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Monday 11th November 2024 – THIS BLASTED DIALYSIS …

… thing isn’t becoming any easier. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Four of us arrived at the clinic together today. I was the first to be coupled up and, as you might expect, the last to be uncoupled. There I was, hoping for a quick getaway today but it didn’t quite work out like that.

Going to bed at a reasonable time is something else that isn’t working out either. Once again, it was well after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed . At least I had a decent sleep though because I slept right through to when the alarm went off, with no pain at all.

When the alarm went off I was busy in an adventure. There was a bank robbery or something like that planned, a huge, elaborate way of doing it too and a lot of people had a lot of little parts in this. Where I joined in was where the local bus driver who had been asked to do something suddenly realised what he was being asked to do and declined to do it, right on the very day. One of the girls went onto his bus and with a fluttering of eyelids and so on asked “you will do just this one little task for us, won’t you?” which was to throw a mine through the open window of an apartment. In the end he agreed to do it, so she gave him this little mine. It was a false mine, but the purpose was for the people inside to flee their apartment and leave the door open. She gave him the mine and I went with him. He asked a lot of questions about the mine, how far is the tailback etc. My issue was how were they going to throw this through the window of an apartment on the thirteenth floor. I imagined that they’d already worked this out. There must be a balcony or something. We talked about the mine and set off in the bus. I thought to myself that when someone writes the story of this bank heist it’s going to make one of the most exciting adventure novels I could ever imagine

That was something that I wished would have carried on because it was certainly exciting enough. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I seem to have is what happens during the night.

Mind you, that’s not true at all. I’ve received an e-mail to day saying that someone has taken control of my computer, has videos of me watching filthy movies and what I was doing while watching them, and will send them to all of my contacts unless I buy Bitcoins to a value of $1410 and send them to a Bitcoin wallet. So in about 45 hours we’ll see whether he can walk the walk as well as he can talk the talk. This should be very interesting. I hope that you will be waiting with bated breath.

Meantime, back at the ran … errr … apartment I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and shave, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Did I dictate the dream where a bunch of four kids was responsible for destroying a house? … "no you didn’t" – ed … They had a water leak in the washroom of where they were staying so they began to explore to try to find it and fix it. Of course, everything that they did led on to further problems then on to further problems and further problems. They ended up destroying a house. The girl and her two younger sisters took to the road and found another boarding house in which to stay by pretending that their parents would be joining them later. The same thing happened with this one – they totally destroyed it. When I arrived on the scene the girls had left but had somehow managed to go into Space where they had landed on the Space Station and were busy pulling that to pieces looking for a leak too. There was another false alarm at 07:00. It didn’t awaken me but I heard the alarm go. I knew that it was a false one so I took no notice but I was in London, part of the street crew who had been defeated by London University. I was in Fulham and I can’t really remember what was happening but I was a guest there and helped them with a few events, the Fulham University, but we didn’t make any progress at all.

Funnily enough, I can’t remember this false alarm going off this morning. As for kids destroying a house, that’s not a problem at all for modern kids. They seem to be much more destructive than we ever were.

Later on I’d been to see the doctor. I’d given him all the details of my illness and a few other problems. When I’d finished, he looked at me and said “yes I’ll have to write a prescription for you”. Then he took from the inside pocket of his jacket, not his prescription pad but a rough notebook and proceeded to write in there. I had to tell him three times about his prescription. It was only after the third time that he happened to look at what he was doing and realised that he had the wrong pad and had to start again.

That’s something that I seem to have on my mind right now – this story about prescriptions. It seems to be a big issue right now. But if people want to pay less tax, then there’s going to be less money available for Social Services. Here in France we still have something that’s far, far better than any other country in Europe.

Isabelle the nurse blitzed in and out today. She didn’t want to hang around too long. I don’t seem to be popular with too many other people right now. I wonder what I’ve done? Maybe this cyber-blackmailer has already been in contact with them, I dunno.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with my book. Samuel Hearne has set out on his first trip into the Barren Grounds in his search for the Coppermine River, and recounts how his native guides robbed him and his companions of everything that they possessed and how they had to retreat to the fort on Hudson’s Bay. Times were tough in 1769

Back in here I had things to do, like my Welsh homework for a start, and then afterwards I still made no headway with this blasted timing for this radio programme.

In the end I’ve bit the bullet and begun to write a computer program. It’s been years since I’ve written a program and I’m surprised that I could still remember. I wrote my first program in 1975 using loads of If:Else and GoTo constraints but this needs to be more sophisticated than that.

It’ll probably take me longer to write the program than to do it by hand, but the program will be useful for another time

My cleaner surprised me in mid-calculation and I had to go to have my patches fitted. And the taxi was early – I was busy cutting up last night’s chocolate cake when the driver turned up.

For once just recently I was on my own and it was probably the quickest journey that I’d ever had. As a result I was early arriving and although I had to wait ten minutes while they cleaned up after the morning shift I was soon in the ward, with three other people coming in with me.

They coupled me up quickly enough and while it wasn’t actually painless, it was better than some times just recently.

However they noticed that my arm was starting to swell up as if they had missed their aim with the needles. They carried out a quick echograph to check and found that everything was perfect, and indeed the dialysis pump was showing a good circulation.

Consequently I spent most of the session with an alcohol compress on my arm to reduce the swelling. I still have one on now so I’ll be going to sleep with alcohol fumes all around me and I’ll have a huge bruise there in the morning

There was a couple of new people there today too so the doctor came to see them. He didn’t come to see me though to find out how things were and to tell me what was in my scan from Friday. I was rather disappointed by that.

At some point I had a little doze and while I was away with the fairies (but not doing anything about which the Editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would comment or which would be of interest to my cyber-extortionist) I saw three bodies. One was a girl and one was a man and I don’t know the third, all wrapped in cloth, in the water. two were chained down under the water to some kind of attachment and had been there for a couple of years. The third, either the woman or man, was with them under water but a new arrival, not yet chained down

In this dream I was actually underneath them in the water and was looking up at them. It was weird.

Apart from that I read my Welsh, drunk loads of orange juice and then carried on with PRINCIPALL NAVIGATIONS

Hakluyt is now attacking the works of Jacques Cartier and his voyage of 1534. This is interesting because it refers to two comments that Cartier wrote in his journal. Firstly he says "in all my travels along this (Labrador and Newfoundland) coast, I have not seen even a bucketful of good soil"

That’s my impression too and much as I would have loved to move to Labrador, gardening would be ruled out for a start.

The second quote of Cartier is much more famous. Sailing up and down the Straight of Belle Isle between Labrador and Newfoundland, he describes it as "the Land that God must truly have given to Cain"

Despite finishing early, uncoupling me was something else completely. I had to wait until there were two nurses free because if one is compressing a patient, there must be another one ready in case of emergencies elsewhere in the Unit.

It took an age until they sorted me out, and they seemed to be more interested in my arm than anything else. The poor taxi driver had been waiting for a while and I bet that she was fed up. But once in the car we sped off to Granville.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched along with another neighbour as I climbed all of the stairs unaided up to my little apartment

After I’d had a rest I put away the rest of the chocolate cake and then made tea – a stuffed pepper, which was really nice. There’s still some ginger cake left so I had some of that with pistachio-flavoured soya dessert.

Bedtime now, and I need to be ready for my Welsh lesson in the morning. I may well be late joining because there’s a meeting here in the morning

But seeing as we were talking about absent-minded doctors just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … it reminds me of that hospital in Belgium a while back
"Doctor" said a nurse "why are you writing your notes with an anal thermometer?"
So the doctor hands it to the nurse
"Will you go back into that patient’s room" said the doctor "and bring me back my biro?"

0

Sunday 10th November 2024 – THIS PERISHING RADIO …

… programme is driving me crazy.

What I have to do is to edit the text that I dictated last night, chop it into segments and attach it to the relevant track, and then make a selection of tracks with their attached speech in order to make a runtime of an hour or maybe some seconds over that I can edit out.

Sound simple doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you something, and that is that it isn’t anything like.

Even a decent night’s sleep didn’t help matters much. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it’s a lie-in in the morning so I still had over eight hours sleep (in principle).

“In principle” of course because, as usual, I was awoken several times during the night by someone or something and I can see that being a problem when I’m living on the ground floor, if I ever do actually make it there.

Despite all of that, I was still fast asleep and dead to the World when the alarm went off at 08:00. At that moment we were discussing someone’s face – how they’d only had it for ten years and it’s always been the same. Something like that but I’d only just begun when the alarm went off.

And the significance of that, I have no idea whatever.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub-up and came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, but I hadn’t gone far before the nurse came to see me.

She’s obviously someone else who doesn’t love me because she was here and gone in a twinkling of an eye, not really wishing to chat. She says that she’s really busy tomorrow, which is no surprise because on Tuesday her oppo takes over.

Once she’d left I made breakfast and read my book. Having finished the editor’s preamble, we’re now reading the author’s preamble.

Interestingly, despite Samuel Hearne being alleged by many to have been the person who discovered on Marble Island the traces of the long-lost James Knight expedition, he makes it clear in his notes that a party of fishermen from his ship, in their "boats, when on the look-out for fish, had frequent occasion to row close to the island, by which means they discovered a new harbour near the East end of it, at the head of which they found guns, anchors, cables, bricks, a smith’s anvil, and many other articles"

Furthermore, despite the many theories that circulate about the mysterious disappearance of the crew, "while we were prosecuting the fishery, we saw several Esquimaux at this new harbour; and perceiving that one or two of them were greatly advanced in years, our curiosity was excited to ask them some questions concerning the above ship and sloop," and they were given an explanation that should remove any doubt about the likely end of the survivors of the shipwrecks.

Back in here I had some football to watch. There were the highlights of the other matches in the Welsh Premier League and then Stranraer away at league leaders East Fife.

Stranraer have only won once since August last year and have been looking well off the pace but to everyone’s surprise, including theirs, I bet, they actually ran out 2-1 winners and are now off the bottom. If they keep this up they might actually avoid the relegation playoffs this season.

Then there were the dictaphone notes to deal with. I had an old, white Ford Cortina MkII. I was in London somewhere. I had someone with me and we were trying to leave the city. We’d been all the way round the north and in the Midlands. There had been some talk about it being a Bank Holiday and how if someone was going to visit the local supermarket he’d better do it on the Friday because otherwise everything would be sold by the Saturday. I’d made it down to London and was trying to exit the city. I told the person with me to look out for Croydon and if we could follow the signs for Croydon we’ll be half-way there. So we kept tacking across the south hoping to pick up a road. We ended up in some residential area where I nearly knocked down some woman crossing the road after alighting from a bus. Suddenly this guy said “just stop for a minute”. He left the car. I thought “this isn’t the moment to be stopping. We’re in a rush and we have to leave”. I heard some water running, and then I was distracted by something. I suddenly realised that he was standing behind me. We both climbed back into the car and I set off again. I asked him what he had been doing. He replied that he had seen some washing-up. I answered that we had much more important things to be doing than washing-up. The washing-up could have waited for another moment if we want to leave this city without being caught.

Just recently during the night I’ve been spending a lot of time in a white Ford Cortina MkII. That’s quite strange, because the one that I owned was black. But I’ve no idea why anyone would want to leave a car in order to do the washing up.

The reference to shops being closed is possibly a reference of when I first came to live in Brussels. The 11th of November is a Bank Holiday in Belgium but an “optional” one where I was working so I was coming in to work anyway. I’d forgotten about the Bank Holiday and ended up in a panic because I had all my shopping to do and nowhere to do it. For tea that night I walked quite a long way looking for a fritkot

And never ever is Trevor going to bother anyone with that feeble attempt at the styrofoam that just trickled by as he tried to have his ticket read by the machine at the entrance to the Undergound.

That’s what I dictated, and I can’t think of any meaning at all that applies to it. I like the rhyme at the beginning though.

That was everything on the dictaphone but there’s also an impression going through my mind about discussing football managers – someone saying that they thought someone to be too old for the job, but someone else reminding them that some famous football manager is actually 106.

Anyway, I then started work on the first of the two radio notes that I dictated last night. And they weren’t straightforward to edit either. They took quite a while. And now I’ve ended up with thirteen segments that, with their music, total about one hour and thirty minutes.

So thirty minutes has to go, which is in principle no problem, but as yet there’s no combination of tracks and speech that makes about one hour, no matter how I try.

It goes without saying that I haven’t yet started the second one. Perhaps I should have done that one first.

After the hot chocolate I started the baking. First of all was a load of dough for a few pizze, one tonight and a couple more for the future.

Then, there was some dough for a small loaf, followed by what should have been a ginger cake but the ginger has gone the Way of the West so it was a rich chocolate cake instead. That’s the next pudding.

All of that took several hours and once more I was out on my feet again. I can’t do all of this standing up and I really ought to buy a stool for the kitchen. But when do I find five minutes to do any on-line shopping?

So the pizza is done and baked and eaten, and it really was lovely too. The bread looks nice and so does the chocolate cake. Mixing the cake mixture in the food processor is really a good idea.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for tomorrow and another painful session at the Dialysis Clinic.

But baking that chocolate cake reminds me of my friend near Macclesfield who was baking a cake. When the oven “pinged” she was speaking to someone on the ‘phone so she told her daughter, who was aged 11, to go to check to see if it was done
"How do I do that?" she asked
"You stick a knife into the centre" said her mother "and if it comes out clean, you know that it’s done"
So off she went – and didn’t come back until tem minutes later
"Well? Is it done?" asked her mother
"Ohh yes" she replied. "The knife came out clean"
"So what took you so long then?"
"Well, the knife came out so clean" said the daughter "that I put the rest of the dirty cutlery in there too".

0

Saturday 9th November 2024 – IF ANYTHING CAN …

… go wrong, then it surely will. Especially if I’m involved in it

And these dialysis sessions are certainly testing this theory to the limit. I am not having much luck at all.

That’s hardly to be unexpected, because right now I don’t seem to be having much luck with anything. And it’s not as if there are any ladders under which to walk or black cats to kick

Even going to bed at a reasonable time seems to have deserted me for the moment. Finishing my notes at a reasonable time last night, but the time that I’d finished everything else that I had to do, I still ended up running late, as usual.

At least, the compensation here is that it didn’t take me long to go to sleep in my nice, comfortable bed. And once I’d gone to sleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off. There had been a little tossing and turning, but nothing about which I needed to worry

When the alarm went off I was working in a chemist’s shop prescribing medication to people. I was told that there was a control on the amount of medication being given out and when I prescribed some to a woman she told me that I was giving her too much. I told her that at the end of the treatment, when she’s finished she can stick the remainder back through our letter-box so that we could have it back

This is an ongoing issue in real life, with all of the over-prescription of medication. I look at all of the stuff that I have in here and multiply that by so many million people and it’s a fortune. Many of these doctors in hospitals seem to live in a bubble and don’t seem to understand how their prescriptions affect those living in the real world. But we’ve talked about that quite a lot just recently.

Despite what might have been a good sleep it took an age to haul myself out of bed and I only just about beat the second alarm. Burning the candle at both ends doesn’t seem to be working so well

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then piled all of the washing into the washing machine, bedding included. It all goes in on a “mixed materials 40°C wash” and if anything wants any different than that then I don’t buy it. It goes without saying that I have nothing that needs ironing.

Back in here I had a computer issue. For some reason it wouldn’t boot up this morning. I had to go to tweak around with the BIOS to make it work and that took some time to do. Consequently I was only half-way through the dictaphone notes when Isabelle the nurse came

She had a good moan about all of the shopping scattered everywhere. That was going to be this morning’s job after I’d finished the dictaphone notes but the best-laid plans etc. Anyway I told her that it was my mess in my apartment and she can give me some of her hours to tidy up if she’s unhappy

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of Samuel Hearne’s travels. Except that I didn’t. Two days in and we’re still reading the editor’s preamble. That’s probably going to end up longer than the author’s book if it keeps on like this.

Then there was the washing to hang up, seeing as the machine had finished. And that’s quite a battle, given my state of health and my lack of balance

Back in here I finished off transcribing the dictaphone notes. I had been doing some work on the city walls. I’d cleared away a platform in front that we were going to use to put on music acts etc so that the public sitting in what was the old moat could see whoever was on the platform. I don’t know at all about the history of this platform but it just happened to be there. While I was cleaning it out I heard a noise like a sports car. I stopped and looked up, and there was a guy there. I asked him if that was his car. He replied “yes, it’s a ‘Facer'”. I said “that’s a marque of which I’d never heard before”. He replied “it’s the only one”. He looked down and asked “what are the chances of putting this car down there?”. I replied “if you have a look on top of the walls a little further down we have cranes that run up and down on top of the walls. We use them for raising and lowering things. Bring one of the cranes up here. They’ll soon lower your car down”. The fact is that the crane didn’t quite reach to where the platform is, but if I stood on the platform and threw a rope that would be tied to the car, then as he lowered the car down I could pull it to the platform. He set off and we set off to go round and come round onto the correct side of the platform. He suddenly began to think “what about the insurance? What about the MoT and the Public Liability?”. We told him to clear off, shut up and lower the car down. He didn’t like our brusqueness but we thought that it was the best way to proceed, to bring this car down onto the platform. As it happened, we had a quick look in the encyclopaedia. He played keyboards so with me on the bass and my friend who worked with me, he was a drummer, we had the makings of a pretty sound group, the three of us

One of my friends lived in a house right on the city walls in Chester and I worked in a building on the walls too. We’d often said that it would be an ideal place for a rock group, or any other musical act for that matter, to have a concert. A few power chords just at the start of the 14:30 Novices’ Handicap down below on the Roodee should upset quite a few punters.

I was in Court last night – a hearing trying to persuade a tenant to leave a property but he was being difficult. He was finding humour in all kinds of strange places but I reckoned that this humour was a front. He was trying to embarrass me in front of the judges so I kept a very clear silence and only answered the questions that they were asked to me and ask him until he pulled up out of steam which he did rather by the nineteenth of the second. He was unable to persuade the French children’s governess that she was the kind of person to be given a more senior role in the Government of France where she could make a name for herself in history.

Does this dream ring any bells right now? I bet that it does. Although where the children’s governess fits in, I’ve not quite worked out.

Did I dictate the dream about the two of us being on a coach tour with two drivers? … "no you didn’t" – ed … We had to stop for coffee but there was nowhere convenient and we ended up at some kind of dire roadside burger bar but it was the absolute best that we could be. The other driver took over to drive and on leaving was almost pranged by a silver 4×4 as he pulled out. In the meantime I’d gone off somewhere – I had Nerina with me – and all of a sudden there was an urgent contact “can you check and look out for a silver 4×4?”. By this time I was back driving this coach again. I looked in my mirror and could see this 4×4 right behind me so I replied “it’s behind me now”. The voice asked “can you follow it to find out where it goes”. I thought “follow it in a coach? I can try”. However I lost it, but I had a rough idea where so I circled around this housing estate again and sure enough, I found it. So I built a swimming pool and filled it with water, then the voice asked me to check on the number. When I checked on the number I saw the old guy driving it, he was standing on a set of ladders up some kind of pole in his garden where there was a light bulb that he was busy taking out. I took the number and reported it. Someone then gave me a briefcase and said “this is his” so I went and knocked on the door. His wife was there so I handed her the briefcase and we began to chat. She said something about his computer so I had a look. It was old and full of viruses so I cleaned it for him, removed the viruses and tweaked a few other things, and it worked so much better. When he ‘phoned up we told him what we’d come for. The wife told him the news so he asked “can you switch it off yet?”. He told me that it needed switching off so I arranged it. She said “yes, it switches off now”. he replied “that’s the first time in 100 years that it’s switched off”. Then Nerina and this woman engaged in quite a lot of small talk about nothing else in particular really

Wouldn’t it be great if I could build a swimming pool and fill it with water at the drop of a hat like that? And I have in the past done strange things like door-stepping someone for purposes other than which are obvious, but we don’t talk about these.

There wasn’t all that long to do stuff of my own before the cleaner came round to stick my anaesthetic patches onto me. It’s freezing outside, she reckons, so I put away my warm-season fleeces and brought out one of the Arctic ones. I kept my jumper on though if I’m going to be in Ice-Station Zebra.

While I was waiting for the taxi to arrive I put away all of the food and did a little rearranging on the shelves. It goes without saying that with my cleaner being early, the taxi was late. And we had someone to pick up along the way.

At the Dialysis Centre there was a crisis. Two patients had been sent over from the hospital for emergency dialysis and one was having a panic attack. Consequently every available nurse was helping out around the bed.

It was 35 minutes before I was seen and by that time the anaesthetic on my arm had worn off. They also missed their aim with the second needle and had to re-do it. Consequently I was in agony throughout the whole three hours and thirty minutes.

"Shall I bring some ice to ease the pain in your arm?" asked a nurse helpfully

"What?" I exclaimed "In this blasted igloo? You must be joking!"

So I listened to a couple of concerts, revised my Welsh, suffered being force-fed with orange juice, had a little doze and read more of Hakluyt’s PRINCIPALL NAVIGATIONS

He’s busy right now talking about a couple of trips in the 1580s and 90s to the Gulf of St Lawrence and the constant changing of sovereignty of the islands there is playing havoc with me being able to identify them in the names by which I know them today

Not only that, we’re talking in the period when the Basque country was still independent and its own language predominated so that makes matters even more complicated, especially when the ports on the Biscay coast are mentioned in passing, under their former names.

Being so late starting meant that I was so late finishing and the guy who came down with me, who has a four-hour session in the other ward, was ready before I was, so we both came home together.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and once more watched in awe as I climbed the twenty-five stairs up to my door. Not as quick as Thursday or Friday but it was still an achievement. We have a new tenant in one of the apartments upstairs, so I met her cat on the way up.

After my cleaner left, we had football. Cardiff Metro v Y Bala. The Met scored after two minutes – a lucky rebound but Y Bala equalised just on the stroke of half-time.

The game came to light when Y Bala scored two goals right immediately after half-time and then we had an exciting second half as the Met clawed their way back into the game with two goals. The final ten minutes was certainly exciting.

It was a good game once it opened up. Cardiff Met play some pretty football but in their desire to retain possession, they can go from all-out attack to a long back-pass to the keeper in the twinkle of an eye and it’s so frustrating to see them do it – eight men up in attack that they pass it backwards.

Y Bala’s style is rather more agricultural but they play forward much more often and with better results.

Tea was a vegan burger on a bun with salad and baked potato followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. It’s all good stuff this.

There’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed.

But talking of my bad luck … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the time in Sheffield when I was walking past the soup canning plant, the boiler exploded and the streets were flooded in vegan tomato soup
"That must have been lucky for you" said a friend
"Not really" I replied. "I could only find a fork"

0

Tuesday 29th October 2024 – I HAVE LOST …

… a sock somewhere in this apartment. And with only 40m² in which to lose it, that’s some going.

Last night I took them off and stuck them over the back of my office chair ready for the morning, and when I went to pick them up, there was one on the floor and the other was nowhere to be found.

This is the kind of thing that you would immediately blame on the cat, but that’s rather difficult to do when I don’t have a cat, and we all know that there’s a sock goblin who lives in every washing machine, goblin up the socks but again that’s not likely to be the case seeing as my socks were nowhere near the washing machine.

But it’s not anywhere to be found, this missing sock. I have turned the place upside down to try to find it but it seems to have made good its escape and that would seem to be that.

It was just before going to bed that I took them off. That was rather later than I planned after everything that I had to do, and it annoyed me that I was so late yet again

Once I was in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly but awoke shortly afterwards and then spent a couple of hours tossing and turning before going back to sleep – something of a variation on the usual post-dialysis procedure.

This morning I didn’t need the alarm to awaken. In fact, when I looked at my watch to see what time it was, it was actually 06:59 – one minute before the alarm was due to go off. It goes without saying that I didn’t beat it to my feet this morning.

Gathering up my clothes to take into the bathroom, that was when I noticed the absence of a sock. “Never mind” I mused. “There’s a clean pair hanging from the octopus in the bathroom. I’ll find the missing sock in due course”. That was famous last words, wasn’t it?

While I was washing, I realised that despite what I said last night, I wasn’t all that disturbed by the events in the Dialysis Clinic and I’d survived the night without any serious issues. Live to fight another day, I reckon.

Back in here I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone note to find out where I’d been during the night. There I was having some kind of dream about being in bed, connecting up to dialysis machines, all that kind of thing. I was really surprised to find myself on the right side of the bed when I briefly awoke instead of on the left side where I’d just been in that dream. I didn’t remember too much of this but I suddenly awoke and was freezing cold again

That sounds as if it was exciting, dreaming about the Dialysis Clinic. Maybe it did affect me more than I thought just now. And if I’m dreaming that I’m cold, that’s worrying because in order to cover up my arms and not tear the plasters off by mistake, I’d gone to bed with a jumper on.

And then I was in Crewe and had to go to the centre of Brussels to see the doctor or to give him a form or ask him for something. I set off on foot but went a strange way and ended up going down Earle Street. I thought “I don’t have all that much time if I have to be there”. I had a think and thought that it takes me 30 or 40 minutes going this way then I have to cut through all the side streets and alleys etc. All in all it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and it’s complicated but if I just went straight into the centre of Brussels down the Boulevard and around the Ring it would only take me an hour and fifteen minutes going that way. I set off clutching my form and a few other things, still trying to work out the times. I went past Zero’s house. Usually I’d be going in there, having a coffee, staying for a chat and generally making myself unwelcome but today I was in a rush so I just went to say hello as I was passing. We ended up having a good talk about T.Rex. I’d given Zero’s father a single or two in the past but suddenly he began to search among his CDs and then went through a box, a tin that looked as if it was a tin that contained CDs. He was obviously looking for a CD but in the end couldn’t find it. I said “don’t worry. It’ll do, whatever it is, another time”. Then of course I had to go but for some reason I couldn’t tear myself away but time was drawing on. I’d miss my slot at the doctor’s to hand over this form if I didn’t get a move on very quickly.

If I’m planning on walking from Crewe to Brussels in one hour and fifteen minutes I ought to be competing in the Olympics. Strangely though, if I walked to work from where I lived with Laurence and Roxanne and went through the alleys of Schaerbeek it did take one hour and fifteen minutes. But when I lived out on the edge of the city in Expo it was more usual for me to talk down the Boulevard to the city centre then around the Inner Ring and down the Rue de la Loi. That was, until I went to work out at the sub-office when it was back to the alleys of Schaerbeek again.

It’s not unreasonable to expect me to find it difficult to tear myself away from Zero’s house. Imagine being there and she being elsewhere. It’s a few times that that has happened and it’s rather depressing to think that I’ve missed her like that.

Later on, a friend of mine contacted me to ask if I wanted to buy ten American school buses. “Not particularly” I thought but then again I thought that it depends for how much they are on sale. Something like that could be extremely interesting so I resolved to make further enquiries. The first thing that I did was to check his bank account, making sure that the numbers that he quoted me came out as being to him so I knew that at least that part of the deal was going to be OK. This all happened while I was at work. I had two enormous files on my desk full of work that I was trying to resolve for a couple of people. It was really complicated and I was having to think about this. I had a young girl assistant who kept coming and going, taking one of the files to do some of the work that I’d pointed out. All of this was going on, there was one thing and then the other. Then the ‘phone rang. It was a voice saying “hello Eric. Se we’re off to Chicago at the end of the month”. I asked “are we?” and they replied “ohh are you going too?”. I didn’t have the first clue who it was but this conversation went on for quite a long time until suddenly he said something, then I realised that he was a guy whom I’d met in a pub while we’d been watching an American Football game. We ended up talking about the Superbowl – it would have been nice as an event but not the complete Carnival the way that it was shown on TV, how there had been so much controversy about the way that it had been shown that they were no longer showing it. The guy was really sad because he had a friend who was a lottery expert. They’d all won the lottery so this was why they were going but now with no American Football there was no longer a lottery. This conversation went on for hours like this guy was my best friend and I’d only met him just that once. We talked about the USA, we talked about Scotland, how they were OK to visit but only in small doses. I had to say that I was just totally bewildered about all of this, why I’d suddenly seemed to become this guy’s very best friend.

Just recently I’ve had to verify a bank account in some kind of similar circumstances, but not in connection with buying American school buses. One of my friends actually does own a retired school bus, don’t you, Rhys, and I’ve slept in it too when I was in South Carolina. But there have been several occasions when I’ve had long and complicated and quite often personal conversations with people either on the ‘phone or in real life and I’ve ended up wondering “who the hell was that?” because I didn’t recognise them or their voice at all.

Isabelle the nurse came round and she tried her best to motivate me and lift up my spirits. That’s not an easy thing to do when I’m down in the dumps but I was grateful for her kind words.

After she left I made breakfast and finished off my book. The geology lecture was very interesting and the book concluded with a list of walks where we could see the different strata. There were eight walks in all and if I were in the UK and in better health I’d go out and do them. But they aren’t for the faint-hearted. The author tells us "much time is taken up in surveying the country and hammering the rocks, and that a twelve miles’ walk as estimated by the map is a good day’s work for the hardiest geologist"

How many people these days would be prepared to have a twelve-mile walk? Add to that the fact that these walks start and finish at local rural railway stations, most of which fell victim to the Beeching Axe in the mid-60s and so you’d have even farther to walk these days.

The next book is going to be EARLY BRITISH TRACKWAYS by our old friend Alfred Watkins who we have met before.

He was at one time President of the Woolhope Naturalists and his book is a summary and enlargement of the talk that he gave to the Society in 1921.

This book is important because it was while researching it that he developed his theory of ley lines, a theory that led to his book THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK that we read and discussed a couple of months ago and which created such a stir when people began to realise the significance of the subject that he was discussing.

His theory was that many prehistoric and not so prehistoric man-made geographical features and many natural geographical features lay along straight lines that stretched for miles across the country and even across the sea to mainland Europe, and he was probing for a reason why this would be so. He reckoned that there were so many of them that it was hardly a coincidence.

His theories were given a new lease of life by new-age people in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed way beyond any boundary that Watkins ever imagined. However his theories have been rubbished by modern researchers who have pointed out that you could draw the same straight lines through the position of such objects as telephone boxes

However, that’s not as strange as you might imagine. Watkins comments that his “ley lines” passed through such places as road junctions, many of which are situated at the crossing of ancient prehistoric trackways that might have been incorporated into the modern road network. And they passed through many churches too, which are quite often (more often than many people will admit) situated on ancient, prehistoric sacred sites. And where would you expect to find a telephone box? At a road junction or outside a church of course, which might correspond with the position of one of Watkins’ points on a ley line.

So whether or not you believe in whatever Watkins was trying to prove, his books make a very interesting and absorbing read.

Back in here I didn’t do much at first. It’s half-term so there’s no Welsh class so I just relaxed for a couple of hours and made the most of it.

Then, before lunch, I attacked the Welsh homework that I had planned to do today. That’s half of it done and I’ll do the other half at the weekend.

After lunch I made a start on another radio programme.

This one is also a special occasion and finding the music wasn’t easy. But I managed to track down everything that, although it’s not exactly what I wanted, will still make a good, relevant programme. And I began to write the text for it.

There are eleven tracks, which run to about one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Then there’s the text to go with it. So for one hour’s worth of programme there will have to be some serious editing.

So which tracks to leave out? The answer is to write and dictate the notes for all of them, see what I have and then see where I end up. It’s a shame though to leave some of them out because there’s some good stuff in there.

There was a break for hot chocolate and the last of the chocolate cake. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the crackers and hummus while I think of my next move.

With no stuffing, my tea tonight was rather different. It was still a taco roll but there had been a tin of refried beans that must, I reckon, have been lying around here since the building was built in 1668. So it was refried beans and salad on my taco roll tonight, cooked lightly in the microwave.

Refried beans reminds me of my trip TO SANTA FE IN 2002 when I drove all around the town looking for refried beans and eventually tracked down some spicy chili beans.

There’s not much of my apple cake left. Just enough for tomorrow so I may well on Thursday have a bash at a rice pudding and see how that works out. I may as well experiment with the air fryer and see what I can do

But not now as I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow.

But talking of telephone boxes … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of a discussion that I had a while back.
With the rise of mobile ‘phones and the loss of all of these telephone boxes all over the country, where do superheroes go when they want to put their underpants on outside their trousers?
When we all lived in the Auvergne I had to plead with the mayor of Virlet to keep the one in our village so if anyone asked for my urgent help, I could dash into the telephone box and put my underpants on outside my trousers and then dash off to their aid.
But while we were discussing telephone boxes one of my friends mentioned that she’d seen my brother with his underpants on outside his trousers once
"Is he a superhero too?" she asked
"Not at all" I replied
"So why does he do it?"
"He does it" I said "because he’s two sandwiches short of a picnic"

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Friday 11th October 2024 – IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN

It was 03:05 when I awoke this morning. It makes a total mockery of trying to be in bed before 23:00. There have been nights – days, in fact, when I’ve not even been in bed by 03:05 so I may as well not bother if it’s going to carry on like this.

And yes, I did make it into bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, it has to be said, but by enough to make it worth noting. And while it might have taken me a little longer that it has done of late to go off to sleep, that wasn’t too much of a problem either.

So there I was at 03:05, wide awake and transpiring, trying desperately to go back to sleep without any success so in the end, at about 4:20 I gave it up as a bad job and went to make the dough for the bread.

For a change, I tried a mixture of plain flour and bread flour to see if there’s a problem with my bread flour, but it’s not that because although it rose, it didn’t rise up by enough to make any difference to the usual.

One mug of instant coffee later, I came back in here and decided to catch up with some personal stuff. I’ve buckets of stuff that’s been hanging around waiting for me to do something with it, and so with this unexpected couple of hours I made a start. And made quite a bit of progress too.

First of all though, I had a listen to the dictaphone and found to my surprise that there was something on there. I was playing in a rock group and we were round at Gainsborough Road preparing everything ready to go out. We had three vans, two long-wheelbase Ford Transits and my old small Ford Transit. We’d loaded everything up and were sitting around waiting, then my partner motioned towards us and said “it’s time to go”. She took one sticker for her van and another sticker for the other big van. I asked “what about a sticker for mine?”. She replied “no”. I asked “why not?” but she didn’t answer. We had something of a back-and-to for a while and I asked her about it again. I asked “so why aren’t you giving me a sticker? Are you ashamed of the van or something?”. She replied “that van’s not having a sticker and that’s an end to the argument”. We continued to argue about it and I expressed myself in a rather extreme fashion. My sister said to me “you shouldn’t speak to your partner like this”. I replied “you need to open your eyes and see what’s going on here”. My partner left the room to make herself ready. I knew that she was waiting at the door listening as an argument then started up between my sister and me. I turned round knowing that she was listening, turned to my sister and said “it’s not going to take very much more of this and I’ll be out of the door of this place”

it goes without saying that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having noticed that even though my partner has adopted a totally intransigent and unreasonable attitude, my family is blaming me for what happened. That, I’m afraid was just par for the course and after I was 18 and had finished my studies, I was “out of the door of this place”. I had a lot of sympathy for my friend’s daughter Tina who told me once "I’m fed up. Every time I do something wrong my brother tells my mom and I get yelled at. But every time he does something wrong I tell my mom and she yells at me for not watching him". Had she not been 3,000 miles away I could have hugged her because I’ve been there and done that. Oh! The angst of being 11 years old! But mine lasted for years. I don’t have one single pleasant memory of my childhood.

Having made enormous strides (which means something completely different in Australia) in what I was doing, I finished off and went to give the dough its second going-over. As I said just now, it had risen, but not as much as I would have liked it to have done

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen to put the oven on … "clothes would have been better" – ed … While I was waiting for it to warm up I came across one of these half-cooked vacuum-packed baguettes that I’d bought a while ago and needed using so when the oven was ready and the bread went in, I bunged that in too and went back into my office to do some more work.

Isabelle the nurse was off on her high horse today. I’m supposed to tell her not to come on Monday because the Dialysis Centre wants to inspect my legs to find out why they aren’t healing.

But I’m not standing around all morning with no socks and no plasters and going down to Avranches and the Dialysis Centre like that, oh no, according to Isabelle the nurse and she’ll tell ’em too. On Monday I’ll have my plasters and socks put on in the morning by her and like it.

And as for having the dialysis at home, certainly not under any circumstances and she doesn’t care if it is Emilie the Cute Consultant who wants me to. She’ll ring them up and tell them that too!

So if it isn’t all over between Emilie The Cute Consultant and me already, it looks as if it will be by the time that I arrive there on Monday afternoon. I shall have to chat up Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre Normandie instead.

While I was eating my breakfast I was reading MY BOOK. We’ve left Yorkshire and are back on the South Coast at Bramber Castle.

Having been sure that the Iron-Age hill forts on the Welsh border were actually Saxon strongholds, he’s now convinced that Bramber Castle is a prehistoric site. However subsequent archaeological excavations have found nothing earlier than Norman on the site.

Still, for an untrained amateur archaeologist, some of his opinions have sometimes been dramatically borne out by the facts.

Next stop was to prepare an order for LeClerc. There’s plenty of stuff here so I can cut back on the order, but there are still some essentials that need buying.

That took longer than it ought too for all kinds of reasons, not the least being that I need to bring the order up to €50:00 so that they will deliver it. In the end it reached €53:00 or thereabouts.

Lunch was a cheese and tomato butty on some of the baguette that I baked this morning and it was nice, followed by some of the fruit. I’ve been told to cut down on the fruit that I eat which is disappointing so bananas are regrettably off the menu from now on.

This afternoon while the cleaner was here I finished off the radio notes and I do have to say that I’m quite pleased with what I’ve written. For once, it all hangs together. It’s not as disjointed as it usually is.

Not that I’m complaining about my previous programmes though, but trying to be erudite and preparing a work of literature in a foreign language is not that easy.

It wasn’t too bad when Liz and I were running Radio Anglais down in the Auvergne because that was in English, but this here is … errr … challenging. How on earth Rhys is managing with his “Rutube” channel in Russian is mind-boggling.

After my cleaner left and LeClerc had delivered the supplies, I tried a little experiment.

My friend Ann tells me that she’s not used her big oven since she bought an air fryer. I have a few of these spring-loaded cake tins of various sizes, one of which fits in my air fryer, so seeing as I am now forbidden chocolate, I resolved to make a chocolate cake in the air fryer and “yah booh sucks” to the dietician.

First lesson is that one cup of measured for the oil cake produces too much so I need a smaller cup

Second lesson is that in its airproof and windproof drawer it goes up like a lift and is the softest cake that I have ever made.

Third lesson is that it needs the temperature turned down and cooked much longer (like 70 minutes) before it’s done

Fourth lesson is that even with a piece of baking paper over the top (thanks for the tip, John), it still burns the top, but that can be cut off and sampled so it’s not the end of the world.

And so the conclusion is that it produced the best cake that I have ever made, but the procedure is much more complicated so we’ll call it a draw. Further experiments are called for

Having stuffed myself with offcuts of chocolate cake I wasn’t in the mood for much tea. Just a small salad, a few chips and a few of these micro-mini vegan nuggets that were on special offer. No pudding though – we’ll call the chocolate cake offcuts the pudding.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve not been the remotest bit tired today despite the lack of sleep so I’m hoping for a good sleep tonight.

But talking about Tina … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the time that her class at school in Florida went to see THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT.
Having an English father and spending all of her summer holidays in Winsford, she has a complete understanding of British slang and a British sense of humour. So when the film was shown, she was rolling around the aisles in laughter and her classmates were looking at her, totally bewildered.
Marianne and I actually went to see it in Brussels where it was shown in English. And you could tell who were the native English-speakers in the audience because we were roaring with laughter while the Belgians were looking on, completely disorientated.
But that leads us onto that famous discussion between Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners".

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Thursday 10th October 2024 – TODAY IT WAS …

… the turn of the dietician to come to bother me and disturb my pleasant … "well, sort-of" – ed … relaxation at the Dialysis Centre.

It’s remarkable (but no surprise really) that the trick cyclist never ever came back to see me for a second time, and I don’t know if this dietician will either after today, even though she promised to bring me a book.

Of course, here in any kind of French institution they don’t know what a vegan is and it’s cuisine à la Tricatel in these establishments so they are in no place to give me any advice about my diet. And in any case, as Kingsley Amis once said, "No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare".

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve no interest whatever in clinging on to life by my fingertips as long as possible just for six more months of agony or whatever. I intend to enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, growing older and riper and more degenerate

You should see the list of foods that she wants me to abandon. And there’s no chance whatever of that.

But last night there was every chance of my being in bed by 23:00 but, loitering around to no useful purpose, I missed it by five minutes. And once I was asleep there I stayed until the alarm went off and that’s something that hasn’t happened for a while.

So at the sound of BILLY COTTON I turned over and made a valiant attempt at leaving the warmth and comfort of my bed and only beat the second alarm by a whisker.

Having washed the clothes under the shower yesterday there was nothing to clean so I had a shave and applied the deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then came back in here.

There wasn’t much on the dictaphone this morning, as I found when I went to transcribe the notes. Someone came to see me during the night from Ireland and wanted me to leave the bed. They said some kind of motivational phrase, I don’t know what it was now but it referred to one of their towns so I sat upright and began to leave the bed. Then I had a rough idea of the time and thought that it’s not really worth it so I turned over and went back to sleep

So who was that who came to see me? I have a couple of Irish friends of course and one of those could quite happily have come into my bedroom and been quite welcome too but I couldn’t be that lucky

The nurse came to see me, her usual smiling face, and we had a little chat about nothing much. She forgot the prescription for the tubular bandage that my cleaner wants and promised to bring it tomorrow.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY BOOK. Today we are wandering around the Devil’s Arrows near Boroughbridge. They are some peculiar standing stones embedded in the ground at a certain angle, not perpendicular.

Once more he was lamenting, lamenting the fact that one of them had been uprooted in a futile treasure hunt and then smashed to pieces and hauled away. How much else of the Country’s heritage has disappeared like that?

Back in here, in another fit of wild enthusiasm, I attacked the radio programme that I started yesterday. Now, all of the tracks are sorted and segued and I’ve written half of the notes already. I don’t know what’s come over me right now.

My cleaner came round to fit my anaesthetic patches. We discussed next shower day and she’s going to change the bedding while I’m under the jet. That means that on Saturday morning I’d better shift this backlog of washing in the bathroom so as to make a space to dump the dirty stuff

The taxi was late coming for me – it had been to pick up that British woman about whom I talked the other week. She’s becoming far too friendly for my liking and I’ll have to do something about this

At the clinic they were waiting for me so I didn’t have to wait for too long before I was plugged in

It seems that I now have a hospital appointment for 8th November. It’s for a scan and an electrograph on my foot to find this trapped nerve that I think that I have. Things in this respect are moving fairly quickly which is good news

As I promised yesterday I went to read my course book but I don’t have the new one loaded onto the portable laptop so I contented myself with the last chapter of the previous one. And then I carried on with reading Lewis Carroll’s biography.

There was nothing in there today that would have worried the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, but there always were plenty of hints, rumour and suspicion about his activities that would have worried the editor had they reached her ears. It’s certainly true that his family destroyed many of the photographs that he took and tore pages out of his diaries before they were passed to his biographers.

One thing that made me laugh about the book was the account by the biographer of his job as curator of the Common Room at the University and especially the Smoking Room "hard by for those who do not despise the harmless but unnecessary weed, "

How times have changed since 1898!

But having posted that on the internet now via the medium of my blog, I wonder how long it will be before someone from Q-Anon or another one of these stupid sites goes around saying that he’s read something about smoking on the internet that the scientists missed, about it being harmless and its safe for everyone to light up again.

The dietician turned up to interrupt me. She gave me many instructions about my diet and so in return I told her about the scandalous meals that I’d been served in her hospital, and that took the wind out of her sails somewhat.

But having given me her instructions she’s going to order a blood test in four weeks time to see if I’ve been a good boy but Austin Powers KNOWS WHAT THE NEXT STEP WILL BE

Apart from that, no-one bothered me at all – no doctors or anything – until my machine sounded its alarm that the process was complete. Then I was uncoupled and weighed (I’d lost 1.7 kgs today) and then I could clear off

There was another passenger in the taxi back, a crabby old woman who was busy expressing an opinion that all foreigners should clear off back to where they came from, so I said “bonjour” to her in a perfect simulated English accent and that shut her up.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched me as I climbed the stairs. And today, I managed five stairs without having to lift my leg up with my hand. Still a long way from when I could stagger up all 25 unaided, but if it keeps on improving like this, I might start to go back to the shops on Friday morning

Tea tonight was steamed veg and vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. There’s no doubt that although my meals are plain, they are very very tasty and I’m not going to give them up without a fight.

So right now I’m going to bed as I have bread to bake in the morning. But before I go I’ll tell you about an incident that took place at the Dialysis Clinic today.
A nurse going past looked at me, stopped, and said "don’t you have such beautiful blue eyes?"
"Thank you" I replied
"Did your father have them?" she asked "or was it your mother?"
"Knowing our family" I replied "it was probably the milkman."

0

Tuesday 8th October 2024 – AS SEEMS TO BE …

… the case the morning after the dialysis, I’m having trouble sleeping. Well, not actually sleeping, but staying asleep, as in awakening at … errr … 04:05 this morning.

And being totally unable to go back to sleep, leaping … "well, sort-of" – ed … out of bed and starting work.

In that unhealthy situation I decided to catch up with what I’ve been missing and attacked a pile of outstanding correspondence. So if you’ve been awaiting a reply from me, you should have had it.

If on the other hand you are awaiting a reply and it didn’t come this morning, I’ve possibly forgotten it so drop me a reminder.

Actually, being awake at 04:05 is not as dramatic as it sounds because it was just about 23:00 when I finally finished off all of the outstanding stuff and headed for bed.

Five hours sleep might seem to be a small amount but I went for years with never a sleep any longer than that. Thinking about it, it’s hardly any wonder that I was crabby all the time

Although I was asleep quickly enough it was another perspiration-ridden night during which I probably lost another kilo of weight. And it was probably that which drove me from my bed.

However, thinking about that too, I’ve not crashed out at all today despite the early start. So I did some mathematics.

The sleep that I was having during the day was on average 1.5 hours. So if I’m no longer crashing out, I’m saving 10.5 hours, which means of the 18 hours that I lose at the Dialysis Clinic, the net loss is only 7.5 hours.

Then there was the 1.5 hours that I used this morning, and the 3 hours on Sunday morning now that my lie-in is abolished, so now the net loss is 3 hours.

Take away three lunchtimes – total 1.5 hours – that I no longer have. And then working on a Sunday and relaxing on a Saturday morning means a credit of 6 hours working time.

So in other words, because of all of this I’m actually gaining 4.5 hours. So maybe it’s not as useless as I was thinking.

Of course I could be building myself up for a fall, such as going back to the crashing-out scenario, but on the other hand I could be thinking about work that I could be doing while I’m plugged in to the machine down there.

There’s no doubt about it – I’m certainly living in interesting times.

When the alarm sounded I crawled off into the bathroom for a scrub-up and then came back in here to carry on. First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. To my surprise there was something on it. I was with Nerina. We had a son who was about 7 or 8 or about 9 or something. I’d been doing something, working or something like that and come home to find that there was no-one in. They’d gone down to the club to meet her father so I went down there. She was down there chatting to everyone else so I went to have a chat to her about something – I can’t remember now. She was rather annoyed that I was interrupting so we had something of an argument. She stormed off and left the building. I went round to see what our son was doing. He was doing some homework with his grandfather. It was a Saturday night so I told the boy to make himself ready to go home. He was rather annoyed because he wanted to finish his homework so I told him that we’d finish it off at home together. He then wanted to talk about reading. I told him that if he were to finish off his homework tonight he’d have all day tomorrow to read. As usual with kids he had a grumble and a groan but I prepared him. The grandfather asked if I was in my car. I replied “yes”. He said “I have some tins here for you. Would you take them?”. I was in something of a bad mood so I went into the foyer. I couldn’t find my coat for ages, the big brown corduroy coat that I used to have. eventually I fund it, and still in a very bad mood I put on my coat ready to leave.

The likelihood of Nerina being in a club and having a son was of course extremely remote. In fact at first I dictated the name of another girl and corrected myself and she might have been a much more likely candidate. And back in those days I was constantly in a bad mood as I lurched from one crisis to the next to the next with hardly any sleep.

Isabelle the nurse is on duty for the next seven days and she’s much more lively. By some kind of miracle I found the prescription that the Dialysis Centre had given me, asking the nurse to take a blood sample so I handed it to her. She didn’t seem to be in the least perturbed.

That’s going to be done tomorrow – à jeun – but then again I don’t have my breakfast until the nurse has gone anyway.

After she left and I’d made breakfast I went to eat it and read MY BOOK. Our hero has now left the Welsh Marches and gone off to York and Yorkshire to poke around some abandoned Roman towns

Before he left though, he was extolling the hill-forts in the borders and making some kind of claim that many of them were not Roman or Iron Age but were in fact Anglo-Saxon strongholds.

In that, he will be disappointed to learn that in the subsequent 170 years, the evidence of Anglo-Saxon occupation uncovered to date is “slight” and in no way displaces the volume of artefacts from previous occupation, whether Roman or Iron Age.

He did however make some prescient comments about several Roman forts in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where it was not until over 100 years later that archaeological investigation gave credence to his observations

Back in here I revised for my Welsh class and then we went into the lesson. Very few of us here again but nevertheless once more it passed really well and I was pleased with what I did. And I made a vow that at the Dialysis Centre I shall read the notes of the previous lesson as soon as I’m left in peace.

Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

After a very late lunch, during which I was disturbed by the cleaner, I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme – interrupted of course by hot chocolate and coconut cake. It’s only four days per week now of course so I don’t want to miss out on that.

And I forgot to deduct from my earlier calculation the 3×20 minutes that I’m now no longer taking in that respect.

The hospital in Paris ‘phoned too. I thought that they might have something exciting to tell me but it was just a check-up with a nurse and an exchange of pleasantries. While they might not have forgotten all about me, they may as well have done. It’s tile to light a fire under a few people but it could simply be a case of “no news is good news”.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. Tomorrow I can start on the apple cake that I made the other day.

And now it’s bed-time of course. And here’s hoping for a better night’s sleep. I shall probably be away with the fairies quite quickly but I bet that I don’t have the same amount of luck that the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine thought that Lewis Carroll had.

But seeing as we have been discussing time just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the story about the two tourists on their way to Italy.
"I’m going to Pisa" said one. "I want to see the clock factory there."
"Where in Pisa is that?" asked the second
"It’s actually in the Leaning Tower itself"
"Really?"
"Absolutely. Yes"
"Why did they put it there?"
"It’s quite simple really" said the first tourist. "The owners thought that seeing as they had the inclination, they may as well make the time."

0

Sunday 6th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again. And you have no idea how hard I have worked either.

It actually began last night after finishing writing my notes. Straight away, I dictated the notes for the two radio programmes that I prepared during the week so that they were ready to edit today.

Even having done that, I was still in bed before 23:00, which made a very nice change from how things usually are. And with a potential lie-in until 08:00 today I was set for a really good sleep.

And I actually had some of it too. It wasn’t until about 06:15 that my eyes first opened. Disappointing, I know, but 7.25 hours of uninterrupted sleep is something that is very rare indeed.

From then on until 08:00 I drifted in and out of sleep. Flat out when the alarm went off at 08:00 but it was still a struggle to force myself out of bed.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to start transcribing the dictaphone notes but the nurse came early today. He was in something of a rush.

He probably set a new record for being in and out which suited me fine and I could crack on and have breakfast. And carry on reading MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, has now left Kent and is in Ludlow and Western Shropshire, scrambling over the Iron-Age hill forts in the Clee Hills

Back in the late 1970s, feeling totally fed up of just about everything, I drove into Shropshire, left my van parked on a car park and walked miles to a Youth Hostel near Much Wenlock.

From there I walked all the way down the Wenlock Edge, the Long Mynd and the Clee Hills stopping at various Youth Hostels on the way, totally alone, just communing with nature.

Eventually, after a week or so, I found my way back to my van and drove home, a cleaner, fresher, more focused person. It’s amazing just how much good a week of that could do.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And guess who turned up last night? Yes, it was TOTGA’s turn to put in an appearance. Did I dictate the dream about the sale at LIDL where I bought four saws or something like that because they are the kind of thing that I would use when rebuilding the house? … "no you didn’t" – ed … Later on, we were with TOTGA. She put in an appearance and we were wandering around the supermarket when we saw one of our friends come by. She showed us four lightbulbs that she’d picked up from LIDL. They certainly hadn’t been on sale when I was there so we thought that they must have put out some more stuff so maybe we should go to look. We went in and had a wander around. TOTGA went off for a wander around somewhere else. When I looked she was standing by a tray and there on the surface was wood glue, four big tubs of it at £3:99 each. I shouted down to her to grab hold of the glue and bring it back because that’s the stuff that I use more and more. Of course Nerina had something to say about that but as we explained, rebuilding a house and doing it primarily out of wood – we aren’t going to do it all today but this is the kind of stuff that you can never find when you want it. Having four tubs on a shelf in the shed would certainly ease my ability to progress whenever I feel that I have the time to do it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I always used to keep my eye open for bargains and quite often I’d see a real bargain that I don’t actually need straight away but in a year’s time I will. So I buy it, and when I do need it, I can’t find it and have to buy another full-price one. If I did find something, it usually meant that my plans had changed and I no longer needed it.

At some point last night I was working for a company and we were planning to launch an advertising campaign. I had several good ideas in my head that I had discussed with an advertising agency but the woman who saw me there was rather frosty and didn’t really pick up very much on my ideas. Instead she suggested something else. We crossed swords on several occasions. A little later on I had to go back to the agency. I wasn’t really looking forward to meeting this woman. Over chatting, she told me that things had gone on in their office and she’d handed in her notice. She didn’t know what to do. In a fit of enthusiasm I asked her “why don’t you come and work for me?” which took her by surprise and took me by surprise too when I said it. We actually sat down and began to discuss one or two things. Later on I began to buy and accumulate office equipment that I would likely need in the hope that it really would come to fruition.

In the past I’ve worked with many people whom personally I didn’t like but because they were so good at their job it was in fact a pleasure to work with them. Skill and proficiency are to be admired in everyone who displays it.

There was also something about driving a lorry through Crewe with a ladder on the back. I’d been to pick up this ladder and put it on the back of this open-back lorry and was driving it back home. I could see that it was really unsafe on there and wasn’t actually compressed . It was fully-extended, which I thought was strange. I stopped, took the ladder off having seen a convenient terraced house round the corner with a blank wall. I struggled to carry this ladder and went to prop it against the side wall of the house so that I could collapse it safely but the ladder was too long and overhung the gutter. The street was on such a slope that the ladder was canting over to the left. I thought that if I’m not going from one crisis to another, it’s certainly starting to look like it here. I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty putting this ladder into a safe condition.

In my mind’s eye right now I can still see where all of that happened. It was going down Derrington Avenue near the turning into Hammond Street. And strangely enough, ladders is not my best subject either when it comes to DiY and building.

Having dealt with all of that, I set to work. And without too many interruptions I bashed out two complete radio programmes, including the extra tracks and notes, and they are now finished and ready to go – sometime in … err … May next year. Something else that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is that I want to be as far ahead as it is reasonably possible to be, so that my programmes can live on, even if I can’t.

One interruption that I mustn’t overlook was lunch. My cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich on fresh bread tasted delicious.

It was about 16:30 when I finished so I had my hot chocolate and coconut cake (I do like that, even if it’s not politically correct) and then made an apple cake. In the absence of a recipe, I made a basic oil cake, added a pile of desiccated coconut and raisins, and then diced an apple into small pieces.

Today, I tried an experiment. I decided that instead of stirring everything with a spoon, I’d make it in my food processor. After all, no point in having it and only using it to make hummus. And it did actually make it all mix up so much better and so much more evenly

Once it was mixed up I lined a baking tin and poured the mix in and left it for a while to settle.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … kitchen table I kneaded the pizza dough that had been defrosting since lunchtime and then rolled it out onto the tray.

Once everything was ready I switched on the oven and when it was hot bunged the cake in. Never mind your “40 minutes” – it was 75 with my oven. It’s a tabletop oven and it’s not very reliable or accurate.

15 minutes before the cake was ready I assembled the pizza and then when the cake was done I swapped it with the pizza and cooked that.

And wasn’t that delicious too? It would have been even nicer had I remembered the cherry tomatoes. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

The only task that remains to be done is the Welsh homework, but that’s a job that I’m going to try to do at the hospital. I may as well try to do some good while I’m there.

Off to bed now, and who will come to see me tonight? It’s Zero’s turn so I’m keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

So while we’re on the subject of things doing some good … "well, one of us is" – ed …whether it’s working at the hospital or walking over West Shropshire, I’m reminded of the time that Nerina went to a Health Farm.
"It’s wonderful here" she told me on the ‘phone. "I’m feeling a different woman!"
On that point I could have agreed with her, but I thought that I’d best keep silent and keep my activities a secret for as long as I could.

0

Monday 30th September 2024 – I SAW EMILIE …

… the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

She came to see how I was doing and her first words to me were "have you considered having your dialysis done at home?"

It looks as if our little romance is over, not that there ever was one at the beginning.

After all, the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors are obliged to take goes something along the lines of "you can make a patient out of your Mistress, but not a Mistress out of your patient".

And, I imagine, these days with all of these female doctors, I imagine that the oath has now become unisex

Last night anyway I dashed off to bed in eager anticipation of a possible encounter today, but my encounter with my pillow was rather later than I would have liked. I still can’t find the way to my bed at any kind of respectable hour.

For a few hours I managed a decent sleep too but I awoke early and then just spent the rest of the time tossing and turning and occasionally falling asleep until the alarm went off.

At the sound of the alarm I was with a couple of girls in a café. We were discussing some obscure English. I was explaining to her about the diphthong “EA”, giving her the example such as “heather”. We were talking about that for a while. Then the subject moved on to the triangular sign that you would see on a cassette keyboard so we were reminiscing about the old cassette players, the triangular arrow and the two triangular arrows, one key with two triangular arrows going one way and another key with two triangular arrows going another way. Then there was the key with a square on it, a key with a red dot on it. We were talking about all of this. These girls had grown up in the era of media and those buttons wouldn’t mean very much to them.

That’s something with which I have difficulty coming to terms. Never mind computers, I remember life before cassette tapes. I forget how old I am and that many people don’t have the same experience. Back in the good old days before I moved into the Real World I was bringing a coach and a hostess back from somewhere and as we were empty I put on a tape.
"What’s this music?" she asked.
And so I told her what it was. And added "it was recorded in 1971"
"1971?" she exclaimed "I wasn’t even born then!"
God knows what a girl of 19 would make of my choice of music today.

In the bathroom I washed myself and then washed my socks and undies, picking a clean pair off my bathroom octopus that hangs from the shower curtain rail. And then I had a shave and applied a liberal helping of deodorant. Must look my best in case I meet the aforementioned.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. I was out on the West Coast with Marty Balin and that lot. They wanted a bassist because their last bassist had had trouble with the USA Government so they called for me to ask me if I would come down. I went down and met them, and happened to mention that I was having trouble with the USA Government too. It considered me to be a citizen and wanted all my taxes and for me to go to join the Military etc. The Chinese guy who was there said that I had told him to put my name down on the form. I replied that that was the Census that wanted to know everyone who was where at a certain place at a certain time. We had a lengthy discussion about that. I was sure that nothing would ever come of it, but anyway … That night there was a party so I went to join in. I was more talking about business. I was with a girl who wanted to know that if she subscribed, what would she receive for her money. I didn’t really know myself so I tried to tell her some kind of vague story but she wanted some more precise details from that. In the meantime there was a stash of money about the place. This was in danger of disappearing so I took it and hid it about my person. I was sure that someone would be bound to say something about it and point the finger at me but I thought that it was all getting completely out of hand, just like anything on the West Coast when once the evil substances started to be passed around, then anything could happen and usually did, and it was usually to the detriment of those who were naïve enough to think that they were going to do the best for everyone.

In the past I’ve met loads of well-meaning people and almost inevitably, almost all of them have been taken for a ride by the more unscrupulous members of society. And as for life in a commune, my experience was such that I went to live in a van instead.

The nurse apologised for being late but she had a considerable number of blood tests to do. That made me laugh. It’s her last day and her first day was full of blood tests too. As I explained to my faithful cleaner later, I think that the clients of this little nursing circle have sussed out her oppo. I know which one of the two nurses I would rather have when it comes to sampling my blood and I reckon that all the other clients feel the same.

After she’d left I had breakfast and read MY BOOK

Our hero has now left Portus Lemanis and is now at Anderida, another “Saxon Shore” fort, this time at Pevensey just down the coast. Once more, he’s bewailing the lost treasures, the demolished walls and so on, and spends a lot of time theorising, much of which was confirmed by later excavations

Back in here I put a spurt on. Firstly I reviewed my Welsh from last week and completed the first part of the homework. Secondly I chose the first ten tracks for the next radio programme, and thirdly I reviewed the programme that will hopefully be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied, I sent it off.

While all of that was going on, our little travel group was having a good and lively chat. It’s nice to keep up with people, especially as I don’t see Alison as often as I used to, or, indeed, as often as I would like. And the same goes for the others too.

Mind you, I don’t know where that impressive burst of energy and concentration came from.

That took me nicely up to the arrival of my cleaner who applied my anaesthetic patches with her usual dexterity.

And her I upset her. I told her that I nearly spilled my breakfast porridge all over me because the microwave is not too high. So we worked out that we could lower its shelves three notches if we were to move the baking trays around and swap the rest of the stuff round on the two shelves.

The taxi came early again while I was in the middle of organising the baking bowls so leaving them on the worktop I hit the streets.

Today’s driver was the young, friendly one and we had a good chat all the way through the rainstorms to Avranches

Some of Saturday’s weight loss has stayed lost, I’m pleased to say. And the “plugging in” was quite a lot less painful that other times. One of the nurses wanted to try out her English so we had a few little chats.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to enquire after my well-being. No more friendly, social chit-chat perched on the edge of my bed. Instead she gave me a very broad hint that I ought to clear off. Maybe she really is a regular reader of this rubbish.

To pass the time I began to tidy up a few of the directories and, deep in the bowels of the computer, I came across a football match that I’d recorded but never seen, dating from 2019, Y Bala v Airbus. So now I can file that under CS too.

After they unplugged me I weighed myself again and I’d lost the grand total of 300 grammes. I want to lose a lot more than that.

The taxi driver had to wait a while for me and she already had a passenger with her. Ahh well, can’t be helped. But we had a nice little chat on the way home.

Having texted my cleaner earlier, she was waiting for me and watched as I made it up the stairs. Even managing the first one without lifting my knee up with my hand.

In here we sorted out the shelves and its now much more reasonable, as I found out later while cooking my delicious stuffed pepper

Now it’s time for bed, ready for tomorrow and my Welsh lesson.

During our on-line chat this morning the others were laughing at me because I’ve applied the deodorant “in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is on duty”.
It remind sme of when a solicitor had been searching for me in Brussels for several years and finally caught up with me.
"Mr Hall!" he exclaimed. "What happened to you? We thought that you might have been dead for years!"
"No he isn’t" said his assistant. "He just smells like it"

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Sunday 29th September 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was exceptional

Fresh dough that rose like a lift, that lovely cheese that my cleaner found for me, and the pièce de résistance, which is not a French virgin, Rhys, it was the home-made tomato sauce.

When I put the new tomatoes away on Friday I noticed two tomatoes left over that were looking distinctly the worse for wear. Ordinarily they would have been filed under CS but I decided to try an experiment.

Being now a member of “LIDL on-line” (God help me) I can now access their recipes. And they have about 300 vegan recipes, one of which I noticed was for tomato sauce.

So as I wound up everything last night by dictating the radio notes that I’d written, I resolved to make use of the two tomatoes, to see what I could do. And then I went to bed.

It was rather later than I would have liked it to be, but once more I didn’t stay awake for long. I was soon away with the fairies and there I stayed for a few hours.

At one point in the morning I awoke in a cold sweat thinking that it was Christmas Day. I’ve no idea why I did that. It was probably with having talked about Christmas previously but it was a very strange thing to happen. It really was quite a panic-stricken situation for a few seconds.

And then about half an hour later I dreamed that the cleaner had come in and shouted my name. Of course, that’s highly unlikely but even so, I’m really degenerating into a bad state. I’m not yet at the stage of locking the bedroom door but I shall have to take precautions. There are a few dreams that you would like to come true, but that’s not one of them.

When the alarm went off I was feeling terrible and it was quite a struggle to haul myself to my feet. Added to that the fact that it’s freezing. The weather has suddenly turned to winter almost overnight and it’s officially “jumper on” weather as far as I’m concerned. It won’t be long before it’s “big coat” weather, followed by “hat and gloves” weather.

Not that I felt like it but I had a good wash again this morning. With perspiring as I do in bed and a nurse that comes in the morning I can’t lounge around like I used to and go for several weeks in an unkempt fashion.

Back in here I hardly had the computer switched on when the nurse arrived. She chatted away as she fixed my legs and showed me some photos of her holiday in Brittany just now.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. My author, Thomas Wright, has now moved on from Dover.

If you were to read the WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR PORTUS LEMANIS situated on a cliff overlooking a drained arm of the sea that now forms part of Romney Marsh, you’ll notice that it’s not very useful for its architecture and remains.

It nots that “The site is still relatively unknown: the only major archaeological excavations were carried out by Roach Smith in 1850 and 1852”. And here I am, reading a book that tells me about the time when Thomas Wright was there with Charles Roach Smith helping out and doing part of the excavations.

His report is probably the clearest and most useful source of information about the fort and yet none of it is included in the Wikipedia entry.

By the way, regular readers of this rubbish may recall me having made certain “disparaging” remarks about Wikipedia. Don’t misunderstand me – it’s a great source to go to when you are starting your research and want to establish the background, but look at the entry and at the bottom you’ll see “References”, “sources” and “External Links”. They are the places to go to if you want to follow it up

Many of the older books are available on-line for download free and for nothing with such sites as the Gutenberg Project, my own favourite, ARCHIVE.ORG or the Google book-scanning project, and then you can check the sources used by the author of these books to find out where he had his information, if it isn’t first-hand knowledge.

And then work backwards from there, and so on. And so, like Nansen said, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"

Back in my little office here I attacked the dictaphone to hear what I was doing during the night. My friends from the Wirral were coming round to Shavington. We had some kind of thing going on. It was quite early in the morning and I was out doing something when I saw them. So I drove like a maniac, overtook them dangerously so they flashed and blew their horns because they didn’t recognise the car, and then took the short cut home so that I was actually opening the gates to the drive when they turned up There was a friend with them, another girl, so the three of them were busy unloading things like bottles of cider, gallons of oil, things like that that they’d bought from the UK for me and I was stocking them somewhere. They had all kinds of exciting stuff. When my friend pulled into the driveway I told him to park down at the far end of the driveway as father would be home and he’d want to park in here too. They’d brought a crate with them too. One of the girls, I think that it was my friend’s wife, said “we’ve brought our furbabies with us too”. There were two cats in there. I thought that I hoped that they’d get on well with my two cats. We were busy unloading this thing when there were people round there interviewing everyone because we were going to do something to do with renewable energy, that sort of thing, and this was something quite novel for back in those days for a newspaper report or two. But it all felt so unreal and uneasy. I wasn’t really comfortable or at my ease doing this but I’d no idea why.

In fact, going back all those years, my friend’s wife, when she was a student did bring a friend with her a couple of times when she and my friend came to visit. But young, naïve, stupid me had absolutely no idea that she was trying to match us together until much later. And that’s not the first time that a similar thing has happened. I wondered why a friend in Chester used to bring his sister with him all the time when he came round to my bedsit. I really was that thick

But as for renewable energy, I was way ahead of my time. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had solar panels and wind turbines on my farm as long ago as 1998. No mains electricity at all. And when I lived down there full-time from 2006 to 2015 there was still no mains electricity. It was all solar or wind.

No running water either. The mains water didn’t arrive in the hamlet until 1977 and my house had been abandoned before then so it missed out. Putting my Degree to work, I built a rainwater harvesting system with home-made water filters using volcanic ash – puzzolane – and sand. Where we lived, there was never any shortage of volcanic ash, that’s for sure.

Later on there were several cases concerning Immigration up before the Bench at the Old Bailey. The defendants were being assisted by a young Afro-type of guy who was doing the translations for them. Whether or not they were all speaking the same language he was doing it for all four or five of them. The barrister was a young Ethiopian or someone like that, a previous refugee who’d come across. He was a pupil in Chambers somewhere. At one particular hearing the Judge was unable to attend so it was the Recorder who took over the chair. There was a submission being made by the defence for an adjournment. The Recorder was actually one of the Seniors of the same Bench as the junior Immigrant barrister. What he was saying was absolutely awful about “how this case, if he loses it, is going to set back his career etc”. The guy asked “how could I do the best to advance my career?”. The Senior guy was really sneering at him with some quite offensive comments that some might have considered to be racist, especially in today’s climate in the UK. As a spectator I was horrified by what was coming out of the Bench. There was absolutely no place for any of this . It was completely out of order, completely irrelevant and completely offensive.

There have been some horrible scenes that I have witnessed in a Court at times, but I’m more impressed about what I can remember about the judiciary when I’m fast asleep. Nothing of what I have typed is different from that which I dictated, except maybe changing the odd “that” for “which” or “who”.

At some point during the night I had a feeling (but I didn’t record it) that I was telling a joke to a publican. It took him several minutes but eventually he “got it”. And I wish that I could remember what the joke was now. But it’s not the first time that I haven’t recorded something that I was convinced had occurred. There was even something once involving Castor. I wonder what else I might have missed.

And then I watched Stranraer lose to Stirling Albion. This was by far and away the worst game that I have ever witnessed. Stranraer lost 2-0 and they were lucky to get nil, that’s for sure. Bottom of the table again, and even so early in the season, they need to find some magic from somewhere, and quickly.

After lunch I did some tidying up in the kitchen, putting stuff away and so on, and then I had some personal stuff that needed my attention.

Once that was out of the way there was the radio programme. And in a wild fit of enthusiasm I bashed through the notes and actually finished it right off. What helped was that adding in the additional track and writing the notes and adding them in led to an overrun of just one third of a second. And it can’t be any better than that.

Following that, I made some pizza dough because I have now officially run out. I thought that I’d found some in the freezer but it turned out to be the leftover hash browns.

This batch of dough didn’t rise as well as some of the previous lots but it had a good consistency. I split it into three lots and put two in the freezer. The third, I rolled out onto the tray and left it to rise.

Wile it was rising, I –

  • chopped up half a small onion and a garlic clove really finely
  • poured a little olive oil into a saucepan
  • added the onion and garlic
  • followed by the two really soft tomatoes
  • A pinch of salt,
  • a dash of ground black pepper
  • some oregano, basil and marjoram to taste
  • Bring it to the boil and let it simmer, stirring constantly, until it reaches the consistency you want

That went on the pizza base, and then I piled on everything else and baked it. And wasn’t it just exquisite? I shall have to make that tomato sauce again without doubt

So right now, late again, I’m going to bed.

But the idea of taking precautions reminded me about the guy with twelve children whose wife was being interviewed by the Social Services. "Every Sunday afternoon after lunch" she said "my husband takes me into the bedroom and … errr … well, you know …"
"Every Sunday afternoon?" asked the Social Services person
"Ohh yes, every Sunday" she affirmed
"Do you take precautions?" asked the Social Services person again
"My husband does" said the woman
"What does he use?" asked the Social Services person once more
"A screwdriver"
"A screwdriver?"
"Yes " replied the woman. "He takes the handle off the outside of the door so none of the other kids can come in."

0

Friday 27th September 2024 – AND I ALMOST WROTE …

… Vendredi too. Obviously the stress is getting to me.

Today, my old microwave has gone the Way of the West.

When I moved here, I bought everything new, but (apart from the bed which was expensive) really cheaply so that I could have everything all at once, and then gradually replace it with something much better item by item as the cheap stuff gave out.

A few things, like the kettle, my office chair and so on have gone before it, but today it’s the turn of the microwave.

It’s not actually stopped working. For €49:95 seven years ago its mechanism is still boldly going forward, but the enamel has flaked off in places inside to leave bare metal and it’s become corroded.

Anything that might be living in there has long-since been radiated into nothing but it’s still not looking good. However I was rather hoping that it would soldier on until I am downstairs, I can erect the two cabinets from IKEA Munich that are still in the van and buy a fitted microwave.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment, my neighbour who has left to go to live in a Home had her family in liquidating her apartment. None of them wanted her microwave because it’s another cheap €49.95 affair but it’s only a few months old.

So, as they say, the rest is history. I hope that it’ll keep me going until I can sort myself out downstairs, whenever that might be.

It would have been useful here last night if I could have fitted my bed into it, because once again I had another late night. The stress of the dialysis is getting to me too and I couldn’t haul myself out of my chair and cross the Great Divide of several inches over to my bed.

All of the tasks had been finished early and I could have gone to bed early too had I forced myself, but never mind. “Ahh well …” as they say.

But something happened last night that made me realise that maybe there is an improvement with this dialysis. And that’s going to cause me more than a few problems at the moment.

Once I was in bed, long after midnight, I slept all the way through until … errr … 05:00 when something awoke me in another mess of perspiration. But I didn’t stay awake for long and was soon back asleep.

It was a real struggle to haul myself out of bed when the alarm went off. Nevertheless I staggered into the kitchen to make some dough for the bread. It’s not the best mix that I’ve made but it would do.

After I’d scrubbed myself up I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was summoned for an interview at a Government office. When I arrived there and was in the waiting room some guy eventually came to a little cubby hole and called my name so I went forward and stood there. He began to look through the papers and I heard him say under his breath “oh God it’s one of these cases”. When he looked at me I said “I’m really sorry for being ‘one of these cases’ and wasting your time”. He made a smirk but didn’t really say anything and then began to ask me questions. But it was strange because he was actually reading through the notes, stopping and asking me a question about what he’d just read instead of having read the thing through thoroughly first and prepared a list of questions. It’s true that quite often you never ever reach the end of your list of questions because you’ve gone off down a side trail somewhere but even so you have to have some plan about where you’re supposed to be going and I could see that I was becoming just as exasperated as he was by all of this

It’s important during a contentious interview to establish a moral ascendency over your adversary. And it’s also a good idea to be thoroughly prepared, have your list of questions ready, have your responses ready to whatever questions they might ask and be ready to go off at a tangent and side-track the issue whenever there’s a possibility. Also, and most importantly, answer the question and nothing but the question, and do not volunteer any information that isn’t directly asked for. You’d be surprised at the number of people who actually talk themselves into trouble. And “yes”, I HAVE learned some bitter lessons in the past.

The nurse came along and talked away about nothing while she sorted me out, and then after she left I gave the bread its second kneading and them made breakfast. While I was eating it, I was reading MY BOOK.

Thomas Wright was still at Ozengell Grange for a while this morning. And I learned something that hasn’t made it into modern research.

Modern research has uncovered more graves that his excavations “missed” and his team has been roundly criticised for its shoddy work. But in fact, Thomas Wright made it clear that they only excavated where the railway wanted to dig its cutting, and they had to do it quickly as the railway company wanted to press on, so they did it when they could with who and what they had. They would come back and carry on “another time” as time permits but they clearly did not.

After that they moved on to Rutupiae to inspect the Roman fort. Regular reader of this rubbish in an earlier version will recall that we visited here in 2006 when we were on the trail of our forebears down in Kent. But when we saw it, it was quite different from how it was when Wright saw it in 1847.

He talks about the little foreshore and the remains of the Roman landing stage where the first Roman visitors to Britannica would have landed once the Romans had secured the area and built the defences. Today though, it’s all been obliterated by the railway that passes through the site

Some of the walls have been gone too, carted away by the local landowner of the time to use as hardcore or rubble.

It’s really sad when you think of what has been lost to history in only a handful of generations. When you think of it, two generations ahead of me and two generations behind me, and those five generations spans 130 years.

Back in here again I’ve been working on transparent *.gif files, overlays and trying really hard to remember *.srt encoding. It’s years since I’ve written an *.srt file and while I managed to finally work it out, I could only make it run in the trial version and couldn’t make it embed into the final video file.

It’s really sad just how much I’ve forgotten. I’m going to have to go back to Education and look for a free video-editing course offered by the Continuing Education Programme.

After lunch (cheese and tomato butties on nice fresh bread) my cleaner turned up with the microwave and we had a wave of laughs confronting all of the various problems and then solving them

One thing that I have done is to reorganise the shelving in the kitchen. The oven with its drop-down door was above the microwave whose door opened to the side and that was the wrong way round, so we emptied those shelves, cleaned them and rearranged it with the electrical appliances in the correct place.

So now I’m not going to drop boiling hot stuff on my head, but instead I’ll have a spice jar falling on me. I need to sort that out.

In the middle of all of the fun, LeClerc arrived. I sent off an order earlier in the day and it turned up in mid-rearrange. So having put the frozen food away and after my cleaner had gone and I’d had my hot chocolate and coconut cake, I had 2 kg of carrots to wash, peel, dice and blanch.

Once that lot was done, I could think about tea. Chips and vegan nuggets with a vegan salad, followed by the last slice of roly-poly that I found in the fridge

Now, its bed-time at long last and I need to psyche myself up for the next trip to the Dialysis Centre to which I am not looking forward at all

But thinking of Thomas Wright uncovering Saxon skeletons at Ozengell reminds me of another team that uncovered some skeletons from that kind of era and the professor in charge was talking to his pupils about some of them
"These two here buried in the same grave are obviously a couple judging by how their arms are entwined around each other" he sad "and if you look closely you’ll see that the one on the right is obviously a woman."
"How can you tell that?" asked a student.
"Examine the jawbones" he said. "The one on the right is quite worn down yet the one on the left is hardly worn at all."

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Thursday 26th September 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… visit to the Dialysis Clinic done and dusted and out of the way.

Mind you, it’s no use counting them because they’ll go on for as long as I do, and if I have to keep on climbing up these blasted stairs that won’t be much longer. Roll on the end of May next year when, if all goes according to plan, I can finally plan to move downstairs.

After the events of the other night, I was actually in bed at something very much like 23:00 which was really nice for a change. It’s certainly better than 03:20, that’s for sure.

Even better, I fell asleep straight away, and there I stayed, curled up like a bug in a rug, until all of 04:20 when I had a rather dramatic awakening. However, I’ve no idea what it was that rocked me awake.

Eventually I could go back to sleep and there I stayed until all of 07:00 when I awoke. At that moment I was actually away with the fairies somewhere but I’ve no idea where because the moment my eyes opened, it all evaporated.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was going somewhere with this girl. She and I were not actually a couple but it was very clear to everyone that there was something between us. When we came to a particular place one of the guys insisted on trying to chat her up which was most inappropriate. When we returned to the car he sat in the back where the two of us were sitting so I sat in the middle of the back seat with the girl on the other side. He had a good moan about that but I thought that he was behaving completely inappropriately. When we reached the airport we all ended up having to sit on separate seats. She was near the back, he was in the middle and I was at the front. He came and had a few words with me so I had a few words with him. He went off and sulked . The girl went and sat next to him to try to console him. I thought that that was rather inappropriate too. Later on we were somewhere in the van. I was trying to give the girl directions. She said “don’t worry, I’ll look at it on the map”. She was looking on the map and giving me directions. We were supposed to be in the mountains but this wasn’t very mountainous to me. I tried to look at the map while she was holding it but I couldn’t see exactly where we were so we were having a discussion about this. Suddenly we came into a village and I recognised it as Pipe Gate (in actual fact it was Madeley). I thought that there’s nothing for it now except to head home. We entered the motorway and began to drive North. I was wondering whether I should stop the car for five minutes with the girl, or ask her f she wanted to go straight home or to stop somewhere or something like that, but quite honestly I wasn’t really in the mood – this incident with that guy had spoiled the whole evening

So here we go again, people putting the spanner in the works, me snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, all of the usual clichés. But this “sitting in separate seats on an aeroplane” does remind me of a real-life event. And never mind strangers trying to chat up my bird, I had a friend who used to do that too. He thought that no-one else should have a girlfriend if he didn’t have one so he thought that he should have yours, and even if he did have one, that still didn’t stop him.

The nurse came round a little later and sorted me out. Her usual bouncy, happy self. They are quite a pair, she and her oppo. She brings joy and smiles wherever she goes, and he brings it whenever he goes. She had a lot to say for herself but nothing of any great importance.

After she left I made my breakfast and then read MY BOOK. while I ate it.

We started off this morning still at Verulamium, reading the account of the discussion that the author Thomas Wright had with the person who excavated the amphitheatre there.

There’s tons of interesting anecdotes about that which never seems to have made it into the official report and it’s fascinating to have all of this unfold before you.

And the more I read of him, the more I’m admiring his work. He has learned that a society has bought some land in old Verulamium and plans to demolish what’s left of the Roman remains in order to build houses there. Our author’s comment is –
"I can only offer up a prayer that some unforeseen event may interfere with their ruthless and unpatriotic designs"
As you might expect, I’m liking this author more and more. For a comment like that to be committed to writing in the early Victorian era, that would have actually been quite startling.

After we left there we went to Ramsgate, my mother’s old stamping ground in the south-east of England.

In the early 1840s one of the many railway companies down there was building a line from Canterbury to Ramsgate and digging out a cutting, came across an early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Ozengell Grange.

An archaeological team (such as they were then) was called in to investigate and our hero, hearing of the events, went along to spectate. We’re just beginning to reach the exciting bit.

A little later, I went to carry out some modern research onto what was going on down there. And even today they are still coming across bodies buried in parts of the cemetery that they didn’t uncover.

And regrettably, one of the modern reports refers to the excavations at which our friend was present, and calls it “a very poor excavation”, which it probably was, bearing in mind the fact that our team from 1847 had no radar, no resistance meters and none of the modern techniques that are available to archaeologists today.

Yet with the relentless commercial pressure in those days and no Government body to protect them, it’s a miracle that it was done at all.

Back in here I was tagging films again and lost all track of time until my cleaner burst in at 12:00 to put on my patches. We had a little chat and a laugh about last night and then after she left I packed my bag and waited.

The driver who came for me was a young girl who had quite a lot to say for herself, and it was quite interesting too. She even took me on a little sightseeing tour.

She was a traveller and had spent a lot of time on the roads around Europe. So I suppose being a VSL driver was … errr … right up her street … "groan" – ed …

After she dropped me off I weighed myself and found to my dismay that the weight that I’d lost the last time had come back on again.

So I installed myself on the bed, the girls plugged me in with just a little less pain this time, and they left me to it.

To pass the time I tagged some of the videos on the portable laptop and had a probe into the depths of one of the graphics programs that I use

When they kicked me out I weighed myself again and the weight had gone once more, so it must be water retention that’s doing this, so my kidneys aren’t improving.

A friendly but rather taciturn lady driver brought me home and my cleaner helped me upstairs and we made plans for the future.

After a little rest I made tea – an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer followed by spotted dick and the last of the coconut soya cream. That made a nice change. I like surfing through the special offers at LeClerc on-line because sometimes they have some nice stuff in there that makes a change.

So now I’m off to bed. It’s a day with no outings planned but I have bread to make first thing before I can organise myself as I’ve run out

But that dream that I had reminded me of a girlfriend I had once who insisted that she could read a map, even though she couldn’t.
Once we were driving somewhere and I was convinced that wed become hopelessly lost
"Where are we now?" I asked
"Just here" she said, stabbing her finger on the map. "Driving down this road here"
"On that blue road?" I asked
"That’s right" She said
"That blue line, dear" I said "just happens to be a canal."

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Sunday 22nd September 2024 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest officially, but no longer these days for me. What with a nurse turning up at 08:30 every morning 7 days per week, I can no longer have the rest to which I was accustomed.

No longer lying abed until ridiculous o’clock, no longer lounging around in a dressing gown and not very much else.

There was an episode of “Gunsmoke”, the famous American radio programme where one of the actors said "Sunday is the one day of the week a man can get up at noon and sit around with his boots off without anybody hollering at him about it" and whoever it was, I had a strong affinity with him.

However, let’s look on the bright side. That extra three hours in the morning eats back into those 18 hours per week that I lose at the Dialysis Clinic. It’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good.

And whatever ill winds that were about last night blew me into bed at a reasonable time. Although I couldn’t make 23:00, it was still before 24:00.

And I’d dictated the notes for one radio programme and also the commentary for the concert that I’ll be broadcasting in due course too so I was quite impressed.

Even better, with the pain in my foot having subsided I could fall asleep with no problems, and so I did. And quite quickly too. No-one and nothing disturbed me until about 06:00 either, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had six hours of undisturbed sleep.

No danger of my leaving my nice clean pit at that time of morning though. I curled up under the bedclothes and went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I crawled into the bathroom and had a good wash and scrub up ready for the nurse.

When he arrived I asked him about this dramatically increased dose.

The story about this is that for many years I’ve been taking a certain medication that has some side effects so they have been very careful, giving me the minimal dose, and even stopping it altogether at one stage, which led to other problems.

Back in the Summer they put me back on it, an increased dose. The doctor told me that he was worried about this increased dose and thought long and hard about increasing it.

But yesterday, I was given by another doctor a prescription that doubled the dose. So is it in error?

It took several goes with the nurse until in the end, frustrated by his prevarication, I asked him outright "so you aren’t going to answer me then?"
He replied "if the doctor prescribed it, then that’s what you have to take" and told me some cock-and-bull story about how much one of his other patients took.

He really is getting on my wick right now.

After he left I made breakfast and then settled down with a new book, WANDERINGS OF AN ANTIQUARY; CHIEFLY UPON THE TRACES OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN

This book, published in … err … 1854, is an account of a peripatetic and keen amateur concerning his travels to various sites that had their origins in Roman or early Saxon days

Being such an early work, it’s bound to be confusing compared to what has been discovered since but that makes it all the more interesting because we can see things from a completely different perspective.

Even then, he was worried about the effects of the “urban sprawl” upon many interesting rural sites and the need to save them, long before there was an official Government body like English Heritage. Everything depended on the generosity of the local landowner.

The first chapter concerns his trips around the slag heaps of the Roman iron smelting works in the Forest of Dean. He made the point that so imperfect were the Roman smelting techniques that even in the mid nineteenth Century there were companies that were exploiting the slag, or “scowle” and re-smelting it.

Incidentally, the Roman smelting works had foot-operated bellows, so he says. I bet you didn’t know that.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in Nantwich and due to go back to Crewe but I’d already changed my bus ticket once and it was now coming up to 09:00 and I didn’t think that I’d be ready to catch the 09:00 bus so I wanted to come on the 09:15 instead so I ran like hell to the bus station and arrived there before and said that for some reason I want to cancel it and go on the next one but the filling in of the forms was so complicated that I nearly missed that one too. The guy in the ticket office was so confused as to why I wanted to cancel the bus ticket for a bus that I thought that I couldn’t catch even though I arrived in his office well on time to fill in a form to cancel it. I noticed too that my address was “Winsford” at that time, 330 New Road Winsford, but I was in such haste that it looked like another address completely on the form so this would certainly be a puzzle when it arrives at Head Office.

My dreams really are confusing at times. Can you imagine going into the bus station office at 08:55 to change your bus ticket for the 09:15 bus because you’ll be too late for the 09:00 one! And then taking so long to fill out the form that you’d miss the 09:15 too. Especially when there was no office on Nantwich Bus Station.

Stranraer FC was next and they were away at Forfar Athletic. And from 1-0 up and cruising comfortably, they once again rose to the occasion and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. With two moments of madness in defence.

And we had another one of our famous “let’s play it out from the back” moments, and you can see the inevitable result on STRAWBERRY MOOSE’S TIKTOK ACCOUNT

Yes, the World’s most famous Moose is going into multi-media. We’ll be working on his past travels around North America. There are dozens of his videos, especially of his Arctic travels, and it’s high time that he did something with them.

Over the next few days we’ll be having a trial run with a video or two but we opened his account with the video that I mentioned above.

After my salad butty for lunch I knuckled down and did some work. And rather slower than I would have liked, I ended up with two radio programmes, one the normal one and the other the concert that will be broadcast on Friday and Saturday far in the future.

And I do have to say that the concert will be well-worth the price of the admission alone because it’s excellent. I don’t know how I came by it. It must be one from the deceased son of a friend, but his group wasn’t the supporting act that night.

Alison was on-line for a while, sunning herself on the beach somewhere exotic so we “exchanged pleasantries”. And what wouldn’t I give to go somewhere like that? Anywhere, in fact? That is, apart from this blasted dialysis place.

At lunchtime I’d taken some dough from the freezer and it had been defrosting. later this afternoon I kneaded it and rolled it out, and when I’d finished working I assembled and baked it.

It’s not a legendary one like one or two have been just recently, but it was still good nevertheless.

So now I’m going to do some Welsh homework and then go off to bed.

But while there might not have been a ticket office on Nantwich Bus Station, there was a street map.
It was one of those maps with the little lights on it, and if you pressed, say, the “car parks” button, little lights would light up on the map to show you where the car parks were.
There were about twenty buttons altogether, with things like “public toilets”, “chemists”, all that kind of thing
There was also a big arrow pointing to the centre of the map that said "you are here"
And someone, a legendary hero in my schoolboy mind, suffering clearly from pangs of anguish, had written underneath in big black letters "Yes! But where are all the f@#king buses?"
Strangely enough, I can still feel his pain even today, 60-odd years later.

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Monday 16th September 2024 – SO THAT’S DAY …

… three of my trip to the Dialysis Clinic. And you probably knew already because you may well have heard me scream when they stuck the needle in

These anaesthetic patches are no use whatever if they fall off inside the sleeve of your jacket and, without thinking, you stick them back on in the hospital so the staff doesn’t know that your forearm isn’t anaesthetised.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make a mistake. Instead I just learn a lot of lessons, and some of them are very painful, believe me. They had to douse my arm in alcohol.

Another lesson that I haven’t learned is the one about going to bed early. Last night’s early effort was just a flash in the pan because tonight is going to be horribly late

That’s because last night everything was all done and dusted quite quickly and, for a change, I was feeling a little more like it So with no distractions, like recovering from a painful arm, I headed for bed quite quickly.

At some point during the night I awoke but I can’t tell you when because I didn’t notice. It was dark so I just went back under the bedclothes and there I stayed.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and sorted myself out, having a shave too in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, and also washed the puttees that had been soaking in a bowl of water since about for ever. They are now hanging up to dry.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what I was up to during the night. We had a small chauffeur’s office and in the office next door were a couple of girls. We all got on extremely well. We used to cook communal meals – we’d cook a couple of things in our room and they’d cook a couple of things. We’d just go along and help ourselves to bits from everywhere. One day I was working on something and hadn’t noticed the time. Suddenly my two colleagues said that they were off out and there were sausages in the room next door if I wanted. I had a look and they had cooked some peas and mixed them with spaghetti and tomato sauce which didn’t look very appetising. Nevertheless I went next door and there wasn’t very much left at all, just a couple of potatoes and a sausage. The girls gave me something of a lecture about waiting until the last moment – if they hadn’t been so kind someone else would have eaten that. In the end I had to borrow a plate, scrounge some bread and start to serve myself this bit of an ad-hoc meal. As I said, the peas with spaghetti and tomato sauce didn’t look appetising but it was food all the same.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if our office had been as friendly as that? I had endless runs-in with my boss and my colleagues, as I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … and weren’t they glad when my Director’s Directorate moved to a different building. There just happened to be a spare room going begging and "if you were to move there you wouldn’t have to fight the Kortenberg traffic every time he wanted to go somewhere". . Yes, I’ll do that. And we all had some peace.

But the cooking in the office reminds me of school. The remodelling and modernisation of the school meant that the Sixth-form common room had previously been the old cookery lab and they hadn’t removed the appliances. And so for a group of us, lunch was a large tin of baked beans and a large sliced loaf divided four ways. And when we went running afterwards we would set record times without any trouble whatsoever. And that lasted until one of the boys casually mentioned that his uncle and aunt kept a pub just down the road.

Isabelle the nurse came in and did her best to raise my morale. She was on the point of giving me another shopping list when my cleaner stuck her head in for something. And so I let them get on with it between them

Breakfast was next and my book. We’ve moved on from abandoned towns (did you like that view yesterday) and on to abandoned villas, not so easy to spot from the air. But the story did go on about the ruins of a villa in private hands.

This was discovered in a forest in the 19th Century and excavated in 1882 by some amateurs who did more damage than good, and roofed over by a lean-to of corrugated sheets. In 1923 the roofing was described by our author as “in poor state, used for breeding pheasants” and in 1945 by another writer as “ruinous”. By 1979 “the sheds have now collapsed and the remains are suffering from weather and from the encroaching wood”. God knows what they will be like now.

Back in here I checked with the taxi company and they have me down for today, which is good news.

And so I wrote a letter that needs posting and afterwards had to contact my health insurers for a document that I need. That involved scanning a couple of documents to attach to my demand

All of my stuff needed sorting out for today too, and to put away what I’d baked yesterday. And you’ll be amazed at how quickly the time flies.

My cleaner arrived next, to put the anaesthetic patches on my arm and we had a little bit of a gossip before the taxi came for me.

It was my favourite Rastaman at the controls, and he had another passenger with him – an English woman.

She and her deceased husband had bought their house in 1997 (well, he wasn’t dead then, but never mind) and they came to live permanently in France in 2014. Despite that, she couldn’t string together two lucid words of French.

And yet these are the kind of people who complain about foreigners who come to the UK and can’t speak a word of English after just five minutes living there. I despair.

When my driver whispered in my shell-like about her and said “an Englishwoman – you can make a friend” I explained that I’d left the UK to come away from people like that.

We stopped in Sartilly to pick up another passenger, a retired doctor who didn’t say a word to anyone in any language, and we drove to the clinic.

My bed was right at the far end and so it took me a couple of minutes to make my way there and install myself. I had to be weighed, my blood pressure checked, all that kind of thing before they could plug me in

And that was when my torment began. It was totally agonising

But eventually the machine set off on its cycle and it’s quite strange because the pulses of the machine coincide with a tingling in my fingers, and I was having cramps in my left calf and that strange pain that I have in the sole of my right foot.

That was one day that I hope that I don’t have again, especially as they forgot the coffee and I had to harass them for it.

There’s a change of book too. I’ve finished Colonel Carrington’s report and I’m now on a book entitled CURIOUS CHURCH CUSTOMS. I’ll let you know if I find anything exciting.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was in the building today but she didn’t come to see me. I don’t think that she loves me any more. Instead I had another side-kick who came to see me, just for the sake of form, I suspect.

Someone else also presented herself to me – as the Assistante Sociale. Wouldn’t surprise me if she isn’t the trick cyclist in mufti sizing me up, or else she’s the mortician’s assistant sizing me up for the correct size of coffin.

Eventually they unplugged me and I went out to meet my chauffeur who would bring me back home. And we had the same man coming home again. Once more, he never said a single word, except when the driver asked “who wants to sit in front?”. Then he opened his mouth pretty quickly.

The driver didn’t have much to say for herself so I was glad to return home and see my cleaner, who made up for all the silence. She watched as I took myself upstairs, disintegrating puttees and all, and back in here where I collapsed into a chair, totally exhausted.

Eventually I could summon up the courage to go to make tea. Horribly late again, but it was another nice stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over for those who say that I need it.

So late as usual, I’m going to bed.

But the story of the Mortician’s assistant reminds me of my operation in January 2016 where I vented my spleen rather permanently.
There was a choice of two venues for the operation, the private clinic and the State-run hospital, and I chose the State-run hospital
"Why on earth did you do that?" I was asked on several occasions
"Have you seen where the clinic is situated?" I asked
"Nothing wrong with that" was the response. "It’s a nice part of town just there"
"I don’t care whether it’s situated in the Garden of Eden" I retorted. "No-one goes for a surgical operation in a clinic where the other side of the wall is the local cemetery. One false move with the knife, and then under cover of darkness there will be a ‘thud’ over the back wall and no-one will be any the wiser."

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Thursday 12th September 2024 – I CAN’T EVER FORGET …

… my friend’s daughter who, on being told that what she was going through for the first time at 11 years old was what she’ll be going through every four weeks for the next forty years, stormed upstairs in a fury and slammed her bedroom door in a fit of pre-teen angst .

And now I know exactly how she must have been feeling, after having gone through what I’ve gone through today and knowing that I’ll be doing it three times per week for the rest of my life.

They said that it would make me feel better, but I’m hardly running around like a spring chicken right now.

“It takes time” they tell me, but how much time do I have?

Not enough last night, apparently. I eschewed a trip out around Central Scotland with one of my groundhopping friends and was in bed relatively early. And asleep quite quickly too, which seems to be becoming a habit these days.

However I awoke not long after 06:00, and couldn’t go back to sleep. By 06:45 I had totally given up the idea and was so wide awake that I arose from the Dead a good 15 minutes before the alarm, not something that happens every day.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, changed my undies and washed the previous pair in the sink. I must keep on top of things otherwise it will all let go and I’ll have no idea where I am.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was an athletics meeting taking place, a World Championships of some description. I was working as a driver. At one stage I had three people in my car, a couple of girls and a guy taking them from one place to another venue. One of them was actually talking about staying illegally in the UK because he had no passport or his passport had expired. The story he was telling was how he was staying with his aunt and how she had left sounded so fishy that it was unbelievable, the type that you hear every day from thousands of people, exactly the same. He was asking about going to Canada and whether he’s receive asylum there. The Canadian girl was very suspicious and was giving very guarded answers. It was all extremely complicated. When I reached my destination I unloaded my three passengers and stayed to listen to the news. They were talking about them on the radio saying that they’d absolutely loused up the first leg of their athletics tournament and so they had been sent away somewhere off-campus to a private room out of the way of the media where they could rebuild their confidence etc ready for the second round of the event. The radio was saying how this was a good thing to do in the circumstances of these three people. But I was listening to these stories and was just extremely suspicious about them all. I was sure that there was far more to it than just a simple “take them out of the public eye for a couple of hours”. It was one of the most suspicious things that I’ve ever encountered

And believe me, in my life I have encountered a great many suspicious things. I have had something of a chequered life in a couple of previous existences and one of these days I might actually say something about it. However, I have to be mindful of the fact that the UK is one of these countries that has a very minimal Statute of Limitations.

And then we were discussing the situation at Celtic where the manager had left, a new manager had come in and there was a lot of turbulence around there with players openly talking about leaving the club. One of them was interviewed on TV and was discussing it. It turns out that another one was released over twelve months ago and has yet to find a new club. I said “surely he can find a job working on a building site or something like that and play part-time to keep fit. I could find him a job tomorrow”. I told him of a job that I knew was going. Whoever it was to whom I was talking was some elative of his and said “I want him much fitter than that. He’s 29”. The discussion continued and it was extremely interesting that I’d dreamed that Rodgers had left Celtic and they had a new foreign manager

So why would I be interested in Brendan Rodgers and Glasgow Celtic? It’s not the usual kind of topic that is forever on my mind. Not at all.

The nurse came in to see me later to apply my puttees (which fell down later). She gave me the copies of my prescriptions that she’d photocopied and also gave me some other paperwork that the clinic wants to see. She wanted to tell me what was going to happen but I didn’t want to know.

My faithful cleaner had been past too and dropped off the unused injections for me to take. Apparently they put a blood-thinning product in the mix when I’m being dialysed so they’ll start with my injections, so as to use them up

After everyone had left, I made breakfast and read my book on ROMANS IN BRITAIN.

We’re discussing Roman Roads at the moment but I’m thinking about the camps at Caersws and Caerhun that we’ve seen on those aerial maps.

When our author was writing his book, it was 1923, a long time before the advent of aerial photography and aerial mapping, something pioneered by Sidney Cotton (inventor of the “Sidcot” flying suit), whose steps we stood in IN NEWFOUNDLAND, when he came to the UK in the late 1930s.

So we can see these things quite clearly thanks to Cotton and those who followed in his footsteps … "or vapour trail" – ed …, but these people in 1923 when they were writing these books had no idea of aerial photography, so what they were able to discover and identify is really quite astonishing.

After breakfast I had to telephone the bank in Belgium. There have been payment issues with a card and I ned to check. But it wasn’t any use. According to the bank they don’t have any marker at all on the card and it should work fine.

We shall see.

What was left of the morning was spent backing up the big computer onto the memory stick on my keyring, and I ran out of time because the taxi came early for me.

There was someone else to pick up and then off we set, two passengers and the taxi driver from Hell, to Avranches. If they give me a blood pressure test as soon as we arrive they’ll have a shock.

When we arrived, there I was struggling along on my crutches so they took me to the cubicle the farthest away from the door.

They slapped a few anaesthetic patches on my arm and then we went through a pile of paperwork and forms. Then they gave me an injection and I closed my eyes as they did what they had to.

All I did was to lie there in bed. They had all the windows open and the air conditioning going full tilt and I was freezing. So much so that I couldn’t concentrate on any work at all – and that’s something that I’ll have to sort out.

Instead I read the report of Colonel Carrington about life at Fort Phil Kearny, which was permanently under siege by the native Americans and the site of which WE VISITED IN 2019. Now THAT’s what I call an interesting document.

There were also times when I drifted away with the fairies and on one of my little trips Roxanne came to see me and I remember distinctly kissing her cheek.

They eventually uncoupled me and I had to wait around for half an hour while they checked that the joint would close correctly. And FINALLY I could go to the bathroom – and not before time. And with my puttees around my ankles.

There were three taxi drivers waiting in the foyer so I asked "who’s drawn the short straw?" and one driver knew exactly what I meant.

We had another person and so the return trip home, much more sedately this time, went via the Centre Normandy to drop him off.

My cleaner was waiting but she stood and watched as I hauled myself up the stairs without help. It’s a struggle, but it works.

There’s no bread so I made another loaf. And in a wild fit of enthusiasm I made a jam roly-poly.

That was easy – make half a bread mix, after it’s risen, roll it out flat and rectangular, coat it with Jacqueline’s lovely home-made jam, sprinkle some desiccated coconut and raisins, and then roll it up, sprinkle with icing sugar and bake it in the other side of the oven while the loaf is a-doing.

While all that was going on I made tea – a burger from what’s left of the European Burger Mountain with pasta and veg done in tomato sauce

But now I’m off to bed and I’ll tell you tomorrow how the bread and roly poly have come out.

However, I started this entry today talking about repetitive tasks. And that reminds me of a Trades Union meeting that I attended years ago to discuss new work proposals
"We have agreed" said a negotiator "a 10% pay-rise, an extra week’s holiday, a Christmas bonus, and as from now on, we only have to work on Wednesdays"
"What?" howled a discontented voice. "Every bloody Wednesday?"

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