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Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

… are back to normal (well, as normal as things ever could be around here) I can carry on and do what I ought to have been doing, and update everything.

And had I known how things were going to have worked out, still being on my feet (well, OK, on my chair) at 02:00 I would have had an early night instead of being up to all hours watching Stranraer, after several weeks of impressive football, go back to their old, miserable ways and be easily beaten by the bottom club in the league who spent most of the night playing with just ten men.

That was as embarrassing as the defeat aginst Clyde a couple of weeks ago and was really depressing after the last three or four performances.

So anyway I went to bed eventually and had another perspiration-laden night where I was only really half-asleep for most of it.

When the alarm did go off I hauled myself to my feet and headed off to the bathroom for a scrub and even a shave. After all, you never know if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there today.

No medication right now because you also never know if the nurse might actually want to come along and do this blood test this morning and it has to be done à jeun so I listened to the dictaphone instead to find out what had gone on during the night. There I was, lying here asleep and a girl was trying to load some ink or something into my mobile ‘phone so that it could print a document. I tried to pur some fat into it but the fat was in a chip basket thing. Of course, every time you tilted it to pour it the liquid would seep out through the holes so I wasn’t having any success with my cooking last night.

Can you imagine trying to lift molten fat out of a chip pan with the chip basket? I’ve no idea what goes on inside my head at night, but there again, I don’t have all that much more idea about what goes on inside my head when I’m awake.

Later on I was out in North Wales looking for an address. I ended up somewhere beyond Conwy in an area that I didn’t know very well but I couldn’t find it. I ended up on an extremely steep hairpin bend. Trying to walk or cycle up there was extremely complicated. When I reached the top there was a waterfall. The waterfall was where some kind of primitive dam had been that had been broken and the water was cascading over it down into the valley where it joined the main river. There was a main road off there to the right and there was a lot of traffic coming that way so it was complicated to cross the road. I did cross the road but still couldn’t find this address. In the end I saw a map with the shape of where it was and I identified that I should have been four miles beyond Abergele so I had to retrace my steps and try to return across the road on a pushbike was even more complicated with all of the traffic that was coming straight on down the main road. Once or twice someone paused and that was the signal for someone to nip over but I had to wait for a while and found myself in the end with about a dozen vehicles on the central reservation waiting for a gap in the downhill traffic again. Once we set off there were all these vehicles passing so closely and I was then freewheeling down the hill listening to the news about a bicycle race. There were two people in the middle of the road, a man and a woman with bikes and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me as I came hurtling down and I missed the woman by a matter of millimetres.

As it happens, I recognise this road too. It’s out of Llangollen heading down into mid-Wales and I was there 20-odd years ago with Nicole when we came to pick up the old LDV. The dam is very much how I would have imagined one of the “Dambusters” dams to have been after it had been blown up. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we WENT FOR A LOOK AROUND the dams few years ago on our way to Colditz and STRAWBERRY MOOSE‘s famous escape attempt.

Incidentally, four miles beyong Abergele up a steep mountainside is one of the Iron Age hillforts to which Arthur Allcroft took us a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing about any hillforts anywhere last night.

When the nurse did finally turn up he did actually take the blood sample and I knew all about it because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he just doesn’t have “the touch”.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We’re discussing exciting subjects today, such as men marrying their daughters and the young killing off the old folks once they stop being productive and become useless mouths to feed.

He’s actually done some research into this and has found plenty of examples back in history and in more remote parts of the World where those customs were still current when he was researching his book. All I can say is that for someone whose day job was a clerk in London County Council, he had some strange pastimes and hobbies.

However, he has proved a point over which I have been puzzling. If people back in ancient history were so concerned about having useless mouths hanging around eating the produce, the produce must have been so scarce that not even family ties could hold the people together and stop them killing each other. So I remain totally unconvinced by the modern way of thinking that these hillforts were nothing but symbolic. The huge amount of effort that went into the construction of these immense defensive works and the amount of time they had to spend away from the fields or from the hunt, they really must have been scared almost to death by what might have happened had they not spent all that time and effort in their construction.

Back in here later I had a few things to organise and sort out but was interrupted by the telephone. "Is it OK if I come a little earlier, like 12:00?". It was my taxi driver.

What has happened was that last week these new Social Security regulations came into legally-binding force and so this is how it’s going to be from now on – taxis turning up at any time they like if they are obliged to combine trips. Not that I’m complaining because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …, it’s a free service and in any case the sooner we arrive, the sooner I can leave and so I sent a message to my cleaner to inform her.

Poor thing, she had to scramble here to fit my anaesthetic patches and was still here when the taxi arrived – at 11:47. The Sécu has instructed that a timespan of 45-minute either side of the booked time is acceptable under these new regulations and by my reckoning the car was actually 43 minutes early. That’s cutting it fine.

We had to pick up someone else on the way of course, someone who had a hospital appointment for an operation. "As we’re so early we may as well drop madame off at the hospital first."
"She’s going to hospital in Rennes"

When I arrived at the dialysis centre I was so early that they hadn’t even finished dealing with the morning’s patients but Julie the Cook saw me and she quickly finished off setting up my machine (patients have their own individual settings) and I was installed and up and running by 13:15.

She tried a new trick this afternoon. While she was setting up the machine she slapped an ice bag on my arm. And that actually might have helped a little – at least until the effect wore off.

Apart from the coffee, no-one bothered me at all until it was time to unplug me. Julie the Cook had gone home a long time before and one of the others came to sort me out. For some reason I was rather unsteady on my feet at first. It can’t have been low blood pressure because that was OK.

So it was 17:30 when I staggered out of the centre and the taxi was already waiting for me. We had someone else with us to drop off along the way but even so I was back at home by 18:15, much to the surprise of my cleaner

That was when I discovered the catastrophe in here, with the big desktop computer spinning around in BIOS mode complaining “I can’t find any disk with an operating system on it”.

Luckily I had a spare 1TB SSD that I’d dismantled from another machine so I formatted that in a disk caddy with the help of the travelling laptop and set about dismantling the big computer. It’s always good to perform a clean installation every couple of years because you’ll be surprised (or maybe you con’t) at the amount of rubbish that accumulates over the passage of time.

While I was doing that, I actually found what I suspect is the fault. There’s an internal power lead with three connectors for disk drives. The one that was connected to the SSD system drive has a crack in it and what seems to have happened is that the crack has allowed the internals to flex and they have shorted out.

No problem. I just disconnected the internal back-up drive and plugged the new SSD System drive into that connector. I’ll have to order a new power lead from somewhere in due course to connect everything back up on a more permanent basis.

While it was sorting itself out I made a quick tea – just like THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on the table inside a tin".

Back in here afterwards, I settled down and steeled myself ready for what is going to be a very long night

But while we’re on the subject of Colditz Castle … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of that legendary “Two Ronnies” sketch from years ago.
"We’re making a film about prisoners escaping from a camp in Germany"
"What’s it called?"
"The Colditz Story"
"What are you making next?"
"A film about life in a South Wales mining village"
"What’s it called?"
"The Coal Tips Story"
"And after that?"
"We’re doing a film starring Raquel Welch who will be playing the role of an Inuit"
"What’s that called?"
"We haven’t decided yet"

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Tuesday 11th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anything that happened today. It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go to plan, even from the very start. In fact, this is probably going to be a week to forget, all in all.

Last night was rather later than I intended it to be, what with one thing and another. Well after midnight, in fact. And not everything that I wanted to be done was done either.

It had been my aim to finish off the Welsh homework before going to bed but with the head full of spaghetti that I had on my shoulders, I abandoned the plan and left it for another day. There was the radio programme that I’d edited at the dialysis centre that I wanted to send off, but that was left too.

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep and then it was a very disturbed night as is usual after a dialysis session, waking up here and there and perspiring like there is no tomorrow

When the alarm went off I hauled myself out of bed with the utmost difficulty and then staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I started to transcribe the dictaphone notes but was surprised by the amount of stuff on there. I’d only finished about half of it when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, and she wasn’t early either. I’m not going to have the homework done this morning either, am I?

She and I had a little chat about nothing much and after she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK

Our author has made a couple of points that are extremely curious. He notes that at Worlebury Camp, overlooking Weston-Super-Mare, where there are according to him, unmistakeable signs of Roman siege and conquest, the skulls of the deceased, complete with battle-wounds, are "the long-headed (Iberian) type, and suggest that at the date in question the dominant race in south-western Britain were the descendants of those Iberians who had preceded the round-headed Brythonic race, and who had been ousted by them from the more easterly parts of the island."

Anyone remember when we were discussing stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and none at all?

Secondly, "Incredible as it must seem to anyone who tries to realize the labour involved in the building of any great camp, it seems none the less to be the fact that many of them were planned and constructed according to one original design."

And if that really is the case (and after all, he’s the expert), given the number of different races and tribes, the time period and the distance to travel, it’s probably the most interesting thing that I have read on the whole subject.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh, complete with a full pot of coffee because I needed it. And I don’t know what I would have done without it because even so, the lesson, well, let’s just say that it did not go as I would have wished, and I was glad when it was over.

After lunch I came back in here and carried on with the dictaphone notes, and as I said earlier, I was surprised by how many there were. I dreamed that I was in a scrapyard looking for all bits and pieces of a car. I couldn’t see what I wanted. It was the springs that retained the headlight in. They were tiny micro-springs. I’d had three and I had put them down but when I went to look again I couldn’t see them. They were so small. I was hunting again. In the meantime two guys turned up in a red MkIII saloon with a black vinyl roof. They had parked their car on a trailer while they had gone off to the pub. Someone told them about their car on someone else’s trailer so they just took their car off the pile and just rolled it down the hill into the scrap. They said “well never mind. We only paid £50:00 for this. Immediately everyone swarmed over to it to strip it for spares as they did in the old days. I went to have a look and someone asked me if I needed anything. I told him that I was looking for an old tax disc holder, the type that suckered on to your window but which had an aerial connector in it. People remembered those from years ago but no-one had seen one. I’d looked at a couple of car tax discs of cars that were ‘S’ reg in 1977/78 but there was nothing around there at all. In the end I left and had to stop at a road junction while a big group of soldiers who were on a military parade marched past where I was standing.

Cars for £50:00. Anyone remember those days? And Nerina and I once drove all the way around Central and Eastern Europe in one that cost £25:00, and on another occasion in a different car at the same price all the way round the South of France.

‘And ‘S’ registered cars from 1977/78? I’m really impressed that I could remember that in a dream as well. But as for cars in scrapyards, I’ve done more than my share of scrapyard scavenging in the past

Later on I was with a group of people. One was a small girl. It was a girl whom I’d seen so many times before and we’d always had a laugh and a joke. Then I mentioned something about taking her out and she said “yes, fine!” she said. “When should we go?” or something like that so I hadn’t realised that she was serious but I was ready to take her then and there practically

There is more to this than meets the eye too. However, let me guess. Small as in “one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed” I suppose. But me Getting The Girl in a dream? It’s a good job that this dream ended before my family came along to spike my guns as they usually do at the crucial moment

There was also something else about buses in Alsager, driving buses out towards Kidsgrove and the back of Stoke on Trent at Werrington, etc, but it was something to do with the arrangement of fares, keeping fares down and buses not going into anyone else’s territory but I can’t remember that

Later yet, I was living in an apartment in a modern block of flats in Brussels but I’d bought the apartment downstairs to where I’m going to move, so I’d given my notice to the landlord. He’d put the property in the newspapers and was arranging visits. The first visit came when I was really unexpecting it so the place wasn’t very tidy at all. It was a nice youngish guy, quite tall, who was shown around. He noticed the Tesla that I had in a wooden box that was a pre-war spark generator sitting in the bottom of the room on top of the piano so we had a discussion about that. Then he asked me a few more questions then he decided to leave. He talked about decorating but I told him that I moved here and didn’t do anything. It didn’t bother me, the decorations being a little tired but he said that maybe he could move into one room and decorate all round him. As he left the Estate Agents gave me all of the duplicate keys that I’d never actually had to the property. As he left he asked me a question about the television. Were the “Free” company’s services available here? I told him that I didn’t know. As he left I noticed another couple waiting in the hall. I thought that I wished that I’d known that there were going to be all these visits because I could have tidied up the property. He did ask me before he went if he could come back and have another look. He wanted to come back at 07:30 so I shuddered but said “yes, it’s not a problem” so at that point he left.

Me? An untidy apartment? Perish the thought! And I wish that I had a pre-war Tesla spark generator lying around here somewhere. But the apartment – we’ve been in that apartment before in another nocturnal ramble, a long time ago when I drove a car into the centre of Brussels round the big Basilica. It’s strange how these things crop up so far apart in time.

Did I dictate this dream where I was in a cheap hotel somewhere? … "no you didn’t" – ed … There was a crowd of people in the room with me. The bath was across the end of the room and there was a glass partition in it that only covered a part of the bath. I decided that I’d take a bath. I went in there and began to run the water but the bath didn’t fill up. Then I found that the plug wasn’t in so I had to put it in. It was still not filling up. I saw that the water was cascading out of the joint of the immersion heater. By the time that there was anything like some water in the bath it was cold. I didn’t really fancy the bath but I thought that I needed one. There were all these people there too. Next thing that I remember, I was outside. It was 18:30. I didn’t have time for the bath because we were going to a nearby café for a meal, so I thought that I’d have to hurry up

The idea of me having a bath is interesting too. Leaving aside the fact that I couldn’t climb out of a bath these days, I would prefer a shower any day of the week. And a cold bath? In my case, that’s water at 36.9°C

Later, I was with Zero’s father and a couple of small boys was asking me that he had to go to school and tell them how a carburettor worked . I asked him if he knew how a carburettor worked. He said a few words but obviously didn’t understand the basic principles. We went down to one of the cars. Zero’s father handed a set of keys to me but I couldn’t make them work. In the end I put the key in the other way round. It worked so I could open the bonnet and we began to discuss the carburettor. Zero’s father was there but he kept on confusing the matter. I was trying to make things as simple as possible for this little boy and he was just complicating them by giving long technical explanations that were not really what was needed, not for a boy in Primary School anyway.

There are always some people who will take a simple explanation and complicate it unnecessarily, who don’t seem to realise exactly who their audience is and the purpose of what you are trying to explain. It’s like our author, Arthur Hadrian Allcroft, who is writing for an audience that excludes about 75% of the population. I realise that the aim of any kind of education is to bring people up to a higher level, but how far up are some of these people sitting?

How depressing is it though that Zero’s father is there and not Zero herself?

Believe it or not, that took me up to afternoon nasty drink break and then I had bread to make as I have all-but run out. That took longer than anticipated but I do have to say that the loaf that I made is perfection itself. It couldn’t possibly be any better. I’ll go with that any time.

There was just time for me to finish the Welsh homework before going to make my tea. And why it was so difficult I have no idea. My brain, if that’s what you call it, has ceased to function, and ceased a long time ago.

Tea was as usual a taco roll with veg and rice, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. Just as nice as ever. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t make it.

So that’s the end of another depressing day. I’m glad that it’s over, Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. I shall have to try to be more optimistic

But seeing as we have been talking of cold water … "well, one of us has" – ed … those crazy Canadians with whom I spent a lot of time up in the Arctic used to love to leap into the cold water from the loading platform of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at every available opportunity
On one occasion deep in the North-West Passage Castor and Pollux were going to leap in with them – at MINUS 0.5°C in the water. It was about minus 10°C in the air
Castor came to look for me and asked "are you going to come and jump in with us, Eric?"
"I can’t, pet" I replied. "I have this catheter port in my chest and it can’t be immersed in salt water"
After she left, a guy who had overheard the conversation asked me "if you didn’t have that catheter port in your chest, what would you have done?"
"What would I have done?" I said. "Simple. I would have thought of another excuse."

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Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

… of asking people questions and having a completely different response to that which would have answered the question and terminated the discussion.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when in Québec I encountered Spruce Beer for the first time, so I asked "is this beer alcoholic?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "that’s over there"

Today at the Dialysis Centre I asked the doctor "have you prescribed me a sleeping pill?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "do you want one?"

Leaving aside the ethical question of patients self-prescribing their own medication with the connivance of doctors, what’s wrong with anyone answering a question simply and straightforwardly?

As you can tell, I’m in a foul humour this evening. And it started out so well too.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I had to do, it wasn’t all that late so I headed to bed at something like a reasonable time for once. And that cheered me up.

Once in bed I was asleep fairly quickly and there I stayed until all of about 05:30 when I heard the phantom doorbell. At least, that’s what it said on the dictaphone round about that time. I have no recollection of that at all.

When the alarm went off I was away with the fairies (although not in any situation likely to bring forth comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and it was a very weary me who staggered off into the bathroom

It’s Dialysis Day today so I had a good clean-up, a shave and so on ready for if I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a girlfriend at school. She used to come into school later than we did so when I came in I would go to my classroom and about 08:25 she would turn up. But one day there was a load of people in our classroom who didn’t belong in there, some kind of managers or something like that. I imagined that they would have an awful lot to say about this girl coming into a different classroom in the morning. I was there waiting for her and round about 08:20-08:25-08:30 she hadn’t turned up but I had some things to do so I went into the boss’s office next door. I caught a glimpse of her and she smiled at me and went into our room. I took these things for the boss and went back into our room. There was my girlfriend on the scales weighing herself. Really disappointedly she’d reached 325lb this week and was very disappointed by that. I noticed that she’d filled out this white dress suit that she was wearing, filled it out rather too much. We basically agreed to see each other at lunchtime and then she cleared off. The teacher looked at me, looked at the people who were surveying the class, looked at me again and asked me some comment about the girl, then looked at these people again as if to say “just be careful what you say because they’ll be writing it down and noting it”.

Weighing yourself as you go into a room? What does that remind you of? It certainly does to me.

To each his own of course, but attraction is a very personal thing – as they say over here des gouts et les couleurs on ne discute pas – but my ideal kind of girl would be one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed. Strangely enough, apart from once at school, I have never ever ended up with anyone at all like that. It just goes to show that life and fate sometimes deal out some very strange hands and you have to play them as best as you can. Whoever would have thought 30 years ago that I would have ended up in a relationship where there was a child present?

It’s true nevertheless that our school bus, which was the prolongation of a service route, always used to arrive first and a couple of girls with whom I spent some time used to travel on the last one to arrive. As for the rest of the dream, it rings a vague bell somewhere in the back of my mind that is best left there.

Having finished that I made a start on finishing off the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. However, Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me. We talked about Carnaval and her float while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to discuss the construction of an earthen fort, with helpful plans and diagrams. That will come in useful if the Romans ever attack us here, I suppose. But joking apart, it’s extremely interesting and I wonder what I’m going to discover next.

Before we leave the general pages, he mentions that "It would seem to be a legitimate inference from such a priori reasoning that, subject of course to exceptional circumstances, a camp is later in date according as it is less irregular in plan, less elaborately defended, and constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site"

Anyone who has ever seen a Norman or Edwardian castle will know that this is far from the case. And while many of the forts that we visited in the USA were built accordingly, when Fetterman and Curser dug themselves in against the rampaging hordes of Native Americans, they both chose hilltops and promontories

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that in 2014 we WERE AT MONTSEGUR, the last refuge of the Cathars, and that is probably the most inaccessible, difficult-to-reach castle that I have ever visited, and I knew all about that climb for several days. None of your “constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site” with Montségur.

Back in here I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. Then I made a start on the remainder of the Welsh homework. That’s not yet finished, and heaven alone knows when I’m going to find time to do it.

My cleaner took me by surprise yet again as I was nowhere near ready, and she fitted my anaesthetic patches. We talked about cats, and it seems that I’m not going to find it as easy to adopt one as I might think. These days, these refuges are very picky and choosy as to who can adopt a cat and she reckons that I would fall down near the end of the queue.

If that’s not enough bad news for the moment, the taxi didn’t turn up until 12:45. It’s the school holidays of course and many drivers have taken time off. The car that came to pick me up was the wheelchair-carrier and we hadn’t gone half a mile before his ‘phone flashed a message “next job, wheelchair from the Centre Normandy – at 13:00”. So he had 15 minutes to undertake a 90-minute round trip to Avranches and back.

It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had we not encountered just about every problem possible on the road. And then when we arrived, there were seven vehicles all trying to unload at the same time – and we were sixth, so we had to wait our turn.

With everyone arriving at once and me being next-to-last I had to wait an age to be seen

The connection was as painful as it could possibly be and I suffered throughout the whole session. But the nurse did confirm to me that once the machine does start up, it’s not uncommon to have a wave of fatigue. It’s to do with the drop of blood pressure and strain on the heart.

The doctor came to see me as well, the unsociable one. We had our little discussion as I mentioned earlier and eventually he did confirm to me, as I suspected, that they had prescribed a sleeping pill. It has several other uses too which they think might be useful, which was why they prescribed it in the first place.

My response was that I was going to stop taking it as of now. He replied that I might find it difficult all at once and I should “taper off”, but if it’s a medication like that then I don’t want to be on it anyway so as of earlier this evening it’s off the list.

And so, incidentally, is the medication that they prescribed to counter some of the side-effects.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in, and then I had to wait. The driver who was to take me home had stuck her head in earlier but I told her that I would be fifteen minutes so as she had someone to pick up at the Clinic across town she decided to go there first.

She hadn’t come back by the time that I was ready so I waited. And waited.

Not that I minded because Emilie the Cute Consultant came past.

"Wiating for your taxi, Mr Hall?" she asked
“No, I’m waiting for N°11 bus to Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square” I would have said had it been anyone else but Emilie the Cute Consultant
"Yes I am" I replied "You don’t fancy taking me home, do you?"
"I don’t live in Granville any more" she said. "I live in Marcey, just around the corner"
"Well, you could always take me to Marcey with you"

She had the decency to laugh, but she wasn’t all that impressed. Ahh well …

A car suddenly screeched up outside, but it wasn’t my driver who hopped out. Nevertheless he had come for me.

He was one of the ambulance crew who was in the depot washing the vehicle when the call came through. Apparently my driver who had gone to the clinic discovered that there was a major problem there with the other passenger and she was obliged to wait. It’s a good job that I hadn’t gone with her.

We had a good chat all the way home, so much so that I forgot to warn the cleaner that I was on my way, and she had a mad scramble to meet the car. 19:45 when I finally arrived home.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by apple cake and soya dessert. But then I cut up the date bread that I had made, and if the rest of it tastes as good as the crumbs that I tasted, it will be absolutely excellent.

So fed up, in pain and glad that the day is almost over, I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. I can understand what they meant in Leuven back in 2016 when they said "save your strength for the battle that lies ahead" because I can’t do with too many more days like this one.

But talking about going home just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a guy in a pub in Nantwich.
He would sneak a photo out of his pocket, glance at it, put it back and then order a beer.
After three or four times curiosity got the better of the and he asked the customer about the photo
"What’s about the photo?" he asked
"It’s the wife" replied the man
"Do you always look at it just before you order a beer?"
"Yes I do" he replied. "When she starts to look beautiful, that’s when it’s time to go home"

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Friday 7th February 2025 – IT’S BEEN A …

… slightly better day today (only slightly). I haven’t managed to crash out and not only have I actually done some work, I’ve actually felt like doing it too, rather than having to grit my teeth and force myself.

But then this is bewildering, because when I’m here I don’t feel as if I’m about to crash out (and that’s a change since last Summer) and yet when I’m in the dialysis centre, as soon as the machine starts off, I’m away with the fairies (and hopefully not in a manner that invite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine).

What I’ll have to do when I’m there on Saturday is to make enquiries to see if it’s a normal situation. I’m sure that it isn’t though. There are nine beds in our ward and I’m the only one who seems to crash out.

So after I’d finished my notes last night I had to do the backing-up, and then do it again because I’d forgotten to back up onto the USB key on the keyring, the one that I use to transfer data between the big office computer and the travelling laptop.

So rather later than usual I headed off to bed, where I fell asleep almost immediately

Once more, I awoke bolt-upright at 06:15 and by the time that the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already sorting myself out in the bathroom.

Into the kitchen next for the medication and then back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at the Power River last night, by the motel in which I stayed IN 2019 where we saw (or where you will see when I upload the photos) the remains of those Conestoga (or were they Studebaker?) covered wagons – real “prairie schooners”. I’ve no idea what I was doing there though because, as usual, as soon as I reached for the dictaphone the whole dream evaporated and that was, unfortunately, that.

The Powder River really was lovely though – typical Wyoming and Montana “dust bowl” country full of historical battlefields from where the Native Americans were desperately trying to cling on to their traditional way of life. History around every bend. I drove down the valley on my way from Wounded Knee – the site of (almost) the final confrontation between the Native Americans and the European American military – and Fort Phil Kearny, where the Native Americans wiped out a patrol of 81 soldiers let by Captain William Fetterman. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we walked all over the site where Fetterman and his troops met their end, and even blagged our way onto a coach trip going around the various sites of confrontation in the area.

But this isn’t doing me much good, is it? I’m becoming all nostalgic and broody about travelling, going back to North America, finishing off my tour of the old wagon route across the USA in the 1840s, all the things that I didn’t do when I was there before and said that I would do some other time.

Some hope.

The nurse came around early again today. The first question he asked me was "have you ever been to Montréal?". Not much I have, and he knows it well enough.

So he asked me all kinds of questions about the city

"Are you planning on going there?" I asked
"Yes, maybe in three or four years" he replied
"Well, you shouldn’t have any trouble" I replied. "The nursing profession is one of the professions that receives maximum points on the immigration scale"
"I won’t be going as a nurse" he answered. "I’ll be finding something else to do"

Well, I always said that his heart wasn’t in his job

After he left, I made my breakfast and then carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’re having a really good discussion about contour forts with several examples used as illustrations. And when you see that people in recent times consider that Iron Age forts with four rings of concentric walls, ditches in between of fifteen feet deep, covering twenty and thirty acres, perimeters of 2 miles, all that kind of thing were but “status symbols” of authority when they were living hand-to-mouth and barely had the time to cultivate their crops and herd their beasts, it defies all logic.

It’s also just how amazing the date of “between 400-450BC” crops up in the conversation when we talk about building these forts or refurbishing old Neolithic ones. That date corresponds with what is believed to be the arrival of the Celtic race who came to suppress and overwhelm the Belgae. The similarity of dates can’t be a coincidence. Building status symbols when they were in the process of being invaded (the Belgae) or trying (the Celts) to overwhelm an existing race of inhabitants. I need a lot more convincing that the modern reviewers have offered so far.

In a modern report on Maiden Castle, a hillfort in Dorset, we are told that "Hoards of carefully selected sling stones have been found at" each entrance, "One area of the cemetery featured burials of 14 people who had died in violent circumstances including one body with a Roman catapult bolt in its back", and then goes on to say "there is little archaeological evidence to support … that the hill fort was attacked by the Romans"

The author of this modern report that I read makes the point that "although 14 bodies in the cemetery exhibited signs of a violent death, there is no evidence that they died at Maiden Castle", a comment which, if T Rice Holmes had read it, would have provoked an explosion. The idea that someone would find a dead body killed by a Roman bolt and then carry it however many miles and then right up a steep hill into the fort in order to bury it surely can’t be a serious proposition. And in any case “absence of evidence” is a completely different affair than “evidence of absence”

So abandoning yet another good rant for the moment, I came back in here and for much of the day I’ve been working. I’ve chosen 10 tracks for the next radio programme, edited them, remixed them, paired them and the segued them, and then I’ve been writing the notes. I’ve almost finished too. Another hour or so will see it all done tomorrow morning, I reckon.

There were the usual interruptions – lunch, the cleaner, my mid-afternoon break etc. but those are only to be expected. Apart from that, it’s been another quiet day where although I worked hard, I could have worked even harder.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because I’m off to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Broadus … "well, one of us has" – ed … the town was founded in 1900 after the massacre at Wounded Knee had removed the last of the native Americans from the area
But in the dying days of the old West an American cowboy turned up at the saloon, totally stark naked, on a native American palomino horse.
"What on earth happened to you?" asked the innkeeper
"My horse died about 30 miles away so I set out to walk here" began the cowboy.
"Then this native American girl rode up on her horse. She said ‘cowboy take off your shirt’ so I took off my shirt
Then she said ‘now cowboy take off your pants’ so I took off my pants
Then she said ‘now cowboy, take off my shift’ so I took off her shift
Then she climbed down off her horse, lay on the ground and said ‘OK cowboy, now go to town’ so here I am!"

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Thursday 6th February 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I have had today!

Or, more importantly, what a horrible afternoon. Everything that could conceivably go wrong this afternoon has gone wrong. It seems that I’m destined to have this albatross hung well-and-truly around my neck like the Ancient Mariner.

"Ah! well a-day!"

Last night, as I expected, I was horribly late going to bed. I’m surprised that I kept on going as long as I did though because I was absolutely exhausted. And again I’m not sure why either because it wasn’t as if I’d done that much.

Once in bed though, just like Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" – “here I am and here I stay”. No danger whatever of me moving under any circumstances.

And there I did stay too. When the alarm went off I was still in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep. And no-one had it any more difficult than me to leave my bed before the second alarm. I know that I’ve had a few struggles in the past but this one beats all of them.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, forgetting to have a shave for a moment, and then went into the kitchen to sort out the medication for the morning, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back into the bathroom to remember to have a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon, and then back into here to sort out the details of any voyages last night. I was at a school somewhere. One of the teachers was at the entrance to the school chatting to a few people. He had a green sports car like a 1930s Bentley only smaller. I happened to glance at the registration number. It was WEE and then three numbers (or maybe the other way round). Whatever it was, if read in a certain way it made something quite indecent. It was obviously not the original number of the car so I was first of all surprised that the Department of Transport would allow such a registration number to be issued and secondly, surprised that a schoolteacher would buy it and fit it on his vehicle.

It really was surprising too to see this registration number, and I wish that I could remember now what it was. But I know exactly where it took place – in between the canteen and the steps up to the front of my old Grammar School. I can still see it now.

The nurse came round and I asked him about this prescription whether it should be done before breakfast before I have anything to eat. "Don’t worry about that" he replied. "They’ll do it anyway".

What I’ll do is to ask Isabelle the Nurse and see what she thinks about the affair.

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

We’ve finished promontory forts and are now tackling contour forts, those that encompass a hill, with defences all round. These are really difficult to date as their position, commanding a wide expanse of countryside, means that they may well have been used by many different waves of civilisation.

Before leaving the promontory forts though, he makes an interesting observation. While they may be good at keeping invaders out, they aren’t much good at keeping cattle in, and many of them have no interior fencing of any kind.

His supposition is that people don’t abandon their possessions lightly, so if they were designed for defenders, the defenders must have been in desperate straights to have to take flight there leaving all their beasts behind.

The alternative suggestion that he puts forward is that they were built as strongholds by invaders who had yet not had the opportunity to recruit any cattle, and the speed at which a promontory fort could be built when compared to a contour fort, is certainly suggestive.

Back in here again I carried on writing the notes for this radio programme, and they are almost finished. Half an hour tomorrow will see them done and then I can push on with the next lot.

It wasn’t my cleaner who interrupted me today either. I noticed (for once) that time was rolling on so I went into the dining area and began to prepare things for leaving.

My cleaner was running late today so we were in something of a rush. But she was soon off out to her next client, and I wait here to wait for my taxi.

And wait. And wait.

At 13:00 I rang them up to find out where they were and it seems that they have cancelled (I hope) the Wednesday taxi that shouldn’t be coming but forgotten to reinstate the Thursday one. So they’ll arrange for someone to fetch me.

The car that turned up (20 minutes later) was one from St Hilaire du Harcoët on its way back from the Centre de Re-education, with three passengers already inside. So it was a rather cramped car that made its way down to Avranches. But needs must.

It goes without saying that my anaesthetic patches had long-since lost their efficacity by the time that I was finally seen and I’m sure that everyone in the street down the hill knew about it, because I certainly did. I’ve had some painful issues, but not quite as painful as this one this afternoon.

Once I was settled into my bed, plugged in and wired up, I had the crash-out to end all crash-outs. Well into the bad old days of last summer. I’m not sure why that should be either, unless it’s something to do with the fact that I’m in a bed, semi-recumbent.

But it was terrible. During the whole session I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all, I was so tired. Even so, I performed the major back-up that I wanted to and the travelling laptop is now as up-to-date as it can me. That’ll last for about a week, I reckon, before it will fall by the wayside once more.

But that did remind me – there’s still the laptop that I bought IN NORTH DAKOTA to update too. I haven’t used that since I fitted the 1TD SSD into it and it could do with some updating. Still, that’s one more task to add to the list of things that won’t ever be done.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in. I could see that the girls were edgy about things, wishing to leave in a hurry and I can’t say that I blame them. I was by far and away the last patient in there tonight. And I was glad to be out of there too.

It was this senior driver who was waiting for me tonight but he wasn’t in a talkative mood again this evening. I don’t know what I have done to him to upset him.

Mind you, in some ways I was glad because I wasn’t in any real mood to converse. Tired, exhausted and in pain, I’d had enough for the day.

The climb up here was difficult tonight and I only just about managed it, but there was no time to relax because I had bread to make.

After making and kneading the dough I made tea while it was proofing. It was another “Mr Carmichael” moment when SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. I was way past caring by this point. At least my loaf of bread is the best that I have ever made, and I mean that too.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m shattered and I can’t keep on going like this. One day my luck will have to turn, and I hope that I will still have time to enjoy it.

But going back to the story about promontory forts, a group of Belgae natives were holed up inside a promontory fort as several hundred people were advancing on them
The captain of the fortress couldn’t make out at the distance who they were so he asked his lookout "are they friends or foes?"
"Friends, I reckon" said the sentinel
"You must have wonderful eyesight" said the captain. "How can you tell?"
"Well" replied the sentinel "they are all laughing and joking together and look as if they are engaged upon a common purpose"

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Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… is magnificent.

In the oven, it rose up like a lift – the first cake to ever do that in all the time since I’ve started baking.

It’s a basic oil cake but instead of it being all-vegetable oil I substituted some coconut oil in place of about half of it, slowly melted in the microwave. In the cake itself are two eating apples, minced up with my big whizzer and also some desiccated coconut and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.

It’s now in the fridge, cut up into sixteen slices and ready to eat as of tomorrow night with the soya dessert because the chocolate cake is now all finished.

But talking of the beautiful cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve had a really good day today, which is a surprise considering how much moaning I’ve done just recently. But there’s a reason for that – I had a visitor during the night.

But more of that … "anon" – ed …

First of all, in yet more surprising news, I was actually in bed early. Not before 23:00 I hasten to add, but by 23:40 and that’s quite an early time for me these days.

But once in bed I remember nothing at all until the alarm went off. I was really soundly and comfortably asleep.

Once more, it was a struggle to rise to my feet but, beating the second alarm (only just), I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen afterwards to take my medicine, all of it (except the Vitamin D supplement) this morning, and then back into here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night.

And look at this! There was a football club that had recently undergone a change of manager. It was the first game under the new manager last night. The commentators were talking and were saying that this is a very important match for this manager to win because with him being new he will have set his stall out and the club that he was managing, which was Peterborough United was a big club with many fans who all used to go to the ground on one occasion but attendances had dwindled. I had a look at the attendances and found that they were in the nine thousands, which I thought for a town like Peterborough with a team like theirs is actually pretty good going in any case. If he could bring it up to eleven or twelve thousand that would be exceptional. This apparently was not an unrealistic dream and the commentators were fully behind him as he sorted out his team and would take advantage of his new position and take them to win the game. Somewhere amongst all of this, Moonchild was there. I distinctly remember speaking to her although I didn’t say very much of any interest but she was certainly there last night looking at the situation and looking at me on this commentary team talking about Peterborough United.

Yes, Moonchild came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER … PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN, WAITING FOR A SMILE FROM A SUN CHILD and put in an appearance, How lovely to see her. It may not be a satisfactory appearance, her being on the fringe of a dream, but she was there none-the-less. I shall have to work much harder and try to entice her further towards centre-stage.

However, what’s all this about Peterborough United? That’s a team that has absolutely no significance in anything that I have ever done, so I’ve no idea why the club should figure during a night-time voyage. But then again, if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have seen Moonchild.

Later on, there was a group of disabled people, me included, that were being examined for reassessment etc. Just as it was about to be my turn and everyone was going for a coffee or something like that, it was the end of the day and everything was quietening down, my alarm began to sound. everyone looked at me and said “Eric! How could you!” in an air of bitter disappointment. It wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I realised that it actually was my alarm going off.

That was somehow prophetic, wasn’t it? But I’ve had plenty of dreams where the subject matter has fused into something that was actually happening simultaneously in real life.

Isabelle the Nurse and I had something of a chat. She’s off to the ski slopes on Saturday but unfortunately there is no room in her suitcase for me. I really need a holiday right now but that’s impossible.

If they had told me last summer that I wouldn’t have ever gone far again for the rest of my life, I’d have booked a cruise or something, or gone to a special home or resort where I could relax and stretch out. I enjoyed the voyage on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR and I’d happily do it again. At least I fulfilled a few of my lifetime ambitions, such as crossing the Atlantic by sea and then sailing the North West Passage.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

At long last, I’ve finished it, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. He’s spent page after page after page in complicated calculations, such as on which date did Caesar sail, only to tell us that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve come to the conclusion that he has plenty of knowledge (which is impressive) and I’ve enjoyed sharing in it but how he loves to flaunt it, quite often unnecessarily. And how he loves to insult his contemporaries who don’t have the same knowledge as he does, and don’t have the time to find it.

Here’s hoping that my next book, whatever it is, is less confrontational than this one was. It was really hard going.

Back in here I had bills to pay. Once more, the standing order that pays my taxe foncière – my local authority rates, has failed and I’ve no idea why. But anyway, these days we can pay on-line so once I’d found my wallet, off I go.

There was also the Property Tax on my place in Canada to organise.

Buying that place in Canada was a shrewd move. There are no identity cards in Canada so evidence of habitation is served by the possession of a Property Tax assessment. And armed with my Property Tax Assessment I could open a bank account, buy a mobile ‘phone, buy a pick-up, take out car insurance and a thousand and one other things.

Once I’d sorted myself out it was almost lunchtime but I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme.

Lunch was a slice of flapjack and some fruit which was nice, especially the flapjack. Mixing the ingredients in the big mixer is definitely the way forward. That mixer was a shrewd investment too.

Back in here I had to resort the music as I had mistaken one musician, but eventually all of the stuff was chosen, remixed, edited, converted, paired and segued.

At this point, the cleaner came along to do her stuff. And that included helping me into the shower.

First though, I have to hand-wash some clothes and then throw them into the bath where they will be rinsed. And then I climb in. It’s still quite a laugh that the company who came here to “help” me wanted €300-odd for a machine to help me that didn’t work, and my cleaner and I rigged up a system with one chair and two wooden boxes, cost €0.00.

After she left I began to write the notes for the music but it was soon Christmas Cake time. Just one more helping of Christmas Cake, which will be on Friday, and then it will be back to the hummus and crackers again

When my little break was over I made my cake. And as I said, it’s wonderful. It took even longer to bake than previous cakes but it’s risen really well, and really equally too. I’ll start eating that tomorrow with my soya dessert and if it tastes as nice as the crumbs that I ate, it really will be nice.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, but there wasn’t much left over so a handful of lentils went into it. No naan either because I forgot to take some dough out of the freezer at lunchtime. Still, it really was nice all the same.

So right now I’m off to bed ready to finish off my music notes in the morning, and then continue this downloading..

But seeing as we have been talking about Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … Canada is lovely, the people are lovely (especially my family in New Brunswick and Ottawa as well as Castor of course) and I could have quite happily emigrated there.

However, I fell into that gap – over 55 means no work permit and you can’t be an aged dependant until you are 65. I was 57 when I applied, and when I was 65 I was too ill to go.

But someone told me a lovely story about Canadians. It went "how do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time? "
"Go on" I replied. "I’ll buy it. How do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time?"
"Simple" replied my interlocutor. "You ask them."

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Monday 20th January 2025 – YET ANOTHER THREE …

… and a half hours under the dialysis machine today, and that might soon be changing. They are talking about increasing the dose to four hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … we seem to be moving slowly towards a climax and the overall prognosis isn’t that good.

In fact, things must be even more serious that I imagined, because they sent Emilie the Cute Consultant to break the bad news to me. And considering that she has been doing her best to steer clear of my bedside these last few weeks, that must have been some effort.

It was some effort for me to go to bed last night too. It was even later than normal when I finally hauled myself out of my chair and went into the bathroom to prepare for the night. I was definitely not feeling like sleeping and I lacked the motivation and energy to haul myself out of my comfortable chair.

Eventually I managed to make my way into bed and there I lay trying to go to sleep and trying to chase the black thoughts from my mind. And as it happened, I did neither. So there I lay, being tormented, for several hours.

When the alarm sounded I was fast asleep so I must have dropped off at some point. And what an effort it was to haul myself from my bed. It’s a good job that the nurse is coming, for I could quite easily have stayed in bed until I don’t know when.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and shave and even applied the deodorant in case Emilie the Cute Consultant should come to see me, and then went to take my medication.

Back in here I went to listen to what was on the dictaphone but to my dismay there was nothing at all, and that’s really disappointing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on (or comes off, but I should be so lucky) during the night.

Isabelle the nurse came around, her last day for this round. She had a few things to say, but nothing of too much importance. She’s going to spend the week packing for her ski holiday soon and also working on her Carnival float.

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has spent probably 100 pages attacking the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar sailed to Britain (not that it matters much, as the book is about Britain, not Caesar), insulting the people who believe that it might have been, and lampooning the people who have changed their opinion over time.

And here we are, on page 579; with a statement "for I myself once argued that the Portus Itius was at Wissant. But my knowledge was then imperfect.". Not a word about why his knowledge was imperfect, not a word about why he once believed that Wissant had been Caesar’s port, not a word of the factors that he had considered at that time, not a word of why he had rejected them, not a word of criticism of his own ideas and not an apology to those whom he had lampooned for changing their mind.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shan’t be sorry to reach the end of this book. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting facts in there but by God! What a struggle it has been to wade through the mass of invective, insult and abuse to find them.

It seems to me that he is working himself up into a crescendo and I wonder how it’s all going to finish.

Back in here I had things to do, like my Welsh homework for example. I like to do half of it in one week and the other half the following week so as to spread it out. But what I’m going to do at some point is to read through all of the homework that I’ve done, and make a dictionary of words that I have already forgotten. As if I don’t have enough work to do.

My cleaner took me once more by surprise. She was late but I’d lost track of time anyway. And we hadn’t even finished when the taxi came for me. There was someone with an appointment at Avranches at 13:00 so these new Securité Sociale rules means that because my trip falls within this 45-minute window, I have to grin and bear it.

Not that I am complaining, because as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s all free, and this is the only country in the World as far as I am aware where such a service is provided for the likes of me.

One advantage of being there early was that not only was I the first of the afternoon shift to arrive, I was first in bed and consequently first to be plugged in. And strangely, the first pin didn’t hurt at all and the second only marginally so, even if they had to take out the pin and reinsert it.

Having said that though, I began to know more about it as the anaesthetic wore off.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and we had an interesting chat. "How are you today, Mr Hall?"
"Very well now that I’ve seen you" I replied. And she had the decency to giggle and blush

So we chatted, all about work though, not one of those intimate personal chats that we had last summer, and she broke the bad news to me. But at least she confirmed that Saturday’s dialysis is no different than any other day so it’s not that which is disrupting my sleeping patterns.

"Would you like me to prescribe a sedative for you" She asked.

It seemed to me that that referred to my earlier comment so I restrained myself, with great difficulty I promise you, from saying something like “what I really need is someone to keep me warm and cosy in bed. When’s your next day off?”. You should be proud of me.

Instead I replied "no thanks". All that I have left these days are my dreams and they seem to be fading right now which is a shame. And never mind restraining myself, it will be other people restraining me if I carry on like this. But ask me if I care.

While we’re on the subject of dreams … "well, one of us is" – ed … I crashed out as usual once the pump started sucking my blood out and went away with the fairies (although I did nothing worthy of any comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine)

There I was, in some building in which I’d been before. Someone came to pick me up and when he took me outside I found that he was to take me away on a motorbike. He had left the engine running so I told him that that had been a very dangerous thing to do around here

The building reminded me of somewhere in (I think) either Cleveland or Buffalo … "IT WAS BUFFALO" – ed … in the USA where I’d passed through on my mega-voyage around North America after having dropped off Kit at her University at Windsor.

And as for motor bikes, we’re either talking about motorcycle taxis again or else it’s to do with crossing the Atlantic on a motor bike, something else that we’ve mentioned recently.

When I’ve been awake, I’ve been tidying up a long-forgotten site on the internet. That all started with a search for someone whose name cropped up there and when I followed it up, I was surprised at how out-of-date this site was. So I did some of it, and there’s plenty more to do.

Don’t you ever become fed up of finding all of these tasks that you need to do that totally distract you from what you were trying to do in the first place?

With starting early, that usually means finishing early. And I was certainly unplugged early. But all of the rest went haywire as the compression burst and we red-washed the entire wall of the Clinic by my bed.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the taxi that came for me had to wait another ten minutes to take someone else too.

So once more I ended up being late home but at least it was the nice female taxi driver, the one with twins at the school here, so we had a nice chat. I hope that she’s the one who takes me to Paris, either her or my favourite lady taxi driver who gives me a running commentary throughout the whole route.

It’s freezing outside again here so I was glad to be indoors again. With about 20 minutes to spare I edited some more of the outstanding radio programme that I should had completely dealt with on Sunday.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt. Plenty of stuffing left, but I’ve no idea when I’ll finish it, what with going to hospital in Paris later this week

So now it’s bedtime, ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. And hoping that I’ll have pleasant dreams involving Castor, TOTGA or Zero, or Moonchild whom I shall add to the Terrible Three and make a Fearsome Foursome.

But before I go to bed I’ll give you an exclusive scoop, one that you’ll hear nowhere else, on the handover discussion between Trump and Biden in the Whitehouse (and that’s not a spelling mistake, although that will soon change) this afternoon
"You just watch" said Trump. "I’m gonna be a goddam Emperor"
"You can’t do that" said Biden. "An Emperor is someone who rules an Empire, and the USA isn’t an Empire"
"Well in that case" said Trump "I’m gonna be a goddam King"
"You can’t do that either" replied Biden. "A King is someone who rules a Kingdom, and the USA isn’t a Kingdom"
"Actually" continued Biden "with you in the White House, Donald, the USA will be just fine as a country"

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Sunday 19th January 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… what at first might sound like a really quiet day but it really wasn’t. I might not have seemed to have done much but I haven’t stopped. Not even for a moment.

After I’d finished writing out my notes I had some dictation to do – to dictate the notes that I’d written earlier in the week. That didn’t take too long and after I’d watched a couple of TV interviews on the internet, I crawled off to bed. I’d actually made it (for once) before midnight so with the lie-in until 08:00 I was going to have a decent sleep.

And I didn’t turn over or turn round much either. It did take an age to drop off, but once I’d gone, that was it.

Whatever it was that awoke me, I’ve no idea but at 07:45 I was wide awake, bolt-upright, 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

And so, if I’m awake and there’s a possibility of recording an “early start”, then why not? When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was actually in the bathroom sorting myself out. How many times is this since dialysis began that a Saturday morning has been an “early start”?

After the bathroom I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, to find out where I’d been during the night. We’d been on a holiday, on a cruise. The cruise had come round ready for people now to start the homeward leg. There was a fair bit of grumbling amongst the passengers about, first of all, parking the cars. There was some strangely-worded statement about people not turning up at the office, which, if interpreted in some way, meant that there was no parking for their vehicles. I somehow felt that it meant that one couldn’t go along and queue inside the office while you were waiting to be signed in. Everyone had his own interpretation on this. We talked about cars parked in a long-term car park for ages, and people with fork-lift trucks lifting them out of the way to put their cars in their place. We came back from this excursion and had to change out of our wet clothes into dry clothes. everyone else had done this and was drifting off on board and I couldn’t get out of my clothes. I couldn’t push my feet through my trouser legs. Everyone was drifting further and further away and I was still struggling. There was one guy and his wife still there. He’d been criticising some of the arrangements because he’d noticed that it was a very early start that morning. He’d posted something on the Group’s chat site that “I bet that it will be a packed lunch and cup of coffee on board the train for our breakfast rather than a sit-down meal in the hotel”. He’d been summoned by the Cruise Director and given a lecture and telling-off, so he reckoned that that was exactly what was going to happen. Eventually I managed to put on some kind of clothing and was able to catch up with the throngs although it was most uncomfortable. Then I heard that the rumour that this guy had started had actually been the truth. We were all to board the train and we’d be given a packed breakfast and cup of coffee once we were on board. The walkway over to this train was a narrow, rickety bridge suspended over a huge gap that was probably over 100 feet down. With all the people on this bridge swarming towards the train I was thinking that this bridge wasn’t going to withstand the pressure and we’d all go crashing down to the ground.

Whatever the story about the car park is, I’ve no idea. When I read this I had an image of a car hire office at the airport in Montreal, but don’t ask me why that vision came into my head because I can’t think of any comparable incident. Changing out of wet gear into our normal clothes was something that we did twice a day (at least) on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR after we clambered out of the zodiacs that ran us around in the various bays and straits up in the High Arctic. However the struggle was usually when we had to put on our gear and rush for a zodiac that we might otherwise miss and all our friends and fellow-passengers would leave the ship without us. There wasn’t a chat group for the passengers though – sometimes we were in places where not even a satellite wi-fi system would work.

There was however a passerelle or “walkway” that collapsed – AT RAMSGATE IN 1994 but I was nowhere near that at the time. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t stop for long. She didn’t have very much to say today, except that the weather really was freezing this morning, which was what I expected.

After she left I made myself breakfast, and then took my time eating it while I read MY BOOK.

Once more, I wasn’t going to waste neither my time nor yours posting more of the same old same old, except to say that at one point he describes with absolute and utter derision the argument of someone whom he freely admits is described as "at the head of living students of English history"

He spends page after page after page scoffing at the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar set sail (as if it matters in a book about Britain) concluding with "the claim of Wissant to be identified with the Portus Itius cannot be admitted.".

That was his position in 1907. Having spent page after page in treating with derision the writers who have changed their position over the years, in May 1909 he submitted a paper to the Classical Review, giving "strong reasons for preferring Wissant".

There was bread to make next. I had soup to make later and so I need a fresh bread roll. And that’s the advantage of the air fryer – I can bash out a bread roll whenever I like.

Today’s soup was broccoli stalk soup, with potato, onion, shallot and various herbs and spices, using up the last of the water from the blanching exercise of last weekend.

Heaping in a pot of soya yoghurt gave it that final touch, even if I did forget the black pepper and the tiny pasta elbows. Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’ll make more of that any time. If you want the recipe it’s HERE but it now has a shallot added to it too.

After lunch I came back in here ready to start work but first there was the football – Stranraer v East Fife. East Fife won 2-0 with the first goal being a foul and a wicked deflection, and the second being a handball. And if you think that I’m making it up, you can see for yourself in the HIGHLIGHTS. And you can hear the best TV football commentators in the entire country while you watch the game.

After that I settled down to edit the notes that I dictated last night but I didn’t get far. Someone came on line to whom I wanted to chat and this desultory chat went on until late in the evening, meaning that I could only edit the notes in the pauses between the chats.

We did however stop for tea. I’d taken a lump of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting. Later on I rolled it out and put it onto the pizza tray ready to assemble.

Once it had risen I attacked the base and put on the tomato and pepper sauce, the olives, onions and mushrooms, sprinkled it with herbs, put on the vegan cheese and then a couple of nice rows of cherry tomatoes cut in half.

This one was nothing very much different than any other that I have baked but for some reason it tasted by far the best that I have ever made, and the cheese melted wonderfully. If only I knew the secret I’d make many more of those.

So tonight I’m off to bed, and tomorrow we’ll all wake up in a New World where the people of Canada and Greenland will be looking for the rest of the World to save them. Being threatened by a madman armed to the teeth backed by a crowd of paranoid lunatics is no way to live.

While we’re on that subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of Trump’s aides dashed into his office. "I dreamed about you last night" He said.
"Really?" asked Trump. "What was it?"
"Well," replied the aide. "You were being driven down Pennsylvania Avenue. People were cheering, flags were waving, kids were dancing and everyone was partying "
"Wow" Replied Trump. "That must have been wonderful. But tell me – my hair – how was my hair?"
"We couldn’t see" replied the aide. "We couldn’t get the lid off your coffin."

-1

Wednesday 15th January 2025 – MARGARET THATCHER …

… once said something like “anyone can do a good day’s work when they want to. The secret of success is doing a good day’s work when you don’t want to”.

That’s not exactly what she said but I reckon that it’s near enough and if that’s the case, then I have failed miserably today.

Don’t ask me why, but I’m thinking that today in Sunday and it’s not just once but several times that I’ve been thinking that it’s Sunday. I’ve certainly been lethargic and sloth-like today as maybe I would have been on a Sunday back in the olden days. These days I don’t have the time to waste like this and it’s really depressing to see by how much I’ve fallen short of my aims.

As you might expect, after the chaos at Cae y Castell on Deeside last night, it was horribly late when I finally finished everything that I needed to do and crawled off to bed.

Not that there was much time to sleep because once again we had a phantom alarm call. I’m so convinced that these are real because they sound just like an alarm but it’s clearly not anything in my bedroom. I’d try to identify it if I could but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually flat-out asleep when it sounds and even though I do sit bolt-upright, by that time whatever noise it is has long-since stopped.

So resisting the impulse to climb out of bed I curled up back under the covers and went off to sleep again.

When the alarm did finally go off I was no-where near ready to leave my stinking pit. And that’s another mystery – why is it that I feel so much more energetic and more ready to leave the bed and spring into action when it’s a phantom alarm call?

So anyway, I eventually found the willpower to crawl off into the bathroom and clean myself up ready for the day, and then go into the kitchen to sort out the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There’s something stuck in my mind about someone talking about apartment-sharing, saying that he was ready to share an apartment with someone. This was after something had happened concerning a roundabout in the middle of the countryside in the ancient times. I can’t really remember any more about this but I have all this stuck firmly in my mind

Well, that’s what I dictated any as for what it means I’ve no idea. Ancient times probably refers to the book that I’m reading right now but I can’t place the rest. However it does strike a chord about something about which I’ve been thinking this last few days and which I briefly mentioned in passing a few days ago, dating back to my brief stay in Elm Drive. However some things are best left behind, dead and buried, even if I am brooding on some of them somewhat right now.

Isabelle the nurse came round rather later than usual today. She was quite busy, as you might expect and didn’t stay long. Nevertheless she was quite chatty and talked about the chaos in the town with all of these roadworks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our hero is busy lashing out left and right at all of his contemporaries. He’s demolishing all kinds of theories about Stonehenge and proposing one of his own which is just as incorrect (and maybe more so), and then arguing about the location of the mythical tin mines of the Phoenicians at Cassiterides.

To be honest, his flailing about is becoming rather difficult and off-putting to read, with the increase in personal attacks and the abuse that he is heaping on his colleagues. He makes a lot of interesting points, but they are swamped by the invective. But don’t worry – only another 300 or so pages to go.

What’s interesting though is that he’s quoting a lot of sources for his criticism, and I am busy tracking them down and downloading them. My virtual library is expanding rapidly.

Back in here I had things to do.

First off was to telephone Paris to argue with them about a convocation to attend next Wednesday. "We don’t do that here" they said, although their colleagues in Neurology do.

It’s important to have one because I need to book a taxi and it’s no good my saying “we’ll pick up the paperwork when we arrive” because if the hospital cancels the appointment mid-trip, there won’t be any paperwork and I’ll have to pay the taxi myself – €1600 – rather than the Securité Sociale picking up the bill.

And in case you are thinking that it’s far-fetched, regular readers of this rubbish will recall back in 2020 or 2021 in the middle of a train strike and so I drove overnight all the way to Leuven for an appointment, only for them to cancel it just as I pulled into the city after a 700km overnight drive.

The best that could do was to confirm it by voice over the ‘phone so I could ring up the taxi company. They knew about the change of day for my dialysis from Thursday to Wednesday, but they had me down for the afternoon, not morning. So I had to change all of that and book a car to Paris, hoping that it will all go to plan.

Having done that I was well on my way when the ‘phone rang. It was the taxi arriving to take me to dialysis."It’s tomorrow". I said. "but it’s on Wednesday next week, but in the morning".

So I had to ring up the Dialysis Centre to make sure, and then ring back the taxi company for them to put their records straight. At least, being early and wrong is better than being wrong and late

Next interruption for my plan to finish my radio notes was for lunch – flapjack and fruit. And then the cleaner came round to do her stuff.

That included the shower of course, so there’s a nice clean me with nice clean clothes ready to climb into a nice clean bed because the bedding has been changed too which I was showering.

We had Christmas cake break later with another one of these horrible drinks, and then I have been making pies. I could make three nice-sized pies from a roll of this flaky pastry, and my filling really is excellent.

It’s

  • lentils
  • split peas
  • potatoes

soaked for an hour in the slow cooker on “high”, rinsed, and soaked again for 18 hours in the slow cooker on “low” with herbs, spices and flavouring

And then I fried in the big wok the following –

  • onions
  • shallots
  • garlic
  • a tofu block
  • a tin of sweetcorn

When they were all nice and cooked, the contents of the slow cooker were tipped into the wok with the fried stuff, simmered to boil off the excess liquid, and then a handful or two of oats to bind it all together.

So three pies in the fridge ready to bake tomorrow, and a pile of filling in individual sized containers freezing for next time, and a ladleful of it added to my leftover curry to try it out.

And with naan bread, rice and veg it was excellent and I had no room for pudding. And in any case, believe it or not (because I find it hard to believe) I crashed out at the table.

So tomorrow it’s dialysis, but for tea I’m going to eat one of my pies with potatoes, veg and gravy. They should be delicious and make me feel better after what will be a very painful session. And I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow too if I am lucky.

But while we ‘re on the subject of curries… "well, one of us is" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall when we were on THOSE FERRIES ON THE OUTER BANKS off the coast of the USA and encountered all of those pelicans.
One person on the ferry went to a restaurant on Okracoke Island and asked to try the Pelican Curry that was on the menu.
When I met him later I asked him how it was.
"I won’t be going in that place again" he said.
"Why not?" I asked. "Wasn’t it any good?"
"The meal was great" he replied "but the bill was enormous."

0

Tuesday 7th January 2025. DO YOU KNOW …

… what I discovered today? And that is the carafe for my coffee machine is not big enough to take all of the water that can be put in the reservoir of the machine. So ask me how I know this.

That’s right – it’s been one of those days where things seem to be going in every direction except the direction that I want. Not that that’s unusual because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the kind of thing that is the normal method of procedure around here.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Last night after I finished writing my notes I was going to go to bed as I said, but as usual, something came up to disrupt me. Round onto the playlist came a concert from Colosseum.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall this concert only too well. It’s a rather complicated concert with a lot of holes and involuntary fadings but it’s one of the top five live concerts that I’ve ever attended so it won’t ever disappear off the playlist.

It needs editing, rebuilding and remixing and that has been my project on both my trips to the High Arctic. The plan was that when everyone has gone to bed late at night and I’m on my own, up in the observation lounge on the top deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR looking at the snow and ice, I could be editing the concert without having to worry about being distracted. It’s not as if there’s much traffic out there amongst the ice late at night.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it didn’t happen like that. On both trips, in exactly the same place on the ship and exactly the same place in the ocean and at the same point in the concert, something (well, someone, actually) came along to disrupt me and I’ve been swept off my feet and carried along on a tidal wave of unstoppable events, and that was that.

Still, it’s a good concert so I stayed up to listen to it, and it was rather late when I went to bed.

During the night I awoke just once, at 05:40, But I was soon back asleep again and there I stayed until the alarm went off.

Hearing the alarm was one thing – lifting myself out of my warm, comfortable bed was something else completely. However I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and staggered off to the bathroom for a good scrub up.

Into the kitchen next for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And there was something on there, but you really don’t want to hear about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

However, whatever it was that went on, there was something about all of this taking place at the seaside. It was this place that I used to visit with Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz”) on the north-eastern coast between Sunderland and Newcastle. I can’t remember the name of the town now … "it’s Seaburn" – ed ….

The nurse was early – probably because no-one wanted a blood test from him today. But he was telling me that he took part in the bain des manchots on New Year’s Day where everyone dresses up as a penguin and runs into the sea.

bain des manchot or penguin or some such donville les bains granville manche normandy franceAnd if you think that I’m joking, in 2019 a couple of us interviewed the penguins for the radio, and here’s a photo of one of them from back then to prove it.

However, it just goes to prove my point that there are some people who simply don’t have both paddles in the water.

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

We’re having a big discussion about heads. And the author reckons that he can identify someone’s origin – whether they are Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Saxon etc, by the shape of their heads. Or, more accurately, the measurement of the diagonals on the interior of the skull.

That got me thinking. His idea is all well and good for 1907 but I wondered how it stood now that we have DNA to guide us along.

So hunched over a bowl of porridge I tracked down a site that talked about genetics in the UK.

Now, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we talked several days ago about stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and I was of the opinion that new waves of immigrants pushed the established population westwards and northwards, and that subsequent waves continued the process.

And there, right in front of my face in this document that I read was "British Neolithic individuals had a small amount (about 10%) of Western Hunter-Gatherer excess ancestry when compared with Iberian Early Neolithic farmers, suggesting that there was an additional gene flow from British Mesolithic hunter-gatherers into the newly arrived farmer population: while Neolithic individuals from Wales have no detectable admixture of local Western hunter-gatherer genes, those from South East England and Scotland show the highest additional admixture of local WHG genes, and those from South-West and Central England are intermediate"

So compare that with what we were discussing, the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and “none at all” and there you are!

Back in here I revised for my Welsh and then, armed with an overflowing coffee pot, I went for the lesson.

Once more, the lesson went quite well, especially as Brain of Britain revised the wrong module AGAIN! How many times have I done that before? And we have a new recruit joining the pack today. She used to live just up the road from where I lived as a tiny baby.

What with another member who was a teacher in the town where I went to Grammar School, someone on a summer school from there too and someone else from a summer school who lived in Wistaston, a suburb of Crewe, this World is becoming far too small for my liking.

After the lesson was over I went for lunch – another slice of this really good flapjack that I made, followed by some fruit. There’s no doubt that this flapjack is the best that I have made to date.

However, I’ve been looking at the dates that I bought to treat myself over Christmas and never got round to eating. There must be a recipe for a date loaf on the internet somewhere, and I wonder how it would work. With my oven, whatever it is, it’s bound to be difficult.

After lunch I had things to do, but I was interrupted by my cleaner bringing me some shopping, and then by my Christmas cake break. For a change, I didn’t have my hot chocolate. I had one of these disgusting protein drinks that I’ve been prescribed. That’s a different type of disgusting to the disgusting anti- potassium powder that I have to take several times a non-dialysis day

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the stuffing, with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And it was lovely too. Tomorrow is a vegan curry with the rest of the leftover stuffing.

So ordinarily I would think about going to bed right now, but a Lindisfarne concert has come round on the playlist so it’ll be a while yet before I retire.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about DNA … "well, one of us has" – ed … I had a relative (by marriage, not by birth, I hasten to add) who sent off his DNA to be analysed.
I asked him "what did the results say?"
"Actually" he said "they came back marked ‘rejected’. "
"When was that?" I asked
"Three days ago" he said. "The day that all the newspaper headlines were something like ‘Missing Link Between Humans and Apes finally discovered’"

0

Friday 3rd January 2025 – MY CHOCOLATE CAKE …

… is exquisite. What makes it, in my opinion, is the coconut oil. It’s based on a simple oilcake recipe but I substituted some of the oil for some coconut oil and that gives it a certain something that you can’t describe, but it’s there all the same. It’s one of the best cakes that I have ever made.

And while we’re on the subject of things being there … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was still there at 01:00 this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned something about going to bed, and that was true at the time, but just as I was planning on switching off the computer, a concert from a folk festival in 2017 came onto the playlist and, strange as it may seem, I had never heard it before.

It was one from that batch that I’d had sent to me a year ago and it had never previously come up on the playlist but now that it was finally there, I stayed up and had a good listen to it.

It was about 01:20 when I finally made it into bed, and once there, I fell asleep quite quickly. And that was all that I remember of the night. The next thing that entered my mind was the alarm call this morning.

When that went off, it took a minute or two to gather my wits – they seem to travel about much more than I do – and then I wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning so I had a listen to the dictaphone but to mu surprise and disappointment, there was nothing at all on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … wandering around in the subconscious late at night is the only fun that I seem to have these days.

When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, she told me that she couldn’t hang around. Her oppo had arranged several blood tests for her back at the ran … errr … office for 08:45 and it was now already 08:42.

She did have time to tell me that it was minus 3°C outside this morning and although snow had been forecast, none had (as yet) arrived.

After she left, I made breakfast and had a read of MY BOOK.

Our author is now discussing Caesar’s second invasion and at the moment we are still in mid-Channel awaiting the turn of the wind and tide so he can bring himself and his army to the shore.

As yet, there is nothing controversial about what he has been saying. He’s been discussing the beam and draught of Caesar’s ships, how they have been built by the sailors with a beach landing in mind rather than their sailing characteristics.

That’s a fact that it’s impossible to prove or disprove, and in any case, as he’s said on several occasions that Cicero’s younger brother was sailing with the invasion, it’s very likely that he’s quoting from the letters that the younger Cicero sent to his elder brother as well as the usual source, Book IV of THE GALLIC WARS by Caesar himself

And that reminds me – I must brush up my Latin. I’m really dismayed about how much I have forgotten since my school days. Puer amat mensam and all that

Back in here afterwards, I began to turn the place upside down to find this missing letter with the notice that I had to pay. I looked absolutely everywhere and, after about three hours, I finally found it.

It was exactly where it should be and ought to have been, and where I’d looked at least three times yesterday and three times this morning. I have no idea at all as to why I couldn’t see it before.

That’s another one of these mysteries – why I can’t see something that must be there, no matter how many times I look. Sometimes I really do wonder what on earth is going on inside my head.

By now my cleaner had arrived to do her stuff so I had missed my lunch, which serves me right. She brought the cold weather with her into the apartment and froze me to death. It really is wicked outside today, apparently.

Later on in the afternoon Rosemary rang me. It was just a short chat, one hour and forty minutes, and it would have lasted longer had someone not rung the doorbell. It was one of those calls where no-one responded to the interphone, and that was a shame because Rosemary and I could have gone on much longer than that.

And I must admit, that I had something of a laugh to myself. When I was round there three or four years ago she was “don’t leave the door open – that stray white cat might come in and I don’t want that”.

Eighteen months ago it was “that stray white cat is actually quite friendly and sweet”

On the ‘phone six months ago it was “this cute white cat is lovely, curled up in front of my fire”

Today it was “I was thinking of going away for a couple of weeks but I changed my mind because Myrtille would be cold and lonely”.

That’s right – I never met anyone who won a fight with a cat.

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. My cleaner had bought some mushrooms and tomatoes for me, but I ought to have asked her to buy a lettuce too. I would usually send off an order to LeClerc today for delivery but I have enough frozen food to last another week and I can survive on what else I have.

The chips were cooked to perfection in the air fryer which is certainly doing its stuff. Rosemary told me that in her air fryer last weekend she cooked a chicken quite successfully and she’s quite pleased with hers too.

In other news, Seàn sent me a report yesterday about new DNA techniques that can probe deeper into ancient bones to establish a much greater DNA profile.

That’s of great interest to me because of what happened in Greenland. The last written record from the Norse colony in Greenland was of a marriage that took place in 1408 at the old church at Hvalsey which regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED IN 2019 on our way across the Atlantic on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when we sailed the North-West Passage.

After that, there is silence and when the Bishop of Norway’s envoy went there in the 16th Century he found no trace of any survivors.

What happened to the people is a complete mystery and there have been several theories. James Enterline wrote A BOOK in which he suggested that the Norse went west onto the mainland of North America, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we went to THE UNIVERSITY OF LAVAL in Québec to check on some of his sources.

For what it’s worth, I’m waiting to see if any bones of any Inuit in Greenland will turn up some Nordic DNA. I find it hard to believe that there was no “interaction” between the Inuit and the Norse as the ice drove the Inuit south into the path of the Nordic colonists. If the Inuit, who were much better-adapted to the climate than the Norse, overwhelmed the latter, they must have taken a few female prisoners. We saw what Samuel Hearne had to say about the Northern people’s handling of female captives. The editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would also have had something to say on the matter.

So now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow it’s Dialysis Day and I’m not looking forward to that at all. But we’ll see what happens on Monday. That’s going to be complicated.

However, with all of this stuff written in Latin that I seem to be finding, I wish that I had paid more attention to my Latin lessons at school .I mentioned to a friend that I was going to look for a Latin teacher.
She asked "Will you be looking for a native speaker?"
And so, smiling, I replied "if I do, you can learn with me. Then we can both go together on holiday somewhere in Latin America"

0

Thursday 2nd January 2025 – I HAVE GONE …

… from one extreme to the other with the story of this blasted alarm.

Having forgotten to switch it off on New Year’s morning and having to do so in a panic, guess who forgot to switch it back on last night … "this morning" – ed … before going to bed?

It was “this morning” too – a good few minutes after midnight when I stopped messing around and went to bed. I’d found plenty to do, as usual, after I’d finished my notes so I loitered around for a while until I was ready to go to bed.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until about 05:20 when I awoke in a panic thinking about the alarm – I’m not sure why. However I realised quite quickly that I hadn’t set the alarm to ring and soon put that right.

It’s interesting though that my subconscious state should awaken me like that. It makes me wonder what else my subconscious is trying to tell me when I have had these other dramatic awakenings. There have been a few of those just recently.

Back in bed, I slept until the alarm went off and then hauled myself off into the bathroom for a god wash, scrub up and shave, although I think that I have had any chance of impressing Emily the Cute Consultant with my charm, intelligence, wit, beauty and, most of all, my modesty.

On the way out of the bathroom I was caught in flagrante delicto by Isabelle the Nurse who had arrived early this morning. We had something of a chat while she sorted out my legs and repaired the damage to them by their not being treated yesterday.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY BOOK

We’re discussing Caesar’s first invasion of Britain in 55BC and the author favours a starting-point of modern-day Boulogne. However, modern research renders this unlikely.

Although he recognises that the coastline on both sides of the Channel has changed dramatically in the last 2,000 years, modern research shows that it has changed even more dramatically than even he imagined. Back in those days there was an inviting inlet that led up to the gates of St Omer which, after having studied the effect of tides and wind, an expert considers that this inlet would have been perfect for an invasion fleet to set sail.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night, such as they were. At some point during the night there was something going on about an ancient warrior but I’ve no idea what it is because the moment that I reached for the dictaphone everything completely evaporated. I lost sight of everything which is a shame

And it is too. It’s something that seems to be happening more and more.

Then I was back at school again. All that I was doing was just walking around the playground. Occasionally someone would come up and chat to me but for the most part I was just walking around. There was nothing to mention or to notice about any of this

It goes without saying that I remember nothing whatever about this. Wandering around the school playground admiring some of the nice girls (and there were some nice girls in our school) must surely have been something well-worth remembering.

When the alarm went off I was busy designing medieval houses, not that they were houses as we would know them but more like huts made out of wattle and daub in which the people lived. Some of them were quite small and very poor but others were quite large and luxurious. I suppose that it all depended upon the success of the person concerned and his agricultural activities at that particular time as to how his house was built. They were certainly not complicated or substantial as we would want to have them today.

At one time a couple of years ago we were having quite a talk on medieval housing. I’d been to the SITE OF AN ABANDONED VILLAGE IN THE PYRENEES where contemporary notes written by a Papal Legate state something along the lines of how a person had lifted up the roof of a house to have a listen to the conversation inside.

This led us to the conclusion that the houses back in those days can’t have been all that substantial – and an animated discussion ensued. But why that should rear its ugly head during the night is another one of these mysteries that seem to surround my dreams

Another mystery that surrounds me, only in real life, is “to where does everything disappear in this blasted apartment?”

There were bills that had to be paid quite quickly and one of them, the most important of all, I’d put in a safe place so that I could lay my hands on it quite easily.

So where is this “safe place”? I’ve looked everywhere that I could think and there is no trace of it at all. The rest of the stuff I could find and that’s all paid, but I’ve no idea where this important one is. Not at all.

In the middle of turning my room upside down and tearing out my hair, my faithful cleaner appeared to apply my anaesthetic patches. It’s that time already. She sorted me out and helped me prepare for my taxi, and then I waited.

The drive down to Avranches was done in total silence. I tried once or twice to engage the driver in conversation but to no avail so I left him to his thoughts, and me to mine.

At the Dialysis Clinic it was another painful three and a half hours. The first pin went in painlessly but the second one made up for that.

But they have given me an appointment for another echograph, presumably of what they have fitted into my arm to find out why it’s so painful. That’s on Monday morning at 11:15 so I need to find out what’s happening about this anaesthetic because if my cleaner does it at 10:30 before the taxi comes, the effects will have worn off a long time before my 13:30 Dialysis session

As well as revising my Welsh, I was reading some notes that I’d downloaded years ago about “Outardes One” – one of the very first hydro-electric power stations harnessing the water that cascades down the Canadian Shield into the St Lawrence down the “forgotten coast” of Québec.

It’s long-since been abandoned but I’d VISITED THE SITE in 2015, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and taken a few photos and written a few notes. It’s my intention to update everything, when and if I can, at some stage in the proceedings so it’s no harm to start right now

Once they had unplugged me I staggered out to the taxi to bring me home, which was already waiting. The driver, one of the usually chatty ones, was also silent today for no particular reason that I could see. Maybe I ought to change my deodorant and underwear more often, I dunno.

But my faithful cleaner was at her post waiting for me when I returned and watched once more as I climbed up the stairs unaided. Only halfway though – they still haven’t fixed these handrails.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry and naan bread followed by the last of the ginger cake. But at least there’s now room in the fridge for the chocolate cake which I’ll start tomorrow.

But not tonight, Josephine. I’m off to bed for a good sleep, I hope. I really need it too. And then tomorrow I can devote more time and effort to finding this missing piece of paper

However, there’s a little story doing the rounds from 2,000 years ago when Caesar walked into a bar in Portus Iltius before setting sail for Britannia, and asked the bartender for "Martinus, please"
"Don’t you mean ‘Martini’?" asked the bartender
Caesar leans over the bar and grabs him by the lapels "If I had wanted more than one, I would have said so!"

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Monday 30th December 2024 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that HIS NIBS and I have been to the town of Lech in the Austria Tyrol ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

It’s a town that has some kind of significance for me. When Nerina and I were on our way to Italy on our honeymoon to see her family, we passed through Lech. We thought that the place looked lovely but being pushed for time – the story of our lives – we didn’t stop. However we vowed one day to return.

Of course, the lack of time and other factors intervened and then circumstances changed. However, I kept my vow and have been back a few times. I often wonder if she ever went back.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to go back today though. Apparently someone took nine hours just recently to dig his car out of the overnight snow that had fallen. All of that snow would have been great if I had been already there and wasn’t planning on going anywhere. It would have been like that time that I was SNOWED IN IN ANDORRA

However, I’m right here at the moment having a good think about what went on today.

Last night was quite easy. After I’d finished my notes and backed up the computer I loitered around for (quite) a while, and it was about 01:00 when I finally crawled off into my stinking pit.

Once I was in there, that was that. I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 08:00 (I’m still in “holiday” mode here). It was quite painless. No-one was more surprised than me that I’d slept like that.

When the alarm went off though, I was in the middle of a dream about elephants dancing in a circus and someone beating a kind of drum with a hand. Someone had offered to teach me how to dance in time to the music too but unfortunately we never came round to that because the alarm went off and that was that.

It’s just as well too. Seeing me dancing would not be a very pleasant sight and I’m glad that we were spared that.

In the bathroom I’d only just begun to wash myself when the nurse put in his appearance. Nothing else for it – he had to wait for me to finish what I was doing and so, like the White Rabbit, he would lose the time he’d saved.

We had the usual banal questions that so irritate me and then he cleared off. It’s his oppo now for the next seven days so things might be looking up.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK.

A couple of days ago, I talked about the location of specific Neolithic (or otherwise) stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in Britain and how it looks to me as if succeeding waves of invaders have pushed the previous wave further into the less favourable areas of the British Isles and so on in further waves.

This morning he was discussing these waves of invaders (without mentioning the stone circles etc) and saying "It would be surprising if these conjectures did not attain some measure of truth ; but those who will not accept guesses even from the highest authority without testing them will perceive that they bristle with difficulties"

He seems to think though that new waves of invaders pushed their way through the existing settlers and headed freely and willingly to the less-favourable areas, something that, knowing human nature, I consider most unlikely, and he pours heaps of scorn on a writer who tell us that the latest invaders "were last in the held, were not forced to seek distant abodes, but conquered the best parts of the country which were nearest to the Continent.", a scenario that I consider to be much more likely.

Not two paragraphs further down, he speaks of the Belgae – the final wave that arrived in Britain – and says "The Belgic conquest, which brought Britain into closer connexion with the Continent, gave a powerful impetus to the spread of Late Celtic art.". Now how could they do that if they had pushed through all the others and gone to the more remote parts of the island?

After breakfast, I tidied up. I cut up the cake and the flapjack into individual helpings and put them all in tins and boxes. But I really need to make toom in the fridge. having resolved all of the difficulties about the freezer, it’s the fridge about which I’m worrying these days, wishing that I could make more room in it.

While I was at it, I started to put away the washing up from yesterday, but I need much more time than I had available to do that this morning.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s a good job that she was prompt because my 12:30 taxi turned up this morning at 12:18. There were two passengers already in it – from the Centre de Re-education on their way home to the back of beyond near Rennes, and I was being picked up and dropped off en route

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … whilst I’m not complaining about these new Social Security regulations, I’d love to know what will happen if an infectious disease springs up amongst the clients of a taxi service because of all of this.

Being early to be picked up, I was early to be dropped off too and was actually second to be plugged in, which made a change.

And while I was undergoing treatment I was reading up on the various periods of the Stone Age (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and the change in existence from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural community. As I said yesterday, the site at Hallstatt begins right at the very, very end of the Neolithic period and takes us through the Copper Age, the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

What had piqued my interest was the existence of Hearne’s Copper Indians – still living clearly in the Copper Age from a tools point of view but a Palaeolithic Age from the point of view of hunter-gathering.

But this takes us back to another point I raised from a couple of days ago about the survival of Palaeolithic Communities in isolated upland areas of Britain well into Neolithic times. They did it for the same reason that the Copper Indians had one foot in either of their camps – because that represents the best use of the resources that are readily and locally available.

The doctor, the uncommunicative one, came to see me too. He asked me a few more questions about my foot and later on, handed me a big envelope full of papers to hand in at Paris. Maybe he’s asking them to follow up this issue. I’ll have to have a sneaky look.

Almost-first in means almost-first out so once Alexi had unplugged me, I was out of there like a ferret up a trouser leg and a rather uncommunicative driver brought me home.

My cleaner was astonished to see me home so early, just as I was astonished to be here so early, and having climbed up the steps and used the lift, I was back in the warmth of my apartment. It was freezing outside.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta in tomato sauce followed by ginger cake and soya mince. Tomorrow, I’m having my New Year’s Eve dinner so I shall have to work up an appetite.

But before I do, my dream today made me begin to think of the time at school we were discussing the sexual reproduction of worms.
We were looking at works through a microscope, examining their reproductive organs, and it struck us that something was missing
"There is no testicular substance there" we exclaimed
"Worms are devoid of testicular matter" explained the teacher
"What does that mean?" asked little Johnny at the back of class.
"It means" I shouted "that worms don’t have any balls!"
"Please Sir" asked little Johnny "why don’t worms have balls?"
And the teacher sighed. "Because they can’t dance, you fool!"

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

… off again around here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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