Tag Archives: baked potatoes

Saturday 3rd May 2025 – THAT WAS SUPPOSED …

… to be one of the easiest sessions of dialysis that I have ever had, with only 1.6 kg of fluid to be removed. However, it’s totally exhausted me and in a few minutes I shall be off to bed.

It probably wasn’t the early start that did it – after all, being up and about at 06:20 is pretty much par for the course these days. And as well as that, it was a comparatively early night last night – in be by 23:30.

What with one thing and another, I had had a good session at the work that I needed to do after tea last night and I didn’t hang around at all. I suppose I could even have been in bed before than had I applied myself.

Once in bed though, I remember very little of the night until, once more, I had rather a dramatic awakening for no good reason at about 05:55.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and, checking the time once more, I nipped out of bed just before the electric water heater switched off.

After a wash and shave (in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon) I went for my medication, sitting at the table when the first alarm sounded at 07:00.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us, including my father, in a car driven by some young lad whom we knew. We’d come by Leighton Hospital and on the old road cut-off there was a Sherpa minibus. It had a taxi radio aerial on the roof and another one bolted onto the back door. I had a quick look but couldn’t see a taxi plate on it so I suspected that this one was operating illegally. We carried on down the hill towards Pym’s Lane, and this Sherpa caught us up. It was probably half an inch from our back door but we were probably doing about fifty mph. As we reached the bottom and began to come back up the hill the Sherpa became even more aggressive. We told the driver “take your foot off the throttle”. The driver took his foot off the throttle and the Sherpa drove straight into the back of it. Of course, we stopped and he stopped and we all alighted. We could see the driver of the Sherpa beginning to panic. He tried to escape but my father reached in through his window and took the keys out to stop him driving off. We made him alight from the vehicle to talk to us about the accident. In the meantime the young lad who owned the car had set up some kind of workshop at the side of the road with all his tools. He was busy preparing stuff to make a running repair of the damage. I was impressed by all of this. He said “well, I have nowhere else to keep it except in my car”. I replied “it won’t be long before you have your own place, and then you’ll find somewhere”. I’d been to the new place that he had bought. It was a tiny two-bedroom flat much smaller than mine. He would have a great deal of difficulty putting stuff into it. He took the top off a tube of something or other but dropped the top and someone nearly walked on it. We were all there, becoming busy while my father and one or two of his friends were stopping this guy from driving away.

This was an extremely realistic dream. The road layout was just as I remember it from when I lived in Crewe and Winsford and travelled that way regularly back in the 1970s and 80s. But once again, someone from my family seems to be involved in one of my dreams, even though there was nothing at all from which I might have needed saving.

Then later on, there had been a group of us. We had been for a walk in the hills over by Macclesfield. We were walking around there looking at all the mountains on the horizon, trying to identify them, which was which, which were the fields beyond it. We were trying to identify where the Salt Way, the ancient road over the hills between Cheshire and Derbyshire went. We were all pointing out amongst this group of people what we’d seen and where we’d seen it. I’d had a really good view five minutes earlier and I told everyone about it. They all came back but we couldn’t see it, or I couldn’t find it again. We ended up on a pub car park, looking. Just then, a group of five motorcyclists and their pillion passengers pulled up. The riders alighted and we noticed that one of the riders had the most enormous feet you have ever seen. They parked their motorcycles anywhere, one of them in the middle of the road. We thought that it wasn’t the best place to leave it. They went in but we were all sitting around a table outside. The manageress came out with the notepad and wanted to take our orders. She ran through the menu. One of the girls with us said that she would have a “Vegan Delight” but she would be horrified if she knew how much it was going to cost. The woman said that the devilled kidneys alone were £31:00. nevertheless the girl ordered it. I ordered the “Vegan Delight” but without the kidneys.

A few of those people I recognised – members of my Welsh class. What we were all doing walking over the moors at the back of Macclesfield I really don’t know either. But the biggest puzzle about this, something about which I am still shaking my head, is whatever would devilled kidneys be doing anywhere near a “Vegan Delight”. It’s no surprise that I eschewed them.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning, although he was not at all happy when I told him that he needed to be here at 06:45 on Monday morning at the latest. He told me to go to bed in my compression socks, which was what I suspected that he would say.

After he left I made breakfast. And my new mini-loaf is really, really nice, just as it should be. As far as MY BOOK goes, we are still in the Tower of London having the guided tour. I’ve long-since abandoned any hope of having any military architecture explained to me.

Back in here, I had a few bills to pay. There’s still no earthly reason why this monthly standing order won’t go through. Whenever I go to pay it manually, it automatically inserts my bank details so it must have them on file somewhere.

There was also a sum of money to transfer from my Canadian bank account for my great little niece (or little great niece)’s graduation from University, which is tomorrow.

There was time to start writing the notes for radio programme 260403 but I didn’t go very far before my cleaner came round to fit my patches.

After she left, I waited (and waited, and waited) for the taxi to turn up. Eventually it arrived and we set off, picking up someone else along the way. I was the last to arrive and so was the last to be connected. But there was only 1.6 kg of fluid to lose today so it was a session of three and a half hours. Imagine how early I could have been out had I been first to be connected up.

For a change, it wasn’t me who had a crisis in there. It was someone else. The nurse explained to me afterwards that she had been coming for several years and was now on the final downhill slope.

No-one bothered me and the machine behaved itself. I revised my Welsh while I was waiting.

Julie the Cook uncoupled me and while she was compressing me, she showed me some photos of a cake that she had baked. It looked lovely, a kind-of flan with fresh summer fruit on a cream base.

The boss came to pick me up this evening, and the poor woman who had come down with me had had to wait half an hour for me to finish. I felt awful, even though it’s not my fault.

After the taxi driver drove away, I realised that he had taken my jacket with him in the boot of his car. He brought it back later on, full of excuses. I told him that my cleaner was most upset about it and wanted a word with him so he made a quick getaway.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan salad, delicious vegan mayonnaise and breaded quorn fillet followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

That was followed by a lovely chat with my niece and her three daughters who are in Antigonish ready for the Graduation Ceremony tomorrow. How I wish that I could be there. Antigonish is a lovely little town – I went there on several occasions when her elder sister was studying here – and it would be a lovely day. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I remember bouncing Amber up and down on my knee as a tiny baby (Amber, not me) when she was just a couple of months old in 2003 that winter that I spent in Canada. It’s hard to believe that she’s graduating from University.

Right now though, I’m feeling pretty miserable so I’m off to bed. It’s a good job that there’s nothing to dictate because I would not have felt much like doing it.

But seeing as we have been talking about Julie the Cook … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she appeared a couple of weeks ago in one of my nocturnal rambles.
So this afternoon I told her "I dreamed about you the other night"
"Did you?" She asked
"No" I replied. "You wouldn’t let me"

Saturday 19th April 2025 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING.

Four hours in dialysis with the machine going full-tilt. It’s enough to finish anyone off. But at least I’m down to my target weight so with a little luck I might only have to stay for three and a half hours on Monday. We shall see.

Things might have been different and I might have been less exhausted had I gone to bed earlier instead of hanging about until some stupid kind of time, but there we are … "or were" – ed ….

To make things worse, it was a miserable night and I don’t think that I had much sleep, waking up here and there every half hour or so. At one stage I was even planning on leaving the bed but I gave up that idea quite quickly.

When the alarm went off I was however fast asleep and it was, as you might expect, a desperate stagger to my feet to beat the second alarm. And in the bathroom I had a good wash ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis, and I hand-washed my socks, undies and night attire.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, I had actually been out and about on my travels during the night. A girl was being examined for some kind of issue with her legs. She’s on a kind-of operating table on her back with her legs in the air and they are examining them. The doctor tells her to put them into the neutral position which she tries. After a little manipulation … "PERSONipulation" – ed … the surgeon or doctor manages to put her legs into some kind of neutral position. He tells her “well, that’s much easier, isn’t it? Perhaps you should have done that at some kind of earlier point in the examination or even beforehand, but I’ll make a mark now to let them know where it’s all correct”.

It’s much easier for me – I simply press “CNTRL-Z” and that puts any selected 3-D object or character into a neutral pose. That dream did remind me somewhat of some of my 3D work when I was living down on the farm.

And then I was back in that dream … "which dream?" – ed … later on. Some thieves had stolen a train with the ammunition on it. They were heading off for wherever it was. They were taking their time, not in any rush, and had stopped to have a meal somewhere. In the meantime, a group of Indians had been removed from a town and were not happy. They found these men and explained to them what was happening and that there was a train on its way towards them. What they did was that they started up the train and set it to going back down the line with all aboard at the maximum permitted speed of seven mph. When they were just a few hundred yards away from a collision they leapt off the footplate and the trains ploughed into each other. Carriages were destroyed, carriages went everywhere. They were saying that over 200 people were killed, including 131 in one carriage. All the wagons ran loose and even sheltering behind the rocks was not saving them from the wagons rolling up on them. There was even a railway wagon that had come from Russia on board this train and it rolled to a stop right at the feet of one of these robbers.

That plot sounds just like a cross between the plot of THE WILD BUNCH and that of A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, two films that spend a lot of time on my playlist. As for the wagon though, whilst Russian wagons ring no bells with me, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we once encountered a railway box-car with “Alaskan Agriculture” on it.

Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

The nurse was chatting to me this morning, telling me what I should do about the situation in the apartment downstairs. When he finished, I told him that I had a letting agent who was doing all of that. "But still …" he said, and started again.

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

We’re still in Kenilworth Castle where, on page 147, this rather peculiar paragraph caught my eye. What do you make of this? "The character of the ground makes it probable that the Norman fortress had but one entrance. This could not have been on the east, west, or south fronts, as the ground was low and marshy ; nor on the north, where the ditch is wide and deep."

The next thing that caught my eye was on page 150 where he tells us "the succession of great events which led to the death of the earl, and the celebrated siege of Kenilworth, belong to the history of England rather than to that of Kenilworth, and form one of its most interesting and most valuable chapters. The subject has fallen under the pen of Mr. Green, and has found a place in the pages of the Archaeological Journal (vol. xxi. p. 277), where the course of the events is disentangled, and very clearly narrated, and their political significance and bearing upon the constitutional history of our country treated in a manner both brilliant and profound"

He then devotes several pages to telling us about the Siege of Kenilworth.

Back in here, I carried on with the remote repairing of Rosemary’s computer. She is now connected to the internet with the aid of an Ethernet cable (but not the Wi-Fi) and has an antivirus installed. She ran a scan of the computer which came up with nothing (which was a pity because I had hopes for that) and when my cleaner arrived to fit my patches and I had to go, she was performing a deep scan.

After the cleaner had fitted my patches I had to wait for my taxi and was packing my bags for my next Paris hospitalisation when it pulled up. It was the boss again and we had a chatty drive down to Avranches.

Late in meant late coupled up and with a four-hour session I could see that it was going to be late. The blood pressure is set to be tested every half-hour and every half hour the nurses had to come running because of the wailing machine, complaining about my unbelievably low blood pressure today

In the end they set the machine to every fifteen minutes, so they had to come twice as often.

While all of this was going on, I was trying to watch the football. Caernarfon were playing Cardiff Metro for the privilege of finishing fourth. There wasn’t as much skill as I would have expected but it was an exciting game that roared from one end to the other.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, this was it. The Met had most of the play in the first half and were leading 1-0, quite deservedly, at half-time. But whatever Richard Davies put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a swig of that myself. The Cofis came out of the blocks at an incredible rate, had most of the play in the second half and eventually won 2-1.

And I’ll have to be careful what I say at dialysis in the future. A nurse and I were talking about my diet and Emilie the Cute Consultant heard it from across the room and came to join in. I hope that she can’t hear me call her “Emilie the Cute Consultant” when I’m here and she’s there.

It was a very, very weary me who staggered to the car to come home and I was glad to be back. Coming up the stairs was a very long, hard trudge tonight.

So having had my tea of baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed. I don’t think that I’ll be awake long tonight and I’ll be surprised if I awaken early, but dialysis is a funny thing.

But seeing as we have been talking about acute hearing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the snail, the tortoise and the sloth having a party when they run out of beer.
They draw lots and the tortoise loses, so they send him to buy more beer.
Three weeks later they begin to complain. "We should never have sent that tortoise" said the snail. "He’s so lazy and bone-idle"
"I know" said the sloth. "For all the good that he does, he may as well not be here"
Just then a voice from outside the door shouts "if you lot continue to bad-mouth me like this, I shan’t go for the beer at all!"

Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

… amongst the painful dialysis connections. After a few sessions of comparatively painless connections since Emilie the Cute Consultant did her stuff, they have been gradually worsening and today we were back in the agony stakes. So I’ve no idea what’s going to happen now.

Another thing about which I have no idea now is this story about early nights. I cracked on rapidly to finish everything last night and managed somehow to finish relatively early. However I was as usual side-tracked by a couple of really good concerts on the playlist and it ended up being long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change it was a comparatively decent night. I slept right though until the alarm sounded with only the vaguest memory of awakening in mid-sleep.

It was a struggle to rise to my feet when the alarm went off but I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the wash I set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. For once, I managed to fit everything into it but it probably wasn’t a good idea because it struggled with the weight. I need to wash my clothes more frequently – or wash fewer clothes more often.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I should have been going into work with Nerina. We were on our way to catch our bus at the top of Mill Street. I was walking on my crutches and Nerina was with me. Nerina suddenly remembered that she had a prescription to pick up at the chemist’s across the road. She said that she would go and pick it up. I told her to be quick so she dashed off while I continued as quickly as I possibly could, which wasn’t very quick at all. I saw the bus come up Mill Street to the traffic lights and turn right. I knew that I wasn’t going to catch it. I saw Nerina come out of the chemist’s and run across the road. I thought “at least she’s caught the bus”. When I reached the bus stop she was standing there. She was saying that she had seen that I wasn’t there and so had waited for me. I told her that that was a silly thing to do. She should have caught the bus and gone on into work anyway on time. I would follow as best as I could. She would have been on time but now we are both going to be late and there isn’t another bus for hours so we are probably going to end up missing half a day. That was a strange decision.

Why I should be going to work on the K43 to Nantwich (that was the bus route where I was) is a total mystery, as is why I would be coming from the general direction of the railway station. And I wouldn’t be on crutches in Crewe either. Furthermore, I reckon that Nerina would have had far more sense than to have missed the bus in order to wait for me if I were going to miss it.

There was also something about being on board a yacht. There was some boy there who seemed to be very well-educated from a good family but that was far from the case. He was very insistent on his rights etc. He was going on wanting this, wanting that and everyone was annoyed with him in the end. They decided that they would teach him a lesson. When he made some more demands, someone reminded him that he was hoping that we’d move back into more traditional ways that were all good and proper a hundred years ago. They put him on a bed face down, removed his trousers and spanked him with a slipper. Every time he protested, they reminded him that he was hoping for a return to the Good Old Days and isn’t this just the kind of thing that he would have wanted? When his parents came back they were outraged by what they saw but everyone on board said “well, he was asking for this – it was literally what he wanted, a return to the Good Old Days of a hundred years ago and he’s receiving exactly what he wanted. None of us can see what the problem is”.

There have been some very, very strange dreams in the past but I don’t think that there has ever been one quite as strange as this. It quite possibly relates to an argument that broke out on the Internet a while back when someone posted "the problem with today’s children is that they don’t seem to have the sense of fear that the sound of a leather belt being withdrawn quickly so a series of belt hoops on a pair of jeans would instil into them.".

Isabelle was in quite a chatty mood today and talked incessantly about nothing whatever as she organised my legs.

Breakfast was next, with more of MY BOOK. We have left Harlech and are now at Hastings Castle, discussing the finer points of corbels and arches, with the odd flying buttress thrown in for good measures. A flying buttress is the equivalent of half an arch, leaning against the outside of a heavy stone wall to stop the wall falling outward. But does our author tell us that? Of course he doesn’t. He describes the buttress’s more elegant points from an artistic point of view and that’s about it.

Back in here I spent a couple of hours drafting a complicated letter to my tenant downstairs, but after having had a couple of chats with a couple of people and having had second thoughts, it’s all becoming far too complicated for words and so I’ve decided that she will leave at the end of the current lease. I’m too old, too tired and fed up to start to negotiate complicated deals and arrangements.

My cleaner turned up on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi. I didn’t have long to wait either. And I was the only passenger in the car so we arrived at the dialysis centre quite early.

For a change I was second in and second to be coupled up. Despite the patches and despite the new procedure and despite the ice pack, it still hurt, and it was hurting throughout the session.

The good news is that if they had the machine on max and ran it for three and a half hours, it would leave 200 grams behind. After a discussion with the doctor today, I decided that it would make more sense to go with three and a half hours, and have a look at how things are on Monday. Four hours would probably be better then, and bring me down to an ideal weight ready for my three-day break.

There was football on the internet as I mentioned earlier – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth. And for once in my life in the Welsh Premier League, I saw a team play the way that I would play my team against any team that has a rather pedestrian central defence.

Y Drenewydd were desperate to win to keep alive any possible hope of avoiding the drop, so they went on an all-out attack, However Aberystwyth, who have clearly been reading my training manual, played with the rapid winger Niall Flint at centre-forward. Every time Aberystwyth won the ball in defence they kicked it upfield over the head of the central defenders and Niall Flint ran after it.

He was causing panic in their defence all through the game. And while Y Drenewydd scored two goals, Niall Flint scored two of his own for Aberystwyth, he hit the post twice and only some desperate defending kept him out on another couple of occasions. And when Aberystwyth scored a third as the game drew to a close, that, I’m afraid, was that for Y Drenewydd.

During pre-season I’d seen Y Drenewydd play against Hednesford Town, and what I saw prompted me to enter into correspondence with the Drenewydd club secretary. On the 5th of August I finished my correspondence with "I can see it being a long, cold season ahead"

At least the Chairman of Y Drenewydd was quite frank after the game. "We lost some very good players in close season but didn’t replace like with like". That is no surprise at all. What is a surprise is that he didn’t do anything to redress the balance.

The boss was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and he brought me home through the immense traffic queue as the Parisians desert their city for the Easter break. Despite dropping off another passenger, I was at home for 18:15 and I wish that I could do that every time.

My cleaner watched as I climbed my weary way upstairs where I relaxed for an hour or so.

Tea was as usual baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet, followed by cake and soya dessert. Now I’m having a little break before dictating my radio notes and going to bed. A lie-in until 08:00 in the morning and then I have baking to do. Bread, more bread and a chocolate cake. Let’s see how the new water measurer copes

But seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … tomorrow there’s a live football match in the Women’s League Cup – Caerdydd V Llansawel.
In the previous round Llansawel beat a team representing the Walt Disney Fan club. It was quite an easy match for Llansawel so I asked them why
"It was as if that Disney team only played with ten players" explained the Llansawel manager. "They had a player on the pitch called ‘Cinderella’ but she spent the whole ninety minutes running away from the ball"

5th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… much less painful session at the dialysis centre this afternoon. Even better news was that I only had to stay for three and a half hours. That will suit me just fine.

It was however quite tiring, mainly because it was after 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed last night, or this morning. It was another one of those nights where I couldn’t really concentrate on what I was doing.

Writing up my notes and backing up the computer seemed to take forever and I’ve no idea why, other than the fact that neither my heart nor my mind was in it

Quickly asleep again but it wasn’t for long though. It was another turbulent night with me still being away when I heard the water heater switch off at 06:20. I was thinking that I ought to raise myself from the dead and claim another early start but I must have gone back to sleep again because the combined forces of the new and the old alarm did more to awaken the dead than John Peel ever did. I had both alarms set for this morning to make sure that the new one actually worked.

When the alarm went off I was walking with someone through the streets of an industrial town. I’d planned to take her out for a long walk at some point but she wasn’t all that interested in going. Then we had to go to see a shop so we set off along this new footpath that they had created. I thought “this is the way that I was going to take her anyway”. We walked a little way, then there was an even newer bit that went down between the railway lines and up the hill on the far side so we walked down there. We came to an area where this path was not very distinct. I thought that we’d go to the left but it wasn’t so clearly marked. We thus carried straight on and found that there was a left turning. We turned left there, and one of the locals said “you could have gone the other way”. We walked on and came through some bushes where there was a beautiful view across a lake, a really stunning view, so we walked down a slope and came to some gates of a big house. There was a crowd of people outside it. We realised that this was the home of someone famous and there were always people here. We felt somewhat embarrassed about being seen joining the crowd of all these people waiting at this gate.

Wherever this area was, I have no idea. But I can see it quite clearly even now. As for whoever it was who was with me, I’ve no idea. That’s the real disappointment about things like this. All these young ladies accompanying me on my peripatetic wanderings and I can’t remember who it was, if ever I knew them in the first place.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and then handwashed my socks, undies and nightwear. Then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. Some girl had come into our family circle for some reason or other. She was telling us all about her childhood. She had been on a school exchange visit to the same area where I had been in 1970. We were chatting about all kinds of different things and she remembered a lake and a beautiful view across it with a view down a valley past a few villages and a large parking area at the side of the road, all situated at a very sharp bend. I told her that I knew exactly where that was because it’s a road that I take regularly down to the south-west of France. I was sure that I went there too when I was on a school exchange programme, but of course she didn’t believe it and thought that I was pulling her leg. A few months later we all set out on holiday, our family, and we took this girl with us. I thought that it would be interesting to spring a little surprise on her. Instead of going down the A7 to the Mediterranean I went along some of the old roads, through Burgundy and the area where we’d been on this school exchange. I knew exactly how this was going to end. As we came down this road the signs were for a junction to the left going off in the general direction of the Rhône and Switzerland. The old road that we were on carried on round a sharp turn to the right to go round a reservoir. As we came over the brow of the hill and the reservoir was just below us, this girl suddenly let out an enormous exclamation “this is it!”. I replied “I know that it is, exactly where I thought that it was”. We turned to go round the bend and there was a big beaten-earth parking space on the left, so even though we were pushed for time, I drove onto the parking area. We all alighted and this girl went skipping off around, looking at all the things that she remembered, the changing huts, the swimmers and everything. She was absolutely delighted. She began to tell me some more stories about her childhood, one of which involved a diary. She’d written everything down in her diaries but she already had eleven diaries so the one after that, she wasn’t really all that interested in keeping and either her friends lost it or stood on it or something but she no longer had it. That was a shame because she would have loved to have compared notes today with things that she wrote about this lake back when she was a child and had come here before.

And I wish that I knew who she was too.

The site and situation of this lake or reservoir reminds me of the Barrage des Fades near to where Liz and Terry used to live in Sauret-Besserve, although the description was nothing like how the Barrage des Fades looks. But as for my trip on a school exchange, I do have to say that it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was my first taste of foreign travel, my first taste of a different culture and it opened up, quite literally, a whole new World. I couldn’t wait to go again – and again, and again.

But seeing as we are talking about avoiding the A7 – the “Autoroute du Soleil” that goes down the east bank of the Rhône … "well, one of us is" – ed …, on many occasions I have driven down the old road on the west bank. It’s much more picturesque and less-crowded

The nurse was in a rush today. It’s weekend so he wants to be home as quickly as possible, I suspect. And that suits me fine I went and made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK

It’s not really a book on architecture – at least, not in the fashion that I was expecting. It’s the kind of book that you would expect to see written by a tour guide, listing the interesting features and describing them in terms that would baffle any layman.

What would be important for me is not the “what” as much as the “why”, why were these castles built in the way that they were and the principles that went into their construction. These designs were not haphazard but quite significant and well-planned and I for one would want to know more about the engineering that went into them

Back in here I carried on with my Woodstock notes. I’m now at not far short of nineteen minutes of notes and I’ve probably written about a third of what I need. There will be some hefty editing quite soon.

My cleaner turned up bang on midday to fit my patches. She’d only just applied them too when the doorbell rang. "He’s early!" we both said together.

However, it was the postie with the first instalment of my recent order. Some new clothes, some baking stuff and, most importantly, the protective pouch for my new ‘phone. I had just finished fitting it to my ‘phone when the taxi arrived.

We were two passengers down to Avranches but there was quite a crowd waiting when we arrived, so I was one of the last to be fitted.

The good news is that the debit at three and a half hours was just about 800ml/hour, just under the limit for a three and a half hour session and that cheered me up. The glycerine count wasn’t much good and they kept on force-feeding me with orange juice.

Apart from that, no-one bothered me at all and I could crack on with updating the travelling laptop, revising my Welsh and looking at a few cookery recipes to see if they gave me any ideas.

It was the boss who brought me home this evening and my faithful cleaner was waiting for me to watch me as I climbed the stairs up to my place. It was really nice being here at 18:30 and knowing that, with a bit of luck on arrival, I could have been back here fifteen minutes earlier.

Tea was baked potato, salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like, followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert.

So for once, I’m early. I’ll do the notes, the stats and the backing up and then dictate my radio notes before going to bed. I really could do with a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about taxi drivers … "well, one of us has" – ed … the police were called to an accident in Avranches this afternoon after reports of multiple casualties. 59 people had died
They interviewed the driver at the scene and asked him what had happened.
"I was going down the hill in my cab and the brakes failed" he replied. "It was either hit two men or a wedding party, so I chose to hit the two men"
"But how come there are so many casualties?" asked the policeman
"Well, one of the men made a run for it but I got him in the end, just as he reached the wedding party."

Saturday 29th March 2025 – THAT WAS BETTER …

… art the dialysis centre this afternoon. I had a couple of small wobbles towards the end but I managed to keep on going until the session concluded, and that’s progress compared to how things were on Thursday.

Having a somewhat better sleep might have accounted for some of it. By the time that I finished my notes and had done the backing up, it was 00:45 – much later than usual thanks to the football, but much earlier than Wednesday night.

Once again, I was asleep quite quickly and there I remained, totally motionless, until about 06:00, just as it was starting to become light. “Far too early for me to rise up” I thought so I turned over and actually, this morning, managed to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I threw off the quilt immediately but it took me a few minutes to rise up into a sitting position and a few more to head off into the bathroom.

It’s Dialysis Day today so I had a good wash, a scrub up, a shave, a change of clothes and even hand-washed my socks, undies and nightwear so that I would look nice and pretty. Then I headed off into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was having a row with my brother … "what a surprise" – ed …. He made some kind of threatening gesture with a knife, that he was going to chase me until he caught me. Of course I dismissed that idea and carried on with what I was doing, which was preparing some things because someone was coming round to visit me. This story about fleeing through the woods with my brother behind me, I didn’t take it very seriously. A few minutes later I was working around the house performing some tasks. There was a couple of other people there, one of whom was my brother and one of them was this person who had come to see me, so I thought that I’d better finish preparing this pack of clothing that needs to be taken, then we can set off. While I was preparing it this guy came to see me. He asked “are you Eric?”. I replied “yes”. He answered “right, yes. I thought that I’d just put my foot in things. “Why is that?”. “Because I went up to your brother and asked ‘do you have those things for me’ thinking that he was you. He asked ‘what things?’ so I answered ‘that clothing that we ought to be dropping off in the woods’ and he made some kind of stupid remark about taking me into the woods and leaving me there’ “. I explained to him the situation and prepared everything so that we were ready to leave. But there was some swimming costume or something that fell out of the cupboard while I was fetching these clothes. I wasn’t really sure why that was there. It shouldn’t have been there either. I was sitting there puzzling about this and wondering if I was supposed to take it with me or whether it had found its way into that cupboard by accident.

Our disputes never reached the stage of going armed but we certainly didn’t behave like siblings, any of us. And I can still see this swimming costume even now. It’s a faded pale bluey-green bikini with a bright, dark pink trim. No-one I know has ever worn anything like this so I wonder why I’ve seen one during my sleeping hours. As for leaving things in the woods, in the past it was usually babies, especially sickly ones who were not expected to live. Sometimes they were simply abandoned and at other times they might be sacrifices to whatever gods and spirits inhabit the woods. FOLKLORE AS A HISTORICAL SCIENCE that we read the other week is full of fairy-tales relating to abandoned children.

Isabelle the Nurse had plenty to say for herself today, mostly about the chaos in the town centre. And sure enough, as predicted, the remodelling of the town centre won’t be complete for the Summer. They will stop work in July and August and then re-start. Heaven alone knows when they will finish.

After she left, I made breakfast, including some more of my apple and kiwi puree, and then read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we are discussing pagan and prehistoric customs that have been absorbed into Church ritual, and he makes a very convincing case for many of them, although like most experts, he tend to see his favourite subject in every single one.

There were a couple of customs that stood out. In fact they leaped off the page right in front of my eyes. He tells us that "at both solstices it would appear that a special fire rite was practised. This consisted of tying straw on a wheel and rolling it when lighted down a hill. There is much evidence for the wheel at the summer, but less at the winter, solstice"

Anyone who has ever been to Gloucestershire on Spring Bank Holiday will know all about the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling where a wheel of cheese is sent rolling off down a hill. People will be even more surprised to learn that not only has this event been going on for many centuries, it formerly took place on Whit Monday which, before Easter became a moveable feast, coincided with the start of what Lockyer describes as “the New May Year” and which corresponds with the alignment of many of the stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … at which we are looking.

He also tells us that in the olden days, some rural farmers "would travel bareheaded and barefooted from ten to twenty miles for the purpose of crawling on their knees round;" certain holy " wells, upright stones, and oak trees, westward, as the sun travels, some three times, some six, some nine, and so on in uneven numbers until their voluntary penances were completely fulfilled."

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in August 2013 when we were in Montréal WE WENT FOR A LOOK AT THE ORATORY OF SAINT JOSEPH and saw all of the pilgrims climbing up the endless flights of stairs on their knees to the Oratory. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Back in here I had to hunt down a codec pack for some types of video as I had forgotten to add it in when I fitted the new drive. I found one of the more comprehensive packs and installed it, but there are still two or three videos that won’t play.

With downloading something from the internet I ran a complete virus scan on the computer and then emptied the recycle bin of all of the temporary files that the installation process had been using.

My cleaner came in, armed with a photograph, to fit my anaesthetic patches. The photo was the one that Emilie the Cute Consultant had prepared to tell my cleaner where to fit the patches these days.

The taxi was on time, driven by the young chatty guy and we had a very animated conversation all the way to the dialysis centre.

One of my predictions came true today. The dialysis session has been put back to four hours after Thursday’s fiasco. However, it’s not all doom and gloom because what we agreed is that there should be a maximum level of 850 millilitres per hour for a three-and a half hour session. So if I have 2000 millilitres to lose, at 3.5 hours that’s roughly 640 millilitres per hour so that’s good. But if there’s 3500 millilitres to lose, at 3.5 hours that’s 1000 millilitres per hour, so they will go for four hours in that case.

That sounds reasonable to me, I suppose. We need to reach some kind of agreement about something.

During the discussion I had an ice-pack on my arm, and when they came to plug me in at the news area of connection, it was one of the most painless that I have had. Still not perfect, but much better. We’ll have to see if it continues.

They set the blood pressure measurer every 20 minutes instead of every half-hour and came to check on me quite regularly. The machine rang regularly to say that blood pressure was low and they came scurrying over each time, but despite a few unpleasant moments, I kept on going.

The same driver brought me home and then I prepared tea. My bread bap wasn’t a success because I’d left the dough standing for too long and it had dried out. There’s nothing wrong with the principle though so in future I’ll have to make my bread roll early and bake it before I go to dialysis. The burger itself and baked potato and salad followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert was delicious.

So now I’ll dictate my radio notes and then go to bed. We lose an hour in the morning of course so I’ll be crabby all day… "so what’s new?" – ed …

But seeing as we have been talking about ancient customs, folk tales and the like … "well, one of us has" – ed … each village used to have its wise man or woman, the faith healer or the enchanter.
One day a farmer went up to the local faith healer and said "remember that cow that you had that had worms and a bad attack of disease?"
"Of course I do" said the faith healer
"So what did you give it? Mine has the same affliction"
"I gave it a mixture of burnt ashes, sacred water from the well, two feathers from a goose and a ladle-full of clay"
A few weeks later the faith healer is walking through the village when the farmer grabs him by the throat
"I gave that cow the mixture that you told me, and two days later it died"
"Now isn’t that a coincidence" said the faith healer. "So did mine!"

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But then that’s hardly a surprise when you don’t go to bed until 02:20 and you are up and about by 05:35. And that’s something of a tragedy because if I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep at least I want to be going out and about enjoying it, even if it is only a notional travel.

As you might expect I was hunting down files and data last night and then ended up being carried away by something or other, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. It was still a very weary me who crawled into bed at about 02:20.

Not that it did me all that much good because although I did go to sleep at one point it wasn’t for very long and in the end I became fed up of doing nothing whatever and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom I scrubbed up and washed my clothes, and then went into the kitchen to take my medication. Next task was to finish off the unpacking of the food from yesterday and organise the collection of glass jars so that there was room to add some more

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m trying to do away with plastic in here. Over the last few months I’ve been buying my olives in these big glass jars and I now have quite a collection. My range of glass-bottled loose product is expanding quite rapidly because of the extra stuff that I have bought over the last few months as my recipe ideas have expanded and as I try to move everything out of plastic and paper bags into glass jars.

Before I came back in here I tidied away all of the shopping bags so that they weren’t all over the floor. But in any case it doesn’t work. My place is now just as untidy as it was yesterday before my cleaner came.

Once back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe I made a start on unzipping data but was halted in my tracks by the nurse who came to sort me out. He asked me the same questions as usual and so he had the same responses as usual, not that I’m too bothered.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We reached page 123 today and that marks the end of the introductory preamble as he sets the scene for what is to come.

He’s convinced that these strange stories that Julius Caesar reported about the British people being cannibals, holding wives in common and other "odious practices" as he puts it were not actually the practices of the Celts who Caesar met but those of the people who were here and were displaced by the Celts when they arrived.

Furthermore he thinks that he can prove it too and I shall be interested to see how he manages to do it, bearing in mind that if there are no written records of the Celts there are likely to be even less for the people who were here before.

In here I carried on with the extraction of files until my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. She had only just finished too when the taxi arrived. 12:15, 15 minutes early. Not that i’m bothered though because the sooner we start the sooner we finish (in principle).

It was the young chatty driver who came for me today but he didn’t have much to say for himself which is a shame because the time passes more quickly when you are having an interesting discussion.

First in at the dialysis centre I was, and first to be coupled up. Julie the Cook had left a message for her colleagues and they applied the ice pack too before they plugged me in and although it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as it has done in the past.

There was football this afternoon, TNS v Hwlffordd. Hwlffordd are pushing Penybont for second place following Penybont’s dramatic collapse of form but TNS demolished them with some ease and the 5-1 scoreline was not flattering TNS at all.

Hwlffordd played some pretty football at times but it was all to no real purpose and they didn’t look threatening at all. For all the distance between Aberystwyth and Hwlffordd in the table and in the style of play, Aberystwyth’s showed much more dogged resistance last week that Hwlffordd did today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and she said “hello” to me, but that was about the extent of her interaction today. No-one else spoke to me until it was time to be unplugged.

The driver who brought me home was the young girl who brought me home several weeks ago. We were talking about food and I found, to my surprise and to hers too, that we are both vegan. She immediately asked if she could come round for a meal and who am I to refuse such a request?

Mind you, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

My cleaner watched as I ascended the stairs and once I’d sat down and recovered my strength I had my disgusting protein drink.

Tea tonight was one of those weird chili burgers on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. It was the first time for a fortnight that I’ve actually felt like eating a proper meal.

So there’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. I have a busy day of baking and there’s some fruit that needs transforming into juice and purée.

But while we’re on the subject of glass bottles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I used to collect them if they were any good and reuse them for other things. One day I found a really nice one.
It was rather dirty so I went to rub it clean and suddenly a genie appeared out of the neck.
"You have released me from the bottle and now I am yours to command" he said. "Give me 100 gold pieces and I will answer any two questions"
"Blimey!" I said. "That’s a lot of money for two questions, don’t you think?"
"Yes" replied the genie. "Now what’s your second question?"

Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anyone else around here, but I reckon that I’ve had enough now and I wish that I would be somewhere else right now. Even shovelling coal into the fires down below can’t be any worse than this.

A few days ago I mentioned that I can’t do with too many more days like the one that I had then, but today I reckon that we’ve reached the stage where there’s no longer any pleasure left in anything any more. As I said right back at the start of all this ten years ago, I’ll keep on going as long as there is something left to enjoy.

It might have been something to celebrate, I suppose, that I had a night last night where I was in bed at something like a realistic time. Not 23:00 of course, because those days are long-gone, but something not too far unadjacent to that.

Once I was in my bed it didn’t take too long to go off to sleep and if only Id have stayed asleep it wouldn’t have been so bad, I suppose, but another mobile, perspiring night. Although I might have slept longer than the ninety minutes of the previous one, it didn’t seem much like it.

When the alarm went off this morning I was just as wasted as yesterday morning and it was yet another undignified stagger into the bathroom. A wash and a shave later, I was in the kitchen taking all of my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night too.

And so it happened, I had. But these continual bouts of awakening had interrupted any sequence of anything important. There was something about Prehistoric man and about being in bed in comparatively modern times but as soon as I awoke, whatever it was that was going on at that particular moment just evaporated and I lost all of it. But I was certainly in bed and it was certainly something of particular interest.

No prizes for guessing where this idea about Prehistoric man comes from. I’ll really have to stop reading these books on ancient architecture. But I wish that I knew where this dream was going.

There was also a woman with whom I used to work once making an appearance last night. She was visiting this prisoner-of-war site at the west end of Crewe where people were incarcerated after the fighting had passed by. She’d gone there to check on their needs etc but the Belgian Government wanted an assurance from the British Government that any changes would not be applicable and were to be backdated but the British Government would not agree to do this so the prisoners were held and she was to check on them but there was much more to it than this and I can’t remember a thing now.

Why this woman should be there I really don’t know because I can’t have thought about her even once since I moved on to pastures new all those years ago. But I’ve no idea where the prisoners of war fitted in. However in the South Cheshire area there were two prisoner-of-war camps, which later became Displaced Persons camps

There was also a group of us in work having a good time passing the time working, chatting to each other. The question of what we were going to do that evening came up because it was a Friday. I said that if I could find someone to go dancing with me I’d be off to the nightclub. “How are you fixed?” She said one or two words and then said “yes, why not?”. So we left the office and walked hand-in-hand down the street, skipping and laughing, down to the nightclub. But there was never anything serious about it. She spent most of the time telling me about her boyfriend and how ever since they had met they had only spent three days away from each other so I knew that this was just the whim of a moment and that it would be all over in a couple of hours by the time the nightclub closed but it was one of those things that you have to seize the moment as it goes by.

This was my Irish friend again, the one who had far more sense than to hitch her cart onto my star, and who can blame her? But almost Getting The Girl is a darn sight better than what usually happens in my dreams. But even in a dream, I realised that it was just something ephemeral, and that’s interesting

Isabelle the Nurse turned up late and in a whirlwind of a rush. Apparently everyone is making their requests for blood tests before her oppo comes back at the weekend and I can’t say that I blame them. I will almost inevitably do the same.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished hillforts and now discussing dwelling houses. But he can’t leave off hillforts for long and we’ve had a delightful ramble through Caer Seion near Conwy

This is a fascinating place because it consists of two forts, one inside the other, but there is no internal communication between the two parts. You have to go back outside the one and come back into the other.

Digging around on the internet, I found an archaeologist’s report from the 1950s. His conclusion went something along the lines that "all dates are inconclusive and capable of several interpretations".

Back in here afterwards I had tidying up to do and I didn’t accomplish anything like what I wanted to do because a text message told me that the taxi was coming early.

Once I was in it, we drove all around the town, to areas that I didn’t know existed and then the four of us, driver and three passengers, set off for Avranches.

They weren’t ready for my at the dialysis centre so I had to wait, but once I was seen it was another painful session where I was in agony.

It wasn’t just four hours either. A nurse came along and said "we’ve seen your weight graph, and the doctor says that you have to stay for an extra half-hour". And by this time the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot had started up..

A doctor appeared shortly afterwards so I complained. "Are you going to make me sit here for four and a half hours in this agony and do nothing about all of the tests that I’ve had on this arm that show an anomaly?"
"I’ll prescribe an anaesthetic spray" she said
"An anaesthetic spray isn’t going to do me much good" I said. "I’m not going through all of this every time I come here for the rest of my life. It needs to be dealt with"
"I’ll have a look in your file" she said, beating a hasty retreat.

When they came to unplug me, they brought me more bad news. The weight graph shows no signs of stabilisation so as of next week I may well have to come in four days per week.

Having arrived early, I was hoping to be home early but with the extra half-hour and the delay at the start it was even later than usual by the time that I returned, totally and utterly exhausted, and completely fed up.

There was no energy left in the tank to make tea. A baked potato and some salad was the best that I could do, and now I’m off to bed. And if I don’t awaken in the morning I couldn’t care less. “Tomorrow is another day” they say, but it will be just like this one.

All of this reminds me of the story of the man who goes to see the doctor about his (the man’s, not the doctor’s) chronic alcohol problem
"If you keep on drinking like this" said the doctor "you are going to die"
The man turned to the doctor with a smile on his face and said "when?"

It’s better, I suppose, than the doctor who announced to his patient "I can’t find what seems to be the matter with you. It must be due to drink"
"That’s no problem" said the patient. "I’ll come back when you are sober".

Saturday 8th February 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… just about enough of this dialysis.

These four-hour sessions didn’t last long. Today, they gave me four and a half hours, and they still haven’t extracted all of the water from me that they ought to have extracted. So how long is it going to be when I go back on Monday?

One thing’s for certain though, and that is that if they keep on pumping the stuff out of me at this rate, I’ll be pushing up the daisies quicker than I think.

Ordinarily I would have complained, except that the doctor on duty was the miserable one who hates his job and loves his patients even less. I imagine that I would have been sent away with a flea in my ear had I gone to see him

In fact, it’s true to say that I am having as much luck with the senior hospital staff as I am about going to bed early because for no particular reason last night it was another late night by the time that I’d finished everything. It was a very weary me who staggered into bed at about 00:30 this morning.

And even though I was fast asleep straight away and didn’t move for the whole night, at 05:35 I sat dramatically upright, wide awake. I’ve no idea what awoke me either because I couldn’t hear any noise.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and in the end gave it up as a bad job. When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was having a good scrub in the bathroom, followed by a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

Once I was ready, I filled the washing machine with all of the clothes that remained and se it off on its cycle (a very clever machine, mine) and then went into the kitchen for my medication, remembering not to take the anti-potassium stuff and not the sunlight pills either

Back in here I began to transcribe the dictaphone notes but there were so many that I hadn’t finished by the time that the nurse came.

There were the usual banal questions and then I wished him a very happy holiday. It’s his turn to go skiing now. Isabelle should be back tomorrow.

Breakfast was next, and then I read MY NEW BOOK.

We’re still moving on with our discussion of contour forts and he gives a few example of them. With regard to several of them he makes the pertinent observation that "the fortress seems to be too large to have been defended by any force which it could shelter."

That is of course perfectly true but it’s a moot point because if the defenders are not likely to be very numerous, neither are the attackers, so the defenders wouldn’t have to defend all of the perimeter. Instead, they would just concentrate on the point where the attackers are launching their particular offensive

No-one has any idea of the population of Britain in 500BC but it can’t have been more than half a million, so it’s not as if you could gather a large army at one place and at one time.

Back in here I finished off the dictaphone notes. I was in the living room of a semi-detached house. I’d been off with this girl and her parents weren’t very happy. We’d had a confrontation when I’d brought her home. We had managed to pass over the confrontation and we were saying goodbye to each other in the hall when the dream faded away

Apart from the fact that there I was, just about to Get The Girl and the dream dies, there’s a great deal more to this dream that anyone would imagine or realise, and I would care to admit. And parents being unhappy was just about par for the course back in those days.

There was also something about the ceremonial exchange of keys for a car that I ended up buying from a garage. The exchange was something that was reproduced in India at the same times. If you were buying something in India you would have to step back for thirty seconds so to convince everyone that it was OK. It was during that period that the recourse would take place, that the former wife of a friend of mine, would come along and do something instead of whatever her name was and me.

So who is “whatever her name was”? And why can’t I remember the first part of this dream? f there’s a girl involved, I ought not to go around forgetting or missing out..

I was out with a friend and we were wandering around a fairground. There were two of us, a guy and a girl. We walked around this fairground and ended up in a place where we could have a hot snack. One of my friends wanted a hot snack so we went round there but the hot snack place was closed. There was a tape across it. We ended up having a coffee. The coffees were tiny, a tiny expresso type of thing and they had to be drunk in the cafeteria on the first floor. ….battery flat .. So we bought a coffee and we had to go up the stairs to drink it to the café. There was a spiral staircase, very tight, very steep and I couldn’t walk up it so we were there with these coffees wondering what to do

So who were my friends? Do I have any?

Then I was with a group of gendarmes. We were going somewhere to pick up something and we had to go there very quietly but we suddenly discovered that something had gone wrong. When we looked at one of the objects that we had that we’d bought at this café we could see the maker’s name. That suddenly rang a bell with one of the gendarmes. He told the others, who suddenly realised what it was. We all piled into the car and we drove. It was driving through Crewe down a few of the side streets. We came in to the bottom end of Delamere Street. We drove down to the bottom. We were looking for a number something like 148 but there weren’t that many houses in that street, not at all, so we didn’t know or I didn’t know where this was going to be. They identified a house – at least, the guy in charge did – that was nowhere near that number and he said to the driver “park a little further down the street” so we did . Someone exited the car and there was some kind of commotion outside so I left the car to go to see. The guy who had exited the car was helping a pedestrian stand up who had been knocked down. I suddenly realised that our car was driving forward. I shouted to “put the brake on” but no-one paid any attention to it. It kept on rolling forward and forward and forward. Suddenly it stopped. I shouted “for God’s sake put the brake on!”. Someone in the car said “well, it was on, but we didn’t know what was going on”. I said “you were rolling forward and you knocked someone down!”. Anyway one of the gendarmes went up to the house. He had a key in his pocket and unlocked it. He walked in and we followed him. It was a filthy, disgusting, untidy house. I have never seen or smelled anything like this . It was full of cats. At first though there was nothing. There was no-one to be seen and he walked around shouting. In the end he walked through this curtain that was hanging over the doorway into what was the kitchen. It was filthy and disgusting, and smelly. There were these cats everywhere. Suddenly two girls appeared. One was about twelve and the other was about nine. The younger one was blonde, the elder one was dark. I suddenly realised where we were because I’d sent birthday presents to these kids. They were the family of one of these gendarmes. They were trying to make some coffee, he was asking them where such-and-such was but they didn’t know. He was looking around for papers and came across some papers about two matching pieces of furniture. He said “this might explain the mystery because they were bequeathed to the two of us and it looks as if the guy has just taken one which he thinks might be his share but we were so totally in the dark and totally bewildered about this.

The house is still clear to me even now. If anyone knows Crewe, it’s just before where the old white single-storey buildings and the belisha beacons and zebra crossing used to be. But the stench in that house was so strong I could actually smell it at the time. Apart from that, it was just like a sketch out of one of the GENDARME DE ST TROPEZ films.

And finally we had a nightmare. I’m not sure where this fitted in anywhere but at one point I dreamed that my cleaner went to take off my plasters and found that one of my puncture holes was still leaking after all this time. There was blood everywhere all over this plaster and all over my lower arm

That really is my worst nightmare of all of this and I shall hate the day when it happens

After typing out my notes, I crashed out, believe it or not. Never mind about being upset about crashing out, I can’t believe that I crashed out so early on in the day. I might at least have had the decency to have waited until I was on my bed in the dialysis centre.

Once I awoke though, I finished off the notes of the next radio programme and was busy involved in doing a few other things when the cleaner turned up. I told her about my nightmare and prepared her to be standing by just in case … .

The taxi was late again, but not as late as it might have been. Just me as a passenger with a friendly, peasant driver and we had a nice drive down to the centre.

For a change, I was first to be seen and that boded ill for the rest of the day. And it hurt just as much as it had on previous days.

There was football on the internet too – TNS v Penybont, 1st v second. At one time Penybont were pushing for the Championship but they have fallen away quite badly just recently, and were well-beaten by TNS, even with TNS playing the final 10 minutes with just 10 players.

One of the nurses came by with the bad news about the extension to the session (the doctor, I suppose, didn’t have the nerve) and so at the end I was the last out of the centre. I mentioned my nightmare to the nurse who unplugged me so she put extra plaster strips on my dressing.

And with the taxi having to drop off someone at Avranches, it was miserably late when I arrived home, tired, fed up and completely exhausted.

You have no idea how much a dialysis session takes out of me, never mind a four-and-half-hour session.

Tea was a burger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by apple cake and soya dessert, and that’s it for tonight. I’ll dictate my notes and then I’m off to bed. Quite frankly, I don’t have the courage or the energy to do anything else.

The secret of these increased dialysis sessions was explained to me later. Apparently one of the doctors (I’ll leave you to guess) is fed up of me chatting her up all the time
She told the girls to increase the suction time to take more water out at each session
"Isn’t that dangerous?" asked one of the nurses
"Who cares?" answered the doctor."If we extract at a rate of 5 kilos per session, in 16 sessions he’ll be gone completely."

Saturday 1st February 2025 – I REALLY MUST SHUT …

… up and stop moaning about this dialysis. If I were to tell you that we had another four painful hours of life coupled up to the machine you would very soon become as fed up as I am about the whole affair. I really can’t believe that everyone else suffers as much as I do about all of this.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

After I’d finished my notes last night I had a few things to do and once more it was quite late by the time that I finally went off to bed. Not that I’m bothered too much. Times have changed these last few months.

Once in bed thought, it was totally painless. I didn’t feel a thing for the whole six hours or so until the alarm went off the following morning.

And that was an effort to leave the bed before the second alarm. I’m having to push myself along as best as I can at the moment and hope that I can keep on going. It’s now my shoulders and my back that are giving me major problems

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, with a shave and plenty of deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant. And then I attacked the washing.

“Attacked” is the correct word too. There were piles of it. So much so that even with the washing machine loaded to the brim, there was still plenty that wouldn’t fit in which will have to wait for another time. This is becoming ridiculous.

In the kitchen I had all of my medication, not forgetting the Vitamin D supplement, and then I had to tidy up the empty shopping bags that were lying around all over the place.

It’s not been a very happy morning so far, has it?

If the nurse had turned up two minutes earlier he would have caught me in flagrante delicto. I’d just finished tidying up when he came. Of course he had to do his “cocorico” after Friday’s rugby, but that doesn’t bother me. I have no interest whatever in the game, except to say that it’s a sport played by men with odd-shaped balls.

He was in and out in a few seconds today. he didn’t stay around at all. That suits me fine and I could make breakfast and read my book.

We’re reaching the conclusion and it is as I suspected – a great deal of construction done quite rapidly around 400-380BC, periods of calm, increase in wealth and a relax in tension, followed by spells of more rapid overhauling of the forts until, in the words of the writers, "this is now an architecture of intimidation …. alongside a ‘deliberate closing down’ of the wider agricultural landscape, including animal slaughter"

Not just animal slaughter either. There’s evidence of warfare, such as heaps of slingshot pellets in readiness by the gates, and also, regrettably, piles of skeletons of men, women and children, clearly victims of a battle, cast into a pit.

This all started with some iron relics that were found in a caravan. And they have now identified them as a convex bowl on a spike that would be thrust into a tree-trunk to act as the pivot for a gate, sitting in a corresponding concave bowl set in a sill-beam in the floor.

That’s not all either. to stop the tree-trunk from splitting, a couple of iron bands were heated and strapped around the end of the tree-trunk. They would shrink and contract the wood, and the spike would be rammed home, with the bands preventing the wood from splitting

And if that’s not clever for Iron-Age engineering 2500 years ago, I don’t know what is.

Controversy has at last reared its ugly head. But it’s expressed in a much more scholarly way than T Rice Holmes ever did. The authors tell us "It seems worth stating here that there are so many problems with Avery’s (1993, App. A, 146 ff.) understanding of Varley’s work that it is in some ways safer simply not to consult Avery "

Back in here, first task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Steve Knightley at a concert. He was organising one of these entertainments. It was a shame because there was only about a dozen people attending them. I’d been on the stage during one of his songs to do something so during a pause he was doing an entertainment having half a dozen people up on the stage for something like a quiz. He looked at me and said “you’ve just been up, haven’t you?”. He couldn’t find enough people to make up the team that he wanted on the stage. They were about to ask him the prize to start to answer the questions. Someone asked him “what are the prizes?”. He ummed and ahhed and didn’t say anything. Then he took all the people off the stage before the quiz had started and then led them out into the car park. We walked through the car park. Someone worked out that “ohh the first prize is marriage” to which one of the women said ” it can’t be that. I’m already married”. And then she looked at Steve Knightley and said “unless there’s a nice, gallant man who is going to arrange it for me”. We walked down to the far side of the car park and there were four or five cars parked down there. I recognised mine, and there was a Black Tulip BMC 1100-type of car. His was an Austin A40, a dirty green metallic and the whole of the bottom was rusting away. The wheels were rusting. He told me that he was a concrete examiner during the day. I thought that he’d been driving the car through the concrete. He said “yes, it needs something doing to the paintwork to stop it rusting further” he said. Why do’t you come down on Friday and do it for me?”. I thought “he lives the other side of Bristol”. He said “oh by the way my wife likes to have her one flat tyre each week so she’s probably have that while you’re down there”. I thought “well, I don’t suppose that I’m doing anything on Friday but even so ..”

Even though I remember nothing whatsoever of this dream, I can see the car park and see my car. It was a black Ford Consul MkI, a car that I have never owned, but would have given my right arm to have had at the time. Steve Knightley is much more well-known for being one third of the group “A Show Of Hands” whom I have never seen live but I have several of their concerts sent to me by a friend who works at a folk festival. He would really be quite good as a game show host I reckon. Judging by the cars though, this was set in the early 1970s when life was so much different. I’m not saying “better” because TB, rickets and waking up to ice on the bedroom window in the morning wasn’t good at any moment in history.

Next stop was to finish off the radio notes from yesterday. They are all done and dusted now ready to be dictated. It didn’t take me too long. But there are quite a few that need dictating tonight so I have better hurry up and finish my notes.

When the cleaner poked her head into the apartment I was backing up the computer, so once more that fell by the wayside. I’ll do this full back-up onto the travelling laptop yet.

She put the patches on my arm and then I had to wait for my driver so I tidied up in the kitchen.

It was my favourite driver today, so we had the whole running commentary, complete with gesticulations, all the way down to Avranches. And at Avranches we had the usual painful procedure that’s enough to drive me wild.

Once installed though, I could settle down to watch the football. Penybont v Hwlfforth is a match of second v third, with both teams keen for points – Penybont to stay clutching on to the coat-tails of TNS and for Hwlfforth to fight off Caernarfon for the coveted third place.

But I’m not sure what game I was watching because, apart from the fact that its quality can best be described as “agricultural”, I don’t think that either goalkeeper had any serious work to do. The match finished 0-0, with both sides lucky to get nil and if they are still playing now I reckon the score would still be 0-0.

The rest of the time at the hospital I spent backing up the computer, with still a long way to go. But when the buzzer goes off and the girls come to disconnect me, I just want to go home.

They guy who brought me back was the one who, I reckon, has some part in running the affair. We had a little chat on the way home and he dropped me off in the capable hands of my cleaner.

Now that the stair handrails have been fixed I strode personfully up all twenty-five steps to my door, and then collapsed inside.

Tea was a burger on a bap with vegan salad and baked potato, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. Life doesn’t get much better than that And now that I’ve written my notes I’ll dictate the notes for the radio programmes and then go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Steve Knightly and his small crowd … "well, one of us has" – ed … it made me smile. I once told someone that I played in several one-man shows
"I thought that there were three people in your two most famous groups" she replied
"Indeed there were" I replied. "but when I talk about a “one man show” I’m usually referring to the size of the audience"

Sunday 26th January 2025 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that I was up at 08:00 this morning. at 08:20 I had a ‘phone call. "Are you back at home?".

The nurse had finally tracked me down and wanted to know if he should come round. Not much I could do except to say “yes” so we’re back in the routine again after our little pause of a couple of days of respite.

Mind you, I didn’t feel much like raising myself from the Dead at 08:00. I hadn’t gone to bed until 01:30 or thereabouts this morning.

After I’d finished writing my notes I strolled through the highlights of this weekend’s matches in the JD Cymru League and watched as Y Fflint, in danger of being overhauled in the Relegation Stakes after Y Drenewydd and Llansawel’s draw, responded by surprisingly beating Connah’s Quay Nomads and putting yet more daylight between them and the bottom two or three.

Aberystwyth are almost certainly down – their activity in the current transfer window has done nothing to improve their position, but Y Drenewydd, LLansawel and Y Fflint are having an exciting battle down there in the basement to keep out of the other relegation place. This is hotting up.

In fact, the whole of the bottom six are going to be exciting for the next nine games. Y Barri and Connah’s Quay Nomads fighting for that vital spot at the top of the pool to play off for the European Championships, and the other four in a desperate life-or-death struggle to avoid relegation.

Meanwhile, the battle for promotion in the Cymru North has taken a surprising turn and thrown the league wide open as Trefynnon beat leaders Airbus and Colwyn Bay put five past Mynydd y Fflint.

Over the last couple of weeks Airbus’s lead in the league has evaporated. Colwyn Bay have won something like the last 16 games on the run and nothing seems to stop them. So that’s the Kiss of Death on them for next weekend.

Later on I dictated the note for the 11th track for the previous programme that I completed, and then dictated the notes for the ten tracks that I’d chosen so far for this week just gone.

But once more, standing up and crossing the foot or so of bedroom from my chair to the bed was an insurmountable gap. I don’t think that even the combined efforts of the Fearsome Foursome of Castor, Zero, TOTGA and Moonchild could have enticed me into bed last night at any kind of respectable hour.

Somehow, I found, and I don’t know where I found it, the effort to rise up from my chair and go to prepare to bed. And once in there, I realised just how wonderful my own bed is.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I didn’t feel like anything else at all but I hauled myself out and into the bathroom where, while I was washing, I had the aforementioned ‘phone call.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone while I was waiting for the nurse to arrive. We were in a supermarket when a German women came in to shop. She bought several whole trays of different things – well, selected them and put them in her trolley. My friend who was the under-manager went over to see her to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to do this She replied that “well, we are allowed to do this in Germany” to which he replied “yes, that’s as may be but this isn’t Germany and over here we aren’t allowed to”. He pointed out to her the special offers that she could buy, where tins are either sealed together in plastic or with a label. You could buy the special offers like that but you can’t buy the whole trays of food. In the end she put back most of her stuff and kept the special-offer kind of food. My friend was going through some of the stuff that he didn’t recognise. He asked “what’s a bratwürst?”. I replied that it was a large sausage. He replied “in that case I’m going to buy a few of these special offers and take them home with me for tea”.

Seeing that in a dream you aren’t allowed to buy whole trays of food, why is there a tray of baked beans sitting on my kitchen worktop? Admittedly, it’s only half-full but it was full when it arrived here. No-one makes baked beans like the British. The European ones are insipid, ones in the USA and Canada are pumped full of maple sugar and even the “British recipe” ones on sale in the Maritime Provinces of Canada taste nothing like the real thing, as I have regrettably found out. So if you are coming to visit me from the UK, let me know and I’ll give you a list.

The nurse turned up and moaned at me because I hadn’t contacted him yesterday but I was in no mood to listen. He sorted out my legs and was gone in less than five minutes so I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK

We are at long last reaching the final pages, but the offensive insults are continuing without abatement. We’re seeing remarks such as "This is the sort of argument that might have been expected, not from an Astronomer Royal, or from a barrister like Lewin who knew the world, but from a clever schoolboy." directed at his contemporaries.

But finally we’re coming close to the end where he’s summarising his argument, despite having said a few paragraphs earlier that "I need not say anything by way of recapitulation, for no man who has read this article attentively can be lacking either in patience or in intelligence". It’s not “patience and intelligence” that has kept me going, but sheer disbelief that any academic could use the kind of abuse, insult and invective that he has, and I was curious to see how would end. We shall know tomorrow or on Tuesday and then I can push on to, hopefully, some less controversial work.

Back in here there was yet more football, Forfar Athletic v Stranraer in Scotland in the windswept, freezing Station Park in Forfar, with snow on the hills in the background.

And for the first time since records began … "2014 actually" – ed … Stranraer came away with the points.

Having survived a withering onslaught on their own goal only to roar upfield and in one of only a handful of half-chances, score a goal that the keeper could, and should have saved quite comfortably. He won’t want to watch the replay of how the ball squeezed between both his hands

With no cooking to do this weekend I had a leisurely amble through the radio programmes and I finished what I needed to do – that’s one more complete programme and the other one that only needs the 11th track. That track is chosen and the text written ready for dictating next weekend.

The editing took much longer than it should otherwise have done because despite having used this sound-editing programme for ten years, I’m still learning new tricks. I managed to dramatically improve the quality of the sound and to improve the quality of the “false stereo” voice tracks that I’m making. Had I the time I could make some exciting improvements to everything.

It’s a good job though that I have nothing to record this afternoon. There’s a hurricane blowing outside and all of the windows are rattling.

Lunch was missed today but I managed the Christmas Cake break and the disgusting protein drink. Hot chocolate is postponed for now while I sort this drink out.

Tea tonight wasn’t pizza. I had Saturday night’s tea – baked potato, salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets followed by chocolate sponge and soya dessert. And having said that I don’t need to bake anything today, cake supplies are running low.

Anyone have any ideas about the next oil cake? What can I use to make it different?

So bedtime in a few minutes and then back to the daily grind and four hours of dialysis. First task tomorrow though after the Welsh homework will be to update the portable computer. If I’m going to be doing some serious work in the dialysis centre I need it to be up-to-date.

But seeing as we are talking about Germans … "well, one of us is" – ed … two Germans walked into a bar in London
"Bitte …" asked the Germans
"Bitter?" asked the barman
"Martinis" asked the Germans
"Dry?" asked the barman
"Nein" said the Germans
"Nine?" asked the barman
"Zwei" replied the Germans

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

… and thirty minutes of sheer, unadulterated agony this afternoon as once more, one of the nurses managed to find the “sensitive spot” in whatever it was that they did in that hospital in the summer.

Whatever else happens in this hospital, I can’t go on like this. I’m sure that dialysis isn’t supposed to be this painful.

At least I can console myself that I’m not suffering as much as the guy who usually comes with me on a Thursday and Saturday. I asked why we hadn’t seen him for a few days and was told "he comes in an ambulance now. He’s had a bad fall"

The only fall in which I’m interested right now is to fall from my chair into bed as I’m exhausted.

It was another late night last night. Just as I was going to bed, a “Traffic” concert came round on the playlist and that’s another “must” to stay up and listen to, especially when there’s an 11-minute version of SOMETIMES I FEEL SO UNINSPIRED and almost 10 minutes of DEAR MR FANTASY.

Anyway, once we returned to normality I crawled off to bed, with the words of Steve Winwood echoing around my head –
"sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
Hunger and pain is all I see
I don’t know who’s losing
And I don’t care who’s winning
Hardships and trouble are following me".
My head is definitely spinning, I can certainly feel pain and while I’m not suffering any hardship – those days are long gone – I’m definitely being followed by a heap of trouble right now. What is worse is that it’s all of my own making too.

Those troubles kept me awake once more and it seemed like an age before I finally drifted off to sleep.

When the alarm went off this morning. I was away on my travels, with a shower that I had to repair so the first thing was to drain the tank. I profited from that by having myself a nice hot shower. I disconnected the shower hose so the pump was on the wall in the bathroom so I took off the pump from the wall and lowered it down a little. This forced the water out of the pump which then drained into the bath. I put the shower pump down, about halfway down the wall so that it was about halfway down to the level – so the water in the tank was halfway down, and put the pump there so that it was drained off the top half. I was sitting there contemplating what to do next when the alarm went off. I was really disappointed because I was enjoying that.

So don’t tell me that all of my nocturnal skills, about which I have so boasted in the past, have deserted me during this crisis through which I’m going right now. It’s the one thing on which I could rely in the past and with the right kind of support, I could have made millions from the skills that I never knew that I had

It was a desperate struggle to rise to my feet and go into the bathroom before the next alarm went off but I just about made it. And then a desperate discovery – that I’ve run out of clean sweaters. Nothing else for it but to put last week’s back on. I have just about enough of other clothes to have a good change but I really am going to have to overhaul my wardrobe. What am I going to do with all my Arctic clothing for a start?

Having washed and shaved, I put the bedding from last week into the washing machine with a selection of other dirty clothing and let the machine do its stuff. Then I wandered off for my medication, remembering to take my “sunlight” Vitamin D.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what else has been going on during the night. There was something about an extremely valuable – well, not valuable but a historic plate that was of great significance between me and some young lady and I don’t know who she was. I had to keep it safe so I hid it under my coat but as I moved, I broke it. A V-shaped piece fell out of it. I was thinking “how am I now going to repair this so that it will be the correct type of plate and that no-one will notice that it’s damaged.

In fact, I really didn’t know who she was. She didn’t resemble anyone whom I might know at all

There was also something about people who were working in Crewe Works. They had to cycle a certain way around the Queen’s Park and would reach a point where someone was waiting. When they reached that point they would have to turn round and cycle back towards the Works. They couldn’t take a short cut by turning around earlier but they all had to go to where this particular guy was standing in the middle of the road.

“Queen’s Park”, or, at least, the road around the back of it by the Golf Club, and “Crewe Works” – that is, the Railway Works – are playing something of a role in what’s going on right now in my mind so it’s inevitable, I suppose, that they should put in an appearance at some point. No sign of Moonchild though. She didn’t come dancing through the shallows of the river into my dreams last night

But what’s sad about this is that I can remember when half of the town was covered in the various branches of the Railway Works and when every boy in the town was destined to become an apprentice in either “The Works” or “Royce’s”. The town was flooded out with bicycles at chucking-out time, and how much like a ghost town it was during “Works Week” – all that was missing were the tumbleweeds. Nowadays Crewe is a ghost town all the time, but for different reasons. There is nothing whatever left of its railway heritage and even the big multi-storey “Rail House” is empty and threatened with demolition

Isabelle was in and out in a new world-record time today. She doesn’t seem to be so keen on stopping and chatting as she used to. Perhaps word about me is filtering around the town

After she went, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

For a change, I’m not going to post any selected comments because firstly, I don’t know enough about the subjects that he’s discussing – it’s all conjecture unsupported by any evidence anyway, and secondly, because his invective and abuse has become tiresome to read and even more tiresome to repeat. I shan’t be sorry to finish this book and start the next one.

Back in here I carried on with the radio notes and they still aren’t finished. Once more I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner who surprised me by her arrival when I wasn’t expecting her. She fitted my anaesthetic patches and we didn’t have long to wait for the taxi to come for me.

Just me in the car today with the driver. Apparently the other passenger who usually accompanies my on a Saturday has had a bad fall and goes to dialysis in an ambulance now.

Everything was running horribly late at the Centre today and it took hours to plug everyone in. That can’t be why it hurt so much because the first pin went in much less painlessly. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it at all.

As usual, once the pump started up I crashed out and I was away for quite a while. So much so that my coffee that had been brought to me while I was asleep was stone-cold.

Before crashing out though, I was hallucinating again as I did the other day. This time there was something about me being on board a Spanish Galleon but I didn’t stroke it this time to see if it was real..

That miserable doctor was on duty today and he managed a brief “hello” as he passed by my bed. And that was my lot. I must be thankful for that, I suppose

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in and how I wish that it wasn’t. The same driver who brought me was waiting to take me back and we had a guided tour of his Head Office at Marcey les Grèves on the way home. I’m convinced that he is in some way charged with the running of the place in some capacity.

Anyway, he’s confirmed that I’ll be picked up in principle at 07:45 on Wednesday for my trip to dialysis followed by my taxi to Paris at lunchtime afterwards.

It’s freezing outside tonight, literally freezing, at 0°C so I was glad to be in the warmth indoors even if climbing up these stairs doesn’t seem to have become any easier just recently.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potatoes and salad, which was nice as usual, especially when followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt.

So now i have to dictate what I wrote earlier in the week and then finish off the lot that’s half-way done sometime. I need to go back too and review the couple of weeks that are missing and have another think about what I’m going to do. I can’t leave it until the last moment to come up with a plan.

So I’ll do that and then go to bed – to make the most of my little lie-in

But in the radio programme notes that I was writing, I was writing something about Caravan’s album A BLIND DOG AT ST DUNSTAN’S
St Dunstan’s was a Charity in London created to care for Blind People and is famously known for its hotel in Brighton which was praised for its "magnificent views over the Downs and out to Sea" – the sense of irony being totally lost on the writers.
But the title of the album relates to a story that one day a little boy saw a male dog mount a female dog.
"What’s that big dog doing, daddy?" asked the little boy
"Well," stuttered daddy nervously, "the dog at the bottom is blind, and the one on top is helping him, pushing him along to St Dunstan’s."

Saturday 11th January 2025 – WHAT A CALAMITY …

… this whole day has been. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong today, but these days it’s becoming par for the course. I’m beginning to think that I must have kicked a black cat or walked under a ladder somewhere on my travels, and it all seems to be coming home to roost.

Even going to bed last night. It was well after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out before I staggered off into my stinking pit. But at least I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, snug as a bug in a rug, until 07:00.

When the alarm went off, it took me quite a good few minutes to gather my wits which is a surprise seeing how few I actually have left these days, but even so I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and headed off to the bathroom

Clothes-washing this morning. My night attire and undies went into the sink after I’d finished washing myself, and the clothes had a good wash through. And there they went, onto the octopus that hangs from the shower rail.

In the kitchen I had my medication, remembering not to take the anti-potassium stuff, and then I tidied up all of the shopping bags that were lying around all over the place. The place has to look tidy at least occasionally, even if I can’t manage that all the time.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Once more back on Middle Earth with a bunch of men and women and in this theme I dreamed that women were people and apologists being shown around. One question that came up was about some visitor to here from a while ago who was sitting on top of a plank that was on top of a paint tin that was stuck on the top of some kind of column. He was doing this in the 13th Century. They were pointing out to him that he had people listening on the news and watching on the television watching what he was doing and he had to hold his foot in his mouth in a certain position when the cameras were filming him so that it would provide an illusion with the camera. They asked him why he was there and whether he followed TNS. He replied “no, it was the other European teams that interested him like Y Fflint and Connah’s Quay” where he could follow them and experience the real atmosphere. But even in the other clubs the opportunity to speak Welsh was presented to him by having to carry out the PA reports in Welsh. The aim of this plank on this pot of paint was so that he could balance it in the one direction so that it wouldn’t actually fall off the plank. He could sit there and watch it or rugby if he so desired, sitting on his plank and have been sat there, really … indecipherable … that was a free seat or something. He was sitting on a big expensive paid type of free seat that didn’t give the right results.

Whatever that was all about, I really have no idea. None of it makes sense, especially the bit about Y Fflint qualifying for Europe. But quite honestly, this was one of the strangest dreams that I have ever had, and I’ve had a few of those.

The nurse was early today and he had a few things to say for himself. But he didn’t stay long and I could press on and make my breakfast

Armed with my porridge, toast, purée and coffee, I had another read of MY BOOK. Our hero is certainly letting his polemic run away with him now and is making no effort whatever to hide his contempt of his contemporaries.

He’s also tying himself up in knots with the different strands of the Celtic language.

There are two principal strands, the “P” strand which is Welsh, Cornish, Breton and maybe Galician; and the “Q” strand, which is the Irish, the Manx and the Gael. There are certainly similarities between the two, for example, there are surnames. In Wales, “son of” is “Mab” (mutated to “Map”) and in Scotland it’s Maq (modernised into “Mac”) which is why in Wales a surname might be “Map Hywell” which over time has become “Powell”, or “Map Reece” – now “Preece” whereas in Scotland it’s “MacAdam” or “MacArthur”.

The Welsh name for the British Isles is “Prydain” (from where “Britain” comes) and our hero is trying to tie the name in with the name “Pict” for the Pictish inhabitants of Northern Scotland, with the argument that they were “Q Strand Celts’ who were formerly the settlers of the whole island before the “P Strand Celts” arrived. But what I don’t understand is that if they were the “Q strand Celts”, why do they have a name that begins with a P?

It’s perfectly true that some of the very early Mediterraneans like Pytheas reported their name, but surely he would have found it out by speaking to them and asking them, especially if the name of the islands had been taken from their tribal or generic name and later mutated into Britannia.

Sometimes I find it very difficult and confusing to follow our author’s arguments.

Back in here I carried on with my radio programme editing and by the time that I’d finished I had something that might actually pass muster. And if it works, it really will be impressive.

It wasn’t that I actually finished but that my cleaner came along and surprised me again. She soon had my patches on me and after a little chat she left me to await the taxi.

And wait. And wait.

Eventually there was a ‘phone call. It was my driver. "I’m sorry I’m late, Mr Hall. I’m in Avranches. I’ll be another half-hour".

So where does that leave me with my anaesthetic?

After about 25 minutes another driver turned up. He’d come from St Hilaire du Harcoet to drop someone off at St Pair so they sent him here to pick me up on his return journey. At least that’s the one big advantage of being a client of one of Normandy’s biggest taxi companies. They have drivers everywhere.

We had to pick up our other passenger too, and then we had a really rapid drive down to Avranches.

Horribly late at Avranches, everyone else was already plugged in so I was seen straight away. The first pin went in totally and absolutely painlessly. I didn’t feel a thing. As for the second, that really hurt. However, it wasn’t working so they had to take it out and insert it again.

And if, dear reader, you ever want to know what pain is all about, I recommend that you go to your local Dialysis Clinic and ask them to try that out on you.

So swathed in ice to deaden the arm and the pain, I could relax.

There was football on the internet and with the lightning-fast connection there, I could watch the game in comfort. Y Bala v Caernarfon, with the winner taking a gigantic leap towards the European Qualification playoffs.

This was actually one of the best games that I have ever seen. Y Bala were the much more technical team but the Cofis are one of the fastest teams in Europe and while their style is more “agricultural” they can tear a more static team to shreds.

And this was precisely how the game went. It was one of non-stop action and excitement and the Cofis caught out Y Bala several tims with their lightning pace. And they made two of those attacks count. You can see the highlights of the game HERE

So now, Y Bala must win their final match this half season against Connah’s Quay (which the Quay must do too) on Tuesday night, and hope that Caernarfon lose at home to Y Fflint.

Eventually I was unplugged and, hours later than usual, the taxi was already waiting for me. It was one of my favourite drivers too and we almost always (except last weekend) have a good chat.

We were halfway home, on the by-pass around Sartilly, when her data head pinged. “Pick up Mr … for Granville”.

That’s the guy who is dialysed with me and he must be ready. This is going to be a very long night for the driver so "it’s OK. Let’s do a U-turn at the next roundabout" I suggested. No sense leaving him waiting and making the driver’s day any longer than it has to be.

As a result, it was after my usual tea-time when I arrived back. And as a result, everything is running really late, yet again.

There’s stuff to dictate of course, and then I’ll go to bed. But I’m never going to have this early night that I need so badly.

But this thing about asking other people to tell you what is someone’s name can lead to all kinds of confusion.
Once upon a time I had to write down a woman’s particulars.
When I finished she asked me "do you want my husband’s name too?"
"That’s right" I replied. "I need to have his name. What’s he called?"
"Well" she replied "There are a lot of names that I call him. But if I told you what they were, I bet that you wouldn’t write them down on your form."

Saturday 4th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE AND A …

… half painful hours of agony today in the Dialysis Centre. There’s definitely something wrong somewhere with it being as painful as it is. That’s just not normal.

Still, I’ll find out on Monday for sure when I go for an X-ray. At least the taxi is confirmed for Monday morning, which is good news

So, hoping not to fall asleep in mid-notes as I did last night, I suppose that I had better make a start on writing about my day. Or, rather, my night, because once more I wasn’t in bed at anything like a reasonable hour.

Once I’d finished my notes I loitered around for a while, having found a few interesting websites to read in order to keep myself out of any mischief, and it was once more about 01:30 when I finally crept into bed. Sound asleep quite quickly, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 08:00.

But not asleep. This blasted stabbing pain in the foot has started up again and won’t leave me alone.

It was a struggle to rise up from the bed this morning, and even more of a struggle to make it to the bathroom. I had a good wash and then washed my clothes and hung them up to dry.

Next task was to write out the Mince Pie recipe for Isabelle the Nurse.

I’m not sure why because it’s one of the easiest recipes around here – cut out some circles of flaky pastry dough to fit in your tart mould, half-fill them with bottled mincemeat, and then cut out more smaller circles of pastry to go on top of the pastry and mincemeat in the mould. Prick a hole in them to let the steam out, and bake at 180°C until brown on top.

Nothing can be easier.

Of course, you can tidy them up as you like by brushing the tops with milk to brown them, sprinkling icing sugar over them etc, but all of that is up to you. I grease my mould with margarine so the pies come out easier too.

When she came she was late again and once more, in quite a rush. The bad news is that she can’t come here at 10:00 on Monday to fix my patches. My cleaner is at work so that rules her out so I’ve no idea what I’m going to do now.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then carried on reading MY BOOK

Caesar has come ashore, been involved in another pitched battle or two, reached the Thames and forded it to the other side, having given battle to the native British yet again, and then mysteriously returned to the coast.

It’s true that a storm has devastated his fleet and according to HIS MEMOIRS he returned to attend to the affair.

It’s important that it’s all repaired of course, but he doesn’t need to be there to do it. It’s far more important that he subdues the Britons before the winter storms come roaring down the Channel.

One thing that has struck me about this is that he seems to be really concerned about the winds and seems to be able to forecast their arrival with some ease. Was the climate so different and the storms so much more regular 2,000 years ago? Storms can be predicted and planned for in many regions of the World, but was the English Channel like that back in Caesar’s day?

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with my youngest sister and one or two other people. We’d been doing something like fighting dragons. On our way back we came to some kind of takeaway food place. The other girl who was with me, she said that she had bought something for another person because instead of it being €2:85 it was only €2:10 but now she was short of money. I said “I suppose that you want me to buy you the food in here, do you?”. She replied, “no, my order is for me and my sister” so I went in and ordered for me and said that my sister will want the soup, the magnificent soup. She said that she wanted something else too. When they worked out the bill it came to €15:30. My sister actually had that money in her hand because she knew exactly how much it would cost. She handed it over to them – 2 notes of €5:00 and 3 notes of €1:00

How I wish that I could buy something at €15:30 with just €13:00. Maybe I ought to bury my differences with that part of the family, seeing that they insist on disturbing my sleep like this, and send her to do my shopping for me if she can produce this kind of results. However, fighting dragons is a strange thing to be doing during the night.

My cleaner showed up to fit my patches and then once she’d finished we had a good chat until my taxi came – a chat mainly about cats.

It was the guy who seems to be involved somehow in the running of the business who came to pick me up. It was just me in the car so I expected to have a good chat all the way down but for some reason he was quite quiet. I tried on a couple of occasions to entice him into talking, but to no avail.

At the Dialysis Centre there were only five of us, but with two nurses we were seen quite quickly. And painfully, as I have said.

The worst thing about it is that they wanted to run an electrical test to see how much water was in my body. They have to plug some electrodes into patches that they stick on my hands and feet.

“But I have elastic compression socks on” I said

“Ohh” replied the nurse. “If we had realised, we would have told you not to wear them today” So I could have had a good lie-in without the nurse.

With a pain from the dialysis in my arm and this intermittent pain in my foot, I was left pretty much alone. The doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) was on the prowl around the ward but he kept well-clear of my bed. Too afraid of receiving an earful, I shouldn’t wonder.

To pass the time I was reading – firstly a pile of reports about the latest archaeological investigations of Norse sites in North America and First-Nation sites where Norse artefacts have been discovered.

It’s no wonder that there have been so many different claims for the site of “Vinland”, given the widespread discovery of artefacts. One or two have even been unearthed on the western side of Hudson’s Bay.

In fact the more that I read, the more mileage there is in James Enterline’s claim that the original sighting of land in North America was in Ungava Bay but the subsequent voyages recorded in the sagas missed Ungava Bay and sailed into Hudson’s Bay.

Most people though are sticking to L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS on the grounds that “only one settlement is noted in the Sagas, and one settlement has been found”.

However, “absence of evidence” and “evidence of absence” are not the same thing at all, and in any case, the Sagas note a few other camps that the Norse created.

The final thing that I read was a report into salmon-fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador, commissioned in 1909, talking about the history of salmon-fishing in each river from the earliest recorded date. It’s interesting, like all of these books, to see how prolific these rivers used to be, and just how the netting and over-fishing destroyed a whole breeding environment.

To return, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi to turn up. It was the same driver who brought me and once more, he was very quiet. He certainly seemed totally distracted today, as if he had a lot on his mind and that’s not normal.

We’d come home in a rainstorm and it was even worse back here. But I made it up the stairs to the lift with my cleaner in attendance. The broken handrail has fallen off completely now and it’s dangerous so I’m having to by-pass it.

Back in the warmth I made my tea – baked potato with vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Thoroughly delicious

So I’ll loiter around for a while and then go to bed. Tomorrow I have bread to make and soup to drink for lunch but that’s about it. Nothing really in the way of culinary activity. But it’s my last day of my holidays because I’m starting work again on Monday as much as I can with all of these hospital appointments.

On the way back in the taxi we were listening to the news, and there was a report of a girl who had been arrested for trying to open the door of an aeroplane.
My driver was listening intently so I told him "on the PA announcement on the ‘plane, they tell you that if you are sitting next to an emergency door you should make sure that you are able to open it, so when I was sitting next to one once in Canada, I went to make sure"
"And what happened?" he asked
"The flight crew went berserk" I replied. "We were at 37,000 feet at the time."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: baked potatoes

Saturday 3rd May 2025 – THAT WAS SUPPOSED …

Saturday 19th April 2025 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING.

Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

5th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

Saturday 29th March 2025 – THAT WAS BETTER …

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

Saturday 8th February 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Saturday 1st February 2025 – I REALLY MUST SHUT …

Sunday 26th January 2025 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

Saturday 11th January 2025 – WHAT A CALAMITY …

Saturday 4th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE AND A …

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