’t my day, was it?

I finally made it back to my house at about 16:30 and then, for once, I could take it easy without having to rush home to Liz and Terry’s for the nurse and an injection. And I forgot that, with it being Friday night, it’s chips night there too.

So now, it’s yet another early night because, try as I might, I can’t shake off these morning injections quite yet.

Thursday 17th March 2016 – IT’S DAY FOUR …

…of my hospital marathon – the day that I had a marathon session in the allergy clinic, just by way of a change. And just by way of a change I was up a long while before the alarm went off too

And that surprised me immensely because I hadn’t ‘arf been on my travels during the night too.

I started off at the allergy clinic (I can’t keep away from here, can I?) and we were making up a soundtrack tape – don’t ask me why – and we found a record featuring someone singing but there were also loads and loads of background noises of all kinds of things that represented actions and items that were taking place in the song. We were listening to it. Liz was only listening with half an ear to it and all of a sudden she pricked up her ears – “did I hear a fox?”. “I think that it’s something on this record” I replied. We played the record back two or three times and, sure enough, there was some kind of reference in it to a fox, and the fox is barking away in the background.
Liz made a subsequent appearance too, in reference to a school trip that she was organising. In fact, she wasn’t really organising it because it was now September and the kids had been back at school for three or four weeks. The aim of this trip was that it was some kind of field trip which involved the children being away for a few days and this was to take place at the end of December. So much time and trouble had gone into the organisation of all of this but people had forgotten to tell the parents about it and it was only now that people at the school were discussing the presentation of the event to the parents. But Liz’s school was in such a poor, deprived area that it was obvious that not many of the families – Group B families was how she described them – would be able to afford the trip and wouldn’t have the possibility to save up between now and the date that payment needed to be made so that their children could go. So rather than be an exclusive trip and not allow some of the poorer kids to go, they were talking about postponing this trip to another year and maybe a few months later in the year so that everyone would have a chance to save up for it.
Next stop was back in Crewe, where I was going for a walk. and I’d been for a walk down Market Street, passing underneath the Cumberland Bridge at the bottom and into Middlewich Street (where we were a few weeks ago, as you might recall). As I was crossing the road I had to start to run as a car came around the corner under the bridge from Market Street at something of a speed on the wrong side of the road, which is actually the right side of the road because we are talking about the UK, although for some reason I wasn’t aware of this. So I had to make a run for the pavement. I had the idea that the road under the bridge was a one-way street, which it wasn’t as vehicles were coming from both directions. Anyway, I was around the corner by now and walking up Middlewich Street and a bus was coming down the street, travelling quite quickly. he reached the bottom and swung round to the right to go underneath the bridge but a car came hurtling out from somewhere under the bridge, shot off up the side of the railway line where there is no road, causing the bus to jam on his brakes. He only just missed this car. I carried on with my walk and it was dark by now. I’d been chatting to a couple of people whom I’d met on my travels but by now I had arrived at a place that was a bank. It had a cash-point which was in the basement, and there were people in there using it. It occurred to me to go and check my English bank account so went downstairs. I pulled out my card ready to use and while I was waiting my turn I noticed that there was something like a shop counter down here, with money all over the place, but no-one had taken any notice at all of this money. I already had a fair bit of money in my wallet, by the way. While I was sorting myself out, another person came down the steps behind me so I told him to go ahead – I’ll be a minute or two yet. he looked at me strangely and said “do you always carry that enormous amount of money around with you?”. I said “no” and carried on doing what I was already doing. But he stood there watching me. I told him again to go ahead and use the machine but he just stood there. I was starting to sense that we were going to have some kind of confrontation but just then, one of my friends from Brussels came in and came downstairs to use the cash point. He (my friend) asked me “what’s 212 plus 212?” as if this was the key to his PIN. I was having to be very vague in my reply because of this other person lurking around in the vicinity. But now of course there were two of us in there, both of whom were likely to be potential victims for this guy loitering around on the stairs.
We haven’t finished yet either, for there was some other part of the dream going on about my youngest sister. She was with a friend and they both drifted in and out somewhere along the way. But in the meantime there was a man who had come from the UK and was now in the USA who had travelled all around the USA on something of an extended holiday. He’d retired from work and there was a great deal of confusion about his pension arrangements, what employment pensions he was entitled to and what he was going to receive. In the end, after a great deal of argument and discussion, he’d been to his former employer who had promised to look into everything. This was an oil company, and the people there decided to make a presentation to him. They gave him an old oil drum which, while not sounding as it it was very much, was actually quite symbolic because it had fallen off a ship somewhere off the coast of New England and washed all the way down along the eastern coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds, tides and ocean currents), round Cape Horn and the Tierra del Fuego and then back up the western coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds etc) and had been recovered again near Seattle. They presented it to him as a symbol of his own voyage all around the USA. Eventually, it worked out that they had found three pension entitlements for him and so he could live happily ever after.

And so you can see why I was astonished by my early night.

On the way to Montlucon through the snow, which dramatically cleared by the time that we reached Pionsat, and then it was quite straightforward as far as the hospital, although I did stop for some cash at the bank on the edge of the town, seeing how the nurse will probably want paying this weekend before I go. And being nice and early at the allergy clinic, that meant of course that they were all late.

But I did happen to notice the first E-plate on the car park. It was a, EA — KK registration so I reckon that it’s about three weeks since they first came out. They now seem to be slowing down to well over two years a letter.

At the allergy clinic, first thing that they did when they arrived was ask me to take off my upper clothes and to check my body. Then they sat me down in a comfortable chair (or what passes for a comfortable chair around there), gave me a couple of injections and then started to squirt something out of a syringe into my mouth – something quite minty and also quite bitter. Then they told me to take a drink of water.

This was how we went on for much of the day. I’ve no idea what it was that they had given me but they ought to have given something to the room and the chair to stop them spinning around while I was trying to sit there quietly and do some work on my Canada notes.

They brought up some food too, but it was, as I expected, some meat (there seems no point in going to an allergy clinic and telling them about your allergies if they are going to totally ignore them, is there?). I was prepared for this however, and had brought along some vegan cheese and tomato butties. But we did have coffee too and that wasn’t too bad.

When I’d finished and the room had stopped spinning, I went off to find Caliburn and then I headed back to my place for an hour or so to gather up some of my possessions, or such that I could remember of them.

And the snow had gone, much to my surprise and pleasure. It was in fact quite warm and I felt a little better once I had warmed up.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, I had another early night. I need to build up my strength prior to leaving because it’s a long way to Brussels, even if I am going to do it in a couple of steps. The days when I could do a full day’s work and then drive the 800kms between Brussels and my Farm through the night – they seem to be long-gone now.

Wednesday 16th March 2016 – HOW WE LAUGHED …

… when the nurse said something last night about it going to snow today. And so would you have done, given the glorious day we had yesterday.

But coming back from Montlucon, and passing through Villebret where you start to climb up into the Combrailles, I saw a few suspicious-looking white flakes being blown about in the sky. By the time I climbed up over the Font Nanaud and down the other side towards St Gervais, the sky was clear again but about half an hour after arriving back here, we got the lot. There’s now about 10mm of snow outside and it’s still falling.

Yes, and I have to go back (GRRRRR!) to Montlucon and the hospital tomorrow too. I arrived there nice and early but had to wait for almost three quarters of an hour before I was seen properly by the nurse. She examined where I’d been injected and where I’d been patched, and told me that there is some reaction so I need to return for further tests.

You don’t need me to tell you what I think of that.

But anyway, off up to the day hospital and the blood transfusion. My favourite nurse and my second-favourite student were there and once more there was a decent and convivial crowd in the room. We all had quite a laugh and a good time, which made us all feel better and helped the time pass by.

Lunch was the usual disgusting muck but at least it was something, I suppose. And although I was finished by 14:30 I told them that I wasn’t leaving until I had had my mid-afternoon coffee.

On the way back from Montlucon I got myself lost in the back streets trying to find the short cut to LIDL. I needed some of my vitamin B12 juice and some sparkling water, and I also bought a couple of big packets of crisps and some packets of sweets to nibble on while I’m driving to Leuven. And they sell 1-litre bottles of orange juice in there and they are just the thing to drink in the van while I’m driving but as usual, Bane of Britain forgot to buy any.

I was going to go back home for a couple of hours afterwards too but it was rather cold and that made me think for a moment, and then with the white stuff, I decided that being back in the warmth and off the road was a much better plan.

And here I am and there I’ll be in a moment – in bed. I’m not going for a walk tonight as I’ve walked far enough today (as well as going all around the hospital I had to go off to find the Records Department to pick up a copy of my file to take to Leuven).

And while I’m on the subject of files and records, I did ask the doctor there to prepare his file and records ready for me to pick up. And so I went to see his secretary and it will come as no surprise to you all to learn that he hasn’t done so. I told her “Friday at the latest” (well, actually vendredi au plus tard, but you get the idea).

So I hope that I have a more interesting and exciting sleep than I did last night. I was out like a light in a very deep sleep and the only recollection of what happened was what was on the dictaphone. And we were dealing with football issues yet again.

We were talking about the Controle Technique in football (well, exactly!) and one of the issues in this is that the player concerned has to take a penalty kick. Now it doesn’t matter whether the player scores or misses, or whether it’s saved by the keeper – it’s all down to whether the player is capable of kicking the ball in that situation. One player having his Controle Technique came out onto the field. He was wearing a red football shirt with his name on the back – a really long name that ended with Platini. He was preparing to take the kick but we noticed that underneath his shirt he was wearing a Father Christmas outfit complete with hood trimmed in white and with a white bobble – and his hood is up on his head. He runs in to take the penalty as soon as the whistle is blown, but almost immediately the whistle is blown again to stop the kick being taken, in order to order him to put his hood down so that the controller could see his head and face. And so he does, and then he runs in and takes the kick again. However the keeper is really quick off his line and manages to block the ball with his knees. The ball thus ricochets off his knees up into the air. Now the goal that they are using for this is actually an over-bridge, so it’s clearly the correct dimensions for a goal underneath it. The ball balloons up and over the bridge past the people who are crossing the bridge and then back down the other side and goes quite a way away. The man who has taken the penalty now needs another ball to do something different and so he climbs up the side of the cutting which this bridge crosses, and plucks another ball that was in a bush that was growing on the top of the cutting, so they can continue this Controle Technique.

After all of that, I was down here early yet again, breakfasted and off on the road at 07:30 with the coffee in my Tim Hortons thermal mug. The drive was pretty uneventful with no-one in my way and even though I stopped at the bank to add to the fighting fund, I was at the hospital for 08:20.

I spent most of the day dealing with my Canada 2014 voyage for the month of September. I’ve now arrived back on Nova Scotia (travelling backwards of course) but then I had to start from the other end at Montreal and reach as far as the Sorel – St Ignace ferry across the St Lawrence because there’s a gap in my notes. I know that they are there because I remember transcribing them and I’m sure that I’ve seen them, but they are probably out of order so I’ll need to find them – and the easiest way to find them is to start at the other and and file the stuff from there, and eventually I’ll come across them.

That’s a nice job for me tomorrow then, seeing as how I have to spend all blasted day in that perishing mausoleum.

Tuesday 15th March 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… for a walk after lunch this afternoon.

And quite right too, because it really was a beautiful day.

I took my time and slowly walked to the end of the lane and then up the main road for 400 metres or so to the turning to Toureix, enjoying the warm temperature of the sunny spring afternoon. From here, you can look down the hill to the turning to Le Fournial and further on over the Gorge de la Sioule.

And I learnt something new today too, which is always a good thing. There’s a huge steel mill about 10 miles from here, right out the other side of Les Ancizes in the countryside. It’s the most surprising thing to find in the countryside and I’ve always wondered why. And now I know the answer.

It turns out that when the built the Viaduc des Fades at the turn of the 20th Century, they correctly identified the potential of the water in the Gorge de la Sioule as a source for hydro-electric generation.

They weren’t wrong either. Today, there’s a big modern dam right across the valley but back in those days 100 years ago they installed a basic, simple hydro-electric turbine which produced its first electricity in 1917.

And then they discovered something important. The generator was a success but they had overlooked to find a market for the electricity. No-one around here had electricity in those days and the transmission of electrical energy was in its infancy and there was nothing like a National Grid to distribute the power.

And so if they couldn’t send the electricity out to clients, they needed to bring in a client from elsewhere. And hence the arrival of Duval’s.

As you know, I had an early night last night. It took me ages to drop off to sleep and once I’d gone off, I remembered almost nothing. I really must have been exhausted. There are just snippets of this and that on the dictaphone that don’t mean much, but then I suppose that after the marathon epics of the last couple of nights, you would welcome the rest.

We started off at the football again during one of my nocturnal rambles and strangely enough, when I awoke in the middle of the night I could name the entire Sheffield United starting line-up but in the time that it took me to reach for the dictaphone, the whole lot had disappeared completely. There was a small guy leading the attack and another small guy in the team and he had been whingeing at me about something or other that had actually started off this particular dream. And I couldn’t recall that either.
But not to worry. I was soon back to sleep, going off somewhere with Liz in her Volkswagen and all of a sudden she came over really, really ill and I had to help her back to the car. I called Terry and he appeared too, so we both helped her back. He was really upset and panicking abut how ill she was and being really nice to her, encouraging her back to the car even though she was in agony. Back home, I was making this salad with rice and chick peas, all kinds of things. I was having to boil up these ingredients separately to go into this rice and someone else was helping me. Liz was there supervising and giving directions. We had boiled up something for quite some time and stuck it in this salad but there was something else on the boil, which I thought was something quick and so I tipped that into the salad as well. It turned out to be dried chick peas so I asked Liz how long they needed to be cooked, as I imagined that it was quite some time. She said that they needed just 2 minutes, and so seeing as they had been on the boil for longer than that, that was OK. I then was curious to know why, if they only needed two minutes, we hadn’t cooked them with the rest of the food. All of this, by the way, was going on in the really cramped kitchen that we had in Davenport Avenue when we were kids.

That was basically it, I suppose. But then I was awake early and downstairs before the alarm went off. I’ve not done too much though because I’m still not in the mood for very much, but I’ve finished off all of the notes for 2015 and done the dictaphone notes for October 2014 and part of them for September 2014 too. But my heart wasn’t in it really – I could do with a change of scenery right now but I’m in no fit condition to do anything about it.

I’m on the move tomorrow anyway because I have the hospital. The allergy clinic followed by the blood transfusion service. Neither of these would have been necessary had the removal of my spleen done its job, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk now.

And so I suppose that I’d better have an early night.

And you can all have an early night too. Only 903 words tonight – I’m clearly losing my grip.

And quote of the week must be that from Terry, listening with only half an ear to the football on TV –
“Manchester City have SEX OFFENDERS in the team tonight???”
“No, Terry” I replied. “He said ‘six defenders'”.

Monday 14th March 2016 – WELL THAT’S ME TOTALLY P155ED OFF!

I had my blood test at the hospital this morning, and the blood count has gone down yet again to 8.1. And that’s despite having a blood transfusion the other day. The operation that I had to go through 6 or 7 weeks ago has clearly done no good whatever and I might just as well have saved myself the agony.

The thing that gets me though is that no-one in the hospital seems to care. Here they are, messing about with allergy tests for a different medication to deal with the immunity issues following the removal of the spleen, and on Friday I’m in hospital for a scan on my lung to see where this blood clot (the one in my lung that I picked up in hospital) has got to.

But as to my underlying illness and the causes of it, and any potential solution – not a word!

What made me even more depressed about all of this is that while I was sitting in the allergy clinic with all of these patches and injections and so on, I was editing all of the photos that I took in Montreal and sorting out all of the notes that relate thereto. And then I got to thinking about just how much I enjoyed the city and how much I felt at home there. And then I reached a conclusion.

And that is that seeing as how no-one cares, then I don’t either. if nothing definite comes out of my visit to Leuven next week and they can’t sort something out, then I’m on the next plane to Montreal. I’ll find a quiet room in a house somewhere around the Cote des Neiges, which really is my favourite part of Montreal, and let nature take its course.

I can’t go on like this. it’s nothing short of purgatory for me to have to go through all of what I’m going through and for no good purpose either. I may as well not be here and be somewhere else instead, whether in this world, the New World or even the next world.

What didn’t help matters very much was that I had another one of those comfortable, reassuring dreams where everything went according to plan, our hero got the girl and we both walked off together into the sunset and all of that – something that never ever happened to me in real life and how I wished that it had.

I was back playing in my rock group from the 1970s again and we were totally unrehearsed – we hadn’t played together for years and we were featuring in a venue somewhere. This was downstairs in a basement somewhere, rather like Enoch’s in Crewe used to be, and we weren’t even sure what numbers we were going to play, never mind how we were going to play them. This went on and we didn’t have all that much idea about what we were going to do. We spent so much time discussing and debating it that we weren’t actually getting anything done. There were quite a few of our friends there, including one particular girl whom I fancied and who I was trying to impress, who were coming to see us and so we HAD to be organised. Came the afternoon of the gig and we decided that we would have a rehearsal. I headed off towards the rehearsal room, carrying my bass guitar and there was some girl, whom I had seen vaguely back in the past but I hadn’t particularly noticed very much, came over to me and asked me if my guitar was a Gibson SG. I told her to count the strings, which she did, and agreed that there were just four of them. And so I told her that it was in fact a Gibson EB3. We started to talk about bass guitars and musical instruments, and she said that she had a mandolin with four strings on it. Of course – a mandolin – that brings back Lindisfarne and “Road to Kingdom Come” and “No Time to Lose”, all of that kind of thing. We ended up having quite a chat about this kind of thing, and she said that she could actually play some Lindisfarne music on the mandolin. It’s always been my ambition to play in a folk-rock group like Lindisfarne so I egged her on to go and fetch her mandolin,which she did and we had a brief jam session. After that, we wandered off together hand in hand. As I said earlier, this was another one of these comfortable situations and I wish that I could remember who she was, or even what she looked like – rather different from the Girl from Worleston the other night whose face is still vividly fixed in my mind. Anyway, off we went, hand in hand and there were a few people loitering in the vicinity who noticed the pair of us together like that and gave a little smile to each other. We walked to a rocky wall where there were a few seating areas set into it at various levels – just flat, grassy areas. I invited her to sit down with me but she said that she had other things to do and didn’t have the time. I continued to encourage her to sit down, she continued to be doubtful and it was at this moment that I woke up rather dramatically and shattered the illusion, much to my dismay.
After the usual crawl down the corridor I ended up at the football – Nantwich Town in fact. And while Nantwich Town might have a new ground, down on Kingsley Fields, this match wasn’t being played there. And neither was it being played on their old ground at Jackson Avenue either, but in the street in London Road right more-or-less outside Churche’s Mansions. I was watching the game, with about 4 or 5 others (huge crowds they have in Nantwich), a couple of girls and a couple of kids, having a kick-around with the balls.There was a really strong, swirling wind blowing that was creating havoc and on one occasion, much to my surprise, I actually caught the match ball one-handed, swerving around in the wind as it went out of play and that was really impressive. For the rest of it, the conditions were really difficult and catching the ball, even a simple catch, was really difficult if not impossible. We were actually watching this at the back of a river and the house rear yards backed right onto it. One small boy was climbing over the back wall and the wooden fence on top and lost his footing, sliding straight down into the river and emerging all covered in green slime. That certainly looked unhealthy! All of these houses had basements that were well below the level of the water but were somehow really dry. I wouldn’t have liked to have lived down in there, although there were people quite happily doing so. There were two teenage girls watching this football match and they lived in one of the houses. At half-time they went back to their house where the mother was cleaning the room of one of these girls, and one of the girsl asked the other what she would like for breakfast. The other replied that she would like one round of cheese on toast with half a packet of crisps and a coffee. I said “breakfast? It’s getting on for 10:30 and most of us had eaten breakfast long before this match kicked off”. But anyway, the first girl dragged a big metal wood-stove out from a corner into the middle of her little basement room ready to fill it and light it to make the toast and put the kettle on. They asked me what I would like to which I replied that I’d had my breakfast a long time ago, but I’ll have a cup of coffee with them. They next asked me what coffee I wanted and what mug I wanted and I thought that they weren’t half making life complicated when all that I wanted was a simple cup of coffee.

But anyway, enough of this. I was up early enough, breakfasted and on the road by 07:40. And what a beautiful morning it was too. I was in Montlucon at the hospital by 08:30 and in the comfy chair by the power point at 08:40 too.

I had the blood test, as I mentioned, and then had the drain fitted, and then injected and patched with all kinds of things. My companion from the other day was there too and we had quite a chat. And while I might have won the “mine’s bigger than yours” competition by having the largest lump on my arm, I felt really sorry for her with all of the tests that she was going through and the mess that they had made of her arm. In consolation, I let her have my mid-morning cake to cheer her up.

We had quite a few moments of humour too, including when one of the others asked if she could leave the room to use the bathroom.
“You’re supposed to raise your hand” I retorted.
“Just like school” said someone else.
At least, despite everything else, there’s a good feeling of cameraderie there in that clinic and the nurse is a really good sport too, which is good.

But the bad side of this is that I’ve had a few adverse reactions so I need to come in again. I explained my situation, all of my hospital appointments and my visit to Belgium and as a result, exceptionally, they can fit me in provisionally at 09:00 on Thursday.

I mentioned that at this rate I ought to be looking for an apartment here in the vicinity of the hospital and asked the young girl here with me whether she had a spare bed in her room. She said she did, but her mother wouldn’t like it. I asked “who cares about your mother?” which made everyone smile, but didn’t have the desired effect.

Not that I expected it to either, but there you go.

As for the blood test though, it’s on the limit of the blood transfusion level, but that’s not good enough for me. I’m off to Leuven next week – 800-odd kilometres by road – and I need to be on my best form for the journey. So what I’ve done is to change my little one-hour appointment back at the allergy clinic from tomorrow to Wednesday at 09:00 seeing as how there was a space, and then went up to the day-hospital and persuaded them to take me in straight afterwards for a blood transfusion. That way, then at least I’ll be in something-like reasonable health to undertake the journey. Coming back won’t be too much of a problem as I don’t have a time-limit for that so if I’m tiring out, I can take a good rest and carry on later.

But as I also said earlier, I’m thoroughly depressed by the way that all of this is panning out. I’m thoroughly hating the past, hating the present and hating the future too.

To cheer myself up, I went to Carrefour and the Flunch to have a plate of chips and vegetables but that was a waste of time as they were stone-cold. Liz had given me a little shopping list that involved going to Grande Frais and the Carrefour so I bought the necessary and looked for something else to cheer me up but there wan’t anything there that took my fancy. That’s always the case when you’re in the middle of a black depression – nothing will pull you out of the pit.

Back home – for only an hour as Liz wanted the shopping by 16:00 – I still couldn’t find my copy of Paint Shop Pro or anything else that I needed. But there was a little issue that the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater was off the temperature scale. I had to drain off 5 litres of the water and put 5 litres of cold water into it. I’ve also plugged the fridge into the main circuit so that it’ll now be working 24 hours per day. I’ll have to do something because with no-one there drawing any current, there’s tons of surplus electricity and it’s all dumped into the hot water.

Yes, 41 amps of surplus energy was being generated when I arrived and the cables to the immersion heater element were stone-cold – a far cry from 6 months ago when they overheated at half of that and I had to rewire everything. All of this, the temperature in the water and the amps that the cables are currently … "ohh! Very good!" – ed … handling just goes to show how much current was being lost by the rubbishy cables that I had been using. Decent cables, even half the diameter, properly crimped and soldered, is definitely the way to go and I wish that my soldering techniques would improve.

However, if things continue like this, my soldering techniques won’t be an issue.

I stopped for diesel on the way back and also to the pharmacie at Pionsat for the next lot of anti-biotic prescriptions (which wouldn’t have been necessary except for this spenectomie, and what a waste … "you’ve done that already" – ed … and then back to Liz and Terry’s.

After tea, which was a stir-fry with the stuff that I had bought earlier, I said “sod it!” and went to bed. I’ve had enough disappointments for one day. I’d already crashed out for half an hour on the sofa and it was beyond me to keep on going – not when I wasn’t in the mood to go on fighting.

Tomorrow is another day. Let’s see how we get on with that. Not any better, I bet.

I’ll leave you all to sit and read this rubbish – all 2322 words of it.

And serve you all right too!

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality