Tag Archives: lie in

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

… parcels delivery this morning, on a Sunday! What kind of strange idea was that? There was nothing in my e-mails to suggest that one would be arriving today.

Not only that, I wasn’t anything like prepared for its arrival either. What with one ting and another, like a late restart after tea, falling asleep on my chair for almost an hour, all of that, it was long after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was probably 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s why I was so surprised and disappointed to be awake at 03:20. There was something about being in a strange place and some American expected me to be in charge of the gentlemen’s restroom when I knew nothing at all about the exact situation.

The next time that I awoke, it was 07:50. I was in two minds whether to leave the bed at that point but I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and went back to sleep.

At about 08:15, there was this insistent ringing on the doorbell. The nurse usually rings when he arrives to make sure that I’m about, but I ignore it as he has a key to the building and my door. And then it rang again. “Don’t worry” I thought. He’ll work it out.

But a third time? And a fourth one? At that point, streaming profanities and vulgar abuse, I began to leave the bed but the door opened and in came the nurse, carrying a parcel. I quickly nipped back under the covers.

"Parcel delivery for you".
"Where was it?" I asked. "On the doorstep?"
"Oh, no" he replied. "The courier was ringing your bell to deliver it when I arrived"

So a courier delivering parcels at 08:15 on a Sunday morning? Whatever is going on here? It’s rather an extreme way of behaving, dragging people from their beds at silly times on a Sunday morning when all respectable people should still be asleep.

The nurse fitted my socks while I was lying in bed, and after he left, I have it a few minutes and the left the bed.

This morning, I didn’t bother with a wash. I just sorted myself out and then went to make breakfast – porridge, coffee and the last of the inside-out croissants. I must make some more next week, but I’ll make them the correct way round this time.

Back in here, there was some football from last night. I started off with Connah’s Quay beating Y Barri 3-1, despite being 1-0 down with only twenty minutes to play. And that’s as far as I went because this computer is just not up to watching streamed programmes

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of party going on in Stoke-on-Trent and I’d been invited by my friend. So I turned up, and I was in my van. I had some things in the back to drop off. He noticed the spare wheel in the back and the large sheet of wood – pallet wood made into a sheet.I explained that one of my tyres was down somewhat on tread so I need to replace it. He said that it’s no surprise that it’s down on tread because it’s always sagging down to one side He had a look inside and said “yes, we have a jack. Yes we have a wheelbrace. There’s a DC socket in the back for the compressor and a few other things”, and he said that we’ll deal with it, but right now, there were other things to do. We had to go round to the front, but people kept on appearing with things wrapped in towels. They were unwrapping the towels and handing them to us. There were all kinds of different food supplies, piles and piles of stuff, loads and loads of loose mint sweets in wrappers. There was so much that we were just dropping it on the floor because we couldn’t carry it all at once. We decided to make a couple of runs and then come back for it, hoping that no-one else comes back for it in the meantime. Some of the people coming back were my youngest sister and her husband. They were dressed as if for Hallowe’en, with blackened faces. I went in to drop off these things, and all my family was in there. My mother said “oh Eric, you’re looking smart today”. I replied “meaning that I don’t look very smart any other day?”. There were all these children around, children whom I knew, children and grandchildren of all the people whom I knew in my circle of friends. There was one particular girl whom I would have liked to have seen, but she hadn’t come. I was particularly disappointed, but so was everyone else. However, she had sent a letter saying “don’t think that I am being rude but ..” and I didn’t manage to hear the rest of it. I was quite disappointed. We dropped these things off, and all these children whom we knew milling around. A couple of young teenage girls came over to chat. I thankedt one of them for doing something for me in the past, but I can’t remember what it was. She went to pat me on the chest and I replied “be careful. I have a catheter port in there” so she apologised. We began to chat, and that was that.

“all my family was in there” – how about that for a scary nightmare Hallowe’en scenario? But this was a dream with all kinds of things going on. A friend and I had had been talking about her children and grandchildren a day or two back, and this probably is where the scenario about all these kids comes from.

As for the missing girl, I am sure that you can all guess who it was, so I’m going to award Zero marks for that.

Caernarfon were playing in the Welsh Premier League and were very close to the top. With the final game to play, it was extremely important. If they were to win, they would qualify for Europe. However, they were hemmed in and surrounded by a large force of Apache warriors and i was very difficult to do anything under these events. The captain of the fort found two of his players fighting . He broke them up, and gave them a lecture about tomorrow being the most important day in the club’s history, all of this, In the meantime, he sent two people out during the night through the enemy lines. They were successful and managed to meet up with a large force of cavalry that was heading their way to try to relieve them. Having been told of the forces and their positions etc, the cavalry commander decided to sleep the night in a dry gulch in the immediate area so that his troops would be fresh and rested ready for battle that he would give on the first of the month as soon as it becomes daylight

If you think that the previous dream was all mixed up, then this one was even worse. The root of the word “Caernarfon” – “Caer” – implies a Roman fort or camp of course and there was a Roman camp there, but they were hardly likely to be defending it against Native Americans. The idea of resting after a march and launching an attack at daybreak was quite a common US Army military tactic in those days.

Did I dictate the dream about the guy going on the bus to the neighbouring town? … “No you didn’t” – ed … He was disabled too, just like me, and couldn’t walk properly. He had no force in his legs. He managed to climb aboard the bus and it set off. Its destination was this town and was going no further so it didn’t pick up anyone as it entered the town. When it came to the edge of the pedestrian area, the bus stopped and everyone alighted. The disabled guy went up to the bus driver and asked if this was where they would come back on board later. He replied “yes” so the guy said that he wouldn’t manage to climb back aboard. The driver recommended that he go to one of the bus stops a little further out of the town centre where the pavements were raised. In the meantime, back at home, there was an absolutely tremendous shower of snow. Within half an hour, there was maybe half a metre of snow everywhere. Some was some poor guy, a footballer, standing by the door of his apartment looking very miserable because he had been planning on breaking some kind of record for his team that afternoon but all the matches had been postponed. People began to shovel, but it wasn’t really much good because the snow was coming down too fast. They wondered if they should bring in some professional snowmen. They thought that that might be a good idea, but they remembered reading that one professional snowman had been killed a couple of days earlier during an incident involving heavy snow. Someone else had the idea of picking up a couple of laptops and taking them outside to put on chairs so that when the snow fell down, the warm laptop would actually melt it and it would be somewhere for people to sit while they were taking a little break from shovelling snow.

We’ve had a few dreams abut buses in built-up areas just recently. And having difficulty climbing aboard a bus is another one of those issues. Here in Granville, some of the pavements have been raised to bus-door height but, ironically, the ones outside the medical centres and in the town centre, where most disabled people are likely to go, have not.

Leaving a laptop outside to melt the snow that falls on it is an interesting idea. It might work for te minutes, but it would be an expensive way of doing it.

The rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon were spent doing some housekeeping on the travelling laptop and the external hard drive, trying to tidy everything up before the new computer arrives.

Later on, I tried a different way of making bread. I’d seen a “no-knead” recipe for making bread in the air fryer, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

It’s very long-winded and takes a fair bit of time and the result wasn’t anything spectacularly good. It was only half a loaf too (my air fryer is quite small) so I might persevere and next time, make a full-sized loaf but bake it in the conventional oven.

While I was at it, I baked a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. I’ll save the other half for tea tomorrow night. But it was a weird pizza, because I had no fresh mushrooms. My cleaner hadn’t been to the shops this weekend.

Instead, I used frozen mushrooms, a great big handful, and I simmered them to dry the water out. And when I’d finished, there were hardly any mushrooms left. You’ll be amazed at how much water thee is in frozen mushrooms.

So right now, I’m off to bed, if the pain in my foot will subside. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately. We are back in our usual routine. And my new laptop might be here for Wednesday so that I can start working again. Steam-driven computing is not an ideal way forward.

But seeing as we have been talking about dreaming … “well, one of us has” – ed … one of my friends told me about a dream that she had.
"I dreamed that I was to have a new washing machine" she said. "If I went to sleep on my right side, I dreamed that I would have an Indesit, but if I went to sleep on my left side, I dreamed that I was t have an Electrolux."
"So what happened?" I enquired wearily
"I woke up my husband and told him"
"And what did he say?"
"He said ‘if you lie there on your back like that, quite still, I’ll give you a hotpoint"

0

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I went down to town in my van and wanted to park it in an area where parking was free, so I parked up at the back on the way to the Val ès Fleurs. On the way back, into the centre do do my shopping, I bumped into one of the other residents. He was surprised that I had parked so far away, so he took me and showed me where I ought to park, which was right in the town centre but was a “pay and display” park. I explained that this was where I parked in the evenings when there was no “pay and display”, otherwise I’ll look for a free place. He seemed to be surprised that I was willing to walk a little distance rather than to pay a parking fee. After we’d finished our discussion, I asked him if I could give him a lift back up to our building, but he said “no”, he had other things to do.

When I was healthy, whenever that was, walking here and there would never bother me all that much, not even in inclement weather. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that i’ve walked home from my girlfriend’s in Chester, all twenty-five or thirty miles, on several occasions when I’ve missed the last bus, and it’s never bothered me.

The next thing that I remember was being in some kind of hall. I walked in and there were quite a few people around. I went to sit on a bench against the wall, a nice, comfortable, padded bench. Gradually, as more people came in, I moved along to give them space. When it came time to go, and I tried to stand up, there wasn’t enough headroom to put myself straight. In the end, I had to say to a girl who was sitting on the bench a lot further up, if she’d mind if I slid along to sit there because that was where the roof had a greater clearance. She tried to help me to stand up but I explained that it was something that only I could do. In the end, I managed to struggle to my feet with bending my head and back forward. I thanked her for her help anyway. She replied “yes, have a nice time where you’re going. It’s a shame that we are going to be one Welsh person less in this hall. I couldn’t understand how it was that she had guessed that I was Welsh.

That’s something that many people can’t understand. I can’t be helped to stand up because my legs need to lock in one position and if I don’t have that correct, nothing on earth will enable me to stay upright, no matter how much help I have. And I don’t have a Welsh accent either. “Part of Flint” spoke very much with a South Cheshire – North Shropshire accent and my mother was brought up in polite society but nevertheless within the sound of Bow Bells.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I was in hospital in Ancient Rome. I was a member of the military for some particular reason, although I’m not quite sure why. That was really all that I remember except that song again, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN somewhere in the background, sung by a choir rather than a musical piece, that kind of thing, with no music – just the voices singing it.

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

0

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday 13th November 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… it was 11:30 when I finally left the bed this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I was in bed at 17:30 and was flat out, fast asleep until about 22:30. Ordinarily, I would have been tempted to leave the bed but I was feeling even worse than I had done earlier so for a while, I just lay there vegetating.

At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 as usual, and it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed.

Yesterday, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed and that was how I was found this morning. I didn’t wash, which is not like me at all, but simply fell into the kitchen for the lemon, ginger and honey drink with my medication. And to make the drink required another monumental effort.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I can’t believe that after all that sleep, there was so little on it. I was very ill, like I am now. For some reason, I was sitting on the floor, trying to work the computer when I was sitting on the floor. There was a cup of tea there, but it was freezing cold, and a cup of orange. There was a woman talking to me, and I recognised her as someone who had a lot of frizzy red hair and I know her from somewhere but I can’t think who she is. She’s something to do with the Health Service, and she asked me how I was feeling. I said that I was feeling dreadful. I told her that it had happened since roughly 15:00 which she said was the time that we all stop for a cup of tea. Surprisingly then, she left the room without saying anything else or doing anything else and I was still struggling about, sitting there on the floor.

That girl is someone whom I know from somewhere but I can’t place her at all. The hot drink and orange juice does come round at about 15:00 at dialysis and I do sometimes have the opinion that when I talk to the doctors about how I’m feeling, they walk away afterwards without doing anything about it.

Isabelle the Nurse noticed how ill I was looking. She told me to mention it at dialysis, which was what I had in mind to do. She gave me some advice and then left on her rounds.

After she left, do I make breakfast or go back to bed? Seeing as I wasn’t hungry anyway, I set the alarm for 11:30 and crawled once more under the quilt, fully-clothed again.

When the alarm sounded, I went to haul myself out of bed but it took so long that my cleaner was here by the time I was up and about. She applied my anaesthetic and it’s just as well that she hurried because the taxi came half an hour early.

It was a driver whom I hadn’t seen before, and she chatted non-stop all the way to Avranches. I really wasn’t in the mood.

Early at dialysis made no difference because once I’d told them about my health problems, they refused to connect me without speaking to a doctor.

Eventually, the doctor turned up and examined me, and they gave me an electro-cardiac test. It took them three goes before they were convinced that the results weren’t incorrect. They have diagnosed an irregular heartbeat.

As well as that, my blood pressure, low as it always is, was even lower today.

They asked me if I wanted to be admitted to Casualty but I said “no”, so they are going to speak to a few people and then call me in for a hospital stay while they examine me. I might have to wait a few days for that.

When dialysis was finally finished, it was another “Tour of Normandy” to come home, so I was no earlier than usual. My cleaner helped me in, and I sat on a chair and collapsed.

For tea, I tried a home-made mushroom soup but half of it went in the bin as usual.

So having written up last night’s entry and now tonight’s, I’m off to bed. Heaven alone knows what time I’ll awaken tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my electro-cardiac test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked the nurse if she had succeeded in finding my heart.
"Oh yes" she replied. "It’s still there "
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative."

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Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… I actually managed to have a lie in. And I really needed it too.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night last night either. After finishing off everything that I need to finish, and sorting myself out in the bathroom, it was just before 23:00 when I crawled into bed under the covers, and went to sleep quite quickly.

During the night, I awoke just once – at about 04:10. And although I did think for a moment about leaving the bed, I turned over instead and went straight back to sleep.

It was 06:20 when I awoke next. And had this been a weekday, I would have been straight out of bed. However, it’s a Sunday when there’s a lie-in until 07:59 so I curled back up under the quilt. I tried to go back to sleep but without any luck. Nevertheless, I stuck it out until about 07:10, when I finally abandoned the effort and left the bed.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hospital somewhere where there were a great many sick patients for all kinds of reasons. One of the things that this hospital did was to give abortions. There was one of the doctors who was violently opposed to the idea of abortions, and he and his wife made themselves extremely unpleasant on the subject. They had to be diverted away from the other services. There was an issue with the woman, something to do with packing a baby away. They were in the middle of doing this when suddenly they announced that one of the baby’s left hand had disappeared and there was a feeling that it had its arm wrapped around its neck. They had to stop the procedure and examine it. However, this doctor was quite angry, violently so, against some kind of situation that was taking place between the hospital and his wife of this affair. I had to go along and check on something, and it was not a situation that I liked very much. He and this other woman were sitting there discussing this case, and I was trying to work in this room in the background, but it was not very encouraging. I wasn’t really able to complete what I was supposed to do while he was there. He was running back and to, doing things in connection with this issue, and I couldn’t really have some kind of minute to myself to do what I needed. I had a feeling that I was going to be discovered any minute now, and this was going to lead to an extremely violent confrontation.

As if there’s any chance of me working in a hospital. The story about the baby refers to the daughter of a friend of mine in Florida whose mother had a very uncomfortable birth with her. The doctor referred to seems to resemble someone whom I knew in Crewe fifty years ago. He wasn’t a doctor and he had no opinion on abortion, but the rest of his character and personality fits.

We were then having a little get-together in Gainsborough Road. I’d invited a friend of mine round, and she came because her husband was working on nights and he had gone to bed. We were there having a chat, and the woman from next door was here. As we had a close look at the houses, we saw that next door’s house had a cellar, or seemed to have a cellar – there was a small window underneath the living room window whereas mine didn’t. This was probably accounted for by the slope of the land. We were intrigued by this and had a discussion. In the end, we asked the lady next door “how do you go into the cellar?”. She couldn’t remember, but she said that she had been in there once. She thinks that she remembers that you collapse the side of something and open a window. From outside, she shone a torch in through the cellar window, saying “I wonder what’s happening here now?”.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. But there is no cellar at the next-door house in Gainsborough Road and as far as I am aware, there are no cellars anywhere in the vicinity.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and breezed out again shortly afterwards. It didn’t take her long to sort me out, and she gave me my instructions – or, should I say “orders” – for the dialysis clinic tomorrow. I have to make sure at all costs that they examine me.

After breakfast, I came back in here and spent the morning catching up on the football highlights, including Stranraer’s monumental morale-boosting win against Edinburgh City. And not just a scrappy win either but a resounding 3-1 win away from home.

After the disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I had work to do. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain the shipping beacon for the port. It’s mounted in my apartment with the antenna on the shutters. Its purpose is to detect the shipping identification transmissions from the equipment on board the ships moored here and transmit them to a central control in Denmark.

A few weeks ago, the beacon ceased to function, and closer examination revealed that the beacon was of an obsolete type that should be replaced. They had sent a new one during the week so this afternoon, I assembled and installed it. It now seems to be working fine.

While I was doing that , I was chatting with several friends on line It’s nice to interact with people like that, although of course it’s not as nice as to chat face-to-face.

There was bread to make and a pizza to make too. The bread didn’t rise as high as usual, which is a disappointment, but the pizza was excellent once more. I was really impressed with that.

But now I’m off to bed, early enough, to prepare for my busy week next week.

But seeing as we have been talking about babies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a guy coming out of the chemist’s with a baby under each arm.
"Where are you going with those?" I asked him.
"Back to the factory" he replied.
"The factory?" I queried.
"Yes" he replied. "I’m the local Durex representative and these are two complaints that I’m taking back with me."

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Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing whatever seems to have gone your way? Well, that’s how it seems to have been today.

Actually, it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and one or two (but only one or two) things did seem to go according to plan, but the rest of the time seems to have been spent lurching from one disaster to another.

There’s no point complaining about last night, because finishing my notes early but going to bed late seems to be par for the course these days and nothing that I seem to be able to do will ever change that, by the looks of things.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly but whatever happened after that was the first entry in this catalogue of disasters.

When I awoke, I had a feeling that there was something totally wrong, so I checked the time. Yes, it was actually 07:10 – some forty minutes after the alarm should have gone off. Did I sleep through the 06:29 alarm and its repeater at 06:33? Or did I forget to set it last night (it should set itself automatically)?

When you consider how loud BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE is, first thing in the morning, it can really only be the latter.

So at that point, I leaped to my feet … “well, not exactly” – ed … and staggered off into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for my medication. That was when Bane of Britain found that he had forgotten to take his Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D on Saturday

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

I was playing American football last night. We were all lined up on the goal line of our team, and someone threw the ball in from the touchline. It landed almost right at my feet so I fell on it to try to kill the ball. For some reason, the referee didn’t call the ball dead so I had to struggle to my feet, with two or three of the opposing players clinging on, and tried to move it away from near the goal. I managed to make about three or four paces before the weight pulled me down to the floor. I thought that that was really impressive, given everything else happening at the time.

Throwing in from the touchline in Gridiron? Somehow I’m confusing my sports here. It might be possible to do so in Rugby Union, I suppose, but then the ball wouldn’t be called dead in that kind of circumstance anyway.

And then there was something else about being in the kitchen of someone else’s house. They had a large white dog that was always hungry, looking for its food, so they simply turned the door of the cupboard upside-down so that the dog’s food was at the top and the dog couldn’t reach it. After a couple of minutes of sniffing around, the dog suddenly began scratching at the bottom of the cupboard door. It had only worked out where the food was, but it couldn’t manage to open the door. The old man of the house was quite comfortable with this going on, although everyone else wasn’t so much. Then this girl appeared. She walked into the kitchen where everyone was sitting. She said something along the lines that she was feeling hungry, but she had to hurry because she was having to go out. The young boy of the family said “the food’s off tonight”. She wondered what he meant. He told her that her father was fed up of the kitchen not actually making a profit so was rather in the way of putting various restrictions on what went on. The dog was amongst the first people to suffer.

That’s another dream that is totally meaningless as far as I am concerned. Whoever heard of a kitchen making a profit? I wish mine would.

But at least there’s no mention of anything to do with the American Revolutionary War.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in as usual, full of good humour and bonhomie. She dealt with my legs and feet, and then breezed out as rapidly as she had come. I could then push on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we’re discussing the British attack on Philadelphia where, for once, it’s the American dilatory tactics that affect the battle, with the British for once pushing on rapidly.

But Henry Carrington’s writing is sometimes, quite unintentionally amusing because of the stance that he takes. He writes pages about the “looting, pillaging and plundering undertaken by the British Army” but glosses over the “American Army seeking forced contributions from the local inhabitants”

Back in here, I had to prepare my timetable for the Centre de Ré-education and then do one or two other things, but the taxi driver rang me to say that he would be early, so I had to abandon everything in order to make myself ready.

At the Centre de Ré-education, my first appointment was with a physiotherapist who gave me a good in-depth examination in order to work out what programme of exercises would do me most good.

The second one was with with someone from the APA – the organisation that deals with autonomy. She wanted to see what I could do and what I needed in order to continue to live alone in my own property.

My next sessions are organised for Friday, so it’s all going to be really quick.

The taxi was due to come to pick me up at 12:30, but by 13:00 I was still waiting, so I ‘phoned them up. Eventually, the car arrived. The driver had had a breakdown … “he means ‘the car'” – ed … and it had taken a while to fix.

Back here, I could hear the computer in the office making strange noises, but I needed a disgusting drink break and to take my midday medication.

My cleaner appeared shortly afterwards and so I went for a shower. It seemed to be easier to climb into the shower today, which made a pleasant change, and it was beautiful. This shower really works and I’m glad that I had it done.

The washing is building up, due to not being able to use the washing machine until the leak somewhere is fixed, so my cleaner grabbed an armful of clothes to wash in her machine, which was nice.

Back in here, we had the ultimate catastrophe. The computer had ground to a halt and wouldn’t restart. There was just an error message “auto-repair cannot fix this drive”. And that’s bad news because I’d only bought this drive in March this year.

This could, in normal circumstances, be considered a calamity but that’s not so in here.

First of all, I keep the system files on one disk and the data files on a second, so that if one fails, the other one still is accessible.

Secondly, it’s the system disk that has failed, and I still have the previous disk, the one prior to March 2025, that I had put on one side after I’d taken it out. So having found it again (which is a surprise after the house move when I can’t find anything at all), I swapped it back and reinstalled it.

But it’s totally disappointing, and it’s shattered my illusions. The drive that has failed is a 1TB Solid State Drive and because these drives have no moving parts, which, according to their publicity, makes “them faster, quieter, and more durable. This absence of mechanical components means SSDs are less prone to physical wear and mechanical failure”

Well, so much for the publicity

In the middle of all of this, I crashed out yet again with another one of these catatonic attacks followed by actually slipping off to sleep for twenty minutes. I hope that this isn’t going to become a regular feature. I’ll be totally dismayed if it is.

Rosemary rang me later for a little chat. And it was a little chat too – only one hour long today. One of the subjects of discussion was the semi-feral cat that has adopted her and has rapidly transformed itself into a pampered domestic feline. It makes me even more determined to find a cat that will adopt me.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and once more, I left food on my plate. This is all rather worrying because it’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that things aren’t as they should be. I’m definitely sickening for something

But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I’ve had quite enough of today, thank you very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about my new computer drive … “well, one of us has” – ed … it’s a good job that I can remember my password.
It takes me back to when my brother first had a computer. When setting it up, he needed to create a password so he asked me about it
My reply was “You need at least six characters, plus one capital and also one special character”
So he replied “How about ‘HawkeyeTheLoneRangerThe VirginianMickyMouseBossHoggGandalfParisHermionebecauseIloveher”

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Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

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Wednesday 1st January 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all my readers. Those of you whom I know and those of you who prefer to remain in the shadows of the unknown. Come and say “hello” – I don’t bite. Well, not hard, anyway. Click on the link bottom-right for a contact form.

But anyway, that’s another year done and dusted – another year which, when it began, I thought that I would never see the end. Round about Summer time I was actually writing out my will and making my funeral arrangements, but I seem to be fighting back right at the moment.

So here’s to another year with improved health and prosperity for all of you. And a great big thanks and appreciation for all of the support that you have given me over the years. You’ve no idea exactly what it means to me

For 2025 I wish you everything that you wished on everyone else in 2024 – wishes for the Conservative Party excepted, of course.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, when the alarm went off this morning, I was off on my travels. I was with a group of people. It was something to do with a taxi business. These people were like extra-terrestrials, something like that, who didn’t belong on Earth and were wandering around here trying to find suitable humans to take back with them. There was something about an axe. I know that when the alarm went off there was a discussion going on about this axe. This axe fitted in somehow with the sound of the alarm so when the alarm went off, at first I wasn’t surprised to hear it because I thought that it was to do with the axe in the dream.

That’s right, you heard correctly. “When the alarm went off”. Brain of Britain has struck again.

It was 05:00 this morning and maybe later when I finally crawled into bed. After I’d finished what I had to do, I was playing about with this voice clone program and managed to produce some interesting effects.

But then I had a thought. If I dictated a sound-byte and recorded it, how would the voice-editing program that I use cope with it and transform the sound? After all, the voice-clone program must simply be a script editor that is changing pitch, tone and speed, so why can’t I do some of that by hand?

Admittedly, it’s much more complicated and much slower, but I could see more-or-less exactly how it’s done. In the free program at least. I imagine that the paid version is much more complicated and much quicker.

So there I was, working away producing some good results, and I noticed that it was 05:00. It’s a good job that I told the nurse to clear off. I cleared off too, into the bathroom to find my nightclothes and make myself ready for bed.

Then, of course, we hit a problem. Brain of Britain, who had been looking forward to a lovely, uncluttered lie-in where he could sleep until he awoke, for once in his life, had forgotten to switch off the alarm. That was the last thing that I needed.

But the dream itself was interesting. On our way up the hill from the railway station to the hospital in Avranches, we go past the “Battle Games” place where one of the entertainments on offer is of “throwing the axes” and I’ve often expressed an interest in going there to see what happens.

My taxi business ran in South Cheshire. Nerina and I had cars in Crewe and in Sandbach, so an extra-terrestrial, someone from another World and a more-advanced lifestyle would be anyone who comes from outside the boundaries of the Crewe and Nantwich and the Congleton Borough Councils.

After all of the drama I actually did manage to go back to sleep, and awoke at a much-more-reasonable 11:30. still not exactly the sleep that I wanted but I suppose that it will have to do.

It was 11:40 when I actually made it out of bed so it’s a good job that I told Isabelle the Nurse not to ‘phone me at 11:30.

After the usual trip to the bathroom I went into the kitchen to prepare my brunch.

Unfortunately, the hash brown mix that I made last week hadn’t survived. That’s a shame because I love hash browns, especially the ones that we have in Canada that I can’t find anywhere else unless I make them myself.

But no matter. With the fry-up in the air fryer, along with the sausages and baked beans with cheese I had a tomato and some mushrooms and all of that went down a treat on toast, along with porridge, more toast with cheese spread, grape juice and, of course, loads of strong black coffee. That’s what I call a good breakfast, but it’s still a shame about the hash browns.

While I was eating, I was reading MY BOOK.

We spent a lot of time discussing religion, but now he’s coming round to the first Roman invasion of the British Isles. He’s already mentioned the mass of human bones entangled with weapons, found in the Thames near Battersea, and he speculates that this was where the Romans tried to force a passage across the Thames.

He notes the difficulty of explaining all of the Celtic shields and the like in there, from a period well back from when the Romans arrive, so in the end he considers it unlikely to be the site. However, arms and armour were expensive items and I’ve seen all kinds of early Medieval wills where arms and armour were passed down from one generation to the next, and there’s no reason to suppose that in the pre-Roman days there was any change in this practice. So it’s quite possible that arms and armour from 200 years earlier might have been at any battle against the Romans.

But whatever they were doing in the Thames, some of the artefacts, such as “The Battersea Shield”, are magnificent examples of Celtic art.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night – or morning, more like. I was back in the Middle Ages later. There was something going on about promoting some kind of death insurance. It was the custom to wrap the dead in a shroud and hang them in the shroud from a hook. You would then take the shroud with the deceased inside and carry it to an undertaker. That was the limit of your duties – everything else would be dealt with automatically. I was surprised that there was this kind of thing going on back in those days but anyway …

Can you imagine that – rows of dead wrapped in bandages and shrouds like mummies and people unhooking them to carry them off? It’s a frightening thought and I wonder what on earth was going on during the day to put something like that into my head.

Apart from that, I’ve not done all that much at all today. I just loitered around in a relaxed frame of mind, totally forgetting until just now that I have bills to pay. I’ll have to do that tomorrow morning and I mustn’t forget.

Tea tonight was a taco roll and rice with veg, followed by the last of the Christmas pudding and some custard. There is still plenty of Christmas food left, like mince pies, Christmas cake, dates, biscuits and all of that. In fact I’ve hardly eaten any of my special supplies.

There’s a roll of pastry left which needs to be used, and so I’m going to have a bit of fun one of these days and make some individual vegan pies. We’re at the stage where the stocks in the freezer are running down and I need to be more imaginative with my baking. I’ll make a lentil and tofu mix, with oats to bind it all together, and use it all as filling

So tomorrow it’s the Dialysis Clinic again and I am not looking forward to that. Not even a smile from Emilie the Cute Consultant would persuade me to go there with any kind of eagerness. I’ll do a few things here and there and go to bed. A long way before 05:00 if I can.

And once again, a Happy New Year, many thanks and lots of love to you all.

But going back to the story of the extra-terrestrials, a few years ago they built a big rocket in Crewe
"Where are you planning to go with that?" I asked
"It’s called “Crewe’s Missile”" said the builder "and we’re planning Crewe’s first trip into Space. We’re going to the sun"
"Don’t be ridiculous" I said. "The sun is so hot that you’ll burn up long before you arrive anywhere near it"
"Ohh no we won’t" said the man. "We aren’t that stupid. We’re planning to go at night"
But the rocket still hasn’t left Crewe. Apparently they can’t find a bottle big enough in which to put the stick

0

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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Sunday 28th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… some excellent pizzas in my time but tonight’s pizza has beaten everything that I have ever made.

At first I thought that it was going to be a total disaster. I’d forgotten to add the oil to the mix and didn’t realise until far too late. As a result, the dough for tonight’s pizza was sticking to my silicon baking mat when I was rolling it out and we had something of a struggle.

But when it came out of the oven the base had fluffed up really well and was extremely light. Consequently it cooked even better than usual and if I could make pizzas like this all the time I’d be more than satisfied

Something else that I want to mention is to go back to something that I said a week or so ago about part-time teams playing full-time teams

This morning I was watching Aberdeen, full-time professionals of the Scottish Premier Division v Dumbarton, a part-time team promoted to the third from the fourth tier at the close season.

The first half was pretty even, finishing 0-0 at the break. Immediately from the restart (and I do mean “immediately”) before Dumbarton had come up to speed, they conceded 2 goals.

The score was 3-0 to Aberdeen with just 6 minutes to go, but it finished 6-0, as Dumbarton ran completely out of steam at the end and Aberdeen put them to the sword. It was a perfect example of what I had been saying, and I’m convinced that I’m correct.

Last night I ran out of steam quite late as it happened. Not that I’m complaining though because I dictated a pile of stuff for the radio and I’m catching up rapidly with the backlog, which suits me fine. I now have a pile of stuff ready for editing, which is good news as it will keep me out of mischief for a while.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. I was soon asleep and stayed that way for quite a while.

It was about 06:45 when I awoke but there was no danger of my leaving the bed at that time of day. It’s Sunday and a lie-in, although the days when I could lie in until midday and later are long-gone thanks to the visit of the nurse.

At 08:00 when the alarm went off I fell out of bed and began to organise myself.

And I seem to have lost another clip for my puttees. I’m convinced beyond all doubt that I picked up two in here but when I arrived in the living room I only had one and I’ve no idea where the other one has gone, despite a thorough search. In the end I had to raid the stores for another.

But it beats me how stuff can go missing in here. There’s quite simply nowhere for it to go where it can be missed or lost.

And of course the nurse was early today. I was only half-washed and half-dressed and I had something of panic-stricken five minutes to prepare myself while he was round at my neighbour’s

He seems to think that the wound in my arm has healed so well that in a week or so I won’t need the plaster. But he can have another think about that. I’ve no idea what they did, I don’t want to know and I don’t want to see it.

Yes – when they finally come to try to plug me in we’re going to have a panic attack like we’ve never had before, but that’s a bridge that we’ll cross when we come to it.

After he left I had a very leisurely breakfast and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There was a girl being interviewed on the radio about relationships with her boyfriend. She was regretting that her boyfriend was not the romantic type and recounted an episode where they had once come to some kind of big puddle in their path. While they were debating what to do, a passer-by came past, picked her up and carried her across the puddle and put her on the other side. She said that it was a shame that her boyfriend had never done anything like that. A few weeks later they found a big puddle in their path. He promptly agreed to pick her up to carry her. He stepped into the puddle but it was an extremely deep one that went up to his waist and he was stranded in there with his girlfriend. It just never worked out romantically as it ought to.

That’s a situation with which I can relate. Nothing seems ever to work out the way that I want it to either and it all inevitably ends up pear-shaped. I reached a stage a long time ago where I’d just let nature take its course and so much the better because then there’s far less to worry about. Some people seem to have a natural flair for this sort of thing, but someone somewhere has been given my share as well, I think.

And then I had the football. Stranraer weren’t playing this weekend so I had to look somewhere else for a game, and came across Aberdeen v Dumbarton, as I mentioned.

With a Premier Division team playing at home against a third-tier side there was only ever going to be one winner, but Dumbarton gave their hosts a fright, having the ball in the net after just a couple of minutes, only for it to be ruled out for offside

It took Aberdeen a while but once they were up to speed the inevitable rampage began.

After the game had finished I began to edit the notes that I’d dictated. The notes for the three additional tracks to make three complete programmes were completed first. They are all dealt with and assembled

At this point I broke off and made myself a salad sandwich for lunch, completely forgetting that I have this mushroom soup to make. Ahh well ….

For the first part of the afternoon I had one of the longer radio programmes to edit. That’s all done and the programme has been assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and the notes written awaiting dictation which will happen on Saturday night if nothing else happens to disrupt my plans.

Round about 16:00 I couldn’t decide whether to go to sleep or go for my hot chocolate. I chose the latter which was a good decision.

And then I had pizza dough to make as I’ve run out. As I mentioned earlier I forgot the oil but not to worry – the pizza dough rose like a lift.

Two balls are in the freezer and the third was used for tea tonight and as I said, it was the best pizza that I have ever made.

And so on that note I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight this week. Considering that Sunday is a Day f Rest when I don’t ever work, I have put my back into it today and accomplished a great deal. I ought to have a Day of Rest more often
It makes a change from when I rang up my boss and told him that I wasn’t coming into work today
"What’s the matter?" he asked
"I”m having a vision issue right now" I replied
"What’s wrong with your vision?" he asked
"I just can’t see myself working today" I replied.

0

Sunday 3rd March 2024 – I’M NOT TELLING …

… you what time I awoke today. It’s rather … errr … embarrassing.

And I’ve no idea either why it should have been what it was. I was in bed at 02:15 – a pretty reasonable time for a Saturday night/Sunday morning and I’d had plenty of sleep during the day too so I can’t have been all that tired.

There wasn’t much tossing and turning about during the night either. In fact I can’t remember moving at all while I was asleep.

The only thing that I can think is that I’ve had another one of those fits that I’ve been having just recently. But even then, I’ve been aware of my surroundings. This morning I was completely and utterly out of everything.

But we have to learn from lessons like this. You CAN teach an old dog new tricks and as of right now this minute, I shall be setting an alarm call for a Sunday. 11:00 might not sound particularly alarming for an alarm call for me, but it’s certainly a novel situation in which I find myself these days.

When I hauled myself out of bed I checked the blood pressure – 15.8/8.4, which is no surprise considering that my ears were steaming. Last night’s figure of 16.2/11.2 was due entirely to the frustration in having to track down some new batteries.

Why they can’t fit rechargeable batteries into machines like this is beyond me. My fitbit is rechargeable and even my kitchen scales will recharge off an USB port. How my life has changed since I’ve had my RECHARGEABLE KITCHEN SCALES and don’t have to scrabble around any more for batteries.

Once I’d done that I cleared off into the kitchen for my medication, and then I suppose that I’d better have breakfast, seeing what time it was – porridge, cheese on toast and hot black coffee – whilst I carried on reading some more of Sir Norman Lockyer’s THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY.

He’s the guy who came up with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were star-worshippers and that their temples and pyramids were located and orientated so as to catch the light of certain stars as they rose and set. And I suppose that Lockyer was over the moon when he worked that out.

But several thousand years further on from the Ancient Egyptians there’s still plenty of star worship that goes on these days. But they aren’t the kind of stars of which Lockyer was thinking.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as they were. A propos l’acteur Davy Buell il a continué vers le Texas où il a travaillé pour un petit moment, entré dans une Ordre réligieuse et puis était acteur à la télévision et acté dans les filmes qui sont biens connus par la publique américaine.

Yes, that’s what I said – In French, which surprised me completely. “About the actor Davy Buell – he continued on towards Texas where he worked for a short while, entered a religious Order and then had been an actor on television and in films that were well-known to the American public”.

It’s not the first time that we’ve had dreams in French. There have been several in the past. We’ve also had dreams in Flemish, Welsh and in Spanish too.

Yes, Spanish. Apart from having several Spanish colleagues at work from whom I was able to pick up the kind of language that you’d never learn in class, while I was having my “year out” after work in 2004/05 I went on a Spanish class at the University down the road from where I was living in Jette

That was quite an enjoyable year and an enjoyable class. I met that nice Asian girl with whom I had something of a fling but I can’t believe it (well, I can, actually) – even as recently as those days I still encountered parents warning their girls about me, and the girls taking notice.

It seems that I am fated to go wandering through the universe encountering this kind of opposition until I myself turn into a star – but no Egyptian will ever erect a pyramid of temple to worship me.

But do you know why there are pyramids in Egypt?
It’s because they were too heavy to move to the British Museum.

That reminds me of the time that I was in Egypt visiting the Great Tomb of Seti, I was told by a tourist guide that it was 3,200 years 3 months and 16 days old
And so I asked him how come they could date the tomb so accurately.
He replied "when I started work here they told me that it was 3200 years old, and I’ve been working here 3 months and 16 days."

There was more on the dictaphone too. Did I dictate the dream that I had twice … "no you didn’t" – ed … about being in that house and there being some kind of machine that had to fit on me like a blood pressure sleeve that would hopefully make me feel better but was one that I found very difficult to actually fasten on with one hand. It took a great deal of doing yet in the end I managed to fasten it on. It seemed to support me enough for whatever it was that needed doing. I had this dream not once but twice, once after the other.

That’s obviously related to this meeting that I have on Tuesday when they are going to be talking to me about some “mechanical aids” or whatever to help me with my problems. I wonder what they are likely to be.

Having done that I made a start on the radio notes – editing some in order to prepare the next programme.

The stuff that I dictated last night is going into the bin by the way. Whatever I wrote last week was total rubbish and makes no sense at all. Not that much of my stuff ever does, but we have to pretend about it.

There is however some stuff in a kind-of backlog so I made a start on some of that.

Not for long though because I had some hummus and some fruit buns to make.

Fruit buns first, and no banana today so I had to use more water. But piles of dried fruit, crushed nuts, sunflower seeds, desiccated coconut and the like. It’s all good stuff, took an age to knead but it went together quite well and rose nicely too.

While it was rising I made my hummus. One batch with chilis and a second batch with olives – and the missing ingredient was almost blood as I had cut myself quite badly on the blade of the food processor.

There was pizza dough to roll out too for tonight’s tea. And being plain flour it did really well too.

So the pizza was delicious, the hummus looks (and tastes) excellent and the bread rolls look great. I had a really good afternoon in the kitchen.

Shame about the morning though, but I hope that an alarm call in the future will help in that situation.

Nevertheless, what a state to be in? I ought to be ashamed of myself. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t go on like this. It’s ridiculous

If I go on like this people will be calling me Rip van Eric and that’s not the reputation I want. Geoff Goddin called the volunteers behind the resurrection of the Talyllyn Railway as having a "Boy’s Own comic spirit of adventure, involving enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility" and that’s much more like my style of doing things.

As Tennyson put it, "my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die" – which won’t be long a-coming but I’ll do what I can until then

Hence the alarm on a Sunday as of now. And about time too.

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Saturday 24th February 2024 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY …

… to me.

yes, and it’s one of these “significant milestone” birthdays, as several people have been quick to point out, thank you very much.

Not that I’m celebrating too loudly because at my age it’s not how many birthdays you have but how many you have left

However I did like the card that my friend Robert in Shetland sent me – "Seen it all, done it all, heard it all – just can’t remember it all". In my case though, I can’t remember anything these days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … two things happen to you when you reach my age. The first is that you forget absolutely everything
… "what’s the second thing?" – ed …
I don’t know. I can’t remember.

Last night I remembered eventually to go to bed. Round about 02:00 it was because I didn’t set an alarm this morning. I decided to have a lie in. and I would have had one too apart from the barrage of text messages that started at 08;02. It’s actually quite nice to be popular for once.

Anyway it was 11:15 when I finally arose from the Dead and that’s about right for a lie-in.

This morning’s blood pressure – 17.7/10.0. Last night it was 18.3/10.8 so there was nothing exciting happening during the night to make my blood boil

After the medication I came back in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. We were in some kind of competition or something like that to try to reach the end of the obstacle course. We had several difficulties. The first thing was that we had two young people with us who were perhaps not as committed as maybe I would have liked them to have been. One was a famous singer and she kept on having her photograph taken. She had it once taken at a very inconsiderable point when she should have been singing something for us and a group photograph was taken of us and then, say, the two of them singing or the two of them dancing when they’d been performing a completely different task that the rest of us have been performing, usually on their own. We didn’t win, which was no surprise with those two young people but it was an extremely stressful occasion. But one thing that we learned was that we weren’t the only people who cheated by a long way. The other people cheated by much more than we did. They cheated in real terms and real figures. We of course used to fly the odd stranger in and dress him in uniform, a fire brigade uniform or school uniform or whatever and infiltrate them into the group as a whole, but only after they had died and it had all been over and there was still plenty of work to do. I’d engaged a drummer and he … fell asleep here …

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating these notes. So when I say that I fell asleep, what I mean is that everything suddenly goes quiet and after a few seconds I hear a low, sleeping breathing.

Or occasionally a deep snoring sound, and I’m sorry for not believing you, Percy Penguin

Another thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is that even though I’m asleep, dreaming and dictating, I usually have some recollection of a dream that comes back to me as I’m typing it.

But sometimes I have absolutely no recollection at all of them, like the one above. I could recall nothing whatever of it.

In complete contrast to the one below.

I’ve forgotten most of this dream thanks to having to look for the dictaphone that I’d lost in bed. We’d had a foreign girl staying with us. She was one of these people who knew everything and made sure that you knew that she knew everything. I can’t remember anything about it except that we all went to bed at the end of the night. She was sleeping in my room as a child. All of a sudden her alarm clock went off. I had a look at the time and it was 08:02. I suddenly realised that it wasn’t an alarm clock at all but someone sending a message and it was my phone that had given its message signal

In this dream I was in Worcester. My German friend and another guy were busy picking out a tune on a guitar. I was wondering all the time whether to go and fetch my acoustic bass to join in. They carried on picking out this tune but it was winter and we were outside and I was freezing and so was everyone else. Gradually they worked it out and gradually we walked up a hill with the two of them playing this song. We had a small child with us and it was complaining about how cold it was. I was wondering when we’d go to find some food as I was starving. But we carried on walking up the hill. We reached the top and my car was there. I opened the door to my car and a charity collector turned up. He was collecting money so I asked him what for. He replied “for taxi passengers to wish them a happy Christmas and they’d give the money back as tips for the driver”. I put my hand in my pocket and threw in what change I had- about 5.5p. he said “that’s more then 10p” and pulled some strange object out of one of the collection boxes. “I’ll give you the change for that next week”. I couldn’t see what it was. Now this situation i the town is becoming crucial. I thought that we’d drive into the town and go to the railway station to look around for a while. But I was picked up in this dispute by Worcester Council. They, or some other people wanted to change everything from “Wulfrunian” to “Worcester” o the grounds that no-one knew where Wulfrunia was. But I was opposed to that idea because it’s just another “dumbing down” exercise for the UK and they’ll sink to the level of the Americans at this rate.

It looks as if “dumbing down” has already commenced because, as any schoolboy might know, “Wulfrunian” related to Wolverhampton, not Worcester.

And as it happens, I do have an acoustic bass. In all of the various apartments in which I’ve lived in Belgium, I don’t think that I ever had the electric bass out. I probably didn’t play it for 20 years.

Instead, I had the Ibanez acoustic and I could play that anywhere, including in a van and occasionally at Folk Festivals like the one on the Scottish Borders where a few of us from University hung out and did voluntary work.

It was there that I met a few people and had a great deal of fun playing bass with a few different people here and there.

It wasn’t until I was set up in Virlet that I had out the EB3, and of course I play it here along with the 5-string fretless electric bass. Not for nothing have I found an apartment in a building with solid granite walls 1.20m thick.

But the EB3 is a genuine Gibson guitar from the early 1960s, totally original. It’s exactly the same model as played by Jack Bruce. I bought it in 1975 when the group in which I played was going on the road after a couple of months of rehearsals.

It cost me an arm and a leg back them but I’ve been offered a King’s ransom for it and turned it down. They’ll have to take it …. errr … “from my cold, dead hand”.

Later on I’d been on a University course and we were at Nottingham. It was a course that I didn’t like for some reason. There was something about it that irritated me. At the end of the course we were all assembled, given a closing speech and then dismissed. I set out to walk to the railway station. It was along a public footpath that wends its way out of town and crossed over a railway bridge of this really elaborate cast-iron railway bridge that had been a railway bridge a long time before but was now part of the footpath. There was a girl in the distance who had been on the course. She shouted at me and pointed “what’s this area here that looks all desolate?”. That’ son the other side of the bridge, a huge flat area. I replied “that would have been the marshalling yard for the old railway line on which we’re walking”. She made some kind of disparaging remark about Nottingham and said that she didn’t know why she was walking this way because she’d understood from the University that if she’d been on this course you’d have to stop in your own time and look around areas like this. I couldn’t remember any such instruction in the instructions that I’d received but if that’s what she’d received then fair enough, I couldn’t see why she was arguing about it.

This reminds me of an on-line course I was studying. It was an aeronautics course provided by Oxford University. I had immediate misgivings when they began to talk about the Messerschmitt Me109.

Although colloquially it is often referred to as an Me109 it was actually designed by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke before it was reformed as the Messerschmitt company in 1938 and so the correct description of the model is the Bf109

Not that a thing like that would normally bother me but a University teaching a course ought to get it right.

This morning to celebrate (although I’m not quite sure what I’m actually celebrating) I made myself a cooked breakfast. Some of the hash browns from the freezer, tinned mushrooms, a vegan sausage and some beans on toast with my porridge and coffee.

For once I decided to treat myself, and why not? It’s not every day that you reach a milestone like this.

This afternoon there was football on the internet – Pontypridd United v Colwyn Bay. The bottom two clubs in the League desperate for points to overhaul the teams above them and scramble to safety.

But for a few administrative errors and subsequent penalties, Ponty would have been clear already but they had ground to make up

And they played like it too. There was no-one special who caught the eye but they played as a team, which is a strange thing to say seeing as when I saw them 18 months ago they played like a clueless, leaderless, headless rabble.

On the other hand, Colwyn Bay played like a team already dead and buried. There was no leadership out there today and in fact (for I timed it) it was just over 60 minutes into the game before I heard one of the commentators mention the name of their captain.

Colwyn Bay certainly had a couple of chances and the crossbar will long be rubbing itself where Owen Cushion’s shot hit it, but they spent most of the time trying to walk the ball into the net, without the skill to do so, when they have players like Creamer and McCready who can launch screamers towards the net.

And height! High balls into the penalty area from corners and free kicks that sow panic and confusion into the defence instead of low flat balls easily and monotonously cleared away by the first defender ….sigh

The final result was 4-0 to Pontypridd, a margin that was rather unfair to Colwyn Bay but just underlines the size of the mountain that they have to climb. If you are going to make mistakes at this level you will be punished for them.

At the end of the match I went for a slice of my chocolate cake. I lit the candles on the top but a couple of icebergs in the Arctic immediately melted so I was obliged to extinguish them

But it was nice, chocolatey and gooey. And the cream certainly worked, which was very nice to know. I was worried about that for a while in case it had given up the ghost during the night.

Tea tonight was a slice of my wellington from the freezer, with roast potatoes, steamed veg and gravy, followed by rice pudding. The air fryer did a perfect job on the wellington and roast potatoes.

A real birthday treat that, and I reckon that I deserve it.

So here I am, another year older and deeper in debt as they say. Uma Shanker said "Life teaches us two important things – we are careless when we are young and by the time we get old, it is too late to be careful!" and that’s certainly true.

It was a long time ago that I passed the stage of caring about anything. I’m going to grow old disgracefully.

What consoles me is that half the population of the UK my age or older are dirty old men and I’m going to be like them.

And why can’t I be like the other half? That’s because they are dirty old women of course.

So when I’ve dictated the two radio programmes in the queue I’ll go to bed and plot the course of my life for the next 10 years – my next 10-Year Plan – knowing full well that it will be something that will never ever be fulfilled.

I’ll be pushing up the daisies a long time before then.

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Sunday 18th February 2024 – MY HOME – MADE …

… vegan mayonnaise worked to absolute perfection and if I can do it like that every time things will be great around here

It’s slow and time-consuming, but the results are well-worth it, and it’s another good reason for having bought my food processor at the end of last year.

The end of last night was rather a mess. I didn’t go to bed until well after 02:00, but that was after dictating two radio programme notes though. And as usual these days, they are a real mess and will take a lot of editing down to make them sound any good.

However that wasn’t a problem for last night. Being half-asleep I hauled myself off to bed

And it was a really good sleep that I had too. When I pulled my head out from under the covers and checked the time, it was 11:55. A good sleep indeed

When I eventually rose from the Dead, it wasn’t 11:55, I’ll promise you that. But there was the blood pressure to take – 17.4/10.6, surprisingly similar to last night’s 17.6/10.0

After the medication I went into the bathroom and put the washing-machine on the go. There’s my bedding and plenty of clothes that need attention. The bedding in particular could do with a really good hot wash.

Then I came back in here to check the dictaphone. I was sleeping solidly when I awoke with a start. Somebody pointed to me saying “this piece goes under the yellow”. It was someone from the hospital. They were trying to put something in the bed underneath the blanket but STRAWBERRY MOOSE was in the way. I went to help them but awoke instead. It seems that there had been a football team playing in a football league. It was one of these leagues where they had physical plans like musculators for the legs and things like that permitted. I was signed up to play and I had my legs all strapped up so that the bits of me that weren’t working were protected but the bits of me that were working were active so I joined this team and played n°s 5 to 11. I mostly played in attack. I remember two people saying that if I have as much more luck in attack then they’ll be conceding goals in the other team’s attack and I should be absolutely great, obviously referring to my periods in hospital. Instead, after a few days I demanded some annual leave so that I could clear out my bus and the shed where I’m living and clear out the dirt of my café. I was granted a bus and went to change it. I noticed from the change that this was a priority, not an ordinary run-of-the-mill school bus so I rang them up to find out about it because this should never have gone on a trip like this with me but kept in reserve until it was needed.A t the reserve they told me that it was all mine if I was careful so I put most of my things in and went back to prepare for leaving.

And that was rather confusing.

Later on I went to the hospital. The prescription was for double the treatment to my legs, i.e. double the injections and everything down there. On the way home I stopped and thought. There was a shop that was selling St Bernards and Alsatians. I thought that seeing as they were already in and around the farm somewhere so I might as well … fell asleep here … I knew that having a twin tailpipe was going to cost me twice as much in fines as having that single tailpipe just now but I thought that it was well worth it because of the difference in performance and difference in layout and well-being of their house, it would be much better this way

Here I am, having a dream within a dream – that’s an interesting concept. DENNIS WHEATLEY in his Satanist collection of books has his hero travelling between various levels of dreams within dreams but so far, I’ve only managed the two levels.

That’s complicated enough. I shudder to think what it would be like by the time that you arrive at your eighteenth or nineteenth

I was fast asleep just now dictating to nothing and I can’t remember now but it concerned our final match of the season, at the end of April against another Bangor team. We had all the support so we should overcome them quite easily but I mentioned the fact that the other team in Bangor now, mine was so much better with this new steering and I did a really good series of turns with it on the road to Amlwch. I was delighted with it and that I’d spent the money on it having it done

That sounds like something else where there’s a bit missing out of the middle. I wonder where it went

And finally I was with a friend from University (yes, I did have some) last night. I’d been absent from work for a while and was retiring on health grounds. She and I bumped into each other somewhere and ended up having quite a nice chat. She asked me about what I was doing so I explained. She said that I’d been very much missed in the office with people sending me their regards etc. Before I retired I had some kind of relapse and was not doing very well at all. She said that she’d asked someone how I was. They said that he seems to be OK but he’s gone a little wild these days. I thought that that was a pretty good description. She filled me in with all the news. I began to explain about things that I’d been doing before I retired and the office was going to be in quite a shock because I was doing so much. I had all these meetings arranged including one on the day that I was supposed to be retiring and no-one as yet has approached me to ask me how they are going to be covered. As far as I was concerned they aren’t going to be covered at all and I couldn’t care less. She was surprised at my attitude because she thought that I was going to leave thousands of ordinary people sitting around with less money than they ought to have. In a way she was right but I was just up to my ears in anger, I suppose, and I just couldn’t wait to leave that office and leave them with all kinds of complications that they’d have to sort out. maybe then they’d realise just how much work I was doing in that place.

It’s quite strange really. Before I retired I did take off some time as sick leave. And I counted – three different drivers rang me up about different aspects of the job that I was doing. In other words, it took three people to replace me.

But what was quite funny there was when I made a suggestion about how things might be improved. I was told “what do you know about this kind of work? ” by the guy in charge.

So on the way home I stopped at the stationer’s and bought some cheap A4 picture frames. And next morning as the guy in charge watched, I hung up my framed couple of Taxi Owners’ Operators Licences from Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council and from Congleton Borough Council, my framed copy of my Certificate of Professional Competence to Operate a Fleet of Coaches in the UK, and my framed copy of my Certificate of Professional Competence to Operate a Fleet of Coaches in Europe – the latter two being issued by the European Union .

Having done that, I asked him if he needed to see anything else, Strangely enough, he never said anything to me again after that.

In most jobs these days though, they have taken to sending home on the spot people who hand in their resignation. It was much more fun in the old days when you could plant time bombs in your working routine to go off after you’ve left, like asking 12 people to come in for an interview at exactly the same time when you know that there will be only four officials present, or booking 12 coach jobs simultaneously when the company has only 5 coaches.

You could spend hours thinking up imaginative and inventive time bombs to confound, confuse and demoralise an antagonistic employer.

All of the above was interrupted by brunch – porridge, strong black coffee and my cheese on toast. At the end of the day I wasn’t too discouraged by the bread. It still tasted nice with bread, cheese, tomato and onion.

Once I’d finished the dictaphone notes it was time to make the mayonnaise.

  • 120ml of soya milk was whizzed around until it began to thicken
  • Once it started to become thick, add a teaspoon of wine vinegar and also your flavouring, like garlic, tarragon, sea salt, lemon juice, chives, diced onion
  • Whizz that lot up for 30 seconds or so
  • Scrape around the sides and base of your whizzing bowl to free off anything that is stuck to it and then whizz again for 10 seconds.
  • Start up the whizzer and while it’s whizzing add 240 ml of vegetable oil drop by drop by drop.
  • Once about a third of the oil has been added, you can slowly increase the speed at which you are adding it
  • Scrape around the sides and base of your whizzing bowl to free off anything that is stuck to it and then whizz again for 10 seconds.
  • Put it in a pot in the fridge

It takes an age adding the oil drip by drip and it’s quite uncomfortable holding the container. I will have to think of a work-around to make it easier. Some kind of plastic container maybe with a pin hole at the bottom perhaps

Back in here I started with the radio programme, one of the ones where the soundtrack was recorded a while ago but not yet edited. And by the time that I’d knocked off for tea it was almost all ready. The final, 11th track has been chosen and remixed, and I just have to write, dictate, edit and assemble the notes that go with it and then assemble it.

That will be tomorrow morning’s job.

There were a few interruptions. For a start … "or for a finish" – ed … the washing machine finished its work and I had to hang out the clothes. And this little trolley really is worth its weight in gold being pushed around the apartment by my crutches, with all kinds of different things on it.

After lunch I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and by 18:00 it had defrosted so I could knead it again and roll it out onto my pizza tray.

After it had stood for an hour or so I went back, assembled the pizza and then baked it. And it’s not denying that it was one of the best that I’ve ever made. Everything about it was just about right tonight.

So that’s all that I’m doing today. Despite Sunday being a Day of Rest I’ve really been quite busy, and like the Duke of Wellington said after the Battle of Waterloo, "I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there".

Right now I might actually go to bed if I can summon up the energy to do so but I dunno. Maybe I should remember the words of baseball coach “Yogi” Berra and "If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there"

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Sunday 11th February 2024 – MY VEGAN SAUSAGE …

… rolls are not quite the success that I was expecting.

Either the sausage filling has expanded during cooking or the pastry that I used has shrunk, but they have come apart where I thought that I’d joined the pastry, so there’s a slit up the middle

But we live and learn, hey? Rome wasn’t built in a day. I shall just have to have more practice with this rolled-up puff pastry stuff.

While we’re on the subject of thinking … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had plenty of time to think while I was in bed last night.

It might have been 02:00 when I finally staggered off to bed but when I opened my eyes this morning and looked at my fitbit the time was 11:42. That’s much more like a respectable time to awaken on a Sunday

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll get up at any time you like six days per week without a problem (well, in principle anyway) but on Sunday don’t call or message me on a Sunday unless …

  1. … the building is on fire
  2. … the fire brigade is in the building trying to fight the flames
  3. … and the firefighters have given up all hope

So 11:32 was when I opened my eyes. That is of course not to say that 11:32 was the time that I left the warmth and comfort of my bed.

When I did raise myself from the dead I took my blood pressure. 17.8/9.9, a little less than last night’s 18.9/11.2. The hospital asked me to collect all these readings but no-one has told me what to do with them.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. The game of rugby was invented in the late 19th Century and what we know about everything of the game dates from 1915 when they abolished the machines that surveyed the touchlines as humans did it, on the grounds that when there was a human call that differed from that of the machine it sounded as if the integrity of the sport was all wrong. Of course not everyone had a machine * it was only a few clubs so it was why these differences in calling in just a few clubs was quite different between the males and the machines on several occasions

And I’ve no idea at all what that’s all about

Later on I was out somewhere. I’d had a lot of money given to me as a discount for something. It was exactly the same price as a large teddy bear so I had the large teddy bear instead. I carried it around with me for a short while. Then I had to go off to do something else so I put the teddy bear in the common room by the entry into my daughter’s school – my daughter might have been Roxanne. Later on my partner and I had to go to pick up Roxanne from school. When we did I told her that she had this new friend. When I explained that it was too large to bring home we’d have to bring it home another time. I explained to her where it was. She asked his name but my mind went a total blank. I’d given it a name when I’d bought it but I just couldn’t think of it at the time of this dream.

It goes without saying that STRAWBERRY MOOSE can see himself in part of this, but no-one who has seen Sid James and Peter Butterworth in CARRY ON UP THE KHYBER won’t eve rforget his name.

Finally, we’d been to Munich and ended up staying in a hotel – one of these hotels where the staff is extremely superior etc. I found the hotel to be quite reasonable and didn’t have an objection to coming back here again but one of my friends didn’t like it at all. I couldn’t understand why. When we were cleaning the rooms ready to leave we came across all kinds of things like envelopes, photography paper etc in a kind of welcome package that made the deal even better but one of my friends said that he wouldn’t stay in this hotel even if they gave him a printer that he could sell to have his money back. I was really puzzled as to why. I tried to ask him but he was quite evasive about his replies. I didn’t know how the situation could advance if he wasn’t going to answer correctly. I found the hotel to be good value and quite reasonable. I’d be really happy to return here.

This is an argument that I’ve had on quite a few occasions. When I look at the comments on some of these booking websites and see what people have written, it bewilders me. I’m usually on the budget plan when I’m travelling and I don’t expect there to be much in the way of facilities for the money that I want to pay.

It seems to me that some people expect to pay bus fare but travel in a Rolls-Royce the way that some of these comments go.

There was that dreadful motel in Flagstaff in Arizona where I stayed 20-odd years ago but it was the cheapest motel that I could find so I wasn’t complaining.

That was the time that I was attending a Biodiesel course in Colorado and then going down to pick up up a couple of wind turbines in Flagstaff.

Knowing how things worked, I paid a credit to my credit card supplier and also told them where I was going and where I was going.

However after picking up the wind turbines and paying for them, I went to fuel up the Mustang only to find that my credit card was now blocked for “unusual spending patterns”, despîte having told them.

And so I had to rely on the small amount of cash that I had on me until next morning when I could telephone the bank and have the situation resolved.

In those circumstances, you don’t complain about the quality of your accommodation.

However, it’s these kinds of things that teach you a few lessons. I now have three credit cards from three different banks in three different countries.

That kind of thing can lead to some kind of excitement. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall MY STAY AT THAT MOTEL IN FARMINGTON, MAINE where I was asked to prove my identity so I produced …

  • Identity – British passport
  • Proof of address – French Driving Licence
  • Vehicle registration – New Brunswick plates
  • Mobile ‘phone – Québec number
  • Payment – Belgian credit card

That’s the kind of thing that will keep them occupied for a while.

After lunch I dealt with the radio programme for my Hawkfest. That was a really complicated thing to assemble and took me well into late evening before it was up and running. And up and running it is too.

Much to my surprise, considering that I was working it inside-out and all at once instead of doing as I usually do and adding the final track later, it was just 13 seconds too long. That kind of editing is no problem at all and it was soon down to one hour in length.

There was a pause while I made the dough for the next few pizzas. And I don’t know why but the dough rose up like a lift, quite the opposite of my cannon balls from the other week. So why can’t I make my bread rise up like this?

While it was rising, I was making the stuffing for my sausage rolls. The vacuum-packed chestnuts worked perfectly with mushrooms and in principle it all went very well indeed

The final result was maybe less than I was expecting but you can’t win a coconut every time. They’ll still freeze nicely and finish off quite well in the air fryer with a portion of chips and some baked beans.

The stuffing tastes rather sweet to me but I suppose that it’s meant to be like that.

There was enough stuffing left to make a kind of burger or patty so I’ll fry that and have it with a baked potato at some point in the near future.

The pizza was absolutely perfect. The dough was lovely and soft and crumbly, and I remembered the cherry tomatoes this week.

So all in all, a busy day today and one that was quite successful. I accomplished a lot today.

Those chestnuts will be on the menu again now I know where they can be found, so my cooking will go up another notch. I have plenty of vegan recipes where chestnuts are an important part of the recipe.

A few more busy and productive days like this will be really good, but it won’t be next week. Monday and Tuesday I have this Welsh course, and then on Wednesday I’m off to Paris for my important meeting with my specialist.

THis is where we’ll decide what happens to me in the future. Will they still deal with me? Will they abandone me? Will they refer me to a hospital closer to home?

But what does it really matter? As Jacqueline de Bellefort once said, "one must follow one’s star, wherever it leads – even to death itself."

But I shan’t be dying alone and unloved. At least the French medical service seems to care about me to some degree – probably just until I’ve paid these bills that I owe them.

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