Tag Archives: early night

5th January 2016 – BACK IN HOSPITAL

I told you yesterday that I had been summoned to the day ward today for a blood transfusion, so after at 7:00 am alarm and breakfast, I was off. There wasn’t much on the roads – at least as far as Montlucon – so I was lucky to arrive early and finding yet another good spec for Caliburn, right outside the hospital building.

And I’d remembered to take the second bank card too so that I could stop off at the bank on the way in. And now the Fighting Fund is looking a little healthier.

It was a good job that I arrived earlier at the hospital too because they were … errr … somewhat under pressure. I was lucky in being the first to arrive, for I could have the pick of the chairs in the day ward – right in the corner by the window by the power point. The others weren’t so lucky and to give you some idea of what was going on, our little ward for two people ended up with five of us in it – two on the beds, two in armchairs and one on a trolley. Maybe they REALLY couldn’t have fitted me in yesterday.

Putting the drain in my arm was another complicated manoeuvre that didn’t do me too much good and I can still feel it now.

We did have a stroke of luck though. Just after I arrived, the woman in charge of the kitchens came up to our ward to chat to the staff there just as they were counting heads for lunch. Hearing that I was “difficult”, she came over to chat to me about my vegan diet and, much to my surprise, at lunchtime I ended up with couscous, chards in sauce and a portion of lentil salad. It just goes to show what can be accomplished if you happen to fall in with the correct people.

Another surprising thing was that the blood was already there waiting for me. But it was freezing cold, so to warm it up I had to stick it up my jumper (and I bet that you think that I am joking too – the old traditional methods are much more effective than anything that modern science can come up with). And that meant that by 13:30 I was all done and dusted, and they threw me out.

Not too far though. I had to go up to the ward where I will be confined during my surgery, to pick up a letter from my surgeon. Of course, it goes without saying that it wasn’t ready (half a day is far too short a notice for a civil service secretary) but it did give me an opportunity to spy out the land while I was there. And I’ll tell you something – there are a few nurses up there who can sooth my fevered brow any time they like! There have to be some compensations for being seriously ill.

On the road again, I went round to Amaranthe to pick up some vegan cheese, only to find that it was closed for stocktaking, and to Leader Price to buy some Cheddar for Terry, but was sold out in both the branches that I visited.

I had more luck at the Clinique St Francois where I was finally able to pay my bill for the blood tests. And I’ll tell you what – I’m glad that I’m not having my operation there. The back wall of their clinic is the side wall of the local cemetery. I suppose that it’s quite handy for discreetly disposing of the surgical failures – a quick heave over the wall in the middle of the night – although it must be a discouraging view for the patients in the rooms at the back.

At Pionsat I picked up my outstanding medication, and so I went off to blag my way into the doctor’s for the injections that I need to have done to bolster my immune system (once the spleen goes, I’ll be relying on those to keep me going) but it appears than Bane of Britain has forgotten to bring the prescription with him.

But here’s a thing. Diesel at the Carrefour in Montlucon is currently 104.9 centimes. At the Intermarché in Pionsat, it’s just 99.9. It’s the first time that I’ve ever seen it cheaper there. Of course, I took the opportunity to fuel up – it’s over 100kms round trip to Montlucon and back even if I don’t go anywhere else, and that soon gets through a tank of diesel in Caliburn whose maximum range is about 750 kms or so. It’s a good job that I don’t have Strider here, who is much more thirsty and struggles to do 450 kms.

Back here I crashed out. I wasn’t up to anything at all. No food, no drink – nothing. Just like in the bad old days in mid-November. I had my injection and then crawled off to bed at some ridiculously early hour – even more ridiculous than the 20:00 of late.

Talking of bed, I’ve forgotten to tell you about last night’s adventures. I bet that you were counting your blessings, thinking that you had escaped from it all.

Not so lucky, are you then?

Anyway, last night was yet another night where there was so much going on and yet I can only remember a small amount of it. Going to bed at 20:00 or thereabouts just recently is certainly doing something for me.

We started off back at a house that I clearly recognised, but which I can’t now recall. I’d been somewhere in a car (and I can’t now recall which car) and by the time that I returned, the car was full of rubbish and totally untidy, not an unusual occurrence of course. I needed to empty the car completely before the long-suffering Nerina came back to witness the disorder, and my brother (what’s he doing here again?) came along to give me a pile of gratuitous advice. Nerina did indeed turn up, and sooner than expected too, but her car was in an even worse state than mine although that didn’t deter her from making a few acid comments.
I then moved on to another house where I was living with my family, although I don’t recognise this house at all. It was crammed with people and, furthermore, we’d let a room to three young men, a French guy (someone whom I’ve known for years but who bore more than a passing resemblance to a guy whom I know in Germany), the guy who married my youngest sister and a third guy, who may well have been the brother of the second. This had involved shuffling around the rest of the inhabitants and it was certainly causing a whole pile of confusion. It started off with me having to help a young boy of about 5 years old feed himself but that wasn’t working. He was being difficult about it and so I had to go up to the room where he had been sleeping to fetch something. He was one of the people who had been shuffled around but I had forgotten this, so I barged straight into the room where these other three people were. Back downstairs, by the time this boy had finished his meal, I reckoned that it was time for him to go to bed but he wasn’t convinced. There was only one clock in the house that was anything like reliable, and that was the bedroom where he had been sleeping. So up I went to check and, forgetting about the change of rooms, barged yet again straight into the room where these three guys were, without knocking. I was full of profuse apologies, to which they replied “it’s not a problem – it wasn’t as if we were doing anything”. My response was that knocking was a form of politeness (a comment that has a strange parallel with an event that occurred in “real time” a couple of days ago). Anyway, the young boy was correct – it was only 18:30 and far from being his bed time. It was however dinner time for the grown-ups and all of the family was there tucking in. And a few minutes later we were joined by our friends from upstairs who had to fight their way into the table as our family gives no quarter when it comes to sticking our snouts in the trough.

But all of this is really bizarre. There are several people making little cameo appearances in my night-time rambles. There are some to whom I’ve given no thought whatever for probably the last 45 years (if I ever gave them any thought back then), some people who wouldn’t give me the time of day in real life (and boy, could I tell you some stories about that), some people whose actions on the second plane totally contradict their actions on the first plane, and some people who remain totally true to type no matter on what plane of existence they are.

But never mind. As I have said before, and I’ll say again … "and again and again and again" – ed … my nocturnal rambles are much more exciting that what is going on currently in my real life, and that’s not something to be rejected.

I just wish that it was me doing the casting, choosing the characters who could take part in it. I’d have a much more exciting cast than this current lot (one or two people excepted).

Sunday 3rd January 2016 – WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE …

… doing intruding into my nocturnal rambles? All kinds of people from my past have played some kind of supporting role in them, but quite recently there have been some people roaming by in the night who certainly wouldn’t ever have given me the time of day in the day, if you see what I mean.

And so it was last night too.

There was such a lot to last night’s voyage but unfortunately I can’t remember all of it. But the part that I do remember concerns a company called British Salt, a company for whom my father worked for many years until about 20-odd years ago. Last night the company was based not in Middlewich, Cheshire, but somewhere along the Waterloo Road between Cobridge and Tunstall, and I’d received “the call” to go there. The factory had five entrances, which from north towards the south were two before the first roundabout, one on that roundabout, a fourth between that roundabout and the next, a fifth on the second roundabout and another one south of the second roundabout (which of course does not make five but since when has logic played any part in my nocturnal rambles?). Of all of these entrances, the second was the tallest and that was the way that I went in. I wandered around to the transport yard and into the office where my first task was to respond to “does anyone here understand French?”. It turned out that the woodstove in the garage had all of its instructions and makers’ plates in French. So I translated them, showed them how to light the fire and work the automatic log dispenser (and I’m going to patent this design when I wake up because it was superb). Then, they slid a fork-lift truck underneath the stove and carted it off somewhere else, right through the garage, right past where my father was working.
It had been 14:00 when I arrived but it was 16:00 when they finally told me what they really wanted me to do. There were two lorry-loads of stuff that needed to be delivered (lorries again after last night?), the first of which was a load of metal plates that had to go somewhere beginning with M (I forget where) up by Stretton near Warrington. The man in charge asked me if I knew by which gate I had to leave so I phoned up the lodge at gate two. The lodge-keeper told me that the height was 4m 01 and so I told the man in charge that I’ll go out that way and that I was sure that I remember it being 12’3″ (such is the logic of my nocturnal rambles) back in the old days. He showed me which lorry to take and so I walked around it to check the wheel nuts and the lights, and then off I set – totally forgetting about the height limit on the gates, but luckily going out of Gate Two all the same. Arriving safely at Stretton or wherever (the first time that I’ve driven an HGV for 20 or more years by the way) I had to unstrap my load and then they craned it off. I gathered up the straps but they were all entangled so I needed to sort them out. This ended up by me having to undo the hooks from the straps but that still didn’t work. It appeared that the people in this factory had hooked up my straps to the ceiling so that they could sweep the floor. They needed to be unhooked and rolled up neatly but by this time I was going to be horribly late for my second load so I just threw them any old how into the cab – a cardinal sin in the HGV world.

But anyway, enough of that. In my “taking it easy” mode these days I had my injection, then my breakfast, and spent a leisurely morning watching Ben Stokes and John Bairstow take apart the South African bowling in the Second Test in Cape Town. I felt sorry for the South Africans actually. Ravaged by injury and giving two young bowlers their test debuts, it must have been very soul-destroying for them, watching their best balls disappear out of the stadium. I can’t remember the last time that England scored over 600 runs with 5 wickets still to fall. In fact, I can’t remember the last time England scored over 600 runs in any circumstances.

Another thing that I turned my hand to in the afternoon was something that I ought to have done a while ago. It’s my custom to write a small web page at the end of each year to talk about the work that I had done on the farm in that particular year. And when I was thinking about what I was going to write for 2015 I suddenly realised that I hadn’t done it for 2014 either.

That needed to be dealt with so I cracked on and I reckon that I’ve done about 75% of it already.

I didn’t finish it off though because by 20:00 I was drifting off into the arms of Morpheus and so I was ready for an early night. I really can’t keep going these days – not the 02:00 and 03:00 finishes that we used to have only a few months ago. All of this is depressing me.

Saturday 2nd January 2016 – IT’S DEFINITELY LIZ’S COOKING …

… that’s causing me to go on these astonishing nocturnal rambles!

Here we are, back in the bosom of Liz’s family (minus the younger ones of course) and off I go to bed, and there I go, off on my travels again.

Well, not quite. I had a really early night as you may remember and fell straight asleep, but I was awake half an hour later and couldn’t drop off again for hours. But once I’d gone again, I’d really gone and only a nocturnal stroll down the corridor at 05:00 broke up the reverie.

Firstly, there was a big queue of HGVs – fuel tankers and all sorts – trying to enter this country park-type of place which had a stone wall all round it and big gates through which everyone had to drive. I’d turned up as a passenger in a fuel tanker but with all of the chaos no-one was entering this park, so in the end I alighted and started to direct all of the traffic, making lorries do U turns and so on in order to sort them out into a proper queue all in one direction so that everyone would pass through these gates with the least amount of fuss.
From here I moved on back to Crewe and my old taxi business. It was in the winding-down phase. We weren’t particularly busy but there was a fair amount of work for two cars during pub-chucking-out time on Saturday night. However it was at that moment that someone called up for a taxi to go somewhere up the A74 way beyond Carlisle, somewhere that I estimated was a 6-hour round trip and which was to be a regular Saturday evening journey. This kind of work is not to be sneezed at and I didn’t want to turn it away. Ordinary for a trip like this I would have used an unregistered car and driver but looking around at the vehicles here in the queue for either dismantling or rebuilding, there didn’t seem to be one that would have been good enough for the journey, and I certainly didn’t want to take a licensed taxi and driver off the road in Crewe when we needed them at all of the pubs. This was going to be quite a problem and I needed to solve it quickly – could I manage to do all of the pub work with just one taxi all by myself while the other car and driver went off to Scotland?

So puzzling over this quandary, I ended up downstairs for my breakfast and my injection. And then after that, precisely nothing! “Take it easy and don’t do too much” everyone keeps on telling me, and who am I to disagree? If I moved off my comfortable little corner of the sofa, it was just for meals and visits down the corridor and that was that.

Much of the time was spent writing up my notes from Canada last autumn, or else watching the football on the TV.

The football today was disappointing. Last weekend was exciting with huge shoals of minnows having really good results against bigger sides. Not so this weekend, with the larger clubs reasserting themselves. Manure’s victory was particularly depressing, although seeing the bin-dippers trounced in East London was impressive. However Crewe were demolished yet again at home, Morton lost at home in the local derby against the soap-dodgers and add to that, Bangor being likewise demolished at home yesterday and it’s been a really bad weekend all round as far as I’m concerned.

I skulked off to bed yet again at an unseasonably-early time of 20:40. I just can’t last the pace these days. Heaven alone knows what it will be like when I have to start doing things for myself

Monday 28th December 2015 – I SPENT LAST NIGHT …

… dealing with issues involving the perfidy of friends, showing me just how fickle people can be.

Not in the real world, I hasten to add, but during my nocturnal ramblings about in another world.

Firstly, I can’t remember where I was, but it resembled the Loire valley down near St Etienne where it cuts through a spectacular kind of gorge and although the issues of this event are somewhat vague right now, I remember waking up in the middle of the night in a cold clammy sweat.

The second event was much more straightforward. I was running a pub (as if that’s ever likely to happen, of course) with my partner (who shall remain nameless to protect her dignity) and I hit upon the wonderful idea of inviting all of the lonely people, and have a kind of disco get-together where they could meet up and make friends. My pub was thus heaving with people and when the music started upstairs in the empty room, I packed them all off upstairs. I wandered off upstairs a short while later to see what was happening but there was no-one there. My partner explained to me that as soon as she had set out two tables for the people to pass between in order to pay their admission, they all cleared off. I explained to her that the idea was that it would be free and that we would benefit through the bar to which she responded that she needed the money. “It’s the pub’s money anyway” I replied. After all, I’d laid out the expense in the first place. So she tried to explain how her logic worked using some kind of weird logic about how if you paid a Deed of Covenant to someone, it was different than if they paid a similar Deed to you. “And anyway, where’s the music?” I asked, having laid on a disco kind of thing (using, incidentally, some speakers and an amp from my days as a rock star) which wasn’t in this room that I had set aside. “Ohh, I was listening to that in my room” she replied. That was quite enough for me, so I went off to start to pack my bags. I’d had enough.

But in between these two events it was all much more exciting. I was in an aeroplane that was part of a force that was to bomb London (of course). My plane was shot down and I survived the crash, and met up with a couple of people who had survived from another lost plane. We decided to carry out a plan to wreak havoc on the London Underground so we occupied a station and barricaded ourselves in with a train-load of passengers with the intention of causing havoc. Unfortunately, there was a lift of which we were unaware and people were still able to enter and leave the station, and we didn’t have the resources to seal this off and so we did the best job that we could. Then we left via a service exit where we had a Volkswagen minibus of the type common in the late 70s (in World War II this would have been astonishing) and we escaped. We ended up dumping the Volkswagen in a wood and hiding out on a housing estate in a council estate occupied by an old woman who was a relative of one of the people with whom we were travelling. I was able to obtain medication there and even my mail. But then an ice-cream van pulled up outside to sell his wares to the kids but we could tell that it was plain-clothes police team (shades of Peter SellErs and The Wrong Arm Of The Law [DVD] just here) so I was all for escaping down the drains (the verandah of this house had been built over a drain manhole). However the leader of our party told us to sit tight, not to panic and to act normally because an avenue of escape would present itself. Eventually we ended up in a Victorian Gothic office building in the centre of London where we were safe for a while, but even here we could see the net closing in. However our leader had yet another cunning plan for us to escape.

Yes, it’s all happening in the middle of the night, isn’t it?

The daytime was, however, much more relaxed. So much so that I was probably horizontal for most of it. Nothing happened at all to break the monotony.

Well, that’s rather unfair. Of course I had my blood test and the results came by e-mail later. And in a fashion that is totally perverse, the blood count has gone UP not down. Just after my last transfusion it was 8.1 but today it was 8.2. Something isn’t right, and I remember thinking to myself that after the two packets of blood that I had had last time, the figure of 8.1 seemed rather low. That would seem to be borne out by today’s figures.

The second thing concerned the home-made Black Forest Gateau. Kate was carrying it rather awkwardly and Darren cried out for her to be carefully.
“Don’t worry” said Kate, with an evil gleam in her eye. “I’ll tidy it up if it falls off”.

So really, that was about it. So relaxed that I was horizontal, I said. And by 20:45 I was too – upstairs in my little attic flat out. And quite right too – I was exhausted, and it wasn’t as if I had done very much either as you can tell.

But that’s just how things are these days I’m afraid. And I can’t see things improving for a while. Let’s all hope that this operation that is scheduled for sometime soon can have me up and about and doing stuff. I’m rather fed up of all of this.

Thursday 24th December 2015 – IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

And I hope that you are all ready for the festive season. I know that I’m not.

In fact, I’ve never felt less festive in my life, which is hardly surprising. It’s not the illness and it’s not the thought of major surgery but this relentless 07:45 start that’s doing my head in. Especially today because it’s blood test day so I have to be à jeune – no breakfast for me until he’s been.

And I had the results too this evening thanks to this e-mail subscription thing. My blood count has gone up, but a mere 0.4 to 8.1. When it was that low 2 weeks ago, they called me in for a transfusion and it went up to 9.0. I’m dismayed that my count only went up that little bit, I really was. Hence the lack of festive spirit from that point of view.

I was on my travels last night too. I was in Canada, although a more un-Canada-like Canada I have ever seen. I was with George, a former employee of the tyre depot and we were driving around looking for something in the middle of winter with bright sunlight everywhere and not a trace of snow to be seen. We were trying to make for a town that we could see in the distance and as we approached, we ended up in a different town and this necessitated a hard-left turn right in the town centre. George told me where to turn and, much to my surprise, it was a turning into a field, right in this town centre. There were hordes of pedestrians walking along this footpath and in a complete departure from tradition, a policeman stopped the pedestrians so I could drive into this field. Here, I misjudged the entrance and ended up clouting the right-hand wing of the vehicle, which was actually a right-hand drive Hillman Imp, dark green in colour. I made the excuse that I must have slipped into some cart ruts that had pulled me out of position.

So after starving myself until the nurse had been, I had a leisurely morning – in fact a leisurely day doing very little except write up my notes from Canada.

I was alone, though, in not doing very much today. Everyone else was at it, and in spades too.

The trampoline is still outside and so the kids and mummy went to play on it. And, surprise surprise, Strawberry Moose went to join in all of the fun. A very gregarious moose, His Nibs has loads of fun outside playing with the youngsters and also with Violet and Sebastian, the sock-sloths. It’s all one big happy family here and everyone is enjoying himself as much as possible.

In fact, Strawberry Moose was quite exhausted when he came back in.

After tea it was bedtime for the little ones, ready for when Father Christmas comes with the parcels. Of course we had to lay out some stuff for him – milk and mince pies, together with a carrot and some reindeer food.

But no bedtime is complete without a good story, especially on Christmas Eve.

Liz read “A Night Before Christmas” to everyone, including Strawberry Moose who enjoys a good story as much as anyone else.

Of course he’ll be up and about waiting for the arrival of the reindeer, but for reasons of his own which are entirely different from those of everyone else.

And so now he and I have some work to do, but we are not going to be up for long. Regardless of whatever time it might be, he and I (especially me) are wasted and I for one will be having an early night. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, I still have to get up flaming well early at blasted 07:45.

Sunday 20th December 2015 – APART FROM A BRIEF …

… sortie from my comfortable bed at about 02:00 in the morning, I had the sleep of the dead during the night. But one thing that I didn’t allow for in my calculations is that the immersion heater is in the attic behind a false wooded wall right by the head of the bed. Consequently, I was wide awake at 07:30 this morning.

Well, sort-of wide-awake anyway, or, at least, what passes for wide-awake these days. And the nurse didn’t take too long in coming either and so I had something like an early breakfast.

And we are not alone here in this house either.

I mean, you know that anyway, with Terry, Liz and her family. But even more importantly, Strawberry Moose is here. he’s come to stay for Christmas too. After all, Liz’s grandchildren are amongst his most faithful fans. This morning when we came downstairs, we found him busily trying to organise lunch for everyone, but he didn’t have a great deal of success unfortunately

He needs to work on his technique a little.

We spent much of the morning making templates of Christmassy items (and I do have to say that my Christmas tree looked superb) and then we used some of that snow spray stuff to spray the patterns all over the windows in the sun-lounge. And I do have to say that it all worked out rather well too.

Anyway, in the absence of fresh fish for lunch, we had a great big salad buffet. I had the rest of yesterday’s pizza and some sandwiches using some kind of vegan cheese and garlic spread that Liz had found in a health-food shop in Montlucon. That’s the kind of stuff that puts hairs in places I didn’t even realise that I had.

Everyone else had a wonderful time too for, as I have said before, the food that is served up in this house is the best that I have ever eaten anywhere.

After lunch, everyone went off to the Christmas market at Marcillat. I was invited but of course I’m not quite up to things like that right at the moment. There was some stuff that I wanted to finish, but I spent most of my free afternoon sitting on the sofa vegetating. However, I did finish my Christmas shopping by finding on-line something that I’d been looking for for quite a while.

I didn’t remain up and about very long this evening either. By about 20:00 I was done for, I reckon, and so I went to bed. An early night, and it’s getting earlier and earlier, but I don’t have the stamina these days. I managed to watch a film on the laptop, one of the Bulldog Drummond films that I’d tried to watch on several occasions that I’d downloaded from archive.org. Tonight, I managed to watch all of it before dozing off to sleep.

I can do with an early night.

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Saturday 19th December 2015 – MY PEACEFUL CONVALESCENCE …

…may well be over now – and for two reasons too.

Firstly, we have now been invaded by two children – Dylan aged 7 and Robyn aged 4. I suspect that that will be the end of lie-ins (not that 07:45 is a lie-in by my standards but it certainly is for children of that age who are excited by visiting their grandparents and the imminent arrival of Father Christmas) and the start of things like “read me a story” and all of that kind of thing.

Secondly, and much more importantly though, my blood test results came today. And my blood count has gone down – in the space of 72 hours, from 9.1 (which is already a good deal lower than the 13 that is the usually-accepted minimum) to 8.1. If the blood test that I will be having on Monday morning shows a similar decline, I suspect that I will be back in hospital by Tuesday morning.

This was confirmed by the District Nurse who came by this evening to give me my anti-coagulant injection. He took my pulse and the pulse-rate has gone up. With the diminished blood count, my heart is having to pump the blood around faster to keep up the same supply of oxygen, and this can create problems of its own.

Up in the attic last night, it took me ages to go off to sleep. In fact, I was still awake at 02:00 despite my very early night. But once I’d gone off to sleep I was right away with the fairies until the alarm went off at 07:45. Totally painless.

During the morning there were chores to do and while I wasn’t up to doing much in the way of heavy work, I did what I could. And after lunch, while Liz went off to the airport at Limoges to pick up her daughter and family, I went out – the first time for a couple of days.

There was a pile of stuff to take to the recycling, and for that there’s a little recycling point on the outskirts of Les Ancizes where there are a few of these containers. Everything went in there, and then I was off to the supermarket. Surprisingly, considering that it’s the last Saturday before Christmas, there weren’t very many people about. I was expecting the place to be heaving, but apparently not. father Christmas was wandering around looking totally lost, with no children around to entertain him.

I bought most of the things that I was asked to do but despite visiting a couple of supermarkets, one or two things eluded me. But what I did do was to find a nice quiet spec in the sun (because, at 18.3°C at 16:00 in the afternoon, it really was glorious) and read a book for a while.

Back at the ranch, it was pizza for tea. Everyone was to have pre-bought pizzas but Liz had bought me a pizza base so I made my own. Tomato sauce (Bane of Britain forgot the herbs, of course), onions, fresh garlic, mushrooms and grated cheese and it really was beautiful too. I couldn’t manage it all, so guess what I’m going to be having for Sunday lunch?

And after that, Liz returned with her family at 19:15 and all mayhem was let loose. I managed to stay awake until about 22:00 and then I went off to my attic. It’s been a long day, a short night last night and I need to be on top of my form. I’ve no idea what the future holds for me but I don’t think that it’s going to be so good.

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Thursday 17th December 2015 – ANYONE WOULD THINK …

… that it was me doing the tiling today, not Terry. Half an hour after lunch I was well out of it – two trips to Terry’s van and back with some stuff for here had finished me off. And back here, I was crashed out on the sofa at 18:00 and in bed by 19:15.

I’ve clearly seen better days – that’s for sure.

But a lot of this could be put down to the efforts that I had made during my nocturnal ramblings. I’d started off with something like a huge contemporary discussion about the qualities of different Roman emperors – and I can’t remember now with whom I was having this discussion. But from there I drove back (it’s good, this time-travel lark) to Stoke on Trent. None of the usual Clayhead characters out in an appearance unfortunately, but I do remember at a roundabout (it might have been one of the newish ones at Longton) I was confused by the exits, took the wrong one, and ended up on the road to Tunstall (a fictitious road of course but one that has featured on my travels before). It then occurred to me that there was one of these old-time sweet shops (just like there is in Longton) somewhere on this road and so I kept my eyes open for it. I ended up walking through this decrepit shopping centre-type of place to try to find it, to the accompaniment of jeers from several people lounging around – and what was that all about?
But back home I ended up chaperoning a young Shirley Temple-type of girl (as if I’d ever be asked to chaperone anyone of the female sex?) who was taking part in a singing competition that was to last all of the weekend. I asked her what would happen if she had to wait right at the end of the competition before it was her turn to sing, to which she replied that there were tons of things that we could do while we were waiting – have a party, go to the zoo, read stories.

No wonder I was exhausted!

So after my blood sample and a painful breakfast, we went off to Pionsat and the bank. I need to build up the fighting fund with all of this going on. Shopping at Intermarche was next, and there we met Clare, Julie and Anne who were off to Clermont-Ferrand for a fun day out. I fuelled up Terry’s van, seeing as how I had some money for once, bought my stuff for lunch and then shot off to the house for the tiling

When we arrived, the batteries were fully-charged already and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus charge was slowly rising. That tells you everything that you need to know about the weather that we have been having just recently.

We had a visitor too! In the jungle that is Lieneke’s field opposite my front door we had a sanglier – a wild boar. We couldn’t actually see it but we could hear it grunting away and see all of the shrubs and bushes moving around as it prowled its way around. Magnificent beasts, these sangliers – I remember being up on my scaffolding when I was pointing the eastern wall and watching those two herds approaching each other and the eventual confrontation.

And while Terry carried on with the tiling, I did some desultory tidying-up. But my heart wasn’t in it and I couldn’t even cut straight today. In some respects I was glad when Terry decided to call it a day.

We’re a long way from finishing (I like the “we” bit, don’t you?) but the most difficult bits have been done. And I know that I promised you all a photo but Terry closed up the house while I was outside washing off the tools, so you’ll have to wait until next time.

And now back here, I’m in bed having an early night but I dozed off for an hour, woke up, and now I can’t go back to sleep again.

This looks as if it’s going to become a regular feature. I wish it didn’t, though, and I could have a decent 8-hours sleep.

-1

Friday 11th December 2015 – EEEUUURRRGGGHHH

I had to go to the hospital today. And so that meant a 07:00 start. And never did I feel less like it either after yet another uncomfortable night.

When the alarm went off I crawled downstairs and made a coffee. Some muesli and fruit juice later, I was properly fed and watered but still not on the same planet as anyone else, I reckon.

As I drove to Montlucon I slowly started to wake up and by the time I arrived at the hospital I was maybe feeling as much as half-human. “Half-man, half-aardvark” I thought to myself. “I’ve clearly been varking too ard”. But at least my luck was in somewhere. I was 20 minutes early and there was a parking place right outside the door of the hospital.

One of the more friendly nurses was on duty at the day-hospital and she even found me a mug of coffee to go a little further in rousing myself from lethargy. But she has three goes at trying to put a drain in me, without much success, and went off to call a colleague to have a go. I thought to myself “hang on a minute – these b******s are playing darts with me!”. They were all having a good moan about not being able to find a vein with any blood in it. “Hardly surprising” I retorted. “You’ve already taken most of it!”

So I was there at 08:40 – I had a drain put in at 09:40, and the blood finally arrived at … errr … 11:40, by which time we were three people in a day ward meant for two. They managed to conjure up something for lunch too – mushrooms in tomato sauce with rice and bread, with a pear for dessert. Hardly the most appetising meal that I’ve eaten – I’ll take butties next time.

My first blood pochette was empty by 13:05 – and it took until 14:00 for them to couple up the second. As a result, I wasn’t able to leave until 15:30 and that annoyed me a little – I should have been long gone from here by then. But feeling like nothing on earth, I went for a coffee in the cafe while, apparently, all the time they were frantically searching for me to tell me that I need to come back on Tuesday at 10:40 for another series of tests.

So having recomposed myself a little I went back home – to Pooh Corner that is. I had a little relax, ate some biscuits and watched something on the laptop. And then I came back to Liz and Terry’s for tea and my evening injection.

None of this did anything to cheer me up and, being totally whacked and thoroughly fed up, by 20:10 I was off to bed. And it wasn’t long before I went to sleep either.

And the result?

Here I am at 04:00 updating my blog. I’ve been awake since about 02:15 and I can’t go back to sleep. I’ll probably be like this now until mid-morning when I’ll crash out yet again and this will mess up my revision plans for today – having had them totally messed up already for today. I’m never going to finish this blasted course.

I just really wish that I could bring a little order into my life right now, but that’s not going to be possible, so it seems.

-1

Tuesday 8th December 2015 – I WAS OUT …

… of it completely today. I spent most of the day up in the clouds somewhere in the distant land between the sleeping and the waking. It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve felt quite like this.

Mind you, there are a couple of really good reasons for that.

Firstly, I was on my travels again during the night. We were interested in a really big and wealthy businessmen, the Russian oil magnate type. I suspected that he had been up to no good and I was interested in finding out more about him and his activities so I called him into my office and began to ask him questions. I’d been told by my boss that these people were “untouchable” and that we shouldn’t interview them, and that if we did, we wouldn’t be likely to get very much sense out of them, but I ploughed doggedly on nevertheless.
And this led to me being on the London Underground with a girl, smaller and younger than me with loads of black curly hair tied in a kind of bow at the back and she was wearing black-rimmed glasses. We went to the refreshment counter for something to eat and drink but a young boy pushed in front of us. He asked for four coffees but said that he wasn’t to say that he’d been here because last time they had done something nasty to the coffee and he told the other cashier that he wouldn’t ever come again. We had a coffee and a sandwich (I asked my companion if she wanted two sandwiches but she gave me a dirty look) and we took them back to one of the two double beds on top of this iceberg overlooking a kind of ice-beach. On the ice-beach was a guy in swimming trunks admiring the view, the water, the clear blue sky and the bright sunshine, but there was a young woman in a bikini creeping up on him and, much to the consternation of my companion, she pushed him right into the water and he began to struggle desperately while we watched, open-mouthed.

Strange as it is to say it, despite all of this going on, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had for weeks. Apart from a visit down the corridor, I was flat out until the alarm went off and it was all totally painless. I could have stayed in bed like that for a year.

But the second reason is not so good. I had the results of my blood test this morning and my blood count is 9.1. It’s a far cry of course from the 3.8 of three weeks ago, but it’s still a long way short of 13 that is the minimum for good healthy blood. After the 9 pochettesof blood that I’ve had this last couple of weeks, this figure is a major disappointment. It’s no surprise that I’m feeling a little down in the dumps.

And so I spent most of the day stuck in this never-never land, using whatever lucid moments I had in some kind of effort to revise for my end-of-course exam later this week. But I was clearly wasting my time in this respect so I called it a night and crawled off to bed

Sunday 6th December 2015 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and in what can only be described as a first for about a hundred years, I set an alarm for s Sunday morning.

Not that I wanted to, but the nurse is coming round some time between 08:00 and 08:30 to give me an injection of anti-coagulant and so I need to be here. Not much point in him coming if I’m still in bed asleep.

But I was glad that I awoke because I’d been on my travels during the night. You won’t be interested in them because I’m not. It was all about hospitals and injections and blood tests, and I’ve had a darn sight too many of all of that just recently. It wouldn’t have been so bad had a nice young attractive nurse featured prominently somewhere, but as if that were ever likely to happen.

We had some more excitement later. Terry and Liz have a Volkswagen Golf but it’s been off the road for a while due to an undetected fault. According to the ECU there’s nothing wrong with the vehicle, but it just won’t start. Several garages have tried (and failed) to get it to go. In fact, it’s just like Crawshay Bailey’s famous engine, and “going to Cardiff College for to get a bit of knowledge” would be about just as much use in this case too.

However, on the internet a week or so ago, there was a very low-mileage engine for sale at a very democratic price and so, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … the engine turned up at lunchtime. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, the new engine might be fitted this week some time and who knows? The car might even go!

Anyway, that was about all of the excitement for today. I’ve done a pile of stuff for my course on Hadrian’s Wall, and I’ve been told that in 5 weeks time my course on Animation will start.

Did I tell you about this course on Animation? As you know, I mess around with a 3D program on the computer, one where you can create your own models and perform simple animations, but I’m not much good at it. Whilst the poor specs on this laptop don’t help, a lot of it can be put down to my own lack of technique and so I’m going to be following this course to see what it can teach me.

And that’s really all today. We had the second helping of curry for tea tonight and it was even better, as predicted. And right in the middle of tea the nurse came round to give me my evening injection. Magnificent timing!

I had an early night too – the strain of an 07:45 start on a Sunday was far too much. But someone with whom I hadn’t spoken in ages came on line just as I was about to switch off the laptop and so that put paid to that idea.

Friday 4th December 2015 – I’VE LEFT …

…the hospital today and I’m back chez Liz and Terry. And the first thing that Liz did for me was to make me a tea of baked potato, vegan cheese, baked beans and a side-salad. And wasn’t it lovely to have some real proper food properly cooked for once? Never mind eating it – I could have dived into it and rolled around in it.

Last night, with my late night, I didn’t seem to get very much sleep. I lost count of how many times I had to go to the bathroom – it was at least 5 times and could easily have been more. And then we had the usual interruptions of people sticking their heads around the door, people coming to give me injections, all of that kind of thing.

But I did manage somehow to get out and about on my travels too. Not that I remember anything much about it, but I do recall a separated couple being involved, and despite having agreed as part of the terms of separation that they would refer to each other as vous , but we did notice, with smiles on our faces, that they were back to referring to each other with the more familiar tu.

So having had breakfast and so on, I went for yet another shower. I’m really making the most of this. And then we had the bad news. It seems that my medical appointment for later this morning has been cancelled. They still haven’t been able to complete the analysis of all of my examinations.

Mind you, this might be good news. I imagine that they would look for the most serious options first and then they would work their way up the ladder, and the longer that it takes to find the problem, the less serious it might be. But of course, I’m ruling nothing out.

But apparently I’m to have an anti-coagulant injection twice a day at home for the next THREE MONTHS, and a blood test twice a week, and I’ve been given a prescription for a lorry-load of medication. Not only that, Liz has bought some vitamin B12 tablets and some iron tablets, and has found a fruit juice that has B12 in it. I need to make the most of my recuperation and keep a close eye on my diet for a while while I sort myself out.

And I did query the “three months” bit too. Would I still be here in three months? But the doctor did confirm that, in his opinion, there was every likelihood that i’ll be here then, and long after that too. And that’s good news;

At the pharmacy in Pionsat, the bill – just for the first month – came to €474. That doesn’t include the smelling salts that they used to bring me round. This is going to be an expensive illness, I can see that.

So after a good evening’s relaxation, I had an early night. We’d bought an ice -pack and we’d had it in the freezer for a couple of hours, so I put it on my swollen arm to draw the heat and give me a good night’s sleep. But it was totally unbearable after about half an hour so I ended up taking it off. But never mind – it had done the rick and, at least for the moment, the discomfort had gone.

I did warn Liz and Terry to make sure though that when they went to bed to wear plenty of garlic around their necks, just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

Wednesday 25th November 2015 – I’VE BEEN DISCHARGED

Well, expelled, more like. Liz came by to pick me up at about 18:00 to take me home. She had to wait half an hour because the hospital hadn’t quite finished with me, but I soon put all of my things together, got dressed, and we were off.

Stopping off at the bank on the way back to start to build up a little war chest for the future, we were back at Liz and Terry’s for about 19:30. After a quick snack, because I wasn’t all that hungry, I wandered off to the bed that they had prepared for me, and that was that.

The plan now is that I’ll have a district nurse coming to see me twice a week to take a blood sample, and I’ll be summoned back to hospital in a week or so for a scan. Once they’ve assimilated all of the results, they’ll call me in again to discuss what they might be able to do for me.

But last night, with the difficulties that I’d had the previous evening, I was in bed by 20:00 and fell asleep while I was watching a film. As a result I was awake before the dawn chorus started. This morning’s blood sample was a farce – it took 5 goes and 2 nurses to find a vein that worked. I’m looking even more like a dartboard now.

This morning I was left pretty much to my own devices but it all kicked off this afternoon. They came to change my pochette of vitamins, only to discover that my right arm was incredibly swollen – no wonder it was hurting so much – and so they had to fit the drain in my left arm. And then I had another 2 pochettes of blood. I also had a biopsy, where they chipped a bit of bone off my pelvis to take away for examination and that’s the most painful thing that I have ever experienced.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The young Eurasian student nurse came to take my blood pressure this afternoon and with the drain having been moved, she needed to reach my other arm. Her solution to this was to lean right across me, in her low-cut nurse’s uniform with no t-shirt on underneath.
“Ohh – your blood pressure is up, and your pulse is racing a little”
“Really?” I replied. “I can’t think why”

Clearly I’m not as ill as I think that I am.

Saturday 21st November 2015 – HELL!

Yes, it looks as if I’ve arrived in hell.

I can cope with most things, including hospital food, but sleep is quite important for me too and while I don’t particularly need a lot, I just become miserable and in a bad mood the less sleep I have.

And this is why I am miserable and in a foul temper right now, because my neighbour is a big guy and has the loudest snore that I have ever encountered. Sleep is totally impossible if he’s dropped off and I am going to be having a long, sad stay in this hospital.

The prognosis isn’t all that good either. The three pochettes of blood that I had last night have done some good. I’m supposed to have a blood-count of 15 or so for my haemoglobin and I now have 5.8, which is a far cry from the 3.8 that I had when I arrived. No wonder that I’ve been so exhausted and pale just recently. But even this improvement is far from adequate and so the transfusions will have to continue.

Talking of hospital food though, I spent about 20 minutes last night talking about my diet to the admissions doctor, and another 15 minutes this morning to my personal doctor. And so for lunch they have brought me a chicken dinner.

I had a nice surprise this afternoon though. Liz put in an appearance with a big bag of grapes and we had quite a long chat. That cheered me up considerably. What also cheered me up is that winter has arrived. It’s -5°C outside and we’ve had the first snows of the year, and I’m inside in the comparative warmth being waited on hand and foot by a bevy of beautiful nurses. So there’s an up-side for everything.

After Liz left, I had tea. And for some reason, the boiled potatoes in their jacket smeared with vegetable margarine was the nicest thing that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off for an early night. Liz brought some ear plugs for me and I’ve fitted them. If I can fall asleep before my neighbour, I might stand a chance.

Friday 18th September 2015 – I KNEW THAT …

… I couldn’t keep it up.

We had twice the amount of usual interruptions today, to make up for the smooth day that we had yesterday.

I’m not counting the rain in this because although this morning there was no sign of any precipitation whatsoever, I’m convinced that I heard some rain during the night.

Mind you, that’s all that I heard. I had another Sleep Of The Dead and didn’t feel a thing.

And so next morning I started on the building of my bed for Strider. This meant that I had to completely unload him so that I could measure up. and with stuff all over my camping pitch, another camper pulled up on the pitch beside mine. He came over to see what he was doing, and his dog promptly went to urinate on my camping pitch. And so the dog had my boot up its backside and his owner would have received one too had he not beaten a hasty retreat, with my opinion of him and his dog ringing in his ears.

While all of this was going on, a camp site steward came up. I can’t stay at this pitch, apparently, as it’s been booked for the weekend. I have to move.
“But you should have come to the office and booked in. After all, you’ve been here a few days”
“Every time I’ve been past the office I’ve seen the ‘sorry – we’re closed’ sign in the window”
“But I come on duty at 12:00”
“And I’ve been gone by then”
“But you do need to register”
“How?”
“One of the campground rangers should have come to see you and given you the details”
“And did they?”
“… errr … no”
“And as you know that I’ve been here for a few days, have you pinned a note on my tent to tell me what’s happening?”
“… errr … no”.

But in the end I had to move and I’m now elsewhere, and my bed isn’t finished either. All of this just goes to prove what I’ve always said about most Government servants. They only work when they have too and when it suits them. Providing an efficient and effective service to their clients is the last thing on their minds.

Some good news anyway concerns the group Tokyo Valentine – you remember that I saw them yesterday on one of the free stages. I was quite impressed with what I had seen of them and so I’d given my phone number to the guy who was doing their sound engineering.

The result of this was that Rachel, the keyboard player, rang me back and we had quite a lengthy chat. She likes the idea of recording one of the group’s live concerts so that I can make up a live broadcast for Radio Anglais. Plenty of interaction with the audience – that’s the thing, even if the have to summon up a clacque. I want to make my audience feel that they are part of the performance.

But as for the other acts to whom I’d slipped a little note – not a word. As I’ve said before, just like most people, musicians seem to be just interested in moaning about the lack of airplay that they receive and it’s far too much effort to actually go out and do something about it.

But before we start to involve ourselves in the festival tonight, let’s just say a word or two about the volunteers.

If you haven’t yet been to the festival, you won’t understand just how much work is done or needs to be done here and without the volunteers, none of this work would be done and the festival would ever take place. The volunteers deserve a big round of applause from everyone.

The first group that I encountered was on one of the free stages in the main street. This is Paula Tozer and Friends.

They were nothing special. Technically competent, they were, and playing an assortment of 12-bar blues including a number by JJ Cale that I hadn’t heard before but they didn’t manage to set the crowd alight.There wasn’t anything that I would have considered for broadcast on Radio Anglais.

As for the musicians, I recognised the lead guitarist. He’s called Rick Bartlett or something like that and I’m sure that I’ve seen him elsewhere at the festival in a previous year.

As for the bassist though, he gave me the opinion of being rather sour-faced. I went up to him as he was umpacking, and told him that it’s been years since I’ve seen a Rickenbacker bass, but he merely scowled and carried on unpacking, totally ignoring me.

And talking of totally ignoring me, I went into Tony’s Music Shop to see what they had – I’ve bought a few things from there in the past at various festivals.

This year though, I went in and all of the shop assistants were busy chatting away to various callers. Eventually, someone bade farewell to one of his visitors and came over to chat to me. And while we were chatting, another visitor came in and he turned to chat to them about babies and children, totally ignoring me.

That was enough for me and I walked out, with him running behind to try to persuade me to stay. But whatever happened to North American customer service? It used to be legendary, but now it’s all becoming just like Belgium. It’s shameful.

Talking of thigs being shameful, here’s Mike Peters, my favourite busker.

He’s been shunted out to play underneath the footbridge far from the madding crowd surging down the main street. He’s here playing to an audience of … errr … just me. And this is shameful treatment for someone such as him because he’s miles better than many of the performers who have appeared on a paid stage – never mind a free stage on the main street.

This is another thing that is shameful in my opinion.

The festival was created, so we were told, to counter the DJ movement and recorded music, and return to live entertainment and live music. But here, what we have is a “musician” strumming a guitar every now and again, backed by a recorded drummer, a recorded bass and a recorded backing choir. And it’s in the main street too.

But whatever is he doing with all of this gear at the festival, never mind on the main street, when many artists much better than him and playing all of their own music are stuck out at the back of the festival miles away from the crowds.

The first formal band that I encountered was the Earthbound Trio at the Barracks Tent. They were to play a little later on as one of the opening acts for Grand Theft Bus and so were warming up before the crowds filtered into to tent.

And yes, the Earthbound Trio is indeed the name, even though those of you who are able to count will have not failed to have noticed that there were four of them up on stage.

Musically, they were okay, I suppose, but this isn’t really my cup of tea and so I didn’t stay around very long.

But this is much more like my cup of tea.

Ross Neilsen is by far and away the best rock musician that you are ever likely to encounter anywhere in New Brunswick and, furthermore, he plays with the correct number of musicians too. Just a drummer and bassist – no horns, no keyboards, no nothing. This is a genuine power trio although his two backing musicians this year seem to be different than those who I’ve seen him play with in previous years.

Now if ony he would play like this all of the time, it would be a magnificent performance and he would be the star of any festival that I would organise.

He does however have a tendency to run a “blues by invitation” kind of show where he invites his friends up onto the stage to join in with the show. And while his friends are without doubt quite competent musicians, you have to hear the opening numbers of any show that Ross Neilsen puts on to hear how much of a disappointment the “augmented” show might become.

One of the things that I noticed about Ross Neilsen and his mates is that while Neilsen and his bassist weren’t ‘arf freaking out at the front of the stage, the drummer, whoever he was, was quite simply and stoically playing away on his drums totally oblivious of what was going on out at the front.

It was quite a remarkable exercise in concentration from the drummer, given the distractions.

And distractions they certainly were because Ross Neilsen and his mate were putting on quite a show and giving it all that they’ve got out there on the stage.

And as my three numbers were up (I’m only allowed to photograph the first three songs) I passed a note to backstage to ask him to contact me. I’d love to use one of his live concerts on Radio Anglais on my radio shows and I’m sure that my listeners would love it too.

This group on stage at the Barracks Tent was the winner of this year’s “Rising Stars” competition and unfortunately I forgot to enquire as to the name of the band … "it’s Free to Grow" – ed.

The stage in the Barracks Tent is one of the smallest stages at the festival, and yet there are no fewer than nine performerss on the stage. It’s cramped enough when there are only three or four performers on here and these nine were really suffering.

Once again, the music that they were playing, technically competent though it might have been, was not my cup of tea and so I didn’t hang around very long.

But what did impress me was the bassist, who you might have seen on the previous photo. He was playing what looked to me like a six-string bass and it’s been quite a long time since I’ve seen one of those on stage.

My permabulations took me back to the Mojo Tent. I’d seen Matt Minglewood and his band warming up earlier as I was wandering around and I was determined not to miss his set.

He had a four-piece band, consisting of himself on guitar and vocals, a keyboardist and drummer who provided the backing vocals, and a bassist. And all in all, it was a very tight set and from what I saw, I enjoyed the show immensely.

And did you notice the bassist? Yes, we had a female bassist who looked as if she might have been Matt Minglewood’s grand-daughter.

From what I heard of her, she kept her bass lines simple and basic, but then what else do you need in a show like this? And if she ever reads these notes, she’s quite welcome to come round to my tent and have a play on my instrument any time she likes. After all, I do have a Jaguar in my truck, don’t I?

He was a really popular performer with the crowd and rightly so because what I saw of his performance was quite impressive.

I was inclined to ask him to do something for Radio Anglais but at the last moment I had a change of heart. It turns out that he is an out-and-out militarist and spent much of his time regaling the Canadian Armed Forces and their aggressive and unprovoked invasion of Afghanistan.

I’m not having my listeners infected by any of this kind of nonsense and so I desisted. People who adopt polarised positions have to accept the consequences of their actions.

And I couldn’t hang around anyway. The battery in the camera was going flat and Canned Heat are up next in an hour. I need to do some charging.

Having rustled up the battery charger and infinity lead, I shot off to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and a charge. But, to my surprise, the Tim Horton’s in town has no public charging points. Consequently, I refused my coffee and wandered off elsewhere, eventually finding an outdoor power point at the local church where I could listen to (but not see) Garrett Mason in the Hoodoo House.

Back at the Mojo Tent, playing to a disappointingly small audience, was Canned Heat.

I couldn’t understand that. For a start, the Mojo Tent is not the best venue for one of the oldest continuing groups in the history of modern music – the Blues Tent where I’d deen Michael Franti and Spearhead is much more suitable. And I couldn’t understand why the tent here was only half-full anyway. Canned Heat should have packed out the festival.

Mind you, talking to one of the stewards earlier, he told me that for one of the artists here, the tent had been filled to beyond capacity.

The problem that they have is that they sell tickets for the individual shows but issues Ultimate Passes so that people can wander around from venue to venue. And if all of the Ultimate Pass holders were to present themselves at a venue as well as all of the regular ticket holders, then the capacity of the venue will be exceeded.

Returning to the music, I’m not sure whether or not the drummer was the same as when I has seen them previously. He certainly looked different, but then there are a great many reasons why that might happen.

But what made me consider this is that the drummer has a high-pitched voice and you’ll recognise his singing on many of the group’s early hits. And he sand several of the songs last time that I saw them, including “Going Up The Country”. But this time, “Going Up The Country” was sung by the lead guitarist who has a quite different vocal range.

Nevertheless, te performance was quite good and I enjoyed what I heard. But I had other fish to fry – there were still several groups to see and so I set off on my rounds.

But my heart wasn’t in it and I rather lost interest. I treated myself to a big plate of chips (I’d had nothing to eat since breakfast) and headed back to Strider. And here’s a thing. On the side of the street was a hat with a note – something like “thanks to all the musicians” – and people were leaving money in it, even though there was no-one with it, never mind doing anything. Imagine that – in the UK – leaving money lying around like that. Some people have much more faith in human nature than I have.

Back in my tent, I spent a half-hour or so quietly reading a book but at the end of the day I decided that enough was enough.

I turned the light off and settled down for he night. I was going to have an early night.

-2

EPIC HALL

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