Tag Archives: granville

Wednesday 26th March 2025 – BLIMEY! THAT WAS HOT!

Now I understand why it was that a couple of years ago Noz had row after row after row of jars a well-known food manufacturer’s Vindaloo curry sauce on special offer. I bought a couple of jars and they have sat on my shelves ever since.

With too much stuffing left over from Monday and Tuesday, this evening a threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce to make several portions of curry, some of which I can freeze for a later date.

But I doubt if they will freeze at all. Even in a cold state, I bet that I’ll put them in the freezer and they will melt all the ice for miles around.

It wasn’t cold in here either last night. In fact, I went to bed without the fleece. It’s possibly a sign that it’s beginning to warm up outside although I wouldn’t bet on it quite yet.

What might have helped in that respect was that it was close to 02:00 when I finally went to bed, and I was absolutely exhausted. Earlier in the evening I’d set up the computer to run an algorithm running through all of the back-up drives to identify more duplicates in respect of the batch of the old files that I found a week or two ago.

It seemed to take an age crawling through all of the disks identifying stuff and so I thought, as it became later and later, "here I am so here I stay", or "J’y suis, j’y reste" as Maréchal MacMahon once said at Malakoff.

Then, of course, the inevitable happened. At 96%, the algorithm crashed and that was that. What I call a waste of an evening, but it was inevitable.

Once in bed, there I stayed, sound asleep until the alarm went off at 07:00. And then, a very weary me took to his feet and staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back at home last night. There were a lot of children there and the place was running a little wild. I was doing something with one of the small girls and she walked on the face of my youngest sister and my sister began to cry. I explained to my mother what had happened and told her that there was really nothing that anyone could have done about it – it was quite an accident and I was sure that she didn’t do it on purpose. My mother was however extremely unhappy about this and and I could see that she was waiting for the ideal moment t in which she would probably blow her top.

My mother not listening to any explanation and blowing her top was nothing new. Most people say that it’s unpredictable behaviour that makes for an uncomfortable household. That’s certainly not true. In our house it was completely predictable and we spent all of our childhood walking on eggshells. But my youngest sister has appeared quite regularly in my dreams just recently. Why can’t Castor, Zero, TOTGA or Moonchild appear as frequently?

Isabelle the Nurse and I had a long chat about the shambles that is the Town Centre right now with all of the roadworks and rebuilding. The mayor’s vanity projects are reaching new heights, so they say, but in my opinion they are plumbing new depths. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few years ago when they ripped up the old railway line down by the docks to turn the area into a car park. They just dumped a load of asphalt down and rolled it in instead of doing something really attractive. But when it comes to the view outside the Town Hall, it’s all a completely different beast.

Isabelle the Nurse thinks that I ought to run for Mayor, but I don’t even have the right to a vote here – nowhere in the World, in fact.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK

Our author has discovered that several stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … on Dartmoor align with the same stars of some of the alignments at Stonehenge do, but some 300 or 400 years later due to the precession of the stars that we mentioned yesterday. In view of the crude nature of the stones he considers that these are more primitive people than those at Stonehenge.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have discussed something along these lines before. One of our authors has pointed to the fact that invading forces in the British Isles have pushed the preceding inhabitants westward onto poorer land. The work on Stonehenge began approximately 2600BC and stopped at about 1600BC. Round about 1800BC we have the arrival of what are termed “The Wessex Culture”, described by one historian as "an intrusive ruling class who opened trading networks with France and central and northern Europe, and imported bronze tools and probably also artisans", from mainland Europe.

They certainly reached the Wessex area (hence their name) where there have been numerous discoveries of rich graves .

It doesn’t take much imagination to speculate that with their superior organisation, the people of the Wessex culture swept away the previous inhabitants who fled West, and built what they could to continue to worship what they worshipped, with whatever they could find and whatever skills that remained.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then started work. By the time that I finished, I’d sorted out all of the music, remixed it, paired and segued it and written all of the notes for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night.

So for the rest of the week I can attack my Woodstock magnum opus and see what inroads I can make into it.

That was despite several interruptions – my cleaner arriving to do her stuff, my weekly shower, the disgusting drink break etc. But at least I’m now nice and clean, my clothes are washed and I can enjoy my night’s sleep, if I ever reach my bed.

Tea tonight was rice and veg and a naan of course, With all of the stuffing though, far too much for one meal, I threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce and had it simmering away for twenty minutes in the microwave on a low heat

And by God! That’s what I call “hot” It’s no surprise that no-one in France ever bought it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I lived on my farm we used to have communal meals in our area where each one of us would take a dish. I always took a dish of pepper and lentil curry, made especially lightly. All of the British people there would be going "what the hell is this insipid rubbish, Eric?" and all of the French people would be gasping for air and throwing themselves into the nearby pond.

Right now though, I’m going to throw myself into my bed and have a sleep, later than usual of course.

But before I go, seeing as we are talking about going to bed … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was told a story about a boxer who was unable to sleep. His doctor told him to try counting sheep after he lay down and that should do the trick.
"I’ve tried that" said the boxer. <"and it’s totally useless"
"Why’s that?" asked the doctor
"Because every time I lie down i begin to count .. one .. two .. three .. four .. five .. six.. seven .. eight .. and every time I say .. nine .. I automatically leap to my feet again"

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Tuesday 25th March 2025 – I HAD ANOTHER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday 24th March 2025 – THAT WAS QUITE …

… a shambles this afternoon. Not the dialysis itself exactly, but everything else that surrounded it. Roll on the day that this new centre opens in Granville when all of this will (hopefully) be a thing of the past, although I bet that it won’t be.

Going to bed early is also a thing of the past these days. After I finished dictating my notes I had the backing-up to perform and then one thing led to another. And until you start, you have no idea how many other things there are. Considering that there was nothing really planned for after the notes, I took an awfully long time doing it.

Once n bed though I was soon asleep but once again, not for long. This time I was actually too hot in bed with my old fleece but I wasn’t going to take it off because I knew full well that i’d only wake up an hour later and put it back on.

At about 05:00 we had another phantom alarm that awoke me bolt-upright and I took some convincing to go back to bed. I found out later that it was a message that someone had posted. So that time, it was easily explained, and I wish that there was an explanation as straightforward as that for all of the other times.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was deep in the arms of Morpheus. However, I threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed quite rapidly. Going to the bathroom was quite something else, however.

After a good wash and scrub up in case I see Emilie the Cute Consultant, I went into the kitchen to take my medication, along with the last of the home-made orange juice, and then I cut up my nice cake and put it in a box in the fridge before the nurse could put his sticky hands all over it.

And if the crumbs are anything to go by, it will be totally wicked.

By the way, seeing as we are on the subject of my cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … if you noted down the recipe earlier, you’ll need to note it down again because it’s changed slightly. I forgot something.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was away somewhere on a course from work and there were quite a few of us. We were in this kind-of complex that was consisting of small single rooms formed into some kind of terrace outside in a small park. We each had a little room. I was coming back from doing something and it was dark. I suddenly realised that I couldn’t remember my room number. I walked up and down this particular row of terraces hearing my radio programme being broadcast on the radio but that didn’t give me any help. I just could not remember my room. In the end I walked back to the office, went in, put on the light and had a look for my number, which was n°315. While I was in there, someone else came in and had a look around the office and went outside. He went to one of the cabins at this end of the complex which were on stilts and you needed steps to go up to them. This guy went to one of the cabins and I heard the discussion, one of them saying that a girl had cleaned his windows for him. He said the name of her but I can’t remember but it was a girl whom I knew. This guy came back down the steps again. I asked him what was the problem. He said that he was looking for a newspaper with the football results in from tonight. I asked him why he didn’t look at the football results on the internet but he became quite aggressive about that and said that he didn’t want to take on board another website to go with the others that he had, which I thought was one of the craziest things that I’d heard.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall all kinds of things that would make anyone realise that crazy things appear quite regularly during my nocturnal rambles. There’s nothing new about that. And as for the complex where I was during the night, I’ve been here before and I can see it quite clearly, but I’ve no idea where it is. It’s row after row of white single-storey buildings rather like the HORSA huts that were installed in schools after the 1944 Education Act raised the school leaving age from 14 to 15. We had some at our school – the old Science block, the Woodworking room and the school canteen.

The nurse had a lot to say today but nothing of any relevance, and once he left, I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK

Today, we’re back on the Astronomy lessons, discussing the Tropical Year, the one that everyone recognises with 365.24219 days in it, the time the Sun takes to return to the same position relative to the seasons of the calendar year.

However, there is also what is called the “Sidereal Year”. This is the year relating to the time that the Earth takes to complete one full orbit around the Sun, and line up again in the same position with the same stars that were there at the start of the cycle. Although the stars are said to be in “precession” – meaning that they are moving very slowly to the West relative to the position of the Earth – apparently it’s the Earth’s axis that is slowly changing. The sidereal year is actually 20 minutes or so longer than the Tropical Year.

This will explain why there is so much coal to be found in the Antarctic – many millions of years ago the position of the earth would have been such that the Antarctic would have been in a temperate forest zone.

We are also discussing the Antikythera computer. It was only found a couple of years before Lockyer wrote his book and so it was even more of a puzzle then that it still is today. However he makes some very educated guesses as to what it might be and quite a few of his remarks have been confirmed subsequently.

He considers that it might be a device for measuring the precession of the stars as an aid to seagoing navigation. Modern thought certainly considers it to be for that purpose but not for use at sea. It’s suggested that it was part of a shipment of freight being taken from the workshops of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in Rhodes (he is known to have considered the very problems that the mechanism can predict, and the ship carried a load of other Rhodian produce) and the calendar details are in the Corinthian calendar, indicating therefore the likely destination of the ship

Back in here I sorted out a few things and then attacked the rest of my Welsh homework. And now all of that is finished and ready for a final check tomorrow before I send it off.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my patches and then I had to wait around for the taxi.

On the way to Avranches we had to pick up someone else at the hospital to take home down there, and despite the visit we arrived bang on time at the dialysis centre.

Unfortunately, so did six other people and I was last in the queue. However a Nursing Auxiliary brought me an ice-pack and I put it on my arm while I waited.

Eventually, I was plugged in. And with the ice-pack, it wasn’t as painful as it might have been. But it was still hours late.

And I had a visit this afternoon. Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see how I was. And although our chat was strictly professional, she did smile, which is certainly a change from just recently.
"Is there anything that you need?" she asked
"Actually, there is" I replied. "But I don’t think that the hospital will provide it."

One thing that I did though was to ask her that, in view of the fact that my water retention is less than it was before, whether they might reduce my dialysis time. She asked how long and I replied "much as I love you, reduce it to as short a time as possible.". She’ll “think about it” and look at my tests.

They came and took several measures with their electronic machine and, rather ominously, a form to fill in about my final directives “if necessary”.

Once I was unplugged and ready to leave, I was told that I would have to wait ten minutes for someone else to bring back. That ten minutes turned out to be half an hour, consequently it was 19:25 when I finally returned home and I can well do without that. My cleaner was fed up of waiting, but not half as fed up as I was.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, and I seem to have gone rather berserk with the stuffing today. I shall be eating that for the rest of the month, I reckon.

Now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to back everything up and go to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subjects of Space, the stars and planets … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was someone once abducted by aliens and promised a trip around the Galaxy to see the stars and the planets.
Just as he was settling down to enjoy the trip a voice boomed out on the tannoy system near his head. "you’re not going anywhere, young man, until you’ve tidied your room, taken out the rubbish and brought your coffee mugs to the kitchen"
"What a strange thing to say" I told him. "What on earth was that all about?"
"You wouldn’t believe it" he replied. "Only I could be abducted by aliens and somehow end up on board the Mother Ship"

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Sunday 23rd March 2025 – MY ORANGE, GINGER …

… and coconut cake is absolutely delicious, if it tastes anything like the mix that I sampled and the crumbs that broke off when I brought it out of the oven. The proof of the pudding is indeed in the eating and I’ll have to wait a couple of days before I start on it, so I’ll tell you more in a few days time.

So last night, after I’d finished my notes, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written during the week and then went to bed. It was only a few minutes after midnight too so with my Sunday morning lie-in until 08:00, I was looking forward to a decent sleep.

To be on the safe side, I’d found an old fleece jumper in the chest of drawers so in desperation I put that on before going to bed. And while I may well have awoken in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons, cold wasn’t one of them. For once just recently, I was quite comfortable in that respect.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that might incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. However, wherever I was and whatever I was doing evaporated completely from my mind and that was that.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

Not that I advanced very far because the nurse came round to sort me out. He had a lot to say for himself this morning but nothing of any importance, so I could crack on and make my breakfast, including some home-made orange juice and home-made apple and kiwi purée with home-made bread out of the toaster and porridge.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK and, unfortunately, Sir Norman Lockyer is tying himself up in knots.

Having criticised the builders of these stone monuments on the grounds of their uncivilised nature, to day he tells us that, according to Caesar "that in the schools of the Druids the subjects taught included the movements of the stars, the size of the earth, and the nature of things … Studies of such a character seem quite consistent with, and to demand, a long antecedent period of civilisation.".

He also talks about the stories that the Greek, Hecataeus, told of the Hyperboreans – "so called because they live beyond the point from which the North wind blows". That’s interesting to me at least because the early Polar explorers were convinced, for some reason, that there was a warm sea beyond the ice belt, a delusion that led so many of them to their deaths. I always wondered why it would be possible to believe such a thing but if the myth of the Hyperboreans really was believed, (and Hecataeus was convinced they and the Greeks had been in contact and that the Hyperboreans were "in general very friendly to the Greeks.’") that would explain everything.

There was a bap to make this morning so that I could have my cheese on toast for lunch. I made the mix rather wetter than in the past to see what happens and it was rather difficult to knead. But once it was made I left it to fester for a while.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. There was something about my youngest sister last night – I can’t remember exactly what it was but I wanted her to do something or to go somewhere and pick up something where I was. It took her a while to turn up and I can’t really remember any more about it because it’s another one of these dreams that evaporated away.

Just as well really. I don’t want my family loitering around my bedside during the night, that’s for sure

Later on, I started work being an Accompanier … "you mean ‘escort’" – ed … on a school bus in New Brunswick. I had to go to the local small town pick-up point to run a check on all of the pupils there. There were probably fifty children waiting there. Each of them wore a badge with their names, and several of them had changed their names and put “Bigfoot” there instead. After I’d reviewed all of the names I asked “how many Bigfoots have we here?”. Someone replied “well, there are five “. I replied “well, it’s New Brunswick, isn’t it? That will explain it”. Everyone burst out laughing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you could put everyone in New Brunswick, and in particular, Carleton County where my place is, into Tennessee and no-one, neither the New Brunswickers or the Tennesseans, would notice the difference. Much as I love that area of North America, western New Brunswick, Maine, Vermont, it is like going back seventy years in time. That’s probably why I like it.

Next, there was football. And I despair of Stranraer FC. Having played like a championship side last week and blown away so convincingly the leaders of their division, and away from home too, this weekend they were at home to the bottom club, played one of the worst games that I have ever seen them play, and lost 1-0.

These Jekyll-and-Hyde performances have to stop if they want to be serious about keeping their place in the league. Last season they had a lucky escape from demotion out of the League, and they haven’t really improved all that much.

And while we’re on the subject of demotion and relegation … "well, one of us is" – ed … the weekend’s results in the JD Cymru League mean that Aberstwyth are relegated, as predicted at the start of the season, and Y Fflint just need one point to be assured of staying up – and with three matches to go.

With Aberystwyth’s relegation, it means that Y Drenewydd are the only club to have been in the league for every year that it has been in existence, and they are looking by no means safe quite yet.

Next task was the radio. Last night I’d dictated the notes for eleventh track of a radio programme and so I edited them and joined everything up together. The whole lot over-ran by seven seconds but I always dictate stuff that can be edited out without disrupting the sense and the rhythm and that was soon accomplished.

Lunch was next and I do have to say that my bap was absolute perfection today, the best that I have ever made. I’m certain that my water measurer is inaccurate and that’s been the root of all of my problems. The air fryer baked it really well and made some lovely cheese on toast, even if it is vegan cheese.

This afternoon I attacked the next programme. Last night I’d dictated the notes for ten tracks and so I edited it all down and assembled it. Later on, I chose the eleventh track and wrote the notes for it ready for dictation next weekend.

After the disgusting drink break I set about making my cake.

It’s a standard oil cake of

  • one cup of flour
  • one cup of sugar
  • half a cup of hot water
  • half a cup of oil (I use 50% vegetable oil and 50% coconut oil)
  • half a teaspoon of baking powder
  • half a teaspoon of salt
  • one teaspoon of vanilla essence

to that I added

  • a couple of inches of ginger paste (Heaven only knows where my fresh ginger has gone
  • a teaspoon of ground ginger
  • a teaspoon of mixed spice
  • some desiccated coconut
  • an extra half-cup of flour
  • all of the orange pulp from which I had extracted the juice yesterday
  • some whizzed-up almonds and Brazil nuts

All of the dry stuff was whizzed up in my whizzer, then all of the wet stuff was added in and whizzed into the mix, and it was all then poured out into a lined cake tray and baked for 35 minutes at 180°C

While that was going on, the pizza dough that i’d taken from the freezer was defrosting. I made the pizza while the cake was baking and then popped it into the hot oven when the cake was done.

The pizza was perfection too, especially as I had remembered everything this week, for a change.

Now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think

But while we are talking about Bigfoot "well, one of us is" one of my friends in Crewe contacted me the other day and told me that there was a big, hairy monster running around Crewe scaring everyone.
"Crewe’s equivalent of Bigfoot, I suppose?" I asked
"Very probably" he replied "but here, he’s called ‘Big Thirty point Four-Eight Centimetres’"

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Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… freezing cold night last night when I had to leave the comfort of my stinking pit to put on my dressing gown and go back to bed. I’ve no idea what’s happening here but as I said yesterday, it’s completely the opposite of how things were even a week ago.

At least it wasn’t quite such a late night as it was the previous night. After midnight, I was still letting it all hang out, but not for long and I was glad to see the inside of my bed, where I fell asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though, because I froze again. And after awakening a couple of times I gave up and put in the dressing gown, and then went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I sat bolt upright and was out of bed in an instant. I’m not sure why because I certainly didn’t feel like it. It was another uncomfortable stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis – a wash and a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there, not that it makes any difference because she doesn’t love me any more.

There was also some washing to do, including the bedding from last week that my cleaner changed. And as you might already have guessed, there’s still some washing left to do that I couldn’t fit into the machine

In the kitchen I had some things to do. There were six oranges that were definitely looking the worse for wear so I whizzed them up in my whizzer and filtered out the juice.

There’s a load of whizzed-up pulp now so what I plan to do is to make an orange, ginger and coconut oilcake and put all of the orange pulp in it. It might not work but if it does, it will certainly be different

The nurse came round and told me a few of the details about the funeral yesterday. He also asked for my medical card, that I don’t have, so he searched through the apartment too and couldn’t find it. I did tell him….

For breakfast I had some diluted fresh orange juice and some of my home-made apple and kiwi purée with my porridge and toast made of home-made bread. And it was all beautiful too. That’s what I call a good breakfast.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK. Our astronomy lessons are continuing and we’re still discussing different New Years, but we’re now coming round to the more practical aspects of what we have learned so far.

He’s come up with some surprising facts, including the fact that there are many similarities of religious and cultural practices between the Ancient Egyptians and some of the contemporary races of Central America. I wonder if this book is where Thor Heyerdahl found his ideas that led him on his adventures in papyrus and balsawood rafts

Going back to the story about various New Years, of which there are more than just a few scattered around the globe, the English New Year was the 25th March until 1752, and it still is for Income Tax purposes, although with the change of calendar, also in 1752 when England lost 11 days to bring it into alignment with everywhere else, The Income Tax New Year is 6th April these days.

Back in here I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe from last night. There was something going on about one of the earliest airports and airfields in Wales, created in the early 20th Century by someone who was wandering around there looking for something special. He came across a very flat piece of land that people were using from which to fly some kind of primitive machines. He was immediately captivated by this and went back to London to create the idea of having the first airport in Wales based on this particular site in the hills.

And if someone could find a flat place in the Welsh hills big enough to build an airport they will be doing well.

There was also an article that I saw in something that I’d written about Granville being the site of one of the very first ports for armed reconnaissance in the New World. But as I looked at it I saw that it was a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent. I wondered whether it had been a dream that I’d written down some time or other in the past without thinking about it and had come across it again. It certainly made no sense, but on the other hand it was a lot of truth in what I’d written.

As it happens, unlikely though it might seem, there was a famous corsair authorised by the French Government who sailed out of Granville, Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley, whose statue is just down the road from here. But “a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent” – my dreams “certainly made no sense”. Perish the thought, hey?

And later still, I went out around Brussels with Zero’s father. We’d come past one of the supermarkets so I suggested that we go there and do some shopping for me while we are out. Eventually we found a car park after several wrong turnings but I didn’t have my disabled car badge and there was nowhere to park really close to the supermarket door so I had to stagger all the way over to the supermarket. We found a parking place right outside but for some reason he didn’t go to fetch the car. We went to go in but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my crutches. I was finding it extremely difficult to move. I could see that this is going to be extremely difficult if I didn’t have my crutches with me to be able to move about in the supermarket, or anywhere for that matter.

Zero’s father? But no Zero. That’s a disappointment. And how I would like to be able to stagger somewhere without my crutches, difficult or not. However, I recognise this supermarket. It’s one that I’ve been to in Canada in the pouring rain, but I can’t remember where it is now, apart from the fact that it’s in Québec.

Back in here I had a few things to do and I was in the middle thereof when I was interrupted by my cleaner who had come to fit my patches. And while she was here I went to answer my telephone and there in the pouch inside the case was my medical card. However it managed to find its way there I really don’t know.

The taxi at lunchtime was driven by a very garrulous driver and we had an interesting chat all the way to Avranches.

At Avrenches they put an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and then went to connect me up. And while it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as some have in the recent past.

No-one bothered me at all today so I watched the highlights of last night’s football, carried out a few tasks that have been meaning to do, and then cut up a few sound-bytes. But the travelling laptop is not the quickest machine in the World and it takes forever.

After they unplugged me it was the same taxi driver who brought me home and we had another interesting chat coming home. My cleaner was waiting for me and we went through the medication and made a list of what I need, seeing as we now have a medical card to take to the Pharmacy.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, salad and one of the breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, seeing as I have now run out of baps for my vegan burgers. Maybe I ought to experiment and make some myself

So now I have radio notes to dictate and then I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow there will be the notes to edit and my orange, ginger and coconut cake to make. I’ve some pizza dough left for tomorrow night and I’m using up the bread that is in the freezer right now to make some space.

But seeing as we have been talking about Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not very well-known that he and his corsairs sailed occasionally with a group of pirates.
One day, in company with the pirates, his corsairs came across a British ship that, after a spirited fight, they managed to seize.
They rounded up all the British crew and upon doing a headcount, found that there were two missing, so the pirates and corsairs searched the ship for them and eventually dragged them out of hiding.
Later on, back in London the two men were interviewed by the Admiralty about their capture.
"How was it that you were captured?" said the First Sea Lord to the first one.
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the pirates"
"And you?" he asked the other one
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the … errr … other ruffians"

0

Friday 21st March 2025 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight. Mind you – this time it’s for a very good reason. Hwlffordd, third in the table, are playing Penybont, second, and need a win quite badly if they are to take second place. Normally, these days, I wouldn’t watch it until tomorrow afternoon at dialysis but this is a crucial match that I can’t really miss.

It’ll probably end up being later than last night’s, anyway. For a change, I was in bed not long after midnight once I’d finished everything that I had to do. And although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

It was another freezing cold night and I was chilled to the marrow. In fact I grabbed hold of my dressing gown and put it on in bed and went back to sleep, feeling a little warmer.

And that’s surprising me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the very recent past I’ve been sweating buckets and feeling so hot in bed that it’s unbelievable. Right now though, for the last couple of days it’s been exactly the opposite. So what’s happening here then?

Once I was asleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off and then a very weary me staggered to his feet and wandered off into the bathroom.

After a good wash and tidy up I went for the medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night. Some woman was talking to someone from the northern part of the USA about things that had been going on in a chat group. The person replied that it wasn’t actually things in general but a few specific occasions where people had been adopting some kind of strange attitude and coming out with some unusual comments. He couldn’t explain anything about them but he did mention that he was very friendly on line with a girl from Oregon. She was possibly the latest person to take part in this strange way of talking and using strange words and so on. He gave a couple of examples of things that she had said but they weren’t particularly complimentary.

That reminds me of a group of people with whom I used to hang around back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we all talked in clichés. You would never ever hear someone say "it’s over there" without someone else replying "what? Behind the rabbit?"

Or when someone needed to find out how heavy something is the answer would always be "we shall use my largest scales"

There were thousands of quotes like that that filtered all the way through everyday conversation back in those days, and many of them still hang around today but for the most part, it’s a form of communication that has become very exclusive because there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

These days, in general, a sense of humour is non-existent. I remember a fellow student, in despair after an “exchange” with an American, created a spoof web site with the University logo on it for a course entitled, “Understanding Irony” and pushed it into the USA. Not only did he have several applicants, his point was proven rather more dramatically than he intended because the University, which also didn’t have a sense of humour and would have benefited from his course, threatened him with all kinds of sanctions if he didn’t take down the site.

Later on in the night I had Crewe Alexandra v Barrow. Barrow, who were bottom of the league, put up a really stubborn existence but Crewe ended up overwhelming them and scoring in a late goal. As a result, Crewe won the championship, probably the first actual championship that they have won, and Barrow were relegated to the National League. Even so, many of the commentators were in admiration of Barrow’s determined style of play and their determination to hold on to win a point at all costs

Earlier in the season Crewe Alexandra were pushing for the leadership of the table and Barrow were down in the depths. But a look in the table just now shows that the Alex have slid down somewhat and Barrow have found some form and climbed up. So this is one dream that won’t be coming true – just like all the rest, I suppose.

The nurse is off to a funeral this morning so I told him to pass on my condolences to the family of the deceased. It’s for one of the guys with whom I used to travel to dialysis. He passed away last Saturday.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’re still in the introductory basic astronomy lesson, discussing the various calculations of different New Years and, would you believe, mistletoe

Nevertheless I sat rather bolt-upright when I read his remark "It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then—townless, uncivilised — that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations".

Surely, if man had stopped being a hunter-gatherer and had settled down to a sedentary life to pursue agriculture, that must mean that they have stopped competing with each other and are learning to co-operate. And is it not the embracing of co-operation between human beings a sign that humans have become civilised?

Back in here I made a start on the Woodstock programmes and by the time I’d finished I had all of the music for Friday and Saturday, all edited, remixed and ready to go. Mind you, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage to fit one hour and twenty-two minutes of music plus all of the accompanying speech into a one-hour time slot on the Saturday

Tomorrow, if I have a moment spare, I shall have to do the music for the Sunday and see how much I have for that.

Some of the notes have already been written and I can work my way through the rest as I go along.

My cleaner turned up today and between us we have still not managed to find my medical card. This is going to become a problem if I’m not careful. I can’t think where it might be. I’ve put it somewhere safe and so that will be that.

That reminds me of life down on the farm. I’d see something on special offer and think that i’ll need that for a renovation in six months time, but it’s such a good price that it’s well worth buying it now. So I’d buy it, put it somewhere to keep it safe and when I came round to need it, I could never ever find it again.

Tea tonight was a very quick salad, veggie nuggets and chips, and then back here for the football.

Hwlffordd took off at a very rapid rates of knots and scored an early goal, but then Penybont roared back upfield and scored an equaliser almost immediately.

Having played at 100 mph for the first 20 minutes or so, Hwlffordd seemed to run out of steam and they became less concerned with attacking and more concerned with retaining possession, to such an extent that it became embarrassing at times. It goes without saying that Penybont scored a second late in the game and even so, Hwlffordd still didn’t show any sign of urgency

You don’t score goals if you don’t attack and Hwlffordd are one of the lowest-scoring teams in the league. Their defence is (usually) excellent but their lack of effort to move the ball quickly upfield and to find a striker who can score goals is going to cost them in the long run.

So now I’ll do the washing up and then go to bed. Washing clothes, making orange juice, and dialysis are on the agenda tomorrow.

But yesterday, we were having a discussion about light bulbs … "well, one of us was" – ed …
This morning a friend of mine in Germany asked me "how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "How many does it take?"
"None" she replied. "German light bulbs are engineered correctly and so never ever need changing. And anyway, Germans don’t have a sense of humour."

0

Thursday 20th March 2025 – A GREAT BIG …

… thanks to Julie the Cook who reunited me with the power cable for the travelling laptop this afternoon. Consequently, it’s all systems go again and I can go back to reading MY NEW BOOK. It’s been a very long few days without any reading matter at mealtime.

However, despite the absence of anything to read and consequently finishing my meals early, it was still a frightfully late night last night, even later than usual. In fact it was after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. What started off as listening to thirty-one and a half minutes or so of NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE – arguably the greatest jamband music track ever recorded, Felix Pappalardi (Cream’s producer and later murdered by his wife) on bass, and things just snowballed from there.

It was freezing during the night too. I forget how many times I awoke shivering in bed. And that’s a shame because having a nice clean bed in which to sleep, thanks to my faithful cleaner, I was hoping to spend many comfortable hours in it, but it wasn’t to be.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and it was a very weary, bedraggled me who staggered to his feet and off into the bathroom for a wash and shave.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And what a lovely surprise! Zero was there last night. I was round at her home. We all decided that we were going to go somewhere so it was a question of piling into the car. I imagined that i’d be sitting in the back seat with her so I was quite looking forward to the trip but when I reached the car she was sitting on the front passenger seat next to her father and I was obviously intended to go to sit on the seat at the back. But her mother and someone else there, they were teasing Zero terribly and I was really disappointed and annoyed to see it. In fact, I said something and finished by saying “at the end of the day, if you are fed up, you can come and sit on the back seat next to me” but I awoke before the dream became interesting.

Castor and even TOTGA may well have fallen off the edge of the nocturnal World but it’s lovely to see Zero again. I wish that she would make more appearances these days in whatever I’m up to during the night. However I shall refrain from mentioning fairies and the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in case my remarks are misconstrued. However, my subconscious is keeping me out of any suggestion of mischief again by keeping us apart. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether all of these nights where my family has intervened just as I am about to Get The Girl isn’t actually my subconscious sending out warning signals to me. It’s usually pretty good like that in real life so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were to do that in the nocturnal World.

At 08:15 I went to prepare myself for the taxi to arrive, in the absence of the nurse, and he appeared out of the woodwork just as I had finished putting on my second sock. So he went home with a flea in his ear.

Now that I’ve been to the opticians, I realise why it is that I didn’t understand where it was. It’s been so long since I’ve been out and about that where the optical clinic is, it was a shop the last time I saw it.

They gave me all kinds of tests, including squirting air into my eyes, and the result is that while my eyesight is not exactly what it should be and glasses could be prescribed if I wanted, they aren’t going to make too much of a difference. That’s good news in a way because I had laser surgery on my eyes in 1997 and whatever they did is still holding up

That was a very interesting situation, that. I was driving my boss back from Luxembourg when a small stone thrown up by a lorry on the other carriageway came through my open window and hit me in the eye. Without thinking, I rubbed it of course.

The cornea was damaged and needed surgery, and because it was an industrial accident the surgery was covered 100%. So just repair the damage, or go the whole hog in both eyes?

After my eyes had healed and I went back to work, the first job was to take the lorry down to Vienna. I really used to get out and about in those days.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr .. apartment I had a late breakfast with still no book as yet, and then came back in here. There wasn’t much time for anything because it was already late and my cleaner came along to fit my patches.

The taxi was early again but there was someone else to pick up and drop off on the way so I wasn’t all that early.

After Julie the Cook found my cable for me, she plugged me in to my machine, and it was back to the old painful moments again.

The dietician came to see me today and asked me about the food that i’m eating. She seems to be surprised at how little I am eating – I thought that I was eating quite a lot. She recommends that as of now I take two disgusting drinks every day because my protein level is falling rapidly.

But having talked at great length about my vegan diet, she asked me "which snack do you take from the trolley in mid-afternoon with your coffee?"
My reply was "which one of them is vegan?"
"Ohh yes"

And I really despair of modern humanity. Who needs a calculator to be able to work out that if you drink about 2 litres of milk a week, roughly how much do you drink per day? And if you eat 600 grammes of bread per week, what’s your daily intake?

After she left I had plenty of things to do, like update the travelling laptop and begin to hack a few very long sound-bytes into some more manageable sizes ready to edit one of these days. I’m trying to cope with all of the work outstanding while I’m at dialysis but it just seems to be making more

Another thing that I did was to have a look through Amazon and see what I would like to have in the kitchen of my new apartment – fittings and the like. I didn’t treat myself to a Christmas or birthday present because I want to spend the money to make my kitchen nice and easy in which to work.

The taxi was waiting to take me (and my travelling laptop power lead) back home and I was here for about 18:45. And then we had a panic because my medical card is not in my wallet where it ought to be. And that’s the trouble. Everything has to have its place and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. I shall have to turn the place upside-down tomorrow.

Tea tonight was the last of my vegan pies with steamed veg. Last week’s veg was something of a disappointment so instead of the microwave steamer I used the electric steamer and that worked so much better.

It’s only a low wattage thing but I used that down on the farm when there was an excess charge in the batteries and it worked really well. I used to have an enamel one that sits on the stove and I made good use of that in winter, but I gave that to Ingrid as a present for helping me pack the van when I moved to Leuven in 2016.

I had my book to read tonight at long last, and we have been discussing Anaximander. He was one of the earliest founders of modern geometry and geography and was one of the earliest people to realise that because of the rotation of the sun, the planets and the stars around the sky, the earth is actually in the centre of the universe with sky all around it rather than being a flat disk with the sky only above it.

However, his theory that the earth was a cylinder with humanity on the flat bit at the top was rather wide of the mark. It was apparent even in those days that the earth was round.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I’m Woodstocking tomorrow and hoping to find my medical card, wherever that may be.

Seeing as we have been talking about Anaximander and his theories … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "how many Londoners does it take to change a lightbulb"
"I don’t know" she replied. "How many does it take?"
"Only one" I replied. "They just hold the lightbulb up and wait for the World to turn around them"

0

Wednesday 19th March 2025 – MONDAY THE FIFTH …

… of May is when I’m being summoned to Paris to hear the news about the results of the tests that I had a while back.

Obviously it can’t be all that serious if they are letting me wait six weeks to hear the news. France is not like the UK where they give you fictitious appointments two years hence and hope that you die before you have to attend and find out that the appointment didn’t really exist in the first place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning how horrified and disappointed the professor at Leuven was when she told me at my cancer consultation nine years ago that she couldn’t find me a hospital bed for four … days.

And so May the Fourth be with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’ll hit the road the next day, presumably after having the dialysis in the morning instead of the afternoon.

But if they are talking about me having dialysis while I’m there, it means that I’ll be there for the Thursday at least.

One thing that will be certain, and that is that I’ll be in bed early when I’m there. I might not even leave it for the whole day. That has to be an improvement on how things are around here just now. It was another 00:30 retirement last night. I’m not sure how many of those there have been just recently but it looks as if 00:30 has become the new 23:00 these days

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly again and although I have a vague memory of something happening in the middle of the night, I didn’t move until I awoke at about 06:00.

Lying there festering for a while I thought "I may as well raise myself from the Dead rather than loiter around here" but the next thing that I knew, the alarm was ringing. I’d apparently gone back to sleep.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and found water all over the floor again. But there will be more news about this later.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I started out with Laurence and Roxanne. We’d gone to some kind of informal concert where everyone would be sitting around the entertainers rather than sitting formally in a theatre or something. We turned up and Roxanne went to sit down at the front with all the other children. I found a seat and Laurence came to sit down next to me. I put my arm around her but as soon as I did that she stood up and went to sort something out for Roxanne. She then came back and I went to put my arm around her again but then she stood up to do something else. It went on like this for half an hour until finally she came to sit down. She explained to me that she wasn’t very happy about me putting my arm around her. I couldn’t understand why because that was what I normally did but she was quite adamant that she wasn’t happy about it. I was beginning to think that for all the good that i’m doing here I may as well go outside and go for a walk on my own to settle down a little and calm down before something that went on that I might well regret in the future.

Amongst her other accomplishments, Roxanne was learning to play the harp during her Wednesday afternoon school music session. When we were out in Pionsat at the chateau once we saw an advert for a harp concert. We wandered off to find some tickets but it was completely sold out, much to Roxanne’s dismay. However, we saw a woman struggling to take a giant harp out of her car. “Clearly the harpist” I thought, and so did Roxanne. She told me how disappointed she was about not seeing her play so I told her not to tell me, but to go and tell the woman. So off she went, eight years old, and was chatting away to this woman for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was clutching three complimentary tickets in her sweaty little mitt.

Laurence used to say things like “I ought to change my name to ‘pense-à-tout‘” – ‘think of everything’ – “because no-one else ever remembers anything”. My answer to that was “and Roxanne ought to change her name to ‘reponse-à-tout‘” – “an answer for everything”.

Later on I was at a rock festival last night with Paul Rodgers of Free and some and some singer, I can’t remember. We’d formed a group for the occasion and had rehearsed fifteen songs. When it came to the night it was our turn to go on stage and make everyone listen. I had a little problem with my drum kit at the time so the guitarist simply began to play something to quieten down the audience. After I’d fetched my bass guitar and plugged it in I worked out what key we were in and played in accordance with that and It went much better. But there were only three railway stations, those on the Wirral that need to be changes in any question at all …fell asleep here …

Leaving aside the obvious point that Paul Rodgers was the singer of Free – it was David Kossof who was the guitarist – and what I would be doing with a drum kit, that’s another mystery. However that dream petered out into Heaven alone knows what before it became interesting.

Today’s issue with the nurse was that he objects to having to be here before the taxi comes at 08:30 to take me for the eye examination. I ought to book his friend for a precise time to take me in time for the appointment. But leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t me who booked this taxi but the dialysis centre, regular readers of this rubbish will recall his friend’s attitude to problems – “lie through your teeth”. That’s not the service that I want.

Breakfast was next – no book again today due to the lack of a power lead for the computer – so I was back in here quite quickly. I took advantage of the extra time by looking for a computer power transformer and cable (which I don’t have) and then beginning what is going to be a long process of tidying up the place, checking what I have, checking what I need etc for when I finally move downstairs, whenever that might be.

Today has been spent working on a radio programme. I’ve had to skip two programmes because they relate to concerts and I can fit those in whenever I have some free time … "when is that?" – ed … Consequently I’ve been working on 23rd January 2026, if that’s not too far ahead.

By the time I knocked off today I’d hunted down some tracks that I needed that I didn’t have, converted, reformatted and remixed them, paired them and segued them and written all of the text ready to dictate on Saturday night.

That was despite the disgusting drink break, the midday medication, my cleaner being here and not forgetting my wonderful shower. But how I’m looking forward to being downstairs when I can have a shower whenever I like – once the bathroom is converted.

But I mentioned the water all over the floor earlier. My cleaner noticed that the handle on my water jug is broken and there’s a crack down the back of the jug. So that’s something else to replace. I’d better spend Thursday afternoon going through Amazon seeing what I need for the new apartment and send off an order for bits and pieces like that.

Something else that happened today concerns the project in the UK about which I spoke towards the end of last year. It’s well under way and my friend who is in charge of things sent me the first photo of what has been going on and how it is going to look when it’s complete. And I’m impressed with this, that’s for sure.

If it carries on like this, I shall be well-pleased, even if it has cost me an arm and a leg to have it done.

Tea tonight was of course a left-over curry with naan and as usual, it really was delicious. The naan wasn’t as good as last eek’s though – that really was exceptional

Tomorrow I have the optician. With dialysis apparently, it’s important to have the eyes checked every six months or so with all the changes that are going on.

But while we’re on the subject of harps … "well, one of us is" – ed … Roxanne once dressed herself up for a fancy-dress party, so I asked her what her costume was supposed to be
"I’m dressing myself up to be a harp" she replied
"That can’t be a harp costume. It’s far too small" I replied.
She looked at me sternly. "Are you calling me a lyre?"

0

Tuesday 18th March 2025 – THEY HAVE HAD …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 17TH March 2025 – SOMEONE I KNOW ..

… IS GOING THE RIGHT WAY FOR A SMACKED BOTTOM AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.

She’ll know all about it though when I see her next. When I took the travelling laptop out of my bag when I arrived home from dialysis, "where’s the power lead?". One of the nurses had packed my bag for me while I was being weighed, hadn’t she?

It goes without saying that it’s my own fault for not checking but even so, I have every right to be annoyed by it. If I have another power lead for it around here, then all well and good but I’m not convinced that I have. I shall have to turn out a cupboard or two tomorrow morning.

It’s strange really that all these little things that come along seem to have such a dramatic effect. It’s like that old kiddies’ poem FOR WANT OF A NAIL.

The dramatic effect that relates to going to bed early is that it has been abandoned. It was another 00:30 night last night when I suppose, had I exerted myself, I could have been in bed much earlier. But after I’d finished writing my notes and backing up the computer I loitered around for a while, not really doing all that much.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I lay without moving until the alarm went off. I was away on my travels at that point but everything immediately evaporated.

Anyway, I was out of bed quite quickly for a change and then headed off to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up, a shave and a wash of the undies so that I’m all clean for dialysis this afternoon

In the kitchen I remembered to take my medicine this morning, seeing as I had apparently forgotten yesterday – both lots – and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. I fell asleep as soon as I went to bed and was dreaming about doing some 3D modelling with people and objects but when I awoke a little later it had all disappeared.

Not that I remember awakening, as I mentioned earlier. I hope that whatever it was, it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA, Zero or Moonchild.

And then I was somewhere in some village and had to put a huge flower pot outside on the street corner. Having manoeuvred it outside, the only way that I could manoeuvre it down the street was by going underneath it, raising up part of the roof with the back of my head and walking with the flower pot pivoting on the ground on just one part of the circle of the base. And so I set off like that. There were a few other people in the street. There was one woman putting the rubbish out, another one putting something else out, some kind of street furniture that she put out in front of the house opposite across the road. I carried on walking with this flower pot thing in a peculiar hunched-up position. I came to the restaurant on the corner and a little girl disappeared inside. I had a look in the window but couldn’t see her. After I dropped off the trousers to this …fell asleep here… I took a piece of cloth that was similar, I suppose, to what she was wearing and I forget what I did with it. I went into the restaurant. There was a girl whom I knew there who was sitting talking to another girl whom I also knew. I wondered what they were talking about

There aren’t half some strange goings-on when I’m asleep, that’s for sure. That particular dream seems to relate to nothing at all. But there’s too much of this falling asleep and dreams evaporating. I really do hope that I’m not missing anything exciting.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up earlier than usual today. Seeing as it’s her final day before her rest I had half-expected her to be snowed under with blood tests and injections before her oppo takes over tomorrow.

She brought me some very bad news about another patient of hers with whom I have travelled to dialysis. He won’t be going there again, unfortunately. That’s two of my fellow passengers who have disappeared and I’ve only been going six months. It’s the fate that awaits every single one of us, I suppose.

After she left I made breakfast and BEGAN TO read MY NEW BOOK.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or so ago we read THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY by Sir Norman Lockyer, in which he discusses the alignment of Egyptian temples and pyramids with the stars, the moon and the sun.

His follow-up book applies the same principles to Stonehenge and other early British monuments and it sounds as if it’s going to be totally fascinating.

So far though, we’re having a basic lesson in the principles of astronomy, to set the scene, and that’s interesting too. So much so that I checked the book list and noticed that he had written a book called ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY. It goes without saying that I’ve tracked down a copy and downloaded it to my reading list for later perusal.

Back in here I did half of my homework for my Welsh lesson. I’ll do the other half next week. It couldn’t be finished off today because it involves something that we are going to be doing in class tomorrow.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and we chatted for a while before she wandered off again. I waited for the taxi which was late today.

It was a chatty female driver who had taken me before and we had an entertaining drive down to Avranches. Several of us arrived at the same time and so I had to wait.

Coupling up was relatively painless today and then I was left alone for quite a while. I could revise my Welsh, update the computer from the back-up and I can’t remember what I did after that. It can’t have been important.

What interrupted my train of thought was a whole list of items. My cleaner contacted me to say that they won’t serve me with any more patches. The clinic has changed it to cream only. And so I had a dispute with the doctor about that and he rewrote my prescription.

The nurse brought me some papers for the optician’s on Thursday morning and then my machine began to play up

Other news is that they have reset my target weight and I’m now going to be (hopefully) 1kg lighter, and that suits me fine. It seems that the water retention is still there but my underlying weight is reducing. In fact I’m only 1.5kg above my “non-athletic weight” these days if I could lose the water.

After I’d been uncoupled I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi and a very taciturn driver brought me home. This was when I discovered the problem with the travelling laptop cable.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now it’s bedtime ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow.

But seeing as we are talking about packing … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me about the visit of the auditors to the parachute-packing company.
He was going through the books and asked "in which account do you note the parachutes that have been returned due to incorrect packing?"
"We don’t" said the cashier. "I’ve worked here for forty years and in all that time no-one has ever brought one back to say that it didn’t work correctly."

0

Sunday 16th March 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today and have hardly stopped at all. I could do with a few more days like that, except that almost none of it was to do with any of the work that has been building up in here.

It actually started last night when, after finishing off my notes and doing the back-ups, I recorded the notes that I wrote for the radio programme that I began last week, and also for the final track for the previous week.

That took me up to just after midnight and it wasn’t many minutes after that that I was in bed, underneath the bedclothes.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 (it’s lie-in day today) I was already sitting on the edge of the bed. I had beaten the alarm, not by many seconds, it’s true, but nevertheless I’m going to claim it as an early start all the same. They all count.

After a good wash I came back in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes while I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

She was late again – even later than usual, but she brought with her the photos and videos of her Carnaval float and costumes. They did a really good job again and it was quite impressive. The way some of the owners of the floats let themselves go with their designs and lampooning of politicians, local and national, should be an inspiration for other countries to let themselves loose.

After she left I made a late breakfast and read MY BOOK. And it’s now finished, ready for the next one to start tomorrow.

Our author, having explored the effects on Christianity is summing up and tells us that he considers that the folklore that existed in many rural communities until fairly modern times is not Celtic but belongs to the Brythonic people whole the Celts found when they arrived here.

He quotes the mystery and mysticism that surrounded it that the Celts, whom Caesar encountered, told him all of the rumours and fairy-tales that litter Caesar’s writings. That may well be the case because Pytheas, who voyaged around the British Isles in the 4th Century BC, presumably met some of the Brythonic peoples in their coastal outposts before the Celts arrived, and he told similar (but not identical) stories.

Gomme states further that he considers that the Celts and the Brythonic people lived side-by-side, with the Celts in their tribal settlements and the Brythonic people in their rural villages, and there they stayed. But we’ve seen anthropological evidence that there was very little, if any, mixing of the people, and all of the later Brythonic human remains were found in caves, hinting that they may probably have been in hiding out of the way of the marauding Celts.

Furthermore, many of these magnificent hill-forts that we saw earlier date from round about 500-400BC – the time that the Celts were beginning to arrive in Britain. That doesn’t look to me like anything like people living side by side at all, It looks like defenders living in total fear and panic.

And so,even though it was a very interesting and thought-provoking book that made quite a number of good points and taught me quite a lot, as far as the contact between the Brythonic and Celtic people, and indeed the Celtic people and the subsequent Saxon people, I’m still going for defeat and extermination.

There was bread to make after breakfast – a bread roll for lunch. With the air fryer, it’s much easier to dash off a roll like this rather than go for a batch in the big oven. So I ran up 100 grams of flour and made a dough, leaving it to fester.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night. I was in a strange town and fancied going to the swimming baths. I turned up, paid for my entry and went in, changed and went through the double doors. It was the smallest room that you could imagine. There was some clear tiled flooring and there was a shower tray that was probably big enough to fit ten people. That was the bath, just one shower head. I thought “how disappointing this is for having spent this money to come for a swim. Nevertheless, people began to arrive. I thought “they probably enjoy it” and made ready to leave. Just as I was about to step out of the door, the room made a really funny noise and began to move. I looked out and the room was turning round through 90°. At the end of its cycle it coupled up to something. I had a look through another door. There was a huge Olympic-quality swimming pool there with cafés, shops, a swimming costume shop, everything like that. I was obviously in the ante-room where you showered before going into the water. At opening time the room simply spun round and connected up with the main pool. I was ever so impressed. I had a listen to the conversations of some of these people talking about what they had been doing, where they had been, what swimming clothes they had bought. It was really interesting.

When I was driving coaches I’d often go to the swimming baths to relax when I was away on a tour. When I lived in the Auvergne I looked forward to my Saturday afternoon swim at Neris-les-Bains and later at the new pool at Commentry. But my worst-ever encounter with a swimming baths was in Loretteville, a short distance from the city of Québec where I froze to death in water that was, if I remember correctly, 11°C. I must have been out of my mind, but there again I’d been living in a car for two weeks so it was not before time that I washed.

Later on I’d just been uploading a file to my computer, watching it, and it was going up, 20,000 items, 30,000 items and still going on. I was wondering how long it was going to take before it loaded. It was only supposed to be one item that I was adding.

And how many times have I, instead of deleting a single file, deleted a whole directory instead and had to go scurrying off to the recycle bin.

Later on, I’d been in a pub in Audlem. I asked if they had something to eat, but apparently not. I explained that i’d been on the road all day and was desperate to try to find something. In the end she suggested that I could make a sandwich if I had some bread, but I didn’t have any. She took me over to a corner where an old man was asleep. She said “see what he has”. I opened his bag thinking that there were some fish and chips in there but there was a loaf of bread which of course I couldn’t touch – the loaf of bread of someone else. A guy came over and gave me a set of keys. he said “take my tractor, there’s a blue Massey Ferguson, and go down this road. It’s called Cegidfa Road but it goes nowhere near Cegidfa and that should take you to the shop if you do a zig-zag as you go down”. I climbed into the tractor and set off but ended up in a completely different town so I climbed out and walked down a street of old, decaying, crumbling terraced houses with water cascading off the roofs etc. I suddenly found myself standing next to this really big, heavy stone wall. I wondered what it was so I looked round behind it and it was like a forest but with bits of building and bits of equipment and an old, decayed toilet in there. I saw a poster that said that this was the old RASC Stafford military base. Regretting that I didn’t have a camera I set off to go back to the tractor. But there was some discussion going on about how in view of the increased tension in the World and talking about National Service there is just not the infrastructure in the UK for supporting the National Service any more with all of the military depots that have been closed and wound down, some sold off, the rest abandoned. If they were to have a general call-out for one day it would be absolute chaos and totally impossible

This deserted and abandoned camp reminded me very much like Camp B70, the civilian internment camp at Ripples in New Brunswick that WE VISITED IN 2011. And it’s true that, having lived for so long under the shade of the American umbrella, Europe is totally uprepared for war. Regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier guise will remember the endless disputes that I had with the Finnish General in charge of the EU’s military force, trying to steel the force into filling the power vacuum that was developing in the World at the end of the 20th Century.

Later on, down the coast towards St Pair I’d met some British people who had a house right on the seafront. I’d come down from London. I wasn’t quite sure exactly whattheir game was but they were rather shady characters, I suspected. I was out with them one day. We’d been to some kind of do and there had been a buffet there. They told me where I could find something to eat. I went to the table to ask what they had but they didn’t really have anything. I had a coffee in a plastic mug so they poured it into a glass mug and they charged me £0:40, or €0:40. All I had was a £5:00 note so I paid with it and they gave it all back in change. I went and sat down and began to talk.
Shortly later we found ourselves in their house. It’s a big rambling house but so untidy, the garden was full of rubbish and the room in which we were sitting was full of paint tins, people and objects, all DiY stuff etc, paper everywhere. They were talking about all kinds of things, saying that they had a job available for someone who wanted it. I suggested “why don’t we write down on a piece of paper all the skills that we are all good at doing and we can see what we can do”. They thought that that was a funny idea but I thought it an excellent one. In the end they all dispersed and I was sitting there having a think when a girl came in. She asked me if that job had been taken. I replied “as far as I’m aware it’s still going”. She wondered what she could do about it so I told her “why don’t you ask?”. The woman of this house then came in to say that they were all planning to go off to London for a concert or something or other. I said “I’d like to go too”. She replied “you can go in a car with someone and the rest of us will have to go in the buses”. We began to think about preparing to go. I began to have this really uncomfortable feeling about this situation. It’s nice to meet people and it’s nice to be friends and to be involved in things but this was simply far too shady a situation in which I should be involved.

And this reminds me of the “Pink Palace” – that place where I stayed while I was waiting for the previous occupier to move out of “Reyers” when I’d bought it, so that I could move in, back in 1994. That house was a huge house with many single rooms, each one occupied as a kind-of pied-à-terre by single British businessmen when they came to do business in Brussels. That was a very happy three months and I learned a great deal from those people.

Having dealt with the dictaphone I sat back and watched Stranraer totally demolish league-leaders East Fife up in Methil. 3-0 was the final scoreline and it was not undeserved. What I wish though, having seen the dismal displays against Clyde and Forfar, is that they could do this every week.

Next task was to edit the radio notes that I had dictated. But I was nowhere anything like even halfway through when I had to break off for lunch

My bread roll was perfect, my cheese on toasted bread roll exquisite, and I ate it in here, something that I vowed never to do, but today it was because of the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

Cambrian United are seventh in the second tier and have had better seasons than this, and today they have the unenviable task of facing runaway Premier League leaders TNS, fresh from their triumphs in European competition

For the first five or so minutes the team from Tonypandy took the game to TNS but when TNS scored their inevitable first goal, the heads went down and the floodgates opened. At half-time the score was 5-0 and it looked as if we were going to be heading for an embarrassing scoreline.

However, I don’t know what the Cambrian manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a swig of that myself, because it was a different game in the second half. Cambrian were much more relaxed and played some neat football. They kept TNS out for the rest of the game (although I suspect that TNS could have changed up a gear had it been necessary) and had a few chances of their own. Had the referee seen the foul by McGahey on Tim Parker as he was one-on-one with Connor Roberts in the TNS goal, TNS would have finished the game with ten men.

After the final whistle there was bread to make as I have run out (well, I haven’t – there’s some in the freezer but it can stay there for now). It was another sunflower seed loaf, and I set the dough off and left it to rise.

While it was doing its stuff, I had some over-ripe fruit here, apples and kiwis. I’m right of my fruit at the moment so I made a batch of apple and kiwi purée to have at breakfast with half of the stuff. I’ll make some more later on with the rest.

There’s also some oranges that I can’t seem to eat (my taste buds changed dramatically a few weeks ago when I was ill) so when the current breakfast orange juice is finished, I’ll experiment with the liquidiser attachment on my food processor and make some fresh orange juice.

The bread was excellent and my pizza (I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier) was perfect too. In fact, all of today’s baking etc seemed to have gone very well. It killed my legs though, standing up, and when I move downstairs I’ll have one of these screwable stools that I can raise the height of the seat.

But now I’m going to bed. I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow and do half of my Welsh homework too ready for Tuesday’s lesson. We’re cracking on with our Welsh course but we won’t be anywhere near finishing it by the end of the year and it’s going to over-run.

But while we are on the subject of swimming pools … "well, one of us is" – ed … a boy at that swimming pool in Loretteville ws thrown out while I was there, for … errr … relieving himself into the water.
"But everyone does that in a swimming pool" pleaded the boy
"Maybe they do" said the lifeguard "but not from the top of the high diving board"

0

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… whatever of any interest happening today. I can’t think when it last was that I had such an uneventful day.

There was even a decent sleep for once. It may well have been late by the time that I went to bed, quite a while after midnight in fact, but I was soon asleep, which is no surprise after the difficult night the previous day … "??" – ed ….

Once in bed and asleep, I stayed asleep right the way through the night with no recollection whatever of awakening and it’s been a while since that’s happened too.

When the alarm did go off, I was away with the fairies – but not in any manner that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. I was doing something with a pair of lady’s shoes but I’ve no idea what because immediately that the alarm sounded I awoke and the whole lot evaporated completely.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, some deodorant and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on at Avranches.

There was also some washing to do, and amazing as it might seem, having taken care to wash my clothes before another large pile builds up, there was still too much for the washing machine. This is becoming ridiculous – either my clothes are growing or the washing machine is shrinking . There certainly aren’t more clothes than before.

With nothing on the dictaphone this morning, I could crack on and do some more unzipping. There’s not all that many left to do now but I keep on finding more and more that I hadn’t found earlier.

Isabelle the Nurse was late as usual, no thanks to the roadworks in the town centre where they are rebuilding the square outside the Mairie. As well as that, they’ve suddenly and spontaneously decided to carry out more roadworks elsewhere in the town centre that’s blocking part of the one-way system and it’s a nightmare.

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

We’ve begun to discuss the influence of Christianity on folklore. He is of the opinion that "Christianity was both antagonistic to and tolerant of pagan custom and belief. In principle and purpose it was antagonistic. In practice it was tolerant where it could tolerate safely. At the centre it aimed at purity of Christian doctrine, locally it permitted pagan practices to be continued under Christian auspices. In the earliest days it set itself against all forms of idolatry and non-Christian practices"

He goes on to quote from Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE saying that "in later days, after the fifth century it accepted both pagan practice and pagan ritual."

It’s interesting that he picks the fifth century. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410AD and by the Vandals in 455AD and in 476AD the “barbarian” Odoacer seized the throne of Rome. This influx of foreigners into the city of Rome doubtless weakened the grip of the Church .

Pope Gregory wrote in 601AD to Abbott Mellitus who was on the point of going as a missionary to England "because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of. the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to all things for their sustenance"

Our author adds "This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual."

In fact, judging by the deterioration of the pure Christian faith in the way that it is practised these days by many so-called Christians, there’s a very strong argument that suggests that rather than the Christian faith having absorbed some facets of paganism, it’s more as if paganism has absorbed some (and only some) facets of Christianity. The more uncomfortable aspects of pure Christian belief have been abandoned a long time ago, if ever they were there at all.

Back in here I attacked the Woodstock radio project and I now have all of the music that I need – at least one track from every artist (even the ones that I didn’t believe that I could find) except one. And that’s because Sly and the Family Stone don’t really fit into my programmes and I’ll have to omit one or two groups anyway.

My cleaner turned up later to fit my patches and then the taxi, driven by the boss, turned up to run me to Avranches.

Once more, I was one of the first there and had to wait until they had cleaned up from the morning. Once I made it to my bed I was the fourth to receive attention (I don’t move as quickly as the others) and then I could settle down to watch the football.

Welsh Cup semi-final today between Connah’s Quay Nomads of the Premier League and Llanelli of the second tier. The Nomads are having a wretched season by their standards and Llanelli are leading their division so it was always going to be a tight affair.

The gulf in class and quality was evident however but even though the Nomads had most of the possession they went in at the break 1-0 down because of a penalty. Both sides had hit the bar however.

Two inspired substitutions at half-time turned the game around for the Nomads. They were 2-1 up in a couple of minutes before Llanelli had had time to re-adjust but once they had adapted to the new situation they held on to the end, having had a couple of chances of their own.

It was another one of those really exciting games however, with plenty of entertainment for the neutral fans.

After that I began to sort through the music for the Woodstock project until it was time to be unplugged.

The same driver brought me home – early once again. I could relax and unwind for an hour or so with my disgusting drink.

Tea tonight was a chiliburger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. The same as last week’s, and the week before etc, but still just as delicious.

So right now I’ll dictate my radio notes and then go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow, bread making and so on

While we’re on the subject of pagan ritual and belief … "well, one of us iss" – ed … to tell a little secret, I had my suspicions that Nerina might have been in touch with things that we know not what. Not long after we had come together, we were out driving when she touched my leg. I immediately turned into a lay-by
It made me suspicious, especially when we were in the local supermarket once and she wanted to buy a new broom to sweep the yard.
At the check-out I told the cashier "don’t bother to wrap it – she’ll fly it home"

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Friday 14th March 2025 – A TAXI CAME …

… to pick me up at 15:30 for a medical appointment at the hospital in Granville at 16:00.

That was the first that I had heard of it. No-one had ever said anything to me. The taxi driver therefore telephoned the hospital, who confirmed that they had nothing down for me today and so the taxi driver left.

The burning question of the hour now is not O’Rafferty’s motorcar but who is turning round and round in circles waiting for a taxi that is not going to arrive to take him to a hospital appointment that he is likely to miss.

Something else that was confirmed today was the snow at Caen last night. Isabelle the Nurse’s husband had to go to Caen yesterday morning and he encountered it. It wasn’t just half a dozen flakes either but a proper snowfall. Several photos of the coverage have circulated around the internet as a result.

If it had snowed early this morning I would have seen it, because when the alarm went off at 07:00 I’d actually been up and about for an hour and a half, and awake for a lot longer than that.

That was after another late night too. Not feeling in the least tired after dialysis I wandered around through cyberspace and came across a match between Wales under-21s and Iceland under-21s that I’d missed. Even though Wales played for a good proportion of the match with just 10 men, they were never seriously under pressure and while a 1-0 score doesn’t look very convincing, Iceland never looked like scoring. The one chance they had, they needed a hand (observed by the linesman) to push the ball over the line.

So in bed at 00:30 and I took an age to go to sleep. But by 04:30 I was awake again, wide awake too, something that seems to be quite common after a dialysis session. By about 05:30 I’d given up any hope of going back to sleep and with plenty of things to do, I arose from the Dead and went about my business.

Plenty of business too. First of course there was the bathroom, and then the medication. And back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And despite the short amount of sleep, I had actually been out and about. I was back in work last night. Before that, I’d been to Shavington and was taking a load of rubbish to the tip. Someone whom I met on the way who worked there asked me if I could take hers and her grandmother’s. I fitted everything into the car and went off. For the next day at work I didn’t see this particular girl for a while so in the end before I went home I thought that I would go into her room and mention it to her. I knocked on the door, opened it and went in. The room was in total darkness. You couldn’t see anything. I asked “is anyone there?”. A voice from behind the desk said “yes” but it wasn’t the voice of the person whom I was expecting to hear. Anyway she put on a light so that I could see her. I said “I think that I have the wrong room. I was looking for …” and then I couldn’t think of the name of the person. I had to try to think of someone else’s name. I came out with a name and she replied “there’s no-one of that name working here”. Then I realised that the name that I’d mentioned was that of someone who used to work there but had left. I thought that this meeting isn’t going very well at all. Then she began to put on a white dressing gown type of robe or something. It looked to me like one of these Japanese martial arts suits. I asked her if she was going to be doing some martial arts, and she smiled but didn’t say anything

It beats me why I spend so much of my sleeping hours in Shavington. We moved there in 1956 and my earliest memory is sitting on my mother’s knee in the cab of the lorry that took us there, going past the entrance to Mount Drive in Nantwich, and we left there in 1970 to go to live in The Land That Time Forg … errr … Crewe. But seeing as we are talking about Mount Drive … "well, one of us is" – ed … I didn’t know where it was of course when I was only two but I do remember my surprise and shock a few years later when we went past it on my way to see my grandparents in Wardle. I was astonished that I had remembered it so clearly and recognised it.

As for dreaming about work, why would I still be doing that?

Isabelle the Nurse was late again but it didn’t worry me because I’d been unzipping files out of storage. There are still plenty to go at but if I do a batch every day I’ll catch up with it.

One thing though, and that is that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first had this mega-computer in the office I went through all of the old disks that were lying around, copied all of the contents onto the back-up drive and slowly cleaned them out and linked everything up. There must have been one that I missed because I found a huge batch of files that had never been merged. I ran a batch-processing duplicate file detector through it and disposed immediately of 1.2GB of duplicated files.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t have much to say for herself apart from the bit about the snow, and she was soon on her way, leaving me to make breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

A lot of ground was covered today. We started off talking about “cohabiting customs” and I admired his quaint way of expressing himself when it came to delicate subjects. When talking about the Arunta people, he tells us that "The father, de facto, is not father according to the ideas of the Arunta people. He is at best only one of a group of possible fathers according to the practices of the Arunta people."

Of the Semang people, he quotes a book that says that "Semang women are common to all men" but also quotes a Victorian-era observer of the tribe who rather delicately says that "I have not had an opportunity of personally judging"

While we’re on the subject of the Semang people … "well, one of us is" – ed … he tells us that "it often happens that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically unintelligible to all except the members of the little community itself".

That’s not just true of the most primitive tribes in the Borneo and Malaysian jungle. A conversation between someone from Cornwall and a Geordie, or a Jock and a Scouser will have the same characteristics – but maybe it simply underlines his point and is not a very flattering tribute to the inhabitants of those UK regions.

After this, we moved on to discuss the migration of tribes, something that we mentioned yesterday. He is at a loss, as I am, to explain how it is that a society such as the Romano-British and all of their technical achievements, that we discussed several months ago, was wiped off the face of the country to an extent that, for example, it took 1,000 years for metal-smelting to even approach Romano-British standards, if it wasn’t wiped out by extermination, and how it is that the Nordic settlers of Greenland could be wiped so completely from the island that there has never been one single trace of Nordic DNA found in contemporary Inuit skeletons if the Inuit had not summarily dispatched the Nordic Greenlanders wherever and whenever they encountered them.

In explanation he quotes Max Duncker who, in his book,”History of Antiquity”, asks "How could the conquerors mix with the conquered ? How could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants?". The answer to that question may be found on the plantations in the Southern United States in the 18th and 19th Century. According to an Artificial Intelligence search engine to which I have access, "By 1860, approximately 10% of the enslaved population in the United States was of mixed race. This significant percentage reflects the scale of sexual exploitation and resulting mixed-race births."

Back in here I attacked the notes that I’d recorded last Saturday night for the radio programme and that took a lot longer than intended because the new edition of sound-editing program that I use that I had downloaded was doing all kinds of weird things. I wasn’t the only one complaining about it either and a new improved version was distributed in a hurry and that seems to be so much better.

But I tried an experiment. In my best “radio voice”, cutting out the slips, errors and breaths, I’m speaking at something like 17 seconds per 300 characters. I quickly ran up a character-counting utility and a spreadsheet function and worked out that what I had dictated should have run, in its cleaned-up form, to eight minutes and thirty-four seconds. When I looked at the end of the edited sound-file, it was exactly eight minutes and thirty-five seconds.

The next time or two I’ll do this again and see if it remains constant. If so, this will speed up the process by being able to do the whole lot at one go rather than having to do an extra track to fill the gap later.

So by lunchtime the programme (apart from the extra track) was finished. I didn’t stop for lunch but carried on and made a start on my Woodstock programmes. By the time that I knocked off, I’d not only chosen all of the music, I’d even found, downloaded, converted and remixed most of it, even one or two tracks that I thought that I’d never ever find

That included a stop for my cleaner, the disgusting drink break and to talk to the taxi driver. I do have a lively, busy life (I don’t think).

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, salad and veggie nuggets followed by date bread and soya dessert, delicious as usual.

Very shortly I’ll be off to bed and hope for a good sleep. It’s hard to believe that after so little sleep I’m not really all that tired. But with dialysis in the afternoon and Connah’s Quay v Llanelli in the Welsh Cup, anything can happen.

But while we’re on the subject of paternity … "well, one of us is" – ed … little Johnny goes to his father and says "daddy, last night I had a dream and it was that you are going to die today".
Obviously, the father is really upset all throughout the day and is a very relieved man when he finally goes to bed.
Next morning on his way to work, he meets his neighbour. "I had a really bad day yesterday" he said. "My son had a dream and luckily it didn’t come true, but I was worried all day."
"You should worry" said his neighbour. "The guy who lives in the house next door to yours had a heart attack and died yesterday morning."

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Thursday 13th March 2025 – THERE HAS BEEN SNOW …

… up the road in Caen earlier today, so someone said. I don’t imagine that there was very much at all, but even so, it’s a sign that winter is still with us, despite the glorious week that we had at Carnaval.

It was certainly freezing last night. My cleaner mentioned that there was ice everywhere quite early on and when Isabelle the Nurse came round, it was a mere 2°c, despite the sunshine.

Not that I felt any of it, because I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep. I finally managed to drop off into the Land of Nod, even though it was another late night last night. I managed to catch Colwyn Bay come from behind to beat Caersws and to watch Gresford Athletics really good run of form over the last few weeks come to a shuddering halt against Cegidfa.

But at least it wasn’t as late as the previous one though. I was in bed by 00:30 which was about an hour earlier. And I remember almost nothing of what happened during the night – just a vague memory of changing the batteries in the dictaphone, so there must be something on there from the night.

Despite actually managing to sleep, it was a very weary Yours Truly who struggled out from underneath the sheets and into the light, beating the second alarm by not very much at all.

And after a good scrub up it’s Dialysis Day) and a stop in the kitchen for the medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone. I was doing something with a 3D character when the bed collapsed underneath me. I had a panic attack at that point because I couldn’t pick myself up off the floor and couldn’t stand up again. When I was dictating that the batteries in the dictaphone went flat so it’s not been my night at all

And apart from that moment about changing the batteries in the dictaphone I remember nothing at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again, flying in and flying out again. She apologised for being late today because one of her clients had mislaid his medication. And for that reason,when I finally move downstairs, all of my medication will be in one box on one shelf and nowhere else.

While we’re on the subject of moving downstairs … "well, one of us is" – ed … I forgot, to my shame, to mention yesterday that I’d had a chat with Alison. How could I forget to mention that? Anyway, it looks as if our intrepid band of travellers will be descending on me some time in August. That will be lovely.

Breakfast was next, and then MY NEW BOOK. Today, our talk on “cohabiting customs” has taken us into the realm of migration.

He makes some very interesting points too. He reckons that as in most mammal groups, there may well have been a dominant male who kept the females to himself and when teen boys reached sexual maturity they were expelled from the group.

If one man had five women, then it means of course that four men had none. And the only way that they would obtain a mate was either by overpowering the senior male and seizing some of his, or else roaming afield to raid a neighbouring group. If a strong group of wandering males encountered a weaker group, they would seize the females and the men of that group would either be killed or would flee.

That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Samuel Hearne’s first-nation Canadians, on their way back from their trip, came across a weaker band, seized all of the women and girls and … well … Samuel Hearne didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … book, the fleeing men would start off the next cycle, roaming afield until they in turn found a weaker band und so weiter

He draws a parallel between this scenario and the fact that it seems to be always the weaker, more impoverished and less-technologically-advanced groups who seem to exist in the worst and poorest environments.

There are pages and pages of this – in my opinion far more than there needs to be, and I can’t help thinking that our author must have been a bundle of fun to have around at parties.

After breakfast I began to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated on Saturday night but I didn’t manage to go very far because I was distracted. And in any case my cleaner appeared, earlier than usual.

It’s a good job that she did too because my 12:30 taxi to dialysis turned out to be a 12:05 ambulance on its way back to Avranches, and so we had the pantomime of me trying to climb into the back. With no power in my legs, I have to sit on the floor and heave myself up with my arms. God alone only knows what will happen when this paralysis spreads into my arms.

First in again though at dialysis, so early that I had to wait around. But when they did let me in I was first in and first to be coupled up. With the anaesthetic not having had long enough to act, I spent five minutes with an icepack wrapped around my arm but it didn’t seem to do very much good and I certainly felt it.

Apart from the coffee coming round, no-one at all interrupted me and I managed to accomplish a pile of work today. I wish that it would be like that all the time.

The guy who seems to run the show came to pick me up tonight and with another passenger on board, we came to Granville. My cleaner was there waiting for me and it really was nice to be back here by 18:30. I wish that it would be like that every trip. And who knows? When they set up the centre at Granville, whenever that may be, I may well be home before then.

Tea tonight was one of my pies with steamed veg and gravy. Potatoes, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, a little of each. And my pie was delicious. But I really have gone too far overboard with all this cabbage. It’ll still be here long after I’ve gone.

But I’ll be gone in a moment- off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … we had some fun in the centre this afternoon.
One of the nurses was going to couple up a female patient, and she was saying "now just relax, Julie. It’s only a little job this with the two needles. It’s not difficult and it won’t hurt, Julie, and it’ll be all over in a matter of seconds and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief"
"But my name’s not Julie" said the patient
"I know" said the nurse "but mine is"

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Wednesday 12th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I checked it.

Not that is any surprise because you don’t dream if you don’t go to sleep, and last night I didn’t go to sleep at all. In fact I didn’t go to bed until 01:25, mainly because I wasn’t feeling tired and I have plenty to do right now so I thought that I may as well take advantage and i might tire me out, but for all the good that it did, I may as well have stayed up and worked throughout the night

So in bed I tossed and turned all the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00 and then I arose from the Dead with, surprisingly, not much difficulty.

Today is shower day so I just had a cursory wash and then went into the kitchen for the medication, then back in here to begin to watch the highlights of last night’s football matches in the JD Cymru League. I felt really sorry for Y Fflint who were beaten 4-0 by Connah’s Quay Nomads despite playing the best football that I have seen them play for quite some considerable time.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again and once more she was in too much of a rush to stop for long. One day I might be able to see the photos of Carnaval but I doubt whether she will ever have the time to show them to me.

Breakfast was next, and then some more of MY NEW BOOK. Today, we are discussing religion and, in an unlikely combination, marriage customs.

Well, not exactly marriage customs because back in the past there was no such thing as marriage. Perhaps I should say “cohabiting customs” but even so, that would be inaccurate because he’s found some tribes where the two partners don’t actually live together but simply meet up on occasion, and "he seems merely entertained to continue the family to which his wife belongs".

We talked a few days ago about Caesar’s report of Britons holding wives in common and as I suspected, he has found tribes of natives contemporary to when he was writing his book who did just that

And that got me thinking. It would be interesting to delve deeper into his theory of simultaneous legends and fables in different parts of the World, and with today’s facilities and science, run a series of DNA tests to see whether there might be any truth in his theory

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off this evening I’d finished everything that needs to be done for the ten tracks that I chose, ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That’s despite the usual interruptions, such as midday medication, my cleaner arriving and the disgusting drink break. Not to forget my shower either. That was really nice again, although it takes quite an effort to force myself to climb over the side of the bath. Roll on when I can have a shower in my new apartment downstairs.

Last week I’d used the last of the naan bread dough and so later on I made another batch. And I remembered to put the garlic in it too, which was good news. Chopping the garlic on these new tempered glass chopping boards is so much better than on the old plastic ones too, and they also make nice flat boards for kneading dough too. Ask me how I know.

Tea tonight was of course a leftover curry and naan bread and I do have to say that it was the best garlic naan that I have ever made. My bread-making seems to have improved just recently, and I’ve no idea why. I suspect that it’s that my small water measurer is inaccurate. Things have improved since I’ve been adding more water (according to my measurer) than the recipes recommend.

So now I’m going to go to bed and try to sleep. “Try” being the appropriate word because despite the lack of sleep last night I’m not tired at all. I can’t understand this. Tomorrow is Dialysis Day so i’ll probably sleep during the afternoon, but I have better things to do.

But while we’re on the subject of concubinage customs … "well, one of us is" – ed … this system where the two partners do not live together was recorded among "the Syntengs and the people of Maoshai,"
The author of that particular report asked our author, Laurence Gomme, if he knew the difference between a giant panda and a male member of that tribe
"A comma, I suppose" said Laurence Gomme
"What do you mean?" asked the author of the report
"Well" replied Gomme "A giant panda eats shoots and leaves. A member of that tribe who only visits his partner simply eats, shoots and leaves"

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