… today. And outside too! Snow is forecast from Friday until next Wednesday and the woodpile is starting to look a little low. Terry had salvaged some beams from a previous construction project and so he set out to cut them up. He handed me a small hand-axe and I went to attack another pile of waste wood in order to reduce it to kindling.
We were out there for an hour or an hour and a half or so and ended up with quite a respectable pile that will keep us going for a while. But I’m clearly not fit – even chopping up a pile of kindling was wearing me out.
But that wasn’t the most exciting part of the day. That was reserved for something of a non-event. There I was, up and about and all ready, a good few minutes before 08:00, and waiting for my nurse to come and give me my injection. And waiting. And waiting. By the time that 11:30 came around, I realised that he wasn’t going to come at all and I could have had a decent lie-in.
When he came round in the evening, he was surprised to learn that he had forgotten. he had had quite a few blood samples to take (and they always have to have priority – no-one likes to hang around for too long waiting for breakfast) and then was carried away with the rest of his work. I’m not complaining though – as you know, I’m fed up of being used as a dartboard and if I can have half a day off, then so much better for me.
After lunch, Terry went out on an errand to visit someone out near Menat and I stayed here (just for a change). I didn’t do too much in the afternoon except work on my animation course. I wasn’t up to much and ended up going for an early night.
But then again I’d been on yet another major mega-ramble during the night and having the dictaphone right by my bed, I had recorded almost everything that had happened. And this news is bound to depress you because there was tons of stuff, a great deal of which totally surprised me when I came to type it out for I didn’t remember even half of it. It does make me wonder what I’ve been missing out of my nocturnal rambles over the last few years when I’ve not had the dictaphone to hand.
And so – here we go. You have been warned.
Terry and I were watching Convoy
A bit later on, we had yet another family reunion as my brother once more entered into the fray. And as usual we were arguing. This time about a car workshop manual. And this took place as we were walking down the street in Welsh Row, Nantwich. I ended up tearing it into shreds, throwing it into the street and telling him to … errr … go away. And as I turned to storm off down the street I heard him call out “Goodnight” to my eldest sister, mentioning her name. And I didn’t know if she was really there or not, or whether he was merely saying that to make me turn round. Anyway, I didn’t turn round and carried on walking down the hill. It was pub-closing time when I reached the town centre. Everyone was milling around at the night clubs and I walked through the Crown Hotel (which wasn’t the Crown Hotel, but since when has that ever had anything to do with where I go and what I do at night?) where all of the people were leaving and the staff was busy clearing up the place. I walked out of the other door into the corner of Pillory Street and Hospital Street (which is of course nowhere near the door of the Crown Hotel) right opposite the old Boots shop to confront a big silver Mercedes saloon coming the wrong way up the one-way street, to the hoots and derisions of all of the pedestrians on the pavement. We ended up watching one of these tests about “what do you do if you have all of these chemicals and fireproof blankets and a fire breaks out?” The person running the test told us how to make a cocktail of these ingredients (which I shall be trying just as soon as I go home, believe me) and what effect it would have, but it’s also a by-product for treating eczema. And if you are treating someone with eczema who has been possessed by the devil, you don’t need to earth them to make the devil leave when you paste this tomato-like paste on their eczema.
Now here’s a thing. Of all of the family who have been recently making an appearance, you will be doubtless wondering when my niece in Canada will be putting in an appearance. Well, wait no longer because tonight, she finally walks onto the stage. We set out with me back home, packing, making ready to go to Canada, but for some reason, when I was all ready to go, I ended up not going. However, I went off to my office with all of my suitcases. My colleagues were curious about this and kept asking me where I was off to and so I explained about my trip to Canada. I then had to go to speak to someone, and I learnt that they were in the swimming baths – and I’d just come from there! All my swimming clothes were wet but nevertheless I had to go back there, change into them, and then go back into the pool. And the person for whom I was looking was no longer there. I went back to the dressing room and changed, being fed up, cold and wet, and went back to the room where my suitcases were. We then had a lengthy discussion that instead of me going to Canada, I was going off the Germany for a few days. But I had to book a bus – and you REALLY DID have to book it too, you couldn’t just turn up and get on – and I hadn’t done that, with just an hour left before the bus departed. Anyway I set off for Germany but it wasn’t Germany to where I was going but somewhere else and here I met up with my niece and her youngest daughter. We were having a really good chat but the surrounding were quite uncomfortable so she suggested that we all go back home again. For my part, I wasn’t too concerned and felt that it would be okay if I were to find a put-u-up bed or something. We each had a hot cup of syrup – mine was mint but I can’t remember what the others had. However my niece decided that she wanted hers cold so I had to put some seawater in it to cool it down. Daughter and I set off to find the seawater (the idea that the syrupy drink would be cold long before we returned never entered our heads) but outside the building was a pile of puppies and a kitten. Daughter saw them and fell in love with them of course. Someone in the neighbourhood shouted a puppy’s name and all of the puppies and the kitten scampered off. We walked off up the street and here we met someone with a pet raccoon. Daughter fell in love with that too and so we ended up having a good chat to this person. We eventually ended up where this water was, and it bore more than just a passing resemblance to the back of the city centre of Chester with the little streets that went down to the by-pass (which was the water line for us). The tide was in and the water had come up to the steps so in principle you could just wade in a grab some. However, the water didn’t look very clean and the faster-flowing water closer to the centre of the river would be much cleaner and so that was the place to go. This involved climbing up a stairway and along a raised brick and stone walkway to a tower right at the end, all of which was fenced in by a tubular metal hand-rail. But to reach there, with the tide being so far in, you ended up to your neck in water. I told daughter to make sure that she stayed on the steps on the shore and I set off , wading out to these other steps to take me up onto the walkway. However, the stairway was fenced off so I had to retrace my steps and swim right around to find a way up (how I was going to bring this water back without spilling it was yet another thought that hadn’t occurred to me). When I finally clambered up onto the walkway, someone was around there shouting to everyone to keep away as there was a raw sewage outlet just offshore a little further out. Daughter then put in an appearance – she hadn’t stayed where I had told her to stay. And so we had to think again about where we could obtain some more seawater.
The three of us (me, niece and daughter) ended up driving through Stoke on Trent with another guy in the car. I was explaining to him just how derelict The Potteries was, showing him many of the derelict sites around the city. We were heading from Hanley out towards Ash Bank and came to a big roundabout (bearing more than a passing resemblance to the roundabout on the outer ring road of Brussels right by the Woluwe Shopping Centre) but the roads over it, particularly the slip-road heading to the south, was completely overgrown with weeds. We had quite a laugh about this as I did a couple of laps of the roundabout, but despite the roundabout being very large, I ended up with two wheels on the kerb at one point. We took the exit that led off to Longton (which bears no resemblance whatever to the “real” Longton) and found the town to be crowded, loads of people around. We arrived at some temporary traffic lights controlling traffic at some road works. One of the workers had a pneumatic road-breaker digging up the road, but when the lights changed to green, he carried on digging so no-one could move. The lights changed back to red, and then to green, and he was still there digging. I rolled the car forward until it was right up against his spine but he still carried on. In the end, I left the car and switched off his machine so that he could hear me and I could ask him why he wasn’t watching what was going on and watching the traffic lights and so on.
It’s hardly surprising that I was totally worn out after all of that. How long can I keep this up? 2023 words tonight and it’s enough to give me another dose of writer’s cramp.
, a “bunch of people living under the same roof” and in the end we made the decision that, like the Knights of the Round Table in 
, we would go our separate ways. It was the most intelligent way to put an end to all of the difficulties that we were facing.
, which is a highly-fictionalised story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. What’s interesting in this film is not so much the film itself or the stars who act in it, but the supporting cast. We have Grant Withers, who played the Police Inspector in the Boris Karloff’s James Lee Wong films (of which I have all, downloaded from 
and the old house in 
. Everyone was planning on going down there for a couple of days so my companion and I decided that we would seed the house with all kinds of practical jokes. This worked in spades and we certainly succeeded in putting the willies up the rest of our company. 
, a particular favourite of Robyn’s. 
just here) so I was all for escaping down the drains (the verandah of this house had been built over a drain manhole). However the leader of our party told us to sit tight, not to panic and to act normally because an avenue of escape would present itself. Eventually we ended up in a Victorian Gothic office building in the centre of London where we were safe for a while, but even here we could see the net closing in. However our leader had yet another cunning plan for us to escape.
and managed to see it right through to the end for once. I had another one of these cold poultices and then tried to settle down to sleep but for some reason I found it difficult to drop off.
, the story of one of the more famous of the Arctic explorers of the first half of the 19th Century.
, causing mayhem at a school graduation ceremony by doing all kinds of things, and a girls’ school at that, to be precise, and everyone was looking for me. 
– probably the best rock album that Neil Young has ever made – a real powerhouse album and one that I haven’t played for … ooohhh … it’s 15 years since I last had my real hi-fi set up.
you’ll remember the scene where the car transporter rips the door off the Sheriff’s car. Now I was at a similar site in an area of similar vegetation – a flat-bottomed river valley with a river (as you might expect), a road, a strip of vegetation of about 100 metres width and then a steep slope upwards with a winding side-road going up to the top.
. 
. I died of shame when I heard that, and it still makes me cringe even now.