Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 27th October 2024 – I REALLY ENJOYED …

… my extra hour in bed last night. Even though I didn’t make it into bed for 23:00, it was still before midnight and when the alarm awoke me at 08:00 (or 09:00 in Summer Time) I had had over nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And it’s been a long time since I am able to say that. Perhaps they ought to change the clocks every weekend.

Mind you, how I’m going to cope when the clocks go forward next Spring I have yet to work out.

Last night after I’d finished writing my notes I had some dictating to do. And I decided, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, to attempt the two programmes that had been giving me great difficulty.

The other day I’d reviewed the notes and re-written them a couple of times, so now was the time to put my efforts into some serious work. After all, they’ve been hanging around for several months and I need them out of the way and finished otherwise time will over-run them.

By my estimation there would be 10.5 minutes of speech in one and a little under 4 minutes in the other so that means that before I edit, the rough dictated notes will be about 20 minutes or so.

Not that I was far out. I had just about 21 minutes of dictation that I can edit in the morning. On that note I went off to bed.

There was no rush to awaken in the morning, and it was rather a struggle to tear myself out of the bed.

Especially as it was absolutely freezing. So once I was finally up, I gave in and switched on the heating for the first time this winter. I had been hoping to hold out until November but that’s just not possible.

After I’d finished washing I came in here but I’d hardly sat down when Isabelle the nurse came in.

She asked how I was feeling after my ‘flu injection so I told her that I’d felt no side-effects at all. She went to have a look at my legs and was really pleased with the left one that looks as if it’s almost well again. The right leg still needs attention so she saw to that, chatting away as she did so.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. The members of the Woolhope Naturalists have finished their discussion on funghi, which included dozens of recipes that showed just how time-consuming and labour-intensive work was in the kitchen in Victorian Days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Society is famous for its attempts to incorporate mushrooms into the cuisine of the British kitchen and the country owes its members a great debt, because much of our use of mushrooms stems from this historic. meeting.

The meeting concludes with "Burke had said that the man who had made only a blade of grass grow on a spot where it had never grown before, was a benefactor to his country, and so was any man who added to its store of food. Dr. Bull did not indeed profess to grow Agarics, but he showed where they did grow, how they could be distinguished, and the advantage of using them as food at the season when they appeared in profusion. He had thus not only approved himself to the Woolhope Club, of which he was so indefatigable a member, but humanity might ultimately be indebted to him in calling their attention to a cheap additional supply to the daily resources of life."

And they were right too!

Back in here I finished off the dictaphone notes that I had barely started when the nurse arrived. It was Joe Walsh’s birthday shortly so the other members of the James Gang and I collected together and bought him a tankard. We collected some kind of verses that we needed to edit to make them more personal. I did that, and then I had to review them. When I was quite happy I remember throwing down my pen onto the desk. Someone picked up their head and asked “are you OK, Eric?”. Someone asked me if I had finished so I replied “yes”. They looked quite bewildered at me having finished. Someone else asked me if I was OK and I replied “well, the situation is not OK – it’s all to buggery” which caused a great deal of mirth and merriment around the table. Then we had to copy out these amended verses onto a piece of calligraphy card, cut it out and put it inside the bag. Seeing as no-one else could do it, I volunteered which was quite the wrong idea because my writing like that, this processional writing and doing things for birthday cards is bound to go all wrong. There’s bound to be a fault in it but as no-one else had volunteered to do it I said that I would

Firstly of course, what am I doing with Joe Walsh and the James Gang? And why would they appear now? However, the latter part is about par for the course. No-one else wants to do something so I do it and then everyone blames me when it all goes wrong. Been there, done that etc etc.

And then I was in Shavington. There was some issue about some payment there that someone should have made on Paypal. The interest hadn’t been added in. We made loads of enquiries about it. It turned out that for some unknown reason I hadn’t made the payment, at least, that’s what I thought. The local pub was the Paypal agent for here so I thought that I’d go to see it. I went on this old bike to the local pub, couldn’t find anywhere to leave the bike. It was a quick journey too, but in the ice I was convinced that I was going to fall at some point but I didn’t. I reached the pub but couldn’t find anywhere to leave the bike and the guy on security duty didn’t look too keen about me bringing it in. The bar was packed with people so I didn’t think that I’d be welcome there to start talking about Paypal. I heard someone going on about their illness, the things that they had to do. I dismissed it at the time. From there I had to travel onwards. I was in a train. I heard some people talking, and someone was saying that they’d heard this guy in a pub who had a terminal illness but he’d organised himself because he had so much to do and was dashing to do it all. Someone who was listening said “that happened to me” so I piped up and said “that had happened to me too”. We continued this lengthy discussion. I can’t really remember what happened after this. The rest of the dream seems to have been pretty much wiped out.

Going back to that dream later on I can remember now that when I returned home there was a woman there who gave me something that was a few thin layers of something or other. She asked me if I’d peel a layer off for her. It turned out that they were false fingernails so I began to peel back a layer but it broke. She was extremely upset about that. I couldn’t see why because these false fingernails were particularly cheap. They didn’t look expensive and certainly weren’t very durable so they can’t have cost very much.

At some point I was with a group of people. There ended up being four of us out of this group. We’d been taken down a ramp and walked out onto a river which was frozen solid with ice. I couldn’t think of where we were for a moment but someone told me that this was the Danube. It didn’t look like the Danube at all to me but when I walked out into the middle of the river on the ice I could see right down in the distance, the mountains, and I knew then that it was the Danube. It turned out that this was a talk about investing in Slovakia. I listened to this and became convinced that an investment here might actually pay off so I agreed to invest £1000. One or two other people were rather hesitant. They asked me why I wanted to invest. The idea is to spread your money about in different places because while one is down the other is up, and I think that Slovakia might be going up. That’s all that I remember about that dream too.

Slovakia is actually a country that is taking off in a big way thanks to its membership of the EU. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been there before ON ONE OF OUR VOYAGES and I’ve been there on several occasions in the past, whether with coaches or even on our honeymoon when Nerina and I passed through Bratislava in the good old days of the Iron Curtain as we followed the Danube home on our way back from Hungary.

Finally someone died and there was some child’s clothing that was being thrown away. A friend of mine who had a couple of small children was quite badly off and was looking for some clothes for them. I told these people who were clearing the house to bring the children’s clothing round to my house so that my friend could come round to look through it. I’d take the rest of the stuff to the tip. On Friday night I was trying to find something to do. I’d rung round one or two friends and no-one was available so I thought that I’d have this stuff sent round and have that organised this weekend. I telephoned the woman and she agreed to bring the stuff. I must have been distracted because when I came downstairs I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not move for children’s clothing, all over the ground floor of the house. The sheds and everything were completely and utterly filled. It was impossible for me to move about. I didn’t understand first of all how they had come here. I thought that they should have stopped bringing them a long time before this. This was absolute chaos. There was no way that I was going to move any of these, never mind my friend sort through them. I was looking at all this and thinking “what on earth am I going to do now?”.

This is probably one of the most confusing dreams that I have ever had. I’ve no idea what’s happening here. I think that had I been awake and this had happened, I’d have gone out for a meal and left it all there while I thought about it. But there’s no doubt – there’s some strange goings-on in my head during the night and I wish that the time when I was awake was as exciting as this.

Football was next – the highlights of last night’s games when we had another “let’s play it out from the back moment” and then the Scottish Cup when Stranraer took on Threave Rovers, four divisions lower in the pyramid.

It’s fair to say that Stranraer have not had a very good time over the last few seasons, but no-one expected them to be 2-0 down at half-time. However they pulled a goal back during the second half and as Threave tired towards the end, Stranraer scored two goals to save them some serious embarrassment

But here we go again. In the closing stages of the game, the superior fitness of the senior side pulls them through. I’ve seen this dozens of times but no-one else seems to have noticed it.

Then we had the notes that I dictated. That was how I spent the rest of the day.

They were complicated to edit and to sort out, and I had to move bits and pieces around, and eventually my estimates of 10:30 and 3:52 turned out to be 10:50 and 4:11 so my estimates aren’t far out.

For the first one I had to find an additional track and dictate (and edit) some notes but for the second I just had to merge the speech that I’d edited, fitting it to the front of the music that I’d prepared months ago, and edit out a few bits to make it fit, and there I was, by 16:30, all up and running with two of the most complicated programmes that I’ve done to date.

There had been a break for my salad butty at lunchtime, and now I went for hot chocolate and chocolate cake. I deserved it.

I spent an hour or so doing more of my Jersey stuff and then went to sort out the pizza – I’d taken the dough from the freezer at lunchtime.

While it was rising, I went into the bathroom. There had been some ginger beer and some Kefir fermenting in there for a couple of years. I opened it and tasted it, and it was all excellent.

What I did was to bring the kefir into the kitchen and filter it through a coffee filter. That’s in the fridge settling and I might drink it tomorrow. In the afternoon I’m at the hospital so if I have any unpleasant side-effects from the Kefir the hospital can deal with it.

But I’m really keen to start up my drinks production line again. I had a good thing going a few years ago, especially the ginger beer.

Tonight’s pizza was excellent. Another roaring success. I really ought to make more of them and have them more often.

So now that I’ve finished my notes, I have a few things to do and then I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the time that a mushroom walked into a bar and ordered drinks all round.
"Why are you doing that?" asked the barman
"No particular reason" said the mushroom. "I’m just a funghi to be with"

0

Saturday 26th October 2024 – YOU AREN’T GOING …

… to believe this – or maybe you are, I don’t know – but do you remember that new prescription that I had just the other day?

And so here we are just 10 days later, and it’s already been changed. Furthermore, the medication that he added in? That’s been changed too. After just 10 days. I don’t know what the chemist is going to say when my poor cleaner goes there on Monday

The issue is that some of these pills and potions aren’t a regular order but have to be ordered specially. And you can’t order just one packet, you have to order – and pay for – a box full. Reimbursement isn’t made until the medication is prescribed and collected by the patient.

So if the chemist has ordered a boxful of rare stuff and only handed out one packet, she’s stuck with the rest until the expiry date at which point she has to throw it away, and she’ll be well out-of-pocket

In my opinion, she will have every reason to be upset by all of this and I’m glad that it’s not me who has to go to face her

But anyway, that’s something to worry about for another time.

Last night I struggled into bed just about at the correct time, just before 23:00. And glad I was too to be finally in bed

There wasn’t even time to start my little night-time mantra before I was asleep, but it didn’t last. Not that I was cold, because I’d gone to sleep in my tee-shirt, but it was a disturbed night nevertheless. I was awakening and going back to sleep on regular occasions too numerous to count.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had a great deal of difficulty rising up out of my stinking pit and it was a very undignified stagger into the living room to collect some clean clothes.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave, and then all of the dirty clothes that were hanging about went into the washing machine and I set it off on a cycle (a very clever washing machine, mine).

Back in the living room I put away all of the shopping bags from LeClerc ready to hand back next time they deliver, and then put all of the drained carrots into the freezer ready for the next few weeks.

Back in here I made a start on the dictaphone notes, but I didn’t get very far before Isabelle came. With everything that I’d done, I was running late.

She gave me my ‘flu injection, and told me that the side-effects might be a painful shoulder and ‘lu-like symptoms for a very short while, so I need to have the Doliprane standing by, so I told her to clear off. This whole country floats on Doliprane – the slightest problem that arises and “I’ll pass you the Doliprane”. If you’re hurting, there’s a reason and masking the pain can just make the problem worse.

After she left I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve finished fossils and we’re now discussing the notes that the speaker who had proposed the mushroom book had prepared and brought to the meeting to present to the assembled multitudes.

And we’ve yet to find out anything about Mr Houghton’s “photographs of a very curious and interesting character”. I’ll be sure to tell you when I find out.

Back in here I finished off transcribing the dictaphone notes. I started off going to flower shows, inspecting flowers etc. I even in my dream sent myself a message although I’ve no idea what it was about but it concerns flowers etc and that’s mainly because everything that I’ve been discussing I’ve been reading about discussions of mixed lists

It’s quite impressive that I can even in a dream remember what’s been going on at the breakfast table. But what interest do I have in flowers? My friend Lorna once said that the only time I’d ever take a photograph of a flower would be if there were a car parked on top of it.

A couple of years ago I’d had a huge, blazing row with a member of public about something or other which had turned rather ugly. Anyway I thought no more about it but suddenly a group of policemen turned up and said that they were going to take me off down to the police station. I thought that it might have been for questioning, something like that, so I went along. I met my boss who was there. I asked him what was going on and he told me that this was going to be the hearing about remand and liability. I couldn’t understand this. I expected the proceedings to be similar to how they were in the UK. He replied “oh now. You won’t have bail. You’ll be remanded and the case will be dealt with tomorrow”. “That’s rather quick”. He asked “what are you going to do afterwards? Are you going back to your old job in the UK?”. I replied “I’m hoping that I’ll stay here”. He answered “well you can’t stay here if you’re going to do this. You’ll lose your job. For a start” he said, showing me a spark plug “this won’t be able to fit under your vehicle”. I couldn’t understand any of this. There was the guy with whom I had this altercation. The police turned to him and asked “do you still wish to go ahead with this?”. He replied “Yes” so two policemen took me inside. One of them asked “you don’t mind sharing a cell on your own, do you?”. I asked if there was going to be any bail. He replied “oh, no. The case will be heard in the morning. You’re remanded overnight. They took me down into the bowels of the police station like in one of these old films. There’s a room there with about fifty people in it on a load of benches and they just sat me on a bench at the back. There were several other people around and we were watching a procession that set off – all people in brightly-coloured clothes and flags of the various nations. A whole group of people from Sweden set off followed by some people from Croatia. I was all completely bewildered by this. I hadn’t the least idea about what was going on

I stepped back into that dream later on and was driving back to the house where I’d been just now. There was a pile of mud on the floor with some traffic lights on red. I didn’t see the line where to stop so I stopped where I thought it was and found that I was in the middle of the junction. I raised my hand in apology to everyone and drove off. As I raised my hand a Rover 820 saloon, a silver one with a pattern part wing on it pulled out of a garage. I thought to myself “that’s the guy with whom I’d had this row and that’s his car. I hope that he doesn’t think that I’m waving to him”. I carried on driving and eventually turned up at the house where I was supposed to be. I was looking for a parking place because parking on the street was not allowed. They were parking two-abreast on the pavement. I could see that outside the house where I was supposed to go there was some parking and there was also some room in the drive at the back.

All of the above is quite surreal, especially the flags. It reminds me of Carnaval here in Granville. I’m not sure why the Police would want to come knocking at my door these days though. I’ve been doing my best to keep my head down, but even so, there are some people who just won’t leave you alone

I was dictating into my hand again here, which is something that I do on the odd occasion. There’s a village just off the headland here called “Pentref-Uchaf”, the “Highest Village”. It was a tiny village. It was the village Open Day at the garage. One woman there learned how to fit gas bottles which she said was going to be interesting. I learned how to make mint drinks which was also going to be interesting. On the headland by the village was a big house where we were kept as prisoners. You could see by the trees which way the winds were blowing because the trees were growing in all funny shapes, all pointing towards the east. When I arrived at this house on remand I was asked which bed I wanted. I said that I didn’t mind. Everything they offered me, I said that I’d take whatever they give me, I’m not bothered. I was helping another inmate in the kitchen. He asked me which set of cutlery I wanted, the big one or the small one. I said that I wasn’t bothered. He replied that I was the ideal companion to be incarcerated with. We were trying to make a meal for people but we couldn’t find anything. The guy giving us the instructions took far too long and we’d prepared half of it by the time we’d finished. It was all really strange, the third part of this dream.

This prison bit – I hope that it’s not a forewarning of something. It seems to be rather persistent tonight. But last night I was dreaming in French and tonight it’s Welsh. When I start dreaming in Innu then you know that the World is at an end.

The washing was now ready so I sorted it out and hung it up to dry. And then back in here I attacked the correspondence. Everyone should now have had a reply, but if I’ve missed you, let me know.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi came early too. We had to pick someone else up so we went round there but she wasn’t ready to come back yet to Avranches so we had a good drive down there on our own.

Being so early I was first in and first dealt with, but even though sticking the ports in me was painless the nurse missed her target so she had to take them out and start again. They are doing their best to torture me in there.

Once it was finally up and running they pretty much left me alone. However the doctor was another story. He came round and asked how I was and then told me about the medication. Later on he sent me the prescription.

As to why they are actually changing the medication I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem to me to be logical to change it so quickly before anything has had time to act.

Once they left me alone, I read my Welsh, listened to music and read my “Curious Church Customs”.

The taxi was waiting for me and we had quite a quick return, where I could only manage nine steps before I had to use my hands to lift up my legs – a backward step … "very good" – ed …

There was football tonight – Hwlffordd v Caernarfon, and what a dreary match that was. Hwlfford played the nicer football but Caernarfon’s approach was rather agricultural. The whole spark seems to have gone out of Caernarfon’s midfield this last few weeks

The final score was 0-0 and both teams were lucky to get nil. This was a match that I’ll forget quite quickly.

Tea was baked potato, vegan salad and a burger on a bun followed by apple cake and caramel soya cream. Nice it was too.

But now I have some dictating to do and then I’m going to bed. It’s an extra hour in bed in the morning and I want to make the most of it.

But the doctor at the Clinic didn’t only see me. He saw others too and after he left, I noticed that one patient whom he’d seen was crying.
"What’s the matter with you?" I asked him
"It’s the doctor" he said. "He’s told me that I have to take one pill every day for the rest of my life"
"There’s no need to be upset" I said "Lots of people have to do that. I’ve been doing it for nine years!"
"It’s all right for you" he said "but the doctor’s only given me six"

0

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

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Thursday 24th October 2024 – THEY BROUGHT ME …

… home in an ambulance this evening.

Don’t ask me why, because I didn’t ask for it and I certainly didn’t want it. But nevertheless, there I was, strapped into a stretcher in the back.

My faithful cleaner thinks that it’s because none of the female drivers wants to bring me home on her own but I dunno. I’ve clearly upset someone somewhere if the only way that they are going to transport me is strapped down in the back of an ambulance

Actually, last night I might have been strapped down in bed because I certainly didn’t move at all, at least, not that I remember.

To cap it all, I was even in bed before 23:00. Not by very much, it has to be said, but enough to make it worth recording all the same. For some reason or other it didn’t take as long as it usually does to finish everything off. And there I was, tucked up nicely in bed.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking either. I was out like a light quite quickly and there I stayed until 07:00 when the alarm went off, and when was the last time that that happened?

When the alarm went off I had some kind of nurse living with me who was trying to organise me about going out because Tuesday afternoon I had to go to the bank and Wednesday afternoon I had to go somewhere. That involved a lot of organisation with the buses, all of that kind of thing. She was busy trying to make all of the necessary arrangements for me to go to do these tasks on the bus without having to use an ambulance or a taxi.

The only person who might do that would be Percy Penguin. She’s quite used to dealing with the elderly, the infirm and those people who might not have both paddles in the water but I think that even she would draw the line at sorting me out.

So at the sound of the alarm I hauled myself out of bed and made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up and to prepare myself in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there at the Dialysis Centre this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were going on a coach trip somewhere. There was a big group of us on board this coach. I was on my own so I sat in a seat and everyone left me alone which was very nice. The coach stopped for a toilet break halfway along the route so I set up a coffee machine. With the cups that I had I started a little coffee production line. A girl came to help me and the two of us managed to keep it going with coffee. The driver said that he and the other two members of his staff had their own cups but I had to use the cups that I could find, which were not very good. Nevertheless, people drank it. There was one moment when I had to go to make some more coffee and I had to go to the end of the line where the machine was. I didn’t have the coffee so I shouted to the girl to bring the coffee back down quick but then found that I actually had the coffee in my hand. There was that particular moment but that’s all that I remember about this dream

Wouldn’t it be nice to find out how to keep 53 people happy with one coffee machine. I suppose that it’s the 21st Century equivalent of “five loaves, two fishes and a pot of tea for five thousand, please”.

There was an earlier dream about someone in the theatrical business who had a small, domineering personality. He had a lot of affairs with different women. He was at one time with a Japanese or Korean girl who was a member of a dancing troupe but he abandoned her for another woman. The newspapers said something like “he’ll certainly notice the difference with this large, overbearing Spanish woman compared to the girl he had previously who had barely entered puberty” that sort of thing but I can’t remember very much about that dream either except nothing really.

That was rather a strange thing to dream, and I can’t think of where it might have any relevance in anything particular.

In that last dream I did absolutely everything towards this play, writing and directing etc. The only thing was when it came to the orchestra, conducting the orchestra I had to step aside and let someone else do that because of some kind of agreement with the particular Trade Union that covers the engagement of musicians in their practical sphere.

And the same with this. A few more things to add to my nocturnal talents. If only I had someone who could organise and motivate me to do these things for real.

Hurricane Isabelle blew in a little later. She didn’t have time to give me my ‘flu jab. It’s booked in for Saturday when she has no blood tests to do. It’s no surprise really that she’s snowed under with requests for blood tests right now. She has “the touch” whereas her oppo doesn’t and people are beginning to realise it.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. Our Naturalists are busy roaming about the estate of the President examining his trees, of which there are many historic ones.

But it’s a shame what subsequently happened to his estate. His family fell on hard times and it was sold, eventually becoming a hospital. It was used for severe cases during World War II and then abandoned, the house being blown up by the Royal Engineers in a training exercise in 1959

Back in here I spent the morning tracking down the dates of more concerts and, as usual, SETLIST.FM came up trumps yet again and helped me identify a dozen or so

My cleaner turned up at lunchtime and helped me fix the patches on my arm, and then the taxi came early for me. It’s a good job that I was ready.

We drove all the way to Avranches and at the roundabout the driver turned right towards the town rather than to the left to the hospital.

He quickly realised his error and performed a U-turn and a voice in the back said "did you forget something?". We’d gone all that way with a passenger in the back and I had never noticed at all.

With being early this afternoon I was first in at the clinic, thus first to be dealt with, which made a nice change.

A doctor came to see me, but only for two minutes and she didn’t seem to be too interested. And apart from the coffee, that was that. I read my Welsh notes, listened to music and finished off by carrying on with my “Curious Church Customs”.

They unplugged me quite early and I was free to go. That was when we had the pantomime about me trying unsuccessfully to climb into the ambulance.

After several attempts they gave up and brought out the stretcher.

We drove back in perfect silence to here where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and she watched as I made it up all thirteen of the first flight of stairs. That was really impressive, considering how much difficulty I had had with the ambulance.

Tea tonight was different. There had been a can of beansprouts festering on the shelves since it was triumphantly carried off the Ark by Noah, and so I made myself a spicy stir-fry. In fact, everything will be spicy now that I have a jar of chilis.

It was hot, and delicious, especially followed by apple cake and caramel-flavoured soya cream.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, as it looks as if I’m going to have a visit tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of Noah … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of the teacher in Primary School discussing certain Biblical events with the children.
She asked them "do you know who Noah’s wife was?" and one boy at the back of class raised his hand
"Please, Miss" said the boy "I do!"
"So who was it, little Johnny?" she asked
And the boy replied "please Miss, wasn’t it Joan of Arc?"

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Wednesday 23rd October 2024 – PHEW! I’M EXHAUSTED!

That’s hardly any surprise because not only did I have an early start, I have been working all day practically non-stop and have done not only tomorrow’s, but almost all of Friday’s work too. I don’t know where all of this energy has come from.

And last night I was actually in bed before 23:00 which is a very pleasant change. That’s not something that happens every night, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

It seems to me that I managed to finish my notes earlier than usual despite all of the distractions that there are, and then I crawled off to the bathroom to sort myself out ready for the night

Once in bed, going to sleep seemed to take much longer than usual though, and that’s something that I’ve noticed over the last few weeks too. I don’t seem to fall asleep as quickly as formerly.

But once asleep, I stayed asleep for almost all of the night, and awoke at about 06:15. I couldn’t remember anything at all of the night so it must have been a really sound sleep for a change, and that probably did me the world of good.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep so after a while of tossing and turning I left the bed and headed to the bathroom where I had a quick wash. Not a full wash as I’m showering later. And when the alarm went off I was busy drying myself.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. To my surprise there was plenty of stuff on there so the night can’t have been as sound as I thought. There had been a girl who had been taken prisoner by a couple of men. She had her mother and a couple of friends etc with her when she was taken prisoner. They were all locked in this house. After a while it became clear that the guy was not interested in her as such but interested in the money that she could bring him. She eventually ended up by barricading herself in the bathroom. Eventually, after a couple of days and all kinds of entreatments and threats etc she reluctantly agreed and eventually opened the door at which point the guys took the information that she had and left, saying that they’d be back. In the meantime all of the girls had been in communication while all of this had been happening. Once all the men had left, the girl having sent them on a wild goose chase she took the money that she had hidden in the house and went to see her friends. Her friends had managed to make some really old car in the garage start. While these men were away looking for something that they’d never find the girls piled into this old car and drove away to make good their escape

There’s nothing in this dream that reminds me of anything. I can’t imagine what’s going on here with this.

That conviction just then … "what conviction?" – ed … rendered me liable to three points taking me up to nine and I was within touching distance of losing my driving licence. When I was out again in my J4 van with things not quite right about it I was beginning to become really worried because I was so easily going to end up on my feet and walking if I wasn’t very very careful and I only had myself to blame. I was driving my J4 van up some street between Oak Street and Chester Bridge that doesn’t exist and I know that coming out of that corner would be extremely complicated especially as I was driving on the left in a right-hand drive vehicle and anything would be likely to happen as I tried to pull out into the traffic just then

So I imagine that this road comes in over my left shoulder, and anyone who has ever driven a right-hand drive van knows just how difficult it is with roads like that. As for the van, I had an old J4 van for a couple of years. Rough as anything and as rotten as a pear, in today’s climate I would lose my licence for ever if it were ever inspected but back in 1974-75 there was nothing wrong with a van like this from a police point of view. As Sir Daniel Gooch once famously said, "whatever would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

However it seems that there’s a lump missing from the start of this. I wonder what was happening that I haven’t recorded. But certainly back in those days we were far too cavalier for our own good and we ran a great risk of falling foul of the law in many ways. I had a very hard time adjusting to the new way of thinking that took root in the 80s and 90s

Finally, I’ve just been in a car sales room, a huge place and there must have been about three hundred cars in there. There were probably fifty motor bikes too. One of them was a Velocette Venom 500cc combo. Ohhh! That took me back to 1973 and John Stigter etc. I just sat on this Velocette and wheeled it up and down in this little area in this car sales place. I was as happy as Larry on this. I just wished that I had the strength in my legs to be able to give it a kick-start and take it for a ride

That brought back many happy memories. It was John’s brother Ray who had the Velocette Venom but John had a combination of some description and we’d throw our gear into the box and go off camping for the weekend at the drop of a hat back in the early 1970s when I was living in Chester. Unfortunately that was a way of life that was destined to be eliminated as society became more and more paranoid. I remember going with a schoolfriend to the Lleyn Peninsula and spending the weekend dossing in the open air, walking through the deserted streets of Portmerion (where THE PRISONER was filmed) at 03:00. "Whatever would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

It’s a shame but I really miss those carefree halcyon days. Many of my dreams seem to reflect that period of happy adolescence (and the unhappy parts of it too) and when I talk about “young ladies” in my dreams, I actually see myself as still either in or just having left that period. Take the J4 van for example – I was 20 then and still naught but a pup.

Isabelle the nurse came to see me to sort out my legs. I told her that I was going to have a shower later on, even if Emilie the Cute Consultant no longer loves me and she asked "is your engagement definitely broken off then?"

Another thing that I mentioned is that her colleague told me that I had to try to put on my own elasticated socks so I was going to try this afternoon. She thinks that I won’t be able to manage it and even if I were to manage it, I shouldn’t be doing it.

There’s also the question of the ‘flu jab. I’ve had the voucher from the Social Services and my cleaner has taken it to the chemist. Isabelle told me to let her know when I have it and she’ll inject me.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book.

The naturalists are having their annual meal and making all kinds of self-congratulatory speeches to each other. But this is the important bit because they have begun to discuss mushrooms.

The speaker tells us "It was really a great pity that so much good food should be lost. The waste was due to the very great prejudice existing against Funguses" and the President proposes that there should be "a paper on the Edible Funguses of Herefordshire."

The preparation of this document led to a publication that became famous – a legend in fact in the UK, a bible to mushroom hunters everywhere that transformed British cuisine and British diet.

But it’s interesting to see how times have changed from the 1860s. Ladies were not allowed to attend the outings, except on a special Ladies’ Day once per year, however, in connection with this document, the President goes on to say "it would be impossible for them to do this, however, without the assistance of ladies to colour them—that is to say, the club could not afford to pay for their being coloured. The ladies had done much for last year’s volume, and were most kindly again prepared to help with this one, so that the committee did not despair of accomplishing it."

We’ve also had a lecture on tree-pruning and members of the club have produced their weather statistics of the kind that I kept down on the farm in the Auvergne.

Back in here, I started work. And I cracked on today. Not only have I finished to notes for this radio programme, I’ve also chosen the music for the next one and written most of the notes. And that was a Herculean effort too, fighting my way through all of that.

There was the usual interruption for lunch, and then my cleaner turned up with the medication and the injection

Now that she was here doing her stuff, I could proceed with my shower, under her supervision.

The shower was glorious and I enjoyed every minute of it. I’d prepared everything beforehand, clean clothes, refilling the soap pump, all of that kind of thing so it was a simple manner of climbing into the bath,

That was much easier too. I’m really getting the hang of this, although I find it still rather strange to have a crutch in my hand as I stand in the bathtub But it’s better than falling over, I suppose.

What’s most important is that I’m all clean and proper. Once per week is not really good enough but it will have to do until I’m downstairs and can have a walk-in shower fitted

Back in here and fully-dressed, I tried to put on my elasticated socks. And it worked really well too. I can manage that without too much difficulty. So does this mean that I’m slowly working my way round back to my Sunday lie-ins?

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry livened up with a chili now that I have some. And it was delicious too, especially the naan bread. And the dessert was really good too.

But now I’m off to bed, early again for a change, and still having a smile about some of the comments of the Woolhope naturalists in 1867.
Before they could eat their meal they said “Grace” which was something that we used to do at home as children.
One day I was invited to a friend’s for tea after school and they just tucked straight into their meal without saying anything.
Back at home later I told my mother about what had happened.
"Didn’t they say a prayer before eating their meal like we do at home?" she asked
"Oh no" I replied. "His mother knows how to cook."

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Tuesday 22nd October 2024 – MY FAITHFUL CLEANER …

… is a heroine and I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

The last batch of hummus that I made exhausted my supplies of tahini and I asked her if she fancied making a call at the Bio shop while she was out and about. Not that there’s any urgency because this batch will last me a month or two at least.

However midway through my Welsh lesson I had a message "is this what you want?" with a photograph attached.

As I have said before just recently … "and on many occasions too" – ed … things are looking up at LeClerc and their vegan range is slowly improving. And my cleaner had found the tahini.

It’s absolutely certain that it was never previously in stock – I’ve trawled the place time after time whenever I could – but there it is, on the shelves and properly labelled.

They had two jars of the stuff on offer today and it goes without saying that now they have none at all. It remains to be seen if they pick up and reload the space on the shelf, or whether that was all they intend to supply. My cleaner will keep her eyes peeled.

But if they are going to have more, then the World’s my lobster. Add that to the vegan cheese and the vegan sausages, and what else do I really need?

Not only that, she found a jar of hot chilis and so it really is “all systems go” for the next batch of hummus and I’m well-impressed.

Having said that, there wasn’t much “go” last night and once again I had a rather late night going to bed. And although I was asleep quite quickly, I was drifting in and out of sleep for quite a while.

Once I was finally asleep, I stayed asleep until all of … errr … 06:15 when I awoke, drenched in perspiration yet again and I’m fed up of this.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was drying myself off after having had a good wash. I was already up and about and had been for some time. There’s no point in lounging around in bed on a weekday when I can’t sleep.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on a railway station, hoping to take a short cut across the freight lines to go back home. I had some kind of flapjack that I wanted to eat on the way. As I was trying to cross, a train came in, an ancient steam train coupled up to some ancient BR MkI carriages, completely out-of-place. So I waited, and a voice said in my ear “it’s not like a modern 53-seater, is it?”. I looked round, and it’s a guy whom I knew from the coaches. I’d worked with him at Shearings. We made some kind of joke and I began to move away but he began to follow me. The last thing that I wanted was for someone to follow me so I made some excuse that I had to go to some kind of museum. He exclaimed “ohh that’s strange! I’m going there! I’ll come with you” and followed behind me. I told him some strange story about how I had a job working for a French coach company. He said that he knew the company and that he’d applied there too. I thought “oh God! This is going to go on for ever, isn’t it?” and I still couldn’t shake him off. We reached the museum and I thought “the museum’s closed so we can’t go in”. He replied “ohh we can still go in”. There he was, clinging on to me as we walked in. I asked him if he wanted a coffee. He replied “no” so I went off to buy a coffee thinking “if I’m not careful he’s going to be stuck with me for the rest of the day and I’ll never make it home”

This dream started off with an aerial shot of a huge locomotive repair yard and the commentator told people that it was Crewe. However it was nothing like the Crewe repair sheds that I knew. I imagine this this dream was in Crewe anyway because there are freight avoiding lines between the station and our old family home

As well as that I can also remember the name of the company. It was called “Silver Degouey” and they had a fleet of silver Kässbohrer-Setra coaches of the type that were common in the late 1970s and early 1980s

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we seem to dream a lot about trains and railway stations, although not so much in the very recent past. Does this mean that we are going back on the rails again? But as for the passenger, much as I like company every now and again, it always seems to be right at the wrong time that I end up with someone clinging to me like a limpet and won’t let go.

There was plenty of stuff that I could be doing to keep myself amused while I waited for the nurse. Part of that was sorting out the prescription for my faithful cleaner who sallied forth into town afterwards on her quest for medication and shopping.

It was Isabelle the nurse who came today. Apparently she’s on duty for nine days from today and it will be nice to have a smiling face. She chatted away but didn’t say much of any importance.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. Today the naturalists are visiting the Bury Ditches near Clun.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall one of our previous authors write so insistently about the history of these earthworks saying that they were Anglo-Saxon in origin and contained the remains of wooden buildings relating to their palaces. He evidently took the idea from the report of the Naturalists because the guy leading the party and giving the talk – some 20 or so years earlier – was also very strongly of the opinion that the Bury Ditches were Anglo-Saxon in origin.

That was however not the opinion of everyone. The secretary who took the notes of the outing comments that "the time was very short, and no discussion was attempted; if it had been there is no doubt but that very different views would have been elicited" which is the politest way that I have ever seen of telling someone that they are talking a load of nonsense.

He concludes the report of the meeting by saying "There was only time, however, after the repast to give the thanks of the meeting to the able lecturers of the day, which was done with a pleasant allusion to the ample scope for the differences of Archaeologists and their necessarily-interminable nature". There’s really nothing at all like grinding it in, is there?

Back in here I revised for my Welsh lesson and then went to class. And once more, everything seemed to pass really well and I’ve no idea why. I quite enjoyed the lesson and it’s nice when that happens. I ought to do it more often.

There was an interruption, as I mentioned, when my faithful cleaner sent me a few messages about the tahini but apart from that there was no issue at all.

After lunch and taking possession of the prizes from LeClerc (the chemists’ stuff will arrive in a day or two) I finished off choosing the music that I need and I’m halfway through writing the notes. I have eight tracks, which run to … gulp … one hour and sixteen minutes and then there’s the text that will need to be dictated.

So what do I leave out to bring the programme down to sixty minutes in total?

The answer is that I have no idea. And so I’ll write everything and dictate everything and then see what I have. That will give me a much better idea of what I need, what I want and what I can leave out.

In the middle of all of this I had my hot chocolate and then processed the hummus in the fridge by adding in the chilis. And now there are two more tubs joining the two others from Sunday in the freezer With the one left over and remaining in the fridge, that will keep me going for a month or two.

Tea tonight was, as usual, a delicious taco roll followed by apple cake and coconut soya cream, and then there was a mountain – and I do mean “mountain” of washing up to deal with

So having written my notes I’m off to bed. It’s a shower day tomorrow of course, in which I thoroughly soak myself and try to make myself pretty … "a hopeless task" – ed … not forgetting that I have to attempt to put on my elasticated socks. That should be fun.

But before I go, let me tell you about the chemist’s where my cleaner goes.
It’s actually run by two women. And when my cleaner was there just now, a man came in.
"Can I see the chemist, please?" asked the man
"Young man" said the chemist, pulling herself up to her full 5’5″” "I am the chemist!"
"Well is there a man to whom I can talk" asked the man
"Young man!" said the chemist again. "I have been running this pharmacy for 35 years. I promise you that there is nothing that I haven’t heard so there’s no need to be embarrassed"
"Well" he said, blushing "every time I see a woman I have an uncontrollable urge to make love to her and the feeling doesn’t die down for several days. Is there anything you can give me?"
"Wait there" she said, going into the back.
And five minutes later she was out again
"I’ve talked to my sister" she said. "We’ve worked out that we can give you €250 per week and a half-share in the business."

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Monday 21st October 2024 – I’M STILL ACHING …

… just about everywhere that it’s possible to ache, and probably a few places where it isn’t possible either.

Mind you, I have to admit that I’m not aching quite as much as I was when I awoke this morning. I thought that a good night’s sleep might have helped everything ease off seeing as I was lying comfortably in bed, but it wasn’t to be.

A longer sleep might have been nice but once again, I missed by some considerable distance my target of being in bed by 23:00. It’s still taking longer than I would like to finish off what needs to be done, and there’s the added problem with the aches and pains that make me reluctant to move from my comfortable chair.

But once in bed I was soon asleep and I can’t recall any awakening until about 06:15. And even then, I turned over and went straight back to sleep again. When the alarm went off I was in a pub in London watching a pub band play. There were Keith Ginnell and his wife on keyboards. His wife had been a famous model in the past, Vicky somebody I think. On drums was Keef Hartley and the singer was Magic Michael. He was too tall for the stage and had to bend his head to fit under the ceiling while he was singing. he was singing that song “Giddy up, Bobby” and I was thinking how easy that was to play when I thought about it. Then I went to the bathroom where I overheard some kind of dispute going on between Keef Hartley and Keith Ginnell. I thought that it was a shame that they were arguing like that because they were a really good group.

What I didn’t dictate was that I was staying at that pub but had to clear out my room ready to leave. And in the WC I’d bolted the door behind me but nevertheless someone still came in and walked past me, and I wondered how they had managed to do that.

Now you are of course going to ask me who Keith Ginnell is and what the song “Giddy Up Bobby” is all about. And the answer to both questions is that I don’t have any idea at all. I know who Magic Michael is of course, and who doesn’t? He was one of the hangers-on with Hawkwind back in the early 70s and later on had a few singles out of his own, most of which sunk without trace. Keef Hartley was of course one of John Mayall’s drummers and later on had a group of his own, but Keith Ginnell and “Giddy Up Bobby” escape me completely.

What’s so surprising is that I could actually remember them.

While we’re on the subject of remembering … "well, one of us is" – ed … I didn’t forget someone’s birthday yesterday. Not at all. It goes without saying that I won’t ever forget it

So I staggered to my feet in a cloud of agony and slowly inched my way into the bathroom where I had a good scrub up and even a shave to make myself look pretty, even though it will take more than a scrub-up and a shave to make me look pretty.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And there was some stuff on there too. There had been a big riot somewhere. The soldiers were all hemmed in at some kind of barracks and had been completely overwhelmed. They decided that what they would so as a desperate kind of last stand for all those who were fit enough was to make some kind of fighting arrowhead and charge out of the building on their horses hoping to break through the enemy lines. So they charged out in this arrowhead and almost broke through but were held somewhere down at the bottom of Oak Street and Mill Street in Crewe. The fight raged round there for an hour or two when suddenly the enemy surrendered and gave up the fight. I’d been watching the events unfold and after the events went peacefully some kind of big American convertible, a huge car with a woman driver pulled up and said “taxi for Hall”. I climbed in and it took me off down Wistaston Road/Victoria Avenue. I was chatting to the woman – she’d been in London earlier in the day in the fog, just socialising. I told her that I’d been to Scotland and it really was foggy there. She was telling me how she did taxiing part-time, how she enjoyed it. She was working for Orange Cabs but she didn’t have a card with her number on for me so we carried on chatting like that and eventually she brought me home

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were AT THE SITE OF THE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN with LITTLE BIG ANTLERS a few years ago and the question that was going through my mind then was “why did Custer and his men dismount?”

On foot they would have no chance of escaping the native Americans, as events were to prove. Knowing that there was a detachment of soldiers with the baggage train in the vicinity, if they had formed a “fighting head” – a triangular-shaped formation, they stood a very good chance of piercing a surrounding line of enemy and the weight of their charge would have pushed at least some of them through the encirclement and on to safety at the far end of the ridge

But as for riots going on in Crewe, it’s extremely unlikely. The people there have long-since lost any free will and initiative.

The nurse came early and caught me off-guard this morning. He refrained from upsetting me, which was good, and now he’s gone off duty for a week which suits me fine. It gives me a chance to gather up my sang-froid ready for the next bout.

Still, the earlier he comes, the earlier he goes and I could crack on with breakfast.

Today, the Woolhope Naturalists are having a lecture on Space and Interplanetary rotation, sitting at a picnic around a waterfall. Some of their propositions have long-since been contradicted by later discoveries but it’s interesting all the same to hear the state of knowledge in 1867.

What’s also interesting is that the 48 members present had to go into the back of beyond to visit this waterfall, and not only did the railway company agree to stop the train at an isolated spot, it built a railway platform and had three gangers ready to help the party alight.

Just imagine that today! It would take them ten years to build the platform, even if they were so disposed to do so, and there would have to be all kinds of Health and Safety surveys and inspections first.

And this “Health and Safety Culture” – do you know what’s brought it on? It happened the day that Solicitors were allowed to advertise.

Back in the old days if you stumbled on a pavement and hurt your toe, you shrugged your shoulders and moved on. But once we began to see the "had an accident? It might not be your fault. Contact us for a free interview" advertisements, everything changed overnight.

The Naturalists were also visiting the famous church of Capel-y-ffin, a site that became notorious later on with the arrival of “Father Ignatius” and then the infamous Eric Gill, whose famous sculptures and type design did little to counter the later unsavoury allegations about his private life that were to occur once his biography was published after his death.

Having finished all that I came in here and finished off as far as I could (because some of it requires access to a television) and then carried on selecting music for the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up to help me fit my anaesthetic patches and while she was here I gave her my orders for the supermarket tomorrow. And the taxi for the Dialysis Clinic was driven by a young guy and we had a very lively chat all the way down to Avranches.

At the clinic they didn’t hang about to plug me in. The first one hurt like hell but the second needle, I didn’t feel it at all.

The nurses asked if I had any pain anywhere so I mentioned the issues that I’m having. They gave me a Covid test and that was that. No doctor came anywhere near me to make further enquiries so I don’t see the point in asking.

As well as the doctor in charge, Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too and although she went to see a few other patients, she kept well away from me. Julie the Cook did likewise, so she must be a regular reader of this rubbish too.

I read my Welsh and spent some time reading, and I also had a little doze. While I was away with the fairies, being careful to avoid drawing the attention of the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine to my activities, I was on a train in Tunisia. A Tunisian woman in local dress came to sit next to me. I suddenly realised that I hadn’t validated my ticket so I stood up and went to look for a machine. There was none in my carriage and the next one was compartmentalised with the curtains drawn and what looked like discreet security guards. I turned to a guy in the vestibule of my carriage to ask him. He told me that you don’t validate it – the ticket inspector does as he or she passes – so I went to resume my seat. However it looked nothing like it did when I left and the Tunisian lady wasn’t there

There was a similar issue about TICKETS ON TRAINS when I was in Tunisia a few years ago, and I can well-believe the presence of Security Guards and curtained compartments on certain trains.

They unplugged me and threw me out into the torrential rain where my taxi was waiting, and we had to wait for the guy who lives in Sartilly. And he had already reserved the front seat

My driver was friendly enough but didn’t say too much and as we stopped outside the building, the rain stopped, the sun shone and we had a rainbow.

My cleaner watched me upstairs, and it was a retrograde number of steps today, no surprise with me feeling not too well. And I was glad to sit down and relax for an hour.

Tea was a lovely stuffed pepper with pasta followed by apple cake and soya cream and now I’m ready for bed.

But the subject of having pains everywhere reminds me of the guy who went to the doctor.
"Every time and everywhere I touch myself" he said "I’m in absolute agony."
And he proceeded to prod himself in his leg, his arm, his torso, his neck, his posterior, everywhere. And each time he winced in pain.
The doctor looked at him for a moment and then took him by surprise, prodding him in his ribs
"Did that hurt?" asked the doctor
"Well, actually doctor" said the man "no it didn’t. What does it mean? Am I dying? Do I have a serious problem?"
"Not at all" said the doctor. "All it means is that you have broken your finger."

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Sunday 20th October 2024 – RIGHT NOW I AM IN …

… absolute agony.

Since 17:00 this late afternoon I’ve been on my feet and my knees are giving me complete misery. I wish that I’d never been born, feeling like this.

Not only that, I woke up this morning … "♫dih dah did dah DAAH♫" – ed … with aches in just about every region of my body, and they are still there now. I’m in a bad way and if I’d been a horse I would have been shot long ago.

And there I was, thinking that it was going to be a good day today.

After all, although I missed my 23:00 deadline, it wasn’t by much and in any case, today I have a lie-in until 08:00 seeing as it’s Sunday.

It didn’t take long to dictate the radio notes that I’d written. There wasn’t much of them this weekend and that makes a change. But I was soon in bed and after all of my exertions during the day I didn’t need much rocking

There I lay, in perfect repose, with nothing whatever that disturbed me until all of … errr … 07:15. And when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already in the bathroom scrubbing up. I’d given up the idea of going back to sleep a long time before that.

The nurse came round of course. "Ohh what a lovely loaf!" he said. "Have you been baking?"

It’s that kind of comment that is really getting on my nerves, especially as the loaf is a long way from “lovely”. One of these days he’s going to receive THE AUSTIN POWERS TREATMENT.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book for a while. The naturalists are discussing climate change – one of the very first, in fact the earliest, reference that I have seen of it in a layman’s work. They note that the theory is in its early days and how it’s subject to ridicule.

The ridicule is something that you could have understood in 1867 but it’s totally beyond my comprehension how anyone today could ever doubt the issue in the face of the overwhelming evidence that exists.

They are also theorising on “erratic boulders”.

An erratic boulder is a rock of a completely different geological structure to those around it, and you find them stuck in the middle of fields and other places completely out of place and out of character.

Their geology back in 1867 was in its infancy so they are theorising, and coming surprisingly close to the truth. The fact is that they are picked up by an advancing glacier and transported in the ice. When the glacier melts, the boulder drops out and is deposited. We saw dozens and dozens out in the Arctic

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago when we talked about the Titanic disaster, there was the American senator who asked “what is an iceberg composed of?”, and was largely ridiculed for his question.

The fact of the matter though is that he wanted it put on record that there are sometimes boulders in an iceberg when a glacier carrying an erratic boulder has calved off an iceberg with an erratic boulder embedded in it, a boulder that might have sprung the side of the ship.

After breakfast I came in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes. Our Year at school had gone off on a field trip somewhere. I was wandering around, feeling not too well, feeling a little down in the dumps as usual when I bumped into a couple of my friends. We arranged to meet later for lunch but I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be still here by lunchtime so it was all very doubtful. One of them, I had a letter to give to him but I didn’t have it on me at that particular moment – I’d have to go back to fetch it. Wandering round a little later on I bumped into some more friends of that particular guy. We began to chat. They weren’t all that welcoming, as if there was something wrong between them and me which there probably was. In the end I happened to mention “are you seeing the other student for lunch?”. One of them said that yes, he was, and the rest of them were too. “Good” I replied. “In that case I have a letter to give him. Could I give it to you?”. This boy was clearly put out of his stride but he was the kind who would never refuse to do something so he reluctantly agreed. I had to go next-door to find it. That was walking into one of the lean-tos of my house in the Auvergne – the one where I slept during the winter of 2007. Of course the snow had come in through the roof and it was snowing that way. It was freezing cold too and very uncomfortable, but I did manage to find the letter. I folded it into three making sure that all the text was on the inside, then handed it over to this boy. Folding the text over to the inside meant nothing because I was sure that one of the others would take it and read it but that would be a matter for them, not for me.

At school I wasn’t particularly popular. I tended to have friends by default. I didn’t really fit in anywhere. But going back to the happy time that I spent – two years living in that lean-to that was 2.0×3.2 metres, I learned an awful lot and believe it or not, I was really quite happy in there

Later on, while we were out we’d had a few business ideas and ended up going to put them to a bank manager. I didn’t agree with some of the things that were in the prospectus but never mind. When we came to show the bank manager a demonstration of our plans, everything that we did simply went wrong. We knew that it was a total wash-out but the bank manager seemed to be quite amused rather than angry. I thought that there might possibly be something to salvage from here. We went to have another chat and I decided that I’d go home. I had a long way to go and was only on a 50cc moped and had to do it all at 30 kmh. I said that I’d go for a bag of chips on the way home. My friend asked me if I would fetch a bag for her husband. I thought “yes, okay, I can do that and I’ll clear off quickly”. Then at the chip shop I met a man who was talking about vans. I joined in the conversation and in the end the two of us were talking. He’d just bought a Transit from the auctions. I asked him to which auctions he went and he said either Leicester for vans or to Shifnal. I asked if they were any good so we had a long conversation. In the end he said that he would have to go. At that point a woman pulled up. She was one of the people with whom we might have been interested in entering a partnership. I began to talk to her. It was clear that some things were interesting her but not others. We had an extremely lengthy conversation. In the end she decided that she had to go. Of course I had the chips and I thought that these are going to be stone-cold by now and by the time that I hit the road it’s going to be 22:00. This is going to be an awfully late night. I leapt onto my moped, raced away from the shop and at a set of traffic lights almost collided with the rear of a white Ford Cortina MkII. In fact I ended up falling on the boot lid. The woman who owned the car didn’t seem to be in the least bit concerned and waved me on. I carried on but was then held up by a level crossing. There was a line in the north of the city that was used about once per week for the movement of goods. Of course it had to be right now. I was sitting at this level crossing watching this slow goods train past, thinking “this is just my luck. Everything is seeming to happen to delay me on this particular trip. I have to return home but I don’t have a clue when”.

This is typical, isn’t it? Everything going wrong at the crucial moment. And ohhh! Happy days at the car auctions at Prees Heath, Silverdale or Longton. We had a calendar of what went on when and I made a little money by moving cars around from one auction to the other at one time.

As well as that, I did have a 50cc Honda Melody scooterette when I lived in Brussels. I remember one night late on going for a ride and ending up in Leuven, coming home as the dawn began to break. That was the scooter that I taught Roxanne to ride.

Finally, I was somewhere in the far North of Canada where I’d been with Strider in one occasion. I’d slept overnight in the back and in the morning I’d set out through the wilderness but as I went a little further it became a very green English countryside. I thought “this isn’t right for Labrador at all”. As I drove, the road became a little worse and a little worse and more narrow. It became a kind-of rough tarmac road. It went down a steep hill, and halfway down was a school on the right that said “Freetown School”. I thought to myself “I bet it isn’t free”. A little lower down was the sign for the town that said “Freetown, Québec”. We went over a hump-backed bridge which was a canal and carried on down. There was a bridge over the river all surrounded by willow trees etc. On the way back up the hill on the other side I could see a caravanette in the distance with two or three cars behind it. Eventually there was just one car behind it, an old Morris Minor. He stopped to turn right into a car park, holding up the traffic. We had to wait behind him. When he finally moved out of the way I could go forward, and found that there were now two more cars between this caravanette and me. I resigned myself to staying behind this caravanette for as long as it would take. I still couldn’t take out of my mind how everything has suddenly changed to an English rural green countryside when I was supposed to be in Labrador.

That was a great time, that trip DRIVING AROUND LABRADOR IN 2015 where I spent every night but one “sleeping out” and having creatures fighting to get into Strider’s truck cap with me.

And turning right into a car park, holding up the traffic? Are we driving on the left then, as in the UK?

While we’re on the subject of Labrador … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve had a rather strange, depressing and regrettable communication that has made me even more entrenched against this system of incestuous academia that seems to exist.

In July last year I had a note that another researcher had quoted me in something that she had submitted for publication, so I wrote to her asking for the details (as is my right) and for a copy of the work (which is an academic courtesy).

She wrote back to me today, 15 months later, to tell me that she can’t remember what she wrote and "Finally, there are two sets of Cartwright’s “missing notes” both of which I’ve published as books through McGill-Queen’s Press – Both listed here – " and then gives me the links where I can buy them

Buy them!

When I pore over all of these ancient out-of-print books and find items that have been forgotten, I publish them either here or on my TRAVEL WEB SITE.

Nobody has to pay a penny to access the information that I discover. It’s nice if someone makes an Amazon purchase using the links here so that I can receive a small commission, and grateful thanks to those who do, but much as I like it, it’s not compulsory.

But pay to look at the results of my own research? Some people are out of their minds.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the trip that I made to Cambridge University to look at the papers that William Cory Johnson had bequeathed to it, only to be told that I can’t have access until a researcher from the University has had first dibs.

And they’ve only been there since 1877 waiting, or something like that.

Like I said, I’m sick to death of this incestuous academia. I’m clearly in the wrong business.

So abandoning yet another good rant for a while, I started on the two radio programmes. And they both gave me problems that took quite a while to resolve. They are now however up and running but I’m going to have to re-dictate the notes because the recorder is playing up again. It sounds as if I have my head in a bucket.

It was later than I hoped when I finished. However I then dashed into the kitchen where I made some pizza dough.

While it was rising I made the garlic butter that I needed to do, and then began to make the hummus (which was what I forgot to mention yesterday).

The first batch, with dried tomato and olive, went really well and made a lovely batch. But the second, which should have been spicy hot chili, ran aground when I found that I had no spicy hot chilis lying around.

At the moment, that helping is in the fridge and I shall send my faithful cleaner off on an errand on Tuesday. She has to go anyway to look for some Tahini as I have no run out of that too.

In between everything I was organising all of the pizza stuff. 2 helpings of dough are in the ice box in the fridge and the third made a beautiful pizza tonight.

And then there was a mountain of washing-up to do. Tons of it tonight.

But now, later than usual and aching in places that I didn’t even know I had, I’m off to bed, still seething about that researcher.
She reminds me of the time that Rutherford was researching, and proudly announced "I’ve just found out that protons have a mass"
"Blimey!" said his Professor. "It’s news to me that they were even Catholic."

0

Saturday 19th October 2024 – THEY LEFT ME …

… pretty much to myself at the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon.

Once they’d plugged me in, they only came back once to deal with an alarm, one of the nursing assistants brought me a coffee, and that was that until it was time to unplug me

That’s much more like my way of doing things and if they can keep it up like that every time I go, I shall be much happier.

Another thing that shall make me much happier is going to bed early. Last night was ridiculous. Just as I was about to switch off everything and go to bed, round on the playlist came the classic Quicksilver Messenger Service version of Elias Bates (Bo Diddley to you)’s version of WHO DO YOU LOVE, all 25 minutes and 15 seconds of it.

Of course, one thing leads to another and once you start you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are and it was after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed

For once though I had a good sleep. Apart from a brief, very brief moment, I was asleep for the entire night but I was still feeling the worse for wear when I crawled out of bed at the sound of the alarm.

First thing was to go into the kitchen. I’ve no bread left and so I set to work to make a loaf of bread, starting by making the dough and giving it a good kneading.

Whilst it was busy festering I went into the bathroom. With it being a Dialysis Day to day I gave myself a good scrub and even applied the deodorant, not that it makes much difference

Having organised myself I sorted out the washing. There’s tons of it, but I washed the bed linen today along with some of the stuff of which supplies are running low. When I came here from the Auvergne I didn’t bring everything with me – just enough to keep me going. But there’s no chance now of going back to the Auvergne to pick up the rest.

When the nurse came round he looked at the dough and asked “are you making bread?”. His asinine, patronising comments are getting on my nerves.

Luckily he didn’t stay long and was soon down the road, and I can carry on with breakfast and my book.

Today, the Woolhope Naturalists are at Llandrindod Wells where we hear them applauding the efforts that are being made in salmon conservation and calling for some kind of control of pollution of the local rivers – a good 100 years ahead of their time.

And then I put the bread in the oven.

After I’d started the washing off I’d made a start on the dictaphone notes but the arrival of the nurse had put paid to that. So after breakfast I carried on. There was this very small girl. She was very small and very lively, and very interested in everything that seemed to be going on around her. One day I had to go to the hospital. A car came for me – it was a big Austin A110. I climbed into it and it had to go to pick up some more people. A guy was picked up and he sat in the back, a woman or a guy – it seemed to change between the two. Then there was this small girl and this woman. The woman insisted on sitting in the front, so much so that she actually climbed into the front while I was in the seat. In the end I agreed that I’d step out of the car and sit in the rear. The little girl made some kind of comment so I said “God, I’m sitting next to you, am I?” in one of those harmless fun tones which started a little bit of a play argument. This all took place at the entrance to a car park somewhere but it turned out to be at the Earl of Crewe. We were all at the Earl of Crewe outside, all fooling around, all of us. Someone came up to me and said “You’ve forgotten that it’s her birthday today, haven’t you?” meaning the little girl. I replied “I didn’t really know”. “Don’t worry. The driver has bought a little present for her on your behalf”. I thought “that’s nice of him. That’s the second time that he’s done that. I’ll have to see about paying him back or something”. But I have half an hour when I’m not doing anything. I was planning on looking at a recipe that someone had given me. Instead, I can look at the recipe in the car and go to buy her a present then. We all ended up in some kind of old house with low ceilings and wattle-and-daub walls. We were all inside there and making conversation with each other and the little girl was doing her school homework. There was someone else there doing some work at the seat behind her. I was going to read this recipe but I thought that I’d go to talk to this girl and see what she’s doing. and this dream carried on like that for ages.

This dream certainly dates me if I’m being picked up by an Austin A110. I was still a teenager when those cars were top-of-the-range. And I often used (and probably still do) tease young girls like that. The incident of the woman wanting to sit in the front reminds me of that strange guy at the Dialysis Centre who never opened his mouth all the time except when the taxi driver asked “who wants to sit in the front?”.

Having had one phantom alarm call we have a second. And one of my friends seems to be coming “extremely close” to everyone who comes to her house. Tomorrow morning there is going to be someone new going so we should all be at the house and we should catch her. Se we were there and were waiting. Sure enough, someone came, a refugee from some island somewhere. She had a close encounter with him which makes the fourteenth in fourteen days. After that we walked home. I walked away over the hills and when I was round about at an arch some woman came up, a type of girl, not even wanting to talk to me about anything other than the items of clothing in my freezer bag that I had to give her, a freezer bag with eight items of clothing in there so now there was one piece of pizza and just three or four left. She wanted to search through them and wasn’t going to let me go home until I’d submitted to a search

There is actually one of my friends who behaves like that. Mind you, it’s a good 15-20 years since I’ve seen her and even then I used to keep a respectable distance. However, I don’t understand anything about the second part of that dream.

By the way, I have absolutely no recollection of either of those phantom alarm calls.

Finally I was in a bedsit room in Manchester. It was something of a mess but I was leaving today. I had a train at 18:00 that I absolutely had to catch. I wanted to see one of the many followers of this blog before I left but he could only fit me in after 17:00. As he lived in Altrincham that was leaving it rather tight to go out there to see him then come back to Manchester in the centre for my train. I’d have to have everything ready but it was now 09:25, I was lying there, I was hearing people washing so I arose, found a bearskin to keep me warm and then went to see if there was a washbasin free where I had a really good wash ready for going out catching the Underground and going off to do the things that I needed to do

If I could go across Manchester on the Underground, that would be something of a miracle. Any plans for an underground network in the city have long-since been scuppered which was a shame and today everyone has to go by tram and even then it’s not all that convenient. The “Northern powerhouse” promised by so many politicians is a myth, a vote-catching soundbyte and as long as the politicians won’t admit that there’s anything of any importance beyond the M25, so it will remain.

Having hung up the washing to dry, I sorted out the bread. One side of it hadn’t risen at all so we can call this loaf a failure, which is a shame. But I can’t understand why that would be because the bread was in the middle of the oven with the heat, in principle, passing equally all around it.

While the bread was cooling and the washing was drying I came back in here where I was supposed to be having a morning off. However, I made an interesting discovery relating to what might in the near future be an interesting radio programme so I followed it up.

Round about 11:50 I had a message – “could you be ready for 12:15? We’re short of numbers today and there’s a person needing to go to Avranches for 13:00. Would you share?”.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am being offered an extraordinary service that exists nowhere else in the World to my knowledge, and it’s all free to me. Who am I to argue about any of this? In any case, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish

It meant a mad panic though, for me and my faithful cleaner to prepare me for the trip and we only just made it. Just as she was leaving, the driver turned up.

It was someone who had taken me to Paris in the past and we had a good chat on the way down to Avranches.

With the taxi coming early, I was early arriving and so I was coupled up quickly, and then left to my own devices.

For the first time in a couple of weeks I crashed out (and isn’t that a change?). Only for twenty minutes or so and when I awoke I had the most appalling indigestion that plagued me for hours.

With no interruptions I reviewed my Welsh, last week’s and the forthcoming week, had a close look at the homework that I need to finish off and then tidied up the laptop. The whole desktop is far too cluttered and there are loads of tabs open in Waterfox and I’ve no idea why. They aren’t open now.

No-one bothered me or interrupted me and as far as I could see, there wasn’t even a doctor on duty. But for the compression stage of the procedure where someone has to clamp my arm for ten minutes I had Julie the Cook again
"You really ought to try to do this yourself" she said
"Clear off!" I replied. "How else am I going to have a beautiful girl sitting beside me for ten minutes holding my hand?"

When they weighed me I found that I’d lost another 2kg. My “unfit” target weight is now firmly in my sights and if I can reach it I would be delighted. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … getting it off is one thing. Keeping it off is something else completely.

The taxi driver was a new girl. She was an ambulancier in the Champagne-Ardennes who moved here five weeks ago. She applied to the company for a job and in the kind of logic that only they think is reasonable but neither my driver nor me could understand, they put her to driving taxis when she’s no idea of where she’s going. At least as an ambulancier she’d be with someone, which would help her pick up the hints.

And for once in our lives, having left the Dialysis Centre early, at Sartilly we find ourselves in a long queue stuck behind a tractor (it’s that time of year again) and we crawl all the way to Granville at 30kmh.

My faithful cleaner watched me up the stairs, and today I could manage nine before I need to lift up my leg with my hand. This is certainly progress and I hope that it keeps up.

Back in here even though I was early I did nothing until tea time. I was exhausted. But I made myself a lovely tea of a burger on a bun with salad and baked potato followed by apple cake and soya cream.

Now that this severe indigestion has eased somewhat I’m off to bed once I’ve dictated the radio notes. Tomorrow I’ll be busy with the radio, with pizza dough to make and there’s something else that I need to make but I’ve forgotten what it is right now. I hope that I remember.

But I forgot to mention an incident that caused panic and embarrassment at the Dialysis Clinic today.
A man walked by mistake into the ladies’ cloakroom and a couple of minutes later two women walked in behind him.
Suddenly there were all kinds of panic as a couple of nurses dashed towards the cloak room with the emergency gear.
"What’s going on?" I asked
"It’s one of those two women" replied a breathless nurse. "She’s had a stroke!"
"What about the other one?" I asked
"She wasn’t quick enough" replied the nurse.

0

Friday 18th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again.

So much so that not only am I going to have tomorrow morning off (apart from bread-making and doing a machine-load of washing) but I actually had a couple of hours off this afternoon too.

In a mad, fit burst of energy I had all of the work that I intended to do today finished by hot chocolate time and it’s nice for once to be in a position where I could just lounge around.

It’s not as if I was in bed early last night. It was another late night, midnight in fact, when I hit the sack. But something remarkable happened, or didn’t happen, as the case may be. I slept all the way through to the alarm.

No awakening, no drenching in perspiration either. It really was a deep sleep. But that means that it’s not the dialysis that’s causing the problem. It must be something else, and I wonder what it might be.

So when the alarm went off I crawled out of bed and went off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up. Then back in here to find that the internet was down.

Not to worry. There were plenty of things that I could be doing. Like transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was out driving a taxi around Sandbach last night. I could hear all of the confusion in Crewe by listening to the radio and thought to myself “in a minute I’ll be mixed up in that” but a voice came over the radio when I told them that I’d finished my job, and that was to go to Sandbach Hall and pick up a couple of passengers to take them to Northampton. I thought “that’s sounding good”.

Yes, I’d often go to drive the taxi that we had in Sandbach, just for an evening’s peace and quiet away from the stress. I always drove it on a Thursday night because there were the weekly accounts to do and sitting at the station there waiting for the trains to come in, I could crack on and do them. But I had a few decent fares from there on a couple of occasions. Never quite made it to Northampton but Coventry once one Sunday afternoon.

When I’d finished that I decided that I’d perform a full back-up.

The last one that I took was in September last year and since then I’ve been backing up every night on the memory stick that lives in one of the USB ports

The situation here is that I have the big powerful machine with a 1TB SSD that is the driver disk, and a 4TB drive that is the data disk. And then there’s an array with several hard drives in it that constitutes the back-up disks. That all works very well so let’s hear it for the array

… "Hip, hip array!" – ed …

There are several external drives that I use for the more specialised back-ups and then there’s the 128GB USB stick in the back of the computer where I back up my data at least every night, and more often if necessary.

The nurse came to see me while I was in the middle of it all. He changed my bandages and when he finished, asked me “can you put on your socks on your own?”.

These socks are actually elasticated and very difficult to manage, and also I can’t bend enough these days with all of my problems. But I asked why he wanted to know.

The answer is that he thinks that in a week or two’s time I’ll no longer need the treatment to my legs and if I could put on my socks myself I wouldn’t need the nurses round every morning.

Sounds like a good plan to me so I reckon that after my shower on Wednesday I’d have a try. Anything if there’s a possibility of a good lie-in on a Sunday morning again.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading the report of the Naturalists. We’re discussing primroses, cowslips and oxslips, not that I have any interest in botany, but I was interested to see the lecturer discussing treatment that was novel in 1867 but is commonplace today, and how flowers have evolved over the last 150 years or so.

He went on to say how putting manure on your primroses and cowslips improves their quality and, rather quaintly, goes on to extol the benefits of what he calls “street scrapings”. Yes, the horse-power back in those days came from real horses.

Back in here I carried on backing up until I’d finished, not having noticed that the internet was back on.

Once I’d finished another good job I started work,, finishing off the radio notes

My cleaner came early today. She decided that as it was a lovely day she’d go to join the crowds at the pèche-à-pied this afternoon so she’d come at lunchtime.

For the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, I live in one of the best shellfish-producing areas in Europe, if not the World.

In principle, all of the beaches and rocks are let off to concessions who have the right to exploit what they find there. That right goes from high water-mark down to the low water-mark.

However, we also have some of the highest tides in Europe and about a dozen times per year, the tides are such that they go out beyond the low water mark. And when that happens, it’s a free-for-all on the very low part where everyone can rake up what he can, as long as he obeys the limits about size and quantity.

So she’s off with her bucket and grattoire and she’ll be OK as long as she shares her catch with her friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

While she was here we chatted about this idea that I have about trying to put on my own socks. She’s not sure how I’m going to do it but she’s willing to see what I can do and how I do it.

And to be honest, so am I.

My salad butty at lunchtime used up the last of the bread and so tomorrow morning I’ll have to make some more. I’ll also have to set a washing machine off so even though it’s going to be a day of rest, I’ll still be busy.

Liz and I had a little chat which was nice. It’s been a long time since we spoke to each other

But anyway I finished off all of the notes for this programme that I’d been preparing. The music that I’d selected ran out at just over 53 minutes and I’d been keeping a careful count of the text that I’d written and I’ve calculated that it will run to 7 minutes and 12 seconds.

It’ll be great if it does because there won’t be much at all to cut out once the soundtrack has been edited.

After the hot chocolate I uninstalled a program that had been causing me problems and reinstalled an earlier version, only to find that I was having the same trouble.

That was when I discovered that I’d inadvertently changed a setting on the program that I’d deleted, that the version that I’d re-uploaded had remembered. A flick of a switch changed that and now I’ll have to uninstall that program and reinstall the new one again.

Tea tonight was vegan salad, chips and vegan nuggets, followed by apple cake and coconut-soya cream

So now it’s bedtime. so I’m clearing off, ready to fight the good fight tomorrow, and I hope that you like my Robinson Crusoe impression

When my cleaner was in I told her that today I was going to do my impression of Robinson Crusoe.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well" I replied "all of his work was done by Friday too"

0

Thursday 17th October 2024 – SOMEONE IS GOING …

.. to have their nether regions given a good kicking in the near future. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago I had an ugly confrontation in the private hospital at Avranches with someone on the accounts department that led to me writing to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company.

Today I’ve finally had a response, full of grovelling apology (I had a cheque sent back to me a week or so ago) and containing the ominous “your letter will be placed before our Committee who will examine your complaint”.

Having received full reimbursement, it’s obvious that my complaint has been upheld, after all, it’s not like a private organisation to hand back money without a fight, so all we need now is a good witch-hunt, complete with a ceremonial burning at the stake

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I finished my notes last night I had one or two things that needed doing so yet again I was rather late going to my nice, clean, fresh bed.

But once in it, I was away quite quickly and there I stayed, all curled up, until the alarm went off. There had been one or two minor awakenings during the night but I was soon asleep again.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream. I was auditing some accounts for some company, going through their office and checking everything. There was a guy and girl there working together. It was quite obvious that the guy had his eye on the girl. After he went out of the room I began to talk to the girl to find out a little more about her to see if I could encourage these two in some way. Then the guy came back and carried on talking. I could see that he was looking nervous and was glancing at me so I just said to him “oh, go ahead. Don’t mind me” and tried to encourage him to ask her for a date. Then I was at home and one of my friends was there. We were talking about diabetics. I was watching TV in French, a TV programme in French while she was working. She was wondering why I was sitting down and not doing things. She found that it was actually a programme about diabetes. They were talking about “if you’re having a crisis, have a fruit” but I replied that quite often when I have a diabetic crisis I don’t have any fruits any more. I’ve run out”. And then I was thinking “maybe it’s a good idea to go out and buy some, then we can have a coffee as well, things like that” but my friend had so much work on her plate that I thought “maybe it’s not such a very good idea to propose that we stop for a moment”

Eating a fruit is a good idea in a diabetic crisis and at the hospital they usually give me a cup of orange juice if I’m having a wobble. Then along came the dietician who tells me that fruit has loads of potassium in it, my potassium is too high and I must cut down on the fruit. But that is just how everything is – one thing going on is affecting something else so I need a pill for the side-effect, but that pill then affects something else so I need another. And so on. I counted once just recently and it was about 32 pills, tablets and medicines per day (it’s increased since then). And I bet it’s all on account of the first one that I started taking. It’s hard to believe that when I went to live in Leuven in early 2016 I was just taking four pills per day.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, a shave and applied plenty of deodorant, even though it probably serves no useful purpose. And then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I can only remember a small part of this dream but I had to go to the bank to draw some money out at a cash point. I drew out £80:00 when I went to the shops last Tuesday but I thought that if I was drawing out that sum every week it’s going to be an awful lot of money. I was driving down the hill to where the little bank branch was where there was a machine where I could draw the money but suddenly I found myself maybe half a mile further on at a road junction. “Never mind” I thought. I could turn left here, turn round and go back again. But the left turning was a one-way street. I thought “I’ve been here before and turned down here but it’s all really complicated but I can’t remember seeing the bank branch when I drove down here just now. I mean, it’s dark and usually all its lights are on and you can see it from quite some distance away but tonight there was nothing. I hope that it’s not been closed down while I’ve been going”.

And I’ve been down this road during a previous night too. It’s the road that I drove down once and waited on a corner somewhere in South London when I was on another nocturnal ramble. And although I can’t recognise the first part of it, I now recognise the second part where I tried to turn left last night and the corner where I waited last time. It’s in Saint John in New Brunswick, just around the corner from where my Canadian insurance broker has her office. Well, well, well. But I wonder if the dream is symbolic of the issues that I had recently with my bank card.

It was Isabelle the nurse today, seeing as her partner has had to go to the doctor (and doesn’t that inspire a lot of confidence in a nurse?). She was her usual cheerful self, blitzed through her task and then cleared off, leaving me alone.

And so I made my breakfast and read my book. Right now, I’ve read the introduction and all the members are taking the train in the middle of a blinding rainstorm, to go to look at the rocks at Colwall in the Malvern Hills. We’re having a long, complicated talk on geology and underlying rock strata, which makes me wish that I could remember more of my A-level Geography. All the time that I spent studying rock formation in the Arctic with Mark St Onge on our trips out there on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR seems not to have done me much good

Back here I cleared up a few bits and pieces and then made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. I’ve now done a few but this is turning into something rather more complicated than I had imagined. It’s not easy.

My cleaner came in and helped me with my anaesthetic patches, and then she tried some of the new tubi-grip bandage that we’ve acquired thanks to the prescription from Isabelle the nurse. That seems to work really well and I’m impressed.

The taxi came early and we set off, picking up another passenger on the way, for the Dialysis Clinic.

Being quite early I was soon installed in my bed with my laptop and music and the nurses didn’t hang about either. The first needle went in almost painlessly but the second one wasn’t so easy and they needed the echograph machine to test for the tube in my arm.

And when they finally found it and pushed the needle in, the anaesthetic had worn off.

It looks as if it’s definitely all over between Emilie the Cute Consultant and me.

She was there this afternoon and although she gave me a little wave of her hand, she kept her distance and that was that.

She certainly speaks English because there’s a monolingual English-speaker being dialysed and she was talking to him in English so she’s probably a regular reader of this rubbish and will recall a few of the comments that I have made. That’s enough to drive anyone away, I suppose. Let’s face it, I have enough trouble trying to persuade anyone to come near me in normal times, never mind when we are thrust together cheek by jowl to fester away in a hospital.

The other nurses came by every now and again to check the machine and to ask me to translate stuff for them so that they could speak to the English guy.

However I spent most of the time now that I have an internet connection trying to track down the dates of some of these live concerts that I have. I didn’t check many because it’s really had to do it when you aren’t comfortable, you only have one hand that you can use and that’s interrupted every 20 minutes by a blood pressure reading.

They carried out a diabetes test on me and sure enough it was at a critical level so they gave me a big glass of orange juice. Presumably they don’t think much of the dietician either.

After they unplugged me, disconnected me and compressed me, I went to weigh myself. I’d lost 3.1 kg in this session. All of that would be quite impressive if I wouldn’t put almost all of it straight back on again. It’s no good taking it off and it all going back on.

And a blood test report was sent to me today. After dialysis a few days ago the creatine was down to 283 (the required level in less than 100 and mine was at 450 which is close to fatal just before all of this started). However when I went back to dialysis a few days later it was up at almost 350 again. So not even that is staying put.

But never mind all of that. If I’m feeling better with just that much improvement, what will I be like if ever it goes down to less than 100 and I’m at my target weight?

There were three of us in the taxi and the driver was having an intense discussion with the other passenger so I sat in the back and relaxed.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and watched as today I made 8 steps without using my hand to lift up my leg. If I keep this up, in a couple of months I’ll be outside through the skylight climbing up the roof to the chimney.

My cleaner says that she’s noticed a major improvement over the last few weeks and thinks that I ought to try going for a drive. But that’s out of the question right now. There’s not enough force in my right leg to apply the brake and that’s that.

Tea was, as I said yesterday, a slice of vegan pie with vegetables in gravy and I forgot the herbs with the gravy. But the pie defrosted and warmed up really well in the air fryer and really was nice. I made the gravy thick and glutinous and stirred the veg in it so that the gravy stuck to all of them. That made it even nicer.

So right now, later than intended, I’m off to bed. But the talk of tying someone to a stake and burning them alive reminds me of a boy at our old school.
He came in one morning saying."I saw this incredible film last night. It was all about this man who changed into a bat and they killed him by hammering a stake into his heart. Can you imagine that? Killing a man with a stake?"
"That’s nothing" I retorted. "My mother can do that with egg and chips"

0

Wednesday 16th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN ..

… a very busy boy today.

And not only that, I’m a very clean busy boy too because I have had another shower today. And not only that either, but I have a lovely clean bed to dive into tonight because while I was soaking myself down, my faithful cleaner was changing the bedding on my bed and sweeping out the room.

Yes, this is a luxury to which I’m not all that accustomed. At this rate I shall be learning to become civilised, far too late to do me any good.

And while we’re on the subject of lateness … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was late again going to bed last night. Not by much, I have to say, but enough for me to complain about it – as if I don’t do enough complaining anyway.

In actual fact I’d finished fairly early and could I suppose have made the bed prior to 23:00 but instead I followed a few distractions to relax myself before I finally hit the hay. We’ve been studying different dialects in our Welsh class and she found an interesting article on the subject so she sent it to me.

The dialect that I know is rather confusing. My grandmother’s family came from Penrhiwceiber in South Wales, she grew up in the borderlands near Wrexham, I worked with a Welsh-speaking colleague from Caernarfon when I was on the buses in Crewe, I study with Coleg Cambria in Mold and I’ve been on Summer Schools in Gwent and Caerfyrddyn, and so I have a bit of everything.

Going off to sleep seems to be taking a little longer than in the past so the fairies had to loiter around for a little longer, but once I was gone, I was gone. I awoke once during the night round about 05:00 (yet again:) but soon went back to sleep again.

That seems to be quite a popular time to awaken. I wonder why it is. I know that I’m a very light sleeper but that time or thereabouts is just too regular to be a coincidence.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I went off into the bathroom to have a really good scrub, and then came back in here to see what was on the dictaphone from the night. We’d set up a business with a couple of different people concerning an estate agency. We’d managed to secure a couple of clients and had gone into partnership with a couple of different people for a couple of different things. My partner was wondering about how progress was being made because we’d been away for a couple of weeks and there had been no contact. We went back to meet everyone again to see how things were. My partner wanted to make sure that nothing that we had done before we went away had been compromised. It was left to me to do the distasteful tasks of asking these other people who were in partnership with us. One guy said, rather offendedly, yes, he’d sold twenty-one apartments in the time that he’d been away but the two that we’d seen with him and organised, they hadn’t moved. Then he buttonholed my partner and asked “when are you going to come along and do this work that you promised?” so the two of them marched off somewhere. He was determined to make her work. In the meantime, the woman of another partnership with whom we’d gone into partnership at the beginning asked “when’s your partner going to deal with this examination and homework that we have to do? It’s already a week overdue now. I went with her we sat down, we each took a paper of this homework and she did one while I did the other. We then swapped papers to look at it and check each other’s work. I didn’t really know very much about what I was doing and was having to interpret it on the basis of what I’d seen in the question. That’s all I knew. It looked very common-sense to me but it was difficult for me to wrap my head around it because I didn’t know any of the technical terms however I did what I could and hopefully it was OK but the dream ended before we had the results of the checking by this other girl

“I didn’t really know very much about what I was doing” – that’s the story of my life, isn’t it? I seem to make it all up as I go along and hope for the best. When I rely on my intuition it works pretty much OK most of the time. Sometimes though I’ve had some spectacular successes but, on the other hand, once or twice I’ve had some miserable failures. Anyway, I’m far too old to change my ways now

Later on I’d been in the USA for some kind of work and was flying back to Canada but I’d looked in at a DiY shop on one occasion just before coming back and they had some 1.6Kw heater elements in there. There was also this beautiful kitchen unit in a flat pack. I looked at this kitchen unit and thought that it was lovely so I bought it. I bought my heater element then I realised that I couldn’t pick up the kitchen unit because it was too heavy so I took the obvious solution and just pushed it in its box. I pushed it all the way to the airport and all the way through the departure. It went into the hold of the ‘plane. When we arrived in Canada it was somehow with me on the ‘plane so I pushed it all the way through. Before leaving the USA I took this heater element and changed the plug on it for a Canadian plug. When I arrived back in Canada I left the ‘plane and pushed this through the airport, half expecting to be stopped at “Passports” but there was no-one on duty at Passport Control – we just pushed our way through into the main hall. I was there putting my things into some bags when someone came up to me and asked me why I’d changed this plug over to a different plug in the USA. I explained that I wanted it to work here in Canada. They asked “couldn’t you have waited until you arrived in France to do that? ”

Canadian plugs are the same as USA plugs, but let’s not bog ourselves down with trivialities. I would have loved to have worked in Canada but I was stuck in the “age gap”. Over 55 and you can’t have a work permit, and under 65 you can’t be a dependent. Now that I would qualify, I’m too ill to go. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WHEN I WAS ON A BUS IN MONTREAL IN 2013 the driver of the bus had lived for years in Brussels and worked the route that I used to take to go to see Marianne. He encouraged me to apply for a job as a bus driver with the Montreal City bus company and reckoned that I’d be certain to be accepted, but I fell right into that age gap. I would have loved to have lived in Montreal although THE OLD FAMILY PILE IN DRAPER AVENUE in the Côte des Neiges has long-since been demolished and redeveloped. The only place our family still owns in Montreal is the six feet of earth in the Mount Royal Cemetery where the bones of my great grandfather lie.

The nurse today was quick and efficient and had very little to say for himself except the usual patronising remarks that get on my nerves. He soon cleared off and left me to make a start on breakfast.

As for reading matter, Old Sarum was the last place that we visited with Thomas Wright. I’m now on the annual report of the Woodthorpe Naturalists’ (not “naturists”, Rhys) Club from (thinks) 1867. Why that’s interesting was because the club was the organisation that pushed forward the idea of gathering mushrooms and this report was the first document to actually identify and catalogue the different types. It’s the mushroom gatherer’s bible.

After breakfast I tidied up in the kitchen and dining area for a while and then came in here. Firstly, there was football to watch. There had been a whole programme of matches last night in the Welsh Premier League, unfortunately not shown live but the highlights of every game were shown.

To be honest, I’m glad that they didn’t show Y Bala v Connah’s Quay live. The highlights ran for 1 minute and 37 seconds, and I counted two shots on goal. Y Drenewydd threw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 against y Barri but the surprising scoreline was that Aberystwyth, dead and buried at the bottom of the table and now managerless, stuck four away from home against 3rd-placed Caernarfon. And of course, we had yet another “let’s play it out from the back, boys” moment too.

Then I started work. And busy boy that I am, not only did I finish off the notes for the next radio programme, I chose the music, paired it off and segued the pairs for the one after too. And even wrote some of the notes too

This next one is another complicated one too and it’s going to be so easy for me to find myself carried off on a tangent if I’m not careful. I’m not allowed to be partisan or adopt a polemic stance, so we’ll have to see how well I can control myself.

There were several interruptions too. Firstly there was lunch. And then there was the shower.

That means washing my socks and undies etc first. And then stripped down and put on my shorts. My faithful cleaner stood by in case I needed her and then, propped up with a crutch, I gave myself a good scrub down as best as I could, and it was wonderful.

There’s some kind of pivoting chair available to help me into the bath and it costs about €300. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in March someone came here with one to try out, but chipped the bath, promised to come back, and I haven’t seen him since.

So €300 for that. My cleaner and I found that a dining room chair and two wooden boxes do the job just as well, and cost nothing.

While I was hosing myself down she was in here changing the bedding and brushing out my room. And it is nice. In fact it was a wonderful hour or so all told and I hope that I feel the benefit of it tonight, even though it’s going to be late yet again.

Once I was out of the shower and dressed, I had a sort-out of my travelling rucksack that I take when I have to go to hospital.

The reason is that I’m running low on my anti-cancer chemotherapy medicine. They gave me a prescription for that at Avranches the other day but it’s a strictly-controlled medication that can only be prescribed by certain consultants, and there are none at Avranches (which is why I go to Paris).

Anyway, the pharmacy rejected it so so I rang them at Paris.
"Didn’t the doctor give you a prescription when you came?" asked the secretary.
"Yes" I replied. "But that was in June, it was only for three months and now it’s run out"
"I mean, when you came just now"
"I haven’t been just now" I replied. "The last time that I came was in June. The doctor said that he’d call me back there for a biopsy at the end of August but I’ve heard nothing since June."
"But surely you … didn’t you? …You must have … Let me see …Can I call you back? I need to speak to the doctor"

As a result, I’m expecting a call to go to Paris some day very soon. God alone knows when ‘ll be able to fit it in. Dialysis, 30 sessions at the Centre de Re-education looming, a series of 30 sessions of physiotherapy waiting for a place. It’s worse than when I was at work.

That’s not all either. The post has been building up and there have been several bills to pay to the Government for one thing and another. So I was busy setting up accounts on the Fench Government web-page so that they can use direct debit to take payment.

The good news is that I’m entitled to a tax refund. It’s only e40:00 but it’s symbolic

After all of that I reckoned that I deserved my leftover curry and naan bread, followed by apple cake and coconut soya cream. Another excellent meal that I really enjoyed. Tomorrow I might try a slice of pie warmed up in the air fryer with potatoes, veg and gravy.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, late again, I’m off to bed, a nice clean me in a nice, clean bed.

But talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the man who went to the Marriage Bureau
"You’ve been married before" sad the interviewer
"Three times" said the client "but I’m a widower"
"I’m sorry to hear that" said the interviewer. "What happened to your first wife?"
"She died from eating poisoned mushrooms"
"Oh dear" said the interviewer. "And the second?"
"She died from eating poisoned mushrooms"
"And the third?"
"She died of a fractured skull"
"A fractured skull?"
"Yes" replied the client. "She wouldn’t eat the mushrooms"

0

Tuesday 15th October 2024 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, last night was something of a disaster.

In fact, it was quite a disaster, if the truth was known. Wide awake at 04:00 drenched in perspiration, up and about at 05:00. Of course, I had dialysis yesterday. It seems to be every time I have dialysis that this happens.

What I’ll have to do is to talk to a doctor next time one of them comes to see me. I’ll have to see if it’s an anticipated side-effect or whether there’s something else going on.

If it’s Emilie the Cute Consultant, I can always request that she comes here to rock me to sleep but I imagine that if I were to ask for that I’d be told to clear off in the fashion that JAH Catton, editor of “Athletic News” described when discussing an outburst from Wales international goalkeeper Leigh Roose, as "not such as might be expected from a gentleman.".

But as long as they don’t give me a sleeping pill. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days takes place in bed while I’m asleep, and I wouldn’t miss that for anything.

You would think that that would be the trigger for me to rush to finish everything and dive into bed as early as possible, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work like that. Take last night, for example. I might have finished my work at a reasonable time, but then we had the battle to lift myself out of my chair.

Eventually though I made it into bed, later than I would have liked, and once again it took rather longer than it has done of late to go off to sleep.

My memory tells me that I awoke once during the night and went back to sleep almost straight away but by 04:00 that was that. I was wide awake, perspiring profusely from my legs, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end, at 05:00 I gave it up as a bad job and went to make myself a coffee and catch up with some personal stuff.

However, I had had a disaster. The toenail on the little toe on the right foot must have stuck in the bedding somehow and on leaving the bed I’d torn it off.

At first I hadn’t realised but I soon did, especially when I noticed the blood. Wrapping some tissue round it I staggered into the living and took one of the compress pads. I couldn’t reach to plaster it so I just wrapped it around the toe and hoped that it might stop the bleeding eventually.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, and that surprised me. No Castor, no Zero and no TOTGA either unfortunately, but several other people whom we all know and love and who are pretty close to me. It was the birthday of someone whom we all knew. Alison, Jackie, Liz, Terry and I had been amongst the invitees to go to his birthday party. We’d all chipped in and bought some kind of present, something that had a long stalk on it. They asked me if I’d write some poems. I wrote the poems and circulated them around. Everyone liked them but Jackie asked me “what was this event that took place in January?”. I couldn’t think of what it was at that point so I mad some kind of light-hearted comment. Liz ‘phoned me up and we were having a chat on the internet about this but suddenly it went dead, the conversation, right at a crucial moment. That’s the problem with the conversations on the internet – they go dead because someone comes to the door or you lose connection and you never know. eventually we were all assembled there. I presented the present to him which he gratefully received. Then I took it back because I’d fabricated some kind of grip for the stalk, made out of elasticated material. I put it on but it was too lose so I borrowed a needle and thread and began to sew it so that it was tighter. Everyone made a few comments so I told them that if anyone thinks that they could do it better, I’m only doing this by default so I’d gladly give up the place to someone else. No-one did so I carried on and was about halfway through it when the dream ended.

I’m impressed that I can discuss the issues about internet connections in my sleep. And sewing too. I can certainly sew in real life, and knit too, but when I’m asleep? Is there no end to my nocturnal talents?

And then later on I was with some people. They wanted me to take a caravan and trailer down to the South of France and into Italy. Although I was in principle agreed the first problem was that I didn’t have a car. They said that a car would be sorted out for me somehow so I didn’t say much until the very evening they produced this car. It was in a shocking state and it was impossible for me to even consider taking this, never mind towing a caravan and trailer behind it. There was some heated discussion about this and they proposed a variety of solutions which I rejected. In the end they produced a motor bike, a 350cc Triumph. I thought that this was the most absurd thing that I’d ever seen. I wondered where they had found the motor bike. It turned out that they had stolen it. All kinds of alarm bells were ringing for me at that point. The first thing that I said was “what about the insurance?”. There they were, rummaging through the papers in the side of this motor bike and they came across an insurance document. In the end, much against my better judgement, I was persuaded. We were in somewhere on the south of Manchester . We coupled up the caravan to the motor bike then coupled up the trailer to the back of the caravan. It would just about move it but I knew that it was all going to lead to a huge disaster. I thought that the first issue would be to take it over the Pennines, all of this, and I’ve no idea how I’m going to do that. I had a think and could remember how the major road system went. I thought that if I went a little way north I could probably pass over there somewhere towards Sheffield and then on the M1. I set out, but when I came to a road junction I heard someone shout “Phil Miller”. “Did you hear that?” and one of the other people said “yes”. I said “you know who Phil Miller is, don’t you?”. They replied “no”. “He was the keyboard player in ‘Caravan’. I wish that I had the time to go to say ‘hello’ to him”. They said “why don’t you go?”. I replied “don’t be silly. I have far too much on my plate at the moment with all of this”. We set off again. They were unhappy with the way that I crossed a certain road but I didn’t care. The further I went down this street heading out of this town the more I know that I was just coming closer and closer to disaster. This is all going to go wrong before too long.

Apart from having all these people on a motorcycle, it was Steve Miller who was the keyboard player in “Caravan”. Steve’s brother Phil was a guitarist who, although he guested on Caravan’s album WATERLOO LILY is much better know for his collaborations with Robert Wyatt. Nevertheless, it’s still quite impressive that I could come out with that. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when WE WERE IN NEWFOUNDLAND IN 2010 we encountered a car pulling a caravan pulling a trailer.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, the way to go south-east to the M1 is via Stoke on Trent and the A500 to Derby, but if I’m heading from the south of Manchester and want to keep away from traffic I’d go via Macclesfield and Leek, past my old stamping ground in 1975 of Bosley.

Having done a pile of work I stopped for a good wash and then waited for the nurse to appear.

He didn’t have much to say for himself, but he thinks that my left leg is almost back to normal so he’s going to try it today without any plasters to see if it holds out. And he put a small plaster on my toe where I’d torn off the nail. It had actually stopped bleeding but it’s better safe than sorry.

After a quick breakfast I came back in here and revised for my Welsh. And once again the lesson passed quite well and I enjoyed it. I was surprised at how much I could figure out, even if I didn’t understand everything. The key to understanding is not to understand and translate every word, but just to understand the gist of the conversation. I reckon that when you are having a conversation in your mother-tongue, you don’t hear three-quarters of the words that are spoken but you know what’s being said all the same.

No lunch today. I started work straight away and by the time I’d finished, not only had I chosen all of the music for the next programme, I’d written half of the notes too. And that was without really trying either

Once again, there was something that happened that made me realise that I must be feeling better than I have been for several months. That cheered me up a great deal too because I need to convince myself that I’m feeling better.

As for my chocolate cake, I had a slice with my hot chocolate this afternoon. And it really was delicious. The best cake that I gave ever made. But it was more done at the top than at the bottom. If only I could turn it over somehow and cook it upside-down for some of the time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice, followed by apple cake and coconut-flavoured soya cream. That was delicious too and there’s no doubt – I might be eating simply but I really am eating well. If I ever lose my appetite or lose the will to cook then I will know that it’s the end.

So now it’s the end of my day and I’m off to catch up with my beauty sleep. And after last night I certainly need it. But then again I always do, especially with a dial like mine.

But before I go, I have been taken to task for what at least one person considers to be humour that really belongs in the gutter and not in a family-orientated web page
"Don’t you know what good, clean fun is?" I was asked.
"No" I replied. "What good is it?"

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Monday 14th October 2024 – AT THE DIALYSIS …

… Clinic this time, with one of the usual nurses on duty, things went so much better today and she managed to avoid drenching the room and everyone in it with my blood.

Mind you, there’s still a few hours before bedtime so plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet. I’ve told my faithful cleaner to stand by.

So last night was another late night – although it could, and should, have been an early one by the time that I’d finished what I had to do. However, the next two radio programmes that I need to do are also going to be celebrating special occasions and will involve a lot of work, and so the quicker I start, the quicker I’ll finish.

Consequently I put on my researcher’s hat and set to work. The preparatory stuff led to quite some progress so even if I did have to burn the midnight oil, it wasn’t wasted. And I’ll have to become used to it because I reckon that that’s how it’s going to be for a week or two.

And isn’t that a change from two or three months ago?

Once I finally made it into bed I didn’t need much rocking and there I slept until about 05:30. It was another phantom alarm call but I recognised it as such and was back to sleep quite quickly though – it hardly disturbed my rhythm.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I fell out of bed and hauled myself off to the bathroom for a good scrub up and to apply the deodorant. I didn’t bother with a shave because I don’t think that Emilie the Cute Consultant loves me any more

Having washed my undies I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and see if Zero had come back. But no Zero last night. Instead, there was a strange dream about all of the women in our family being lined up and undressed. When they were totally undressed everyone stood in some kind of queue to welcome the arrival of the Roman legions. There was more than that in the dream but going back in the return of this dream is really all that I remember and I can’t remember anything at all about the actual dream itself which is a shame

In fact, no it isn’t and I’m glad that the dream stopped there because, had it carried on, it would have quite put me off my breakfast. If I’m going to be present when women are stripping off, I’ll choose them myself, thank you, not have them imposed upon me. Knowing my luck it will be a bunch of retired Bulgarian female weightlifters rather than the female members of an Olympic beach-volleyball team.

We had my white Passat estate and we decided that we’d put it back on the road. We went over it, made a list of everything that needed doing including the bodywork, bought all the pieces and began to clean it and weld it. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be and we did the most important parts. We found that we could drive it but the brakes were binding. I’d adjusted the handbrake but my father was going to climb underneath it. I said that it was either a 17mm or 19mm spanner. He felt it and thought that it was bigger than that. I noticed that he was trying to undo the void bushes so directed him to the correct area. Later on we were having a look. We’d done the rear of the boot but the sides of the floor needed patching so we bought some body panels for that and were busy measuring, preparing to cut out the old rot and fit the panels when the alarm went off.

Ahh yes! Good old Saltofix. A company in Oswestry that made replacement body panels and tailored patches for cars. The amount of stuff I bought for the Cortinas we were running must have kept them in business. There is still a stack of body panels and patches down on the farm that must be worth a fortune, especially the two rear quarters for a Ford Cortina MkIII in the back of the Luton Transit that are worth a King’s ransom. I wonder how much any body panels for the Vanden Plas in my barn would cost me these days. I should have bought them when I dragged the car out of that scrapyard in Belgium in 1998

Isabelle the nurse came along later. We decided (or, rather, she did) that we should try with just two plasters on my legs today. Like I said yesterday, I do admire her optimism. However she thinks that there’s a dramatic improvement already but I remain unconvinced.

After she left I made breakfast and read READ MY BOOK. Thomas Wright has now left Stonehenge and gone to look at the remains of Old Sarum down the road.

However before he left he made an interesting remark. Although it seems to be assumed that no archaeological excavations took place at Stonehenge until Aubrey’s excavations in 1666, he seems to be aware of an ancient book that states "in 1620 the celebrated Duke of Buckingham , King James’s favourite , did cause the middle of Stonehenge to be digged, and this underdigging was the cause of the falling down or recumbencie of the great stone there ."

Back in here later I made a start on my Welsh homework and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I worked my way non-stop all the way through two-thirds of it, leaving just one-third for next week. It’s not like me to race ahead of myself. usually I’m always struggling, miles behind relevant deadlines.

Having done that I carried on with my research into the next programme and I’m now beginning to choose the music that I want to feature. It should actually mean slightly less work because one track is over 17 minutes long and I’ve been waiting for an appropriate moment to feature this.

The cleaner fitted my anaesthetic patches onto my arm and stayed for a chat for a while. The taxi that came for me was the luxury car that’s usually driven by the boss’s daughter. However the driver was a guy who has taken me to Paris in the past and we had a really good chat.

Just five patients in the Dialysis clinic today. In fact the staff outnumbered the patients by about four to one. The young nurse who looked after me, Julie, is a self-taught pastry cook and she showed me photos of some of her creations. And I had to say that I was well impressed.

She was also quite good at wiring me up to the machine and I hardly felt a thing.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today, but she kept her distance and didn’t even come within my range of vision. I merely caught a couple of glimpses of her down the corridor.

Instead, it was the senior doctor who came to see me. "I have some good news for you" he said. "We can cut out one of the medicines that you’ve been taking".
However, without hardly drawing breath, he went on to say "but that will create a couple of side-effects so I’m going to give you a prescription for three more to counter the effects."

So is that now 36 per day? Or 37? I lost count a long time ago and quite frankly, I couldn’t care less. I’m sure that there are more medicines in this apartment than in the chemist’s shop in town.

As for the famous confrontation about the plasters and the compression socks, the doctor didn’t even bother. Julie the Cook took down (not “off”) my socks, took off the plasters, cleaned the legs with antiseptic and put the new plasters on. Exactly the same that the nurse does.

So I don’t understand any of this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day that I crowed about having driven the trick cyclist away. However it’s a mistake to underestimate your enemies. She’s made of far sterner stuff and was back today.

We had all of the usual pregnant pauses to try to provoke a response, so I showed her MY TRAVEL WEBSITE instead.

Because I don’t have a password to access the intranet I had to show her on a ‘phone instead of my laptop. And the result of this is that I now have a log-in and password to access the intranet. The World’s my oyster!

In recompense I suppose that I shall have to throw her a sprat and say how much I’m in love with my mother and how as a baby I had uncomfortable feelings about my nurse. She probably is a follower of Freud.

During the process I fell asleep – not a crash-out but a gentle slide into somnolence and a gradual fading out. And while I was asleep, Castor came to see me. She just stood there, at the foot of the bed without saying or doing anything, almost as if she was watching over me like a guardian angel. And I had a great wish to reach out to her but pipes and tubes in my left arm, a blood pressure brassard on my right so I couldn’t move. Can you imagine?

The unplugging was also painless and without complications and I was soon in the taxi to come home. In fact, it was the earliest that I’ve ever been out of there and after my cleaner watched me up the stairs (I managed seven before I had to use my hand to lift up my leg) I actually had some free time to myself.

My cleaner thinks that I’m much more motivated, much more enthusiastic and much more switched-on than I was before all of this started. If that’s the case, I wonder what I’ll be like in twelve months time.

Tea tonight was as usual, a stuffed pepper. Just as delicious as usual and with plenty of stuffing left over for the rest of the week. It was followed by a slice of apple cake with coconut-flavoured soya dessert for pudding. And nice it was too.

So bedtime now, ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow.

Before I go though, seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of one particular person who went to see a psychiatrist
"And what can I do for you?" asked the psychiatrist
"I’m having terrible trouble" replied the man. "I keep on thinking that I want to kill myself. What should I do?"
"You should start" said the psychiatrist "by paying me in advance"

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Sunday 13th October 2024 – ♫ I WOKE UP …♫

♫… this morning♫

At 06:05 and thought “here we go again. Just when I was hoping to have a really good sleep for once …”

But I did in fact go back to sleep again. And I’m glad that I did because I had a visitor – a most welcome visitor too who came to see me in my sleep.

But more of that anon.

After I finished my notes last night I dictated the notes for the two programmes that I’d prepared during last week and, having reviewed them yesterday, it was much easier, and much quicker to dictate them. And hopefully, much quicker to edit them too.

Everything was finished by about 23:15 which meant that, although it was after my target time of 23:00, there’s a lie-in tomorrow until 08:00. And how I need it too.

Nice clean shorts in which to go to bed too. Life’s becoming a luxury here these days.

As I said just now, I awoke at 06:05 and after a few minutes I was convinced that I could raise myself from the dead but I’m glad that I didn’t. Instead, I had sweet dreams until I awoke again at just a couple of minutes before 08:00.

When the alarm went off I sprung out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a quick wash before the nurse arrived.

The spare dressing gown fell off its hanger on the back of the door. There it was on the floor and I didn’t have time to pick it up. I suddenly began to think “when will I have thirty seconds to pick it up and hang it back?”

Yes, there is so much to do that life is becoming a race – a race against time. LIFE IS JUST A BET ON A RACE BETWEEN THE LIGHTS and that’s all that I can say.

The nurse came late today. She made a few encouraging noises and left off a few of the plasters to see how my leg improves. She’s certainly more optimistic than I am.

After she left I made breakfast and READ MY BOOK. Today we’ve made it to Stonehenge, as it sits in its natural state.

But before we leave the villa at Bignor, it’s worth mentioning that Thomas Wright had heard that "the farmer to whom the land belongs is desirous of selling that portion of it which contains the remains of the Roman villa ," and so "If the government will not interfere in a case like this-which it would do in any other country—it is to be hoped that there is public spirit enough to secure the preservation of these interesting remains on the site where they stand , in such a manner that they may be seen to the most advantage by every one that will visit them"

And so we see the seeds being sown of the idea of the National Trust, or English Heritage. But it took until 1882 and the Ancient Monuments Protection Act before the Government took any action, and even then the Roman Villa at Bignor was not on the list.

Back in here I carried on with the dictaphone notes. I’d made a start earlier before the nurse arrived but hadn’t finished. I was doing a character analysis of Lewis Carroll at one point last night. We met him once and had to ask him whatever questions we liked. Then we had to go away and write down our assessment of his qualities. For some reason or other I was busy writing stuff about his liking of folk music

Lewis Carroll – can you imagine how hard it would be to do that? Everyone is a product of his time and should be judged in respect of the prevailing conditions at that moment. How difficult is it for us to be able to put ourselves into the mindset of another period and judge someone in accordance with those characteristics? I personally am fed up of people making judgements on historical characters, or even contemporary people living in another culture, based on our own standards of today.

There was also something about being on the trail of the Romans in Derbyshire, finding soapstone blocks that had been really well-shaped and practically professional and listening to a talk on them. At the same time people were interested in reading about French place-names and how they’ve derived from the one that was given by the Romans when they came to settle in the area.

And that reminds me – It’s never “Roman” in France. The French don’t accept that the Romans brought civilisation and urbanism to France. It’s considered that France was already civilised and urbanised before the arrival of Romans and so the remains should be called “Gallo-Roman”. I’ve seen a historical meeting in France almost break out in a brawl when someone used the word “Roman” instead of “Gallo-Roman” to describe some remains.

Having awoken once, then back to sleep and who should come to see me but Zero! There had been a festival taking place, a music festival. It had been pouring down with rain and all the crowd was dancing under a huge piece of plastic. When it was time to go everyone ran with the plastic to put it away but I was caught in the middle and overwhelmed by all of it. In the end I managed to make my way to where my friends were waiting for a ride back to the campsite. We were sitting there chatting away. One of them was Zero’s father. I ended up round at his house. His brother-in-law was living with him – a right waster, fond of alcohol and buying all these derelict cars and somehow selling them on at a profit. It was really annoying Zero’s father. We were having a really good chat when his son came up and asked “could you do me a favour on Sunday?”. I asked “what is it?” and he replied “could you run me to Gatwick?”. I replied, laughing (and when I listened to the dictaphone I found that I had been laughing too), “I could run you to Gatwick but i certainly wouldn’t be for a favour”. He answered “OK, but I’ll buy you a pint”. I thought “it’s going to take a lot of pints for me to drive him to Gatwick”. We actually agreed on an arrangement. When I went to pick him up he had Zero with him. We arrived in London and I dropped him off. She asked if I could run her somewhere else. I replied “yes” and we ended up at some traffic lights in the south of London. She alighted and someone, I don’t know who, said “that’s the last you’ll see of her”. I set off to go north from there. There was some trouble with the van’s clutch. If I tried to pull away in second instead of first the clutch would go dead and the van wouldn’t move. If I then put it in first it wouldn’t move back and I had to perform some really complicated arrangement to make the clutch grip. That was causing all kinds of problems in these traffic queues with cars cutting in. I thought to myself “I’ll be glad to join the motorway and go back to when I don’t need to use the gearbox. But I was perplexed about the appearance of Zero. I thought “what is it that she’s doing down here in London? Why didn’t she want a ride back etc?

And then I stepped back into that dream later. Zero’s father went out and then her brother made arrangements to go out with his friend. That left the two of us alone together. We had a cup of coffee and a chat and she took her brother a cup of tea. Then we went into the living room and began to tip out the drawers of one of the units where she kept her things. What she wanted was some lined wallpaper that she would line her drawers and put her tools in, all in one long line in this drawer. But we hunted high and low in that house for some lined wallpaper – wallpaper with lines on it. I knew that there was some somewhere but we couldn’t find it. This was beginning to become complicated and we had all her things tipped out all over the living room floor.

How nice is that? Not only did Zero come to see me, I stepped back into a dream and she returned. I couldn’t wish for anything better and I wish that she’d come back to see me more often. As Counting Crows sang, MAN, I SURE DO LOVE THEM RED-HAIRED GIRLS.

Having done that, I attacked the two radio programmes that I dictated last night and by the time I stopped for tea, they were complete, 11th track added for each programme, notes for that extra track written, dictated, edited in and now I have two more programmes fully prepared that take me up to 20th June next year

There were plenty of interruptions during the course of the day.

Firstly, I had soup to make. Due to a confusion between my cleaner and myself I ended up with two lots of mushrooms. That can only mean one thing – mushroom soup. And seeing as I had some soya yoghurt, then that could only mean cream of mushroom soup.

Rosemary rang me too for a chat. Just a short one today – 1hr 11 mins. So my Welsh homework is now pushed back to tomorrow too but it can’t be helped. Talking to friends is much more important.

Tonight’s pizza was excellent again. I had two tomatoes that were looking the worse for wear so that called for a home-made tomato sauce as I made the other week. This time I made a couple of changes to what I did last time and the sauce was actually beautiful. It certainly made a good pizza

So now I’m off to bed, in the hope that Zero will come to see me again.

But all his talk about vans, France and so on reminds me of the time I went in the van to p-p-p-pick up a Penguin, a Percy Penguin in fact, from work one evening
A new French restaurant had opened in Holmes Chapel and I wanted to try it out so I asked Percy Penguin "do you fancy some Coq au Vin?"
"Yes please" she said, and climbed over the seat into the back

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