Tag Archives: hans field

Tuesday 24th February 2026 – ♬ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO …

… me ♬

Yes, another year older and deeper in debt, right enough. And don’t ask me how old I am because at my age, you don’t count the number of years that you’ve had – you count the number of years you have left. And in my case, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not all that many. In fact, if I see this one out, I shall be setting a new record.

So in preparation for my birthday, I tried my best … "and failed miserably" – ed … to rush ahead with what I needed to do. However, it was still late by the time that I finished, but not as late as some have been. I was in bed by 23:00, which is not bad going these days, although I wish that it could be better.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. But as seems to be par for the course following a session of dialysis, I was awake quite early. 03:50 as it happens.

And for the first time in a while, I managed to go back to sleep again – until all of 05:00. And after that, I just lay there trying unsuccessfully to doze off again. But when the time came round to about 06:15, I slid out from under the bedclothes and put my feet on the floor.

When the alarm went off, my feet were still on the floor and so that counts as an early start, even if I hadn’t been able to do anything in the way of work.

It was a struggle to stand up and go to the bathroom, but I did manage it in the end, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I found that I’d already received a few birthday messages, which I then read, with a great big thank you to those of you who had written. And my three friends from our travelling club were online and we all had a chat, including my friend from Munich who is just out of hospital after an eye operation.

While we were chatting, I was transcribing the dictaphone notes from last night.

There had been a body discovered in a shallow grave in Canada. It was of a girl about ten years old. Eventually, the police managed to track down her family – they lived in the Maritime Provinces. At one stage, they had moved out west but the lure of the Maritimes was too strong and they had returned. That was as far as I’d gone before I awoke.

Bodies are being pulled out of shallow graves by the dozen in North America, so there’s nothing new here. And neither is people going out west to the oilfields of Alberta from the Maritime Provinces, especially after the collapse of the fishing industry following the cod moratorium of 1992, something that we have discussed on numerous occasions during our visits around the Atlantic coast of Canada.

It’s also true that most of the families do end up coming back. The pace of life in the oilfields is much more intense than the laid-back attitudes of the Maritimers, so once they have done several years out there and made their pile, they gradually filter back home to work at whatever they can find while drawing on their not-insubstantial savings.

I was with one of my friends last night and we were in Crewe watching the Crewe Carnival. And while I was trying to fix something and she was watching me, another parade went past with all young people. I happened to recognise two or three people in this parade. I’d heard that there was going to be some kind of parade in respect of something else, some march or demonstration, so I wondered if this was it. After the crowds dispersed and we slowly began to walk away, we were walking down Queen Street … "It was Queensway actually" – ed … and there was sunlight with a very fine rain and we bumped into one of the girls whom we’d seen in this parade. I asked her how her parade went and she replied “ohh, the speech by the leader was magnificent and it’s really going to make him grow”. I replied “yes, but what about the parade?”. “Well, maybe there were six hundred people there and it all seemed to go very well” she said. And while I was standing in a queue for something or other, it might have been a packet of crisps or something, another girl whom I knew came along. She tried to take her mug off the counter but she couldn’t quite reach it, so I reached behind me and it was much easier to reach from there so I passed it to her with a smile. She wandered off, but my friend asked me about the girl – who she was. I replied that she was someone from our office. We began to walk down Queensway and I was eating my packet of crisps. I asked my friend what she was doing this evening. She replied that she was going to look for a pair of shoes in some of the shops around the area, so I said that I’d come with her, with the idea that maybe later on, we’d go for a meal or something. Then she began to talk about Margaret, a former employee of mine on the taxis. She said that she went round to see Margaret’s first accommodation which was some kind of bedsit place down one of the back streets off the West End. She said “it has to be worth more than £1000 per year”. She mentioned something about the smell but I didn’t really notice it. She began to think aloud about investing some of her money from her retirement pension into a rental property in Crewe and seeing whether that would make a better return than what she’s receiving on her investments at the moment.

Strangely enough, in our Welsh class later, we were talking about rituals and ceremonies and discussing how many old ceremonies have disappeared in recent times. The subject of Crewe Carnival actually did crop up during this discussion. It disappeared about fifteen or so years ago, which was a shame because at one time it attracted tens of thousands of people to the town.

The two girls – I know them too. The second girl was a girl with whom I worked for a while, and the first one was a friend of a friend from Stoke-on-Trent who came to stay with me for a few days while she was interviewed for a post at the European Commission. The bit about “the leader” sent a chill through my spine, though. There are far too many of these “leaders” around these days and it can only go all pear-shaped.

Isabelle the Nurse came along later and wished me a happy birthday as she sorted out my feet and legs. And after she left, I made breakfast. As a special treat, I had cheese on toast with my porridge, and it would have been really nice had I not dropped both slices upside-down in the oven.

While I was eating, I read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

He’s finally finished discussing pottery, and he’s still no nearer solving the riddles that have been plaguing him throughout the chapter. His conclusions are full of theories and unanswered questions, but at least, his “layering” technique for identifying periods of occupation seems to have produced positive results, even if they aren’t the results that he’s expecting.

Back in here, I went to revise my Welsh and then I joined the lesson. And it passed really well today. All of this revision seems to be paying off, if only I could remember it the following morning. Wouldn’t that be nice?

After lunch my faithful cleaner came to do her stuff and she shooed me into the shower too, so now I’m nice and clean … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

Liz ‘phoned me later and we had a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for an hour and eighteen minutes. Just a short one today. We discussed lots of things and she promised to send a recipe for a grilled vegetable salad, which I received later.

My niece and one of her daughters ‘phoned me later, as did my friend from the Orkney Islands. I shall have to have birthdays more often at this rate, if I’m so popular.

Once everything had quietened down, I began work on another radio programme but regrettably, I fell asleep for almost an hour – one of those sleeps where I don’t even realise that I’ve gone to sleep until I awaken.

While I was asleep in the early evening, I was with two friends. I’d met them while I was out driving down Chestnut Avenue in Shavington, presumably on the way home to Vine Tree Avenue and they were walking up the hill. There was a house for sale in the avenue and I’d noticed it because it seemed to be remarkably cheap for what it was so I happened to mention it. They looked at it – a big, modern detached home, on sale for £199,000 and it had a big gazebo at the back. The wife liked the look of it so the three of us went into the garden. She was worried that we had no authorisation but I told her that it didn’t matter. I’d simply pretend. As we walked up to the house, we noticed that there was no path and the lawn towards the front door was badly eroded. But as we walked, it became steeper and steeper and more and more eroded until we found ourselves on the roof. There seemed to be no other way in, despite how it looked from the road. And the roof seemed to be all old slates rather than the nice, neat tiles that we’d seen from the road. We eventually found our way inside, and it didn’t seem to be so bad, but there was someone else in there showing another couple around. He was telling them “you’ll probably get this place for £130,000 because … ” and then he mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch. I asked him to repeat it but before he could, I awoke.

Whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea. I can’t think of anything that has cropped up recently that will have triggered this off.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan vegetable stir-fry with noodles followed by a slice of fiery ginger cake with thick custard. And “fiery” is definitely the correct word to use here. I’m well-impressed. Isabelle the Nurse had asked me if I would be putting candles on my cake, but I told her that with climate change, global warming and all of that, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Mind you, my breath alone after eating that will contribute to a rise in planetary temperature, I imagine.

But now, I’m off to bed to sleep off my rather large meal. I couldn’t resist all of that lovely food, no matter how ill I might have been feeling.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my friend from Munich … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor came to check up on him this morning.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four" replied my friend
"Good" said the doctor. "Now come with me" and they both went outside.
"Now what’s that?" said the doctor, pointing up into the sky
"That’s the sun, of course"
"Well, that’s ninety-three million miles away from here. If you can see that far, your eyes must be good enough to go."

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Tuesday 17th February 2026 – HAVING WAXED LYRICAL …

… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again.

And it was looking so good too.

Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to stand in my way and I was actually in bed by about 22:15, having finished everything that needed to be done. And it’s not very often that I can say that.

Not only that, I was asleep quite quickly too. However, you don’t need me to tell you what subsequently happened. You’ve heard me say it often enough, and you are probably just as sick as I am of hearing about it.

So there I was, at 04:15 this morning, lying in bed, trying my best to go back to sleep but without any success at all. In the end, round about 05:45, I dragged myself out of bed and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, dictated all of the radio notes that were outstanding.

It has to be said, though, that I made a right dog’s breakfast of more than just a couple of them. Probably because at that time of morning, I can’t see straight enough to read my notes and I’m not awake enough to concentrate. There will be piles of editing to do, but it can’t be helped.

After I’d finished, I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. I really do like this hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, despite all of the rubbish that I’m obliged to take with it.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

I dreamed that I was working for Birmingham City Transport. I was in a double-decker bus that had Route 454 on the front. I wondered where I was going because no-one had said a word to me. I tried to set the destination board to 000 but I somehow couldn’t manage to do it. It was displaying all kinds of numbers. The next thing that I remember was that I was in the middle of Birmingham Bus Station, in the middle where the buses wait to find an empty bay. Someone came along and said that I was in the wrong place. There were already one or two people on board so I set off to do a lap around the bus station to look for the bay for the 454. Everyone complained that I hadn’t picked up passengers, so I told them that I was doing a lap round to find the correct bay. They explained to me where I had to go, and there were half a dozen people waiting there, so I picked them up and drove out of the city centre. I had no idea where I was going, and we went there and these areas of total devastation where there had been acres and acres of demolition. By that time, there were just these two women on board. They explained to me that I had to take them to some kind of house where they were going to go for a visit. Of course, I knew nothing about this. No-one had told me a thing. I didn’t even know where this house was, so they said that they would guide me. In the end, we ended up walking through the countryside, chatting about all kinds of things, washing clothes in salt to remove bloodstains etc. And the views were wonderful. We met two other people and had a quick chat and just carried on walking into the countryside and we walked for miles. There were these two old Swedish Volvos parked at the side of the road. I noticed them, and they had foreign plates, but I couldn’t identify the plates at the moment. We were just chatting for hours as we walked through the countryside, and I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.

Now, this was a strange dream, if ever there was one. Firstly, I’ve never driven a double-deck service bus. Plenty of coaches of course, and plenty of single-deck service buses but not a double-deck service bus. and as for driving around Birmingham, I know the various ways in and out, but I’d be lost completely if I had to drive a service bus route. However, there was a Birmingham bus route 454 that ran from the city centre out to Smethwick and that way.

So what would I be doing there? And why would I end up walking miles through the countryside with two women past a couple of pale green Volvos, two of the very last 164 models (I can still see them).

As for removing bloodstains, at dialysis yesterday a large load of blood was actually spilled onto my T-shirt and needs to be cleaned.

There was also something about being at home with Nerina. She was drinking a bottle of beer, and she said that this particular beer was really nice. I said that my friend from Munich might be coming to stay for a while, and he likes a special kind of beer, and my brother likes a certain beer, so if my friend from Munich comes to stay we’ll fetch a few beers of each type and we can have a nice night in, and she seemed to like the idea. Then we decided that we’d have to tidy up and she wanted to put some things in the fridge. The fridge was full, so I had to shuffle everything around and in the end, I managed to fit these things in but a couple of bottles of wine wouldn’t fit on the shelves inside so I had to move some things out of the door shelves to put the wine in there and to put the things that were in the door shelves into the fridge somehow. But the bottom shelf of the fridge was full of peat and that kind of thing, composted soil. I had to dig a hole in it to stand these bottles of wine upright in it.

This is probably a little more like it. Nerina wasn’t a beer drinker, but she would appreciate a very good beer very occasionally. I know that my friend does, because there’s a special order here every time that he tells me that he’s coming round.

We were much more into wine back in the old days, Nerina and I, and back in the days thirty or forty years ago, a plate of cheese and a bottle of Burgundy would have been our heaven. Planting a bottle of wine in the soil in the fridge is a novel idea, though.

And why would my brother be rearing his head in the middle of a convivial gathering?

The nurse was really early today – barely 08:00. But the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and that suits me fine. I could push on, make my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And we are reaching a really interesting point in the book, a point that has me fascinated. Firstly, he and his team are able to interpret the climate to such a precise extent that, judging by the state of the soil and vegetation immediately underneath it, they can tell you that the prehistoric burial mound in the middle of the hillfort was begun when it was pouring down with rain. And it doesn’t become any more precise than that.

Furthermore, by examining the mollusc (snails, etc.) remains in the various layers of soil, his team can tell you that the land was first climax woodland, then cleared, then abandoned and returned to scrub and woodland, then cleared again, then overgrazed and overworked, then heavily eroded and left to grassland with occasional farming. Different types of molluscs flourish in different types of soil and vegetation, and examining their remains in the different layers of soil can pinpoint the vegetation (or lack thereof) at the time.

But interestingly, I was dragged off on a tangent to an article about the “Beaker People”. Their culture (there’s a dispute as to whether the people came with their culture or not) arrived in Southern England round about 2500 BC and died out round about 1800 BC, to be replaced by the Bronze Age. What is significant about this period is that during that relatively short time period, about 90% of the genetic make-up of the population of Southern and Eastern England was displaced by an equivalent genetic make-up from Eastern Europe.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then I read a couple more chapters of my Welsh course book to do a little revision. However, what with my Teflon brain, nothing will stick.

After that, I had an important task to perform. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I hadn’t filed away my correspondence for well over six months, and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere. So I sat down, sorted through it, threw away a pile of unnecessary paperwork and then filed the rest.

It goes without saying that I really ought to be much more organised than I am, although I have said that a hundred times before, and still, nothing has changed.

My faithful cleaner turned up later and shooed me into the shower for a good scrub up and so that I smell nice, not that it will make much difference, I suppose. And then afterwards, we did our monthly sort through the medication and organised a few other things too while we were at it.

After she left, I came back in here to sit down, and that was when I was overwhelmed by an enormous wave of fatigue. I crashed out completely, and for over two hours too. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so far out as I was this afternoon. So much so that when I was finally able to move, I had to have one of these caffeine-laden energy drinks.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together again and I finished choosing the music for the next radio programme, reformatting where necessary, re-editing and reconverting it.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. I’ll have to think of a new dessert for tomorrow, but if all else fails, I bought some tinned fruit, having had my taste buds titillated by the fruit that my neighbour brought me the other week.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, later than usual. And who knows? Maybe I might have a good sleep tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about shuffling … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from when I lived in Chester who was bewailing his back luck at the racecourse during one of the racing weeks.
"I don’t understand it" he said. "If I’m having a game of cards, I usually always win, but at the racetrack, I never seem to win anything"
"Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself" I replied. "It’s not your fault that they won’t let you shuffle the horses."

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Sunday 18th January 2026 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… way to start a Sunday. A slow, gentle awakening and a gradual sliding out of bed into the daylight – at 10:00 this morning. I really should do it more often.

Especially if I can manage to be in bed before 23:30 the night before.

Last night, though, I didn’t quite manage it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied while I was trying to finish off everything, and in the end, it was about 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it was something of a disturbed night and I awoke on several occasions. Mind you, I was fast asleep when the nurse breezed into the bedroom to deal with my legs. I actually took no notice so he did what he thought was necessary and then breezed out again. He can’t have been here longer than two minutes.

It hadn’t really disturbed me, and I was soon asleep again, right up to my rather gentle awakening at 10:00.

My clothes were in here from last night so, for a change, I didn’t bother with the bathroom. I dressed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Porridge and piping-hot coffee, and a couple of my homemade croissants warmed in the microwave. What a lovely breakfast that was too!

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

Today, James Curle has been emptying the various wells and pits around the fort and camp. So far, he’s examined no fewer than one hundred and seven, and that’s an enormous number.

Some of them are empty of relics, some have a few, some have more, but some are astonishing.

Take Pit I for example – "Near the surface a fragment of an inscribed table. At § feet, a piece of twisted silver wire, part of a penannular brooch, two bronze rings, and twelve links of a small bronze chain. At 8 feet, a human skeleton, near it a bronze penannular brooch, as well as two pieces of bronze, perhaps part of a second brooch. At 12 feet, an altar dedicated to Jupiter, and below it a ‘first brass’ coin of Hadrian. From 14 feet downwards, bones of animals; the skulls of oxen (Bos Longifrons), and of horses were-frequent ; also soles of shoes, fragments of leather garments, and deer horns. At 18 feet, fragments of stone moulding, pieces of amphorae, and small bits of undecorated Terra Sigillata; also two pieces of deer horn fitted together like a rude pick. At 21 feet, an iron bar. At 22 feet, a human skull complete and part of another skull near it, remains of scale armour of brass, also the necks of five large amphorae, and the bottom of a cup of Terra Sigillata (Type Drag. 33), with the stamp PROBVS-F. At 25 feet, the upper stone of a quern, an iron knife with a bone handle, an iron knife, a linch pin , a bar of iron, a sickle, portions of an iron corselet mounted with brass; the staves and bottom of an oak bucket, 7 inches high, 8 inches in diameter; the iron rim of a large bucket; a large block of sandstone having a rudely-sculptured figure of a boar on one side; a small fragment of stone, with a figure of a boar in relief; five arrowheads of iron; pieces of chain armour; the iron umbo of a ‘shield and fragments of brass, perhaps belonging to its decoration; a brass coin of Vespasian or Titus; a stirrup-like holdfast of iron; a fragment of wall plaster, necks and sides of several amphorae"

That’s just one example of a well-filled pit.

He makes the point that it seems to be the earliest pits that have all of the relics. That would fit in with the idea that the abandonment of the fort was a panic-stricken flight and whatever couldn’t be carried away was cast into the pits and quickly filled in, in the hope that it could be recovered at a later date. However, with the passage of twenty years before the return of the Roman Army to the area, the generation that had hidden it was gone and the whereabouts of the caches forgotten.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

My friend from Wellington was around last night. He’d come to see how I was and to see how my house move was going. He was having a look and he saw that I had a toolbox. He asked me about the toolbox – it was a dark green cantilever thing. I said that I’d picked it up for a couple of quid with one or two tools in it and I’d gradually been expanding it. I now had about three or four of these toolboxes with different tools in them and more complete toolkits etc. He seemed to be quite interested in it. In the end, he asked me what we were going to do so I replied that we would rearrange the living room and sort out the furniture in there. We decided to go in, and we were looking at the big, black wall unit with mirror doors. I was thinking of putting it across the door to protect everything from the draught but pulling it about four feet forward so that people could slalom around it in comparative ease

The cantilever toolbox that I have here is a light green, but there are several others back on the farm. There isn’t a dark green one though. And my friend from Newport (not Wellington) did come over here to help me design the plans for the new apartment. The large black wall unit with mirror doors didn’t fit in with the plans and that was taken away by the charity shop people. When it was upstairs though, it was across the doorway but pulled a few feet forward. It protected me from draughts when I was sitting at the table.

Did I miss the end of that dream about my friend from Wellington? We went into the other room to rearrange the furniture. We thought that with the black and white shelf unit which was much too close to the porte, it would have been interesting in bringing the certifed form ending and the final reel over to my new address and sharing oil one night. But for some reason, it became very complicated … fell asleep here

This quickly degenerated into a pile of whatever, didn’t it?

When the nurse came, I was somewhere in the Alps. I’d been there before, years ago, and I had plenty of photos, including photos of the boats that were on the lake right up in the mountains. There was even an imitation Spanish galleon on this lake. Don’t ask me how it arrived there. There were several pleasure cruisers. I remember talking to one of the guys in a rowing boat who was just sitting there, lying on his back enjoying the freezing cold weather as his boat followed the current through this lake. This inspired my German friend to go there once he’d seen all of my photos so we’d arranged to meet one day. But he’d met someone the previous day who had some kind of horse-drawn contraption. He became friends with him, and asked him if he could borrow this horse and cart, or whatever it is, and go off camping for the night. We made some kind of strange remark about leaving a holiday in order to go on another holiday, a holiday within a holiday or something. He eventually turned up, and all that he had was a metal chair. He had to try to make himself comfortable on this metal chair during the night but it had casters on it. He was afraid that during the night, if he moved, it would begin to roll and he would be over the edge of the cliff so he was looking for things to try to chock the wheels to make sure that it wouldn’t move while he was asleep.

As for this, I’ve no idea to what it refers, although I have vague recollections of being somewhere similar in a dream several weeks ago. It wasn’t as detailed or as complicated as this, though.

There was also something about being on board a ship. I was the captain of it. It was a cruise ship, that sort of thing. I’d been receiving secret messages by the time the ship went into port, it would go slowly along the docks until it reached its berth and someone would walk alongside the dock and tell me these messages. But when it came to berthing down, the cabin for the captain was also the cabin for the First Officer so we had to share. So I grabbed the bunk on the ground floor for mine and I thought that I’d let the First Officer climb up the ladder to the one on top. It turned out that the First Officer was a woman. I thought that this was going to be rather complicated but neither of us really cared and we both went to bed. We had a little chat about this and that. But while I was trying to fall asleep, I was rummaging through the lockers at the side of the bed. There were all kinds of things in there. There was a huge homemade battery clamp, there were other kinds of bits and pieces in there, but I was going through it, trying to take an inventory while I was waiting to fall asleep.

The First Officer, I can see her now. She was the driver who brought me home on Thursday from dialysis, although why she should pop up here, I don’t know. Walking along the shore at the side of a ship reminds me of being AT THE WELLAND CANAL IN 2010 where I did just that. The rest is about my preoccupation with the untidy state of this apartment, I imagine.

After that, there was football. Greenock Morton were away to Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup yesterday, and I have to say that I have never in my life seen such an inept, incompetent display from a professional club.

Giant-killing acts in cup matches occur so frequently that it’s hardly ever worth mentioning them, but when a full-time professional club in the second tier of Scottish football comes up against part-timers in the third tier and loses, it’s not really headlines, but to lose 4-0? It’s an embarrassment. Morton were really lucky to get nil, that’s for sure.

The rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme. It took an age to find all of the songs that I wanted, and then they needed to be reformatted, remixed, edited, paired and segued. By the time that I knocked off, it had all been done. It just remains now to write the notes, which I shall do during the week.

There was time to make the pizza base for tea – not a loaf, though, because there’s plenty of bread in the freezer that needs using. And for a few minutes, I reviewed my Welsh for Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, and there’s a half left over for tomorrow night. Right now, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Welland Canal … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Welland Canal was built to by-pass Niagara Falls.
While I was there, I went into Niagara where I heard a story about a couple, a 95-year-old man and a 94-year-old woman, who were there on their honeymoon.
"Did they have a good time?" I asked
"Not really" was the reply. "They spent the whole two weeks trying to get out of the car."

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Wednesday 24th December 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

… horribly late again and totally exhausted. I’ve done all that I’m going to do and what isn’t done won’t be done now.

And “exhausted” is really the word too because I’ve been on the go since … errr … 03:55 this morning.

Last night, what with running really late again, it was about 23:30 by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and crawled into bed. But once in bed, I didn’t have long to enjoy it. A little less than four and a half hours, in fact.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. In the end, round about 05:00, I gave up the idea and left the bed.

Yesterday, I said that I was determined to finish a radio programme today, come what may, and so I made a start. I’m not sure what happened, or from where all of this energy came, but from 05:00 until 06:29 when the alarm went off, I wrote the text for eight of the ten songs that will be included in the programme. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked as hard or as quickly as that in all the time that I’ve been preparing them.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the bathroom to have a good tidy-up and then into the kitchen.

It was one of the earliest that I’d ever been in the kitchen, so I took full advantage and had a leisurely start to the day with my medication and my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink. I wasn’t in any rush.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had a meeting of our little travel group here in Granville and everyone came to see me. It was about a week before I was due to move house so we’d been putting everything in boxes etc. They had all gone out for a meal or something and I was still at home. While they were away, someone else was here , a young girl. I don’t know who she was. She was talking about medical affairs and I was talking about my legs. She asked me if I would be better off with one of my legs amputated and an artificial leg fitted. I told her that that would be the last thing that I wanted. If that ever were to happen, I would probably want to commit suicide. She made a couple of statements assuming that God would intervene and I’d be defying God for this suicide. I replied that I don’t believe in God anyway. She was horrified that I was planning to do that. Meanwhile, while I’d been going through everything, I noticed that the following weekend, the 1st of March, was a holiday, the Monday. So when everyone came back, I tried to begin to talk about seeing what would happen if everyone could come down that following week and help me move. For some reason, I didn’t find a little gap in which to talk so I was sitting there with this pent-up statement in my mind and I wasn’t able to fit a word in edgeways as everyone else was in mid-chat. Somewhere along the line, I had been out and I’d met someone from my Welsh class. We had a chat in the middle of the street and that was how I’d learnt that the Monday was a bank holiday. Where I’d been was that I’d been to some kind of office for something or other. When i’d gone in and introduced myself, someone in the background made some kind of remark in a phoney English accent. I turned to her and quite angrily said “there’s no need to take the mickey”. I did what I wanted to do and said goodbye. As I was walking out of the building, the window at the side was open and I heard someone say “I thought that you had to have three ‘O’ Levels in the UK to be able to do that. I shouted through the window “as a matter of fact, I have eleven ‘O’ levels, three ‘A’ levels and a university degree. She replied “how rude it is to be listening at a window”, to which I said “with a voice like yours, it’s impossible not to”.

It’s certainly true about my legs. There is no way on this earth that anyone is going to amputate them, and if it’s the only solution, I shall head off to Switzerland or Belgium and “the needle”. The rest of the dream is quite meaningless. It doesn’t seem to fit in with anything that’s happened in my life, as far as I can remember.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual, but today, she was wearing her Christmas tree earrings. It’s nice to see someone else in the Christmas spirit. It’s lonely around here, with me being the only person to have coloured lights. It’s disappointing that no-one else has made an effort.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

And here we go again! A few months ago I posted examples of a very Anglo-centric view of the United Kingdom and today, when discussing the size of the fort at Trimontium we have "In Scotland the only one of the excavated camps that compares with it in size is Inchtuthil, with its fifty-six acres. In England, Caerleon on Usk, fifty acres in extent, occupied by the Second Legion, corresponds" that is presumably a totally different Caerleon-on-Usk that is situated just a stone’s throw from Casnewydd and Cwmbran in Gwent.

It really is sad when you see postings like that scattered all through these books.

After breakfast, I sorted out the food that I’d made yesterday that needs to be put away. That involved sorting out and tidying the freezer in the bathroom (yes, folks, I have a freezer in the bathroom) and that took an age. And then the one in the kitchen (because I have one there too) needed tidying.

The job isn’t perfect by any means but I found that I could fit in everything that needed fitting and there’s still room for more, although I shall try to resist the temptation. But it was almost midday by the time that I’d finished and everything was put away quite nicely.

After the disgusting drink break, I came in here to play with the rest of the radio programme and it didn’t take long to finish. On the next early start day, I’ll dictate all of the notes and edit them.

Once I’d reached that point, I called it a day and began to catch up with the outstanding correspondence. I had no idea how much there was that needed attention. That couple of weeks while I’d been ill, I’d really let things slide away from me.

As far as I can see, I’ve dealt with all outstanding correspondence. If you are still awaiting a reply to something you have sent me, let me know.

The postie interrupted me yet again with a packet. I expressed my disappointment that she didn’t come down the chimney dressed as Santa Claus, and she made some kind of gesture in response.

However, there is still one parcel that has not arrived, and it would have to be the one with half of my cleaner’s Christmas present in it, wouldn’t it?. And then, I couldn’t find the Christmas wrapping paper for the parcel so I had to wrap up what I had of her present in a large Amazon envelope. Hardly festive, but you do what you can.

Back in here, I crashed out on the chair again. I was totally disorientated when I awoke, wondering if I should go for breakfast. What kind of state am I in?

Anyway, I invited my cleaner down to give her whatever I had for her and wished her a Merry Christmas. There was also another present for one of the people who had helped with the removal, and I popped that into his letterbox. The third one had gone directly by post a few days ago.

Tea tonight was mashed potato, veg and a strange lump of something filled with curry sauce. It looked totally bizarre but tasted quite nice. I wish that I’d bought some more now but I shan’t be going to that cheap shop again, which is a pity. In fact, I shan’t be going anywhere.

Pudding was fruitcake with vegan mango, quite nice as usual, but once Christmas is over, I’ll have a go at making some real vegan ice cream and see what happens.

But right now, I’m off to bed. When we all wake up in the morning it will be Christmas so I hope that Santa will be kind to you. Season’s greetings to everyone.

But seeing as we have been talking about the disrespect of Wales and the Welsh a hundred years ago … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s those kinds of comments that go to create a lot of animosity that is felt in Wales towards the English colonists who have squashed the Welsh language and culture.
For example, a shepherd on an isolated hilltop saw a well-dressed hiker bend down to take a drink of water from a stream.
He shouted at him "peidiwch ag yfed y dwr. Mae’r defaid wedi bod yn glaf ynddo. Byddwch chi’n dal afiechyd." – don’t drink the water. The sheep have been sick in it. You’ll catch a disease.
"I’m sorry, my good man" said the stranger, in a perfect Received Pronunciation. "I don’t understand your language. What did you say?"
"I said ‘would you like to borrow my mug? You can drink much more with that’"

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Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that starting work at 11:00 on a Sunday morning was some good going, how about starting at 12:00 today, then?

Not that it felt like it was going to be anything like that. As usual, thanks to drifting off to sleep on a couple of occasions while I was typing out my notes, it was another night where I failed miserably to beat my 22:30 deadline. In fact, it was so long ago that I was in bed before 23:30 that I can’t even remember when it was.

Anyway, when I had finally finished, it was more like 23:30 and I was really glad to be tucked up in my little cot. However, as seems to be the case these days, it wasn’t for long. It was 03:44 in fact when I opened my eyes, although a few coughing fits earlier had awoken me for a brief moment here and there.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at that point. I lay there tossing and turning and watching the time on the ‘phone advance round to about 05:00. I began to think “give it half an hour and I’ll get up and do some work, like dictate the outstanding radio notes”.

The next thing that I remember was the nurse shaking me awake. Apparently I’d gone back to sleep again at some point. He sorted out my legs but wasn’t very happy about doing it while I was in bed. Mind you, neither was I. I’d have much rather been up and about and working rather than lying in my stinking pit, but there you go.

After he left, I reckoned that I’d give it a few more minutes and raise myself from the Dead, but it was somewhat more than a few more minutes. Actually, it was about 10:15 when I next awoke, and at that point I decided that I’d better shoot into action, otherwise I’ll be in here all day.

It was a quick nip into the bathroom and then a slow stroll into the living room to check the washing and to make breakfast. More porridge and coffee with two of the strange croissants that I made last Sunday. How could I possibly have rolled them inside out?

There was no rush at all this morning, and so it was midday when I was finally back in here. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was still on the taxis last night, and so was Nerina. There was something happening about a coat of hers that had had a bowl of porridge fall on it so she was thinking of throwing it away. However, her mother, even though she didn’t really know what was wrong with it, said that she’d have a close look at it and see what she could do. That’s all that I remember of this.

There’s definitely something of an obsession with taxis right now, and I’ve no idea why. Those days are long behind me and they can stay behind me for all that I care. By the way, Nerina’s mother was a tailoress and she could work miracles with a piece of cloth.

Later on, I was in Crewe doing my shopping last night. I’d been to Woolworth’s to buy a few things. I’d sorted out what I’d needed and the shop assistant came along and tipped them into my bag and I paid for everything. I was then supposed to go to Marks and Spencers, but when I looked, I didn’t have very much time and had to go to the railway station. I picked up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and set out to walk. I found myself a couple of minutes later on a motorway interchange, the one up near Northwich. I had to walk all the way down the motorway to come off at Sandbach and then walk across to Crewe and had about fifteen or twenty minutes to do it so I thought that I should have to hurry. I set off down the slip road and there was a policeman there with his dog. The dog barked, which frightened the policeman. I walked past them and was looking at the traffic on the motorway bridge a little further down the hill. They were driving along normally on this bridge when suddenly, they leapt into the air and landed again as if they had hit a large object on the road. I was wondering what was happening there, but I thought that I didn’t have the time to stop and look because I had my train very shortly.

Those were the days when Woollies was next to Marks and Sparks. Woollies has long since closed down and Marks and Sparks has moved onto the new retail park where we used to go speedwaying and banger racing all those years ago. What a sad state of affairs that was when they demolished the old railway sports ground thirty or so years ago.

However, imagine walking down the motorway from Northwich to Sandbach, especially in about ten minutes.

There were also a few things going round in my head when I awoke that I didn’t dictate. Two things that I remember, so I don’t know if they were dreams or not, were firstly, there was some famous TV presenter sitting at a table with us who suddenly started to spout off a vicious anti-Welsh rant, to such an extent that I became violently angry. The second was being in a pub with friends of mine when suddenly one of them put on the table a very large and very dangerous-looking knife in a sheath. I remember saying that I’d told him on several occasions not to bring it out with him and that he was risking seven years in prison carrying it about with him.

Next, we had a footfest. Stranraer v Dumbarton. And while the unbeaten run goes on, it was a very poor, lacklustre performance that saw them creep to a very unsatisfactory 1-1 draw against Dumbarton. But with a squad containing five strikers, every one of whom is out injured right now, it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t manage to launch any kind of attack at all.

After that, I had the misfortune of coming across the St Johnstone-Greenock Morton game. And it was embarrassing to watch Morton slither to a miserable 5-0 defeat. Their squad just isn’t up to Championship-level football and I’ve noticed in a couple of previous games that several of their players look less than interested in what’s happening out there on the field.

For some reason, it was as quiet as the grave out there right now, so I decided to dictate the radio notes before the endless streams of tourists go strolling past.

When I’d finished, I edited the notes for the joining track for one of the radio programmes. That programme is now assembled and ready to go. It was actually thirteen seconds over the hour, but a judicious piece of editing enabled it to fit the timescale exactly.

Next task was to edit the other notes, which are the major part of the following programme. I didn’t get very far into those before it was time to knock off and go a-baking. Homemade bread and homemade pizza were on the list for today, so I made a couple of piles of dough.

While it was all festering, I came in here and did a few more bits and pieces of my Welsh homework. And this is a really difficult exercise because it’s revising a lesson that we learnt when I was absent in chemotherapy a few weeks ago.

So back in the kitchen, the bread and pizza were all made, and the pizza, such as I ate, was delicious. But once more, there’s half of it left that I shall finish off for tea tomorrow. All that remains to cook for Christmas now is the vegan Wellington, for which Liz sent me a recipe a couple of years ago, and the hash browns.

As well as that, I might try a little experiment. I’ve received a recipe for homemade baked beans and, struggling to find any good ones here, I might give it a try and see how they work out.

But that’s for Tuesday. Tonight, I’m off to bed, probably to dream about more taxis and wake up at some silly time in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about cleaning clothes and porridge … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a late working session in the White House, Monica Lewinsky went into the local dry cleaner’s to pick up a dress she had left behind for cleaning.
As the cashier handed her the dress, she said "Thank you Miss Lewinsky. Come again!"
"No" replied Monica. "Porridge this time."

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Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… found me in bed, fast asleep, this morning when she arrived to sort out my legs. For once, I’d actually managed to have a decent … "kind-of" – ed … lie-in.

And I needed it too. Yesterday evening was another difficult night when I kept on falling asleep while I was trying to type out my notes. It took an age to finish everything.

There was another difficulty too. When I went to stand up, I couldn’t manage to keep myself upright and it was the most uncomfortable feeling that I have ever had. Even worse, I couldn’t walk either. It seemed that my right leg had now totally ceased to function, and if that were ever to happen, it would be the end of the world.

Eventually though, I managed to make it to the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I crawled into bed. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

The next thing that I remember was Isabelle the Nurse’s cheery greeting as she breezed into the bedroom at about 08:40. I’d been flat out, fast asleep for a little more than nine hours, and it’s been a very long time indeed since anything like that happened.

She sorted out my legs and feet while I was in bed, half asleep, and then she disappeared again. But not before admiring my Christmas cakes and the icing thereupon. But how disappointed was I that she didn’t bring me a nice, hot mug of coffee?

After she left, it took me a good twenty minutes to decide that I wanted to leave the bed. I could quite easily have stayed in bed all morning, but anyway …

The first thing that I did was to make the croissants because I have run out. And what a mess I made of those. I rolled up the pastry with the points inside rather than on the outside so they went berserk when they began to bake.

While they were baking, I made the rest of my breakfast, and the porridge boiled over in the microwave. It really wasn’t my morning. At least the croissants tasted nice, no matter how they looked.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s now down in Southern England and, as this is a region that has been thoroughly explored and catalogued, there’s really nothing new about any of it. He makes one or two educated guesses about a couple of places, but subsequent research has shown that he was somewhat wide of the mark.

Not that it’s a problem. Modern archaeology has many more tools in its inventory than he had in 1909 and in many cases, he really was groping around in the dark.

After breakfast, there was tidying up to do. I found a couple of empty biscuit tins and, having cleaned them out, put the cakes in them. They are now on the cake shelf with all of the other baking products.

There were the leftover croissants to put in the fridge for another time, and then the kitchen needed another clean because yesterday, I hadn’t done a very good job.

Back in here, it was 11:04 when I finally sat down to begin work. And that’s a luxury and no mistake. I’d enjoyed my really slow start to the day.

First thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had been invaded by the Nazis so we were going through our house, destroying any incriminating paperwork, hiding our guns etc., so that we had a purely clean house when they finally arrived. When they did arrive, it was two women. The first thing that they did was to compare the marking of the deer with the deer that we’d had previously. It matched, so it was obviously our deer that we had killed. There was no problem there. Then she began to discuss the famine. I told her that that was two hundred years ago and had nothing to do with me. Eventually, I managed to convince her that it was an epoch in history and nothing particularly recent. She began to ask questions about my private life etc. We told her that we’d prepared a list ready for baking with all the details of our homes and our cookery on it so she told us to bake it, so we did. She had a good look around … fell asleep here …. Anyway, it was going back into that girl’s room for quite some time, and then one day we heard that he had taken her in his car to the beach and that was considered to be excessive and inappropriate, so he was summoned before the bishop.

The opening part of the dream reminds me of a story that I had heard once in North-Eastern France in 1914. When the Germans invaded and the British and French troops were in full retreat to the Marne, an undefended village found itself right in the path of the advancing German Army. Having heard of the atrocities committed upon the civilians in Belgium by the Germans, the mayor of the village ordered that all firearms be surrendered to him. And then, in consultation with the priest and the local undertaker, they put them all in a coffin and then had a formal “burial ceremony” in the cemetery.

The end of the dream refers to the case of the notorious headmaster Neil Foden, who is currently serving seventeen years in prison, but if you want to know more about that, you can look it up yourselves. The rest of the dream means very little.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am actually asleep when I’m dictating these dreams. But what I mean when I say that I fell asleep is that my voice tapers off into silence, and you can then hear the heavy breathing.

Next on the agenda was the footfest of matches from yesterday. And HERE are the highlights of last night’s game. They don’t actually do anything like justice to the game, which is a shame.

And while we’re at it, THIS GAME is between a Third Division club (Bangor City) and a Second Division club (Trefelin), and I reckon that it would do justice to any fixture played in the Premier League.

When all of the Welsh football was over, we had Stranraer away at Elgin. And this run of Stranraer’s keeps on going. They ran out 2-1 winnsers, making five victories in a row. For a team that, at the end of September, were hopelessly anchored, well adrift, at the foot of the table, they are now up to fourth.

The bubble will have to burst sometime, but we are all enjoying it while it lasts.

A few months ago, my friend from Munich gave me an old 2012 2TB hard drive that had become corrupted. One task that I’ve been meaning to do is to have a look and see if I can fix it. Anyway, I stuck it into a spare bay in the array and had a play about.

In the end, after a little bit of messing around in the BIOS, I managed to make it fire up and then I could format it. It seems to be working fine now.

Interestingly, it seems to have corrupted itself into two partitions, one of 500GB and another one of 1.31TB. I’ve only ever seen one hard drive do that before, and even as we speak, that one is sitting on my desk, where it has been for a couple of years.

While I had the array switched on, I began to do a little housekeeping. I found an empty 4TB drive and fitted that in, so now, every bay is full. Then I began to shuffle things around somewhat to make my backing-up much more efficient

At 16:30 I knocked off in order to go bread-making and pizza-making. They both turned out to be excellent, mainly due to me having added a little more liquid than usual and letting them bake for a few minutes longer.

So now, having finished my notes, I’ll check the stats, do the backing-up and then go to bed. There won’t be a lie-in tomorrow morning, which is a shame, but we have dialysis instead. But as a footnote, I’ve not felt at all tired today and have kept on going remarkably well, considering. It seems that a really good sleep is what I’ve been missing.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking and tidying up etc … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone what was the secret of a happy life.
He replied "finding a woman who can bake, who can keep a tidy house, knit and sew, look after the kids and run the finances"
"And did you?" I asked
"Ohh yes" he replied. "But it was a nightmare."
"Why was that?" I asked
"Arranging things so that those five women never met each other."

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Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a nice uninterrupted sleep all the way through to when Isabelle the Nurse would shake me awake by the shoulder when she comes in to sort out my legs.

And so waking up at 01:06 this morning was something of a disappointment.

It wasn’t as if I had gone to bed early either. It was well after 23:00 by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and crawled in under the covers. Mind you, I fell asleep quite quickly with the kind of sense of relief that you have, knowing that a good sleep is just about the ideal solution for all known ills.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at 01:06 and when I noticed the time, I was devastated. I was not expecting this at all. However, I was lucky in that I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

But only until 07:46 though. I might not have moved a muscle in the intervening period, but it was still not long enough to have really enjoyed it. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

In the end, round about 08:00, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

It would, of course, happen to be a day when Isabelle the Nurse decided to reorganise her round in order to give me more time to sleep, so she was rather put out to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

She had something of a mumble about it, sorted out my feet and then went to carry on with the rest of her patients.

It took me about fifteen minutes to summon up the courage to rise from my chair in the kitchen in order to make my breakfast – coffee, porridge and home-made croissants from the batch that I had made last weekend.

While I was eating, I was reading more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. I mentioned the other day that he had put me on the track of John Horsley’s BRITANNIA ROMANA. Codrington is not very impressed with Horsley’s interpretation of the Iter Britanniarum though, saying that "the way in which he dealt with the Itinerary distances is remarkable.".

Codrington talks about a Roman camp called Epiacum up on the northern edge of the Pennines. It’s described as "not rectangular but lozenge-shaped, with probably the most intricate system of defences of all the known Roman forts". So I had a little search around on an on-line aerial map, and what do you think ABOUT THIS? Isn’t it magnificent?

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there. We were trying to smuggle someone out of mainland Europe last night into the UK. We had something of a trial run at one of the border posts but it didn’t work very well because he had a kind of wrong attitude towards the Customs officers and it rather shattered his nerve somewhat. So rather than adapting his behaviour and comportment, he just sat there like a clam and refused to co-operate. We tried everything we could to cajole him to coming along and crossing the border but each time, he refused. When we told him to prepare himself a drink, he’d prepare a drink and then pass it to one of us instead of bringing it with him. In the end, full of frustration, we decided that we’d leave him and go back on our own. There was no point trying to force someone. But there was some kind of dispute at the border between him and one of our army officers. It seemed that the guy at one time had stolen the girlfriend of one of the army officers, and that was what made one of the army officers in our group rather bitter and terse with him.

This dream probably relates to some of the issues that the Secret Intelligence Service had with trying to bring out their agents from occupied Europe in World War II. They had many different escape routes, but going over on a ferry would have been novel, especially as no ferries ran during wartime.

There had been talk of a giant whale stalking people in London. Things came to a head when it appeared before a group of Year Two children, so Holmes and Watson set out on the trail. They waited until it was a foggy night and then took a boat, and rowed to a wharf where this school was. These two young boys who were rowing were telling them stories about it. They climbed out and went for a little walk themselves, and stopped to have a bag of chips each. They put their chips on their plates and were sitting there outside, waiting. Suddenly, out of the mist, the whale appeared. The first thing that it did was to launch itself at the plate of Sherlock Holmes. He quite simply cut a piece out of it with his knife and fork and ate it. That was basically at the end of the drama.

There have been dreams involving Holmes and Watson before, but this one was one of those surreal ones that has no explanation at all.

I was somewhere in France. There was a road down which I had driven hundreds if not thousands of times, only today, I found that I was walking down it. When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed that there was an old car just at the edge of the field with a sign pièces detaches written on it. I’d not noticed it before, so I went through into the field and at the back was a kind-of wood or coppice. There were probably about thirty or forty old cars scattered around there, and there was some kind of workshop. Someone came by and asked me what I wanted. I asked if it was OK if I were to have a look around. The guy told me to please myself, so I did. Eventually, someone came over to me to chat. He pointed to an old 1930s-type car that was there. He said “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this because the cylinder block has cracked”. He couldn’t find anyone to weld it because it was such a long crack. I asked him if he had thought about re-sleeving the bores and putting smaller pistons in. I thought that when he had an idea that I knew what I was talking about, he began to chat with me. I told him that I had one or two old cars andA TRACTION. He replied “we have four around here”. I noticed that there was one that was being restored and painted. I told him that I would give my right arm to have a Traction that was running but he didn’t really hit on anything like that. We had a long chat, and then I found myself driving back into town again afterwards. I wasn’t thinking, and I was following two cars. One was a Rolls-Royce and one was something else. I suddenly realised at some point that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. I hoped that no-one was watching and that there were no cameras. Eventually, I found the supermarket and grabbed myself a plate of chips with some weird Indian accompaniment. I had to struggle to find a seat in the café but I did in the end, and the chips were nice. But these Indian things, I wasn’t all that impressed. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat them after I’d tried a couple. Then I looked at the time and it was almost 18:00, time that I was due home, so I had to hurry up and move on.

This dream reminds me of that time ON LONG ISLAND when I stopped at this warehouse where I’d seen an aeroplane parked outside. I spoke to the manager of the place who interrogated me on my knowledge of the history of early aviation and, satisfied that I knew my stuff, allowed me in to see their prize exhibits, including a replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis and sit at the controls inside it.

The Indian meal reminds me of tea last night.

Going back to that dream about the abandoned cars, later on, I was driving around somewhere in the USA in a hilly area. I found a nice patch of green at the side of the road where I thought that I’d pull up and I could eat my sandwiches there. I noticed that there was a group of kids in the field at the side. They were all playing about. One of them came over to say “hello”. I had a little chat with her, and it turned out that she was in Year 6 and was going to High School soon. She was talking about her new English teacher, that he was always crying and becoming angry. I explained that not everyone is always very happy and in a good equilibrium. Sometimes, people are like that and you have to push the emotions aside and push on with what you are doing. Learning English is fun. We carried on chatting and we talked about sports. It turned out that she wasn’t American at all. She was from somewhere else. She was saying that one thing she hated about the Americans was how they blew themselves up into something that they weren’t. They were always showing off etc, and how she couldn’t really cope with it. I told her a story about one of my niece’s children who played sports. They were playing against some team from a High School on a Native American reservation. There was one young lad who was winning everything, and no-one knew why he was so good until a few days later when they checked the results and discovered that he was an Olympic champion in some kind of events. That was much more like the way that people should be. She agreed. Then, one of her friends came over and the three of us began to chat. I said how well they had done, that they had gone through elementary school so quickly and were nearly ready for the High School, and I hope that they’ll enjoy it. Then, the school bell rang and they had to leave. I said goodbye to them and “maybe I’ll see you again”. I drove off and back over the hills with this beautiful view in the distance of what was going on in the valley.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a lot of time for kids. I think that they have a really raw deal in life. They have such a lot to say, much of which is interesting, yet no-one wants to listen to them

There was football next. Stranraer v Clydebank in the Scottish Cup. The third round was full of shocks and surprises, with many clubs being knocked out by lower-league opposition, such as Dumbarton losing 4-0 at home to West of Scotland League side Auchinleck Talbot, for example.

And we almost had another one here at Stranraer, where but for several slices of good fortune, the score could have been 2-1 to Clydebank rather than the 2-1 to Stranraer, as the match finished.

This afternoon, I tackled my Welsh homework and waded through it from start to finish. I just need to review one or two questions and then I can send it off.

While I was at it, I was chatting to my friend from Munich, but I had to abandon that because Rosemary rang with a computer issue and needed help. It was another one of those long conversations where we can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it made me late for my baking.

The loaf that I made looks to be excellent, and the pizza really was delicious. However, I could only eat half of it, so the other half will do for tea tomorrow. Based on the weight, I’m eating between about a third and a quarter of a pizza that I would have comfortably eaten six months ago.

While everything was cooking, I wrapped my two Christmas cakes in baking paper and tinfoil, and they are now cooling in the fridge ready for marzipanning next weekend.

So now, horribly late, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately, but at least I’m only out twice next week, which is a major improvement. I can get on and do things.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to Holmes not so long ago and I asked him how his crime investigations were going.
"Ohh, I’ve retired now" he told me. "It’s only the elderly who remember me and appreciate me. The young people don’t know me at all."
"So I suppose you’re really an Old People’s Holmes" I replied. "But do you keep up with the news from London?"
"Watson still lives there" he replied. "He keeps me up-to-date with the news."
"So he’s your ‘Watson in London’ then."

0

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

… I’d have gone back to sleep after the alarm sounded this morning. It was another one of those days when I have never felt less like leaving the bed.

If the truth be known, I should have gone to bed much earlier than I did, but as usual these days, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied and generally managed to waste a lot of time while I was finishing off the evening’s work. As a consequence, it was another evening that was much nearer 23:30 than anything else, and probably approaching from the wrong side too.

Not that I was all that tired either. That sleep that I had at the end of the afternoon probably had an influence on everything because, apart from everything else, it took a good while for me to drop off once I’d finally made it into bed.

At some point I remember waking up, but it wasn’t for very long and I was flat out, dead to the World when the alarm went off. And what wouldn’t I have given to have been able to have gone back to sleep. However, with the nurse coming around every day, a real, proper lie-in these days is quite impossible.

It was a real struggle for me to rise up from the bed before the second alarm, and then we had a desperate stagger into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to wash down my medication, and then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a group of US Cavalry to make a large armed patrol into Native American lands. I was appalled by the lack of security that was going on there. There was a General in charge, and he was insistent that the natives wouldn’t attack because we were so numerous, but I thought that that was a crazy situation to suggest because they will attack when you least expect it, in a manner that you least expect it and a place where you least expect it. You need to be at security all the time, for example, at night, he just set up a kind of camp on the plain and didn’t mount any serious attempt at pickets or guards. About a mile away, there were some rocky slopes. That’s where I would have gone to have my camp at night – amongst the rocks on the slope where you are pretty much hidden from view from what’s happening down in the valley, and you would have immediate defence if there were any problems and you came under attack.

These books that I have been reading about the US cavalry in the late Nineteenth Century are clearly preying on my mind. I must be doing too much reading, I suppose. It’s interesting that I’m happy about giving tactical advice to US generals but seeing the mess in which managed to find themselves in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, it’s not too difficult.

Later on, we were on board a train heading from Italy to Germany. It was one of these super-high speed trains. It was travelling at an incredible rate of speed, and it came to a new tunnel that was twelve and a half miles long so it shot into this tunnel and out the other side. I went and stood outside the carriage for some fresh air after that, but when I looked back in, all of my seats had been taken and there was no room for me. I waited for a moment until we stopped at a station, where everyone alighted except my friend and me so I could sit down again. Then we thought about making breakfast. There was a kind-of grill in each carriage so we made some breakfast, bacon, sausage, things like that. Suddenly, my friend looked at the time and said “we’ll be in Munich in an hour and we haven’t made the beds or anything”. He asked me if I would go to fetch the suitcases, but I explained that I didn’t think that I could manage the two suitcases on my own, so he began to become agitated. “And what are we going to do about making the beds?” he asked.

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find myself on a train these days, least of all travelling between Italy and southern Germany, much as I would like to. It’s simply a totally impractical proposition, never mind being able to sit outside the carriage.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to give me my injection, and then she sorted out my legs. Her happy mood is still continuing, which is nice. I don’t know what it is that she takes, but I wish that she would give me some.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re up on the moors right now, north-east of Manchester, and I’m still tracking down these camps along the way, trying to identify them.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I rewrote some of the radio notes to make them longer. I can dictate them the next time that I awaken early, I suppose.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. Once aboard, I had to go to the depot to witness a game of “musical chairs” as they swapped drivers around. Once I had my new driver, I could set off, but I was still late arriving.

It took a while for me to be seen, and once more they took a measurement of my dry weight. When they coupled me up, they didn’t want to take everything off but I managed to persuade them. If I’m not back for four days, I want to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she ignored me again. She really doesn’t love me any more, which is a shame. I was left pretty much alone all through the session, something that suits me fine.

The taxi was waiting for me when they unplugged me, so I wasn’t back home as late as I was fearing. I had pasta, vegetables and ratatouille for tea, followed by some of my ginger cake.

While I was at dialysis though, they gave me a booklet that included a recipe for a pear cheesecake, and I reckon that I can make it into a vegan recipe with no difficulty. I shall give that a try one of these days.

But not now because, having already fallen asleep once while I was typing my notes, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Romans … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was chatting to a friend about Roman numerals
He told me "I have enormous difficulty trying to remember Roman numerals. If you asked me how you write, for example, 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500, I wouldn’t have a clue. It makes me really angry."
"Is that so?" I asked.
"Oh yes" he replied. "I’M LIVID"

0

Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

… at dialysis are quite difficult to bear, but I’m going to push ahead with them all the same for as long as I can, especially if it means that I can have an extra day at home.

By the time that I made it back home this evening, I was totally exhausted, and it was just as well that my tea tonight was already prepared without any intervention on my part.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. By the time that I was finally ready for bed, it was about 23:20 and there have been nights much later than that in the past.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed. I’d no idea what time it was that I awoke because I didn’t check the time as I usually do. But I was contemplating having a quick glance at the time when BILLY COTTON beat me to it; so it can’t have been too far short of 06:29.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to find my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I made my got lemon, ginger and honey and drink to go with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

It’s surprising how much there was on there too, considering that I remember nothing at all. There were different kinds of spraying machines. I counted about three different types, and for one type, water came out of the jets with such force that it lifted the pipework up off the ground. Someone wanted to know the name of that type of thing, and I knew it but I couldn’t think of it. It was something like the Douche Marie or something. I was wracking my brains for ages and I couldn’t actually think of another name by which that kind of machine is called.

Everyone has seen these videos, I imagine, of people holding two Kärcher pressure washers, one in each hand, and being lifted off the ground by the force of the water. It was something like that.

And then I was on my way to a family wedding. I arrived at some different town and was walking through there looking for the place to go. I came across a bathroom so I thought that I’d nip in there and read the time, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see what time it was. But my mother was there. She stuck her head in and saw me, and was about to say something but she changed her mind and walked away. After I’d finished sorting out some water, I went into the main room. There was all my family and everyone whom I knew so I simply said “hello, people”, found an empty chair and sat down … fell asleep here … and anyway, so they were sending meals around at some point during all the speeches. My meal came on my black glass chopping board. I thought that this was unusual. There’s a special name for a meal that’s served like this but I couldn’t think of it at the time and I still can’t now.

As if I’m ever likely to go to a family wedding. But why would my black glass chopping board feature in one of my dreams like this?

There was a taxi to go to the station but the taxi was hours late arriving. We were all beginning to panic about this. We’d made enquiries about walking there but I’d have to change partner thirteen times between my house and the station. There was me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend or wife and we were waiting. Another taxi turned up for someone else so we asked about ours. The driver decided that he would go back to the depot and find out what was going on, and my brother went with him. Just then, our taxi turned up so I shouted to my brother but he didn’t really pay too much attention – he was too busy on the ‘phone. So we went somewhere into the vehicle, but there were some things like some plastic hurdle fences in there so we’d have to fight our way around them to get into the car. For some reason, I sat in the front instead of in the back with my girlfriend. The car set off and after we’d been driving for a couple of minutes, I noticed that my brother wasn’t on board. I asked what happened to him, and one of the girls said that he had decided to run. I thought that thirteen changes of partner was a lot, but it’s bound to be more now. This is making life extremely complicated to reach the railway station on time before the train that we wanted departs.

These dreams of indecision are a regular feature of my nocturnal rambles, but it’s usually to do with my activities rather than someone else’s. And who was the girlfriend? Fancy having a girlfriend in my dreams and not knowing who she is. That’s a sad state of affairs.

There was a film being shown somewhere. I had a friend of mine round and I recommended to him that he went to see it, because it was an extremely classic film. I was away – I had some taxi jobs to do – so I went to pick up a family from a poor area of Crewe and they actually had a copy of the book and one of the kids was taking it with him to read. So off they went and off we went. A short while later, I had to go to take them home. I’d picked up my friend from the cinema in the meantime and when I reached the home to drop off these people, I saw that the boy put this book in the waste paper bin. I picked it up and said that before I go, I’ll mention to the family to see if I could borrow this. We went off somewhere else and while we were driving, I noticed that the book was on my dashboard. I’d mentioned that I was going to ask to borrow it but it looks like I already have.

The film was actually THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, based on A BOOK OF THE SAME NAME written by Erskine Childers. The book is much, much better than the film, even if Jenny Agutter is in the film. It concerns a couple of amateur yachtsmen who stumble across a rehearsal for a German invasion of the UK just before World War I. I actually have a copy of the book.

Ironically, when Childers was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, he carried out many patrols over the area from where the invasion was said to take place. However, he came to a sticky end after the war. An ardent Republican, he was executed by the “Treaty Irish” in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War.

With that friend, he was a guitarist – he wasn’t, he was a drummer – and we were round at my house because we were going to meet some guitarist. There was a concert or gig being played and he’d been looking for a bassist and a drummer. My friend asked what kind of music we’d be playing. I said that according to this guitarist, it would just be basic, well-known twelve-bar standards. He asked whether this person was a boy or a girl, and I said “I don’t really know. I’ve never actually met who it was”. We set off and reached this rehearsal hall and there were several people there. I gave some stuff to whoever was in charge to make a meal. He looked, and told us of four or five things that were missing. So we piled into this car, and had another girl with us and we set off for the shops. I suddenly realised that the Intermarché in Pionsat was much closer so we went to the Intermarché at Pionsat and wandered round, picking up the things that we needed. I noticed that at the till, there was a bin full of reduced stock. I looked in, and there was a huge tin of custard powder there for sale for €3:01. I thought “it’s a long time since I’ve had some real custard” so I added that onto the list too. There we were, with all this food that we’d bought and I thought that at this rate, these rehearsals are going to be over and it’s not really worth going back because it’s taken us so long to do all this shopping.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a giant tin of vegan custard powder somewhere? I’m having to make do with a sweetened béchamel sauce with vanilla flavouring and it’s not the same.

The nurse turned up as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He goes off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wanted to finish his rounds as quickly as possible. I could then push on with making breakfast.

This morning, I finished MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

In the past, we’ve talked about how certain words in the English language have changed their meaning over the passage of time. At least, I hope that that’s the case here when she talks about the commemoration of the battles up on the Bozeman Trail, saying "It is well the programme was no longer, or I should run out of expletives"

And like the previous Mrs Carrington, she has no sense whatever of irony. She notes, when talking about the area in which the battles took place, that "it is not to be forgotten that the Sioux themselves had stolen it from the Crow Indians" and "many of the Sioux, themselves, were beginning to realise that their occupation had been one of force, and not of inherent right."

Just what, exactly, was the American army doing up on the Bozeman Trail in 1866? Pot calling the kettle “black”, methinks.

She also notes a report from one of the contemporary local newspapers in Sheridan, that "the time ought to come before many years, and will come, if the present policy is carried out, when the Indians will have the same rights and duties as other Americans"

That was written in 1909 and we are still waiting even now for this to come to pass.

Back in here, I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off, and then I spent the rest of the morning revising for the lesson tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and that I had to wait for the taxi. Not only was it running late, due to a weird decision by the controller to insist that the driver took her break in the middle of nowhere, we had to pick up in Donville les Bains and then miles out on the road to Villedieu.

As a result, I was quite late arriving but at least, I was connected up quite quickly without having to wait around.

Or so I thought. One of the needles failed and they had to start again later.

Apart from a brief visit from the doctor, I was left pretty much alone, and when I was finally unplugged, the driver was already waiting for me.

Back here, my cleaner helped me back to the apartment, then after she left, I warmed up the half-pizza from last night. It’s even nicer twenty-four hours later.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover from my recent efforts. And I need a decent recovery because I’m still quite exhausted and I can’t see it ending.

But seeing as we have been talking about invasions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Duke of Wellington was told during the Napoleonic Wars that a prominent group of citizens planned to form a regiment of volunteer cavalry "but not to be sent overseas".
With one of his usual scathing remarks, he replied "except in the case of invasion, I suppose."

0

Saturday 18th October 2025 – I WENT TO …

… bed early last night – before 23:00 in fact – for once. And I’m so glad that I did because not long after I’d gone to sleep, I had a special visitor come to see me. Had I gone to bed late, I would have missed her.

But more of that anon

Firstly, though, I did actually make it into bed at something like a respectable time. In fact, had I concentrated and been more motivated, I could have been in bed a good while earlier than that. However, as usual, I dillied and dallied etc. etc.

Once in bed, it took a while for me to go off to sleep and I don’t know why. I ought to have been completely wasted after my session at the Centre de Ré-education, but apparently not.

Eventually though, I did manage to drop off to sleep and although I awoke a couple of times during the night for no good reason, I awoke definitively at about 06:00.

As usual these days, it took a while to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. And after the medication, I came back in here to see what had happened during the night.

And to my surprise, I’d had a special visitor. And she’d come quite early too so, as I said just now, I was glad that I was in bed early. Yes, I was with Castor (or, rather, she was with me) last night. We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR again. There was some kind of meeting taking place and I was one of the last to arrive. I had to struggle my way in to find a place to sit. There was a place right at the back next to Castor so I went to sit down on it, thinking that I could probably move to a more comfortable seat at some other time. As I went to sit down, the ship lurched and I ended up sitting down almost on top of her. I excused myself, and she had a smile at me and something of a laugh. I thought “maybe I don’t want to move now”. While this discussion was going on, the two of us and Castor’s friend, we were having something of a chat. We were talking about electricity. They were saying that they needed some more electricity. I was saying that Canada doesn’t have any more, what with Muskrat Falls and all of this taking so long. Then the discussion turned round to the forests, how Canada was destroying all of the forests for lumber. It moved round then to someone else connected with the events of the 11th September being found in New York and extradition to Canada being asked. It turned out that he’d advocated the massacre of all kinds of children and was described in the Press as a “loyalist”. We chatted about that for a while, and then Castor put her arm around me and cuddled up tightly to me so I put my arm around her too. I thought that this was really nice and comfortable.

Nice and comfortable? I bet it was! And how glad was I to see her? I thought that she’d dropped off the end of my dreaming cycle, just as The Vanilla Queen has, and Moonchild, who put in a flurry of rapid visits a year or so ago and hasn’t been seen since..

Muskrat Falls, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is a hydroelectric project in Labrador that we have visited on a couple of occasions. It’s vastly overdue, vastly over-budget and has been described as "one of the most controversial public project cases in Canadian history"

As for putting our arms around each other, well, you can’t turn back the clock, can you?

The “loyalists” by the way, are the supporters of the Crown during the American Revolution. We’re back with Colonel Carrington and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Someone else came to see me last night. It was Castor again. Just as I was stepping onto Her Majesty’s Steamship Pollard, we’d been asked for this incident to build shares and in this steam prop and everything so that if we were successful in capturing it, we could suppress it for a while, while these nasty ingredienty stuff is.

So did Castor appear again later? Not that it matters … "of course it does, really" – ed …
because I have no recollection at all about this. As for the Pollard, I’ve not been able to trace a ship of that name. The only Pollard whom I can recall was the captain of the “Essex”, the whaling ship that was sunk by a whale and the starving crew in one of the longboats killed and ate one of the crew members. That’s the inspiration behind the book MOBY DICK and also behind the song NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE by Mountain.

I was with my three friends with whom I travel frequently. We’d gone to Germany and had arranged to meet at a posh five-star hotel – restaurant type of place somewhere. When we arrived, and I was having difficulty with my crutches, we were welcomed by one of the waiters who escorted us to our seats. I had a special chef who had come to see me for my dietary requirements, and we had a lovely meal. Later on, we were actually on the stage, the four of us. We were singing folk songs, and there was quite a crowd there cheering us on, even when we were singing “The Rocky Shores of England” … "he means ROOTS" – ed …. It was all really enjoyable.

Not that there’s any chance of me singing folk songs praising England, of course. But news on the grapevine suggests that I may be having another visit in the Spring.

I’d been hired as some kind of umpire for a baseball team, which is crazy because I’ve never played baseball in my life. I had to go to Barony Park where, across the road, were some clay tennis courts. The team was practising on there. They all wandered off and I lay down on the floor for a relax for ten minutes. However, people came up and began to play tennis over the top of me. I had a baseball bat and I was holding it up, and if a ball came near me, it hit the bat and was deflected. When everyone came out, they presented me to the crowd and said that I’d hit every ball that had been thrown towards me. Wasn’t that brilliant? I replied “well, I’ve never ever played baseball in all my life before. That was the first time”. It was breakfast break at this time so we had to help ourselves to breakfast. This typical American buffet – it had cake, cream cake, pastries etc but I was simply looking for the muesli and some toast. I eventually found the muesli but I was still struggling for the toast. When I found the milk, which was over by the coffee, I had to ask the waiter if they had any plant-based milk but before he could reply, I awoke.

This is another one of those dreams that seems to be totally mysterious. The American buffet sounds quite interesting though, although there wouldn’t be much there for me to eat.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving, but she still found time for a little chat before departing again. I could then push on and make breakfast.

Back in here, there were the highlights of last night’s football matches in the Welsh Cup. However, the match that I particularly wanted to see wasn’t recorded, which was a shame.

After I’d seen all there was to see, I finished writing the notes for the joining track for the radio programme on which I’ve been working. That’s now ready to dictate, which I shall do at the first available opportunity.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await the taxi. It was only a few minutes late but we had to drive out into the sticks to pick up someone else, so we were late arriving. And as usual, I was the last to be connected up.

The doctor, he who is in charge, was supposed to examine me for Tuesday but he barely stuck his head in the room. That was right at the very beginning of the session so I thought that he’d be doing his rounds later. However, I never saw him again.

Instead, I watched the live Cup Match. Bow Street, a little village team from mid-Wales, had fought their way through the preliminaries to this round and had drawn Y Fflint of the JD Cymru Premier Division.

They were well-outclassed but put up a brave fight and managed to keep the score down to 3-0, which, I suppose, is something of a moral victory.

One of the Bow Street players received the “man of the match” award, but it wasn’t the goalkeeper, Lewis James, which I thought was a travesty because he had done more than anyone else to keep his side in the game, as YOU CAN SEE.

For the rest of the session, I began to make up my shopping list, although I have no idea when I’m going to find the time to have it delivered.

The taxi was waiting for me when I was ready, but it was still late when I returned home. There was a reception committee awaiting me – several of the residents, including my cleaner, were having a chat at the door.

One of them offered to programme my timer for me, but after half an hour of trying, he was unable to programme it either. So it’s not just me who can’t make it work.

Mind you, it took so long, and with me being late to start with, that there was no chance of making a cooked tea. Instead, I made myself a few rounds of cheese on toast, something else that I haven’t eaten for years. And it was nice too.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow and a lie-in until 07:59 if I’m lucky, which I doubt very much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Castor … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the story to one of the nurses at dialysis.
"What was the name of Castor’s sidekick in Greek mythology?" she asked.
"Pollux" I replied.
"Look!" she retorted. "If you don’t know, there’s no need to be rude about it!"

0

Wednesday 15th October 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little more like it today.

Well, let’s just say that I have managed to go from about 05:30 or so until right now without falling asleep anywhere. That is of course not to say that I’m not tired or that I’ve done a lot of work today, but almost anything is an improvement on how I have been on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

That very long afternoon in bed asleep must have done me the world of good, I reckon, even if I did fall asleep on the porcelain horse once more when I should have been preparing for bed.

It was just after 23:30 when I fell into bed, far later than I would have liked, but I was asleep quite quickly. However, at about 05:30 (or probably a little before because I didn’t look at the time for a while when I awoke) I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Round about 06:00 I left the bed and was still sitting on the edge thereof, trying to summon up the courage and energy, when the alarm went off at 06:29. It wasn’t exactly one of my quickest starts to the day.

After a good wash, I went for my medication and that was another leisurely “somewhat-more-than-a-moment” too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night. Nerina and I were living apart, although in the same house. After being out one night, she brought her boyfriend home with her. I was in bed, and had two of the cats cuddled up around me. When she came in, she made quite a bit of noise that awoke me, and couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end, she came into my bedroom looking for something. At that moment, I awoke completely and asked her what was going on. She just mumbled a few things and wandered off. At that point, I left the bed and walked into the kitchen, still carrying one of my cats, and went to find a drink; However the fridge was just full of bits and pieces of plastic and paper. I asked her if the rubbish in the fridge was anything to do with her. She said that it was hers but I wasn’t to touch it. I said that I wasn’t even going to take it out, never mind throw it away. I couldn’t find a drink, but in the end I found some kind of strawberry yoghurt that I ate. Then I couldn’t find the cat so I went to the door and shouted for her. It was pouring down with rain, and two of the other cats came in, but she didn’t. Nerina said that she would go outside to look for her. Seeing as it was raining, I thought that that was a good idea. She took two paces outside, abandoned the search and came back in. After another couple of minutes calling the cat and she still didn’t arrive, I closed the door and went back to bed again, relying on the cat flap for her to come in, and then left Nerina and her boyfriend to it.

Nothing at all that would appear in a dream involving Nerina would surprise me. Our life together was quite lively and interesting and, as there are no Statutory Limitations for some of the things that went on, it’s probably not a good idea to discuss them anywhere.

It’s nice, though, to see the cats appear in my dream. I had my old black cat of course, but when Nerina and I began to make a home together, we ended up with a total of four. We were, in fact, quite a big happy family. I wish, of course, that I had a cat here with me now and one day, maybe I will.

There was something at one point though about her stripping all the plasterboard off the wall in the kitchen and talking about a few things that needed replacing. I told her that I wasn’t going to bother about that because I was planning to sell the place and move on, and let the new owner of the house worry about things like that.

This sounds like something that was going on in the Spring of this year and which, even now, isn’t completely finished.

Later on, I was in Stoke-on-Trent, but before that, I’d been talking over the internet with my German friend. He was saying that his water heater had to be switched off at 06:00 exactly. Not knowing exactly how to do it, I told him to call me up on the radio at 06:00 from wherever he is and talk me through it. When he did, there was some confusion but we managed to work out how to do it and we were able to switch it off. From there, I had a load of things to take round to Stoke-on-Trent on a trailer. When I turned up, I was at my brother’s house. We had then to go to somewhere else where the rest of my family was waiting and meet up with them. We reached this place and began to unload the trailer. I ended up being totally dirty, both me and my clothes. I suddenly realised that I had a white shirt on. I’d noticed one of my tee shirts before and I wondered how I’d still had that, but this was the answer. I should have changed into that tee-shirt before I’d unloaded. We both had to have a quick change and a quick wash, and our meeting-up with the family was going to be hours late. As we were ready to leave, there was an album playing a live concert. We had just reached a suitable break so I went to switch off the CD. But it wasn’t a CD playing, for the music carried on. It was an LP. In the end, we decided to leave it playing and we would go. Just outside his place was a Football League ground of one of these small clubs that was at the bottom of the old Fourth Division somewhere. I said “there’s a shortcut around the back”. He didn’t remember it but I told him that I’d reminded him of this when he came to live here. We took this shortcut around the back, and found that the football club had gone. It was now some kind of kiddies’ park with playground and adventure equipment etc. I was completely surprised by this because I’d heard nothing about this football club moving. We began to walk across the park and met a couple of girls who were about 10 or 11. They were eyeing us suspiciously for some reason but I couldn’t understand why because it was not as if we were doing anything that would attract any kind of attention at all.

There’s a feeling going around my head that I know where this football ground is, but I can’t think of it right now. I can actually see it still in my mind – situated on the angle of a couple of streets such as Catherine Street and Frances Street where the old Security Printers used to be before it burned down.

At the back of the park that they had built over where the football ground used to be, there was a run-down semi-derelict grassy park with a lake, and I’ve a feeling that I ought to know where that is too.

However, you can tell that this is a dream. In real life, I wouldn’t be in any kind of rush at all to go for a meal with my family. "Old sins" as they say "cast long shadows."

Isabelle the Nurse turned up at her usual time. I told her the good news that her partner will have to be here before 06:45 next Tuesday to sort me out before I go to Rennes. "I don’t think he’ll come" she said.

Somehow, neither do I.

After breakfast, I came back in here. There were plenty of things to do, of which I managed to do a couple, and then I began to concentrate (as best as I could) on the radio programme.

It wasn’t a rush, just a slow, steady amble and I managed to finish it with plenty of time to spare, which is always nice.

There were the usual interruptions, such as my faithful cleaner coming to do her stuff and trying to persuade me to have a shower, but I’m not that well as yet.

There were also a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, but, as I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t a sleep break, and that can only be good news.

Tea was a frozen curry from the fridge with rice and veg, and it was a struggle to eat it. Once more, I left food on my plate, so obviously I’m not feeling that much better.

But now, I’m going to capitalise on my apparent good fortune so far by going to bed ready for dialysis (I don’t think) tomorrow, and to see what the doctors think about my state of health

But seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me when we were learning addition at Primary School.
"If I gave you two cats" said my teacher "and the headmaster gave you two cats, how many cats would you have?"
"Five!" I replied.
The teacher was aghast. She thought for a moment and asked "so if I gave you two cakes and the headmaster gave you two cakes, how many cakes would you have?"
"Four!" I replied.
So she asked again "if I gave you two cats and the headmaster gave you two cats, why do you say that you would have five cats?"
"Because we’ve already got one at home, miss."

0

Monday 6th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

Mind you, that’s no surprise at all. The storm that had been raging for a couple of days had died down by the end of the evening and for once, it was as quiet as the grave outside.

Once I was in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly and with two days’ worth of sleep to recover, there I lay without moving, all through the night.

How I was looking forward to it too. Once more I rushed through the work that I needed to do before going to bed and by the time that I crawled in underneath the covers, it was 23:02 – past my ideal curfew time of 23:00 but I’m not complaining.

After that, I remember nothing whatever until I awoke with another one of these “sitting bolt-upright” awakenings at 06:20 precisely. It took a couple of minutes to summon up the courage to haul myself off into the bathroom, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

With nothing on the dictaphone, I took the opportunity to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while, and that is to tidy up the freezer.

During the move, the freezer was filled in any kind of order and I had real difficulty finding anything that I needed. Now, though, a couple of the drawers are sorted out and there remains just one more to do. Everything that needs to be in there is in there, but it needs to be tidied.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up a little later. It’s her last day before her week’s break so she was quite naturally in a good mood. We had a good chat about her Breton grandmother and how sad she … "the nurse, not the grandmother" – ed … was that her grandmother hadn’t taught her to speak Breton.

That’s just how I felt too. My grandmother never taught my father to speak Welsh because it was considered to be shameful back in the 1930s. Consequently, I had to learn by other methods. My grandmother did say a few words in Welsh to us when we were very small but she never explained that it was Welsh. We thought that it was just meaningless speech.

After Isabelle left, I could make breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

By now, it’s Spring 1781 and the British have all-but given up hope of retaking the United States. A few inconclusive battles have seen the British Army retreat, even when they have had the upper hand. I think that Cornwallis is retreating towards the coast in the hope that he’ll meet a British ship that will whisk him out of the mess that the politicians have created.

Back in here, I had the radio notes to check for this week’s programme and to carry out a little judicious editing. I was also chatting to my friend in Munich and my friend in Telford while I was at it.

With the time that was left, I spent doing my Welsh homework. It’s not finished yet but it won’t take very long. Then I can concentrate on the next unit.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await my taxi. Although he was on tie, there was someone else to pick up and for that, we had to wait around for a while. I had to sit in the back seat too, which was uncomfortable.

And so we were late arriving at dialysis and, as usual, even though I wasn’t the last to arrive, I was last to be plugged in.

For some reason that I don’t understand, my weight had ballooned since Saturday. The amount that needed to be removed was over the threshold for three and a half hours, so I expected to be there for four hours. However, the nurse failed to notice and I wasn’t going to say anything. The quicker that I’m out of there the better.

And jamais deux sans trois as they say around here. My niece’s second daughter contacted me for a chat while I was at dialysis.

Despite the fact that I was finished after three and a half hours today, I may as well have stayed because the taxi was late coming to fetch me. I didn’t complain because it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a good chat all the way home. With plenty of traffic on the roads, her driving was suitably restrained today.

Horribly late back home again, and totally exhausted because when the dialysis machine is going flat-out, it takes a lot out of me, I didn’t faal like eating anything. However, I can’t starve myself to death, so I made some pasta and veg with a vegan burger. That will do me for now.

Anyway, I’m going to bed, hoping to sleep for a week because I am so exhausted right now. I’m really beginning to worry about my health.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my favourite taxi driver … "well, one of us has" – ed … she’s one of the “old school” of taxi drivers who has her own way of doing things that wouldn’t fit in with modern ideas.
The first time that she took me to Paris, I remember it vividly.
Being someone who is famous for his very low blood pressure, I was surprised when at the hospital there, they told me that my blood pressure had gone through the roof.
"Well, you go for a long drive through the Paris rush-hour with my driver" I retorted "and see what yours is like when you come back!"

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Thursday 18th September 2025 – I’M THOROUGHLY FED UP …

… with this dialysis nonsense and for two pins, I’d throw it all in. I’ve been trying to talk to the medical staff for weeks upon end and no-one has paid the slightest heed to what I’ve been saying. Today, it was the time for the monthly assessment of my “dry weight”, and the results are exactly as I predicted and I am rightly furious.

The doctor on duty must have realised too, because he kept well out of my way and only showed himself in our room for a brief second.

It’s the last thing that I need, on top of everything else that’s going on right now.

Last night, I mentioned going to bed early. But if only … I finished my notes early enough but I simply could find neither the energy nor the motivation to haul myself out of my chair. I sat here like a vegetable until almost midnight before I could stagger, fully clothed, the two feet from my chair to my bed.

It took an age to go off to sleep – it really did – and that’s so unusual these days. I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and well beyond that too.

Once I was asleep though, I slept right the way through to … errr … 05:20 or thereabouts. That three hours in the afternoon must have made a difference somehow. I left the bed at about 05:50 and then went off for a good wash, a shave and a scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis in the afternoon, and then went for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night – and yesterday afternoon too.

Yesterday’s notes are now amended to include the relevant entry, and then I turned my attention to those from the night. I had a strange dream last night. I was with my friend, and it was a question of hunting down some of his papers for some reason. It turned out that he had given them to another friend of mine to store because he had no particular way of storing his papers. He was always someone who was on the move around so he needed some kind of place to keep them. But there was again much more to this dream, but the moment that I awoke, it all evaporated yet again. But there was certainly something going on in my head about something called “The Familynappers” but I’ve no idea now why this seems to have related to anything.

This is another dream that seems to relate to nothing at all, although I wish that I knew what the missing pieces were all about. I’m missing far too many extracts these days with this disturbed sleep pattern following chemotherapy, and I’m not all that happy about it. Not at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning but she was her usual cheery self today. It seems that both she and her oppo are very happy, which is nice to see. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I hope that it keeps up.

After she left, I made some breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is excelling himself with this book. When discussing revolutions, rebellions and insurrections in general, he criticises Shay’s Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts, saying that it "The claim that the Governor’s salary was excessive, that the State Senate was aristocratic, and that taxes were odious,". One would think that he hadn’t heard of the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.

Later on, he tells us that "The first grade is that which devolves upon distant dependencies, the assertion of Independence, when the controlling authority is unable or unwilling to grant the people their rights and proper representation; when laws are constraints without equivalents, and the subjects are, in fact, slaves". Twenty or so years previous to when he was writing his book, the US Government left John Brown’s body mouldering in the grave after the events in “Bleeding Kansas”.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then I had a very important letter to write. It’s been taxing my French and it’s not finished yet, because it’s going to end up like GUERRE ET PAIX, but for all the good it might do, it will be finished some time soon.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then she stayed talking for quite a while. The taxi was late, and with someone else to pick up too, I was quite late arriving at dialysis.

As I said earlier, it was time to assess my dry weight, which took about fifteen minutes to complete. And sure enough, it’s 2 kg less that they have set it. That means that there was 4.9 kg of water to remove.

The nurse set it at 2.9 kg, using the old dry weight, and said that she would speak to the doctor. However, he disappeared from view and that was that.

For weeks and weeks, I’ve been telling them that with my appetite reduced to next to nothing, I’m rapidly losing weight. But not only has he taken no notice whatsoever, he increased the dry weight a week or two ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and he also cut halted a session a short while ago with liquid still to be extracted.

Another thing was that on Monday I asked them, seeing as there was a margin of manoeuvre on the maximum hourly rate to be extracted, whether they could increase the limit to the maximum in order to give me a head start for chemotherapy, but they refused. "We can’t take out what isn’t in" was the reply, but the events of this afternoon has shown clearly that it was in there all the time.

It beats me why I go through all of this pain and suffering for what seems to be no good reason. But watch this space over the next few sessions when they oblige me to stay for four hours, through no fault of my own at all.

The session eventually finished, at the old dry weight with still 2 kg to go. However, to cheer me up, I had the young chatty girl taxi driver to bring me home and we had a lovely journey home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me back into the apartment and, once more, stayed chatting for a while. But almost immediately after she left, I had a ‘phone call. It was the ex-girlfriend from school. She’s planning on turning up on Monday evening to stay until Wednesday.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have very suddenly become extremely popular these days and I’ve no idea why. I’ll have to buy one of these “take-a-ticket” machines to install outside the door if it carries on like this.

Tea was a handful of pasta and an overcooked veggie thing in breadcrumbs (I still haven’t fathomed out the intricacies of this new microwave) and now, I’m really going to try to go to bed and to sleep much earlier than usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about vegetables, Starmer was in a restaurant with “a certain visitor from overseas” last night, when the waiter came over to take their order.
"What would you like, sir?" asked the waiter.
"I’ll have the steak" replied Starmer
"And what about the vegetable?" asked the waiter
"He’ll have steak too" replied Starmer.

0

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… drama, I suppose that I had better take a calmer look at things. We can’t do with having that kind of emotion day after day.

So last night, in the middle of what can be best described as “a bilious attack”, I left the desk and fell into bed. It was all of 22:10 as well, and you don’t have a finish much earlier than that every day of the week.

Once in bed, I was out like a light. I really was exhausted, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that too.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I really thought about going back to sleep. However, one glance at the time persuaded me to stay in bed. It was 01:24 and, much as I like to be an early riser, that kind of thing is ridiculous.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep again because I remember awakening a couple of times during the night. However, at 06:26 exactly (my body clock is working really well these days) I awoke again, and at that point I decided to leave the bed, even though it’s Sunday and I’m entitled to stay in bed until 07:59 or thereabouts.

Saying that I would be leaving the bed is one thing. Actually leaving it for real is something completely different and it was a real struggle into the bathroom. I decided against having a wash as I really wasn’t in the mood, but everything else that I needed to do took quite some considerable time.

So did the medication this morning, and then I had the disagreeable task of doing last night’s washing up. One thing that I really detest is waking in the morning to find a heap of dirty crockery awaiting me but I really was in no kind of state last night.

After all of that, I was hardly back in here when the nurse arrived. He sorted out my legs, did his accounts and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is laying the ground … "groan" – ed … for a chapter on the Roman surveying of Middlesex. I’m really looking forward to that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we discussed Roman surveying or urban areas during one of my University modules, and I even built some Roman surveying equipment such as a GROMA.

Back in here later, there were the dictaphone notes to review. Back in the 18th Century there was a Native American raid on a village somewhere in North America. The residents succeeded in fighting off the invasion and killed several of the Native Americans. There was bound to be some kind of enquiry about it, and the settlers were concerned about what would actually come out in this, so the organised a collection of all of the arms that were in the possession of people. The aim was to try to find somewhere to hide them until the investigation was over. My plan was to put them in a coffin and bury it in the churchyard with the victims of the incident, then it could be dug up when the enquiry is over. However, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant about that idea.

Attacks by the Native Americans on settler communities on the frontier were commonplace in the 18th Century and there were terrible stories of atrocities – on both sides, it has to be said. But the burial of firearms in a coffin in the graveyard relates to an actual event in a village in north-east France just before the arrival of the Germans during their rapid advance of summer 1914.

Did I dictate the dream about me being with the old Ford Escort estate … "no you didn’t" – ed … My friend from Munich was there and he had borrowed it for a couple of days. He had taken my collection of small solar panels and installed them on the vehicle while he was borrowing it. When I went back to pick it up, he’d taken the panels off. I asked him how it went, and he replied that it was extremely good because he’s had a figure of 35 Kilowatts of electricity generated while he’d been borrowing the vehicle. I asked him where he’d installed them, and he pointed to the kind-of ladder rack on the back. He said that he had put them on there and they seemed to work fine. I had the panels and I had another attempt at installing them on there. It was complicated because the mounting blocks that I’d designed for it were fouling the nuts that held the ladder rack on. We had to be very careful about how we fitted everything. I thought in the end that rather than use a rubber sheet underneath the panels, I’d mount them on a sheet of wood or something that would be covered in the rubber sheet. That way, it would be much more solid and the mounting blocks would work better. We were there for quite a while, trying to fit these solar panels back on. He said that in the meantime, I’d lost two more of my volunteer drivers for this scheme. He said that Old man Sinclair was one. I said that I’d never really expected him to take part in it anyway. I said that I suspected that the other one would have been that little Jackie. he agreed that it was she who was the second, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed by those two because I didn’t think that it was likely that they’d take part.

It was the old Escort van that had the ladder rack, bot the estate that I had when I was with Laurence and Roxanne. And of course, the solar panels are on the roof of the Transit. But why Jimmy Clitheroe’s grandfather would be involved in this dream, and also “Little Jackie”, a girl whom I knew in Crewe in 1982/3, I really don’t know.

After that, I began the task of writing up last night’s notes and eventually, after quite a long while, I managed to post them on line, so you can all find out about my horrible day yesterday.

And so it was time for a footfest. There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League, and afterwards there were the highlights of Stirling Albion v Stranraer. Stranraer had about 90% of the play and had a hatful of shots at the Stirling goal, but failed to make any of them count. Stirling only had one meaningful shot on goal, so I shall leave you to decide what the final score might have been.

There were bread and pizza to make later on too. The bread is cooked magnificently, and the pizza was one of the best that I have ever made. My new oven is marvellous and I am almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

But right now, I’m going to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I really could do with a week off. But right now, all I want to do is to sleep. I might be feeling better but I’m still dog-tired.

But seeing as we have been talking about how ill I was last night … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that church in Neston where we went once for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
At the entrance to the church was a box marked "For The Sick" and next to it was a note – "This Box Is Restricted To Monetary Donations Only."

0

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

… another malaise – or “funny turn” – at dialysis this afternoon. And what a state I was in too. For a good while they had to switch off the machine.

It surely must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy, because I can’t think of what else it might be. After all, I had what for me would have been a good night’s sleep last night.

When I finished all of my notes etc last night, it was about 23:20 but as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep at my desk yet again and it was at about 23:50 when I tore myself away and went to the bathroom. When I finally crawled into bed, it was just slightly after midnight.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but I awoke at about 04:10. I was seriously toying with the idea of raising myself from the Dead at that point, but instead I went back to sleep and finally awoke at 06:20, just a few minutes before the alarm. Six or so hours’ sleep is quite good going these days.

The Hound of the Baskervilles and his master were already awake, and they went off for a walk while I tried my best to organise myself.

When they came back, we had a coffee and a good chat, and then my friend began to pack while I made myself some breakfast.

The nurse had been round earlier and, for a change, he was quite sociable. He gave me this new injection, which may well be a contributory factor to this malaise, and then he cleared off.

My guests left at about 10:00, and then I had plenty of things that needed doing. So much so that I forgot to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There are plenty on there, so you’ll need to look further down the page.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic cream, which we are trying instead of the patches. She did her best to organise me, but I was already not feeling too well so that was a waste of her effort unfortunately.

The car down to Avranches was full today, and it was driven by one of the chatty females who wants to take me to an axe-throwing session (we have some strange pastimes around here). I’m almost tempted to go, except that I can’t stand up straight these days.

At the dialysis clinic, I was stuck once more in a room on my own, where I was attended by one of the more … errr … “senior” members of the nursing fraternity. She had lived in London in the past, and wanted to practise her English.

There wasn’t very much water to remove today, mainly due to the fact that I’m not eating much these days, but I persuaded her to wind up the machine to take out more so that I have a head start for next time.

There were plenty of things to do, but after a couple of hours, I began to feel ill. My head began to spin, my eyes blurred over, I had a dreadful pain in my right shin and I began to sweat profusely.

They put me flat on my back with my legs in the air and put an ice pack on my head. That didn’t seem to calm me down, but I managed to doze off for an hour or so, which was probably the best thing to do

When it was time to go, I was left pretty much to my own devices. The good news though was that it was my favourite taxi driver who brought me home, and we had a good chat about her house-moving project next week.

My faithful cleaner and the neighbour had been helping me move were waiting for me. But by now I was wasted and couldn’t really function. They left me alone and eventually, I managed to make some food. However, you can tell that I’m ill because I left some of it, and it’s not like me to leave food on the plate, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually, I managed to catch up with the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I must have had a really mobile night. I was out in the street in a cul-de-sac somewhere and set up on a very low stage right at the end of it was a rock group whose singer played trumpet, saxophone, flute, a bassist, a couple of guitarists, a keyboard player and a drummer. They were doing all the songs that I knew. One of the songs was Hawkwind’s CHILDREN OF THE SUN. Their version of it was absolutely terrific, and the bass line was just how I would have played the bass line to that song too. We were all having a really good time watching them, and the musicians were dancing around. One of them, one of the guitarists, was dancing with the crowd and collided with me but I just smiled and let him carry on. It was a tremendous concert. At the end, they happened to mention that two of their musicians were taking the day off at the weekend for some reason or other and they were going to be rather short-handed for a gig on Saturday night. I wondered whether it was worthwhile my going over to introduce myself to see if they wanted a bassist for a couple of nights, looking for a change to go out and about and go back on the stage.

As it happens, I know where this cul-de-sac is. It’s just round the corner from where I lived in Gainsborough Road in Crewe. And I also know the track “Children of the Sun” and I would indeed play the bass line in a different way to Hawkwind. Also, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, once I settled here I began to relearn the bass guitar and six-string guitar. It was all flooding back to me and I was really enjoying myself and giving serious thought to going back on the road. I even bought a 200-watt bass combo amp. However, losing the mobility in my legs, not being able to stand up, and having this implant in my arm means that I won’t ever play the guitar again.

At another moment, I was down in Hampshire, on my way back to the cross-channel port ready to go home. However, I had someone else to see but I can’t remember who it was. Someone with whom I was talking happened to mention that they were looking forward to seeing me, and I remember replying that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them. It turned out that I had 400 miles to go in order to reach the ports so I had to leave quite quickly and there wouldn’t be much time to see anyone because 400 miles on French roads in a day is fine but 400 miles on UK roads could be problematic so there wouldn’t be a minute to spare to go to see anyone in my opinion. I didn’t know how I was going to fit this extra visit in.

400 miles from Hampshire to a Channel Port? The only port that might fit that description in any way at all is Rosyth, from where there used to be a ferry that sailed to Zeebrugge, although it’s been cancelled for years. Strangely, my friend and I were talking the other day about this ferry crossing.

Later on, I was out in a minibus last night with someone else. We were dropping off TV decoders at different places. At one place, right out in the countryside, we had to wait until someone came along with a car. It was a woman with a tiny, tiny daughter. She came to pick up the TV decoder and she began to tell us about this car park where we were waiting. I can remember it being a gravel place at the side of the road but these days, it had been modernised and made to look much nicer although I thought personally that it was a waste of money. This little daughter was running around somewhere very close to the side of the road. I thought that this was extremely dangerous and would cause a great many problems if she wasn’t careful. We were discussing this situation, the driver and me, saying that we’ll never have this job finished by 16:00 at the rate that things were going, so I was trying to think of a way to speed it up.

Later on, I was with a little girl who was my daughter. For some reason, I didn’t have a partner and the girl didn’t have a mother. We were going to a party so she was dressed in a little lilac party frock. We went in, and everyone looked at us. We eventually found a place to sit down. The two of us were chatting to each other. I could hear one or two whispers that people were thinking that maybe it’s wrong for a guy to have a daughter without having a partner there as well, but we didn’t really care all that much. Then my niece appeared. She asked me later if that place was going to be my local from now on, the place where we had that party. I told her that I’d been here before and I know what it’s like. I’ve had a few games of snooker here but it’s rather far out here from home so I don’t really know.

Something else that’s bizarre is the story of the lilac party dress. The nearest thing that I ever had to a daughter was Roxanne, whom I looked after for three years. When her mother and I separated, Roxanne had left some things in the apartment that we had. There were her communion dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and the clothes that she wore on the night of the wedding that she attended. There were also some other items and two extremely large dolls, one of which was almost as big as she was, and I can’t bring myself to give any of them away, sad creature that I am. When my faithful cleaner was sorting out my old suitcases, she came across the party dresses for the two dolls (you can’t go to a party all dressed up yourself and not take your dolls, dressed up too!) and one of them is a lilac party frock.

The story about being a man on his own with a daughter is probably something to do with the fact that I got on better with Roxanne than I did with her mother, and I was sadder about her having to leave than her mother leaving.

Then we moved on from there and I was with this young Italian girl. We were talking about all kinds of different things, having a really interesting chat. Then she took me off into a corner of this car park where we had been with the minibus earlier. There were half a dozen graves there. She pointed out one and said that it was her little brother, then she pointed out another and said that that was her mother. She said that she had had a lot of difficulty coping with the death of her mother because she was so young. I felt really sad for her and put my arm around her to console her, and we began to walk back to the town. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a really nice person, which I didn’t think very much, and she told me that I ought to moderate my language because it is rather coarse, and I ought to take more care of myself etc, my dress and so on, because she said that the two of us might actually make a very nice couple at some point, which pleased me immensely because I liked this girl. We carried on chatting until we came out of one of the back entries on Nantwich Road ready to go down Edleston Road into town. This was another one of these dreams that felt so comfortable and felt so relaxed. I haven’t had one of these dreams for months that had this calm, comfortable and relaxed feelings.

As I said in my dream, I’ve not had one of these dreams for ages. As for Italian people, I love them and all of their emotions. When I first met Nerina, I found it very difficult to come to terms with the emotional side that she presumably inherited from her mother, but having worked with a bunch of Italians in Brussels later on, I just wish that I had met Nerina ten or fifteen years later. But you can’t turn the clock back, no matter how hard you try.

It’s true too that I suppose that I don’t take enough care of myself and my personal appearance, and it’s true that some of my speech is … well … quite emotional. However, you can take the man out of Crewe but you can’t take Crewe out of the man.

So having struggled to do the washing up, I’m off to bed, even though it’s quite early. I can’t keep on going any more this evening, so I hope that I’ll feel better tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling out-of-sorts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time that I was at Balmoral talking to a serving wench, when suddenly she burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
"What’s the matter, girl?" asked the Queen. "Are you feeling hysterical?"
"Och no, Ma’am" replied the girl. "He’s feeling mine!"

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