Tag Archives: alison weihe

Friday 17th November 2023 – AND I WAS DOING …

… so well too!

While I was out at the shops I really noticed some kind of improvement in my mobility. Not a lot, it has to be said, but definitely something.

And then, back here, I couldn’t climb up the stairs to my apartment. I really couldn’t. To make my way up 13 steps it took 20 minutes and a pile of gymnastics and I’m really not cut out to do this any more.

There had been plenty of gymnastics during the night. I didn’t go to bed until late because once I’d finished off everything I had a bad fit of nostalgia and fetched the acoustic guitar.

The last time that I had played CAREY seriously was on a windswept airstrip in the High Arctic when Castor and I were chilling out before her ‘plane came in to take her away – away for good after one of the most bizarre periods of my life and I was never the same again.

And, believe me – there have been more than just a few of those.

Of course after that there can only be ONE SONG THAT CAN FOLLOW THAT and it’s really strange that it wasn’t until a couple of years later when I was standing on an airport somewhere else that I realised that sometimes, goodbyes have to be said like that.

The painter Samuel Gurney Cresswell who had the unfortunate experience of accompanying Robert McClure during his expedition in the Investigator said afterwards when being interrogated by the Admiralty that "A voyage to the High Arctic ought to make anyone a wiser and better man".

That doesn’t seem to have worked for me, but then again we were only beset in the ice for 48 hours, not 18 months.

So having had a bad attack of nostalgia I went to bed with my legs strapped together in my elastic hoping that maybe Castor would come to pay me a visit during the night, but no such luck there. I’ve definitely lost the knack of summoning up people

When the alarm went off this morning I was in South Wales with a group of people who may well have been some kind of Welsh learners’ group. The discussion centred around sport – mainly rugby but also football – and one woman was talking about a “rugby trail” around South Wales, a tourist attraction to visit all of the famous sites in Welsh rugby that passed by her home in Merthyr Tydfil. Some of us were talking about football and the subject of a famous footballer who had had a difficult time in his youth with a couple of clubs came up. We had at one point to go out into a field, mark out a path and lay down some supplies but when we arrived we found that the field hadn’t been mown for years and was really just like wild hay. When we reached the spot where we had to leave these items it was impossible to see anything but the guy with me asked “should we just leave the things here now and come back for them again?”.

Nevertheless I struggled to my feet and went off in search of medication.

Having done that I came back here and transcribed the rest of the notes, of which there were more than just a few. For some reason I’d been on a voyage around an apartment during the night. The apartment was equipped with every kind of device known to man, to help someone handicapped raise themselves to their feet and move around. There was of course nothing that I saw that was of any use to me in my predicament but it was interesting to see what my subconscious in a dream thinks would happen to people in circumstances like this.

Some boy whom I’d known at school had phoned me and asked me to stop doing Hamas’s job. I asked him what on earth he was talking about. It turned out that we were all a big group of people from school working together for some organisation and someone had been phoning him with all kinds of strange phone calls while he was in the bath. He thought that it was me but I tried to reassure him that I hadn’t done anything at all like that. In the end the conversation gradually drifted round into something more light-hearted and friendly. He went through the whole list of phone calls on his phone for that afternoon and asked me if I knew any of the locations and if I’d ever been to any of them during the day. Of course I had to deny everything. But there was something in this dream that when I saw him leaving work that afternoon he had with him a double-necked 6-string guitar and amplifier so I wondered what on earth was going on with that but it had nothing whatever to do with these phone calls, I was sure of that and I knew nothing whatever about any of them.

There was another dream similar to the first one where someone complained that I’d been ringing them at all strange hours of the day and night. When we looked at the phone records I was nowhere near wherever these phone calls had originated. I’d never lived there and certainly hadn’t visited that area during that time so I’d no idea what he was talking about and why the guy thought that it might have been me.

At another moment it was as if a length of coiled spring had been inserted into the pavement every so often and you came along and stuck your crutch-end into the hole in one of these statue things and it tipped you off down the road to the next one. I thought that this was the strangest thing I’d ever heard but once again I had to go to great lengths to deny having made any of these phone calls that were so disturbing this guy so much.

Shavington, outside the Post Office on the corner, was another place where another one of these statues had appeared. Once again people were thinking that it was me but I had no idea why they thought so. I certainly hadn’t done anything about erecting any statues and I was sure that if they’d checked the phone number and the e-mail it would be totally different from any that I could access. I really didn’t have any idea as to who was doing all this, why they would want to do it and why they would want to use me as a victim.

I was back last night in that dream about Roosevelt, the baseball player. I’m not sure if I dictated it but there was a group of RAF pilots in South Wales during World War II right at the start. They’d heard that a Luftwaffe fighter had fetched up in Ireland and had been put on display by the Irish authorities. They took off on a scheduled flight with about 10 other people to fly to the airfield. The part across water went well but the part across land was complicated and ended up running out of time. It was a struggle to get down to the airfield at the correct moment. For some unknown reason I was flying behind on my own. They touched down and went into this hangar. There were some statues of American heroes who had come from Ireland. One was a guy called Roosevelt. Everyone immediately thought that it was the President but I explained that there had also been an American pilot in World War I called Roosevelt who came from Ireland and was a famous baseball player. I bet that the statue was of him. That led to all kinds of discussion and argument sand no-one would believe me. But there had been so much time spent messing around and trying to organise things that when it came to the flight back not only had they not actually seen the aeroplane but they were still nothing like ready to depart. You could see that everyone from the passengers down to the crew down to the airport staff were extremely annoyed about these RAf pilots who want to go to look at this aeroplane but just couldn’t organise themselves to do so. What didn’t help was that one of them knew a girl who happened to be there at the airport and spent far more time talking to her than he did to the rest of his colleagues.

Actually, the pilot referred to was an American of Dutch descent, Quentin Roosevelt, who was shot down and killed on the Marne in 1918 and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our shuttle between Brussels and Virlet that we used to undertake regularly, we always drove past the memorial at Navarin Farm near Chalons sur Marne.

He had an airport on Long Island named after him and we went there to see the site of it over the New Year of 1999-2000 and where I was lucky enough to be allowed to sit behind the controls of the replica of Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St Louis”

Later on I was whisked off in this programme of investigating people’s immigration status, I suppose. There was a pink aeroplane that came along on which I was put. When we landed somewhere we were all ushered into a certain area where we had to produce our nationalities etc. I was extremely confused as to what was happening and couldn’t understand a thing. Of course quite naturally I’m of British birth and origin and have been all my life

After a good wash and setting to washing machine off on its travels I went out and caught the bus.

And on arriving at St Nicolas a most extraordinary thing happened.

Someone came over to me. "I see you at the Centre de Re-education" he said, and began to chat with me about our illnesses.

When I told him that I have a terminal illness he reached into his pocket, pulled out a phial of Holy Water, dipped his finger in it and made the Sign of the Cross on my cheek.

Marianne had gallons of Holy Water that she had collected from just about every Holy place in the World and she even blagged herself an Audience with the Pope when we were down in Rome for Holy Week 20-odd years ago, but it didn’t do her any good and I don’t suspect that this will do me any good either.

But sometimes, I’m quite amazed at the generosity, thoughtfulness and kindness of ordinary people whom I encounter on my travels around.

That Holy Week though was quite interesting. Apparently if we visited 7 particular religious sites scattered around the Seven Hills, we would be assured of permanent Absolution. Of course, that means nothing to me whatsoever but she was really keen to go so we went.

It was in the middle of winter too and the sites were really scattered about – one of them several miles outside the city on the Via Appia Antica but I insisted that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it properly so just like the Pilgrims of years ago, we walked all the way, past the catacombs and the tombs and everything else.

Mind you, there were many more cafés along the road than there were in former times.

So now, just to let you know, I am assured of permanent Absolution – not that it will do me any good.

At the Carrefour they had some bread that was going out of date, on sale for a pittance. As it happened, I’d seen a couple of days ago a recipe for bread-and-butter pudding made in the air fryer and seeing as I now have some dried figs to go with my raisins, sultanas and desiccated coconut, I reckoned that I’ll give it a try.

Loaded up with stuff and having had my coffee I made my way back to the bus stop and home, and my nightmare climb back up to safety.

First thing that I did was to hang up the washing, and you’ve no idea how difficult that is these days. Then I put away the stuff that I’d bought and made myself some soup to go with the crusty bread that I’d also bought.

Back here afterwards I was absolutely fit for nothing and spent much of the afternoon asleep. It’s really taking it out of me, all of this work and I know that I’m going to regret it before much longer.

In between everything I was having a chat with Alison. I asked her how the renovations were going on at Alison Wonderland so she sent me a few photos to show the latest developments.

Apparently the new kitchen will be there in a couple of weeks and she’ll be moving in in January

Whatever lese was left of the day I finished the radio programme that I started earlier and then paired off the music for the next radio programme and writing the notes. I’ve done over half of them and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow so that I can record them during the night on Saturday when it’s quiet outside.

Tea was salad, chips and some of those veggie nuggets, and that is that for today.

Now that I’ve finished my notes I’ll make myself a drink and then go to bed. I’ll try to avoid playing the guitar just before bedtime though. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

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Tuesday 7th November 2023 – I HAD PLENTY …

… of time to recover from my exertions this afternoon at the Centre de Re-education. The vehicle that came to pick me up was 90 minutes late.

What I expect actually happened was that the vehicle that should have come for me picked up someone else because there was a driver from another ambulance company wandering around for ages trying to find her passenger.

And it’s just as well too because after the night that I’d had, I needed a good rest, although I doubted if I would be so lucky as to have one.

It was another one of these extremely mobile nights where there was a lot going on here and there. Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone as I was to discover later, and I was sure that there was much more to it than that which I recorded too.

Anyway, when the alarm went off I staggered to my feet and went off in search of my medication.

Back in here afterwards I did the very final version of this important letter that I have to write, and then I had to print off the details of my medication to take to the Centre this afternoon.

Surprisingly, there are 14 medicaments on the list, but I’m actually only taking 10. I know about 2 that I’ve stopped taking, but I’m quite curious about the others.

It’s not easy to double-check either as the prescriptions are in Flemish and the trade names of medication in Belgium are quite often different here in France. It’s pretty much some kind of inspired guesswork to fathom in out.

For example, there’s a product that I have to take that contains “Natrium”, which is unknown in France. However, the chemical formula Na refers to sodium and once you realise that, you can work it out. My ‘O’ Level Latin didn’t go to waste. But if only all of it was so easy.

After that I prepared for my Welsh lesson. I took my time at it too but regrettably I crashed out while doing so. The strain of last night was obviously far too much.

In between all of that I was having a chat on the internet with Alison and with Claire. It’s totally bizarre but everyone whom I know seems right now to be ill.

However, that’s not really all that much of a surprise. We’re all pretty much of a similar age and it’s catching up with all of us.

It reminds me of 5 years ago when I was in Liège and met a guy with whom I went to school years ago and who now lives in Munich. We were in a restaurant eating a meal, surrounded by tables with all these cute young girls sitting there eating, and we were talking about our medication.

That was when I finally decided that I was getting old. Prior to that, I always understood that someone who was old was someone 10 years older than me, no matter what age I actually was.

But kids have a habit of deflating your ego. I remember when I started to see Laurence 25 or so years ago and she brought her daughter Roxanne along with her. We were playing guessing games.
"Guess how old I am" I asked six year old Roxanne
"A hundred" she replied, without even drawing breath.

Much of the Welsh lesson passed quite well and I was quite pleased with that, but not so the rest of it.

We usually stop for 10-15 minutes for a coffee break after a couple of hours and so I went for a strip-down wash, seeing as I’m still quite wary about going into the bath for a shower.

And have you any idea how long it takes me to put on clean socks? I am really having the most extraordinary difficulty in performing even the most simple of tasks these days.

The car came for me bang on time and so I struggled down the stairs and outside, and we set off for the Centre de Re-education.

It’s a fantastic place, formerly one of the biggest and most luxurious hotels in the Baie de Granville.

It was requisitioned by the Germans in 1940 and after the Americans captured the town in 1944 it was badly damaged during the infamous German raid from the Channel Islands in the early Spring of 1945 when a detachment of German troops landed in the town and stole a freighter laden with coal from right under the noses of the Americans.

After that it was left semi-derelict until it was converted and it is probably one of the most impressive places that I’ve visited.

As it happens I actually know one of the girls who works here. She was one of the physiotherapists who worked on me in the days when I could walk and used to go twice a week to that centre by the station.

But anyway, a young girl gave my legs a workout and spent some time searching around for damaged nerve ends and the like. And I have to say that she can massage my clavicles any time she likes. There have to be some benefits of being ill.

The next session was a series of “time trials”. They have a kind-of obstacle course and the equivalent of a “measured mile” and I had to negotiate all of it against the clock.

And then I had to wait.

But I now have my programme for the next couple of weeks and it includes a chat with a social worker and also a representative of that body about which I’ve talked previously that it concerned with autonomy and keeping people in their homes as long as possible.

Strangely enough, climbing back up the stairs to here was probably the easiest that it has been for a couple of weeks. It’s probably just a coincidence or maybe even wishful thinking, or maybe it’s that the trousers into which I changed earlier today aren’t as tight as the previous ones.

On the way up I bumped into one of my neighbours, and I was glad to see him. He’s also disabled and has had his car converted to hand controls. I wanted to pick his brains about where he had it done.

After my hot chocolate and biscuits I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was being interviewed by someone who was wearing some kind of badge that wasn’t the usual badge that I would have expected someone in that position to have been wearing. Just as the interview began and before I could ask too many questions about it I had a falling sensation again in bed and awoke with a frightful start.

It was exactly the sensation that I have when my right leg gives out and I cascade to the floor, and it was really strange that I had exactly the same feeling when I was lying horizontally in bed. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there aren’t ‘arf some strange things that go on during the night that have been brought to … errr … light during this project.

And then I’d had a whole pile of homework to do – an enormous amount of it. It was all in various textbooks and on line. I needed to make a start on it but as usual there were all these different distractions etc that were preventing me until I finally managed to sit down at the computer and open one of the workbooks. There was something else happening in this dream about moving around in Shavington and something yet again about a group of us children being divided up into 2 teams by some kind of teacher for a game of rounders. Where that all fitted in I really don’t know but I do remember quite a lot about this trying to sit down and make a start on all of this homework that I had to do.

Later on I’d been out to do some shopping. I was back home in my apartment trying to sort it out and put it away. There were some things that were confusing and I didn’t know exactly where to put them. There was also some flour that i’d bought to make some kind of fruit bread so I threw the flour across to one particular pile on the table but it didn’t arrive. I thought that I must have miscalculated the weight and while it was in the air it must have fallen to the floor. I had a good look round but couldn’t see anything at all around that related to the food that I’d just bought.

Back with this dream about shopping again. I was trying to put everything on the correct shelves but there was so much that needed to be sorted out, things that I hadn’t actually bought before but there was no room for it. I had to start to shuffle everything around and squeeze things up in order to make more room to spread out and sort out my shopping that I’d just received.

And with the manoeuvres of just now, when I’d organised my things I fell over onto the ground but no-one noticed. Once I’d caught my breath I put my hands up to the table to try to raise myself up but at that moment a woman who happened to catch sight of me and hadn’t realised what was going on let out a great yell. She was really shocked. And interestingly, this was something that I dictated in French by the way.

Finally there was another one of these Government safety reports published during the night that laid bare a lot of the failings of the Government with regard to security breaches etc. Most importantly it continued on to say how the Government was trying very hard to shift the blame onto the ordinary people. Of course it wasn’t the people who were talking indiscreetly and the people don’t know any of the secrets anyway. If the people did know any secrets the fact would be that it would have been from leaks in the Government security system that those leaks had come into the public domain. A couple of journalists were tearing quite savagely into the Government last night with this report that they had published.

Later on I wrote out a few more notes for the radio programme on which I’m working, and had a chat on line with my cleaner. We need to change her hours around, what with me having to go out tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m having a visit on Friday afternoon too. I wonder what that’s all about.

Tea tonight was a taco roll made with some of the stuffing left over from Monday, with rice and veg. Tomorrow I’ll have another leftover curry and naan bread.

But let’s see how things go tomorrow down the road. The hard work is going to begin and as long as they can make some progress – or, at least, retard the deterioration – I’ll be happy. But with the Social Services and APA being involved, things are starting to happen.

And that can only be a good thing.

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Friday 6th October 2023 – IT’S NOW OFFICIAL.

In the post this morning came my two disability permits. One for me and one for any car in which I might be travelling. It’s a sign of the times of course and something that will inevitably happen to all of you at some time or another. All I can say is that I’ve had a good run for my money

All I need now is a car which I can drive, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. For that, I’ll have to see what these people at APA have to tell me, but even now they STILL haven’t sent me the forms that they promised a week ago. This is going to be a lengthy process.

My sleep last night was a lengthy process too. For two nights on the run now I’ve slept right through until the alarm went off. And then I had a struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

There was time to listen to the messages on the dictaphone before I did anything else. There was some kind of uprising taking place. All the citizens were required to rally to the defence of their city. Someone was suspected of being behind all of this so hat they called for was to examine the metadata of a couple of files on his computer to see whether they had been altered in any way that might give grounds for some kind of suspicion. When they asked for this information he did everything he could to defy them, delay them etc until in the end they were all swamped by all the mails that were coming from the citizens so it was going to be so it was going to be something much more complicated than it might have been had they done it a day earlier.

And then I was working for a company last night and had to go round to collect a debt from someone that was owed. I went round to their house, and it took some finding. When I arrived I knocked on the door but it swung open so I walked in and shouted. Eventually an old woman came into the kitchen and asked why I was there. I explained that she had a bill to pay. She apologised and said that she’d pay it so I went back to my office. There was some kind of building project taking place that needed to be done quietly so we decided that we’d do it in the dark. At night we dressed in clothes, it was a wet and windy November night. When everything was quiet and everyone had gone we set out. It was then that I realised that I didn’t have my gloves. I was told that I had to have them. They were on the floor by the washing machine in the laundry room So I’d have to run back to fetch them while everyone waited for me. That was quite a long way but I thought that it would really be uncomfortable working in this without gloves so I’d best set off.

We were back in Davenport Avenue later. It wasn’t exactly like it but a mirror image. Nerina and I were tidying up a few things because we were having visitors. It turned out that my friend Malou and her friend were coming to visit and we were going to hang around together and then go off out. Nerina was busy planning in her mind who she’d allocate with who and decided that I’d take Malou in my car. I didn’t want to explain to Nerina that there was no tax or MoT on my car but in fact it was probably a wise idea to go in Malou’s car but she was quite insistent so when it reached the time to go outside one of our party (I can’t remember who) was at the front of the house and saw Malou pull into the drive with her friend. We walked down from the bottom of the drive up to the street to meet them. I remember thinking “my house is so untidy, such a tip, that i’m not sure that this is a good idea to go inviting people to my house” … "nothing new there" – ed …

Finally I was with Alison and another girl walking around Brussels. We ended up around a section that was really modern. There were all these huge aeroplanes flying overhead and it really looked like something out of another world. It was dark and misty and these aeroplanes were so impressive flying through the low clouds at night like this with all their lights on. Then we decided to carry on walking but there was a really good view there so I stopped to take a couple of photos. Then I wandered off to take some photos of my bedroom window which was only a couple of hundred yards away. I dashed off and took the photos. I could hear some people talking outside as if their conversations weren’t being overheard. That was really interesting. In the end I set off back out again. I hadn’t gone far when I realised that I’d forgotten my camera. I carried on anyway. There was a woman on crutches with a couple of kids, and lots of other people. I couldn’t see Alison. I thought to myself that maybe we should have made better arrangements to meet than this. Suddenly she was at my elbow and told me that she’d put on the shelf all the information concerning our trip. I told her that I’d been keeping a log for the whole month and that was all together too. We sat down to work out where we want to go

Then I headed out for the bus as I had things to do in the town. I’d taken with me the letter that I’d written yesterday to the doctor, with the intention of giving it to the receptionist. But as you might expect, the way things are these days, there was a strike on and the receptionist wasn’t it.

Round at the Carrefour I did the shopping and made it back in time for the bus. It was a struggle to climb aboard, as I imagined that it would be.

However, there was some good news. I’d interrogated the driver and he told me that the bus stop at St Nicholas does indeed have an elevated platform so boarding the bus for coming home shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The big difficulty though is that there is only 12 minutes between the bus dropping me off and it coming back again, and that is going to cause a few problems of its own.

Mind you, after how I felt after my trip out today, I don’t think that I’ll be going anywhere again. I can’t keep this up. it’s really hard to believe that it wasn’t all that many weeks ago that I walked back from town after a shopping trip.

Back here, having staggered up the stairs under my heavy load, I made my coffee and my cheese on toast, and then came back back in here where, in a marvellous fit of bravado, I finished off the arrears of the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital last autumn.

My cleaner came round to see me afterwards. I’d sent her a message about my failure to leave the letter at the doctor’s. I’d asked her if she would take it for me on one of her forays down to town next week. I realy and honestly don’t think that I could do it, and it’s quite an important letter.

Something else that I did this afternoon was to bake a loaf of bread. With not going out tomorrow I won’t be having one of my lovely crusty baguettes so I need to do something about that if I want my cheese on toast.

In fact, going back to baking isn’t a bad idea really. At some point in the proceedings I have to make more fruit buns and more pizza dough so it seems like a good moment to have another go at making a vegan pie. I picked up some potatoes today so I have enough to keep me going for a while.

Finally, I chose all of the music for another radio programme and paired it off. If I can write the notes for that tomorrow I’ll have four sets of notes to dictate and that will give me something to do over the next week

Tea tonight was a burger on a bun with salad and a baked potato. Nothing special at all but quite nice for a change.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a really busy day as you can see, and I’ve crashed out once this afternoon already, but only for a few minutes. Now I want to crash out for a good while and sleep until the morning.

Then I’ll see what can be done about all the things that need resolving. There are plenty of those.

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Sunday 24th September 2023 – I WAS THINKING …

… and that’s always dangerous of course, about how much things have changed.

6 years ago to the day, I was in South Carolina visiting Rhys. I was at the end of a mega-voyage where I went to say goodbye to everyone whom I knew in North America and to cross off a few more things from my bucket list.

That voyage was because I felt that I was coming to the end of the road and didn’t want to forget anyone whom I knew.

However 6 years of living here in peace and quiet and comparative luxury gave me a new lease of life but tomorrow I shall be off to Paris for what will be a make-or-break hospital examination. During the next few days they’ll be examining me and it’ll either be good news or bad news. There’s nothing in between.

It’s a pity really that the decline in health over the last 18 months has happened at this time. I was having a lengthy chat on the internet today with one of the daughters of my niece currently in the USA. She’s getting married in November and, having followed her adventures quite closely, how I would love to be there to celebrate it with her.

However, as my trip to Leuven went to prove, I simply can’t make it. I even went to the lengths of costing how much it would cost to invite a friend to come with me for a week to hold my luggage and my hand. However there are few people whose company I would enjoy for that period of time and every one of them is either too ill to travel, otherwise occupied, or with other responsibilities.

My responsibility last night was to have a decent night’s sleep and for some reason, despite not going to bed until after 02:30, I was up and about by 09:45. That’s something that I don’t understand. It’s not like me at all on a Sunday.

For the morning I didn’t do very much – just a nice quiet relaxing morning, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was back at home going through my record collection. There were some records there, some of this death-metal stuff. My brother decided that he didn’t particularly like it and this led to a huge argument between us. This argument turned violent. He started to attack me. At one point he was on my shoulders beating me so I took him to the top of the stairs and quite simply dropped my head forward. He fell off and went right down the stairs onto the floor of the hall below. I thought that this was really only a temporary solution. It’s just going to lead to yet more trouble and I really don’t know how I’m going to get myself out of this. It was another one of these occasions where I actually awoke with quite a start as if it was something that was extremely real.

And you really don’t want to know the rest of that, especially if you are eating your tea or something.

Later on, Alison had gone off to see some friends. I was at home having to get ready to go to Paris where someone was going to meet me to take me to the hospital. Rather than rush around I thought that I’d have a nice lie-in and then make myself ready to go. Then I realised that trains are only every three hours to Paris. If I didn’t catch the one that I intended I would be 3 hours late, no-one would be waiting for me, the hospital would have closed its admissions and I’d be left high and dry. I had to start to hurry. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that the best thing to do would be to just take what I could carry and leave everything here, hope that Alison won’t mind, come back for it when I’m out of hospital and then move on back home. I couldn’t see how I was going to do that either. I was just in a state of total confusion. I’d written to Alison previously about a couple of special offers on things. She’d been impressed by an offer on cheese and had taken a pile of tickets with her. She had written to tell me that the cheese was a great success and she wished that she had some more. Was there any way that I could obtain some before I left? Of course it was far too late to do it now. She was talking about another type of cheese she’d had but I didn’t understand the message. Of course all the time I was sitting there worrying about my train. Would it go? Will I miss it? What am I going to do? in a total state of confusion.

Feeling energetic at that moment, which is not like me at all, especially on a Sunday, I transcribed a couple of entries from my hospital stay last November. There’s still plenty that need to be done but if I do a couple each day, it won’t take long.

Having had a lengthy chat with my niece’s daughter in the USA, I finished off the afternoon by dealing with one of the sets of notes that I’d dictated for those radio programmes. It was a miserable attempt at dictating and took a great deal of editing. One of them is now almost completed and I’ll deal with the other in due course.

Earlier on I’d taken out a lump of dough from the freezer and I made another pizza for tea, just as delicious as usual.

So now I’m off to bed. I have to be up at 04;30 and that’s not going to be nice. But once I reach the hospital, if I ever do, I can crash out and sleep for several days until they throw me out. But at least I’ll know what’s going on and what, if anything, they can do about it.

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Friday 15th September 2023 – AS BARRY HAY …

… once famously said, "there’s just one thing – IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME".

And you’ve no idea the size of the sigh of relief that escaped from my lips when I collapsed into my chair here in my office.

Hardly surprising since I’ve been on the road since 05:20 this morning. That was when my alarm went off and I was already packed and dressed. It didn’t take too long to load up the car and then hit the road.

Alison dropped me off at the Kortenberg railway station and it took me a while to work out how to reach the platform. It’s not like a conventional station and things take some hunting down.

nevertheless I was soon on the platform and in time for the 06:28 to Brussels. And it was just as well that I chose that train because these are low-line commuter units where the floor is level with the platform, not like the urban express double-deckers where there’s a climb up into the carriage that I can no longer accomplish.

The rain pulled in bang on time so I had about 75 minutes to wait.

However, what I’d learnt so far today was that the 65 minutes to traverse Paris isn’t going to be enough. I need to think of another plan.

At the booking office they wouldn’t let me change my ticket, but up on the platform, speaking to the train manager I had better luck and she let me hop aboard one of the casual seats at the back of the bar, which I thought was very nice of her.

And it was just as well too because with the renovations taking place at the Gare du Nord they have moved the taxi rank from just outside the door and now it’s a real marathon trek to the rank. I really was finished long before I reached it.

As luck would have it, the taxi marshal waved me to the front of the queue and I had a really nice and chatty lady driver who drove me to Montparnasse.

There was 33 minutes to wait for the departure of my train so it was just as well that I’d caught the earlier train. I was able to grab a cup of coffee which was also just as well – that’s all that I had to eat or drink on the journey because I’d forgotten my bottle of ginger beer in Alison’s fridge.

The train was packed and we were crammed in like sardines. I managed a brief five minutes of … errr … relaxing, but that was all.

It was on time pulling into the station and I was lucky in that I only had to wait two minutes for the bus to the town centre. And from there I had a horrible, miserable walk to the bus stop at the port for my bus up here.

There’s no kerb there and the buses don’t kneel down very much so climbing in was a real effort. And then climbing up the stairs to here, I just couldn’t do it. In the end I had to take off my backpack and drag it on the floor behind me. I am not ever going to do this journey again.

Back here when I finally arrived I made myself an ice-cold drink and came in here where I crashed out on the chair and that was really that.

Tea tonight was sausage chips and beans (I’ll end up looking like a sausage after this week) and then we had football on the internet – Colwyn Bay v Aberystwyth.

The match was a real bottom-of-the-table shocker that Colwyn Bay won 3-1, and I have to be honest and say that they won’t ever have a victory as easy as that again. After only 40 minutes the commentator said “Mae Aberystwyth yn siomedig” – Aberystwyth are disappointing – and that was aun understatement.

One bright spark for Aberystwyth was that at half-time they brought on a left-back called Akeem Hinds. I hadn’t seen him before. He certainly livened up the team with some good interceptions and some beautiful crosses into the penalty area.

What with Colwyn Bay’s Nigerian forward Udoyen Akpan who has come to the club from Cyprus, here are two players on whom I shall be keeping a very close eye.

Mind you, I said the same about Okera Simmonds who played for Y Fflint last season, and he disappeared without trace. I must be the Kiss of Death.

Surprisingly, despite the short night there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone. I don’t know what was happening here but I was pulling nails and plastic skewers out of my foot. I took one out and it didn’t ‘arf hurt. I just wondered whether that was symbolic of the pains that I’m having in my feet or something at the moment.

The next thing was that the alarm went off so I trued to turn off the dictaphone and tried to turn off a couple of other things. I suddenly realised that it was the phone. I fell out of bed and crawled across the floor to turn off the phone. For some reason my brother wouldn’t leave the bed so the girl with me was wondering what on earth was the matter with him. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was 01:27. I’d awoken and actually dreamed of the alarm going off.

I was with my mother and brother. We pulled into Paris. We left the train and walked outside the station ready to walk across Paris to the next railway station. There were kids on bikes and scooters having fun in one of the squares. My mother said something like “we need to be careful around here because of all these kids” but they looked fairly harmless to me. For some eason we became separated. My mother and brother went off down one street and I went off down the other. I was sure that I was correct. This road took me to the top of a hill where I could see right over Paris. It looked miles away but the way my mother was going was even further away. I shouted for my mother but couldn’t hear anything so I carried on walking by myself in a field. I shouted again and this time she answered. The fence was quite high and I couldn’t climb it so I had to walk back to where the fence was low and then climb up a bank to go over the top. As I climbed up the bank the top kept falling down and I kept sliding down to the bottom again. This happened several times. In the end there was a vehicle, some kind of army lorry buried in the bank. Suddenly it gave a lurch and rolled over, throwing me onto the floor near where my mother and brother were . They said “quickly, grab that guy …” and mentioned someone’s name “… and he’ll take us”. But I couldn’t see who it was that she meant because I couldn’t see anyone around

I was with my friends from the weekend. We’d just left the train and gone walking. We came across a big bush that was on fire. We tried to stop the fire by stamping it but it burnt me. The fire gradually burnt itself out. All the climbing ivy over this object died so we scraped away some of the ivy and that was a job and a half of its own. We found a woman sitting there. Apparently she was with some kind of Social Services and had come to check up on us to make sure that we were all OK and not up to mischief. Of course we caught her like this.

When we finally did leave the house we ended up at the end of the drive and across the road into the chemist’s, nearly being knocked down by a big old Humber that stopped to let us through. I handed a form to the chemist and said “four dailies”. He said “this isn’t the correct form. Where’s the rest of it? It should be twice this size”. He showed me a full example of a form. The last thing I wanted was an argument so I took the form back and said “just give us four dailies”. She rattled off four dailies. One of my friends went to pay but it was £30 and something. That horrified him but I thought that this job of getting to the station to catch his train was just so complicated that we weren’t ever going to manage this at all at this rate. All we want is four tickets and it was turning into a right pantomime

I was in a butcher’s buying food for tea for about a dozen meals that I needed. He sat down with some huge piles of meat and began to give me things like brains of DH Lawrence etc. I wondered what on earth was going on because I was a vegan and he was giving me all these cuts of meat to eat for my tea

Anyway, I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow and I don’t feel at all like it. As I said, I’m not going to be doing this journey again. I just can’t.

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Wednesday 13th September 2023 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’m slipping back into my old routine again, as far as sleep goes right now. For the first time for several days I awoke in the middle of the night.

Not only that, I crashed out again in the middle of the afternoon for 20 minutes and it’s been a good few days since I’ve done that – apart, obviously, from when I’ve been exerting myself by going walkabout outside.

Regardless of all of that, I was still wide-awake before the alarm went off, just on the point of putting my feet down onto the floor.

However, it seems that I’ve been going one place backwards yet again. The sofa is quite low and for the first couple of days the only way that I could stand up is by going via a chair. After that, I was able to push myself up from that low position. But today, it was a real struggle.

After Alison had gone to work I spent all of the day sorting out stuff for the next series of radio programmes that will be broadcast in the second half of next year.

Importantly, there are two festivals that have caught my eye. One programme will be broadcast on the anniversary of the first Hawkfest and another one will be broadcast on the anniversary of the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival.

The Hawkfest one is going to be quite interesting.

There are half a dozen groups which, if my listeners and the radio station manager would stomach it, I would broadcast during an entire programme non-stop from start to finish. Hawkwind would be one of them. Unfortunately that’s not really appropriate.

Hidden away in my music collection is a whole pile of esoteric stuff relating to groups who have played at one or other Hawkfest so what I’m going to do is to recreate my own Radio Hawkfest for broadcast on the appropriate anniversary date. That’s one of the things that I’ve been doing today.

The Isle of Wight Festival is a much easier proposition. I’ve found a list of bands, a few set lists and all that kind of thing so a programme like that won’t be too difficult to assemble. Most importantly, I’ve been able to trace quite a few press reports and the like that give interesting facts about the performers and the music that I can add in as appropriate

It’s not easy though, doing all this audio-editing on the laptop. It’s not the most powerful of computers and that was one of the reasons why I bought the monster desktop version. But whatever I can do here, regardless of how long it takes me, means that I have less to do when I finally return home, even if it will be much quicker.

In between everything else I had another wash. Once more in the kitchen because I cant make it up the stairs. This time I remembered to close the blinds in the kitchen before I started so as not to surprise anyone who might be walking down the path of the house next door.

Alison had even found be a bucket so I could give my feet a good scrub. I can’t fit them in the sink and I’m not able to climb onto a chair.

Really? I ask you! What kind of state am I in these days?

There was a lot of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I’d had a huge row with my family, a really violent argument. In the end I stormed away, climbed into Caliburn and set out to drive away to the family home. I didn’t really want to go home because that was where they’d come looking for me. In the end I parked up somewhere in a field and sat and watched these vehicles driving down the track alongside the river suddenly come to the end and trying all to find ways to drop down into the field. There were things like these old Morris vans, a 3-wheeled version rather like Heinkel bubble-cars but enormous ones that were trying to drop down into this field with 1 or 2 overturning on the way. In the end I set out to walk into town from there. My brother bumped into me and insisted on following me about. While I was in one particular street there was a place advertising Bed and Breakfast. I thought that with it being a Sunday tomorrow I’d go in here and see. It meant climbing down a couple of weird flights of steps to reach the front door but the people came out. They seemed nice and friendly and charged me £30 per night which I thought was reasonable. My brother insisted on hanging around and I couldn’t get rid of him – he just wouldn’t leave me alone. I remember saying that¨£30 per night, I’ll remember this place if I have to come around in this kind of situation again.

And then I had a Ford Cortina that was causing me a few problems. I had it in the garage and was crawling underneath it. I could see that the exhaust was broken. I had to cut off the back box part to have a look to see what was happening. I cut it off and I could see the air filter inside the exhaust. Cecile came down and she was interested in what was happening. I showed her and she went to fetch a friend to show her the air filter. At that moment a girl whom I knew came in. She had a boy with her and they were talking so I thought that I’d go into the kitchen and wash my hands. My mother was in there. We were talking about washing my hands when the phone rang just once then stopped. She had a look and said that it’s Nigel Gregory ringing for your sister to apologise for last night. I said “she’s in the garage with some guy at the moment”. She replied “it won’t take long”. While I was washing everyone came in for tea. We were talking about the exhaust. I said that the exhaust for a 1.6 is cheaper than for a 2.0 so I suppose that we ought to have that, waiting for some kind of comment from Darren. He didn’t actually say anything at the time. Earlier on I’d been in some kind of woodworking class where there was a kind-of bench. I was trying to draw a circle on a piece of OSB with a set of compasses but it was much more complicated that I thought. The people next to me were borrowing my tools and putting them back so I didn’t object too much. They made a comment about my little socket set that I had. I said “just wait until you see the big one that I have in the car”. When I’d drawn my circle to some kind of satisfaction I took a G-clamp and went to clamp it to the bench but there was no threaded rod in it so I had to find another one then clamp it to the bench. I borrowed the wood saw off the guy in the bay next to mine and began to saw away at these marks that I’d made ready to cut the circle out of this OSB

Someone posted a photo of the National League South table pointing out “look how well Torquay were doing” but someone else commented that that was the National League South and it’s the National League here so that photo shouldn’t be posted, which led to some kind of heated debate

Tea tonight was pasta in a cheese and tomato sauce with vegetables and a couple of those delicious vegan sausages. They really were delicious too.

It’s Castle Anthrax tomorrow where they can check up on me and see what this last 4 months has done to me. So I’ll probably go to bed and hope for a good sleep on my comfy sofa. It’s an early start as Alison is dropping me off on her way to work. I’ll have to catch the bus home afterwards though.

It’ll be interesting to see how I’ve been doing after all this time without treatment for my cancer. That might be stable at the moment but the problem is that everything else is breaking down.

It’s for that reason that my trip to Paris will be interesting. Not so much that I’m expecting them to work miracles – it will just be nice to see them try. You never know what might happen.

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Tuesday 12th September 2023 – I HAVE HAD …

… the kind of day today that you can only ever have in Belgium.

In the middle of my Welsh lesson, during which I was speaking Welsh, I had a ‘phone call which I had to answer, and ended up having a conversation in French.

Back to the Welsh lesson, speaking Welsh again, and someone came to the door, so I ended up having a conversation in Flemish.

And then back to speaking Welsh.

It reminded me of the time years ago when I was living here and there were 14 of us sitting round a table talking in French, and French was the mother-tongue of none of us.

Something else that was good and interesting was that I had another excellent night’s sleep again and I wish that I could have a few more of those. I’ve really no idea why that might be because sofas are not actually renowned for their comfort and my bed was the best that I could afford.

Anyway I was up once more before the alarm went off and had a very slow awakening before I was ready to Fight The Good Fight.

Alison was going to work late this morning so she dropped me off at the supermarket in the village where I stocked up on the basics that I need to keep me going until Friday morning.

The walk back here with a heavy rucksack was not easy because it’s much further than you might think and the road is quite uneven. So I was glad to be back and have my cheese and tomato on toast, especially now that I have some tomato to go on it.

There was something on the dictaphone from the night. I was in Canada talking to my niece. Actually, I wasn’t in Canada but somewhere else and she was there. We were chatting and she was talking about the tyres. She had a little Subaru vehicle that she used as a private runabout. She had a certain type of tyre on it which she found to be great in winter when she was in and out. My car over there had Arctic Grip tyres on it but her husband’s vehicle had racing tyres which surprisingly gave him the best grip of all in the snow and ice. They’d already had snow and ice there. There was plenty of snow but it had all levelled out. They also had a guy with a cattle truck, one that my father had found for him. He used to work for people in the area including my niece in transporting the cattle around from one day to the next to different places in the area.

It’s not easy having my Welsh lesson using the mobile phone but the computer isn’t powerful enough to run videos. We have a couple of new students in our class this year so hopefully we’ll keep on going.

The good news is that there’s no exam at the end of the year so I might go to take the exam that I should have taken last summer. Having spent all that time away and then in hospital, I didn’t feel that I’d done enough prepare me for it.

The discussion in Flemish was with the guy who mows Alison’s lawn, but the phone call in French was with the hospital where I went 10 days ago, and that was much more exciting.

"Mr Hall, we’ve arranged a bed for you. We’d like you to set aside a week to come to stay with us, starting 25th September"

So six weeks from seeing the Specialist to seeing the Hospital Consultant, and then three and a half weeks from seeing the Consultant to being called into the hospital. It’s not quite the four days that I had to wait when I first came to Leuven in 2016, but it’s still treatment that you would never have on the NHS.

After the lesson was over I had a slice of toast and a coffee and then crashed out. I’d been fighting off sleep since I came back from my walk but in the end I succumbed.

While I’d been asleep we’d had a rainstorm so the Angel Of The Lord Came Down And Gave Another Rinse to the clothes that I’d had drying outside. They aren’t ever going to dry at this rate.

For the rest of the afternoon I’ve been doing more radio stuff and then I went for tea – burger on a bun with pasta and veg in a tomato and cheese sauce.

When Alison came back we had a chat and then she went off to bed. Now that I’ve written my notes I’m going to bed too and if I sleep as well as I have done this last couple of days I’ll be more than happy.

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Monday 11th September 2023 – EVEN THOUGH I …

… had the alarm set for 06:30 this morning I was still up and about before it went off.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this settee is one of the most comfortable places where I’ve ever slept.

Even more interestingly, I’ve not had one of these night-sweats that I’ve been having just recently back at home. I’ve no idea what’s happening. I think that Alison might be afraid that I’d be wanting to move in here permanently.

Something else that was quite surprising too is that I remembered to take my medicine too – the first time since Thursday last week. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen to my sleeping pattern now that I’m back on the medication.

Loads of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I started off in Nantwich, walking up Welsh Row towards the Grammar School where I used to attend. There were people there and it was late at night. I was intending to walk up one of the side streets that were there. Suddenly we came under attack. We were in a big spacecraft thing so we all had to fit into our flying suits, like a large sack of something. We had to unzip it and it was like 3 flying suits all joined together. It took ages to sort them out because we’d never done this before. We were panicking quite badly because the attack was quite severe. In the end the first person in front climbed into his. I managed to unzip the parts behind him so I could climb into the middle piece. Someone else unzipped the part behind to climb into the back. We were then ejected n some kind of capsule into Space. We could see the fog, mist and ice forming on the outside of our helmets etc. It was freezing cold in this capsule but the 3 of us inside more or less the same flying suit meant that it was extremely warm in there too as far as we were concerned. We were quite comfortable even though ice was forming everywhere. But what this had to do with Nantwich I’ve really no idea

Back into this dream again. The woman recognised her daughter first then the father recognised her later. There they were in the middle of the Square in Sandbach dressed informally and were giving her a hug. They tried to question her about where she’d been and what she’d done but I explained that this wasn’t the best time to do it here in public because you never know who’s listening and what kind of capabilities they had, where the surroundings actually either don’t help anyone or just work in their favour.

I was with a girl last night talking about a couple whom we knew. They were a very strange couple. She was a straight-laced young girl and he was an older guy, rather wild. She asked if they had any profession or anything. It turned out that she was a former probation officer and she was someone whom she’d encountered during her work and they’d started a relationship together, which was extremely strange. This conversation went on for quite some time. She suggested that we go to meet some people whom she knew. She took me on a walk around the town in the rain. We ended up in these blocks of buildings which were actually 4 flats. She just came to the door of one of them and walked in. There were all kinds of people around here in this living room, I suppose, where she’d entered without even knocking. There was a girl having her eyebrows plucked by someone. She was in her underclothes. There was a cat being fed with a bottle, a pile of kids and an old woman. She went off into another room to fetch someone. I had to make some small talk with these strange people, introduce myself etc. It was certainly not the meeting that I’d been expecting with people. It was one of the strangest groups of people or families that I’d ever encountered

I don’t know where this fitted in with anything but on my travels during the night I saw a National Express coach reverse into a parking bay at the same time that a pile of kids were trying to alight. It was a woman driver reversing it. I thought that it was probably the most dangerous thing that I’d ever seen, all these people alighting from the coach as she was backing it up into this bay.

All of the day has been spent choosing music for the radio programmes for next year. I’m doing things slightly differently for next year so choosing the music is much more complicated in certain circumstances. It’s the more complicated ones that I’ve been doing today.

There was an interruption though – the Jehovah’s Witnesses came a-calling. They didn’t stay long though – I soon to saw to that.

Washing myself is a complicated affair so I can’t go upstairs. I ended up washing in the kitchen and I was half-way through when I thought that it might be a good idea to close the blinds in the window.

While I was at it I washed my clothes to date. I managed to hang them over a couple of chairs in the garden, only for them to receive an extra rinse. We had a torrential downpour this evening.

Tea tonight was pasta in my home-made cheese sauce with a vegan burger in a baguette. It was surprisingly delicious.

Alison was late coming home from work so we had a good chat for a while and now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow I’m going to have an attempt to go to the supermarket. It’s 400 metres up the road so it will be a brave try but we are running low on supplies.

So I’d better clear off an have a good sleep so I’m ready to fight the good fight.

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Sunday 10th September 2023 – SO FAR THE SCORE ..

… is “Eric 2, Alison’s cups and saucers 0”. And that was just trying to make one meal here this evening. By the time that I leave here after my hospital appointment Alison won’t have any crockery left

However, look on the bright side This sofa on which I’m sleeping is one of the most comfortable on which I’ve ever slept. Once I’d finally gone to sleep last night I had the best night’s sleep that I’d had for some considerable time.

So much so that at 06:15 I was awake and by 08:00 I was up and about, feeling quite refreshed. How about that for a Sunday?

Hans came down a short while later and brought me a coffee, and when everyone had finally assembled down here we went for breakfast in Tervuren where we were yesterday.

Alison knew a scenic route through the park and the forest and quite luckily there was a parking space nearby.

Everyone else had patisserie but I had my bread rolls with jam, coffee and orange juice. We sat in the sun for hours and put the world to rights.

Later on we came home and an elderly lady passer-by actually helped me into the car which was very nice.

Back here we sat in the sun, nibbled on bits and carried on with our chat, and then Alison took Hans to the airport and Jackie to the station. There wasn’t much point my going, although after seeing the kind of damage that I can do while tidying up, I bet that Alison wished that I’d accompanied her.

Instead, I had a listen to the dictaphone. There was something going on last night about finding medals stuffed down sofas. When we uncovered this one we had a feeling that it was fake. later on there was an issue at a petrol station. I was with Paul. In the end I can’t remember very much but ha had to speak to a cashier. At the end of each line of petrol pumps at these Motorway services there was a kind-of hatch where there should have been a bank employee sitting. We had a drive around this fuel station but could only see one that was occupied, right at the top of the hill. We had to go to the bottom, swing the car round and drive back up again to pull up alongside the kiosk.

I then had to go to pickup someone at the airport at 12:45 – pick them up to take them to the airport. I was in one of these Japanese-style midi vehicles from the 1980s. I found the address and pulled up outside but no-one came out. I was waiting for about 15 minutes. Then I saw that the door was open and the keys were in the door. I imagined that they must have wanted me to go along and knock. I went and knocked, and a guy and a few boys dressed in some kind of sports uniform and track suit came out, said their goodbyes to whoever was in the house and went into my vehicle ready to leave.

Later on Alison had bought some kind of dancing sheep, cut-out trains and earth-moving equipment that were being used as a promotion for a cartoon film about sheep. She asked me to look at it. It was cheap and not very good, one or two of the things didn’t work properly so for just £1:00 or whatever I thought that it was quite interesting and amusing. It turned out that she’d paid £60:00 for one pack and £50-odd for the second. I thought that that was absurd. She realised that it was expensive, particularly as one or two of the things didn’t work but she happened to fall in love with them when she saw them being stored at the side of the road. Later on when we were around at her house which was actually Rosemary’s, thinking of something else I asked her if all the vehicles had been removed from that plot of land, thinking of the place where Terry found that old van that we drove away. She said “no, there’s just the old red one left”. I couldn’t remember any red one there. She said “the one that my son was going to use when he started his business before he died. I had someone come and take away all the others but that one hasn’t gone yet”. I realised then that we weren’t talking about the same plot of land at all. I was talking about one next to her cottage in France which was all overgrown etc.

There was something else with cars too. We were preparing a fleet of vehicles ready to go to a war zone, big red American-type tipper vehicles towing trailers. We prepared them. Before that there was a building site nearby. I’d been there to ask if they needed any volunteers to do any work. They asked about what I did, and to come back the next morning. I was there preparing these cars. In the end there was just one like an American Cobra sports car left. We couldn’t find the key to it. We spent hours sorting out the seat belt for it. When it was ready the guy looked under the table and found the key. he asked “what’s this key doing here?”. I replied “I don’t know – I’ve never seen it before”. he looked at it, looked at the registration number of the car and said “it’s one off the buses off on the holiday tomorrow”. I asked everyone what I was supposed to be doing tomorrow. One of his children – he had four, 2 boys, a girl and another who, although it was the oldest, was the smallest and rather fragile. This smallest one said to me “it’s lime-washing tomorrow again, I’m afraid”.

We had something about a cup of tea. Tea in Italy was something of a delight and they’d bought me a tea and a biscuit. The tea had milk in it but it tasted really nice. I couldn’t understand that because normally I wouldn’t drink tea with milk. It tastes bitter anyway

For tea I had pasta in a cheese sauce with olive oil, black pepper and oregano along with a couple of the vegan sausages that I’d bought yesterday.

Alison has an early start in the morning so I’m going to bed early. It would be nice to drink a coffee with her before she goes to work.

And then I can find a few things to do; to keep me out of mischief.

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Saturday 9th September 2023 – ALISON’S SOFA …

… is one of the most comfy places in which I’ve ever slept.

There is actually a bed for me but to tell the truth, I can’t make it up the stairs any more so “arrangements” were made. Oh!!! How the mighty have fallen

For a change, I was the first awake (with no alarm) but the others soon came to join me and we sat outside in the heat and drank coffee.

Later on we headed into Tervuren. Alison knows a nice cafe where they do pastries so while they were tucking into pastries and coffee I had bread rolls and strawberry jam.

Up the street we then went to see Alison’s new house. It looks quite small from the outside but it’s a real labyrinth inside. We had the guided tour while she outlined her plans.

The sale was only concluded on Monday and she’s decided to have a pile of work done to it before she thinks about moving in

On the way back home we raided the English Shop for Ginger Beer, ice cream (I even found some vegan ice cream) and vegan food for me, then we came home to sit outside in the heat with ice cream and ginger pop like something out of an Enid Blyton novel.

We found a new vegan restaurant that does a buffet where you pay by weight so that seemed like a good idea.

We knew where it was but driving to it was another complication but we eventually settled down. And I’m glad that we went because the food really was delicious.

Back here now, everyone’s exhausted and gone to bed. I’ll be going too in a minute, but not before I exploit a remarkable discovery that I’ve made.

If I select more than one piece of music (like a whole album-full for example) and keep them selected while I go into “properties”, I can batch-edit all of the properties for each track simultaneously.

1994 was the first time that I played with “Windows” and it’s taken me that long to work this out.

What’s even more bizarre is that I discovered it by accident too.

One final thing – the dictaphone. There was some stuff on there from my nice, comfortable night. I had posted on a Social Network page that I was planning on leaving Leuven and going back home. Someone posted to ask if I could bring something back. I replied that it wasn’t possible so someone else asked me if I could bring back something else. I explained that that wasn’t possible either. It ended up with me being given a rather unfortunate heap of abuse.

There was also a dream about a load of Port Vale replica football tops which were not in Port Vale colours at all and a series of bad “knock knock” jokes told by a girl of about 4. And I’m glad that I can’t remember them. After all they won’t trouble my sleeping any.

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Friday 8th September 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… horrible journey and I don’t ever want to do it again.

As usual, when I’m going away, I had a bad night’s sleep and spend much of the hours of darkness tossing and turning.

Nevertheless I was up and about (in principle) before the alarm went off

First thing that I did was to grab a shower and then I did a few last-minute things before going out for the bus.

The bus was there but the driver wasn’t so I had to wait a few minutes before he turned up. And then we set off with a bunch of kids who were staying at the youth hostel in the town and who had been for a morning run.

The bus threw me out at the port and I had a 200-metre walk to the bus stop around the corner where the next bus would pick me up. And it was this 200 metres so early in the journey that convinced me that my travelling days are over.

There was a 20-minute wait for the bus during which time firstly my cleaner went past and rearranged my backpack on my shoulders, and then one of the girls from the radio came past and said hello.

The bus didn’t drop me off at the station but across the road so it was a long walk. And with my carriage being right down at the far end it was something of a scramble to be seated before the train pulled out

Updating all of those files took an age, not helped by the fact that I had a little … errr …relax at some point, and we were late pulling into Montparnasse too.

What with one thing and another I’d decided long-since that I was going to throw caution to the wind and have a taxi across Paris, but the walk to the taxi rank was about as far as the walk to the underground, which is regrettable

The ride with a friendly taxi driver wasn’t as expensive as I thought, but my leg had collapsed again getting into his car so I wasn’t enjoying it one bit

To make matters worse I staggered into the Disabled Persons’ room and asked for assistance to board my train to Brussels but they told me to clear off because I hadn’t booked 24 hours in advance.

So four of the assistants there sat and watch me make my slow weary way all the way down the platform to my carriage right at the far end of the train.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We were back at school – some kind of sports day with competitions etc. We were with our own House and had to stay with our own House all day. There were all kinds of things going on in the way of competition etc. The final one was a football match so we all had to go to our various common rooms afterwards to prepare. It was then that I realised that in all my things I didn’t have any shoes with me do it looked as if I would be playing in my socks. I didn’t really fancy playing too much because of that so when they began to talk about goalkeepers someone asked a girl “have you ever tried to be rather rough with a goalkeeper when you have the ball in the penalty area. I replied “you can always try it with me and see what happens” but no-one seemed to pick up on it so I didn’t bother all that much. I went up to the common room to prepare. One of the girls was closing the door so I had to insist and make some kind of rude comment before she’d open it again. There was a girl there from about 2 years younger than us whom I knew. Her boyfriend was in our year. The two of them were together and there was another girl in a green check dress – our colours were blue so I don’t know where she was from and what she was doing in there.

Back into this dream again, I eventually made it into the room when they let me in and sorted out into houses except these two girls and I don’t know what was happening with one of them. The other one was with her boyfriend, and we were joking about the football with my ingrowing toenail on my right foot and wasn’t going to be very happy for it especially as I didn’t have my shoes etc with me.

Back once more into the same dream and we were all back in our groups again, going back up Welsh Row towards the Grammar School dressed in our school uniform. Something happened and one of the boys pointed to another one in our class and called him names because he was more interested in eating a bar of chocolate than playing football. There were a few other things like that too.

This was another dream that took place in connection with a school. This time I was in a bath and the water was coming out with such a force that I was sure that it would break the porcelain fittings etc so I was prepared to be dumped into the middle of the bathroom. Somehow the contraption kept on running which surprised me greatly.

still on the theme of children, there was something going on about therapy for children who had been troubled. It was like a drawing and colouring class. What they had for adults was like a painting-by-numbers where you could go along and paint yourself a picture and hope to get rid of stress and tension by doing that.

This final part looks as if it might be something to do with the previous one. There was something about a clinic, people who have financial health problems. Part of the therapy there for children is drawing. For adults they had a few of these huge “painting by numbers” outfits with pictures even taller than the people themselves. The adults could spend as many hours as they wished simply painting the image.

At Brussels I didn’t have long to wait but climbing into the train was next-to impossible on these double-deckers with their steep stairs. Next time I go to Leuven I’ll have to wait around for one of the local stopping trains. These are all on the same level, and a level that is level with the platform so there’s no trying to climb in.

Leuven was roasting hot when I arrived and the walk along the platform to the lift finished me off.

And for some reason my phone wasn’t receiving messages so Alison and Jackie didn’t know that I’d arrived.

Eventually we met up and roared off to meet Hans at the Airport.

Alison knew a lovely Indian restaurant in Sterrebeek so we went there and had a delicious meal. Then we cam back here and sat outside in the heat until God Knows what time chatting.

My sofa is comfortable so I’m going to get in it and sleep for a week. I don’t ever want to do that journey again. Not on any terms.

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Thursday 7th September 2023 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I probably won’t be here.

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not all here and I haven’t been all here for quite a while but tomorrow I shall be somewhere else.

What I have been doing today is preparing for my journey. And it’s taking some preparation too.

There is however some good news. You might think that the idea that my neighbour isn’t going to work tomorrow morning so can’t drop me off at the station on her way meant that I’d have to make other plans.

Before I phoned to book a taxi (yes, I really am that ill) I checked the bus times. The bus from outside here doesn’t for some reason that only the dispatcher will know, go into town or near the railway station. I have to change buses.

There are three places where it’s possible to do so and in the past, I’d miss a bus to the station by a couple of minutes. However I checked today and found that they seem to have adjusted the timetable, meaning that I have a 20-minute wait at the port for a connecting bus.

There’s only 15 minutes to leave the bus at the station and board the train before it departs, so I shall have to hurry as best as I can. But it seems to be the most logical way to go to the station.

If ever I had anything to say about it, I’d have a major re-route of the bus network. It defies all understanding that here in the walled city, where the population density is heaviest, the bus doesn’t go to the town centre, the railway station and the hospital, and stops a good few hundred metres away from the largest supermarket.

So be that as it may, I’ve been quite busy today.

last night was rather depressing because I went on several little voyages that completely evaporated out of my mind when I tried to dictate them. My brain is really turning to spaghetti right now.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the world and had something of a scramble to rise to my feet.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a chat with Alison and with Liz on the internet and we had a few things to say to each other. Rosemary also sent me an e-mail to say that the internet was down at her place. The Auvergne is definitely “The Land That Time Forgot”.

First thing that I needed to do is to book my train from Brussels to Leuven. I’m not going to have much time in Brussels to buy a ticket when I arrive and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not as mobile as I used to be.

Once I’d done that, I had to track down all of my paperwork and print it off, and then organise my medical folder. I don’t need the stuff that I took with me to Paris last week.

But it really is a sign of the times that even one unnecessary piece of paper in the backpack makes such a difference in my mobility.

There was the backpack to pack too. And we had a slight catastrophe because I can’t find my box of medical stuff that I take with me. I’ve no idea where that might be. I’ve put it somewhere but I can’t think where.

That’ll teach me a lesson. I’m the world’s worst at organising myself so I have to have a place for everything and everything has to be in its place. And if it isn’t, than I am totally lost.

So now that my bag is packed as much as possible, complete with food to sustain me on my journey, I backed up the computer onto the USB key that I take with me when I travel.

And not having backed up the portable computer since my last trip to Leuven, which was in May, there will be tons of stuff to amend and append when I’m on the train tomorrow morning. A mere 2,338 files, to be precise.

There was even time to finish off sorting out the music for another programme. But I’ve not written any notes for it as yet as I’m going to have several days when I won’t have anything to do so I can catch up with it then.

A little earlier I talked about my nocturnal voyages. We were doing a remake of EL DORADO last night. I was accompanying John Wayne on his travels on his horse. Our version was much better than John Huston’s … "actually Howard Hawks’s" – ed. We did so much more in the film and went into it in much greater depth. It was another one of these that went on for absolutely hours but I ran out of steam while I was in the apartment of the girl who was trying to give him false information. It was nothing like the cabin in which the girl was living – it was an office block in a huge complex and an apartment above the Bank that was there, all modern glass and chrome etc. The person who gave John Wayne his information at the sheriff’s office, which was a huge place with lots of small offices was actually one of his ex-wives. She struck me as being quite a nice woman. But I ran out of steam while we were confronting the woman about the disappearance of the gang that we were trying to hunt down.

There was another long rambling dream, however as I mentioned earlier, I’ve forgotten almost all of it. The interesting thing about it was that we encountered the wife of a friend of mine. Her birthday was 5th September. I had another friend who was also a nurse. Her birthday was also 5th September. I thought that that was the most amazing coincidence.

Later on, there was another dream that I’d forgotten, one in which we encountered the body of a friend of ours in the Stores in a castle. She’d obviously been very unhappy and she’d committed suicide but I can’t remember any more of this.

However a little later I had something of a recollection of a few things relating to that last dream. There was something to do with hire cars. Whole fleets of cars had been hired out by big reputable companies but some were so old – quite a few “G” registration cars there as in the mid-80s. They had been hired out for this event. I was interested to know whether they’d hire them out again but the person concerned with whom I was talking didn’t know. All my colleagues at work were making remarks about the vehicle that I’d hired and about me driving it which I thought was awful but never mind! There was also something involving a bowlful of the dirtiest water you could ever imagine but I don’t now where that fitted in.

Tea tonight was fried rice and vegetables with some of those Chinese whatsits that I bought a while ago. It was a really nice tea too and i’ll have some more of those when I can

Actually I ought to have a think about making them myself. They are basically tofu and vegetables wrapped in some of that brick pastry stuff. I suppose that I could make them like sausage rolls and slice them into smaller lengths.

And that reminds me – I need to think about making my sausage rolls at some point.

Before I finished, I diced the remaining carrots, blanched them and put them in the freezer. There weren’t many of them but it would be a shame to throw them out.

So I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow. I shall be in a rush so I need to get a move on. And it will be a long, tiring day which won’t end for quite a while. At least I can sleep on the train, if I’m not too busy with those 2,338 files.

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Saturday 26th August 2023 – ONE THING THAT I …

… do like about going to Noz is that fairly often I find some different food that I can eat that will vary my diet quit considerably.

There were some bags of 10 frozen quinoa wafer-burger type things but I’m not really talking about those, but I’m referring more to the bags of 1 kg of frozen sweet potato chips.

My ambition, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is to continue to make room in my rather over-full freezer but there’s none at all now because a bag of the wafer-burgers and a bag of the sweet potato chips has now filled it to the brim.

And I did manage to fit in another frozen pepper too. They had the small ones at LeClerc today so I grabbed a couple. One is in the fridge ready for Monday and the other one has joined the three that are in the freezer.

So all in all it was a good day today around the shops.

Much better than the night, I have to say, because even though I was in bed fairly early for a change, it took me an absolute age to go off to sleep. And when I did, I awoke a couple of times during the night.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and it was a struggle to leave the bed. But after the medication I had a good wash and then headed off to the shops.

My parking space outside Noz was free so I was able to park close to the door which is always useful. And as well as the frozen stuff that I mentioned, they had some sachets of orange zest for adding to cakes and the like so I grabbed a few packets of that too.

LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special today – just the usual stuff. All in all, it wasn’t a very expensive shop today.

Back here I put everything away and then made my cheese on toast and coffee. back in here I sat down and began to think about doing some work but regrettably that was that, and for more than three hours too. Completely dead to the World yet again and I didn’t feel a thing.

While I was away I was off on my travels. I was arguing with a neighbour about some information that she had given me. I thought that it was incorrect and I was upset but she told me that I didn’t need to accept it and that I should have done my own research.

Later on, after I’d managed to come round into the Land of the Living again I transcribed the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. Alison and I were in a queue for something. She was being attended to and I was talking to a couple of guys standing behind me, discussing these absurd rules about the airport. It turns out that one of them knew a small girl who was stopped because they wanted to confiscate her aspirins. She insisted that she was allergic to everything else. This was the only brand she could have. After much argument the girl on her own won her case and managed to take her aspirins with her through Security. We thought that that was tremendous so we then began to make a list of things that we’d assemble if we’d had that girl with us and what she could have brought through Customs for us. One of the guys said “we’d have needed to park our car quite close to the airport building in order to carry the stuff off in the end”. Alison turned round, saw and heard us, and asked what we were doing. I tried to explain the story of the girl to her but for some reason I kept on having it all wrong. I couldn’t explain it properly.

And then I was with a former friend of mine last night in an old Ford Transit van driving somewhere around the Potteries. We’d ended up somewhere around the Goldenhill area. We’d been doing a few things and ended up at a petrol station chatting to the owner, a woman. For some reason she gave my friend £1:00. It became time to leave so I said “I’ll say goodbye and go home”. He asked “aren’t you dropping me off?” in a real kind-of panicky way. I replied “don’t be silly. Of course I am but if I were to have a young girl with me I might change my mind”. I had something linked up about the spark plugs. I had 2 spark plugs in holders and plugged the holders into one of the HT leads. I asked him to check that they were working because I would simply swap the HT leads over when I was somewhere convenient to do it rather than take the plugs out and replace them at the side of the road. He could see the spark and said that it was sparking fine. I had a look and sure enough, it was. I’d done something to the mirrors so I couldn’t see out to the back of the van. When we got into the van at the parking place of this garage I asked him to look behind me to check the road for when I pull out. He didn’t understand and had a panic attack about something. He was shouting at me for something or other but I couldn’t work out what. Then I suddenly realised that we were already on the road. What I thought was where we had to cross over in order to leave was actually the other side of the dual carriageway. We would have been driving on this dual carriageway facing the wrong way. I understood his panic attack at that moment but I told him that I wished that he hadn’t shouted like that because it really distracted me. I wasn’t sure myself what was actually happening at that moment.

Having finished those I had a little play around with the radio programme that i’d been preparing in a kind-of desultory fashion over the last few days and then settled down to watch the football – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth.

Both teams were bottom of the league not having won a single point so far this season. That’s a strange position for Drenewydd but as I’ve said before, it’s one to which Aberystwyth fans will have to be accustomed.

One bright spark in the Aberystwyth side though is that veteran keeper David Jones, surprisingly released by Drenewydd at the end of last season, has washed up on their shores. It makes a world of difference to find a reliable and competent keeper between their posts.

The game flowed from end to end in a quite exciting game but with relatively few chances. There were probably no more than four or five clear chances throughout the whole of the game but the lack of many clear-cut chances didn’t spoil the game in any respect.

It finished 0-0 which was about right. Y Drenewydd was the better team but were unable to capitalise on their superiority.

One player who caught my eye was Aberystwyth’s young left-winger Luca Hogan. I’ve not seen him before. His match started off quietly but as other players tired towards the closing stages he really came into his own and began to tear them apart down the flanks.

Unfortunately he’s far from the finished article but at his age he can only improve his final ball into the penalty area.

In fact, from what I’ve seen so far this season, crosses, free kicks and corners into the penalty area are pretty depressing and if I had anything to do with it, I’d spend a lot of time working on making some dramatic improvement.

At this level of football it’s one way of putting defences and goalkeepers under a lot of pressure.

Tea tonight was chips in the air fryer, a mixture of potato and sweet potato. They were actually quite nice, especially with the salad and one of the kale burgers that I bought from Noz a few weeks ago.

So now I’m off to bed ready for a lie-in tomorrow. After all of my exertions I’m ready for it too. Having been to Stoke on Trent last night and not meeting up with Zero, I wonder with whom I’ll meet up tonight.

But if not, a good long sleep will do me some good. I hope that I’ll manage it this time.

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Friday 25th August 2023 – I MADE AN …

… executive decision today. And in case you don’t know what an executive decision is, it’s a decision that you make that, if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

So having a form to be picked up from the chemist’s in town and knowing that my neighbour would be heading that way, and not feeling in the right kind of mood to rush about this morning, I abandoned the idea of going into town this morning and asked my neighbour to go to the chemist’s on my behalf.

It was probably something to do with the fact that I didn’t end up going to bed until really late last night and although I had a slightly better, more quiet night than I’ve had recently, there wasn’t enough of it to make a difference.

When the alarm went off I was flat out in the arms of Morpheus. I was actually in a zoo or a circus, somewhere where there were animals, but the alarm went off just as I was starting under way.

Struggling to my feet I had my medication, checked my mails and messages, spoke to my neighbour and then tried to find someone to pick me up at the station on Wednesday.

You’ve no idea how difficult it is, and I’ve no real confidence that the people who in the end agreed to meet me are really as reliable as I would like them to be.

Today was the final Welsh lesson of the Summer and it went OK, although I wish that it would have been better. There’s a couple of weeks now before the next year’s course begins and I’ll probably have forgotten everything by then.

At lunchtime I had a really beautiful shower and then changed the bedding. I’m going to have a really nice sleep tonight, a nice clean me in a nice clean bed. And I can’t say that I’ll be sorry. Mind you, as usual, I’m sure that it won’t be as really nice as I would like it to be.

With a short while to spare before the lesson restarted, I listened to the dictaphone to see what was on it. I’ve talked about the animals at the zoo or circus. We were going off from school on our Christmas meal somewhere. I was struggling to walk somewhat of course but I did the best that I could. My friends weren’t particularly interested for some reason. We had to board a couple of buses. The one in which I was sitting was an old lightweight thing with no windows, an open-top type of bus. It set out through these icy roads. Something happened up ahead which meant that we had to stop. Our bus had no traction and began to slide. The bus in front then decided that it would reverse to go around the obstacle. At that moment with the force my head was flung outside the edge of the bus and the bus that was reversing hit me with the most almighty bang straight in the right eye. I had never ever felt so much pain in my head than at that particular moment. I really did feel the pain from somewhere. People came running. There was a girl whom I knew and couldn’t believe at first – telling me not to be stupid about all of this kind of thing. Suddenly she screamed and ran off. A couple more people came and began to give me some First Aid to my head. But there was a real pain that I felt at that moment in my head and right eye

That’s probably why I wasn’t feeling like very much this morning. I really did feel the injury that I suffered during the night. I’ve no idea what had happened while I was asleep that might have caused it.

After the lesson I made my hot chocolate and then came back in here where I crashed out for a couple of hours. And it was another really deep sleep that took me out of just about everything.

Tea tonight was a salad, but with no mushrooms (because I didn’t go to the shops today) I had cheese and olives with it. The chips and vegan nuggets were cooked to perfection in the air fryer – the best that I’ve ever made.

Later on, Rosemary phoned me and we had a really lengthy chat as we usually do. Then both Liz and Alison were chatting to me on the internet. It seems that I’m quite popular these days but I’ve no idea why.

Tomorrow I’m shopping and then I’m having a rest. I’ve been working to hard just now and I could do with putting my feet up.

Not that it’s likely to happen but you never know your luck. One of these days nothing will happen that will disturb me. But then I’ll probably be bored to tears.

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Saturday 27th May 2023 – WE ARE NOW BACK …

… in the position where we were a few months ago. The freezer is now full to bursting once more.

It was a good day round at the shops to-day and once again, Noz came up trumps as it does every so often.

But anyway, I didn’t beat the alarm this morning. I was somewhere down in Newcastle under Lyme at the PMT bus garage where I was to pick up a bus to work a local service around Newcastle. They’d given me the information and then given me a route map but the map was a kind-of abstract map. I couldn’t identify anything on this map compared to how it is in real life so I had to find someone to explain the route to me. I was wandering around this depot trying to find someone. I found one or two people but they were of no help whatsoever. I really needed an inspector or something but I just couldn’t find anyone at all. There were all these buses parked up. No-one had actually told me which one was mine. I thought to myself “I can see this being a disaster too if I don’t organise things quite quickly” and that’s something that is a recurring theme too.

It didn’t take too long to organise myself this morning, which is a surprise. and it’s just as well because Alison phoned. She needed to talk about things like kitchens and showers so we were there on the ‘phone for about an hour discussing various things.

As a result I was rather later than usual going out to the shops but who cares? I’d much rather talk to my friends than almost anything. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have many friends but those whom I have are the best in the World.

So at Noz, the first thing that I discovered was a pile of McVitie’s ginger biscuits, and the vegan version too. I know that I like to bake my own biscuits these days but I’m not going to miss out on several rolls of these.

And in the deep freezer they had carrot burgers from some Italian company and a pile of those breaded quorn fillets that I like, only a Findus variety with the labelling in Danish and Swedish.

My diet can be somewhat monotonous if I’m not feeling adventurous so I’m not going to miss out on the chance to add some extra stuff into it so I grabbed several boxes of each of those to shake things up a little.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Noz is a chain of shops that buys bankrupt stock, surpluses, short lifespan products and the like and sells them off quite cheaply. I’ve had piles of stuff from there over the past 10 or 12 years since I first encountered one and there’s usually always something in there to add some excitement to my diet.

LeClerc came up with the goods too. Some of that sliced fondue vegan cheese in the clearance range so I liberated a pile of that too. I also bought some lasagne. It’s years since I made myself a lasagne and I had a sudden craving for one. I might have a go at that next week.

But there was something rather surprising in LeClerc today. They have a few assistants who roam around the store to help the elderly and infirm with their shopping, and one of them came over to me to ask if I needed help.

In the past I’ve been told, and on one or two occasions quite bluntly too, that I didn’t look as if I’m dying. But after my adventures last autumn everyone who saw me on my return told me how ill I was looking and how they were worried that I might not pull through – even my doctor. But I reckon that it’s becoming clearer by the minute now and if Regina is reading this, then “I told you so”.

It’s all very reminiscent of when I used to live in Brussels and one of my friends happened to see me
“Eric!” he exclaimed. “We thought that you were dead”
“Not at all. It just smells like it.”

Back here the first thing that I did was to clean and dice the 2kg of carrots that I’d bought and set them off a–blanching. I’m running low on carrots in the freezer so I need to stock up. And then I had breakfast – cheese on toast and some nice, strong coffee.

There was time to transcribe the rest of the dictaphone notes, because I’d been on my travels quite a lot during the night. I was in a group last night with a few other people. There was a keyboard player and a guitarist whom I remember. The guitarist was quite young. We took the stage and began to play. A girl came up and went over to the guy playing the guitar and singing and began to gyrate around him. It was clear that she was putting him completely off his stroke. When it came to the part where he was supposed to sing he turned to the keyboard player and said “you’ll have to sing this”. This led to an argument between the two of them. As soon as the concert finished and it was already undignified with a few spectators and someone was getting an awful amount of mileage out of this, teasing them both about their group, how disorganised and how bad it was.

And isn’t that a shame? I seem to have gone beyond the days when girls would come along and gyrate all around me – even when I’m off on another plane of existence. I’m losing count of the number of times that I’ve snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in this respect during the night, without counting the number of times members of my family have come along to queer my pitch in the middle of something exciting.

Later on I’d been staying in a cabin with a couple of old guys, the type of thing that you’d find on the frontier 150 years ago. Cabin fever was definitely striking and we were arguing about just about anything. One of the guys decided that he would let rip with a full-blown argument point out to me all my faults and defects. I had an answer for everything that he said but it was just one of those things that if you became involved in this argument you’d be there for ever and nothing would ever be resolved.

And that’s something else, isn’t it? Cabin fever is quite a well-known phenomenon in the High Arctic and there were several cases amongst some of us after several months on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR. My suggestion that we round up the more cantankerous members of our party and send them ashore on the first zodiac to see whether there were any polar bears about did not however meet with universal approval, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Immediately after that little episode I awoke with a terrible pain in my right knee as if I’d over-exerted it yesterday. However it eased off after a while and I went back to sleep.

Once the carrots were draining and drying off I headed into town in the beautiful sunshine. And do you know – it’s taken me about 6 months to realise that if there is a set of steps with the handrail on the right, I can go down much quicker and easier if I go down backwards?

The Aranesp was waiting for me so I picked it up and headed home. Having struggled with my shoulder bag falling off my shoulder and knocking me and my crutches out of balance, I’d found a backpack that I’d bought ages ago to use as a day pack when I go out walkies (not that I’ll be doing much of that these days) and that was much better.

On the way back I fell in with one of my neighbours, Pierre, the one who owned the Spirit of Conrad on which we sailed down the Brittany coast FOR A WEEK a few years ago. We had a good chat about this and that. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I seem to be the flavour of the Month since I now own a share of this building.

From there I came back in a regrettably, at that point I … errr … had a little relax, just as I thought that I might. It’s all becoming rather monotonous, but there’s nothing that I can buy in Noz to alleviate that.

While Alison and I had been chatting earlier I’d told her that I’d sort out a few photos of the kitchen that I’d had installed in Expo so I had a rummage around in various old directories (yes, they are still “directories” – I haven’t recovered after learning DOS 5.0) and sorted out a few to send to her.

The rest of the day has been spent resurrecting an old project. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when they opened the road over Eagle Plateau in 2010 so that you could drive all the way across from northern Québec to the Labrador coast, I was one of the first TO ATTEMPT IT

At that time I went as a tourist and I had no idea what to expect so after I returned I did a pile of research and went again in 2014 and then in 2015 by which time I’d bought Strider who was a much-more suitable vehicle for going off-roading. The aim on those occasions was write a sequel but from a historical and social point of view.

Unfortunately that project ground to a halt because a few months after returning in 2015 I was swept up in all of this.

And as well as that, I went again in 2017 when I went out in a couple of small boats to visit some of the abandoned settlements that were cleared out under Joey Smallwood’s “bigger is better” policy of the 1950s and for which even 70 years later the people of the Labrador coast are still paying the price.

However, I digress … “yet again” – ed.

The task therefore, if I choose to accept it, is to resurrect what I was doing in 2015 and to add in the stuff from 2017 and start again. So this afternoon I’ve been trying to find all the notes that I made back in those days.

Tea tonight was a couple of small breaded quorn fillets that I’d bought ages ago and were festering in the freezer. Wo while I pulled them out, I stuck the carrots in. I had the fillets along with a salad and some fried potato cubes done in the air fryer. That was really nice.

Tomorrow is a Sunday of course so I’ll be having a lie-in. But I have some radio notes that I’ve written and I’ll dictate them tonight once the street outside is quiet. That’ll give me something to do tomorrow and on Monday, and then I can crack on with this and that.

But before I go, yesterday I was talking about South Pass. There’s one song that I always associate with South Pass and THAT CAME ROUND on the playlist.
“We rolled across the high plains
Deep into the mountains
Felt so good to me
Finally, feelin’ free
Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone, oh, oh”
(and who do those last two lines bring to mind?)

The song is all about “The High Plains” of Wyoming, which WE VISITED IN 2002 when I was on my course at the Solar Energy Institute but the photo in the posted extract is a long, long way from the High Plains of Wyoming. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its earlier guises will recall having seen that image BEFORE.

“Next time
We’ll get it right”

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