Tag Archives: shower

Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… will see me installed downstairs, if all goes according to plan. It won’t be everything down there of course – just the essentials like the bed, the office and the kitchen. That’s the important part of everything. The rest will arrive when it arrives.

But it won’t be without its vicissitudes though. I’ve had the “summons” to attend hospital on Tuesday next week for chemotherapy, staying over until Wednesday afternoon. And it’s to Paris again. It seems that my plea to be treated at Rennes has fallen on deaf ears.

Something else that has fallen on deaf ears – my own this time – is my plea to be in bed by 23:00. Once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out

For no good reason, except that yesterday I appear to have written WAR AND PEACE instead of the usual notes, and that must have taken an age. And by the time that It’d taken the stats and backed up the computers, it was probably closer to 00:30 than anything else.

That’s not the worst of it. I was wide-awake at 01:50. So wide-awake that I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed. However, second thoughts prevailed and I curled up under the covers again, where eventually I managed to go back to sleep.

Not for long though, because I had one of these dramatic awakenings at – would you believe – 04:10.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and so round about 05:00 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in the bathroom having a good wash, having already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And not dictated them once, but twice. I made something of a pig’s ear of the first attempts and it was easier to start again.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in dialysis, but we were allowed to be up and about while we were being pumped around. There was one guy there who had a tablecloth over the top of his table and it looked as if he was baking. He was weighing out certain quantities of this and certain quantities of that. The guy who was in charge of supervising the dialysis section told him basically to stop doing that and to concentrate on being dialysed. However, the guy didn’t listen and carried on so the guy in charge began to make a few sarcastic remarks, such as “it looks as if you are making the tea for your mother” etc. In the end, the guy said that he was passing the time making this whatever it was and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever he likes during the period of dialysis provided that he doesn’t upset or disturb the other people. It looked as if the guy in charge was going to have some kind of argument, but the first guy said “if you had been here a couple of hours earlier, you would have seen three women here from the other group making folders for different purposes. At that point, I stuck my hand up and said that if everyone were allowed to do all kinds of different things and people could do all kinds of different things during dialysis, I think that the period of dialysis would pass so much quicker than it seems to do at the moment”. The guy in charge wasn’t very impressed. He just put his head down and just totally ignored everything after that

Dialysis is quite literally the bane of my life. It really is three and a half hours wasted each time because there is nothing that one can do. We lie in bed, not allowed to move in case we disturb something, and no exercise of any value, nor any entertainment other than a TV is provided.

One thing about which I have been badgering them is to provide things like pedicures, bed-yoga sessions so that we could profit from the time that we are there, but that seems to have fallen on stony ground too.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood this morning. Only three more days and then she’s off on holiday for a fortnight. That’s good news for her, but not so good for those of us remaining behind because we have her oppo for two weeks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve had our first meeting with Dr Dionysus Lardner. He was the Magnus Pyke of his day, one of the very first people to take science out of the laboratories and put it on the breakfast table in the ordinary home.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t always accurate in the events that he predicted. He told a tribunal hearing once that if the brakes failed on a heavily laden train going down a slope, it could reach speeds of 120 mph. Gooch and his boss, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had to remind him that there are such things as friction and wind resistance, and these would slow the train down considerably.

He also predicted that the larger the steamship, the more fuel it would need, and there wouldn’t be the space on board for all the coal, failing to understand that if you double the breadth and width of something, you increase the volume fourfold.

Try it yourself – for example, if you have two metres width and two metres length, at one metre high, you have four cubic metres of space. But if you double the length and width, i.e. four metres width and four metres length, at one metre high you have a volume of sixteen cubic metres.

And so there’s plenty of room for extra coal.

Further along in the book, I stumbled upon one of my favourite quotes. Gooch talks about the early days of railway operation, saying "When I look back upon that time, it is a marvel to me that we escaped serious accidents. It was no uncommon thing to take an engine out on the line to look for a late train that was expected, and many times have I seen the train coming and reversed the engine, and ran back out of its way as quickly as I could. What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now ?"

Yes, "What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now?" How many times have I said that when reminiscing about my adolescence and young adulthood?

We have however reached the interesting part of the book. He’s off on the Great Eastern laying the telegraph cables along the sea bed from Valencia in Ireland to Heart’s Content on the island of Newfoundland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED HEART’S CONTENT ON OUR MEGA-VOYAGE AROUND NORTH AMERICA IN 2017 when I went to say goodbye to all of my friends in Canada and the USA. Who would have thought that I’d still be here eight years later, defying all the odds

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated and despite several interruptions, they are all now finished and the radio programmes assembled. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the next one.

Seeing as we have been talking about interruptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the first one was the man who came to repair the electric door opening device. In a fit of pique and bad temper, I sent a somewhat … errr … intemperate mail to the building’s management team and, to my surprise, they reacted.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff too, and that included putting me in the shower. Do you realise? That was the last time that I’ll have to clamber into the bath to have a shower. Te next shower that I have will be in my shower downstairs.

That is, if the plumber extricates his digit. He’s not the fastest of workers and he’s not going to have this finished by the time I come home from Paris. Mind you, he seems to be making a very thorough and solid job of everything.

Sadly, I also crashed out today, which is no surprise seeing how little sleep I’ve been having just recently. It was the hospital that awoke me, telling me the news about chemotherapy. And it was tough trying to follow the conversation, seeing that I was still somewhere up in the clouds.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry. One of the best that I have ever made, I reckon. And now I’m off to bed for a really good sleep ready for a good afternoon at dialysis. There’s nothing like optimism, is there?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my pleas falling on deaf ears … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the situation to my niece in Canada, with whom I have been talking today.
"That’s no surprise" She said. "The rest of the family thinks that you are a miserable pleader – or something like that, anyway."

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Friday 8th August 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

That is not, however, a surprise. When you are in bed just before 23:00 … "for once" – ed … but awaken at about 01:30 and just lie there vegetating without being able to go back properly to sleep, you don’t have all that much time to go travelling.

That’s right – for once, I was in bed by 23:00 and that doesn’t happen all that often, much to my regret. Tea hadn’t taken very long to make and it was soon over, so I could come back here to write my notes, take the statistics and back up the computer.

And as it happens, I could have been finished even earlier had I applied myself more diligently to my work but as usual, I was sidetracked here and there during the evening.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing whatsoever until I awoke. And being awake, I did my very best to go back to sleep but somehow I couldn’t doze off again. I simply lay there in bed, drifting occasionally into a kind of semi-consciousness but still being aware of my surroundings, and then drifting back out again.

Round about 06:00, I gave up the struggle and took to my feet. I went into the bathroom and had a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but as I said just now, there was nothing on there from the night.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I find that extremely disappointing. These days, the only excitement that I seem to have is whatever takes place during the night. The rest of my existence is a boring, humdrum tour around these four walls with the occasional delight of dialysis and the odd trip to Paris for chemotherapy.

There was plenty to do this morning, such as to watch the highlights of Forfar Athletic v Stranraer and a couple of other matches too, and then the weekly summary from Stranraer as the club prepares for the match against Edinburgh City on Saturday.

Isabelle the Nurse was horribly late today. She forgot yesterday to tell me that she was going to undertake her morning round today in the reverse direction, due to one of her later patients having an early medical appointment.

After she left, I could make breakfast and then read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

It’s a book that is beginning to annoy me and I’ve only just started to read it. It’s his flowery prose, where he takes several lengthy paragraphs to express an idea that he could put down in a dozen words, that’s the problem. I mean – look at this as a way of expressing “the passage of 120 years” – "From just before its opening till a generation after its close, from the final conquests of the Normans to the reign of St.Louis, from the organising plan of Gregory vii. to the domination of Innocent in., from the first doubts of the barbaric schools to the united system of the Summa, from the first troubled raising of the round arch in tiers that attempted the effect of height to the full revelation of Notre Dame—in that 120 years or more moved a process such as even our own time has not seen."

It’s not only that either. His curt dismissal of the pre-Roman British civilisation as "savages" and "barbaric" when in Neolithic and Iron Age times we had classic pottery, jewellery, the smelting of iron (in the later period) and an agricultural system that was not surpassed until the early days of the Agricultural Revolution, is totally unsustainable.

He writes "Letters, geography, common history, glass, and the use of half the metals were forgotten. Not tU the Latin reconquest in the eleventh century was the evil overcome and an organisation at last regained.", but while the first sentence is only partially correct – letters, geography, common history and glass had been restored for several centuries by 1066 – the “reconquest” of which he speaks was not “Latin” at all. He should be reminded that the Duke of Normandy and his followers were in fact for the most part fourth-generation Norse who had occupied Normandy following the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Épée in 911.

Another thing that he mentions is "the rudest and most remote of our ancestors,". It made me wonder what on earth they must have been doing in their remote isolation.

But returning to our road for the moment, he goes on to talk about "Chalk is viscous and spongy when it is wet. It is never so marshy as to lose all impression made upon it. It is never so hard as to resist the wearing down of feet and of vehicles. Moreover, those who are acquainted with chalk countries must have noticed how a road is not only naturally cut into the soil by usage, but forms of itself a kind of embankment upon a hillside from the plastic nature of the soil.". Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WHEN WE WERE IN WYOMING looking for the emigrant trail of the 1840s towards Oregon and California, we saw some really good examples of trail ruts in chalk.

After breakfast, there was work to do. I went right through the kitchen a second time, sorting out what I won’t now need for a couple of weeks, and packed it all away in these plastic boxes that I have. Having done that, I then began to pack away the crockery, carrying on until I ran out of boxes.

There was time after that to write two important letters. One concerns a shareholding that I bought in 1977 and about which I had completely forgotten until a chance remark had jogged my memory. And before any of you lot says anything, it’s a tiny proportion of the total shares and the company has never ever paid a dividend. The purchase was more in the nature of a charitable donation.

The second letter will heave an enormous shark into a very small swimming pool. There are several matters that are annoying me, spinning around in my head, and yesterday I reached the limit of my patience with one of them. Consequently I wrote a letter to the Director General of the organisation concerned and I was … errr … unrestrained. There will be some fall-out about this, without a doubt.

Having done that, the next task was to persuade the printer to work. For some reason, it was proving to be extremely recalcitrant. It took a good while, including cleaning the print heads on no fewer than four attempts to persuade it. But in the end it managed to squeeze out a couple of fair letters.

Whatever it is, I don’t know but I never seem to have much luck with printers.

My disgusting drink break was thus later than usual and it didn’t take long to drink. However, I wasn’t long back in here before my cleaner came up to do her stuff.

She stuck me under the shower, due to the fact that I’d missed out on Wednesday, and then we sorted out some more things to go downstairs. She ended up taking the boxes downstairs, as well as some of the CD racks, Tomorrow, I’ll go downstairs and put everything away while I’m waiting for the taxi, and when I come back if the taxi comes early again.

After she left, I finished the radio programme on which I’d been working and then made a start on the next one. The music has been sorted out and the notes almost finished. It won’t take long to do and then I can crack on and do another one while I’m in the mood.

Tea tonight was miniature vegan nuggets with a salad and air-fried chips, with some more of that nice mayonnaise that I made on Tuesday.

So right now, I’m off to have an early night. There’s football to watch in the morning and plenty of other things simmering away in the background. I don’t know from where all of this work has appeared.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Norse ancestors of William the Conqueror … "well, one of us has" – ed … when Prince Rollo sailed up the Seine to besiege Paris, he had difficulty controlling his fleet of longboats.
Consequently, he installed a gong on each of his ships. One bang signified "go to port" – two bangs signified "go to starboard" – and three bangs signified "go full ahead."
That system is the basis of the modern system of remote communication that was popularised in the Nineteenth Century and was called "Norse Code." And that’s why every Norse raid was dreaded because of its series of gong bangs.

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Wednesday 30th July 2025 – AT LONG LAST …

new bedroom place d'armes granville manche normandy france… after several days of prevarication, I’ve finally come around to putting a photo of the bedroom online. The blue is rather bright, I agree, but there’s a huge difference between what I saw on a computer screen when I chose the colour and what the colour turned out to be in real life.

It’s complicated when I can’t go out myself to choose anything and have to rely on other people and the internet, but in those circumstances, we have to take what we can obtain. I’m sure that STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I, and the eventual cat of course, shall be very happy in there.

And in answer to the obvious questions that are bound to follow, yes I do have a sea view. If I go to the window and look to the right, I can see over the wall and over the clifftop to the sea. When the weather is really good, I can even see Jersey, even if it is 50 or so kilometres away.

You can also see the lovely granite walls that we have in this building, one metre twenty centimetres thick of granite – the legendary Grès de Chausey, built in 1668. Grès de Chausey was also used to build Mont St Michel down the bay from here.

With walls like this, I can play music as loud as I like and no-one can hear me.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this building is part of the Patrimoine de France – the equivalent of a listed building in the UK. In theory, we can’t even knock a nail into the wall without asking permission.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I’ve had a horrible day. Just like the Wednesday a week after the last chemotherapy, I’ve had a major relapse.

There were all the signs of that last night. Once more, I had a major wave of tiredness wash over me as I was writing my notes, and it was all that I could do to keep awake to finish the evening’s work.

Nevertheless, it was quite late by the time that I finally crawled into bed, relieved that I was to be there, and it didn’t take very long at all to go off to sleep.

What I didn’t anticipate though, although I should have done so, was that I would be awake at 03:20. Not just awake either, but totally unable to go back to sleep despite my best efforts.

In the end, a few minutes after 05:00, I finally gave up the struggle and crawled out of bed into the bathroom for a wash, followed by a trip into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and in view of the short night that it was, I was surprised to find something on it. I was back in medieval times. A few of us were associated with some kind of trade or brotherhood and were busy organising things for some kind of event. At that moment, the archbishop came in and he asked the person in charge of our party what we were doing. He replied that he was preparing things ready for the start of the hunt. The minister was outraged “having a hunt on a festival day? Don’t tell me that you are hunting on a festival day”. The boss had to deny it with some kind of stammer and embarrassment. Then we could continue our own preparations for celebrating this day by having sport and some kind of athletics competition followed by of course the dialysis for the day.

It’s no surprise that we have gone back into medieval times with the amount of medieval information that I’ve been reading just recently, especially with regard to the jousting tournaments. And involving dialysis too – there’s no surprise about that either. Just wait until I begin to dream about chemotherapy.

There were a few things to do this morning, such as finishing off sending the radio programmes for the month of August. And then Isabelle the nurse turned up. She gave me the injection, sorted out my legs, and then disappeared into the blue yonder.

However, I have heard on the grapevine that there’s some kind of issue regarding this nursing practice. I shall have to keep my ears open for more news.

Once she’d gone, I could make my breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. Not that I managed to go very far as the kitchen fitter turned up. However, he had all of the keys and everything that he needed, so he simply stayed downstairs and attacked the remaining work.

There were a few things of interest in the book that are worthy of note. Our author tells us that there "was sometime a large and most sumptuous house built by Charles Brandon, late Duke of Suffolk" that went through several ownership changes and eventually a merchant "pulled it down, sold the lead, stone, iron etc and in place thereof built many small cottages of great rents, to the increasing of beggars in that borough."

That was a fate that befell many large houses in urban areas in the 1960s and 1970s, with the same consequences.

One question that has also been answered today was "why are the effigies of some medieval knights shown on their tombs with their legs crossed?". Stow tells us that of the eleven tombs that he has noticed in the Temple Church in London, "eight of them are images of armed knights, five lying cross-legged as men vowed to the Holy Land, against the infidel and the unbelieving Jews."

So in other words, a cross-legged statue or effigy lying on a tomb is of a medieval knight who has taken the Oath of the Crusade

Something else that I’ve learned are the rules of running a brothel or “stew house”, which I’m sure will come in useful one of these days. Stow tells us, inter alia that "no stew-holder is to receive a woman of religion or another man’s wife.".

Even more interestingly, "no single woman to take money to lie with any man, but that she lie with him all night until the morrow."

Running a brothel back in those days was apparently a respectable business. "William Walworth, then mayor of London" was the keeper of one such place, so Stow tells us.

Not so respectable, apparently, for the women who worked there. Stow says that "these single women were forbidden the rites of the Church so long as they continued that sinful life and were excluded from Christian burial if they were not reconciled before their death, and therefore there was a plot of ground called ‘The Single Woman’s Churchyard’ appointed for them far from the parish church."

There’s no doubt whatever that I’m learning a lot by reading this book, which is just as well because that’s why I’m reading it (and all the others like it).

After breakfast, I was going to make a start sorting out more things to take downstairs but there really wasn’t much point with the kitchen fitter being there, so instead I came back in here to prepare for my Welsh discussion group.

There were only three of us there today and it was awful. I couldn’t remember anything, not even the basics. I seem to have gone completely to pot. Mind you, I put it down to the ill-health that was starting to overwhelm me because by now, I could feel myself sliding down into the hole.

After the meeting, it was time for my disgusting drink break and, girding up my loins, I had another one of these extremely disgusting pea and mint ones. And if anything, it tasted worse today than last time. Just two more of those to take and I won’t be ordering any more of this variety.

Next to arrive was my cleaner, who came to do her stuff. And that included supervising me having a shower. By now though, I really was feeling terrible and I had never felt less like doing anything in my whole life. However, I forced myself and I suppose that I was glad that I had. But I was ruined afterwards.

Back in here, once my cleaner had changed the plasters on my arm, I crashed out. That was no surprise either.

One of these high energy drinks brought me round half an hour later which was just as well because Rosemary rang up for a chat. Just a short one today – a mere sixty-five minutes.

There was time afterwards to write the notes for the next radio programme and then I went to make tea.

There was a large curry in the freezer so I defrosted it and ate half of it with some rice and veg. The other half will do for tomorrow. My imagination has run aground.

The kitchen fitter came up to give me his final account and I paid him. His bill might sound expensive but it includes all of the stuff for the shower and also, he’s done a great deal of work that was never included in his original quote. Not only that, I’m well-pleased with what he has done.

There are one or two small jobs that he hasn’t done, and something that needs some repositioning, but I can sort that out.

The situation is that the plumber will be here on Monday to fit the shower, and we’ll see how far he intends to go with the finishing of the bathroom. Whatever he leaves unfinished, I’ll contact the kitchen fitter who says that he’ll find some time to finish everything off.

Right now though, I’m even more impressed with my little apartment than I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … I hope that they have changed the mattress on my bed otherwise there will be a row.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Patrimoine de France … "well, one of us has" – ed … Liz once told me that she thought that it was quite appropriate that I lived in a historic building.
"why is that?" I asked, bitterly regretting ten seconds later having done so
"Well" she replied "You’re something of an ancient ruin yourself."

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Wednesday 16th July 2025 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… afternoon I have had, catching up with old friends.

My friend June was a fellow student of mine and activist at University. Her daughter Catherine was a lecturer there. They live in the wilds of Southern Germany near Ulm and whenever I was on my travels around Europe, she was one of the people on whom I would always pay a visit.

She and her daughter were part of the musical community there and her son was Sound Engineer for the Pink Fairies, thanks to whom I have some of the huge pile of live concert recordings from when the Fairies were a support band or when he took the equipment out as a freelance Sound Engineer.

June and Catherine have been in the UK visiting family and as June has been wanting to see the Bayeux Tapestry, they are o their way back via Normandy, so they popped in to say hello this afternoon and that was a really pleasant interlude. It’s lovely to meet up again.

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night was another late night, and it felt like it too. I had a real struggle to keep going and finish my notes. And then there were the stats and the back-up, which I really didn’t feel like doing but I forced myself. Nevertheless, when it came to the heat treatment and the ice pack on my knee, I had already run out of steam.

It was midnight or so when I finally crawled into bed, and it didn’t take me very long to fall asleep. But I didn’t stay asleep for very long. By 04:30 I was wide awake again.

While I was trying to make up my mind whether or not to leave my bed, I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing that I knew, the alarm at 06:29 was sounding.

At that moment, I really was exhausted and it was all that I could do to throw off the quilt and put my feet on the floor so that I could at least say that I had beaten the second alarm.

It was a very slow start to the morning too. I didn’t feel like doing anything at all. However I went through the motions of having a wash and taking my medication, and then I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of advert going around about some kind of computer program. It concerned a video that was circulating around on the internet and how if you were to treat it with a certain computer program, it seemed as if the bird that was in the video was flying backwards into its nest right at the very start. It certainly sounded something very interesting to do, but reading the announcement, it just really seems to be some kind of free publicity towards the certain computer program that was mentioned and not really some kind of news item or interesting observation at all.

This is something that I’ve noticed with a depressing regularity these days. Sites that tell you to “click here to find out more” or “click here to speed up your computer” or “click here to access your details”, and when you do, you are confronted by a screen that tells you “this costs $7:99 per month” or some such nonsense.

There’s an Academia site that regularly sends me notices asking me something like “are you the Eric Hall mentioned in a paper about Labrador? Click here to find out”, and they expect me to buy a membership so that I can see my own name and my own research, if it is indeed true that it is a reference to something that I have written.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in again, and breezed out just as quickly, having applied the heat treatment to my knee and dealt with my lower legs.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’ve been visiting churches today and discussing the memorials in there. There’s a delightful entry in his book about "John Master, gentleman, was by his children buried there 1444." I do hope that he was dead at the time.

He also mentions "the Writhsleys to be buried there, I have since found them and other to be buried at St Giles Without Cripplegate, where I mind to leave them." I then pictured him having a change of mind and setting out with his spade under cover of darkness.

Most of the day has been spent radioing. I read through the notes for Sunday and revised them several times, after which, seeing as it was deathly quiet outside, I dictated them. And that took a while because I was continually rewriting them as I was going along.

This is another one that is going to overrun by miles and will need some serious editing to bring it down to one hour in length. But I want to finish it before I go to Paris next week (if it is next week) so that’s presumably a job for Friday and Sunday.

There were the usual interruptions – a couple of disgusting drinks breaks and my cleaner turned up in mid-afternoon so I had a wonderful shower again. And how I am looking forward to having a shower unit fitted downstairs where I can shower much more often than once a week, and do everything on my own too.

June and Catherine turned up later just as I was finishing my notes, and we sat around to chat and catch up with old times for a while, which was very nice. But I wonder why I’m becoming so popular these days. What do all these people know that I don’t?

After they left, I made tea – bangers and mash with vegetables and gravy. Again, it tasted much nicer in my imagination than on my plate but that can’t be helped. Even if my taste buds are distorted right now, I still have to eat something sometime.

Tomorrow afternoon is dialysis, to which I’m not looking forward at all. I hope though that if I have to go, I will have one of my favourite nurses to look after me. I’m in need of some cheering up.

But seeing as we have been talking about funeral monuments … "well, one of us has" – ed … in one of these London churches, our author, John Stow, heard a mysterious tapping noise late at night.
He walked over gently, and saw a man chiselling something on the tomb of a deceased person.
John Stow breathed a sigh of relief. "For a moment" he said "I thought that it might have been a ghost."
"There’s no need to worry about that" said the man.
"So what are you actually doing?" asked Stow.
"I’m just making a little correction" said the man. "They put the wrong date of death on my memorial."

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Wednesday 9th July 2025 – CAN YOU IMAGINE …

… anything as embarrassing as being in the middle of a conversation with someone and suddenly dropping unconscious at their feet?

The kitchen-fitter and his son who came this morning to start work don’t need to imagine it because they saw it for themselves as a conversation that I was having with them came to a rather dramatic pause.

That’s now the fourth of these little wobbles that I’ve had. There were the two that I mentioned last night, a third as I was going to bed, and the fourth which was the daddy of them all this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, I was becoming concerned about all of this. The one that I had when I was almost ready for bed made me even more worried, and then collapsing unconscious for a couple of minutes at the feet of a couple of visitors is extremely perturbing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … one of these days I’m going to have one of these attacks and I won’t awaken from it. And the way that things are going, it won’t be long a-coming.

It was a late night too last night – I didn’t go to bed until about 00:15, what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … but I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until about 06:00.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Leaving the bed is something else completely. It was about 06:15 when I finally saw the light of day and fell out of the bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen for my morning fruit juice and medication. It was yet another slow start to the day while I slowly unwound.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We shared a holiday home with some people, a home in France. Eventually we decided that we were going to settle down there and stay forever. The other people who were sharing the house were not particularly happy about the situation of Brexit and all of that. In the end, one night after a rather heated discussion, they simply packed their bags and left, leaving us in charge of the house. Nothing much happened about that after a while except that one evening, just as we were moving some furniture around, someone knocked at the door. We had to rearrange the furniture quickly and let them in. It was some people who had come to see the house. Obviously the house had been put up for sale, no-one had said anything to us, and now there were people arriving to have a look around it. They took a big liking to our collie who was six years old but the cats took absolutely no notice of them. We ended up having something of a chat about the situation. One of the things that came out in the discussion somewhere was the question of the rateable value of the land. Someone had a big plot of land in a forest but they were only paying a small amount of tax on it. After they had had this campaign to try to equalise the tax payments, someone explained to them that if the land is not capable of being exploited, for example, it’s too steep, it doesn’t attract council tax. Here in this forest in the middle of the mountains, a lot of the land was far too steep to do anything with it so it had no rateable value.

This sounds rather like what will be happening here over the next few weeks. The estate agents are coming to photograph the place on Friday and from then on, there will be streams of people coming to look at (and to sight-see) the apartment while I’ll be in the throes of trying to tidy up and move house.

If anyone has a free weekend some time, I shall be needing all the help that I can find.

The nurse turned up, much earlier than usual, and sorted out my legs. And while I was making my breakfast, the kitchen-fitter and his son turned up to start work.

They needed to know where my new apartment was and what needed to be done so I went downstairs with them. And it was while we were in the bathroom discussing the shower unit that I hit the floor quite dramatically.

Eventually, I recovered and it was a very sad, weary me who struggled in vain up the stairs. In the end I had to take the lift from the first half-landing up to the next and then struggle downwards to my door.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK but I was so out of everything that I couldn’t begin to tell you what I read.

Back in here, it took me a while to recover and then I started on my “Friday Woodstock” programme. And that is now, at long last, finished and is just how I want it to be. It took an age and several retries to bring it down to exactly one hour but there it is, all done and dusted, and the only artists excluded are Ravi Shankar and Swami Satchidananda, but there again their performances aren’t really the style that will fit into our rock music programmes.

Tomorrow, I’ll start on the “Saturday Woodstock” programme and see how I go. That is going to be much more complicated because there is so much that needs to be omitted if I want to keep it down to one hour.

There were the usual interruptions, such as a couple of disgusting drink breaks and the arrival of my faithful cleaner, who, as usual, helped me into and out of the bath while I had a shower.

And bless her, she spent much more than one hour going through the kitchen and bathroom making everything look respectable ready for the photograph sessions on Friday.

While all of this was going on, my right knee began to swell dramatically and it hurts like Hades. I can hardly move without being in some kind of agony and it looks as if there is a balloon on my knee. I must have fallen with quite a thump.

The kitchen fitter came to say goodbye and to show me some photos of what he had done. It certainly looks impressive and I can’t wait to see the finished product. That’s likely to be in a couple of weeks, he reckons.

The shower room isn’t going to be so easy, he thinks, and he’s probably right. I’m already beginning to redesign it in my head and I’ll probably do that three or four more times yet.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta. I wasn’t feeling up to much. And my faithful cleaner came by to pick up some things for downstairs and to take a few more photos of the work

But that’s everything now. I’m going to rub some heat treatment into my leg and then strap an ice-pack on, and then go to sleep. I want to see if this swelling and the pain will go down overnight. If not, I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty going to dialysis.

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad leg … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll have to be careful about hos this works out.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a bad fall a few years ago while I was out and about and hurt my knee quite badly.
Some guy walking by stopped to help me and offered his advice.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked
"Not exactly" he replied, "but I do have some kind of medical experience"
"So what do you think?" I asked him
He examined me and replied "I’d better go to fetch my gun"
"Your gun?" I exclaimed. "Why a gun?"
"I’ve seen that injury before" he replied "and I had to use it on the horse."

0

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something that I have only done once previously over this last few weeks, and that is that I was still asleep this morning at 06:30 when the alarm went off.

Well, actually, I wasn’t. I was awake – but only just, and I was thinking about looking at the ‘phone to see what time it was when the alarm beat me to it.

It might be a disappointment, but it’s not so much of a surprise, especially as I didn’t go to bed until later than I would have liked.

Not that I slept for long, though. At 02:20 I was wide awake and after half an hour of trying to go back to sleep, I was seriously thinking about leaving the bed and doing some work. However, at some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off, there I was.

Trying to return to my usual habits after the bouleversements of the last few weeks, first thing that I did was to go to the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here afterwards, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was staying in a hotel or somewhere like that, right by the beach. I had to go for a walk every day. This walk was very realistic, walking around the edge of the sands and edge of the dunes etc, having to deal with seagulls, take my injections correctly at the correct time. It’s all very much like the way that things would be now if I were actually at a hotel staying somewhere.

Here we go again. Another hotel. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with almost all of my dreams, I am asleep when I dictate them but when I’m transcribing them, I have some kind of vague memory or recollection. This dream is, however, one of those rare ones where I have no recollection of anything whatsoever.

And then I awoke at about 02:20. I’d been walking up and down the beach with a friend, a beach that had a very broad similarity with the beach at Donville les Bains. While he’d gone off to do something, I’d set out to walk along the coastline following the railway, the electric overhead railway that was there. I didn’t meet him until his car turned up quite a while later. I seemed to have walked for miles. According to the map, I had. When I awoke, I was carrying on this conversation with my friend for quite some time before I went to check the time and found that it was now 02:40.

Leaving aside the fact that there’s no railway line, overhead electric or not, at or near the beach at Donville-les-Bains, nor has there ever been, it’s an interesting phenomenon for me to awaken in the middle of the dream and to carry on dreaming. I know that there are some people who can climb up into the dozens of layers of dreams, but I can only rarely make it as high as two layers. I wish that I could do it more often, especially when Zero comes to see me during the night.

This walk continued and we ended up at a really nice stone house, a typical “Midi” low-pitched roof. We ended up talking to the owners. One of them was British but the other one, we weren’t quite sure. They were talking to us about all of the work that they had done. What I had noticed was a car tyre on a wheel awaiting being prepared for the dustman to take it away. It was a cheap copy-tyre and had been worn down way below the tread limit. That made me wonder whether these people had any money, seeing a car tyre in that condition. Anyway after we had had a chat for quite some time, we were invited to take a walk around the garden. One of the women said to me “it’s OK. Someone has sent for a wheelchair for you”. I replied “no thanks. I’m intending to walk”, and walk I did, although I took my time … fell asleep here … all over the new stones etc. We went to sit in the shade in what must have been a chapel building. Slowly, everyone moved away but my two friends and I stayed there talking. Later on, I heard one of them on the ‘phone giving directions to where we are. When I asked what was happening, he said that we can’t go back via the railway line because they’d had a huge delivery of something or other and they were working there, so we had to find an alternative way and someone else was coming to pick us up.

Stepping back into a dream later is something that I would also like to do more often, especially when Zero etc. etc. And the number of times that I’ve been offered a wheelchair. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when you are really ill, you have to keep on fighting, because that is what keeps you going. I’ve seen far too many people give up the struggle and a few months later, they have gone the Way of the West.

Isabelle the Nurse came around to give me my second injection and to deal with my legs. She tells me that the oedemas are almost gone, which is good news, and I hope that she is right about that. I need to find a way to bring down the creatinine in the bloodstream so that I can do something about this dialysis which is the bane of my life right now.

She told her family about the mouse in my hospital room and they were outraged. Just to underline the point, I showed her the photo that I had taken. But now that the dust has settled and I’m not quite so angry, I’m going to go on the offensive … "”offensive” is the correct word where you are involved" – ed … and write a scathing letter to the hospital administration. I’m not sure how they will respond, but if I mention that I’ll be writing to the Press and the Sécurité Sociale. In the words of Hugh Latimer, as he was being burned to death, I "shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, as I trust shall never be put out".

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re undergoing a tour of all of the gates through the wall into the City of London, including the water gates. And I do like the cynicism of the author, which makes quite a change from the gullibility and naïveté of most medieval authors. He tells us, for example, that "in the west is the next gate … called Ludgate, as first built (saith Geoffrey of Monmouth) by King Lud … in the Year before Christ’s nativity … wherefore I pass over it … referring the reader to that I have before written out of Caesar’s Commentaries."

When he’s writing about Billingsgate, he tells us "Geoffrey of Monmouth writeth that Belin, a King of the Britons, about four hundred years before Christ’s nativity built this gate, but is seemeth to me not to be so ancient but to have taken that name of some later owner of the place. "

Back in here, there was football to watch – a friendly between Hurlford and Stranraer last night. Despite the gulf in league positions, Stranraer made really heavy weather of a 1-0 victory. They never really looked in much danger but their attack just wasn’t at the races and the Hurlford keeper didn’t have much to do.

Unless Stranraer find a striker from somewhere, they are going to struggle this coming season.

Following the football, I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme but I didn’t go far because I hadn’t realised how late it was. My faithful cleaner burst in onto the scene while I was having a disgusting drink break.

She spent most of her time tidying up the living room and vacuuming up dog hairs, in between finding time to shoo me into the shower for a good scrub up, and I have never felt less like doing anything, never mind a shower.

But a nice clean me came out and I came back in here to carry on working.

However, something else that I haven’t done for ages until this afternoon, miserable failure that I am, was to crash out in my chair. And it was another one of those crash-outs that I didn’t realise that I’d crashed out until I awoke, all of an hour later. So don’t tell me that we are starting these all over again after all of this.

But what this tells me is that they aren’t extracting enough fluid and impurities from me – in other words, this lack of eating is working better than I anticipated and my “dry weight” has fallen dramatically. They are still extracting fluid based on my previous “dry weight” which means that they aren’t taking out enough. It’ll be interesting to see what the blood test reading tomorrow will show.

There was time to finish choosing the music and to begin to pair it off before I went to make tea – a small stuffed pepper with a handful of pasta and veg and I didn’t feel much like eating that either.

So tomorrow, the plumber comes. I hope that it’s good news when he rips out the bathroom. But we’ll know that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about London’s City Walls … "well, one of us has" – ed … John Stow tells us that he found that someone had knocked a hole through the wall into the changing rooms of St Botolph’s nunnery.
He told me that he had reported the incident to the Mayor and the Constable of the Watch
"So what happened?" I asked him
"Nothing as yet" he replied. "They are still looking into it."

0

Wednesday 18th June 2025 – THE FIRST OF THE …

… deliveries arrived today. We now have a built-in electric oven sitting on a pallet in the apartment downstairs.

We actually have the units in which to fit it too, but they are in the back of the van where they have been since June 2022 when I bought them in Munich. However, I’ve never been able to take them out. And that made me wonder – is it really that long since I lost the ability to walk?

Although I’d had several bad falls up until that date, it was on the boat COMING BACK FROM JERSEY ON 31st AUGUST 2022 where my legs finally gave way and I wouldn’t pick myself up off the floor.

Nevertheless, I went to Canada to finalise everything but that was a journey too far and not only did I not last out the journey, I caught that virus that almost killed me and led to a two-month stay in hospital as soon as I returned.

But anyway, I digress.

Last night it was late yet again by the time that I finished my notes – I do have to say that as usual, I was not in all that much of a rush.

Once in bed though, I had the longest sleep that I have had for quite some considerable time. It was 06:15 when I awoke this morning, and I had to rush to make sure that I was out of bed prior to the alarm going off.

It wasn’t long before everyone else was up and about too, so there wasn’t really any time to do very much. Instead, I sorted myself out in the bathroom and when the Hound of the Baskervilles, who had dragged his master outside for five minutes, came back, I went for a coffee.

It was a nice, slow start to the day as we sat around chatting about past times and the days of our youth etc., and we were still there when Isabelle the Nurse blew in. She fell in love with the Hound of the Baskervilles and probably spent more time talking to him than she did to me.

After she left, so did the Hound of the Baskervilles, dragging his master behind him, and I made myself some breakfast for a good start to the day.

A little later, we set out for the shops. First port of call was the Disabled Persons’ shop on the edge of town. This is a place where they sell everything that you need if you need some kind of special equipment for some medical reason or other.

My purpose was to look for grab rails for the shower and for the w.c. I’m not going to keep this weird framework thing in the w.c. here – it takes up far too much space. I would prefer a couple of handles on the wall. And the same for the shower too. I need to be able to hold on to something and pull myself in, and to hold myself upright when I’m showering.

The good news is that they have them in stock. There’s no need to order them. So I can come and fetch them any time that I like – assuming that I have some transport to take me there.

While I was there, I asked about mobility scooters to see what they had. However, they don’t stock them at all. That’s a shame. I was going to have a little try-out around the car park.

Next stop was in Centrakor for another window pole for the gap between the living room and the other half of the apartment. And as well as a window pole, I came out with a combined w.c. brush and toilet roll holder and also several large storage jars for my flour. This new apartment is starting to become a serious proposition.

Third stop was the local park. The Hound of the Baskervilles was becoming restless and wanted a run-around so I directed my friend to the Parc du Val ès Fleurs, the site of the old Christian Dior factory now transformed into a lovely park. They went off for a ramble while I sat and enjoyed the sunshine.

This was when the delivery lady rang me so we had to pile back into the car and drive home to unlock everything so that she could bring the oven in. Yes, things are looking up.

When she’d gone, I did something that I hadn’t done for ages, and that was to sit on the wall at the top of the cliff by our building. The sun was beautiful and I really made the most of it for half an hour or so, watching the ships coming over from Jersey and the trawlers out in the bay. It was wonderful.

On the way back I met my cleaner and also the lady whose briefcase we recovered yesterday. We had quite a nice chat for a while and then I staggered back up the stairs.

When my cleaner came up to do her stuff, the others went out for a walk and I went to have a shower. So there’s a nice, clean me this afternoon ready to charm Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

Back in here, I rather regrettably crashed out for half an hour – the first time for ages. But then again, I’d done a lot today – much more than I usually would.

Once I’d recovered, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. After only a couple of seconds after having gone to bed I must have fallen asleep because I saw Nerina come into the room. I was with someone else when she walked in. Of course, she was a lot older than she had been. She walked in and went out of a door in the wall. Another woman came in after her and stuck her head in the door and shouted “Neessa”. At that moment the Hound of the Baskervilles made a noise and I awoke. I would have loved to have known what was going to happen after all of that but the Hound of the Baskervilles broke the spell.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … much as I don’t appreciate my family coming along to disrupt my nighttime voyages, I don’t mind Nerina being there. After all, I did invite her to share my life so she has every right to be there, and in any case, you can’t choose to live with someone for nine years and not like them.

There was time to make a start on the next radio programme so I went through the notes, found that I’d written down incorrectly one of the dates and so had to start again from the beginning. In the pipeline already, there’s one set of notes to dictate but I want to see how far I can push on.

When everyone came back I set about making a curry – mainly because I fancied some more of that vegan soya mince that I’d used the other day. So the big mystery was “why, if the curry that I made tasted so nice, did I actually forget to put in the soya mince?”. I really am losing my mind these days.

So right now, it’s bedtime ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. Another seven hours of my life wasted and three and a half hours of painful purgatory.

But seeing as we have been talking about my shower … "well, one of us has" – ed … while I was drying myself afterwards, my cleaner and I were talking about school and punishment – the difference between our day and today.
It reminded me of one day when I was talking to one of my form teachers. I asked him "would you, as a matter of principle, ever punish a pupil for something that they hadn’t done?"
"Not at all" he said. "I would never ever do that."
"That’s good news" I replied
"Why did you ask?" he asked
"Because, I’m afraid, I haven’t done my homework this week."

0

Wednesday 11th June 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that I’m going to have my shower installed for when I move downstairs, unfortunately.

Having had a good chat this afternoon with the guy who is going to fit the kitchen, he’s not convinced that he’d be able to do the work that I want. He’s happy to do some of it but not the rest. He really thinks that we ought to have a professional plumber on hand, and he’s probably quite right too.

But you try to find one. I shall ask around and see who knows one, and maybe trouble my friend Liz to put another advert on that Social Media page. Maybe there might even be someone on one of these tradesmen’s sites who has a week or two free. There is bound to be a solution somewhere.

Anyway, last night I had another fairly late night, not being able to motivate myself sufficiently to have everything done in any kind of urgency. It was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing at all. I must have gone to sleep quite quickly, and there I lay until about 06:15 without moving at all.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was in the bathroom sorting myself out. Then after the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night.

There was a police investigation taking place last night and I was in charge of the enquiry. It had taken place in a large house where a lot of people were staying. We’d had a stroke of luck in that someone had identified a coat, a blue and white checked coat. This was not general knowledge so I kept that to myself but I arranged for the rooms of all of the people to be searched. We found someone with a blue and white checked coat, so we decided to keep an eye on her. There were one or two other things too that led us to believe that she was the one who committed the offence but we wanted to make sure that we had all the evidence that we needed. That involved taking her coat and examining it so we had to wait until she was ready to go into the bath. We arranged to send some young girl around who was to tell everyone that she was looking for a blue and white checked coat so that it would divert suspicion if the girl was found carrying one, or if someone else was found carrying one. Then this woman decided that she was going to have a shower. I waited until she went and then I collected my shower things ready to go into another bathroom but she stepped out of her bathroom and saw me. She asked me if I was going for a shower too. I told her not to worry because the two showers were on different circuits. In the meantime, the young girl was coming upstairs and was asking if anyone had seen a blue and white checked coat. I suddenly realised that I had a blue and white checked coat and this could be complicated if the two became mixed up so I had to think of how to say something, but the girl was wandering around the corridors asking everyone whom she met and I thought that she was going to be up to me fairly soon so I need to be able to have some kind of story ready for her

This is a road down which I’ve travelled during the night on many occasions – the one where I’m full of doubt and indecision, just as I am with the kitchen and the rest of the apartment right now. I’ll be really happy when it’s all done (if it ever is) and I don’t have to do anything else. However, being involved in a murder case during the night without Holmes and Watson being present is quite unusual. They’ve joined me on a few trips in the past.

Good Queen Bess (that is, Queen Elizabeth I) was having to choose a new personal confidante and admirer because her previous one, with whom she got along really well, was suspected of being in the pay of the French and all the British secrets were being passed over to the French before the English could do anything about it. Anyway so it was all possible to talk about having a new set of official suites during the interval between the terms but she is believed not to be very happy about that.

Whatever this is all about I have no idea. Apart from a brief reference in passing to a couple of the books that I’ve been reading, it doesn’t appear to have any relevance at all.

The nurse was even earlier this morning. Not that it’s a surprise because he probably doesn’t have much to do. He was soon gone too and I could make breakfast and carry on reading MY NEW BOOK.

Once more, we’re stumbling on little-known facts. John Stow has been describing the rivers, stream and wells that ran through the City of London in the past. Although the existence of one or two of them is disputed today, he’s quoting charters and deeds that refer to many of them, and even gives an inventory of people who contributed money towards their upkeep, and how much they donated.

We then moved on to bridges, and there was a lot of information about those too, doing back to the time of the Saxons.

Interestingly, he talks about a siege of London in 1471 by an army led by someone called, rather eloquently, “Thomas the Bastard Fawconbridge”. With a name like that, he sounded as if he was well-worth tracking down. It turns out that it’s a reference to Thomas Neville, son of William Neville, Lord Fauconberg and a leading supporter of the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses.

For much of the day, I’ve been dealing with a radio programme. There’s the anniversary of a concert coming up soon and I found the recording that we made of it so I’ve been editing it, remixing it, cutting out bits that we don’t need and merging the joins together so that it all runs smoothly and seamlessly.

Then I needed an introduction so I sat down and wrote a couple of thousand words that will make a nice lead-in to the music. And that’s all ready for recording on Saturday night, or maybe even earlier if I have any more really early starts.

My cleaner turned up this afternoon to do her stuff. We went downstairs to the new apartment and took a few more measurements that the kitchen fitter needed. Back up in here, I had a nice shower to try to make myself pretty for dialysis tomorrow, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, even though she doesn’t love me any more.

The kitchen fitter rang me afterwards. We had a lengthy, Rosemaryesque chat and he now seems to have all of the information that he needs. He’s going to stick his head into IKEA to find out the answers to a few questions that I can’t answer, and then we’ll move on and order the product and have it delivered ready for installation

There was time to make a start on another radio programme. Another day that is coming up in due course is “International Biodiversity Day” and with musicians such as Robert Plant, Herbie Flowers and Kate Bush, and groups such as Porcupine Tree, there is the basis of a programme already suggesting itself

If I were to play Herbie Flowers’ song DANCE OF THE LITTLE FAIRIES, I wonder if the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would make any comment.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and very nice too, s usual.

So now, having wasted enough time this evening, I’m off to bed. I have a visitor tomorrow morning, dialysis in the afternoon and another visitor tomorrow evening. I seem to be in great demand right now, which is nice, if it weren’t for the dialysis of course. But at least I’ll smell nice for Emilie the Cute Consultant.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about Thomas the Bastard Fawconbridge, it reminds me of when Nerina went for a job interview.
They asked about her family life, and she replied, mentioning "my husband" quite a few times
"But what’s his name?" asked the interviewer. "What do you call him?"
"I call him quite a few names" replied Nerina "but if I told you what they were, I wouldn’t get the job."

0

Friday 6th June 2025 – I ACTUALLY HAD …

… a lie-in this morning, believe it or not.

Yes, there I was, lying stinking in my pit this morning as late as … errr … 05;50, and isn’t that a change from the last couple of days?

And not only that, I was in bed as early as 22:00 too. It really was a difficult night last night and I couldn’t keep on going any longer, having already fallen asleep twice while writing my notes. I dashed through everything as quickly as possible and crawled into bed, and that was that.

Nothing whatever awoke me until 05:50, as I said just now. I lay festering for a while and then decided to show a leg as there’s no point in just lying there doing nothing when there’s plenty to do.

The first thing that I did was to finish off writing the notes for the radio programme that I’d started on Wednesday. That’s now all ready for dictating on Saturday night, or maybe on Saturday morning if I have another dramatically early morning tomorrow.

The next thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Having told that charges would be likely to follow after this interview, Mr Blake requested leave to return home and organise some of his affairs and would return in due course. This was granted and he left the police station heading for home.

As is sometimes the case, I remember nothing whatever about this dream. It’s far from complete of course, and so I wonder what was involved in the rest of it As long as none of my favourite young ladies weren’t involved in it, it’s not important.

Later on, I was coming back from dialysis. It was my favourite taxi driver who was bringing me back. We were talking about my medical situation and the news that I’d had from Paris. She was extremely sympathetic about it but there was nothing that anyone else could do. We had quite a chat until we reached wherever it was that we were going. Then they had to use some kind of plane to skim down part of my body so that it would fit into a machine. They had to take me into a special room to do that and that was when I awoke.

And here we go again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have enough issues with dialysis during my waking hours. When I go to sleep, I’m supposed to be relaxing. I’m going nowhere fast if I’m going to be worrying about it during the night.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and wasn’t hanging around. But she noticed yet another oedema blowing up on my leg – the right one this time – and weeping. This is really too bad. I went through all of that a year or so ago, and for quite a while too, but I really did think that we’d seen the last of it when it all healed up last autumn.

So now, once again, I’m covered in plasters. I have two on my left forearm covering the dialysis punctures, one on my left shoulder where I had the vaccination the other day, and now one on each shin. If it carries on much more like this, I shall end up being wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy.

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

This whistle-stop tour is pushing on now at a hell of a rate. We’ve blitzed through half a dozen castles, including the magnificent pile at Whittington that I know so well, and we’ve arrived at Wigmore Castle where I don’t suppose that we’ll be spending too long.

But being sidetracked on several more occasions, I now have a copy of a book that summarises the sources from which, in the 12th-Century romancer Chrétien de Troyes wrote his legendary stories about King Arthur. The summariser tells us that the work has been translated into English before, but it needs a translation in the modern vernacular to bring it up-to-date.

However, seeing as the summariser was writing in 1840, I would love to see one of these earlier translations.

After breakfast I came in here as I had a couple of telephone calls to make and also to send to my cleaner my order from the shops for this weekend.

After that, I went downstairs to my new apartment where I had a video conference for ninety minutes with my architect friend, discussing my plans for the kitchen. It’s turning out to be much more complicated than I was hoping, but it’s one of these things that you can really only do once and I don’t want to do it again, so it needs to be correct.

It’s like most of these places. The more that you start to do, the more you start to find and the more that needs to be done. But when you buy an apartment in a building that was erected in 1668, what on earth did you expect? It’s not a Listed Historical Building, a National Treasure of France, for nothing.

My cleaner came to join me down there afterwards. We had another look around, checked the measurements and had another think.

For example, I came to the conclusion that there’s a pile of wasted space in the bathroom. For example, you could swim in the washbasin there and lounge about on the worktop at the side. I’ve decided that maybe that can be filed under CS and I’ll buy a smaller until with sink. Then I can have a larger shower instead of a cramped 70cms affair.

Back in here later, my cleaner supervised while I had a shower – the first for a couple of weeks now that the scar on my leg from the hospital has healed correctly. And I do have to say that I needed it. It’s been quite complicated this last while.

However, between about November 2023 and September 2024 I didn’t have a shower at all because I couldn’t climb into the bath, my cleaner’s insurance wouldn’t allow her to help me and I didn’t want to have a shower when there’s no-one around to supervise in case I have a fall. It was only when I was taken in charge by that Organisation that deals with autonomy that my cleaner’s insurance would authorise it.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent discussing kitchens, working out plans, thinking about designs and so on, and then discussing them with my architect and the guy who is (hopefully) going to do it all. We’re a long way off being in a position to do anything, but things should now move along quite rapidly seeing as we now all have the same plan.

Tea tonight consisted of air-fried chips, vegan salad and some of these vegan nuggets, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert – delicious as usual

So right now, I’m off to bed to see how I sleep tonight. You never know – I might one of these days manage to sleep until the alarm goes off. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But seeing as we have been talking about mummies … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina and I went to Egypt once, where some local offered me 50 camels in exchange for her.
After thinking for quite a few minutes, I had to decline his offer.
"That was very sweet of you" she said "but why did it take you so long to reply?"
"I had to think about how I might be able to take 50 camels back home on the aeroplane."

0

Friday 2nd May 2025 – AS I HAVE SAID …

… before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s not much point in going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early.

So when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00, I was already in the kitchen sorting out the medication, having already done the necessary in the bathroom.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night I really was feeling quite queasy and uneasy and after I finished my notes at 22:20 and it wasn’t very much later than that when I hit the sack.

Once I was in bed it took a few minutes to settle myself down and once I did, then that was that. I remember absolutely nothing else.

That was until 05:50 when I had another one of those dramatic awakenings that I have sometimes. I lay in bed tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, but when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I gave up the ghost and arose from the Dead.

After the good scrub and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Unfortunately, there was no Zero last night. However, there was a rock festival taking place. I was asked if I would deal with the sanitation issues so I tried several aspects of the toilets, several different designs, and in the end I simply went for the large pit with a big wooden board with holes over it. I had to supply all of the paper and everything like that, arrange to have the pits pumped out and it began to become extremely complicated. I began to wonder whether or not I’d bitten off more than I could chew with this. First of all, of course, I didn’t know how many people were going to attend – if it would be something like Woodstock with a 50,000 crowd limit but half a million people who appeared.

It’s a little-known fact that as part of my Degree in Environmental Technology, I have a Diploma in Environmental and Pollution Control so not only can I design a fantastic waste disposal site for you, I would be quite happy to design a sanitation system for a major festival. It’s clear though that I have my Woodstock Festival on the brain right now. I really ought to crack on and finish it instead of messing about so much.

And then I stepped back into that dream later. After we’d installed what we needed to do, a couple of other people and I, we went for a walk into town. We could see the crowds coming away from the festival behind us. They had obviously just installed their things. We thought that seeing as we were ahead of the queue coming up the hill, maybe we should go to the shops and buy some food because we had a suspicion that the food was not going to last anything like as long as the festival. We saw all kinds of things. We even saw them digging holes as if they were ready for graves. We entered a supermarket and began to look around and select things to put in a small basket. They had some of these iced buns with white icing crosses on them. They looked really nice so I said that I would have one. The girl with us put her hand inside and grabbed hold of one. She began to eat it. I thought “this is probably not the best advertisement for us that there could have been”. She was telling us that in the local paper that day there was a letter from a guy who had tried to come to the festival but couldn’t make it. He had written a huge, enormous letter of complaint to the shop that the shop had published in the newspaper.

One thing that you will find, if you listen to my radio programmes on Woodstock this coming August, is that food was a major issue at the festival. Many people gave no thought whatsoever to food, and the organisers had counted on 50,000 people, not 500,000 turning up.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning or, if he did, I paid no attention. And after he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We are, as I expected, still in the Tower of London and so far, there has been nothing controversial in what he has said. That is rather disappointing.

Back in here, there was plenty to do today. The first task was to finish off choosing the music for programme 260403. That took longer than it ought because I didn’t have half of what I needed and some of it took some finding.

While I was at it, I also took the opportunity to research for the programme for the following week, 260410. That should be an interesting programme and no mistake.

Once I’d assembled all of the music I went for a disgusting drink break and then my cleaner appeared to do her stuff. After I’d prepared for my shower and washed my clothes, she helped me into the bath to have the shower, and it was delicious.(the shower, I mean).

While I was under the shower the ‘phone rang. So after I was out and my cleaner had gone, I rang the number back.

It was the taxi company who had ‘phoned. Apparently my authorisation from the Social Security only lasts for one year and it had now expired. I needed some more paperwork from the hospital.

Not exactly sure of what I needed, I rang the hospital. It sounded so complicated to me that in the end I gave the hospital the taxi company’s ‘phone number and left them to fight it out between them.

Liz rang me after that and we had a Rosemaryesque chat of over an hour, split in two because the hospital ‘phoned me back midstream to tell me that they had sorted it out between them, the paperwork had been e-mailed and everything was to go ahead as normal. And so I could continue my discussion with Liz.

It’s been ages since we chatted but she’s been up to her eyes in grandchildren for the last while, what with one thing and another. We had a really good chat about lots of different things, which was nice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I was having “another think” about my apartment renovation. Liz and Terry have an “in” on a certain Social Network group so between us we worked out an advertisement that we could publish on there about the work that needs doing. And not only is it now published, it’s also had some response.

It’s just a shame though that they don’t live in this area otherwise I would have had them come and do it in a heartbeat. We all worked so well together as a team and in that really hard winter of 2010-2011 when it was too cold to work in the Auvergne, we went up to Brussels to my centrally-heated apartment and blitzed it from top to toe in just six weeks.

Liz has really good taste too and that helped a lot, to add some nice little touches to the place. And between the two of them, they managed to keep my feet firmly anchored to the floor instead of soaring off on some flight of fancy. It would be worth any price whatever to have them here doing the work, even if I had to hire a holiday let for them for a month on top of whatever they would want to do the job. However, you can’t turn the clock back and once people have retired, they want to enjoy themselves.

Having sorted out everything else I went one better than David Crosby, probably because last night I wasn’t feeling up to par. It increases my paranoia like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year. I feel like I owe it to someone.

Finally I could sit down and edit, remix, pair off and segue the music for programme 260403, miles behind time as usual, but ask me if I care..

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, vegan salad (with more of my delicious home-made vegan mayonnaise) and some of the vegan nuggets that I’d bought from Noz the other day, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

In between preparing and eating the food I made myself a very small 200-gramme loaf. I’m out of bread at the moment so until I have the time to make something on Sunday afternoon, that will keep me going. With the new water gauge, the loaf turned out to be spot-on. That was a good purchase.

So now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon (I don’t think). However, it’s the Welsh Cup Final between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads.

The Nomads are desperate to win as it’s their only avenue into Europe but they are currently managerless after a very poor season by their standards so we shall see. There were three clubs in the Welsh Premier League, The Nomads, Y Drenewydd and Aberystwyth, who lost several of their bigger names in the last close season and their recruitment was simply just not good enough. They have all paid the price for that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about me being able to build a decent waste disposal site … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that to Liz
"You’ll need to go out on the street and collect some rubbish then" she said.
"I refuse" I replied.

-1

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE …

… that has been today!

It actually started off quite well this morning but as seems to be the usual situation, it didn’t take all that long for it to descend into chaos.

For a change, last night I was in bed fairly early – round about 23:30. And that is early too, considering how things have been in here just recently. It’s even more surprising when you consider the wretched night that I had had after dialysis on Monday.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, although I didn’t stay asleep for long. I have vivid memories of awakening a couple of times during the night, although they were just something brief and of the moment.

By 05:30 though, I was awake, and wide awake too. After a while of gathering my wits (and you’ve no idea how long it takes to do that, seeing as I have so few left), I gave some serious thought to leaving the bed and just as I was about to throw off the covers I went back to sleep again.

Once more, I awoke quite soon afterwards but even so, I had had time to go off for a wander around. I was making a start on digging the Dee Navigation, the stretch of the river that runs between Chester and the Dee estuary that was built in the – was it the Sixteenth Century? … "Eighteenth Century" – ed …to avoid the parts of the River Dee that had become silted up.

That’s why the border between England and Wales up around Queensferry and Shotton is nowhere near the river. It used to be, back in the days of old, but when that baron whatever-his-name-is … "Hugh Lupus" – ed … constructed the weir in Chester to power his water mill, the speed of the water slowed down dramatically and the Dee began to silt up with the incoming tide. Digging the new channel was a desperate final gamble to revive the fortunes of the port of Chester.

So when the alarm went off at 07:00 I had already been up, washed, had my medication and was sitting at my desk working. First task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. Isabelle the Nurse came round last night. She wanted to treat me with something to do with my legs. I had to put on my shorts before I went for a shower so that she could sort out my legs. The only pair of shorts that I had were an orange pair. She made some remark about “flesh-coloured” that I didn’t understand. When I had my shorts on I then went to put on my trousers but I suddenly had a realisation that she was going to treat my legs so I took off my trousers again. Then we had a chat about the bathroom and various kinds of things. Then she wanted the living room tidied – it was rather a mess. I had a look inside and thought “where has she put the stuff that she’s just brought in?”. No-one seemed to know. I thought “never mind, I’ll pick up the vacuum cleaner and begin to vacuum”. I pressed the foot switch for the vacuum cleaner but it wouldn’t work so I began to go round and pick up things by hand. There was a kitchen roll of orange paper and a ball of wool on the floor behind the sofa. The kitchen roll had been savaged by the cat and the ball of wool had been spread everywhere and looked as if it had also been savaged by the cat. I picked that up and the cat was still in it. It was struggling so I tried to put it down on the floor and let the cat find its own way out of the mess that it had created. We began to talk about cats. There were these cats that lived on some kind of marsh. One had just died that had been born in 1993. I thought that that was an incredible age for a cat to have.

Yesterday, I forgot to mention that I’d been talking to my little great-niece (or great little niece) in Canada. She’s back home from University for a couple of weeks and when she arrived, she was mobbed by the three cats. When she went up to the mill to see her parents she was mobbed by all of the mill cats. Consequently she spent all yesterday filming them and she was sending me her little videos for me to approve and to go “aww”. I would love to have another cat but I shall have to wait until I’m downstairs before I make any plans. As for wanting the living room tidied, so do I but somehow I have a mental block when it comes to things like that.

Later on I was on board a bus or train last night with some people, some of whom I knew. We’d been discussing various things. I’d been sorting out my papers. I had a look through – it was all my Welsh homework. I saw that it was a real mess, totally untidy and scrawly and I couldn’t read some of it. I just wondered what was in my mind when I had written some. The handwriting was just a jumble of straight lines. We were sitting there talking and I was putting away my things. I suddenly looked at the clock. It was after 18:30 and our train to take us home comes at 18:45. I said “shouldn’t we better be moving?”. Everyone began to make themselves ready. I began to put away my computer. Someone asked “why are you putting away your computer? Why not leave it here until the morning?”. I thought that that was probably the strangest thing that I’ve ever heard, leaving a laptop lying around on the seat of a bus so I carried on trying to put it away, panicking about the fact that we are going to miss our train if we aren’t ready in a minute.

Are we having another panic and bout of indecision again? It seems to be happening more and more often, although this is the first “train” dream that we’ve had for a while. We were having them quite regularly at one time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and out again in a matter of a couple of minutes. She didn’t hang around long at all today. I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK. We have finished at Knaresborough and are now in Leicester, having made a very brief stop at Leeds Castle in Kent.

We seem to be covering quite a bit of ground on our travels and we aren’t a quarter of the way through the book yet. At some point we’ll have to be spending a long time somewhere, even if just to fill out the pages of the book, and hopefully, we might even begin to discuss military architecture.

After breakfast I came in here to begin work. First task was to look for some music that I had been trying to find yesterday. And this was when all of my troubles began.

Some friends of mine, who have been very helpful to me in some of my certain endeavours, had, well, let’s just say “a certain issue” and as a result, everything went with its mammary glands pointing towards the sky.

Between us all, we had to end up rebuilding a computer program, and it took us about seven hours to do it. And to write a computer program of 121mb in seven hours is some going.

In the meantime, I was desperately looking around for another alternative to keep me going, without a great deal of success, and I ended up falling miles behind in the work that I had to do today.

There were the usual interruptions. There were a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner put in an appearance, and there was also the shower, nice as it was. However, I had to put the heater back on in the bathroom for half an hour.

There was also a ‘phone call that needed my attention. Another builder rang me up to talk to me about my little project downstairs. This lot sounded frightfully professional and I have a feeling that their prices will reflect their professionalism. None of this “I’ll just nip round for five minutes with my tape measure” lark.

By the time that I knocked off for tea, I had all of the music that I needed, all edited, remixed, paired and segued. No notes though – I’ll have to dictate them tomorrow, I suppose.

The computer program is up and running too, and it works. Although for how long, I really don’t know. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon, I don’t think. I’m really not looking forward to it at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about falling behind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling one of my friends about my problems earlier.
"Just like my local butcher" she said
"How do you mean?" I asked.
"Some woman came in and sat down on his bacon slicer" she replied
"what happened then?" I asked, bitterly regretting having done so.
"The butcher didn’t notice" she replied "and he ended up getting behind in his deliveries"

0

Wednesday 16th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my hot cross buns. They have risen up like the proverbial lift and look absolutely magnificent. It just shows the difference that having an accurate water gauge makes. All these years that I’ve had some very hit-and-miss baking …

Something else that was magnificent last night was the fact that I was in bed by 23:00, for the first time for ages. I really appreciated it too, having blitzed through everything after tea – the notes, the statistics and the back-up et cetera.

As well as that, it didn’t take long to drop off either, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:55. Probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for ages.

When the alarm went off I was awake thinking about leaving the bed early but BILLY COTTON beat me to it. Surprisingly it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed.

In the bathroom I had a cursory wash (after all, it is shower day today) and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had to meet Rosemary and we arranged to meet in London at one of the big railway station termini. She had a rough idea of when she’d be there. I was already in London so I said that I would be there or thereabouts. As the station is so big, I’ll just arrive there and we’ll contact each other by ‘phone or something. When it came time to go I set out on foot on my usual way. I suddenly realised that I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. Just at that moment I was walking past a house when a taxi pulled up. I asked the driver which was the best way to the railway station. He pointed out the way from which I had just come. Down at that end of the road was a dirt track that led through some kinds of fields or common. I asked “surely you don’t mean that I am to go past there?”. He replied “no, it’s a great big main four-lane road”. I realised then where I’d gone wrong – I’d gone wrong a long way before the junction back down the road. I asked “could you run me there?”. He replied “I can’t. I’m finishing work. I live here”. I tried to persuade him but it didn’t work. Another taxi pulled up so I asked him but the first driver told him not to bother – that I was going to walk. I was rather disappointed by the two of them. I set out to walk back and walked probably the quickest that I have ever walked in my life. Eventually I could see the railway station in the distance. There was a big road junction just before it. There were millions of cars milling around there trying to go through, totally ignoring the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing but people just surged across. Some girl in a car tried to drive through the crowd and the crowd was quite irate. They made something of a demonstration about it. In the end I extricated myself from this mess but still had ten minutes of walking to go and I thought that I was going to be late yet again.

This all rings a bell with me. I’ve walked down that dirt road and across those fields and common before during one of my previous nocturnal rambles, quite a while ago now. As well as that, I can see the railway station now. I was up on the top of a hill, something like Highgate in London. The railway station was on a slight rise across a valley, with its huge arched train shed clearly visible. However, we are once again overwhelmed in confusion and anxiety in a dream. Someone has commented on my anxiety and confusion dreams in the past and suggests that it might be due to stress. All I can say is that if my life now is stressful, what must my dreams have been like 40 years or so ago when I was running my taxis?

Later on I went back into that dream … "which dream is this?" – ed … I was wandering around Crewe near the Square, talking to a friend of mine while I was typing out some notes for the radio. One of the things that I was typing out was the notes of something about the Blues Brothers. At that moment friend climbed into his car and shot off just like the Blues Brothers did. of course, at that moment, a police car appeared. The police car went to block him off on the Square. I could see it all perfectly from my vantage point but my friend’s vantage point was obscured by the old Marks and Spencers building. When he came round the corner there he found himself face-to-face with the policeman. Of course he had to stop, he couldn’t really do anything. The policeman stepped out of his vehicle and the first thing that he did was to close the bonnet of my friend’s car – it was one of these bonnets that hinges from the front, not from the rear. He would often leave it open as he drove around, held only by the security catch

That reminds me of a time 40 or 50 years ago when we were all out late one night (or early in the morning, more like) in Crewe when there was a heavy snowfall. My friend took his car onto the public car park, that was totally empty, and was spinning round doing doughnuts on the slippery surface. What he had failed to take into account that it was right next to the police station. Two constables came out and gave him a ticket for “using a car park other than for the purpose of parking”.

The nurse was in a better humour today and was rather more cheerful than yesterday. However he didn’t stop for long and I could get on and make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Our trip around the castles of England (and Wales) is turning into a real whistle-stop tour. On some of these sites we aren’t discussing architecture of any type (never mind military architecture) because there are no extant remains, so I’m not convinced of the reason why we’ve even come here.

However, he does make an interesting observation when it comes to Huntingdon Castle. He tells us that "William the Conqueror was at Huntingdon 1068, when he ordered a castle to be built, evidently on the site of the old fortress restored by Edward the Elder in 918. The names in Domesday show how complete had been the removal of the larger English landowners."

We’ve talked rather a lot just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … about the ethnic cleansing that must have taken place as several waves of invaders overwhelmed the native population during the various invasions back in the early days of history and prehistory. So these “larger English landowners” – what happened to them? I can’t see them being allowed to remain, even as serfs and slaves, in the local area where they might command the respect and loyalty of their previous tenants and possibly incite a rebellion.

Back in here I had things to do that needed my attention, and then I cracked on with the radio programme. All of the notes for programme 260227 are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

There was time for a disgusting drink break and to sort out my faithful cleaner when she arrived. And then I had a wonderful shower and found some nice, clean clothes so that I shall look fine for Emily the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

After my cleaner left, I had my second disgusting drink and then I had things to do.

After breakfast I had put some lentils and split peas into the slow cooker and after an hour and the water had boiled, I rinsed them and then put them back in the slow cooker on the lowest heat with some clean water. So after the afternoon’s disgusting drink break I began to plan my lentil lasagna.

First though, I had hot cross buns to make. And here I almost had a disaster. I didn’t have enough vegan butter.

However, any oil is good, as we have proved with our oil cakes, so why not use coconut oil? I made a really good mix of flour, coconut oil, salt, yeast and mixed spices with warm soya milk and melted coconut oil – the correct amounts of liquid – and left it to fester.

While it was festering, I fried a large onion and some garlic in my wok, tipped the lentils and split peas in after I’d rinsed them again, along with a pack of this soya mince in tomato sauce that I wanted to try. In went some tomato sauce and herbs and so on and I left it to simmer away.

The dough for the hot cross buns had risen nicely so I added some sultanas, raisins and some orange essence, and kneaded it all again.

After it had stood for a while and risen again, I moulded the dough into six balls, flattened them and put them on the biscuit tray. I made some thick flour mix and with my icing piper, piped the crosses on the buns and left them to rise again.

While they were festering, I assembled my lasagna and made a vegan cheese sauce that I poured over the top, and stuck it all into the oven.

When it was cooked I put the hot cross buns in and then had a quarter of my lasagne with some vegetables. And it was delicious. Even better, there are three more slices to go into the freezer for another time. It was the lst of the orange, ginger and coconut cake today too. Tomorrow I’ll start on my chocolate cake.

Rosemary had rung up while I was baking so after I’d finished tea and washed up, we had a little chat. Not very long – only fifty-four minutes.

Consequently I’m running really late but never mind – I’m off to bed right now. Tomorrow is dialysis day and shopping order too.

But while we’re on the subject of buns … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had served in the Army in a regiment where the chief cook was Doctor Spooner’s brother.
"How interesting" I replied
"Very interesting" he said "especially when the Germans launched an attack on the kitchen"
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because Doctor Spooner’s brother personally led the counter-attack" he replied. "He went into action with all buns glazing"

0

Wednesday 9th April 2025 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision. And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is on that if it turns out to be the wrong decision, the person who made it is executed.

It’s amazing the thoughts that go through your head when you are lying there in bed at … gulp … 05:20 in the morning trying rather unsuccessfully to go back to sleep after another dramatic awakening, but there we are. I put the time to good use.

It wasn’t as if I’d been to bed early either. In principle I could have been in bed at a realistic time last night but as usual, just as I’m about to make up my mind to stagger off to bed after doing everything that I needed to do, a decent concert comes round on the playlist and so I find something to do as a good excuse for staying up to listen to it.

Eventually though, I go off to bed and go straight to sleep, only to awaken bolt-upright at 05:20 wondering why I’m still in bed when I was convinced that a couple of hours ago I’d arisen from the bed and gone into the kitchen.

So while I was pondering and musing, I was thinking. And one of the things about which I was thinking was that I’m never going to go back to sleep so I may as well raise myself from the bed and do some work.

Into the bathroom for a cursory wash today, after all, it is Wednesday and shower day, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and to my surprise, despite the short night, I’d been out and about on a couple of occasions. I had to board a bus to go somewhere, and I was with a friend of mine. We climbed on board but the bus was crowded and there were people sitting on the floor. We found some space on one of the side seats over the rear wheel arch but there were some people sitting right in front of it on the floor so we had to manoeuvre our feet around. One of the people on the floor objected. I told them that my feet have to go somewhere but they carried on complaining so I told them that if they didn’t like it, they should have sat on the seat when it became vacant and then they could have put their feet on the floor but they were still extremely unhappy. In the end I couldn’t care less and began to take the mickey out of them for complaining.

Back on the bus again after last night? That seems to be becoming something of a regular occasion. I could understand the situation if I were driving it but as a passenger, that’s hardly likely. When I was fit I would walk miles and miles without even thinking about it. I remember in Brussels a few years ago when I was going to the hospital at Leuven and went for a little walk around one afternoon – and covered nineteen kilometres. And how far did I walk with Hannah on that Sunday when I was showing her around Brussels?

Later on I was driving taxis again. I was parked on the rank and was ready to pull away when another vehicle came along, drove past and reversed into a space at the side of me, another taxi, a white Hillman Hunter. As he pulled into this space he hit the front of my car. I climbed out to see what the damage was but there wasn’t a great deal. The guy wasn’t really all that apologetic. He asked me if I’d seen the guitar, some package, a similar thing. I said that someone had left a package yesterday and I’d put it in the boot of his car for him. He didn’t remember seeing it when he looked so I told him that I was certain that it was there and if it’s not there I probably still have it at home and I’ll sort it out for later.

Yes, “again”. That’s becoming far too much of a regular dream too, or is it a nightmare? If I had my time back and had to go through it again, I would have changed a great deal of what happened. I made some very poor decisions back then but hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it? And as was once said in the USA "it’s hard to remember, when you are up to your neck in alligators, that all you are trying to do is to drain the swamp".

Having put that out of the way I had plenty of work to do and I cracked on. I was hard at it when Isabelle the Nurse arrived to sort me out. We talked about my compression socks and she’ll remind the secretary of my doctor.

After she left I made breakfast. The loaf that I made before going to bed is absolutely excellent and made some lovely toast. I munched away on it while I was reading MY NEW BOOK.

This book has now turned into a whistle-stop tour of castles. We’ve probably been to six or seven this morning, just a quick walk around and then teleported ourselves on to the next one, in alphabetical order. With 669 pages at which to go, we are going to be covering a lot of ground at this rate.

Back in here, I began to concentrate.

My decision – about which I talked earlier – is that no matter what evolves downstairs, I’m going to rip out the kitchen and throw it away. I’ve been planning my own kitchen thanks to that 3D app about which I spoke the other day, and I’ve made myself a lovely kitchen and so I’m going to go with it and make my new apartment look really nice and practical.

Electrical appliances are next so I spent a couple of hours looking at fridge-freezers and built-in ovens and microwaves. In the end, my brain had turned to porridge so I abandoned the process. There were thousands and thousands and I had no idea what I wanted or what I needed.

It was at that point I had a good idea, and I contacted Rosemary. Just a short chat this morning – a mere fifty-seven yea … errr … minutes. But knowing how much care and effort Rosemary puts into checking things out, I set her a task TO PROVE THAT SHE IS WORTHY.

What I did was to tell her what I thought would be my requirements and what my budget is. And if she had my budget and my requirements, what would she buy?

She immediately made a couple of suggestions that had not occurred to me, and then she had to go to sort out a taxi to take her to hospital as she’s having some surgery in a couple of weeks. But she’s on the case which is just as well because I didn’t know who else to ask and I couldn’t sort it out on my own.

My faithful cleaner made a suggestion too. She reckons that this organisation with which I’m registered – the one that bends over backwards to help handicapped and disabled people stay in their own homes – might be able to offer some sort of assistance with the move and the fitting out of the apartment to suit my needs and requirements.

Having given the matter some thought, I wrote to them to see what they would have to say.

Then I had to send off the receipt for the new telephone and return one of the products that I’d bought from Amazon because they had sent the wrong one.

When my cleaner arrived this afternoon she helped me into the shower and I had a really good scrub up that made me feel so much better and then after a disgusting drink break, I cracked on with the radio programme.

But the time that I stopped for tea, I’d chosen all of the music (which wasn’t easy, as I said yesterday), edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written all of the notes. That was a really busy spell of work and I was exhausted.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. But there was so much left over that I added a couple of small potatoes, a jar of that korma mix that I bought ages ago, and made enough for three meals and the one that I ate tonight was delicious.

The naan was perfection too – definitely one of my better ones.

So it’s bedtime now, if the stabbing pain that has started up in my right heel will let me. Despite the late night and early start, I only had one or two wobbles during the day but kept on going until the end. But dialysis tomorrow of course, so we shall see.

Seeing as we have been talking about buses and Crosville the other day … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember back in Crewe in the early 1970s and the Lodekkas were beginning to be phased out. The Bristol VRTs arrived and were equipped for one-man operation.
During the first week there were several accidents and on one occasion I was there when the police were interviewing the driver
"So can you tell us what happened?" the police asked
"I’ve no idea" replied the driver. "I was upstairs collecting the fares when the accident happened".

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Wednesday 2nd April 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning I was already up and about. I’d had another one of these dramatic awakenings, this time round about 05:30, and despite my best efforts I couldn’t go back to sleep.

It’s not as if I’d had an early night either. It was shortly after midnight when I’d finished all of my notes, the backing up and things like that and it took a short while for me to summon up the energy to go off to bed.

It was very difficult to go off to sleep too, and I had another quite turbulent night. I don’t think that I’d had a continuous sleep that had run for more than about an hour or so.

So wide awake and trying to go back to sleep, I heard the water heater switch itself off at 06:20 and that was the point at which I gave up and raised myself from the Dead.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up in view of the fact that yesterday’s was somewhat interrupted, and then I went into the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in that dream about clothing again. There was something to do with buttons on that bikini although it wasn’t the same bikini but a different one, a sort-of denim blue colour. This changed eventually into something like out of the Navy Lark where Heather was talking to one of her colleagues about Leslie Phillips. They were discussing him, how he might have been cuddly and lovely but Heather said that that was only as far as it suited him and then he could be off with some other girl somewhere and he would be only interested in what he could get out of it rather than anything about anyone else.

It’s been ages since I’ve listened to on-line radio. I’m far too busy these days so programmes like The Navy Park, Round The Horne and Paul Temple have gone to well at the back of the back burner.

Most of my listening these days is spent reviewing this huge heap of concerts that I have collected from various sources over the years and trying to identify the individual tracks so that I can check the setlists to find out when and where the concerts were recorded. No-one ever thought to label the tapes back in the 70s and early 80s.

Later on I was discussing Bomber Command with a couple of airmen last night. We were talking about the typical waste of life and equipment that went on during the British attempts to bomb Germany into submission. Someone came out with a statistic that of the aeroplanes used, only one spare part was allowed per 10,000 kilometres – the equivalent of four trips to Prague and back. They were bewailing the loss of all of their friends etc who were shot down and killed, and those who never became famous simply due to bad luck that brought them down. They were talking about crashing and I asked them if they all had their little siphon tube with them in case they hit the water. Someone commented that if you hit the water from 10,000 feet a siphon tube wouldn’t do any good. They couldn’t wait to be back home at their aerodrome and mentioned a couple of girls’ names who were waiting. I went on about my way and sorted out my medication. I went into the office and there stuck in the duplicating machine was the blister pack of one of my medications that I must have left in there. I wondered how come no-one else had noticed them but I went them to take my medication and suddenly realised that I’d already taken one of them this morning and I awoke in a panic

Some of the stories that were told by the survivors of Bomber Command were horrific. On one occasion a flak shell hit a flare that had just been loaded into the flare chute of an aeroplane. The subsequent explosion destroyed the centre of the aeroplane and killed everyone on board except the pilot, navigator and rear gunner. However the plane returned home.

Someone else watched in horror as two ‘planes collided in mid-air over the target and dropped out of the sky right onto an aeroplane that was below them, and all three crashed to earth.

My mother was a WAAF in the latter stages of World War II and she’d tell us (only very, very rarely though) of some of the tales that she’d heard at de-briefing the morning when an air raid came back. Where our family lived before we moved to Shavington (about which I talked a few weeks ago) was as squatters on a variety of redundant air bases, such as Marchweil near Wrexham and at Calveley.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself, although he did mention that a patient who had a blood test programmed for today cancelled it when he discovered who it was who would be doing it. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

After that, it was time to make breakfast and read MY BOOK, which is now finished.

We’ve reached the conclusion at last, which is rather disappointing. He states that "these clock-star observations were introduced into these islands about 2300 B.C.", however Maeshowe, which we discussed a couple of days ago, dates from the period 2800-3000 BC and was abandoned by about 2600BC, so this undermines his conclusion right at the very start.

Interestingly, he shows a table of various stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in the West Country and the dates at which their alignment was directed towards the rising cluster of the Pleiades. I plotted the sites on a map and one thing that appeared quite clearly to me was that we have two contemporary groups of neolithic constructions, which start off (Stonehenge) on a very accessible plain or (The Merry Maidens) on an exposed coastal site, and then over the years retreat into more inaccessible and inhospitable areas.

In a couple of these more accessible places, the orientation is changed to reflect the setting of Antares.

Incidentally, he tells us that "The warning stars at Athens were the Pleiades for temples facing the east, and Antares for temples using the western horizon.", but there was also a gap of several Centuries between the two.

He tells us that he has "shown that some circles used in the worship of the May year were in operation 2200 B.C., and that there was the introduction of a new cult about 1600 B.C., or shortly afterwards, in southern Britain, so definite that the changes in the chief orientation lines in the stone circles can be traced."

He goes on to say that "This change of cult may be due to the intrusion of a new tribe, but I am inclined to attribute it to a new view taken by the priests themselves due to a greater knowledge,"

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that our “Invasions Cheat-Sheet” tells us that the “Beaker-people” began to arrive in England round about 2400-2500 BC, which corresponds with the start of the alignment with Pleiades. However round about 1600BC, immigrants of the Wessex Culture began to flood into England. This date is significant as it marks the abandonment of places like Stonehenge and the beginning of the flight of the Pleiades Culture to more inaccessible and inhospitable places, and the construction of the earliest hill forts.

The more I read of things like this, the more I’m convinced that these invasions were anything but peaceful, despite the modern way of thinking, and I reckon that my cultural migration timeline and maps will have quite a lot to say on the subject.

And while we’re on the subject of the subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … you’ll understand now why I was a lousy student at University. I’d go off and do my own thing, in which I was thoroughly absorbed and thoroughly enjoying myself, regardless of whether or not it had anything to do with what I was supposed to be studying.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent radioing. I’d assembled all of the music that I needed, edited, remixed, paired and segued it, and then I wrote out all of the notes for it ready to be dictated on Saturday night.

That was despite the usual interruptions, such as my cleaner arriving, the disgusting drink break, and a wonderful, refreshing shower.

As well as that, the bank rang me up. I have a savings contract with them and that expires next month. What did I want to do?

The answer is “roll it over into a new one and use the balance on the old one as the starter sum”. I don’t know what else I’m going to do with it. It was supposed to be my savings account for if I had to change my vehicle, but as I no longer drive, it seems rather pointless.

It’s not as if I could go mad and spend it either because I can’t go out to the shops. Another trip to the High Arctic, which I would love to do, is out of the question.

While we’re on the subject of shopping … "well, one of us is" – ed … I sent off an Amazon order today. A water jug to replace the broken one, a case for my new telephone and some baking equipment as well as a couple of other things that I need.

Tea tonight was one of the best leftover curries that I have ever made, with a delicious naan followed by some more of my orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Probably the best meal of this type that I have made. What with the excellent pizza on Sunday, the food situation is looking up.

So now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrw. But seeing as we are talking about looking up and were talking about Bomber Command … "well, one of us is and was" – ed … there was that much surpus war equipment from Bomber Command lying around after the War that it went into store for years.
Eventually, someone found it and they began to distribute it amongst the various Air Cadets branches in the country.
The Crewe branch of the Air Cadets received a supply of parachutes and so they went for parachute training.
"These parachutes are old stock, been in store for years" said the instructor "so we aren’t all that sure about them. So whatever you do, don’t pull the ripcord until you are ten feet from the ground"
"What happens if it doesn’t open then?" asked a cadet
"Well, surely you can jump ten feet" replied the instructor.

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Wednesday 26th March 2025 – BLIMEY! THAT WAS HOT!

Now I understand why it was that a couple of years ago Noz had row after row after row of jars a well-known food manufacturer’s Vindaloo curry sauce on special offer. I bought a couple of jars and they have sat on my shelves ever since.

With too much stuffing left over from Monday and Tuesday, this evening a threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce to make several portions of curry, some of which I can freeze for a later date.

But I doubt if they will freeze at all. Even in a cold state, I bet that I’ll put them in the freezer and they will melt all the ice for miles around.

It wasn’t cold in here either last night. In fact, I went to bed without the fleece. It’s possibly a sign that it’s beginning to warm up outside although I wouldn’t bet on it quite yet.

What might have helped in that respect was that it was close to 02:00 when I finally went to bed, and I was absolutely exhausted. Earlier in the evening I’d set up the computer to run an algorithm running through all of the back-up drives to identify more duplicates in respect of the batch of the old files that I found a week or two ago.

It seemed to take an age crawling through all of the disks identifying stuff and so I thought, as it became later and later, "here I am so here I stay", or "J’y suis, j’y reste" as Maréchal MacMahon once said at Malakoff.

Then, of course, the inevitable happened. At 96%, the algorithm crashed and that was that. What I call a waste of an evening, but it was inevitable.

Once in bed, there I stayed, sound asleep until the alarm went off at 07:00. And then, a very weary me took to his feet and staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back at home last night. There were a lot of children there and the place was running a little wild. I was doing something with one of the small girls and she walked on the face of my youngest sister and my sister began to cry. I explained to my mother what had happened and told her that there was really nothing that anyone could have done about it – it was quite an accident and I was sure that she didn’t do it on purpose. My mother was however extremely unhappy about this and and I could see that she was waiting for the ideal moment t in which she would probably blow her top.

My mother not listening to any explanation and blowing her top was nothing new. Most people say that it’s unpredictable behaviour that makes for an uncomfortable household. That’s certainly not true. In our house it was completely predictable and we spent all of our childhood walking on eggshells. But my youngest sister has appeared quite regularly in my dreams just recently. Why can’t Castor, Zero, TOTGA or Moonchild appear as frequently?

Isabelle the Nurse and I had a long chat about the shambles that is the Town Centre right now with all of the roadworks and rebuilding. The mayor’s vanity projects are reaching new heights, so they say, but in my opinion they are plumbing new depths. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few years ago when they ripped up the old railway line down by the docks to turn the area into a car park. They just dumped a load of asphalt down and rolled it in instead of doing something really attractive. But when it comes to the view outside the Town Hall, it’s all a completely different beast.

Isabelle the Nurse thinks that I ought to run for Mayor, but I don’t even have the right to a vote here – nowhere in the World, in fact.

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

Our author has discovered that several stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … on Dartmoor align with the same stars of some of the alignments at Stonehenge do, but some 300 or 400 years later due to the precession of the stars that we mentioned yesterday. In view of the crude nature of the stones he considers that these are more primitive people than those at Stonehenge.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have discussed something along these lines before. One of our authors has pointed to the fact that invading forces in the British Isles have pushed the preceding inhabitants westward onto poorer land. The work on Stonehenge began approximately 2600BC and stopped at about 1600BC. Round about 1800BC we have the arrival of what are termed “The Wessex Culture”, described by one historian as "an intrusive ruling class who opened trading networks with France and central and northern Europe, and imported bronze tools and probably also artisans", from mainland Europe.

They certainly reached the Wessex area (hence their name) where there have been numerous discoveries of rich graves .

It doesn’t take much imagination to speculate that with their superior organisation, the people of the Wessex culture swept away the previous inhabitants who fled West, and built what they could to continue to worship what they worshipped, with whatever they could find and whatever skills that remained.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then started work. By the time that I finished, I’d sorted out all of the music, remixed it, paired and segued it and written all of the notes for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night.

So for the rest of the week I can attack my Woodstock magnum opus and see what inroads I can make into it.

That was despite several interruptions – my cleaner arriving to do her stuff, my weekly shower, the disgusting drink break etc. But at least I’m now nice and clean, my clothes are washed and I can enjoy my night’s sleep, if I ever reach my bed.

Tea tonight was rice and veg and a naan of course, With all of the stuffing though, far too much for one meal, I threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce and had it simmering away for twenty minutes in the microwave on a low heat

And by God! That’s what I call “hot” It’s no surprise that no-one in France ever bought it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I lived on my farm we used to have communal meals in our area where each one of us would take a dish. I always took a dish of pepper and lentil curry, made especially lightly. All of the British people there would be going "what the hell is this insipid rubbish, Eric?" and all of the French people would be gasping for air and throwing themselves into the nearby pond.

Right now though, I’m going to throw myself into my bed and have a sleep, later than usual of course.

But before I go, seeing as we are talking about going to bed … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was told a story about a boxer who was unable to sleep. His doctor told him to try counting sheep after he lay down and that should do the trick.
"I’ve tried that" said the boxer. <"and it’s totally useless"
"Why’s that?" asked the doctor
"Because every time I lie down i begin to count .. one .. two .. three .. four .. five .. six.. seven .. eight .. and every time I say .. nine .. I automatically leap to my feet again"

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