Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 – IT’S ALL STARTING …

… off again around here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that medical appointments seem to come in batches . They are like London buses – you don’t see one for ages and then half a dozen all turn up at the same time.

And so this morning I had a ‘phone call from the Dialysis Centre. “Could you come in during the morning on Thursday because we’ve arranged for that scan on your implant to take place during the afternoon at 15:00?”

So at 10:00 in the forenoon I have been summoned to answer to the above, not at a Court of Law, but at the Dialysis Centre. And they will arrange the taxi at the appropriate time.

Shortly afterwards, Paris finally called me back in answer to all of the messages that I had left them. I told them about this appointment there with the neurologist on 23rd January so if they wanted to perform this blasted biopsy, could they do it round about then?

“That was why we are ringing” said the voice. “If you can tell us the contact details of your Dialysis Centre, we’ll get them to do the dialysis on the Wednesday and have the taxi bring you here straight away, giving you two days before you go back home again”.

It’s taken them long enough to come round to it, but now that they have their fingers on the pulse again, things might begin to happen.

One thing that won’t be happening is me going to bed at a respectable time. It was another late night last night.

This time though, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until the alarm sounded at 07:00, without moving a muscle or batting an eyelid at all.

It was a struggle to haul myself out of the bed but I beat all of the alarms at the correct places and had a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. I was running a small solar energy business as I did before. I was in Canada. I’d registered my business in Canada and done a little work there. I’d managed to rent someone’s front garden where I’d put a portacabin and a few other bits and pieces on there and that I used as a Head Office. When I crossed over the border between Canada and the USA I noticed that there was now a Customs office. It was inviting traders to register there. I was thinking that with the difference in tax between the USA and Canada it may well be of interest to me if I’m bringing stuff across the border. If I do that, the tax that I pay that is more will be refunded to me. If I buy stuff in Canada and take it over into the USA to sell, then I’d receive a deduction on the difference between the Canada and the USA tax. We went round there but it was closed so I thought that I’d go there again. On our way back we went past where my property was and I noticed that the house was for sale. I said to my niece to let me know when it’s sold because I couldn’t see me being allowed to stay there on the front lawn by a new owner. We stopped to have a look. The owner was outside. He buttonholed us so we went in and had a chat. No-one said anything about the property being for sale. Then it was time to leave. We had to leave downstairs through the basement so it was a case of locking all the upstairs. That gave us an opportunity to look into the rooms and we saw that work was still going on. It didn’t look as if they were ready to leave any time. The boy of the house ran back upstairs after we’d all gone down even though we’d closed all the lights and locked the doors. His father was rather short with him. The wife carried on talking to us as we walked through the house and basement and saw all of the lovely work that they were doing, turning what had been the living room into an office and the conversation carried on

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, back in 2012 and 2013 I was actively exploring the possibility of setting up a business in Canada and had even taken steps to initiate something. But like everything else, I was overwhelmed when my ill-health began.

There was also the famous Motel venture, when I had my eye on THAT PLOT OF LAND THAT WAS LEFT OVER when they finished the Trans-Labrador Highway over the Mealy Mountains in 2010, and there was also the other little plot of land left over when they built the Trans-Canada Highway and for which I actually made an offer, before being well and truly wiped out by Irving’s Petrol Stations who paid ten times what the land was worth.

Isabelle the nurse was late today. And not just late but very late. 08:50 when she finally appeared. "Sorry but I had a lot of blood tests to do this morning" she said.

No surprise there of course. People are withholding their prescriptions when her colleague is on duty because he doesn’t have “the touch” like she does.

On the subject of holidays I told her not to bother to come on New Year’s Day because I’m having a lie-in. Nevertheless she insisted on coming, but she’ll come on the midday round. The question is “will I actually be up by midday?”.

After she left I made breakfast and began the second part of ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

We aren’t many pages into it before we read something that underlines just what I was discussing the other day about the morals of the Europeans who went to North America. He tells us that the First-Nation people whom he met at Lévis opposite Québec were "{qualid and filthy in the extreme, and going about the ?treets every day in large partics, begging, pre?ented a mo?t melancholy picture of human nature; and indeed, if a traveller never ?aw any of the North American Indians, but the mo?t decent of tno?e who are in the habit of frequenting the large towns of Lower Canada, he would not be Jed to entertain an opinion greatly in their favour. The farther you a?cend up the country, and con?equently the nearer you ?ee the Indians to what they were in their original ?tate, before their manners were corrupted by intercour?e with the whites, the more do you find in their character and conduct de?erving of admiration."

If that’s not a damning indictment of the behaviour of the European settlers in Canada I don’t know what it is. But I’m convinced that Isaac Weld would have had a good relationship with the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. They have a lot in common, although he is more in tune with the First-Nation peoples of North America rather than Aunt Judy’s Magazine editor’s fairies.

Another thing he discusses, after having visited a convent in Trois Rivières and meeting a young novice, "the fair Ur?uline, who came to the Iattice, ?eemed to be one of tho?e unfortunate females that had at la?t begun to feel all the horrors of confinement, and to lament the ra?hne?s of that vow which had fecluded her for ever from the world, and from the participation of tho?e innocent plea?ures, which, for the be?t and wi?e?t of purpo?es, the beneficent Ruler of the univer?e meant that his creatures ?hould enjoy. " is "the cruelty of the cu?tom which allows, and the mi?taken zeal of a religion that encourages, an artle?s and inexperienced young creature to renounce a world, of which ?he was de?tined perhaps, to be a happy and u?eful member, for an unprofitable life of ?olitude, and unremitted Penance for ?ins never committed"

Much, much later than usual I came back in here to revise for my Welsh lesson and then to take part therein. And once more, it went quite well too.

Earlier, I’d sent off my homework and I received it back, marked “brilliant” and with a note that my tutor loved my essay on James Bond.

After lunch I went on the hunt for music for the next radio programme. That wasn’t easy because some of it was quite obscure but in the end I managed to find what I needed. As well as that, a few gems fell into my hands too.

The trouble is that with this new program that I’m using to search and extract music, it’s not so good at finding the titles of the songs and becomes confused, so in the end I’ve switched off that option because it’s making more work than it’s saving. I’m having to do all of that by hand afterwards.

That’s probably taking more time than I’m saving with the speed of this program.

There was the break for hot chocolate of course, which was really nice. And while I was drinking it I rang up Isabelle the nurse.

Earlier in the day my faithful cleaner had stuck her head in at the door. She goes into town really early on Thursdays so if she fits my anaesthetic patches before she goes, the effect will have worn off by the time I’m plugged in. So she suggested that I telephone Isabelle and ask her if she would do it.

And so I did – and she agreed, which was nice of her. She’s much more friendly and serviable.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with stuffing and with rice and veg followed by the last of the chocolate cake. Tomorrow I’m starting on the ginger cake and I’ll tell you how it is.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed.

But when Isaac Weld was in Trois Rivières I expected him to mention the enormous sundial in the town that I SAW WHEN I WAS THERE.
There’s a story about that sundial. There was one Québecois who asked another one to tell him the time
"I don’t have a watch" replied the second
"Well, go and look at the sundial" said the first
"Don’t be silly" said the second. "It’s dark outside"
"In that case" said the first "take a torch with you"

Monday 2nd December 2024 – I HAVE SEEN …

… my first “H” reg car today.

France isn’t like the UK – they simply issue all of the numbers consecutively until they run out, and then move on to the next letter and so on.

It’s about time that I saw one. They seem to have been stuck on GZ numbers for quite some considerable time, but this evening on the way home, parked in the Rue des Juifs there was an HA.

Interestingly, on the radio on the way home there was a talk about what the Press sees as the current financial crisis in France, with the cost of borrowing reaching 2.88% of GDP. That intrigued me because I don’t think that this amount is any big deal. Anyway I had a look, and found that the UK’s cost of borrowing is 4.4% of GDP – over half as much again.

In the USA it’s 2.86% – about the same as in France – and no-one is panicking over there. Interestingly, the USA’s borrowing is without anything even resembling the amount of social welfare that any other country pays out.

The record, by the way, according to the International Monetary Fund; is held by Ghana with 7.49%. In the Western World, it’s held by Iceland with 5.88%.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I was late again going to bed but I didn’t care at all. And once in bed, although it took an age to go to sleep, I slept the Sleep of the Dead once more, all the way round to … errr … 06:20.

Whatever awoke me I really have no idea, but once awake I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I thought but I definitely had my head in the clouds at 07:00 when the alarm went off.

It took a while for me to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and when the room stopped spinning round I alighted and headed to the bathroom.

After a good wash I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but to my disappointment there was nothing on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on during the night.

The nurse came early yet again, which cheered me up because the quicker he comes, the quicker he goes. He’s on duty on Christmas Day, apparently, so I told him not to bother coming here that day. I’m going to have a lie-in.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to tell Isabelle the Nurse not to come on New Years Day either.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK, which I have now finished – at least, part I of it.

He’s absolutely sold on Canada by the way. He lists several really good reasons why one should leave the UK and go West. And while the USA is the preferred destination for so many at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and for so many good reasons too, he goes to great lengths to explain why each of these good reasons is even better in Canada.

He concludes with "From a due confideration of every one of the before mentioned circumflances, it appears evident to me, that there is no part of America fo fuitable to an Englifh or Irifh fettler as the vicinity of Montreal or Quebec in Canada,"

Tomorrow I’m going to start on part II as he travels back to Montréal on the CHEMIN DU ROY but in the opposite direction to that in which I travelled when I wrote my magnum opus.

After breakfast I came in here to finish off my Welsh homework. I had to write an essay on my favourite screen character so I chose James Bond.

If I were to ask people to name the first two Bonds they would inevitably say Sean Connery and Roger Moore. In fact Moore was the fourth. Second was David Niven in the first version of “CASINO ROYALE and third was George Lazenby in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE.

Having finished my homework I started to prepare the next radio programme but was interrupted by the arrival of my faithful cleaner, come to fit my anaesthetic patches.

This new series of restrictions on the use of taxis is biting hard. We were three passengers in the taxi down to Avranches today. The other two came from somewhere miles out in the back country going home from a stay at the Centre Normandy and the car was driven by a driver who had no idea where anything at all was in Granville.

We were a crowded clinic today. Every bed was taken and once more I was last to be plugged in. The first pin went in my arm totally painlessly and I didn’t feel a thing. The second hurt like Hades and then they found that it wouldn’t work, so they had to fit a branching pipe to the first. They needn’t have fitted the second at all.

I spent the time studying my Welsh and downloading more literature that I’d been able to find. It turns out that Isaac Weld had a nephew, Charles Weld, who wrote extensively on the Arctic so I downloaded as much of it as I could find.

He also followed his uncle’s steps around Canada and the USA 50 years later and also wrote a book about his adventures. That too is a must-have as far as I’m concerned and it took a while to find a copy that I could download.

As I mentioned the other day, I can now access my LeClerc account from the Dialysis Clinic so I was busy reviewing the site and adding products onto my shopping list. Can you believe that my next LeClerc order will be the last one before Christmas? Hasn’t this year passed quickly?

While I’m at it, I’ll have to work out what other on-line shopping accounts I can access. The hospital’s firewall is quite restricting and using my ‘phone to access the internet isn’t always possible if I’m in the hospital too deep to access a wi-fi signal.

As well as all of that, I was being force-fed orange juice as my glucose level was so low.

My favourite taxi driver brought me home. She was strangely quiet which was a shame because I quite enjoy her running commentaries, especially when she’s annoyed.

Once more, I strode out and climbed the stairs boldly. I’m a long, long way from being able to climb even one of them without dragging myself up by the handrail on the wall, but at least It’s quite a change from how it used to be.

Back in here I had a little rest and then I made tea – a stuffed pepper with pasta. It was quite delicious too. It was followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert.

That’s the last of the lemon soya, and tomorrow will see the last of the chocolate cake that has done me so well over the last couple of weeks. The ginger cake is cut into slices and is in the fridge ready for the next set of desserts

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

Talking of James Bond, I once met Sir Roger Moore and I had a chat to him about the character that he played
"That’s right" he said. "They called me ‘Basildon Bond’"
"Why was that?" I asked, rather naively
"Well," he replied. "Since I’ve been knighted by the Queen I have letters after my name."

Sunday 1st December 2024 – MY CAULIFLOWER STALK …

… and broccoli stalk soup at lunchtime was absolutely delicious. I made myself a bread roll to dip in it too, and baked in the air fryer, it was perfection too. All in all it was one of the best lunches that I have ever eaten.

It’s the period of winter veg at LeClerc and so with broccoli and cauliflower being sold at giveaway prices, it’s too good to turn down

In fact, it’s been a good day today. And it started last night when I actually made it into bed at 23:45. Not 23:00 I know, but with it being a Sunday, there’s a lie-in until 08:00.

But at 08:00 I was actually up and about, working away at my desk in here. Something had awoken me from at 06:00 while I was in one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve had for ages. I’ve no idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. And by the time that 06:45 came round I’d given up and left the bed.

After I’d washed I came back in here and checked the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. There was something to do with a rock group and the young girl who was in it. She was attacked at some point by some kind of unearthly being. I’ve no idea why that should be but it was certainly the case.

We had a rock group yesterday, if I remember correctly. And a few days ago, we had a girl attacked by some kind of extra-terrestrial being. We seem to be doing a lot of repeating these days.

Then there was a Secret Service operation going on in London to do with the Russian embassy. They had to find a certain vehicle, break into it and steal some papers but they didn’t know exactly how they were going to do this. They knew that it was in some kind of code so they took with them one of Britain’s leading Civil Service codebreaker people. He was a very scared, elderly gentleman who was most uncomfortable as they were roaming around London looking for this keyword or whatever. They were surprised while they were searching somewhere and this elderly gentleman ended up stabbing someone. Of course that made him really panic. They had to try to restrain him and keep him with them even though he was ready to run at any moment. When someone came round, the caretaker of this building to find out what the noise had been, this elderly gentleman said “oh, I hear my ‘phone ringing” and ran away as fast as he could. Of course there was no way that these two people could stop him. They ended up roaming around this certain area in London on their own. They were looking at this shop that had closed down, some kind of vegan restaurant or shop, looking at all the adverts plastered everywhere all over it. There were four adverts for something or other but there stuck in the corner of one of the adverts was something like “Ron’s Taxis 5150”. That immediately gave them a clue because this taxi sticker wasn’t on any of the other three posters. It had something to do with the vehicle 515 or 5150 so they set off to wander around thinking that the ‘phone sticker advertising this taxi service was to do with the vehicle. They hadn’t yet figured out that at some stage they were going to see a taxi vehicle with the registration number RON 515 or RON 5150 that I’d figured out but they were wandering around London, something like that, when the dream evaporated

Codebreaking now in my dreams? It’s certainly impressive. Is there no end to my nocturnal skills? As I have said before, … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had had in my life someone who was capable of harnessing all of these hidden talents that I must have buried deep within me.

The nurse was early yet again and he didn’t hang about long this time. That suited me fine and I could make my breakfast and carry on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s now In the city of Québec, having left Montréal, and he’s just as enamoured of the city as I was. He tells us that "I must not conclude this letter without making mention of the fcenery that is exhibited to the view, from various parts of the upper town of Quebec, which, for its grandeur, its beauty, and its diverfity, furpafles all that I have hitherto feen in America, or indeed in any other part of the globe." and I cannot disagree.

He’s really in his element here, in fact. He’s given me a fascinating description of Wolfe’s storming of the Heights of Abraham and an excellent lecture on how Montcalm should have organised his defence to prevent his army and the city being overrun.

He’s also given us a lecture on the manufacture of sugar from maple syrup and how he would do it on a large scale and on a commercial basis, even calculating how much profit he would make per acre.

In fact, he’s given so many lectures and seems to be an expert on so many things that, when he said a few days ago that "A rational and agreeable companion, to whom you might communicate the refult of your obfervations, and with whom you might interchange fentiments on all occafions, could not but be deemed a pleafing acquisition,’", I would have been the first to volunteer to go with him. The two of us would have been experts on just about everything, boring the pants off just about everyone else whom we met.

Much of my free time was spent editing the radio notes that I’d dictated last night. I now hove two more programmes to add to the pile but I still can’t afford to relax. I have a lot to do and a short time to do it.

Stranraer were at home from a team way down the pyramid in the Scottish Cup. Although they played well and had a great deal of possession, and even though they hit the woodwork on a couple of occasions, they only scored one goal. Their opponents, Broxburn, just had two shots on target so you can guess the final score without too much effort.

This really was the nadir of Stranraer’s season to date.

It took quite a while to make my broccoli stalk and cauliflower stalk soup at lunchtime. It involved

one large onion
two cloves of garlic
one medium-sized potato
a broccoli stalk
a cauliflower stalk
cumin
coriander
marjoram
chives
chervil
half a litre of the water that you saved from the blanching of the carrots, broccoli and cauliflower on Saturday
vegetable stock cube
soya cream
fresh ground black pepper

chop and fry the onion until soft
chop the broccoli stalk, cauliflower stalk, garlic and potatoes into very tiny pieces and add them to the onion
add the herbs and spices
fry them for about 10-15 minutes
add enough water to cover the vegetables
add the stock cube and let everything simmer for 15 minutes
when everything is mushy, whizz it all up, adding the soya cream as you do so
serve with fresh ground pepper and fresh bread roll

There was pizza dough to make later on, and also a cake. This week I chose a ginger cake seeing as I had some fresh ginger on hand, and together with some desiccated coconut, coconut oil and orange flavouring, it smells delicious

Tonight’s pizza was one of the best that I have ever made too, and that’s good news because one or two just recently seem to have gone off the boil somewhat.

All in all it seems to have been a very good day for baking and making. There’s plenty of food on hand now to keep me going for a while.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh homework to finish off and then I’m off to dialysis – more agony and pain. I suppose that I’d better hurry up and go to bed to prepare myself.

But before I go, General Wolfe, who led the British Army to victory on the Heights of Abraham, was killed on the battlefield just as the victory was won. And there used to be an obelisk making the spot.
When I was there once though, a helpful local, and a very vocal local yokel at that too, told me that members of the Québec Libre – the Québec Separationists – sent it back to the UK
"Surely it was far, far too big to go in the post" I said
"Indeed it was" said the helpful local "but you’ll be amazed at the velocity released by 100 kilos of dynamite."

Wednesday 27th November 2024 – I’VE DONE IT AGAIN.

It’s strange, isn’t it? That it always seems to happen on a Wednesday. But once again I had a very late night, or more like, an early morning because it was long, long after 03:00 when I finally crawled off to bed.

And when I was in bed I can’t remember if I went to sleep or not. I have vague memories of being awake throughout the night last night.

However when the alarm went off I was asleep and what surprised me was that it wasn’t as difficult as I thought that it would be to raise myself from the bed

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up to keep me going until this afternoon and then came back in here to see if there was anything on the dictaphone from what little of the night there was.

And to my surprise there was something on there too. But I’m not going to mention it because you are probably eating your meal at the moment. It actually concerned the South-Eastern USA and slaves. I’ve been reading too much Isaac Weld, I reckon.

The nurse came early today and he didn’t hang around for long. And so it was earlier than usual when I sat down to eat my breakfast.

However, I was engrossed in ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

He’s still having issues on his travels, and he must have had some unfortunate run-in with some more American people because he writes "Intoxication is very prevalent, and it is fcarcely poffible to meet with a man who does not begin the day with taking one, two, or more drams as foon as he rifes. Brandy is the liquor which they principally ufe, and having the greater abundance of peaches, they make it at a very trifling expence."

As well as that, he’s also continuing on his favourite subject, the quality of the accommodation on offer in the USA.

He writes " The accommodation at the taverns along this road I found moft wretched ; nothing was to be had but rancid fifh, fat falt pork, and bread made of Indian corn. For this indifferent fare alfo 1 had to wait oftentimes an hour or two."

Nevertheless, Weld would have been glad of that because next day, having arrived late at his next lodgings and having to argue for an hour to be let in, "returning to the houfe, I was fhewn into a room about ten feet fquare, in which were two filthy beds fwarming with bugs ; the ceiling had mouldered away, and the walls admitted light in various places … Unable therefore to procure any food, and fatigued with a long journey during a parching day, I threw myfelf down on one of the beds in my clothes, and enjoyed a profound repofe, notwithftanding the repeated onfets of the bugs and other vermin with which I was molefted."

It sounds vey much like THAT MOTEL IN FLAGSTAFF ARIZONA, where I stayed in 2002.

His observations throughout his journey are fascinating and I’m enthralled by his book and its contents. He tells us "the people in this part of the country, bordering upon James River, are extremely fond of an entertainment which they call a barbacue. It confifts in a large party meeting together, either under fome trees, or in a houfe, to partake of a flurgeon or pig roafted in the open air, on a fort of hurdle, over a flow fire; this, however, is an entertainment chiefly confined to the lower ranks,."

However, his cynicism is wonderful and I’m appreciating his book more and more. He finishes his talk of “barbacues” with"like moft others of the fame nature, it generally ends in intoxication."

Back in here I had a slow start to the day, which is not surprising given the night that I’d had last night (or this morning) but once I’d organised myself I set about finishing off the radio programme that I’d started to edit yesterday (was it yesterday?).

There were several interruptions of course. Lunch was first and then my cleaner turned up to do her stuff.

Once she’d organised the bathroom I went to have a shower. And how much I enjoyed it too. It really was lovely and what was even nicer was that I climbed in and out without any help from my cleaner . However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not a good idea to try it on my own with no-one about.

There was the hot chocolate break too. I didn’t forget today, which is just as well because I do like that.

While I was at it I began my order from LeClerc. My cleaner had told me of a few things that we need so I may as well begin.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. I’d taken some naan bread dough from the freezer and it had been defrosting throughout the afternoon.

The curry was delicious as usual and the chocolate cake, with lemon-flavoured dessert tonight, was just as nice.

Bedtime right now, ready for the next lot of issues at the Dialysis Clinic. And there’s really no end to all of this and it’s something that I’ll have to suffer for the rest of my life, if I live that long.

However I did feel sorry for Isaac Weld, on his travels confronting yet more intoxicated Americans. "Whenever thefe people come to blows, they fight juft like wild beafts, biting, kicking, and endeavouring to tear each other’s eyes out with their nails. It is by no means uncommon to meet with thofe who have loft an eye in a combat, and there are men who pride themfelves upon the dexterity with which they can feoop one out. This is called gouging … But what is worfe than all, thefe wretches in their combat endeavour to their utmoft to tear out each other’s teiticles."

He met one of these intoxicated Americans in the street. "You’re drunk!" he roared
"No I’m not!" replied the American
"Ohh yes you are!"
"I’m not at all" replied the American. "I know full well when I’m drunk"
"When’s that?" asked Weld
"It’s when I start to see double" replied the American "like when the two of you become four"

Monday 25th November 2024 – I AM STILL IN …

… agony after the session at the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon.

Once more, they could only fit one pin into the tube in my arm, once more it hurt like absolute Hades, and once more they had to come running to the machine every five minutes when it let out its little plaintive wail.

So what am I going to do? I don’t know. I have no idea what the alternatives are. The visiting nurse who is on duty as of tomorrow formerly worked in a Dialysis Clinic, but I suspect that I’ll be wasting my time asking him. Every time I ask him a question, he replies with a completely different answer.

But the agony is now going beyond a joke. It can’t really, surely, be as painful as this? No-one else seems to have the slightest problem

By the looks of things, everything seems to be a problem these days. Like going to bed, for example. Last night I couldn’t even be in bed for midnight, there was that much going on that needed doing and finishing.

So when I finally crawled into bed I didn’t have much time to sleep but, believe me, I was out like a light once I was in bed, and there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When I awoke, it was with a mighty crash – one of THOSE awakenings where the whole World seems to stop. Except of course that it was still spinning round and I had to wait, poised, on the side of my bed until it stopped spinning and I could stand up.

In the bathroom I had a wash, a shave and washed my undies. I need to do what I can to keep clean as much as I possibly can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a quiet, shy girl who worked in an office somewhere. She used our vehicles every now and again for hospital runs. Sometimes I’d take her, and I’d quite enjoyed taking her too. I came to quite like her. I was hoping that she might quite like me as well but nothing ever came of it for a while which was quite sad. One day I had to take her to the hospital but for some reason we decided to walk there. She came out of her office, and she told me about some of the things that she’d been doing over the last couple of weeks as we set off. I knew the short-cut through the hills so we walked through the hills. She began to tell me a few more interesting things. We climbed over this steep bit of hill. There were two types like this that we climbed over. We found ourselves in a little valley. As we walked along this small valley we saw a sign that said “exhibition of the factory that made Churchill’s beds. I made some kind of witty remark about that and carried on walking. I put my hand down and found her hand, and began to hold it. She didn’t take her hand away, just left it there for me to hold and we walked off hand-in-hand like that

So i Got The Girl last night, and no-one from my family came along to spike my guns or put le baton dans le roue as they say around here. That’s not something that happens every day, is it? And a guided tour of the factory that made Churchill’s beds? That sounds exciting and is obviously a trip not to be missed. But that range of hills – it’s the one that we’ve walked – and skied – over on many occasions in the past and keeps on reoccurring. I’ve no idea where it is, although you would think that I would know by now.

There was also something else, that I haven’t dictated but that I have a very strong memory of it happening during the night, of going into a newspaper office and placing an advert to sell the van. I can even remember describing it in great detail. I’ve no idea though why there’s nothing like this on the dictaphone. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed in the past. Nothing involving Castor, TOTGA or Zero, I hope.

The nurse came and told me some more about the demolition of the War Memorial. It seems that following a poll where the town was something like 90% against the mayor’s plan to remove it, the mayor is going to move it anyway. My nurse expressed herself in such extremely unparliamentary language that had someone from the General Medical Council heard her, she would have been struck off.

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

Our author, Isaac Weld, is remarkably prescient. You have to remember that he is writing in the 1790s, and makes some predictions that are astonishingly accurate.

"at a future day, if the affairs of the United States go on as profperouHy as they have done, it will become the grand emporium of the weft, and rival in magnitude and fplendor the cities of the old world."

And talking of the removal of Congress from Philadelphia to Washington he predicts "a large majority, however, of the people in the United States is defirous that the removal of the feat of government mould take place and there is little doubt but it will take place at the appointed time. The difcontents indeed, which an oppolite meafure would give rife to in the fouth could not but be alarming and if they did not occafion a total feparation of the fouthern from the northern ftates, yet they would certainly materially deftroy that harmony which has hitherto exifted between them."

He also talks about "the prefident’s houfe, which is nearly completed on the outride, is two ftories high, and built of free ftone. The principal room in it is of an oval form", something that will ring a bell with many people today.

He saves most of his vitriol for Washington himself when he visits Washington’s house and the first things that he sees are the "SLAVE" (his capitals, not mine) cabins.

He says, on the subject of Washington’s slaves, "Happy would it have been, if the man who flood forth the champion of a nation contending for its freedom, and whofe declaration to the whole world was, ” That all men were created equal, and that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, amongft the firft of which were life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs;” happy would it have been, if this man could have been the firft to wave all interelted views, to liberate his own flaves, and thus convince the people he had fought for, that it was their duty, when they had eftablifhed their own independence, to give freedom to thofe whom they had themfelves held in bondage !"

No more needs to be said.

Back in here I had things to do, such as my Welsh homework, and then I carried on with editing the radio programme notes. However the Welsh homework had taken me much longer than it ought to have done so there wasn’t much time for the radio

My cleaner turned up bang on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then helped me tidy up the mess from yesterday. We kept all of the packaging because it will all come in useful in the future

The taxi was early because we had to go to pick up someone else – this sharing of taxis now is proving to be inconvenient but who am I to complain?

And then we had the pantomime of fitting the plug in my arm. And how painful was that? Nothing that they tried to do seemed to make any difference until after about an hour, they finally found a position in which the machine was comfortable. Then they taped the plug and pipes to my arm with so much tape that it was ridiculous

Even before I’d arrived, I’d made up my mind to speak to the doctor about the situation.

There’s a team of four doctors whom I’ve identified so far and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s one of them who gives the impression that he really doesn’t want to be there. So guess who was on duty today.

He is really disinterested in his job and has no interpersonal skills at all. So I told him about the situation and his immediate response was to tell the nurse to bring me a Doliprane – a notion that I immediately shot down.

No, a painkiller is no good for me. I want the situation resolved. In the end he agreed to arrange a scan of my implant to see what the problem might be. “But it won’t be today”.

While we’re on the subject of scans … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked him what was the plan about the scan that I’d had the other day.

“Nothing” was the answer. “We’ll see how it goes because things like this usually disappear after a couple of weeks or months”.

“Seeing as I’ve been suffering like this for over a year” I said, “I promise you it won’t go away ‘in a couple of weeks’ ”

That rather deflated his ego and he beat a hasty retreat.

They eventually unplugged me, hours later than it ought to have been and the poor taxi driver had to wait quite a while.

Luckily it was one of the friendly ones and we had a good chat all the way back to Granville.

My cleaner was waiting and watched as I climbed all the stairs on my own up to my room

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left over for a curry on Wednesday. Tomorrow I’ll use the last of the refried beans.

But wasn’t it a lovely change to go to the freezer and open the drawers without a fight? I hope that the drawers last without breaking again until I can move downstairs and have a decent fridge-freezer.

But right now I’m off to bed, not before time too. It’s my Welsh class tomorrow and I want to be on top form.

But one of the nurses told me about a footballer who was admitted to the emergency department on Saturday with a dislocated knee.
He screamed “Blue Murder” when the physiotherapist went to put it back in place.
“"Don’t be a baby" urged the nurse. "There’s a woman in Maternity who has just given birth to triplets and she’s made far less noise than that"
"You go and try to put them back in" said the footballer "and see what noise she makes then!"

Sunday 24th November 2024 – RIGHT NOW I’M IN …

… absolute agony yet again, having been standing on my feet for several hours.

It’s the lack of muscles in my knees that is causing the pain. If I want to stand up without my crutches, such as if I want to use my hands, I have to wedge my legs so that the knee-bones lock in a certain way and after a while it hurts like hell

Still the most important job of the week is done, even if several less-important ones have not so been.

Take the radio notes for example. Last night after I finished writing my notes I had the dictating of the radio notes to do – two lots of them. I was also having a chat on-line with my niece from Canada.

Her middle daughter, my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) was married a year ago and now lives in Michigan in the USA and her youngest daughter, another my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) is at “St. F-X” – St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the best University in Canada.

We’re planning a group meeting soon, a video chat on one of the on-line platforms seeing as we haven’t all seen each other for an age.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was invited to the wedding in Michigan last November so I tried a “dummy run” to Belgium last September to see how I would cope with the journey on my crutches with just a backpack, but failed miserably so I didn’t manage to go to the USA.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finished off the dictation, finished off the chat and crawled into bed much later than I would have liked.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off for a quick wash and brush up. It’s Sunday, I’ve had an hour’s lie in and the nurse will be here soon so I need to hurry.

But back in the bedroom I have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. The wind awoke me at 03:00 (not that I knew anything about it) but at that point I’d been off on an expedition with the native Americans. We’d paddled down the coast as far as we could to Florida and then walked back, describing a few of the tribes that we’d met and a few of their characteristics. Several of them were noted as lazy and several others had different epithets. In the end we said that it’s a far better representation of ourselves amongst the native Americans, we want to build a stronger fort to protect our settlement. He goes on to say that although there’s not a lot of land in each settlement they’ve crammed in many men, sometimes more men than the land is worth and they really need more soldiers going to serve as colonists so that they can have some kind of native element to protect the settlements against the French or the French can protect their own settlements against anyone, even the British who were currently their allies at the moment.

This reminds me of the book that I’m reading right now. Our author travels by water all the way down the St Lawrence River and then comes back on land.

But the conflict between the English and the French, with various native American tribes on different sides (or not as the case may be) went on all along the Hudson River valley and out into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee for the best part of a hundred years, on and off. It was a fierce, vicious war at times and was well-documented in stories such as Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED MANY OF THE BATTLEFIELD SITES in the Hudson valley in 2013 when we had that slow drive back to Montreal that took several weeks

We made it to Ticonderoga, Fort William Henry and all of the other places that Fenimore Cooper made famous in his “Leatherstocking Tales” of the Seven Years War in North America.

I’m not sure where I was but there was a choice of two cars. We had to choose one of three cars, An Austin Maxi, an Austin Princess HL and a Marina. I remember thinking that that’s the whole total of the British car output of the United Kingdom represented in that lot. We had a really good look round at them but couldn’t see anything or any reason to break any kind of monopoly position with Ford because there were quite a few issues with the British cars, even coming just straight off the production line and we couldn’t really at the time negotiating and repairing all of the bits that they needed to give us a car that we wanted

In the past I’ve had various cars and vans and I have to say that I’ve always returned to having Fords. I’m not sure what I’ll be having next. It’ll have to be whatever is available at the moment that has hand controls fitted.

The nurse turned up and was in chat mode today. She asked for my Carte Vitale – my health card – because she’ll be off on Tuesday and won’t be back until after the start of the next month so she has to make up her accounts.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I learned something new today.

Over the years, I have always wondered why the “District of Columbia” where the city of “Washington DC” is situated, is not included in the territory of any of the States. And thanks to Isaac Weld who was there at the time of its creation, now I know.

Congress used to meet in Philadelphia but at the end of the Revolutionary War it was besieged by discontented soldiers whose pay was in arrears. And the Pennsylvania State Government, in sympathy with the soldiers, refused to summon up the State’s forces of law and order quell the riot.

Consequently it was decided that there should be a territory created to house the Congress, where Congress itself could act as the local Government, issue by-laws, control the law enforcement officers and so on, and not be dependent upon any State authority.

In HIS BOOK he talks at great length about why that particular site was chosen. He is certainly very informative, if not garrulous.

Back in here, much later than usual thanks to the late arrival of the nurse, I had football to watch.

For some reason I couldn’t find a video of Stranraer’s game against Spartans. I later found out that the match had been postponed.

As for te Welsh football, there was one game missing – Hwlffordd v Y Bala, and it took an age to find that one.

The radio notes that I’d dictated were quite complicated. So far, I’ve only managed to finish editing one and I’m halfway through the other. I’m a long way from being where I wanted to be, with two radio programmes fully completed.

That’s because after the hot chocolate I set about dealing with the freezer.

It took much longer than you might imagine to unpack the two new drawers. Whoever packed them certainly deserves a medal because they would never be likely to break in that box, with all the padding that was around them.

Then I had to switch off the freezer, unplug it and take out all the drawers. Luckily, I’d put ice packs in there and they, being frozen solid, would help keep the contents cold.

Then I could attack the freezer with the hair dryer that I’d liberated the other week.

That took much longer too. I was surprised at just how much ice there was in there. And what didn’t help was that having put a towel at the front to catch the water that melts, the water actually drains out of the back.

For the time that it took, I was on my feet for several hours and hence the issue with my knees. But it was worth it because the freezer is now totally defrosted, the new drawers are in and filled, and you’d be surprised at how much room there is in there now.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and that had been defrosting. When I finished with the freezer I rolled out the dough and later, assembled the pizza.

With no small tomatoes I had to use large ones sliced thinly. Nevertheless it took much longer to bake. However it was delicious all the same. Now I’m going to have a quick tidy-up of the packaging and then go to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow.

But talking about the Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of Hawkeye and Chingachgook on their way to Fort Ticonderoga
After separating for a few days Hawkeye comes across Chingackgook with his ear to the ground.
"What is it, Chingachgook?" asks Hawkeye
"Stagecoach. French stagecoach" says Chingachgook. "Eight horses, two drivers, twelve passengers, five women, seven men. One driver, he have wart on side of face. Other driver, he have patch over left eye. "
"That’s astonishing" said Hawkeye. "You can tell all that by just lying there with your ear to the ground?"
"Oh no" replied Chingachgook. "Me standing here having little pause, and damn stagecoach ran me down"

Friday 22nd November 2024 – AND THERE I WAS …

… dashing to make tea, wolfing it all down at a speed that’s more likely to give me indigestion than anything else, and then abandoning the washing up and dashing in here to watch the football tonight – Y Drenewydd v Connah’s Quay, only to find that the 86mm of rain that has fallen in mid-Wales in the last 24 hours has washed out the game

So after trying in vain to find another live match that was still being played, I went back to do the washing up

It’s a pity that Bonnyrigg Rose weren’t playing. After several seasons of playing their home matches at New Dundas Swamp, 86mm of rain falling on their pitch would have made quite an improvement and they would, quite literally, be at home on a pitch like that.

So it might be an early night for me once finish these notes, if I’m lucky. Not like last night where even though I finished my notes early I loitered around until it was actually quite late when I hit the sack.

And there I stayed until all of 06:00 or thereabouts when the loudest crack of thunder that I have ever heard in my life awoke me.

The storm raged for several minutes with some of the brightest flashes that lit up my bedroom despite the thick curtains. And the storm was so close overhead judging my the almost instantaneous thunder. Then it slowly moved away and we could go back to sleep

But not for long because the alarm went off at 07:00 and I had to leave my stinking pit in order to head to the bathroom for a wash and brush up

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d just taken delivery of a beige MkIV Cortina estate that had come from a scrapyard. The windscreen was missing and a few other bits and pieces. It was essentially acquired by me for its parts, to break it, so I’d had it in my drive. Later that night it turned out that it was not my drive at all but a public park somewhere. After I finished work I went over and began to have a look around it. First thing that I wanted to do was to find out its registration number but I thought that that would be difficult with its windscreen broken and tax disc gone. I eventually found a torn-up tax disc that gave the car as “M” reg, which is obviously incorrect. I had a play around with it and found that the radio still worked. After I’d switched off the radio I had my head all around it somewhere, and I heard a car pull up. I looked, and it was someone else. After a while he came into view, the driver, and walked towards where my couple of cars were. I didn’t say anything, I just watched him and stared – it was pitch-black. No-one could see anything, except that he had the light behind him so that I could see it. And staring at him would make him and his senses uncomfortable. Sure enough, after a minute or two he turned round and walked away. He obviously climbed back into his car because it drove off. I was there with this car, and I heard a door slam. I looked around, and sitting on a bench not too far away from me was a schoolboy from Sandbach School. He was feeling very happy, very pleased with himself. Then a few others came to join in. A boy and a girl began to disport themselves on the table. This other boy was teasing this boy and girl and so were one or two of the others. I asked them how much longer they had at school. They said “three weeks” with a big wide grin so I asked them if they were really looking forward to the end of it.

It was mainly MkIII Cortinas that I’d collect. When I had my taxi business people would offer me MoT failures if I would take them away, so I’d take them up to my yard and dismantle them. Sometimes I’d find that with a little welding I could make them better than a car that I was actually using and a couple had a new lease of life, mostly officially, but unofficially, well …

Have you ever done that, by the way? Stared at someone really hard from a distance away? And suddenly then turn round and look in your direction? We used to do that a lot back in the mid-70s when I had that flat on Nantwich Road. We were convinced that people still retained an element of the sixth sense that kept their forebears alive in the time of the sabre-toothed tiger and the other wild beasts of the distant past. It’s a sense that people should work at and develop. No worries with Nerina though. Her sixth sense was very well-developed and worked well on several occasions. I wonder if she ever made good use of it.

But schoolkids fooling around? I used to get on well with schoolkids at one time but these days I don’t see anyone at all, never mind schoolkids, and that’s a shame. I think that kids have a very raw deal from adults and I have a lot of sympathy for them.

Later on I was out with the Inuit again last night. There was a big tribe of them, probably fifty or something of people of all ages. When some white guy came by to study them for a thesis he tried to teach them to all go into a huddle. When he did, there was someone missing, a young girl of about fifteen. We couldn’t find her at all so we had to start again, the count, to verify it. It still ended up as one person short. Then a couple of the Inuit began to discuss the merits of eating human flesh. The meal that they described was quite revolting but I could see that several people were interested in the menu so I promised that if we were going to perform this again I would leave out any reference to humans, their age etc in the hope that they too don’t become dragged off down this road of cannibalism.

Revolting? Like some of Samuel Hearne’s meals when he was out on his travels?

One of my eternal gripes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is the number of students who have gone to live amongst the Inuit, the Métisse and other groups, to study their habits and lifestyle as one would study goldfish in a bowl, write their thesis identifying various shortcomings in the dealings of the Canadian Government with those people, proudly receive their PhDs and then go to work in a bank and totally forget the factors raised in their thesis. It strikes me that they believe in all earnestness that the shortcomings are designed specifically for them to study, not to resolve. At what point are the First-Nation people and the Métisse going to be fed up of these interlopers?

Back in the past I remember reading something about the members of Military Intelligence going to the PoW cages of the elite at the end of World War II in order to interview some of the German experts. The writer said something along the lines of that it felt as if he was in a superior fish restaurant, going up to the lobsters in the tank, pointing to a lobster and saying “I’ll have that one, please”. And that’s the impression that I have of these PhD students

And then we were all in the army doing our military service and our period of engagement was drawing to a close. We’d had a whole series of boring lectures. We’d probably had enough so we were larking around making poor use of the time that we had when my friend from Germany appeared. He joined in the general fun and frivolities as we found humour in everything. We were talking about the Wild West and a border dispute between two States where here was a State claiming tolls for crossing a border into another State although the border wasn’t actually there. Some boy had been organising a campaign to refuse to pay it. It had gone one for quite a while. We were joking about the border and the situation about Dodge City came up. We were describing the place with hilarity, the place where every time that a tourist pus his sooty foot in the place, some cowboy is shot by some kind of Indian who pops up on a roof somewhere and they all give a good performance of dying etc, just to take some money off the tourist. My friend turned round to everyone and said “right, we’re going to have a lecture on the Intruder bomber. That’s your very last lecture of your period of service of engagement” so we all finished laughing and joking and gathered round.

No danger of ever catching me anywhere near the Military. Had there been a War during the period when I was eligible to serve, I would have joined the Merchant Marine. "Hello, sailor!" indeed!

By now, dawn was slowly starting to break so I went to have a look out of the window to see what the weather had been doing. And as I expected, we’ve had a sudden snowfall over the past couple of hours.

The entry to the Square here looks really nice at the best of times, with the city walls in the background and the Eglise de Notre Dame de Cap Lihou in the distance. But in this snowy weather it looks even better. The snow gives it quite a nice touch.

It’s no surprise that I want to stay here rather than go anywhere else because this really is a nice building and it’s in a lovely situation, stuck between the city walls and the clifftop with the sea just 25 metres away

On the left we have the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs – the French equivalent of the YMCA where youths can find a tiny box-room to call home – and straight ahead we have the annexe to the Municipal offices. That’s where marriages take place.

There has been quite a bit of snow there too that has fallen just now. I know that it’s nothing compared with what we had in the Auvergne when half a metre would fall in a couple of hours or to what people on Germany and Austria experience every year, but with snow being so rare here, this is enough to bring North-Western France to a standstill

The nurse came along, later than usual, to tell me about the chaos and the slipping and sliding of everyone on the roads this morning. She couldn’t hang around because she had other people to see so she was soon gone

After she left I made a breakfast and began my next book. It’s a story written by someone about his travels in North America in 1795.

Why it’s interesting to me is that he goes at some point in his journey to “Upper Canada” and “Lower Canada” and I reckon that he will almost inevitably travel on the “Chemin du Roy” – the first road to be built in Nouvelle France that linked Montréal and Québec.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I WROTE AN ARTICLE a few years ago about the Chemin du Roy and I’m ready to update it with stuff that I’ve accumulated since those days. Wouldn’t it be nice to include some eye-witness reports of what the road was like from a traveller’s point of view?

So hopefully our hero will at some point find himself in a diligence, or “stage-coach”, flying along the road of Lanouillier and Bécancourt and give me some good information

Back in here I’ve spent most of the day writing notes for the next radio programme and now that’s complete and ready to be dictated. This one wasn’t anything interesting which is a shame because I’ve been enjoying doing these last few “special interest” programmes and can’t wait to do some more.

There were the usual interruptions. Lunch was one of them of course – a cheese and lettuce butty followed by some fruit.

And then my cleaner arrived to do her stuff. We changed the table around and put all the medication in one of the drawers now that they are accessible, instead of having medication scattered about on top of the table looking untidy.

We also had a break for hot chocolate. I really like that, so it’s become something of an enjoyable habit. I could do with a few more like that to cheer me up because, let’s face it, I could do with cheering up.

Tea was sausage, chips and baked beans with cheese. And to liven them up I put some hot chili powder in there. That should get them going, I reckon.

After the chocolate cake and strawberry soya dessert (there was another pot in the fridge) I dashed in here, only to have my hopes dashed.

So what I’ll do is go to bed and hope that I have pleasant dreams and that the thunder doesn’t awaken me.

This afternoon I had a brief chat with Rosemary and I mentioned the storm.

"Did it shake you out of bed?" she asked.

"No" I replied. "I hung on to the rails in the headboard."

And that reminded me of the little girl who came running downstairs and said to her mother "mummy! Mummy! The au-pair is dying!"
"What do you mean, dear?" asked her mother
"Well, mummy" said the girl "she’s lying on the bed gripping the rails in the headboard and going ‘oh God! Oh God! I’m coming!’"
"Is she really?" asked her mother, rather alarmed
"Yes mummy" replied the girl "and she would be too, except that daddy is on top of her holding her down!"

Thursday 21st November 2024 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we’ve featured any photos on these pages?

And how long is it since we’ve featured a photo with snow in it?

And what I mean is “real snow”? And while these photos may not be so impressive, I wasn’t the one who was driving so I couldn’t photograph just anywhere, otherwise you would have had photos much more exciting than these to look at.

Anyway, for the coast of Western Normandy, even this amount of snow is impressive and enough to bring the whole region to a shuddering halt. For November, it’s totally unprecedented. But our taxis ploughed valiantly onwards so that I could see what was going on.

So while you admire a few photos of yet more snow that we encountered, I’ll say some more about my day today.

Starting of course with last night. Although not in bed early, it was before midnight when I finally crawled into my stinking pit after finishing off everything that needed doing.

And once in bed, there I stayed for the rest of the night, thinking that I can’t have moved a single muscle during the whole of the night, optimism that turned out to be misplaced as it happened, but I certainly can’t remember anything about it

When the alarm went off I arose from the Dead, just about, and had a very slow walk into the bathroom. But not before switching on the rest of the heating in here, because I noticed that the outside temperature was 0°C – freezing point.

While I was washing I noticed that not only had I lost the protective netting over my arm, one of the two plasters had disappeared too. I wonder where that had gone. It’s a good job that my arm hadn’t bled any during the night.

Back in here I found the missing objects. They were in the bed . I must have moved about quite a lot in order for them to to have come off my arm. I would have expected to have known about it, anyway. But I wonder what I must have been doing for that to happen.

First thing that I did afterwards was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something in a dream about going to to war and colonising some particular area, how it was very important to wear your uniform exactly as it had been supplied and wear it exactly where it fitted properly and where it was supposed to be rather than where if felt more comfortable on your body because if you had it somewhere where it wasn’t supposed to be it would sweat and make life really uncomfortable for you but that’s all really that I can remember of that.

I stepped back into that dream too and when the alarm went off I was having a lengthy discussion with someone about something or other but the alarm going off totally disrupted my whole train of thought which is a shame. I would have loved to have found out where this dream would have led me.

So with nothing of any real significance, except, maybe that I managed to step back into a dream that was 76 minutes previously, which is a good memory for the subconscious, I waited for Isabelle the Nurse.

When she arrived she told me about the freezing conditions, the fact that it had begun to snow, the excitement on the streets and the general chaos in the town as everyone struggled to come to terms with the snow. If the temperature drops a few more degrees the département will be paralysed.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. I’ve finally some to the end of Samuel Hearne’s adventures which is a shame because not only did I gain much from reading them, his glossary of fauna and flora at the back in even more interesting.

If only John Hornby had read them.

John Hornby, or “Jack Hornby” to the few friends that he had, was the son of the famous rugby player and cricketer who lived in Nantwich and is buried in Acton Churchyard near my aunt. He went out to Canada on several occasions to explore the Wilderness and the Barren Grounds. However in 1927 he and two companions starved to death on the Thelon River in the Barren Grounds.

They had gone to follow the trails of the migrating animals and to live off the animals that they captured.

Hearne makes the point that even some of the First-Nations people who have lived amongst the migrating animals for generations have starved to death. He says in his book "in some years, hundreds of deer may easily be killed within a mile of York Fort; and in others, there is not one to be seen within twenty or thirty miles. One day thousands and tens of thousands of geese are seen, but the next they all raise flight, and go to the North to breed.".

He concludes his notes with "I am persuaded that whoever relies much on the produce of the different seasons, will frequently be deceived, and occasionally expose himself and men to great want." – advice that Hornby would have done well to heed.

However, had Hornby taken a copy of Hearne’s book with him, he would also have had a great many hints on how to obtain an enormous amount of food out on the Barren Grounds. Some of it would have been unpalatable to European tastes but it’s better than starving to death.

After breakfast I came back in here where I paired off the music that I’d chosen yesterday for another radio programme, and then segued the pairs together. However I was taken by surprise by the taxi driver.

The new rules and regulations come into force today apparently and now if there are journeys to and from the same area within a 10 km radius of pick-up and drop off, the taxi proprietor is obliged to combine them as long as they do not result in a delay of more than 45 minutes. The taxi company had three trips – two others and me – that fell in this category so we all had to pile in together

Half an hour early, and not being anything like ready, I told the driver to go to pick up someone else and come back. I sent a frantic message to my cleaner who dashed here to fit my anaesthetic patches and help me dress and pack, and then we made it downstairs into the wind and snow to await the driver.

When she returned I piled in and we went off to the hospital to pick up our third passenger and then we had a drive through the tempest and blizzard to Avranches.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m not complaining about these new arrangements. I’m having for free something that is available in no other country in the World, as far as I am aware. Free and for nothing. I’m grateful that it exists and I would do anything to keep it and prevent any abuse.

However I might have thought differently when they came to plug me in. The anaesthetic hadn’t had time to work and I knew all about them plugging me in, as I suspect does everyone else in the neighbourhood now.

And then I had another one of these cataleptic fits that I have every now and again

Once I recovered I read my Welsh again and then read some of the reports of the crew of the Sieur de Roberval who was chasing after Cartier on his third voyage. However I was interrupted by a nurse who brought me an appointment with an ophthalmologist and a doctor who brought me a prescription for a pedicure.

But an eye test? Which nurse did I call “beautiful”?

And I’m admiring the precision of Roberval’s pilot who is giving his measurements clearly, even if they are in leagues. A league could be anything back in those days – there was no fixed measurement – but as I can now identify some of the points between which he works out his distances I’ll be able to work out what was Roberval’s idea of a league

When they unplugged me I headed out for the taxi and it was the same driver who brought me down. We had a little chat on the way back in the snow, and slid the car a couple of times on the ice, once into the kerb.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and watched once more as I climbed up all of the steps unaided. I really must keep this up.

Tea tonight was something out of a tin. I wasn’t feeling too adventurous. I’ve had a hard day and I’m going to bed for a good rest (I hope).

But all of this snow in Western Normandy? What do you make of that? It’s not like the Auvergne (which has had a shed-load over this last 24 hours and is currently without power) or Canada but it’s still impressive.
But still not as impressive as what went on with radio station KHAR in Alaska in the early 1970s with the newsreader reading out details of the daily snowfall in various cities – "and Helena got six inches during the night" and then hastily explaining himself " . . . Helena, Montana, that is"

Wednesday 20th November 2024 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from the night just now.

But that’s not surprising because I didn’t go to sleep at all. It was what the French call a nuit blanche.

And if you think that going to bed at midnight or thereabouts is bad, then how about at 02:00 and I was still awake and not in bed?

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s a pretty miserable affair when I’m awake like this and can’t sleep but it’s just another one of those little things sent to try me, I suppose, and I have to make the best of it, such as it is.

So after finishing off my notes I was somewhat tired, but more physically tired than a sleep kind of tired. I couldn’t find the strength or the will to haul myself out of my chair and move the few inches or so into the bed. I just sat here and vegetated for all that time.

Eventually I managed to pull myself together and headed off to the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, thinking to myself that it wouldn’t have been so bad had I been able somehow to do some work in the time that I was still awake.

Once in bed I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep at all, and that was probably the most depressing part of the night. I began to reminisce about things that I should have done, or ought to have done, and that’s bound to bring me out in a depression.

And that’s how it went on for most of the night. I was too far wrapped up in the past to think about the present, and that’s definitely the wrong way to be doing things.

When the alarm went off I crawled reluctantly out of bed (and you’ve no idea just how reluctantly) and headed for the bathroom and a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone and, as I expected, found nothing. So instead I had a look at my shopping list ready to order things from LeClerc on Friday.

However it’s difficult to make up an order this week. I have a lot of things in stock so I don’t need much. In fact, I can live without everything for the next week or two (except the soft vegetables of course) so I made an executive decision and decided that I won’t sent off an order this week. What I do need, like the mushrooms, tomato and cucumber, I’ll ask my cleaner to fetch them.

And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed.

Isabelle the Nurse had news for me today. Firstly, they are moving the War Memorial while they renovate the town centre and secondly, snow is forecast for tomorrow. And I’m going to Avranches and the clinic in a taxi too.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with my book.

Hearne is now writing his summary. He writes about the people whom he meets, their lifestyles out in the peri-Arctic tundra and their habits, and it’s all extremely interesting. About his guide he says "I have met with few Christians who possessed more good moral qualities, or fewer bad ones" and "his scrupulous adherence to truth and honesty would have done honour to the most enlightened and devout Christian, while his benevolence and universal humanity to all the human race, according to his abilities and manner of life, could not exceeded by the most illustrious personage now on record"

If that’s the case, then having read about some of the antics of his guide and party on the way back from massacring the Inuit, it tells me so much about the behaviour and morals of England and the English at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

We’re also being treated to an account of the wildlife and vegetation that he encounters on his trip. And his discussion of the food that they ate on their journey has revolted my stomach. It makes my meals sound positively appetising. Hearne however claims that he quite enjoyed some of them and in that case he’s welcome to them.

And when he describes the contemporary meals that are on offer back in England in the 1770s, that’s enough to get me going too. They make my mother’s meals sound delicious.

After breakfast I came in here and assembled the radio programme. Despite the speech being longer this time for some reason or other, it all went together quite nicely and I ended up being thirteen seconds over the one hour allowed for the programme.

But that’s not a problem. I can just cut out some of the applause and move some of the sound-bytes up a little and then it will all fit. And in fact, it all fits quite nicely

After lunch I had things to do. A friend of mine was on-line so we had a chat. We have a project going on together that is becoming quite involved and so it was good to have a chat about it.

There were a few on-line orders to make too. I need to overhaul the freezer here because it’s iced up and the drawers have collapsed. I’ve found a supplier of the drawers in Rouen so I had to organise an on-line order. They’ll be here by the weekend, I hope, and with the hair dryer that I liberated with the help of my cleaner, it will be “all systems go” with the freezer.

While we’re on the subject of the cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed … she turned up to do her stuff this afternoon, part of which was helping me into the shower.

Well, watching, actually, because I managed to climb into the bathtub and sort myself out totally unaided, and isn’t that a change? It’s not all that long ago that I couldn’t even lift my leg up, never mind climb into the bathtub.

The shower was delicious too. I stayed in there for much longer than I should, giving myself a good hosing-down in nice hot water. And I enjoyed every minute of it too

So a nice clean me climbed out of the shower and tidied the bathroom to match the rest of the apartment, and then came back in here to choose the music for the next radio programme.

After the cleaner left I took some naan dough from the freezer and left it to defrost and then made some dough for the next supply of bread.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by chocolate cake and the last of the strawberry-flavoured soya dessert which is a shame because it was so nice

While I was having tea the bread was baking in the oven. And at 160°C for 15 minutes and then turn over for another 15 minutes at 160°G, we have the most perfect loaf that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. I need it too after last night. Dialysis tomorrow but I don’t know how I’m going to go there. All public transport tomorrow is cancelled due to the wave of bad weather that is expected to hit us tonight so I imagine that the taxis won’t be going either, but we shall see.

But before I go let me say something else about Hearne’s trip to the Coppermine River.
One night he and his guide, Matonabbee, were lying there looking at the stars in the sky
"Look at that shooting star, Matonabbee" said Hearne. "What does it signify?"
"It represents the spirit of one of our tribe on his way to join his ancestors in the sky"
"And the stars?" asked Hearne. "Do they represent our ancestors?"
"They do indeed" said Matonabbee. "They are happy with us so they have come out to dance with joy"
"And look at the Aurora Borealis" said Hearne. "And the moon. It’s all so wonderful. And here we are, staring up at it through the night. What does it all mean?"
"It means" said Matonabbee "that earlier this evening some thieving b@$t@rd stole our wigwam."

Tuesday 18th November 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’m off back to Paris.

The Neurology department of the hospital where I go has summoned me to attend, some time in late January (I can’t remember the date right now), so I wonder if it has anything to do with the scan that I had a few days ago.

If it is, then that’s good. But if it isn’t, that’s good too because there can’t be too many people looking at my nervous system. The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned, provided that they all agree on a course of treatment.

After all, it is a treatment that I’m hoping to have. If there’s any kind of possibility of improving my mobility then I’ll take it, and with both hands too.

It might even enable me to go to bed earlier too. Midnight these days is the new 23:00 and I reckon that I’ll be struggling to meet that kind of deadline too on certain days.

Last night though I was in bed just before midnight and was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until about two minutes before the alarm went off when I had one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite being awake early (ish) it was still a struggle to find my way out of bed before the second alarm and into the bathroom before the third one. I had to rely on all kinds of determination to drag me out of bed.

But having washed, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Once again we had an alarm going off at 04:20. I was with some Native Americans at the time discussing health arrangements and medical examinations with them. We were considering how that kind of thing was going to work. My brother was there. He saw the vehicle that I was using, which was an old A60 van. He asked from where I’d had it. I told him that it was a hire vehicle. He thought that it was a great machine and he’d have to look out for another one. He’d try round all the Native American corporations to see who had one etc

And I remember nothing at all about the alarm going off. But I did own an AUSTIN A60 VAN in the past. He was called Bill Badger and we had a great many adventures together over the couple of years that I owned him

This dream continued afterwards and we were giving various Native Americans some kind of medical check. We had guides and tables to help us so we were puzzled when one girl turned up who seemed to be taller than the others but whose weight seemed to be far less than any that we had recorded to date. We had a look in our notes but there was nothing so we resolved to weigh her again only this time totally naked and without her dictaphone and music player around her neck (…fell asleep here …)

The second part of this dream – when I say that it “continued”, then according to the timestamps there’s just over an hour between the two parts. And this is another dream of which I have absolutely no recollection at all. But I clearly have Native Americans on my mind, what with reading Samuel Hearne and Jacques Cartier. And weighing is a procedure that we have to follow at the Dialysis Clinic, both before and after the procedure.

Then there was a football match taking place. I was watching from a balcony of a sports centre or something like that. The first thing that I noticed was that all the players of one team rushed towards the linesman to berate him for something. As they wouldn’t calm down the referee began to hand out yellow cards. As they continued, he sent them all off. I asked the other team, which was the Midland Bank, what had happened. They said that apparently every time their goalkeeper had been involved in a collision with one of their players the referee had given a foul against the goalkeeper. And then this ball, no-one was convinced that it had gone out of play except the linesman so there shouldn’t have been a throw-in but the linesman insisted and that’s why the other team was so upset. But while I was talking about this to someone i was reading through my e-mails. I’d had one from one of my friends on the Wirral. It was from the wife of the partner saying “now that the husband has a job on the new Radio Monte Carlo …” and that rang a bell with me because someone else whom I know as a DJ had begun to work for RMC so I wondered what was happening there, whether they were recruiting or something.

Sometimes I wonder what referees and linesmen see that I have missed, and what I have seen that they have missed. I’m sure that at times, the referee is refereeing a different match to the one in which he’s standing in the middle and which I’m watching. But working for another radio station where things are more challenging and more is expected would be exciting. Local radio is great but it does have its limitations. I’m ready to take on the World!

Did I dream that dream about our neighbours in Shavington? … "no you didn’t" – ed … I was on my way back home in Shavington, going down Vine Tree Avenue and they were standing outside their house? The first thing that I had to do when I went in was to move a settee outside. I could manage that fine on my own but when I was halfway through it the neighbours came round and began to chat but I carried on moving this sofa. I had it outside and I was going to stick it in the garage. Mrs Neighbour then came out for a chat. She watched as I opened the door of the garage – it was an “up and over” door and I stood this settee up on its end so that I could manoeuvre it in. She was astonished to see everything that was in there including the two cars parked one on top of the other – one was the green Princess. My brother was there too. He had this old rickety bike but there were one or two good things on it. I took that from him and threw it into the garage and pulled out another bike that was much more modern and generally in better condition but needed a good overhaul and service and two new mudguards. He could take the mudguards off the other bike. I told him that he could have this other bike but if he hadn’t done anything to it in a couple of weeks they were both going down to the tip. Mrs Neighbour was astonished by all of this. Later on I was an an autojumble. I was walking around and I saw stalls selling badges, all kinds of things that were of interest. Then I came across a stall selling rear light fittings. He had all the little strips of colour that I needed for the Mark III Cortinas so I enquired about them and he told me the price. They really were reasonable so I said to whoever I was with that I’ll be back here some other time and bring some money with me because there’s loads of stuff here that would be of interest to me. This other person shook their head and said “well, Eric, I just think that you are simply accumulating more kinds of old junk for all the good that you are going to do”.

“You are simply accumulating more kinds of old junk for all the good that you are going to do” – And there’s a lot of truth in that. My life is full of all kinds of half-finished projects that will never ever see the light of day. There’s a fortune stashed away in my barn and in my warehouse if only people will realise the value instead of hurling it into a skip. But anyway my brother made it into a dream yet again, and so did some neighbours whom I last saw in 1970 and haven’t ever thought about for a moment either before or since that date.

It’s Isabelle the nurse on duty for the next seven days so things will improve here I hope. She has many more interpersonal skills and is a much better conversationalist. But she didn’t hang about this morning because she had plenty of blood samples to extract, which is no surprise.

Once she’d gone, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And Samuel Hearne has now arrived safely back at the Fort, but not before experiencing yet more horror and depravity.

His group, now numbering almost 200 people, all heading for the Fort to trade their skins and furs, when they stumble across a small party of strange First-Nation people. Being only a small party, his larger party "robbed them of almost every useful article in their possession"

And worse was to come. His party"joined themselves in parties of six, eight, or ten in a gang, and dragged several of their young women to a little distance from their tents" and what Samuel Hearne goes on to describe cannot be imagined.

Hearne remonstrated with his party, only to be told "in the plainest terms, that if any female relation of mine had been there, she should have been served in the same manner".

In the past, I’ve read several third-party accounts of Hearne’s voyages and read several summaries, and not one of them has ever mentioned the cruelty and depravity about which Hearne writes, other than the massacre of the Inuit at Bloody Falls.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And once again it passed quite satisfactorily. Although it doesn’t seem like it, I must be able to concentrate a lot better than I have done in the past. I just wish that I didn’t have this teflon brain where nothing sticks to it.

As usual, it’s a late lunch when I’m having my Welsh class, so there wasn’t a great deal of time afterwards. Nevertheless I attacked the radio programme notes that I had dictated on Saturday night that hadn’t been edited, and now they are all ready for use.

Strangely though, when I dictated this batch a few weeks ago, the running time was 7:05. Today though, for some reason, they are 7:36 – exactly the same notes. Now there’s a mystery if ever there was one.

There was a break for hot chocolate of course, and the finishing off the editing took me up to teatime.

Taco roll again, with more refried beans. I’ve run out of tomatoes so I had just mushrooms with onion and vegan cheese with the refried beans, and that worked too. There’s enough refried beans left over for one further meal and then that will be that, which is a shame. Refried beans was top of my list of things to find when I went to Santa Fe in 2002 and I’ve enjoyed every mouthful of the very limited stock that I’ve been able to find elsewhere.

Pudding was more home-made chocolate cake with strawberry soya dessert. There are two more tubs of soya dessert in the fridge and I can’t remember what’s in them, but I bet that it’s just as nice.

So later than ever, it’s bed-time ready for tomorrow which is shower day.

But that dream about the football referee reminds me of the boy at work who asked for the afternoon off to go to his uncle’s funeral – on the day of the Cup Final.
Later on, that afternoon, the boss was at the Cup Final and who should he see but his young employee watching the game from the terraces
"I thought that you said that you were going to your uncle’s funeral" roared the boss, angrily
"But I am, Sir" cried the boy. "I am"
"What do you mean" asked the boss
"Well my uncle is the referee" said the boy "and he’s just awarded a penalty against Manchester United"

Sunday 17th November 2024 – THIS RADIO PROGRAMME …

… was flaming complicated

What I did last night before going to bed was to re-dictate the notes from two radio programmes that I’d recorded previously. I don’t know what was up with my microphone when I first dictated them but they had turned out as if I had my head stuck in a metal bucket while I was dictating.

Nevertheless, I’d done everything and assembled the programmes but I was never happy with them and so yesterday I decided that I’d have another go

Dictating them was no problem and interestingly, the unedited notes of the first programme were only one second shorter than the unedited noted of the first attempt.

Having done all that, and it being later by far than I would have liked, I crawled off to bed.

Once again, I slept the Sleep of the Dead and knew nothing at all about anything whatsoever until the alarm went off at 08:00. Once I’d switched it off i crawled into the bathroom to have a wash and brush up before coming back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

Not that I reached very far because the nurse came early again and I had to go into the living room for the attention to my legs.

The nurse and I had the same discussion about baking a pizza that we have had I don’t know how many other times and I was glad when he finally slung his hook

Once he’d left I could make breakfast and read my book. And I do have to feel sorry for Samuel Hearne. There’s no doubt, reading his story, that he’s at the mercy of his First Nation guides on the return to the fort. He has absolutely no control, no power and no influence over the events that are unfolding.

They are covering incredible distances – 45, 45, 46 miles per day at times – over some of the roughest terrains in the world, distances that are confirmed by modern mapping methods, without stopping for rest. Women are giving birth, people are dropping out, sick people are being abandoned to die and Hearne is footsore and bleeding but he has no choice but to keep up or to be abandoned too.

He describes his diet in some detail and it’s not for the faint-hearted. But he also describes the life, cultures and habits of the First-Nation people and also the animals that he encounters. It’s a fascinating glimpse through a window into a country and a lifestyle that has gone forever.

Back in here I carried on with transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was in my little office at work. I’d been having a meeting with a couple of people. The subject of ages came up because a famous British tennis player roughly my age has married a girl of 26, a Swedish football player who is playing for a club in London. We all expressed our congratulations and had a general discussion about affairs like this. I happened to thumb through a few life assurance files and found that a few of the French sex-symbol women were now well into their mid-90s, something that many people find hard to believe. We all shook our collective heads at the idea of age. As we prepared to leave – or as the two people prepared to leave, some woman walking past my room ended up engaging herself in conversation with another woman. In the end there were three of them. For some reason my office door was open but they were right outside my door. In fact one of them was inside my office leaning on my wall. They were discussing the crisis in the French National Health Service, about how things weren’t the same as they used to be, how operations are being rushed, how people are being left with scars due to imperfect surgery. They were going on like this for about half an hour. When they paused for breath I asked them “what are the three of us – that is, these other two people in my meeting and I – going to do and how are we going to react now that you have told us all of this gruesome story about operations, hospitals etc?”. For some reason they seemed to be rather embarrassed about being overheard (…fell asleep here …) then made arrangements to watch a film, something like that. I can’t remember the name of the film now.

It goes without saying that there’s no crisis in the French health system. Whatever problems there are (and there are problems, to be sure) are as nothing compared to the issues that plague other countries and other health services. Having experienced several of them, I can say without fear of contradiction that i’ve never been so well looked-after as I have been in France.

Football was next on the agenda. There were various highlights from other matches in the Welsh Cup, including a giant-killing act where Y Wyddgrug from the second tier beat Llansawel from the Premier Division 2-1

Following that, we had Stranraer against Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic. Bonnyrigg are in deep trouble right now because their pitch, known with good reason as the “New Dundas Swamp” is probably the worst in professional football and a sad throwback to the bad days of the 1960s and 70s.

The club promised to replace it with a synthetic surface but failed to do so and so have been deducted six points. They have two months to come up with a plan otherwise they will be in even deeper trouble.

But right now Stranraer were entertaining them at home in a match where the weather was all four seasons, terminating in a torrential downpour.

Despite Stranraer having the lion’s share of the game the score was 1-1 going into injury time when Bonnyrigg scored a goal out of nothing to win the game that Stranraer should have won at a canter.

After lunch I made a start on the first radio programme. And, even more strangely, the edited notes ended up exactly the same length as the edited notes the first time round. So how come the assembled programme ended up 17 seconds short of the one hour?

So confused was I that I must have spent well over an hour trying different arrangements but nothing would work so in the end I called up the project files of the first attempt.

To my surprise, I found that I had included a different song from the one for which I had dictated the notes, and that accounted for it. I’m not sure why I did that.

Anyway, there was an interesting introduction on that replacement song so I extracted it and tagged it onto the front of the correct song that I’d used in the revised programme. Now I was 27 seconds over but filtering out some of the applause soon took care of that.

However, I’d spent so much time on that programme that there was no time to start the second one.

There had been a break though for my hot chocolate and crackers, followed by making the pizza for tonight. Just after lunch I’d taken out some frozen dough from the freezer and it had been slowly defrosting during the afternoon. So after my hot chocolate I kneaded it again and rolled it out onto the pizza tray

Later on I assembled my pizza and then baked it in the oven. The base wasn’t as baked as I would like it, which seems to be the fault of my oven which is pretty much hit and miss but it’s the best that I have.

So now that everything is finished for the night I’m off to bed, ready for a fresh start tomorrow.

But talking of Hearne and the animals that he encounters reminds me of the two explorers wandering across the plains of southern Africa in the 18th Century admiring all of the strange and wonderful animals
"Look at that strange male animal" said one of them "sneaking up on that herd of females"
"Wildebeest?" asked the other one
"Any moment now, I reckon" said their guide

Friday 15th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy … "for once" – ed … and worked hard today … "for once" – ed …

And that might have been because I had one of the best sleeps that I’ve had for a long time … "for once" – ed … I didn’t awaken, turn over or do anything while I was asleep, to the best of my knowledge. I awoke for the first time at 06:55, 5 minutes before the alarm was due to go off and that was that.

As seems to be the case these days, I was late again going to bed. But I have this little project of sorting through, would you believe, 22,000 photos and I’m doing a few each night, in the hope that one day I’ll finish. I won’t finish it if I don’t make a start, that’s for sure.

After a while I crawled off to bed and there I slept the Sleep of the Dead until the morning, and I could do with a few more sleeps like that every now and again. I don’t know why nothing awoke me

When the alarm went off I managed slowly to bring myself back into the Land of the Living and crawled off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I didn’t go far at all. Someone shouted me again in the middle of the night. This time it was attached to a dream about having a new kitchen installed and they were the installers come to deliver the material ready to fit it

Strangely enough, I remember nothing at all about that. But I am going to have a new kitchen installed when (if) I finally manage to move downstairs. There is already a row of kitchen furniture up against the wall and I’ll be installing units in a kind-of island something along the same lines that I have here.

Naturally, I have proper units for that. There are those that I bought in Munich that are still inside the back of the van, and the four base units still in their boxes outside the door here. There’s also a worktop in the van along with the oven that I bought and is still in the van.

Looking at all of this, it’s just about four months in 2022 between me going on a mega-drive around Central Europe for several weeks and me being unable to walk any more. It’s difficult to believe how quickly I became so ill

This cancer that I’ve had since 2015 is bad enough and that’s been slowly dragging me down and further down, but what went on in that four months was totally inexplicable. However, I made it to Jersey and I made it (just) to Canada to tie up my affairs, but at what cost?

The nurse was quite early again today and that suits me fine because the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and I can continue with some more exciting stuff.

When he arrived he asked me the same kind of silly question that he asks me every day, as if he hasn’t heard the answers all these times, and that irritates me considerably. Today I left him in no doubt that he was irritating me so he changed the subject to something else just as patronising, and got on my wick even more.

After he left I made my breakfast and carried on with my book. Hearne does indeed discuss some of the “family arrangements” of his First-Nation companions and is hardly complimentary. And of the arrangements of the families who live around the fort he has even less of a good opinion, if that were ever possible, He describes them as "being the most debauched wretches under the Sun"

Considering that we are talking of a book written at the end of the Eighteenth Century when feelings were much more delicate than they were twenty years ago (although not today in this current society that seems to be becoming more Puritan by the minute), his book and his accounts must have caused uproar

He concludes his narrative in this chapter with "In fact, notwithstanding the severity of the climate, the licentiousness of the inhabitants cannot be exceeded by any of the Eastern nations"

But we moved quickly on from there and have just read the account of the massacre by his First-Nation guides and porters of a hunting party of Inuit camped on the shores of the Coppermine River by what became known as the Bloody Falls. And the gratuitous savagery and brutality that he describes is dreadful

We flew over the Bloody Falls on our way back to Calgary from Kugluktuk at the mouth of the Coppermine River, and it’s hard to believe that such a peaceful place was the site of such horror.

Back in here I’ve finished off all of the notes for the next radio programme, which I’ll be dictating on Saturday night. For a change just recently, this was quite straightforward and will probably be quite boring after what I’ve been up to with the radio just recently.

There were several interruptions during the course of the day.

The first was, of course, for lunch and a slice of flapjack followed by some fruit.

Secondly, my faithful cleaner came to do her stuff and we tidied up the medication and then sorted out a new water filter for the jug that I keep here. There’s a pack of water filters on the top shelf and I can’t reach it but today my cleaner came with her step-ladder so she climbed up and passed one down to me.

As well as that, I’ve been talking to a friend on the internet about business, looking for a maker of stained glass and trying to find someone who will supply me with a couple of new drawers for my freezer, seeing as two of the old ones have gone the Way of the West. I want to defrost the freezer but there’s no point with the drawers in the state that they are.

That’s really all that I’ve done today. I don’t know where the time goes but it doesn’t seem as if I’ve wasted any time doing nothing or being distracted, which makes a change.

Tea was some vegan nuggets with chips and a vegan salad, followed by chocolate cake with strawberry (in honour of HIS NIBS) flavoured soya dessert.

So now that I’ve finished my notes there are a few small things that I have to do and then I’m off to bed. I have bread to bake tomorrow so I hope that it turns out well. The last couple have not been as I would have liked.

Samuel Hearne will be continuing his travels tomorrow too, to find the mouth of the Coppermine River (he should have asked me, because not only do I know where it is, I’ve been there) persuade the natives to come to trade furs with the fort, and to find the copper mine where they make their artefacts and report on its value

But he also told a very interesting story about how, when one group of his party diverted to carry out another task and was hurrying to meet back up with the main party, the members of each group announced their whereabouts each day by sending up a column of smoke

That reminded me of a discussion that I was having at the Little Big Horn when LITTLE BIG ANTLERS and I were talking to one of the Sioux guides there.
He was explaining the system of Native American smoke signals and there were several in the distance that he was interpreting.
He explained to me that the system worked by lighting a very smoky fire of damp grass and holding a blanket over it, then releasing the blanket to allow the column to rise in a kind-of Morse Code arrangement that he could read
But there was one of the columns in the distance that looked bizarre even to a tenderfoot like me
"Can you read THAT signal?" I asked him
"Oh yes I can" he replied. "Most definitely"
"What does it say?" I asked
"It says" he said "Help! My blanket has caught fire!"

Wednesday 13th November 2024 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… the second radio programme, the notes of which I also dictated on Saturday night.

This one was much more complicated than the last one but because of my little program it was all done, finished and dusted off much quicker.

It helps having used an array for the numbers rather than entering them manually whenever they needed to be changed, so let’s all give it a big hand … "hip, hip, array" – ed …

Last night I had a lot of things to do and as a result I didn’t go to bed until late, long after my ideal time of 23:00 but one thing that I can say is that I had the best sleep that I have had for ages. I awoke once during the night as far as I can remember, but I was asleep very quickly afterwards so I didn’t pay much attention

When the alarm went off, three girls had just come round to my apartment. I was still in bed but I was wide-awake. I was making plans for the immediate future, what I was going to do. Then one of the girls came up to me, ripped the bedclothes off and shouted “wakey wakey”. At that moment the alarm went off and Billy Cotton REPEATED THE CALL.

But can you imagine that? I suppose you can because it’s pretty much par for the course. 3 girls come into my apartment and just as it’s about to become interesting, Billy Cotton spikes my guns. It’s a change for him to do it though. Usually it’s one of my family who would put the spanner in the works, just like they did in real life.

So there I was, sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the World to stop spinning around and then when it stopped I got off and headed off to the bathroom to clean myself up.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My girlfriend had come round with her mother, and we’d left her mother in my apartment while the two of us went to a kind-of party in the afternoon. When we came back, the taxi dropped us off by the club on Nantwich Road and we walked down the side street there to the side door of my building. The first thing was that we couldn’t open the padlock. It was as if something had been stuffed down the keyhole but eventually I managed to open the padlock and could unlock the place and walk in. At the first glance I thought that her mother had died, the way that she was lying on the sofa, but she was lying there chewing, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was chewing a chocolate. My girlfriend went over to talk to her to make sure that she was OK while I prepared the papers and so on from this party/reception type of thing to which we’d just been.

Who this girl was, I have no idea at all which is a shame. Some kind of company would be a nice thing to have in a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have met some really nice girls on occasion during the night. It would be nice if I could do that today but first of all I don’t go anywhere these days and secondly I’m far too old for any of that kind of nonsense.

The nurse came early again today and after making the usual remarks, saw to my legs and then cleared off. He can’t have been here ten minutes. Not that I’m complaining though. It suits me fine.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book.

Samuel Hearne is on the move again, out on his third trip to find the Coppermine River. He makes some very prescient and penetrating remarks about the First-Nation women whom he encounters which, if read in the wrong spirit, would not be appreciated. He likens them to nothing more than beasts of burden

However, it should be remembered that if the men are out hunting for food, chasing deer around and hoping to catch them, they need to be able to move quickly so someone else has to do the heavy lifting and carrying. Life on the Barren Grounds is really tough and in fact a guy from Nantwich, John Hornby, starved to death with two companions out there almost 100 years ago. It’s a fight and only the toughest survive. Co-operation and partnership is essential.

Back in here, I had some editing to do. Listening to the radio programme that I’d prepared yesterday, I found that I’d left in there a reference to a track that I’d cut out. So the reference had to go too, which meant that I was now 2.23 seconds short.

Not a problem though – just add in some applause at an appropriate moment and we’ll be fine.

Then I began to prepare the next programme by editing the notes that I’d dictated.

Having done that I broke the finished sound file up into segments for each track and then entered the times of the sound-bytes and tracks into my little program and the machine did the rest.

It found me a selection that ran out to one hour and twenty-eight seconds – not a problem – except that one track wasn’t what it was supposed to be and by the time I’d edited it to represent what I wanted, the batch was short by several minutes. And there was, regrettably, an error in my programming that caused one track to be counted twice.

In the end, I was nine minutes short so I had to go again. This time I was one minute and twenty seconds over, but editing that much out is no problem at all.

There were several interruptions.

Firstly, there was lunch. I can’t go without food and I had a slice of the flapjack that I’d made a while ago.

Secondly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and that meant a shower for me this afternoon. And although she stood and watched, I did absolutely everything on my own today and you’ve no idea how proud I felt.

She cautioned me about attempting a shower when I’m on my own. There might be an improvement in my mobility and I’m right to push myself onwards, but I mustn’t take any risks. I’m not out of the woods yet. I have simply moved into different woods.

We then spent a pleasant half-hour going through the medication and you wouldn’t believe (or maybe you will) the amount of medication gathering dust around here that is long out-of-date. There’s some stuff dated 2017 and I bet that I can find stuff older than that if I look around. It’s high time someone got to grips with this over-prescribing of medication.

After my hot chocolate I had naan dough to make because I’ve run out. This lot is extremely garlicky which is just as well. I’m not going to be bothered by werewolves and vampires, especially when the garlic naan is smeared in my garlic butter

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, as usual. It really was delicious and I reckon that it was the best that I have ever made. My chocolate cake, with lumps of real chocolate, is also excellent, especially with a pistachio soya cream

So that’s enough for today. Tomorrow I’m off to dialysis so Heaven help me. I can’t take much more of this.

But I’m still having a laugh at some of the comments made by Hearne in his book.
Apart from his beautiful quote "they never give themselves the trouble to acquire what they can do well enough without" to describe the philosophy of the First-Nation people in the Barren Grounds, something from which many people in Western society would do well to note, he records a conversation between several of his First-Nation guides
Sitting around the fire late at night after a heavy meal of venison they jokingly ask each other whether they would ever consider having "an intrigue with a strange woman"
It reminds me of a party in Munich to which I went several years ago and an Italian girl asked me "tell me – would you ever consider making love to a perfect stranger?"
"Madam," I replied "the way that things have been just recently, I would even consider making love to a bloody awful stranger"

Tuesday 12th November 2024 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… this radio programme that has been hanging around my neck like a perishing albatross for over a week.

In the end, I made a selection of tracks that were something like, and some judicious editing of the applause and the speech from the stage finally brought it all down to one minute and twenty seconds over. And the rest, I had to hack about a bit and I eventually managed to shoehorn it into a programme of one hour.

It’s currently turning around on the playlist and I do have to say that it works quite well

Something else that worked quite well was my sleep last night. After I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was long after bedtime but nevertheless it was the best that I could do. And the good thing about it is that I can’t remember awakening at all.

Having said that, I awoke with a start at about 06:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. When the alarm went off I was sitting on the edge of the bed already, so this will class as an early start

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and then came in here to deal with the dictaphone notes. For a short moment I was with Percy Penguin last night. When she climbed into the van she told me that she had something to tell me. She wanted to finish our relationship. One of the reasons that she gave me was that she didn’t like my choice of music which was fair enough, I suppose. For a change she seemed to be quite confident and quite sure of what she wanted to do. That’s not like her at all. In some ways I admired what she said. It goes without saying that I was disappointed but life is full of disappointments, isn’t it? You just have to become used to them

It’s been a while since Percy Penguin has put in an appearance, so welcome back to you. She was a very simple, uncomplicated girl and when I was going through a very bad patch she was the only one who ever gave me any support. In fact she was the only one who ever listened to me when I wanted to talk. She herself had been dealt a terrible hand by the fates but she just drifted through life, tossed about on the currents and never seemed to care at all. She just carried on as best as she could with whatever came her way.

Later on I was in London. I’d been listening to someone talking, a very kind-of unkempt fellow, saying that he’d been living on the streets and had no home but had been appointed leader of a playgroup in Central London. He’d been on some kind of trip to see some kind of concert. He’d been so many days without sleep but he’d come back into work – gone straight to work thinking that when things quietened down he’d take a sleeping pill but by that time he was far too irritable and touchy to have thought about the sleeping pill and went the whole day without it. This playgroup bewildered me. I was actually in Central London at the time and had a rough idea of where it might be. I walked out of my hotel down the road. There was a pub on the corner called “The Brewery”. I turned round and was in the Cathedral precincts. I walked up past the Cathedral but I couldn’t see this other church anywhere. After I’d had a good look around, I decided that I’d walk back. First thing that I noticed was some old guy. He was picking things up off the streets so I thought “homeless person, I suppose”. I thought “there really are some people who are down on their luck if they are having to pick discarded clothing etc up off the streets”

This dream doesn’t seem to have any significance at all as far as I can tell. I can still see the pub and the cathedral precincts but I can’t recognise them from anywhere that I’ve been, either in my sleep or when I’ve been awake.

The nurse came early today, and we had the usual inane, patronising comments that get on my nerves so much. I suppose that I’ll have to stop moaning and deal with it. It doesn’t look as if it’s going to go away any time soon.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading the story of Samuel Hearne. Today, he’s on his second attempt to reach the Coppermine River and has just had an encounter with a group of Northern First Nation people who promptly relieved him of everything that he carried that was of any use to them, so now he’s on his way back to the fort on the shores of Hudson’s Bay

Third time lucky, heh?

We had a meeting here today at 10:00 – one that we should have had on Friday had it not been for the complications surrounding that hospital appointment.

It was concerning the radio, and a couple of people from the Admin and the Local Council came for a chat to see how everything was with me, which was quite nice of them

As a result, I was late going for my Welsh class. But what I did there and for how much I missed, I did quite well yet again. It’s becoming a habit and I hope that it keeps up.

After lunch I waded into the radio programme.

Once I’d remembered how to deal with arrays, things went so much better with the little program that I was trying although there were several shortcomings with it and I shall have to tweak it some more whenever I have time, whenever that might be.

The radio programme is now up and running satisfactorily so tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the second one of this series. So God help me!

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some more of the refried beans, tomato and mushrooms. Had it been more spicy it would have reminded me of my stay in Santa Fe in Arizona twenty-odd years ago when I had the Mustang convertible.

THAT WAS A TRIP AND A HALF – through the deserts of the Southern USA and then back through the Rockies – even driving up to the top of Pike’s Peak, all 14,000_odd feet of it.

All the time that I had the Mustang, the top never came down. Even when it was snowing up in the Rockies. After all, if you’re going to have a convertible with the top up, you may as well have had a saloon car.

So having finished my notes, I have a few things to do and then I’m off to bed for another good sleep (I hope).

But one thing that Samuel Hearne might have said in is book about the First Nation peoples was that they made a great deal of use of the plant that is known by people in Eastern Canada as “Labrador Tea”. They dry it and drink buckets of it.
Hearne was telling his boss in the fort about the time that he and his band were camped by the side of a lake and his guide, having drunk so much tea that he could hardly stand, crawled off to his bed instead of leading the expedition
"Did you find him next morning" asked his boss "and give him a good talking-to?"
"We found him" said Hearne "but it was far too late by then"
"What do you mean?" asked his boss
"We found him all right" said Hearne "but during the night he had drowned in his teepee"

Sunday 10th November 2024 – THIS PERISHING RADIO …

… programme is driving me crazy.

What I have to do is to edit the text that I dictated last night, chop it into segments and attach it to the relevant track, and then make a selection of tracks with their attached speech in order to make a runtime of an hour or maybe some seconds over that I can edit out.

Sound simple doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you something, and that is that it isn’t anything like.

Even a decent night’s sleep didn’t help matters much. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it’s a lie-in in the morning so I still had over eight hours sleep (in principle).

“In principle” of course because, as usual, I was awoken several times during the night by someone or something and I can see that being a problem when I’m living on the ground floor, if I ever do actually make it there.

Despite all of that, I was still fast asleep and dead to the World when the alarm went off at 08:00. At that moment we were discussing someone’s face – how they’d only had it for ten years and it’s always been the same. Something like that but I’d only just begun when the alarm went off.

And the significance of that, I have no idea whatever.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub-up and came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, but I hadn’t gone far before the nurse came to see me.

She’s obviously someone else who doesn’t love me because she was here and gone in a twinkling of an eye, not really wishing to chat. She says that she’s really busy tomorrow, which is no surprise because on Tuesday her oppo takes over.

Once she’d left I made breakfast and read my book. Having finished the editor’s preamble, we’re now reading the author’s preamble.

Interestingly, despite Samuel Hearne being alleged by many to have been the person who discovered on Marble Island the traces of the long-lost James Knight expedition, he makes it clear in his notes that a party of fishermen from his ship, in their "boats, when on the look-out for fish, had frequent occasion to row close to the island, by which means they discovered a new harbour near the East end of it, at the head of which they found guns, anchors, cables, bricks, a smith’s anvil, and many other articles"

Furthermore, despite the many theories that circulate about the mysterious disappearance of the crew, "while we were prosecuting the fishery, we saw several Esquimaux at this new harbour; and perceiving that one or two of them were greatly advanced in years, our curiosity was excited to ask them some questions concerning the above ship and sloop," and they were given an explanation that should remove any doubt about the likely end of the survivors of the shipwrecks.

Back in here I had some football to watch. There were the highlights of the other matches in the Welsh Premier League and then Stranraer away at league leaders East Fife.

Stranraer have only won once since August last year and have been looking well off the pace but to everyone’s surprise, including theirs, I bet, they actually ran out 2-1 winners and are now off the bottom. If they keep this up they might actually avoid the relegation playoffs this season.

Then there were the dictaphone notes to deal with. I had an old, white Ford Cortina MkII. I was in London somewhere. I had someone with me and we were trying to leave the city. We’d been all the way round the north and in the Midlands. There had been some talk about it being a Bank Holiday and how if someone was going to visit the local supermarket he’d better do it on the Friday because otherwise everything would be sold by the Saturday. I’d made it down to London and was trying to exit the city. I told the person with me to look out for Croydon and if we could follow the signs for Croydon we’ll be half-way there. So we kept tacking across the south hoping to pick up a road. We ended up in some residential area where I nearly knocked down some woman crossing the road after alighting from a bus. Suddenly this guy said “just stop for a minute”. He left the car. I thought “this isn’t the moment to be stopping. We’re in a rush and we have to leave”. I heard some water running, and then I was distracted by something. I suddenly realised that he was standing behind me. We both climbed back into the car and I set off again. I asked him what he had been doing. He replied that he had seen some washing-up. I answered that we had much more important things to be doing than washing-up. The washing-up could have waited for another moment if we want to leave this city without being caught.

Just recently during the night I’ve been spending a lot of time in a white Ford Cortina MkII. That’s quite strange, because the one that I owned was black. But I’ve no idea why anyone would want to leave a car in order to do the washing up.

The reference to shops being closed is possibly a reference of when I first came to live in Brussels. The 11th of November is a Bank Holiday in Belgium but an “optional” one where I was working so I was coming in to work anyway. I’d forgotten about the Bank Holiday and ended up in a panic because I had all my shopping to do and nowhere to do it. For tea that night I walked quite a long way looking for a fritkot

And never ever is Trevor going to bother anyone with that feeble attempt at the styrofoam that just trickled by as he tried to have his ticket read by the machine at the entrance to the Undergound.

That’s what I dictated, and I can’t think of any meaning at all that applies to it. I like the rhyme at the beginning though.

That was everything on the dictaphone but there’s also an impression going through my mind about discussing football managers – someone saying that they thought someone to be too old for the job, but someone else reminding them that some famous football manager is actually 106.

Anyway, I then started work on the first of the two radio notes that I dictated last night. And they weren’t straightforward to edit either. They took quite a while. And now I’ve ended up with thirteen segments that, with their music, total about one hour and thirty minutes.

So thirty minutes has to go, which is in principle no problem, but as yet there’s no combination of tracks and speech that makes about one hour, no matter how I try.

It goes without saying that I haven’t yet started the second one. Perhaps I should have done that one first.

After the hot chocolate I started the baking. First of all was a load of dough for a few pizze, one tonight and a couple more for the future.

Then, there was some dough for a small loaf, followed by what should have been a ginger cake but the ginger has gone the Way of the West so it was a rich chocolate cake instead. That’s the next pudding.

All of that took several hours and once more I was out on my feet again. I can’t do all of this standing up and I really ought to buy a stool for the kitchen. But when do I find five minutes to do any on-line shopping?

So the pizza is done and baked and eaten, and it really was lovely too. The bread looks nice and so does the chocolate cake. Mixing the cake mixture in the food processor is really a good idea.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for tomorrow and another painful session at the Dialysis Clinic.

But baking that chocolate cake reminds me of my friend near Macclesfield who was baking a cake. When the oven “pinged” she was speaking to someone on the ‘phone so she told her daughter, who was aged 11, to go to check to see if it was done
"How do I do that?" she asked
"You stick a knife into the centre" said her mother "and if it comes out clean, you know that it’s done"
So off she went – and didn’t come back until tem minutes later
"Well? Is it done?" asked her mother
"Ohh yes" she replied. "The knife came out clean"
"So what took you so long then?"
"Well, the knife came out so clean" said the daughter "that I put the rest of the dirty cutlery in there too".

EPIC HALL

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