Tag Archives: shower

Tuesday 9th December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. It’s pointless rushing through everything in order to finish early, because all that it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

You are probably fed up of hearing me say that, given the number of times that I’ve repeated it, but believe me – I’m totally fed up of breaking my neck to be in bed before 22:00, only to wake up the following morning at … errr … 02:35. It’s going beyond a joke.

And indeed I did break my neck trying to finish early. Tea – the other half of the pizza – was all cooked from Sunday and just needed warming in the oven so it didn’t take too long at all to prepare. And with there being no preparation, there wasn’t very much washing-up and tidying to do.

Back in here, struggling desperately (and failing every now and again) to stay awake, I dashed through my notes, which went online at 21:43 and it wasn’t long after that that I crawled under the covers, with the bedroom heater turned up so that I won’t freeze to death like the previous night.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all of that. There I was, wide awake at 02:35. There was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how I tried, and I couldn’t make myself comfortable. At one point I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed but instead, I just lay there in a kind of semi-conscious daze until the alarm went off.

As is usual these days, it took a good while for me to summon up the energy to head into the bathroom and sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen to sort out the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had my old Ford Escort estate and I was in Northwest Scotland, wandering around the surfing paradises there. I had someone else with me. We were looking at everything that was going on and just walking along the beach. The beach was beautiful, but there was some kind of haze although it was cold, well, not cold but not that hot either. The islands offshore were all shimmering and glimmering in the haze. The guy with me pointed to the one nearest to us and said that he didn’t remember that being there. I said that as far as I was concerned, I remembered it from the previous times, but I thought that the one next to it was new. They were all chalky islands, like a chalky peninsula that had been sliced by the tide and the waves. We walked along this crowded beach, and for some reason, I slipped and fell down the beach. I managed to stay on my feet, but he came down to see how I was. I told him that it was one of those inexplicable things, but I was sure that I’d torn a ligament. I had to scramble as best as I could up to the previous level where we were walking. We’d been looking at those islands and they had all been painted white with lilac roofs, and he was looking at the statistics for them. He said something like there were one hundred and seventy-eight houses and one hundred and ninety-three people plus thirty temporary accommodations. I was thinking that it would be nice to have some kind of holiday or break in a small house on a little island like that somewhere.

In the mid-seventies, I often used to wander aimlessly around Scotland, but mainly in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van. And I did once go with a friend.

However, in this dream, I imagine that it’s the houses on the island that are painted white with lilac roofs, not the islands themselves.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the wind and she was impressed with my Christmas tree and my Christmas lights. I’m glad about that, because I’m impressed with them too, almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

She sorted out my legs as usual and then with a cheery wave, she carried on with her rounds. I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we didn’t go very far, because I was sidetracked down a blind alley. Something to do with an old railway station led me astray and I wandered off – I suppose you might say “down a branch line somewhere”.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then go for the lesson. It passed quite well again today but I don’t know why. However, it’s all very well learning the stuff for the actual moment, but remembering it ten minutes later is what is causing me most of my problems.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner came along and caught me by surprise. She’d bought my vegan butter from the supermarket and now she’d come to help me into the shower. And I needed it too – the help as well as the shower.

Although it takes a lot of motivation to force me into the shower, I always feel better afterwards and today was no exception. I wish that I could have a shower more than once per week but that’s not really possible

My cleaner and I had a nice, lengthy chat afterwards as we sorted out the medication, and I even played doctor for a few minutes while I was examining some of the boxes.

After she left, I came back in here and worked on one of my radio programmes. That’s now as complete as it can be, with the extra tracks chosen. All that is needed for it is the text for the extra tracks writing and dictating, which I can do tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, followed by the last of the coconut soya dessert with a couple of biscuits. I’ll bake another cake tomorrow, if only I knew what to make. I’ve run out of ideas.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my appalling memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once mentioned it to Nerina, and she took the mickey by saying that I had a teflon brain.
"Teflon brain?" I asked.
"That’s right" she replied. "Nothing sticks to it."

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Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Actually, you have no idea just how tired I was last night. I fell asleep twice … "or was it three times?" – ed … while I was typing out my notes, and in the end I gave up. I left undone a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left undone, and round about 22:20 I crawled into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I stayed until about … errr … 04:20 when I awoke. I was able at that point to go back to sleep, but when I awoke the next time at 05:13, that was that. By 06:00, I was in the bathroom having a wash.

After the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and my medication, I came back in here to finish off what I should have finished off last night, like take the stats and back up the computer.

Then it was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in my office again and it was the final day so I was preparing to retire. I was slowly going through my things, slowly tidying up. But at one point, I was actually in somewhere else trying to clear the floor of all kinds of papers and everything. It was all little notes and stuff that I’d written years ago and it all went into the bin. I couldn’t believe how tidy I’d made the place. I even found an assignment from one of my University courses and when I had a look at it, I found that although it had received a good mark, the page layout and format of the document that I’d sent was awful, and I wondered how on earth I’d managed to miss this when I’d been preparing it. Then I was back in my office and going through my desk. There were tons of stuff, and I couldn’t work out what I needed to take and what I needed to leave behind. People were asking me what I intended to do. I replied that I had a deckchair, a nice garden and two nice cats. I’ll just sit out and enjoy the summer. Two of us, right at that moment, said that I’d picked the best time of the year to leave. Then the boss came round and asked me if I was nearly ready to go. I replied that I was still sorting out my stuff. She said something like “don’t take the toaster” which was the office toaster that was on my desk. I replied “it’s still on my desk, isn’t it?” because I thought that it was a really offensive thing to say. Then I suddenly realised that it was Friday so I rang up Nerina at her place and asked “shouldn’t we be going swimming tonight after work? I haven’t brought anything to wear”. She replied “I’ll get something off one of my brothers, some shorts or something” but I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then she told me about this plastic underwear that you could buy. I turned up my nose at that. She tried to persuade me but I wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. In the end, I thought that I’d probably just go home and make some tea for when Nerina comes home. That’s going to be the best solution but she was still trying to persuade me to wear either her brother’s shorts or some of this plastic underwear.

So having spent all those years during the night reaching the final few days at work but never actually finishing, here I am finally about to cross the threshold. That’s twice in a week or two that I’ve done that, after all of these years.

But whatever this is about plastic underwear? I really don’t know. And as if I really would pinch the office toaster … "perish the thought" – ed …

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self (at least, these days) and we had a little chat as he sorted out my legs. He’s all inclined not to come on Sundays to give me even more of a rest and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – although if I fall asleep once more while I’m typing these notes, as I just did five minutes ago, I’ll think again.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Not that I managed to go very far today, though. I was side-tracked … "again" – ed … looking for the one of the many towns named Manton that contains some significant Roman remains, and ended up going on a guided tour of Roman villas in England – abandoned, or burnt, or destroyed, or buried.

You’ve no idea just how many there are altogether. They even came across one when they were digging a driveway into the Council offices in Bromley.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then I went to the lesson. It started off quite well, but it all went pear-shaped when we had a spontaneous test on a subject that had been covered by the class while I was at chemotherapy. That was an embarrassment.

However, I bravely stuck it out until the end of the lesson, but I was glad that it was over.

My faithful cleaner came around later, as usual, and organised the shower for me. And so now, I’m a nice, clean boy again. I can’t wait, though, to have the time to order the handrails for the shower so that I can shower on my own and have more than one per week.

After the shower and I’d dried myself off, the next task was to install the strings of Christmas lights in the windows.

Last year, I was the only person in this whole area who had some pretty coloured lights in the window. And even though I’m not a believer in Christmas or anything like that, it’s still nice to bring some joy and gaiety into a depressing period of the year and it’s a shame that other people don’t make any kind of effort at all.

Consequently, my faithful cleaner (under my supervision) put up my lights in both the windows, and now it looks as if at least one person in the area is celebrating Christmas instead of the whole area being so miserable about it. At some point, I’ll even organise my Christmas tree.

After my cleaner left, I sorted out the rest of the music that I need for my next radio programme, and I’ll organise that over the rest of the week. And won’t it be nice to have a couple of days when I’m going nowhere, so that I can press on.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes, veg and vegan sausage, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Only small portions, but I managed to eat it all tonight. It’s a meal with foods that are full of carbohydrates and fats so while it’s not a particularly healthy meal, it’s full of energy and proteins so that should help to keep me going while this lack of appetite persists.

And so, on that point, I’m going to be and see how I’ll get on tonight. I could do with another good sleep but, as usual, that’s not particularly likely. We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about sticking it out … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in the High Arctic about two nudists who went on a camping holiday in the north of Greenland.
Freezing and shivering to death inside their tent, they were wondering how long they could stick it out before they ended up being frost-bitten.

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Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

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Tuesday 11th November 2025 – TODAY’S WELSH LESSON …

… was another one that passed quite well, and I’m not sure why. Maybe, subconsciously, all of this preparation that I’m doing is having some effect, even if I don’t really notice it.

Having a good sleep also helps. I finished my notes fairly early last night, dashed through everything else that needed doing and found myself in bed for 22:50 – early by the standards of these days.

Once in bed, there I lay, fast asleep, until I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This time, though, it was at 06:17, just twelve minutes before the alarm was due to go off. And being sat on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm sounded allows if to be counted as an early start.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication. This involved another honey, ginger and lemon drink to hopefully dissolve what is causing all of these fits of coughing. It doesn’t seem to be working so well so far.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some big battle going on in Europe. In the USA, they would be sending thousands and thousands of shells over to Europe to fight this battle. When they had unloaded them on the docks and put them on a big railway, it would send them somewhere near the front line. Then, they would have a system of trench railways that would bring the stuff right up to the front. It was the Scots who were mainly involved in this battle. What they did in the USA was to encourage exiled Scots to make a monthly contribution. It only had to be a few pence or it could be a few Pounds every month to a bank account that had been set up, which could be used to purchase more ammunition and equipment.

That’s another thing about which I’ve been reading just recently – the trench railways in World War I. There were hundreds of miles of them built to bring supplies from the forward depots up to the front line. And this military subscription thing is similar to something that was set up to supply the Ukrainian forces in order to defend their country against the aggressor.

Isabelle the Nurse started her week this morning, and started in excellent fashion by turning up early. She was her usual cheerful self, except when she began to talk about the new War Memorial plaques that have begun to create a huge scandal.

In the town centre, they have commemorated the fallen by adding new plaques, listing the names of the fallen from the town in both World Wars, alongside the statue in the town square.

However, all of the names on the list are of the men who fell. There is not a single woman listed, although it is well-known that there were nurses from the town who were killed in action in both wars, there were female resistance fighters who were either killed or executed, there were females who were transported and died in the camps and there were females who were killed in the bombardment of the town. All of these people were mortes pour la France.

Many people are outraged by the omission of these names from the rolls of honour.

After she had left, I made breakfast and, having finished the project that I had been undertaking just recently, I went back to reading AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

It’s the diary of Margaret Carrington, wife of Colonel Henry Carrington of Fort Phil Kearny fame, and talks about her journey to the fort, her encounters there, and the final retreat after the Fetterman Massacre.

It’s written in a spirit of total naïveté, which would be charming had it not been full of comments that would be considered most offensive these days. Imagine someone writing today about the Powder River valley, saying"Buffalo Tongue and other Indians who infest its valley." and what the response would be.

She also has absolutely no sense of irony either. She mentions that "the Crows lost possession" of the Powder River "by robbery".

Furthermore, she then berates the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the Peace Council at Fort Laramie, asking them "Why do the Sioux and Cheyennes claim the land which belongs to the Crows?". They reply, quite naturally "The white man is along the great waters, and we wanted more room.".

Yes, no sense of irony whatever.

But she tells us of some very interesting events on the border. When talking about “Old Little Dog”, she announces that "he sprang upon the bare back of his pony with all the elasticity of youth and more than the skill of our mounted infantry, and galloped swiftly away. He had the appearance of being very old, but his agility and address in his intercourse with that pony were decidedly suggestive of the probable skill and activity of the young warriors of his nation"

Now, who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that?

The most noteworthy remark however, was when she was talking about her house catching fire just before leaving for the Powder River. "But as this was only an incident very possible in army life, the fun of the affair made up for its losses."

Yes, “the fun of the affair being “an incident very possible in army life”. I’m all agog to find out what she makes later in the book about the death at the hands of Red Cloud and his band of Oglala Lakota of Lieutenant Fetterman and the eighty soldiers who went with him from the fort. How much “fun” will she think that this “incident very possible in army life” was?

After breakfast, I had to revise for my Welsh and then I attended the lesson. One of the subjects that we discussed was the UK’s Postmaster scandal. Many sub-postmasters were convicted of false accounting and sent to prison, with several committing suicide, only to be told later that the new computer program that they were obliged to use contained a bug that corrupted the entries that they had made.

The Post Office knew all about it but chose to keep silent, thus destroying the careers and the future, and in some cases the lives, of many of their sub-postmasters.

After the lesson, my cleaner turned up to do her stuff and I had a lovely shower. So now I’m all nice and clean for once.

After she left, I fitted the new SSD hard drive into the computer and loaded up the operating system. However, despite trying all afternoon, there’s a corruption in the C++ libraries that is preventing many of the programs that I use from loading up.

Had I realised this, I would have updated the operating system before loading up the programs. What I’ll have to do now is to format the disk and start again.

Tea was another helping of Moroccan bean tajine, but once again, I left a pile of food on the plate. However, a helping of chocolate cake and strawberry soya dessert filled a hole.

So now, this nice, clean me is off to bed to make the most of an unexpected Day of Rest tomorrow, to see if I can’t sort out this C++ library and then finish this radio programme.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Margaret Carrington’s offensive remarks about the Native Americans … "well, one of us has" – ed … since writing this entry, I am told that the Oglala Lakota Sioux are planning to take legal action against the estate of Margaret Carrington, and have consulted lawyers.
"It’s quite surprising that you have done that" I said to Red Cloud
"Not at all" he replied. "We’re not called ‘the Sioux’ for nothing, you know."

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Tuesday 4th November 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely chat this afternoon.

It’s been ages since Liz and I have had a good natter over the internet, but this afternoon she came online and we had quite a discussion. It’s really nice to catch up with old friends.

Something else with which I shall have to catch up is my sleep, but that’s not going to be for a day or so, the way that things are panning out right now.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s totally pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the next morning. And so it was today.

Last night, after tea, I rushed through everything. My notes were on-line at 22:07 and it didn’t take long to finish off everything. By 22:40, I was tucked up under the quilt and already half-asleep. It didn’t take very long at all to go the rest of the way.

And there I lay, flat out and dead to the World until … errr … 03:15. I’ve no idea what awoke me, if anything actually did, but I couldn’t go back to sleep despite all of the trying.

By 05:15 I had given it up as a bad job and left the bed. Taking full advantage of the unexpected early start, I dictated the radio notes for the additional track on the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

Once I’d done that, I uploaded them to the computer, edited them and then completed the radio programme. It over-ran by nineteen seconds, which is better than under-running by nineteen seconds. I can edit out an over-run but there’s not much that you can do to an under-run except to slow the speed of the recording.

The editing took a while, but now it’s all up and running at exactly one hour in length, which is what it’s supposed to be.

The nurse turned up as usual today. His happy, cheerful self seems to be continuing, which is very pleasant. He’s much nicer than this.

To cheer him up, I told him that I’m going out at 07:30 tomorrow morning. He told me that he can’t make it by that time so I should have to sort myself out. That’s not too much of a problem, as it happens. I’m sure that I shall manage.

After he left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. It was some guy’s party for a birthday, a wedding or something, so everyone had gone to town with him. When they were outside a pub, they were awarded a free kick, so one of their friends took the kick and hoisted it really high towards them. The commentator said something about “this is a typical gentleman’s wedding-type ball, this one”. Anyway, they all dispersed themselves, walking away. But before that, though, when the ball was played into the air, everyone ran forwards towards the ball except for two guys who stood waiting at the back. They were the ones who were able to get the ball and head it towards the goal, or towards the pub etc, and the commentator was saying something about it being a proper wedding ball. But these players who ran forward trying to get the ball, it was like a stampeding herd that you’d see in a couple of these other games. Anyway, later on, there was another free kick that needed to be taken, so the same player who took the previous one again kicked a high ball into the centre of the town where everyone was waiting outside the pub, trying to head it in.

Whatever that’s about, I’m sure that you can work it out for yourselves. I can understand the football part, but why they should be doing it in a town centre in the middle of a stag night is anyone’s guess.

Someone had made a cheese soup and they had brought it into the kitchen where we were all waiting. So I went into the cupboard and brought out a pile of bowls and began to hand them round to people who went up to be served with it. However, the woman in charge took a great deal of exception to the idea oof me handing out bowls. She told me quite simply that bowls were not allowed. I replied “I don’t know how else we’re going to eat this meal”. But she dispensed everything to everyone else in the bowls and just put the soup down. Then they all wandered off. As I wasn’t allowed a particular bowl, I picked up the big bowl that was already there and wandered off with that. I just sat in my car outside and ate it, or, at least, ate some of it. The next thing that I knew, I was surrounded by these two angry women who wanted to know what was happening with the soup. I explained that I couldn’t supply myself with a bowl from which to eat it, so I just ate it out of the main one. That made them even more angry. In the end, they took the soup. They wanted to know what had happened to the tickets that I must have taken from the people to whom I’d handed out the bowls. I replied “no-one gave me a ticket” so that made them even more angry. In the end, they searched through the car to see if they could find any tickets but all they found were two sets of ear-studs belonging to children, who must have been children who were at this meeting or whatever it was and had come there in the car. They were so angry, but I didn’t care at all because if I hadn’t been allowed to eat the soup out of a bowl that I’d supplied from my kitchen, then I was going to eat it out of the main bowl whether they liked it or not.

It’s not as if I have any interest whatever in cheese soup – it sounds disgusting to me – but this kind of situation where I’m excluded from something that I’ve organised on my own premises is nothing at all new to me.

One of the guys from the Welsh class was saying that he wasn’t here last week because he’d had to go to some small place on the Bristol Channel somewhere. There was a mutual Society there called something to do with the Bristol Concessions. They owned property and that kind of thing in their settlements, and everything was done on a very co-operative basis. It was very cheap to live there and one of the shares had come up for sale, so he went to see it to see if he could buy the share and move to the village. He was telling us all about this place and we all decided that we’d go with him to have another look around. He took us and showed us around the village. My eye immediately fell on someone’s workshop, which was full of motorbikes, many of which, I imagined, had never been used. He was saying that this was the guy to whom he’d been talking. There were even cars that that belonged to the Society that go back eighty years that are still active today, and there were many that they had bought that had never even had their engines fitted yet. This particular guy owns one of them. We carried on walking around the village and came to a field where there were about a dozen old cars, one of which was one of the vehicles that he mentioned. I swarmed in there and began to take photos. There was even a rare Audi van from the late fifties or early sixties. I was enthralled by this. For some reason, I couldn’t make my camera work to take photos on it. I was distracted by the city walls of this place. Having to take a photo, I found that to take a photo, I was far too faraway because I was used to having my big camera. I had to change my photography technique, and in doing so, I forgot to take half of the photos. I had to run back to where this Audi van was so that I could take the photographs of it that I wanted

This one is quite confusing too. For example, the car wasn’t an Audi (it would have been an Auto-Union or a DKW in those days anyway) but a Volvo PV544. I can still see it now, even though I can’t remember the dream. And how I wouldn’t mind finding one of those in a field.

A workshop full of old motorcycles would be my dream too. It’s been a while since I had my last proper motorbike – a Honda CX500 30-odd years ago.

However, this part about the camera not working at a crucial moment – that was a recurring dream at one time too.

After that, I … errr … crashed out for ten minutes, and then had a mad panic to revise my Welsh for the lesson.

However, I needn’t have bothered because there was a power cut in Yr Wyddgrug and the College was closed, so we had no tutor and the lesson was abandoned. Instead, I had a couple of hours of nice, personal relaxing time.

After the disgusting drink break at midday, I attacked the next radio programme and by the time that I had knocked off, I’d finished them and they are ready for typing when I next have an early start.

There were several interruptions today and all of them were very welcome.

Firstly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and, once more, she ushered me into the shower. That was really nice. And now that the plumber is finished, I can call the joiner and have him install the handrails in the shower so that I can climb into and out of the shower without any assistance.

Secondly, as I said just now, Liz and I had a chat that went on for quite a while and was only finished because I had to go to make tea.

Tonight I had a taco roll with rice. The filling consisted of lentils, mushroom, garlic and tomato sauce, and it was delicious. Nevertheless, there was some left on my plate yet again tonight. Not to worry though, because chocolate cake and soya dessert filled the home that was left.

Now, I’m off to bed. It’s a 06:00 start tomorrow because I have dialysis in the morning. My hours are messed up so that I can have a free weekend with my niece, which is nice.

But seeing as we have been talking about my niece … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine from Crewe told me that his sister was going to have a baby.
"What’s she going to call it?" I asked.
"If it’s a girl, she’s going to call it Denise " he replied.
"And what if it’s a boy?" I asked.
"I don’t know for sure" he answered. "I think she’ll call it Denephew."

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Tuesday 28th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29 this morning. I don’t know what’s happening to me. A few weeks ago, I’d have been up and about for several hours by then.

It’s not as if I had had a late night either. Although it wasn’t as early as I would have liked, 23:20 isn’t all that late by current standards. It could have been earlier too, but I can’t seem to find the motivation these days to push on and complete even the most simple tasks.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, flat out, until about 04:15. Having checked the time, I rolled over and went back to sleep, and that was that. I wish that I could do that more often.

As usual, it took me a good while for me to find the motivation to raise myself to my feet and stagger off to the bathroom, 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. There was something about a ships’ convoy sailing down the coast of Normandy out here in the bay. They were keeping to shallow waters so that a submarine wouldn’t creep up on them and sink them

Yesterday, I was reading a report on the convoy codes from World War II and what they meant, such as SC, representing “Sydney, Cape Breton” – the slow convoys from the Gulf of St Lawrence to Liverpool, and the reverse route from Liverpool to the Gulf, ONS, meaning “Outbound, Northwards, Slow”. There were hundreds of convoy routes, each one with its own identity. What a convoy would be doing, hugging the coast to keep clear of submarines, is anyone’s guess.

There was also something about shopping and someone going to buy some food, and having to buy something else like a bread bun that was loose in one of these dispenser things.

This one, however, is totally meaningless.

But the one that I remember was someone being awoken in the morning and having to dress. He put on a suit but the suit was soaking wet; It had been on the floor when there had been a flood or something like that, but it was the only suit that he had so he put it on and tried his best to make himself tidy. He went into the living room where there were a few other people waiting. They began to talk about leaving. There was something about breakfast – whether they should have breakfast before leaving because all along the way, all of the shops were forbidden to serve Jews so they wouldn’t have anything to eat until they boarded their ship that was taking them to immigrate to the New World.

This one doesn’t seem to relate to too much either. Many Jews did flee Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Century, in order to escape persecution. Many more tried in the late 1930s but of those who did manage to escape on board a ship, many were refused entry at the destinations of their choice

A young Zero put in an appearance last night. She was coming to stay with Nerina and me for a couple of days, so we went to pick her up and brought her home. We all settled down on the settee and we let her choose a film. She chose CROCODILE DUNDEE and put the DVD on. But the film wasn’t anything at all about that. It was more of a cartoon type of ASTERIX THE GAUL and his friends, who were invaded by the Romans and the misadventures that befell them. All of the woman in this film had fallen in love with Caesar and so they wanted to assassinate Caesar but they couldn’t agree on a method of doing it. In the end, the plot was exposed, and they were all fastened to this huge plank of wood that was hinged on the floor. When they were fastened there, they were raised up – the plank of wood was raised up almost vertically so that the sun was shining directly onto them all. It was a form of medieval torture.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see her during the night, and it’s a shame that she couldn’t stay around for longer. However, I didn’t think much of the ending to this dream. It’s been quite a while since there has been a violent dream. At one time, I was having these bloodthirsty dreams on a regular basis.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in this morning, full of good humour and bonhomie. She gave me the first of this series of injections and then tended to my feet, chatting all the time. It seems that her son is off on holiday to Scotland at some point and she was asking after some hints.

My favourite part of Scotland is the West Coast, all around the lochs and islands, but I’m also a big fan of Galloway, where I’ve spent many a happy day or three.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then came back in here.

There was plenty to do at first and it took an age. It still doesn’t seem as if I’ve actually done anything. But once I’d finished as far as I could, I made a start on the radio programme.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d chosen all of the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it, and written half of the notes. Tomorrow, I shall have to crack on and finish.

There was an interruption today, when my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff. That included organising a shower for me, and I did something that I haven’t done for several years – which was to climb unaided into the shower.

That was a real feather in my cap, I can tell you. And I enjoyed the climb too. The shower was even nicer, and now, I’m a nice, clean boy.

For tea tonight, I had a taco roll with rice and veg. But not the usual taco roll – I made it with soya mince and kidney beans just for a change. It was a change too, but I’m not going to say that it was any better.

So now, I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. And as well as a nice, clean me, there’s a nice, clean bed. My cleaner changed the bedding this afternoon while I was showering. I’m really going to be in the lap of luxury tonight and I can’t wait to climb into it.

But seeing as we have been talking about showers … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once in a motel when I heard a woman in another room shout "it’s disgusting. It shouldn’t be allowed!"
Of course, I wandered over there to see what was going on.
"It’s the man in the room next door" she said. "He’s in the shower, doing rude things to himself!"
So I had a look in the shower and couldn’t see anything at all.
"Of course you can’t" she said. "But if you put the bedside chair on top of the chest of drawers and climb up, you can see him through the air brick if you squint."

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Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But then what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you are wide awake again at 01:30, you don’t really have time to go very far.

As you might expect, it was a horrible night last night – one of the worst that I have ever had. Having noted how much better I was feeling over the last couple of evenings, last night saw the collapse and I was back to where I had been earlier last week, struggling desperately (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to stay awake.

It was definitely one of those nights where I could have done with being in bed much earlier but as usual, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the time simply drifted away to nothing.

Once in bed though, I don’t even remember being awake for a minute. I was out like a light, only to be awoken a couple of hours later by a dreadful attack of cramp in my thighs, an awful cough and a powerful urge to vomit. These sensations kept on coming and going, making things most uncomfortable for me and the pain and inconvenience was such that I abandoned all hope of going back to sleep.

For the last couple of nights, I’d been awake quite early but had gone back to sleep again without very much effort. But I tried – oh, how I tried – this morning and nothing would seem to work … "he was very trying" – ed … . So round about 05:30 I gave up the ghost and left the bed.

After a good wash, I went for the medication, and it was a very leisurely medication too. I wasn’t in any rush at all this morning, what with feeling as ill as I was. In fact, it was quite a struggle to keep the medication down.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, I started my little footfest.

First match up was at the top of the JD Cymru League – TNS, who are leading, against Penybont who are second. It should have had all the air of being an exciting game, but quite frankly, Penybont were abysmal. The TNS attackers were going through the static Penybont defence like a knife through hot butter and the final score – 6-2 to TNS – didn’t do TNS any justice.

If Penybont are serious about mounting a challenge for the title, they are going to have to organise themselves much better and play much better than this.

In the middle of all of this, the nurse turned up. He sorted out my feet and then helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education gave me. But he didn’t really have much of an idea how to fit them, and neither did I, so after he left, I removed them.

After breakfast, which I really didn’t feel like eating, I came back in here to watch the highlights of the rest of the games, not that there was anything of interest to report.

All of this was followed by Stranraer v Queen of the South in the Scottish League Cup, and Stranraer ground out a very respectable draw against a team that is comfortably in mid-table in the league above.

What was interesting ABOUT THIS GAME was that we had another one of these exciting “let’s play it out from the back” moments that so entertain the crowd.

This afternoon, I’ve had a whole raft of exciting things to do, such as to sort out my tax affairs which are proving to be more complicated than I could ever imagine.

There was my Welsh homework to do too, and that’s almost finished. Half an hour on that tomorrow will see it ready to go off.

The printer needed a good overhaul too, as some of the stuff that I’ve been printing just recently isn’t as it is supposed to be. In the end, I changed a couple of ink cartridges and it seems to be working a little better, although the Magenta is still being troublesome.

And that reminds me – I need to order some more ink cartridges.

This afternoon was beautiful and sunny, so seeing as I didn’t have my shower last week and I shan’t be having one for a couple of weeks with all of these medical appointments, my faithful cleaner came down and helped me organise the shower. At least, now I smell nice and sweet for Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow, although how long it will last, I really have no idea.

There was bread to make, and pizza to make too. I really didn’t feel like doing anything, but it has to be done. I was in total agony while I was making it, but I forced myself to carry on, and in the end I managed to produce an excellent loaf and an excellent pizza.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me for a chat. She’s had her car serviced just recently and she didn’t understand a few things on the bill.

It wasn’t one of our usual chats though – my voice was giving out and in the end, I had to terminate the chat as I couldn’t keep on going.

Throughout the whole of the day, I could feel myself becoming worse and worse. By teatime, I was feeling totally dreadful. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as bad as I was feeling just then. In fact, halfway through my pizza, I just couldn’t go on any longer.

The pizza was abandoned on the table. And even though I hate waking up to dirty dishes all over the kitchen, so was the washing-up. I came back into the bedroom and simply climbed into bed, probably the best decision I had ever made.

But seeing as we have been talking about the difficulties in going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed …, apparently one of the best ways to fall asleep is to try counting sheep.
I asked one of my friends if this were true.
He replied "I’m not sure. I tried it the other night, starting off with one sheep. By the time that I had to leave the bed to go to work, I had ten thousand sheep, a huge farm in Australia and I was busy constructing a meat-packing factory"

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Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, so much for the publicity

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 24th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened to me this afternoon, but I suddenly went ice-cold, frozen to the marrow in fact, and I had another one of those sessions that I haven’t had for ages when I simply sit and am totally unable to function, rather like a catatonic episode.

It’s surprising really, because it was another night when I had something of a decent sleep. I was in bed by 23:30, which, although it’s later than I would like, is earlier than some have been.

Once in bed, I remember nothing at all until about 06:00 when I awoke. I hadn’t moved an inch during the night, which is quite rare.

No point in going back to sleep at that time so I switched off the alarms and slowly eased myself out of bed and into the bathroom.

After a good wash and after the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, but there was nothing on it at all. That’s disappointing in some sense, because the only excitement that I have these days is what happens during the night when I’m asleep. On the other hand, nothing on the dictaphone means that I must have had an undisturbed night.

Yesterday, there had been a full programme of football in the JD Cymru League, including a live match, and I hadn’t seen any of the games. I’d deliberately kept myself from looking at the scores so that I could enjoy the games this morning.

The live game was Hwlffordd v Y Barri so I watched that first. I didn’t get very far because the nurse put in an appearance.

He was disappointed that my guests had gone, but he gave me my injection and then sorted out my legs, forgetting to put away the oil afterwards. It drives me berserk, that does.

Once he had left, I could make breakfast – porridge and toast with coffee. And I do have to say that my bread is excellent these days, since I bought that scientific measuring gauge for the water. To think of all those years that I have been producing failures, all due to the measuring gauge on the water jug that I was using being incorrect.

Back in here, I resumed watching Hwlffordd v Y Barri. It sounds like an interesting and exciting game, finishing 3-2 in favour of Y Barri, but it really wasn’t. It had its moments, but the rest of it wasn’t a really good advert for the league, despite what Steve Jenkins, manager of Y Barri, said after the game.

The defeat for Hwlffordd has rooted them in the basement of the league along with Llanelli and Cardiff Metro.

It’s hard to believe that just two months ago, the club was competing in European Club Competition. It had just about the meanest back lines in Wales last season but the club sold the goalkeeper and three of the four defenders, and failed to replace them. It was odds-on that they were going to struggle in the league this season without adequate replacements, but what do I know? The chairman obviously knows best.

Their plight is worsened by Llanelli having their first win of the season last night, away at Llansawel. They are now on four points, with Hwlffordd and Cardiff Metropolitan on five, so things are looking interesting down in the basement.

While I was at it, I watched the highlights of all the other games and there were no real surprises in the results, although Y Fflint could leave Park Hall with their heads held up, having gone toe to toe with perennial champions TNS until the final ten minutes.

After a disgusting drink break, my faithful cleaner arrived and she organised a shower for me. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve had one, what with chemotherapy etc.

And while I was showering, she changed the bedding. Even better, when we were unpacking a few weeks ago, we came across a brand-new quilt cover and pillows, with matching new sheet. So I’m going to be in unashamed luxury tonight.

Once she’d left, I had some bills to pay and then I went for my mid-afternoon disgusting drink break. That was when I had my catatonic episode, sitting at the kitchen table. And I was there like that for well over an hour.

There was still time to carry on with another radio programme that I’d started the other week. I need to motivate myself much better than I am doing these days, because I’m really struggling to exert myself right now.

Tea tonight was lovely. There was some boiled potato and veg left over from the vegan pie meal on Monday, so I fried it in oil and butter, and with a vegan sausage cooking in the air fryer, I ended up with a lovely dish of bubble and squeak. It’s been years since I’ve eaten one of the “great peasant dishes of the world”, as Howard Hillman once described it.

But now, tiredness and my lovely new bed are calling, so I’m going, and if I wake up tomorrow, which is doubtful the way that I’m feeling right now, I’ll see you all tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about bubble and squeak, one of the “great peasant dishes of the world”, another one of the “great peasant dishes of the world” is toad in the hole, made of sausages in a suet or batter pudding.
When there were three of us, impoverished as we were, living in an apartment in Crewe, we would often eat that when the money ran out.
But one day, just as we had finished cooking the dish, another group of starving friends turned up.
"What did you do?" asked my girlfriend when I told her later.
"There wasn’t much that we could do" I replied. "We all just ended up with more hole and less toad."

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Wednesday 10th September 2025 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what’s happening right now, but I suddenly seem to have become very popular and it’s not like me at all. All kinds of people are contacting me these days and if I’m not very careful, I’ll end up needing a bigger engagement book to control it all.

Not last night, though. I was left pretty much to my own devices after tea and once more, I failed to push on with my work in order to have an early night. It was almost 23:30 when I finished everything, and there was no real reason why it should be that late.

The water heater hadn’t switched itself on so I switched it on manually in the hope that it might keep going through the night, not that there’s any way of controlling or checking it that I have found.

Back in here, I was in bed quite quickly, and asleep quite quickly too, but not for long because I had another one of these highly mobile nights where I’m tossing and turning without actually being asleep, but not actually being awake either.

There was another one of this dramatic “sitting bolt-upright” awakenings, at 06:24 this morning, five minutes before the alarm would usually sound. I managed to be sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off, so that counts as an “early start” – only just, but it counts just the same.

On the way to the bathroom, I checked the fuse box. Although the fuse setting for the water heater showed “off”, it was still humming as if it was drawing current, so I switched it off completely. I hope that I remember to switch it back on again tonight.

After a good wash and scrub up, followed by the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was another dramatic awakening at about 02:50 that wiped this dream from my mind. It was something to do with sound files. I had various files with sounds in them and a few others with different other side effects of sound. I’d been trying to assemble something but someone came along to give me a hand but ended up dismantling what I had done. As they chose pieces from the first lot which were probably longer and better, it was much more difficult to find a piece from the second block that would actually match the sound. It was becoming extremely complicated.

This relates to what I was doing the other day when I had to re-dictate a part of the notes for that radio programme, and to make that which I dictated then sound like that which I had dictated previously.

At one point, I’d been on a sea voyage around the South-Central Atlantic somewhere off the coast of Brazil but I can’t remember that at all and … fell asleep here … but going back to that dream again, there was a little girl in an ambulance crew uniform with a portable x-ray machine who was waiting by the door. She was waiting there for ages until she was beckoned to come in to do her job on me.

As it happens, I can’t remember anything of this, whether I had a dramatic awakening or not. In fact, I’m always asleep when I’m dictating these notes, and when I say that I “fell asleep here”, what I mean to say, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is that my speech gradually slows down and is followed by a long silence with the occasional breathing and snoring.

But here we are again on a sea voyage in the first part, and I can’t see what the second part has to do or how it relates to anything that I dictated in the first part.

I was asleep later on and in my dream, I saw all the stuff that I usually take with me when I’m going to hospital, all scattered about the floor as if someone had been picked up the bag by the wrong end. And all this stuff was … no-one was making any effort at all to try to clean it up.

That sounds more like my kind of house, doesn’t it? Rubbish all over the place and no-one cleaning it up.

It was the male nurse who came today. And surprisingly, he’s still in the same good humour as he was on his return from holiday a few weeks ago. I hope that he can manage to keep it going, because I like him much more when he’s like this.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

Our author has now had enough of the Columbia River and has set out across the Rockies for “Canada” – which in those days was simply the combined Provinces of Ontario and Western Québec.

However, before leaving, he goes through a long list of animals that have been seen down near the coast and, to my surprise, he notes that "White bears are occasionally killed on the coast to the northward of the Columbia". Imagine that today – polar bears wandering around the streets of Seattle and Spokane.

Back in here, I had another go at sending off this radio programme, but the file transfer service is still playing up dreadfully and sent the file round and round in circles on several occasions and there was nothing that I could do to clear it. In the end, I uploaded it to my own web server and sent the link to the radio station.

And that was not without issues either. It took an age to upload, for some unknown reason.

After lunch, my faithful cleaner came round to do her stuff and I had a good shower – another lovely one in my beautiful new shower unit. However, I have encountered a problem that I never realised before, and that is that when I turn the tap on, the water is freezing cold for about fifteen seconds while I am obliged to stand underneath it.

Running the water through on the detachable hose doesn’t seem to make any difference either. I can see that I’ll soon be resorting to running a blowtorch up and down the shower column.

Back in here afterwards, I had a lovely message. "what are you doing for the Remembrance Day Weekend?"

As it happens, I’ll just be going to dialysis on the Saturday afternoon, but I was intrigued to know why someone wanted to know.

"My youngest daughter and I are thinking about coming to see you for that weekend" replied my niece from New Brunswick in Canada.

That will be a hell of a trip for a long weekend, but won’t it be lovely, really lovely if they actually do manage to make it here? I love my Canadian family and I wish that I could see them more often. I miss them terribly.

So having lived in splendid isolation upstairs for just over eight years, how many visitors is this that I have had in the couple of months that I’ve lived down here? And with ex-girlfriends planning to turn up, Rosemary and Ingrid discussing another trip, and now my niece thinking of coming over from Canada, the only person who has not so far declared for a visit is Nerina, and I’m half-expecting her to turn up on the doorstep any day soon.

The rest of the day has been spent radioing, and I’ve completed the one on which I’ve been working for a few days and have made a start on the next. This one is going to be complicated, I reckon, and will take some time, so the sooner I start, the sooner I finish. And then I can move on.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed. I’m not sure if I’ll sleep tonight though, because it’s a very high tide and with the wind outside, I can hear the waves crashing into the cliffs.

It’ll be a while before the tide goes down so I’ll be hearing this for some time yet. Actually, it’s a lovely sound, the waves pounding the cliffs, and if it does keep me awake, I shan’t be bothered. I can always sleep at dialysis tomorrow afternoon.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my family … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "do you miss your family in Crewe?"
"Yes I do," I replied. "I miss them terribly. But don’t worry. I’m trying my best to improve my aim."

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Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed – and had been for ten minutes – trying to summon up the force, the energy and the courage to leave the bed.

Well, in fact, the alarm didn’t go off at all. I switched it off when I rolled out from under the covers, but you get the idea.

It was quite astonishing that I was up so early because it was a horribly late night. Feeling rather depressed and miserable, a concert by the Phil Beer Band came onto the playlist and there are several songs on there that seem to affect me like that and I really don’t know why.

However, I’ll always make time for the group to play THE BORDER SONG and, as you might expect, when you want to go to bed and there’s a concert of one hour and forty-three minutes, that’s the song that they always play to close the show, so you have to wait up.

Once in bed though, I was soon asleep and although I was tired, I awoke on two or three occasions. When I awoke just after 06:00 this morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep again and for twenty-odd minutes, there didn’t seem to be much point so I forced myself out of bed.

After I’d had a good wash and clean up, I went for the medication and then, changing the habits of a lifetime, I quickly tidied up the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Isabelle the Nurse starts her round today and I expect that she’ll want to examine the apartment.

Back in here, while I waited, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. And to my surprise and delight, I’d had a special visitor last night.

There was a group of us going off again. I first of all had to go to collect one of the girls who had a shop in High Street in Crewe. So she locked up her shop and had to go to the nightclub next door for the keys, but then found that there was a light on further back in the shop so she had to run down there to switch it off and then run back to hand in the keys. Meanwhile, my brother went across the road and fetched Zero. She was coming with me. Eventually, we all gathered in the car park and climbed into the van that I had. There were a couple of girls sitting in the front and I was driving. Zero was sitting right behind me, leaning over my shoulder. As we were driving, I made the remark that she looked rather like a parrot sitting on my shoulder, to which she replied in a bad temper that she wasn’t a parrot at all. I asked her what she was to which she replied “a bad-tempered, rude-mouthed girl” which made me laugh. After we had been driving a couple of years … "don’t you mean ‘hours’?" – ed … we pulled up at the side of the road to sleep for a few hours. I curled up in the back and Zero came to curl up next to me.

So after having mentioned yesterday one of my special young ladies, another one came to see me last night. And what’s more, she curled up next to me in the back of the van and for once, my family didn’t intervene. But the story about curling up in the back of the van with a young lady reminds me of another occasion that is much more recent, and just about as ethereal as curling up with Zero.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to complain at all.

When Isabelle the Nurse came in, she inspected the apartment and promptly fell in love with it. I’m not surprised, because I love my little apartment too. She sorted out my legs and then we discussed this “dialysis at home”. She gave me a very stern warning against it, for a variety of reasons.

Apparently, the people at dialysis describe it in one way that makes it sound attractive, but Isabelle described the same procedure in a totally different way that made it totally unattractive to someone as nesh as me.

And that reminded me of my first introduction to propaganda. When I used to drive taxis, I would always drive at night and the BBC would finish its broadcasts at 02:00 with a news bulletin.

Turning the dial slightly, you would then pick up the English language broadcasts of Radio Free Bulgaria that would start at 02:00 with a news bulletin. They would say the same news, but by changing the stress and the pronunciation, they could make it sound exactly the opposite to the BBC.

So the same news, told the same way but with different stresses and emphases to make it portray the opposite viewpoint. Who was right?

After Isabelle left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now discussing the Saxon overrunning of Middlesex, with a highly fanciful account of the invasion that is backed up by almost no evidence whatsoever. Our author seems to like this flights of fantasy into unrecorded territory.

Modern research seems to discount almost all of his theories in this respect, but then again, modern research also seems to discount or deny the ethnic cleansing of the Romano-British population by the Saxons. However, ss I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the sudden and dramatic end of writing, of ironworking, of urban dwelling and of many other skills and habits cannot really be attributed to anything else. We have the classic example of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields and the “Back To The Land” movement in this respect.

After breakfast, I changed the habits of a lifetime and began to tidy up. Having spent hours trying to find certain herbs and spices yesterday, that was the focal point of my attack and eventually, I’d managed to sort them out as I would like them to be.

There were a few other things too but I didn’t go too mad in this respect. However, I am having difficulty finding things, like the power pack to drive the little Roland bass cube for example.

There was a disgusting drink break of course and then I came in here to deal with a problem concerning the data senders for the fleet monitor, the transmissions for which are not being received at the Head Office in Denmark. The warning lights seem to be flashing as normal, so I took a one-minute video of the senders and the flashing lights.

There followed an interruption by the usual Wednesday visit by my cleaner. First thing that we did was to sort out all the bedding and I found a quilt cover and sheet that I didn’t know that I had.

She arranged the shower for me and I went and had a really good soak too. You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a lovely, warm shower in a lovely shower cubicle. But it’s rather precarious and I need to sort out the handrails so that I can have a much better purchase for pulling myself into the cubicle.

After my cleaner left, I came back in here and crashed out in one of those sudden, dramatic crashes that I have sometimes. I was out of it for an hour or so, which was disappointing, but even more disappointing was that when I awoke, I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was, and I was half-expecting to go for breakfast at that point.

Not that that’s any surprise. I don’t know where I am or what day of the week it is even when I’m wide awake.

At that point, Rosemary ‘phoned me for a chat. Just a short one today, only one hour and thirty-six minutes. It’s nice to chat to people like that and thanks to these internet chat applications, it’s all free too.

One of the things that we discussed was how good friends seem suddenly to drop off the radar and you never seem to hear from them again after a while. That’s something else that is perfectly true. Having said that of course, I still have a friend and a former girlfriend from Grammar School with whom I’m regularly in touch

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. Tomorrow, it’s dialysis and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about propaganda … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the greatest exponents of the art of propaganda was General Hindenburg of the Imperial German Army, who claimed all of the credit for the battles in Eastern Europe that destroyed the Russian Army in 1914, much to the disgust of General Hoffman who had actually led the German troops into battle.
Years later, Hoffman used to take official visitors around the battlefields there, and he would always point out three particular farmhouses.
Of the first one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept before the battle"
And of the second one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept after the battle"
But of the third one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept during the battle"

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Wednesday 27th August 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still fast asleep.

It’s no surprise really, for when you don’t go to bed until after 00:30, there really isn’t all that much time for sleeping. It is, however, disappointing to say the least. I was hoping that this series of very early starts would go on and on and on.

Yes, it was after 00:30 when I finally went to bed last night. I know that what with one thing and another, it was a late night but I hadn’t realised that it was that late until I checked the time.

Once in bed, though, I remember nothing at all. I must have gone to sleep quite quickly and stayed there until the alarm. Being as tired as I have been over this last week or so since chemotherapy, the good (well, for me, anyway) sleep probably did me some good.

Mind you, I didn’t feel like leaving the bed when the alarm went off. Once again, for two pins I would have gone back to bed. I had a real struggle to leave the bed before the second alarm went off.

It really was a slow start to the morning. It took an age to sort myself out in the bathroom and I didn’t rush to take my medication. It was about 07:40 when I finally made it back into here.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone, “just in case”. I was travelling miles in my sleep but I can hardly remember anything of it because the alarm awoke me yet again. However, I do remember that on one occasion I was going back into a place where I worked, trying to smuggle out a textbook or instruction book or something so that I could do some work at home on the Thursday or Friday and have the book back in the office for Monday morning. I also remember doing something with a sheet of newspaper, rolling it up into some kind of spiral like the kind of thing that you’d make if you were lighting a fire. That’s all that I remember about what was going on during the night.

And isn’t that disappointing too? Having a really interesting dream, only to find it evaporate away like that.

The nurse was early again and he was once more in a spirit of amiability. I hope that this keeps up, rather than his usual depressive state

After he left, it was breakfast time. However, I had hardly started it, never mind finished it, when there was a ring on the doorbell. I’m not sure that I mentioned yesterday that the dialysis centre wants me to go for a Doppler examination on the implant in my arm. It had been arranged for 09:30 this morning here in Granville, so I wasn’t expecting the taxi at 08:45.

We arrived at the hospital at 09:05, in plenty of time for my appointment at 09:30, so it goes without saying that I wasn’t seen until a little after 10:00. My taxi driver had already been once to pick me back up but she found me sitting there waiting to be called.

The doctor who performed the examination was someone whom I have met on several occasions in the past. A small lady of “a certain age”, she would make a very good companion to my favourite taxi driver, for she is another one who gives a running commentary of “a certain kind” while she is working. Those two working together would make a wonderful combination.

She had me there for well over half an hour, and the result is exactly as I knew it to be before we even talked about going – namely, there’s a fault in my implant right where the second needle goes, and the fault has been there for months, exactly as I said that it had.

That is the responsibility of the clinic that tried its best to rob me of €1667 or thereabouts last summer, and for which I had to fight over four months for it to be returned. I am now awaiting the formal report before I decide my next move.

However, I shall be having words with the doctors at the dialysis centre too. I’ve been complaining about this implant for months, and no-one has done anything about it. It’s a shame that I had to write to the dialysis centre’s head office so that something could be done, and despite the objections of the chef de service who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, took great exception to my letter, my letter has produced some kind of results.

When I left the radiology booth, my poor taxi driver was still awaiting me. I felt terribly sorry for her but there wasn’t all that much that I could do about it.

It was 10:55 when I arrived back here and I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that was that it was lovely just to walk back all on my own across the courtyard to the front door, into the building and straight into my new apartment without having to worry about how I’m going to climb 25 stairs.

First thing that I did when I was back here was to reheat my porridge and coffee in the microwave and then finish my breakfast, at long last.

The second thing was to say hello to my faithful cleaner who came in carrying an urgent letter. And so it’s official that Tuesday 16th September I go to Rennes for my next session of chemotherapy.

It looks as if it’s just for the day too. Plenty of mention about what I need to bring, but nothing at all about an “overnight bag”. Of course, I’ll telephone to check. However, if it is just a day visit, that will cause a few other problems because I don’t think that I’ll be in much of a state to travel afterwards, if the previous sessions have been anything to go by.

Much of the afternoon has been spent beginning to unpack my office and installing my external drives. There’s a lot to do in this respect and it will take a while to do it all.

However, the good news is that I have had my first shower. And it was gorgeous too. It worked just as I wanted it to and I was so impressed. However, climbing in and out of the shower is difficult. The step up is just a little too high for me.

But I have a solution to that. Lying around here are all kinds of offcuts of scrap wood from the kitchen, and if I put two or three together and screw them so that they don’t move, they would make a nice step up of half-height and so I should be able to manage the ascent so much better.

What kind of state am I in these days?

Later on, we had another foot-fest. I’d missed the match between Stranraer and Clyde at the weekend, and last night Stranraer had taken on Glasgow Rangers Youth in the Scottish League Cup.

The match at the weekend was a tame 1-1 draw but last night’s match was … errr … interesting, to say the least. Stranraer won 4-1 but, big Stranraer fan that I am, their third goal was scored from the softest ever penalty award that I have ever seen which in 99 games out of 100 would have been waved away, and as for the fourth goal, you can show me that again as many times as you like and from every kind of angle too, and I will still say that the Stranraer forward was half a mile offside.

However, Stranraer has in the past been on the wrong end of several dubious decisions in the past so I suppose that things eventually even themselves out.

Tea tonight was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer with pasta and vegetables, and in a return to normality after the upheaval of the last week or so, I read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES by Montagu Sharpe.

Sharpe has been discussing the Iron-Age occupation of Middlesex by the various Celtic tribes and that has led me on a chase around cyberspace for buried treasure. Quite literally too, because the subject of buried hoards from the Iron Age came into the discussion.

Of course, I went off on a side-track and in the words of Fridtjof Nansen, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on."

And that, dear reader, is the answer to why it takes me so long to write up my notes, and why my Degree studies were not as they ought to have been. I am side-tracked far too easily by things that, to me at least, are much more interesting than whatever I am supposed to be doing.

So late once more, even though at one stage it promised to be quite early, I’m off to bed, wondering if I’ll have another “lie-in” until the alarm goes off.

But despite my having the first decent meal tonight since before chemotherapy, it’s been something of a bad day. On several occasions, I’ve felt my head spinning round and I’ve had to hold on to something to stop me falling. I’ve still not recovered from chemotherapy, I reckon, and I have no idea for how long this is going to continue.

But seeing as we have been talking about Fridtjof Nansen … "well, one of us has" – ed … he is of course famous for his epic hike across Greenland in 1888. During his trek he came across an Inuit building one of these little round houses out of ice blocks.
"What do you call this building?" asked Nansen
"It’s an ig" replied the Inuit
"Don’t you mean ‘igloo’?" asked Nansen
"Oh no" replied the Inuit. "There’s no plumbing up here on the Greenland Ice Cap."

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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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