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Wednesday 11th September 2024 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… late night last night

One of my groundhoppers was out and about at Linlithgow watching Linlithgow Rose take on East Stirlingshire in the Scottish Lowland (Tier 5) League so I stayed up to watch the action.

Nicely poised after an hour at 1-1, East Stirlingshire threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at Linlithgow in the final 30 minutes in an attempt to snatch the victory.

And so you might expect, in probably their only attack in that period, Linlithgow roared off down the other end of the field and scored an unlikely goal to win the game.

Why this game is important will be revealed in due course

Anyway once it finished I did what I needed to do and crawled off, later than intended, much later in fact, to bed.

At some point during the night I awoke but I can’t remember all that much about it. I must have gone back to sleep quite quickly.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was at another football match in Central Scotland. It was just getting under way and I don’t think that the teams had been presented yet to the public. I was there ready to watch it and that’s all that I remember. I was interrupted when the alarm went off

And you’ll find out why I said “another” in due course.

But anyway I headed off to the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, not forgetting to make use of one of the little pots that the nurse had left me

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And here we go. We had another one … "another one?" – ed … of these corners that was taken. It was at a football ground in Stirlingshire, the home of an amateur league side, quite well-appointed for what it did. They were apparently – Arbroath were visiting. They tried their luck against Arbroath but the ball went into the cucumber display and stuck here so they went back from Inverness, they’d bought one of the worst flights that they’d had and the one to Malta wasn’t any better. They were all ready for a brand-new challenge after this and see where this would take them.

It seems that I can talk nonsense without really trying, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that already. Although the ball going into the cucumber display reminds me of a match at St Gervais a good few years ago when a sliced clearance out of defence went straight through the open hatch of the pie hut scattering just about everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

I dreamed that I already had the report of a dream laid out i front of me. It went something like “it was a game of pêl-droed yn erbyn …” and I listed two clubs with their names in Welsh and carried on talking about the game. Here I am, doing it in Welsh again. I wish that I could remember what it was all about then.

Yes 05:30 and we’ve had another phantom alarm. I was in the Scottish Highlands watching two games of football. One of them was a female match. There was a goalkeeper whom I know really well but I can’t think of her name. There was a centre-half playing. The two of them had recently formed some kind of couple which had raised a few eyebrows in professional sport but that’s how things have involved in the game of pêl-droed. I can’t remember any more of the stuff like this except that a lot of this dream was actually in Welsh yet again

So there you go – games of football in Central Scotland, dreaming in Welsh – you can tell what’s on my mind these days. But why doesn’t it work when I have Zero, Castor and TOTGA on my mind for as long as this?

The nurse came around to take my blood sample, the other sample and to deal with my puttees. She is getting to be very good at blood samples, doing it these days without a hitch.

But the list of instructions that she gave me to carry out tomorrow, and the list of things that I have to tell my cleaner, it’s unbelievable.

And after making all the necessary arrangements so that I might try my best to remember it, I needn’t have bothered because the two met each other in town and the nurse told the cleaner directly.

But the upshot of this is that it’s “all systems go” for the dialysis tomorrow.

After the nurse left I made breakfast and while I was eating I carried on reading my ROMANS IN BRITAIN book.

Today we were discussing the Roman fort that guarded the crossing of the Conwy River at Caerhun. I did some reading of my own and found the map reference – 53°12’58″N 3°50’02″W

And if I were to tell you that a typical Roman fort of this type would be either square or rectangular with rounded corners, then copy the map reference into “Google Maps”, click on the aerial photography view rather than the map view, and if you’ve zoomed in enough, what do you see?

If you look slightly above and to the right, you’ll see a strip of a different vegetation type going down into the river with some corresponding traces in the water near the opposite bank. What’s the betting that that’s what’s left of the Roman cobbles that made the ford?

Back in here I had a pleasant couple of hours finishing off the paperwork and when the cleaner came I was in the process of emptying the waste paper into the bin. You’d be amazed at how much I’d collected

But once that was gone, I made a start on the next radio programme and in an uncharacteristic burst of speed, finished everything except the dictation and the final piece of music.

At some point too I rather regrettably passed off into the wilderness. While I was asleep I dreamed that my brother was accompanying me as I reflected on a dream that I’d had, and I was waiting there for him to began talking again so that he’d awaken me.

Just recently I seem to have been doing that a lot, dreaming about the dreams that I’ve had.

Tea tonight was one of the best vegan curries and naan breads that I have ever had. And it’s just as well because my appointment with destiny is tomorrow.

As I said to my faithful cleaner, I’m not going to worry about anything. I’m just going to be swept along with the flow and go wherever the currents take me.

So where will it all end? My hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche summed it up when he said "I concluded from the beginning that this would be the end; and I am right, for it is not half over yet"

But the subject of “ends” reminds me of the two guys arguing in the pub.
"Are you the front end of an ass?"
"No I am not"
"So are you the rear end of an ass?"
"No I am not"
"So then you must be no end of an ass"

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Monday 9th September 2024 – HERE WE GO AGAIN

Up to our ears in paperwork.

The paperwork has been on hold for several weeks while I’ve had other things to do but circumstances dictated that I had a look at it today

And you’ll be amazed how, in this world of digitalisation and computerisation, I can find so much paperwork that needs to be sorted and filed. And once I think that I’ve reached the end, I come across another bundle.

One of the things that I thought that retirement would bring me would have been an end to all of this. But what with hospital issues, old-age pensions, mobility issues, there seems to be more than there was when I was healthy.

That’s easily measured by just looking at the thickness of each year’s paperwork. What I have here only starts at 2016 but the early years seem to be positively bulimic compared to the mountain of paperwork for this year so far. And at this rate, I’ll be sorting paperwork in my sleep.

And last night I could have done that because it ended up being another late night. One of my groundhoppers had gone over to Dublin to watch Ireland v England so I ended up staying up to watch the carnage.

Once in bed I went to sleep quite quickly as you might expect after all that, and slept a deep, uninterrupted sleep for all of four or five hours.

Nevertheless I was flat out when the alarm went off at 07:00 and it was something of a struggle to haul myself up out of bed when the alarm went off.

However I was soon in the bathroom organising myself ready for the day. It’s Isabelle the nurse for the next 8 days so I need to look my best of course.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We also (also?) discussed the idea that someone might be mad and create all kinds of problems for the Earth by detonating nuclear missiles and so on. The guy to whom I was talking was more interested in the idea of there being huge excesses rather than there being actual catastrophes, him threatening everyone with an unexploded bomb, the rocks crushing away before his bones beneath his palace etc. I replied “don’t worry, people will just think that you’re mad”. “How would that be better?”. I said “well, throughout the whole of the Kingdom they asked, and good questions too”.

That all sounds quite gruesome. I’ve no idea at all what I was on about here

Meanwhile in football it was 3-1 or 3-2, I can’t remember. They won 3-1 and the result never really looked in doubt. The victorious team played really well and managed to contain the (…fell asleep here …)

I can’t believe that I fell asleep mid-sentence but I suppose that it might happen now and again.

Someone else was messing me around for some reason or other about a payment. I’d paid it somewhat under pressure and done some research when I returned home. I found that I wasn’t liable to make this payment so I excluded it as from … and that caused a lot of complications about this. In the end I phoned my mother and told her that I was taking two days from work. One day we were travelling on the (…fell asleep here …)

Here, I dreamed that someone took the dictaphone from me and put it on the bedside cupboard. But it was a dream because when the alarm went off I’d lost the dictaphone down the bed somewhere somehow, it was still recording and had been for almost 2.5 hours. My beautiful rhythmic breathing and so on.

When the alarm went off there was a plot to kill a German General who used to nip through the British front line in his car on his way to his own troops. Whenever he did that he was heavily armed and fought off any attempt to attack him. The British used to play a lot of music really loudly, drums and everything, to awaken everyone to the fact that he was coming that way in the hope that someone could stop him. I’d proposed mining the road and having a detonator somewhere where someone could just press a button and blow up a crater with him in it but for some reason no-one had ever thought of that. One day we were driving a couple of Army lorries along that road. All of a sudden there was just total mayhem, lorries overturning and swerving out of control. At first we thought that we’d hit a mine but we hadn’t – there was no noise of any explosion so it couldn’t have been that. While all of this chaos was going on, one of the lorries having to perform some violent manoeuvres burst a front tyre and overturned. In the middle of all this carnage a black Ford Thames van with German number-plates on it disappeared into the distance. Speculation was that this van had been driving recklessly, overtaking a couple of lorries, and had carried out some manoeuvre that had caused one of the lorries to swerve and that had caused a pile-up of vehicles behind it so everyone seemed to think that this German Ford was responsible for this chaos but no-one could ever catch it. I tried to send a message to the border so that they could hold him at the border as he tries to go through but there was no way of contacting anyone at the site of the accident.

The van was actually a Ford Thames 400E, the predecessor to the Transit and the competitor to the Bedford CA but for some reason I described it as a 117E. Anyway it was a model that was mainly built for the British and Commonwealth market although some left-hand drive versions were built by Ford of Denmark so finding a left-hand drive German-registered example would be a rare bird indeed. But during the days of the “Red Ball Express”, the shuttle service of war goods from the ports to the Front Line, the haste and indiscipline was such that there were hundreds of accidents and many a French farmer, garagiste or haulier acquired an “Army Surplus” lorry or Jeep that had some kind of accident damage and which had been simply left by the roadside.

Later on Hurricane Isabelle blew through the apartment. She’s convinced that I’m being dialysed on Tuesday and wants to know why I haven’t had this prescription – the one that I don’t have – made out

If I don’t have it I can’t do anything, but this was what started me off on this paperchase today.

But not until after breakfast. And especially until I have had a coffee.

During breakfast I read some more of my ROMANS IN BRITAIN and today he mentioned the fort on the River Tweed at Newstead.

Newstead, probably the most important and substantial Roman town north of Hadrian’s Wall, has been excavated a couple of times. The most famous time was by James Curle in 1905 and he prepared a report that ran to 235 pages and a lovely list of books that contributed to his opus. And as it happens, his report is AVAILABLE ON-LINE for downloading, to add to the huge pile of books that I need to read.

It was situated on the banks of the River Tweed and was the junction presumably of the road north from Londinium and Eboracum and where the roads branched off to each end of the Antonine Wall across the isthmus between the Forth and Clyde. When the Antonine Wall was abandoned in AD184 and the Romans retreated to Hadrian’s Wall that ran between the Solway and the Tyne, it’s likely that Newstead was abandoned too. The amount of artefacts excavated at Newstead is astonishing and seems to suggest that the abandonment and subsequent flight was so panic-stricken that they could only take away what they could carry in their arms and left the rest behind. It really must have been something, this flight, and it’s a shame that whoever it was who was responsible for it could leave no written record. I would have loved to have read it.

And believe me, I shall be sifting through his list of books that the author read to see what I can find to add to my downloaded library of books to read

As for the site itself, which was discovered when the railway bridge just down the road was built across the Tweed, it’s nothing like as clear from the air as the site at Caersws is, sue, I imagine, to the constant ploughing of the site.

There was some football on the internet next. This rage for televising your home games seems now to have percolated into Wales and Newport City in the Second Division were broadcasting their match against Llanelli.

Newport picked up a couple of good players in the transfer window and they are mounting a challenge for the title. I hadn’t seen them before so I wanted to watch the game. And I quite enjoyed it too.

But it’s sad that I can only live the life of a groundhopper these days thanks to someone else’s GoPro.

The next task was to have a play around with that site where I have to send my medical expenses claims.

After much binding in the marsh I seem to have made it see a kind of sense and managed by chocolate time to upload all the receipts that I could find.

My cleaner came by with more supplies and the day’s post. We had a chat about this and that (I’m keeping well clear of chatting about “the other”) without solving any real problems and then I came in here to attack the paperwork.

Almost straight away I found two more receipts but I suppose that it’s like that. But now anyway I have about 5 different piles of paper that need either merging together or putting in the medical folder for the next batch of medical claims.

But where’s it all going to end?

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta. A lovely meal, especially when followed by home-made apple crumble

So now I’m going to have another 20 minutes filing and then go to bed

But it’s a mystery where things go to in this place. I’ve lost yet another clip for these puttees and I’ve not been anywhere for it to disappear to.

And did I really have this prescription? Or is the doctor imagining it?
It could be that, I suppose. I was told that he was the doctor on duty when they were filming the remake of “The Invisible Man”
After an accident on the set he went to see the doctor and the receptionist announced him
"I’m busy right now" said the doctor. "Tell him that I can’t see him at the moment"

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Sunday 8th September 2024 – I’M FED UP …

…of trying to make this stupid site work.

This afternoon I’ve been trying to upload my claim for reimbursement of my medical expenses but every time I try to attach an attachment, such as a scanned receipt, the site locks up, and that’s that.

What should have been a half-hour job has so far taken me all afternoon and I’ve not done one batch yet, never mind the whole package

Still, as the bank robber said when he was arraigned before a midget judge, these little things are sent to try us

Everything that I touch at the moment seems to be either breaking or falling off right now. I’m at the stage where I’m afraid to go to the bathroom these days.

It wouldn’t be too bad if I were to have an early night, I suppose. But the nights are becoming later and later these days.

last night was well after midnight before I finally hit the sack, long after I wanted to of course and I was thinking that it’s a good job I don’t have to get up until 08:00.

At least I was asleep quite quickly and although I awoke once or twice during the night, I simply turned over, tucked myself back in and tried to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 it was quite a shock and I had a desperate scramble around trying to find the ‘phone with the alarm so that I could switch it off.

When the bedroom stopped spinning round I could stand up and go into the bathroom to sort myself out. Even if it is a Sunday when I do nothing at all, I still have the nurses coming round.

Back in here I made a start on transcribing the dictaphone notes but was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse.

He was once more in full chat mode. He tells me that he rang up the clinic in Avranches and it is indeed Tuesday when they want me to start, as I suspected that it probably was.

he says that he told them that I didn’t want to come on Tuesday and they told him to tell me that they’d ‘phone me on Monday

They can ‘phone me as much as they like but it won’t change anything. I told them right at the start of all of this that I am not available on Tuesdays.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book on THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN

Today the author was discussing the Roman marching camp at Caersws in mid-Wales. There were two camps at Caersws, a permanent one that had a vicus attached and which has now been built over. But there was a second, earlier camp just outside the town that the Romans built as a temporary camp when they first explored the area.

The map co-ordinates for this early camp were given as 52°31’13″N 3°25’05″W so I set my on-line map to “aerial view” and copied in the co-ordinates.

Considering that this was a marching camp that was only used for a couple of years at the very most in about 60AD, almost 2,000 years ago, it leaped off the page of the map right at me when I looked for it

And that surprised me. I didn’t expect to see anything. I know that a couple of readers are interested in archaeology so see if you can see it on an aerial view of, say, Google Maps too.

Back in here later there was football and I watched as Stranraer were put to the sword by local rivals Annan Athletic.

Stranraer are a division lower than Annan so we knew that this Cup match was going to be tough, but Stranraer were matching them blow for blow until Annan were awarded a very dubious penalty.

Dubious because firstly I wasn’t convinced that it was a foul and secondly, even if it was, in my opinion whatever took place took place outside the penalty area

Still, I’m not refereeing it, someone else is, and he awarded a penalty, which Annan converted.

After that, Stranraer fell away and the 5-1 score-line was somewhat exaggerated. Stranraer were much better than the score-line suggested.

One of my groundhoppers was out and about too so I was treated to Lanark United v Bonnyton Thistle In the West of Scotland League Division Two

Lanark raced to a 3-0 lead in the first half and in the second half they simply parked the bus and played out the game until the final whistle, to the frustration of Bonnyton.

Lunch was a lovely cheese and tomato sandwich made with fresh bread, followed by some fruit. But there won’t be fresh fruit much longer because it doesn’t seem to want to keep.

Thiis afternoon I finished off the dictaphone notes from the previous night. We were writing match reports for football games in which we’d played or refereed. It became extremely complicated because we didn’t have half the vocabulary that we needed and had to invent all kinds of phrases, some of which were good and some of which were rubbish, in order to describe what we wanted to say. But in the middle of all of this they were talking about another Covid injection so I went round into the main office of my section which my old boss was running. I went in there and gave myself an injection which I thought was extremely brave of me. I found out later that it was the wrong one so after waiting for a while during which nothing happened, I took my injection, went to see my old boss and asked him if he’d inject me. He was busy arguing with a couple of his workforce, a couple of guys, and didn’t really see me at first. I was standing in his office rather self-consciously until he suddenly noticed me and I arranged for my injection. The next week I was signed to play with Singapore so not only did I order that, it was a syringe different to the one to which I was accustomed so I had to change my injection yet again. I thought to myself “this is becoming too much of a good thing, isn’t it? There’s too much going on here for me to take in at the moment, my pepper box, especially if it involves food”.

Whevever the final line came from I really don’t know. It doesn’t fit in with the rest. Neither does asking my old boss to give me a Covid injection before I’m transferred to play for Singapore so I dunno. Nothing seems to make any sense these days

We were next going on a coach tour with the office. We had several coaches lined up for the staff. We had to walk to pick up the buses, which was quite difficult for me on my crutches but I just about made it and hauled myself up, only to find that the buses then drove back to the office to pick up everyone else. Then we set off. Because the seats were so cramped I had to swing round and put my legs in the corridor, to which one girl took a great deal of exception.. We arrived at our destination. There was a woman there swimming around so I borrowed her newspaper. She came along and said something to me to complain so I put down the newspaper. Then we ended up going for a swim, then for a walk around outside then back on the bus to go back to the swimming pool. We then had this issue again about me sitting with my feet in the corridor and the one female passenger not liking it. We returned to the swimming baths and there was the woman again with the newspaper. She was actually running the baths. She was rummaging through a box or something. It was food and there was some diabetic bread in there. I told her “thank you for providing the diabetic bread”. She looked at me and said “no, yours was the sliced loaf” so being somewhat beaten I replied “this is a (name of our employer) coach …fell asleep here …

That was a confusing mess too and ended up with me rhythmically breathing deeply into the dictaphone, totally out of this World and out of my head

There’s no pizza dough, as I found when I went to take some out of the freezer. I’m sure that I made some the other day but wherever it might be, I can’t fond it. And so I had to make a batch of that. Two lumps went into the freezer in the fridge and the other one I rolled out and put on the pizza tray ready to make my pizza.

When the dough had risen again sufficiently I assembled it with all of the ingredients and put it in the oven to bake.

In between times I’d been sorting out my medical expenses into date order insofar as I could find them and then trying to prepare a claim. But as I said, the site just keeps on freezing up every time I try to load an attachment.

At a certain moment I fell asleep too. The strain is obviously far too much. However, while I was asleep I went away with the fairies. I was visiting a town with a couple of people, man and wife, who may well have been Zero’s parents. We’d been looking around a shop and were now standing outside. The guy wandered off somewhere and after a couple of minutes so did the wife. I asked the guy when he returned if he knew where his wife had gone and he said that she had gone to buy some nylons. I asked where and he told me that she was in the shop behind us. He pointed to a modern car showroom and accessory shop and told me that he knew that I couldn’t wait to go inside. Just then a group of guys turned up on motorbikes. One of them was a beautiful bright green Honda CB450. I said to the woman, who had now come back from the shops, that if I were to have another motorbike it would be one of those. Suddenly the road became really busy with cars. We noticed the time and it was shortly before the ferry sailed back to the mainland so we imagined it was all the traffic going to catch the boat. I suddenly realised that we needed to be on it too but we were nothing like ready.

I have some very happy memories about a friend who had a CB450 when we lived in Chester in the early 1970s. Back in the days when its rival was a Triumph Speed Twin it was a real beast of a machine. But today, it would be rather pedestrian compared to modern bikes of an equivalent cc. But if it were Zero’s parents in this dream, I’m disappointed that they didn’t bring Zero with them. Who wouldn’t be?

The pizza maybe needed another 10 minutes of cooking – it seems that this new cheese acts as some kind of thermal insulation. But the cheese itself is delicious, melts perfectly and tastes wonderfully good. My faithful cleaner did well to find this batch.

So now I’m going to have another little go at uploading some of these documents to see if I can do any better, and then I’m off to bed.

But talking about newspaper reports … "well, one of us us" – ed … reminds me that the real heroes of newspaper reporting are the sub-editors who think up the headlines.
Everyone admires the sub-editor who, writing a headline for an article to inform everyone that, during the Korean War, General MacArthur was on his way back to his troops after speaking to his advisers. The headline was "MacArthur Flies Back To Front"
My own personal favourite was the headline in 1953 when Sir Vivian Fuchs set out on a trip to cross the Antarctic continent. A headline that read "Fuchs Off To Pole"

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Saturday 7th September 2024 – THE PLAN WAS …

… to sit back and do nothing whatever today.

And so of course, as you might expect, I have been quite busy and done quite a lot of stuff. But nothing really towards the huge backlog of stuff that’s been building up. That seems to be growing even bigger as I’m simply swept aside in a torrent of paperwork and the like.

What didn’t help matters very much was that I had another really late night last night. After falling asleep so completely during the afternoon I was quite wide awake during the evening and come bedtime I wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep.

Too tired though to haul myself off my comfortable chair and cross the couple of inches that separates chair from bed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s more exhaustion that I’m feeling than actual tiredness.

Nevertheless I did end up sorting myself out and at round about 00:30, long after the time at which I would have liked to have gone to bed, I finally hit the hay.

As seems to be the case these days I didn’t need much rocking. I was soon asleep and there I stayed until all of 04:30. After that, it was a miserable night of tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 it was close to Christmas. Some of our friends were visiting. We hadn’t prepared any Christmas cards and had no idea about what we were going to do about this. It was noticeable that our friends sent their children to the door first so they were obviously paving the way to see what kind of reception they’d receive. They’d receive a warm reception of course but they wouldn’t receive a Christmas card. That might upset them. When they finally turned up at the door she (…my friend’s wife…) said something like “is it any use us doing this?”. It was something like this that she said.

Right at that moment the alarm went off. When the room finished spinning around I hauled myself out of bed and crawled off to the bathroom.

In the bathroom I had a really good wash, a shave and of course I washed my shorts ready for tonight. I must at least make an effort to be clean and tidy, even if I don’t feel like it.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. For some reason there was a pile of clothing in one of my dreams too, a pile of clothing for a small girl probably about seven or eight years old. I have no idea why but there were some high-heeled shoes there of the type that had a small high heel that didn’t have any superstructure above the sole at the back to hold the shoe onto the heel at all. It was just held on the foot at the toe by a strap there. I don’t know where all this came from.

And neither do I either. I know that I’m likely to have some strange dreams every now and again but sometimes even I’m amazed at what I dream.

The next one is even more bizarre. For some reason I was identifying as a woman last night. I was playing for the Belgian national ladies’ volleyball team against a team from the Netherlands in a cup match that was taking place against the Netherlands. While we were waiting for the game to start I saw the crowds arriving. There was a bent little old woman leaning over a stick. I thought that I recognised her – it turned out to be my aunt from Ottawa. After the game she came over to chat. She asked about the performance. She thought that it was rather lethargic. I explained that that was hardly a surprise. This morning I had to get up really early to travel all the way here. I’d missed my breakfast. I’d normally come on the train as far as here all the way from Belgium but luckily this morning one of the other competitors and her friend brought me in their car.

Unfortunately this modern way of thinking is not for me, where you can self-identify as something completely different and expect everyone to adapt to you. Let’s face it – I self-identify as an intellectual who can write some really excellent prose and I wish that everyone would respect my choice and identify me accordingly. But some of the names that I have been called are not only unkind but completely disrespectful and I am offended. So there! As far as my writing goes, I can only echo the comments of the Reverend George Gilfillan of Dundee who, when commenting upon the works of another author 150 years ago, said "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this"

This was a series of dreams about a small girl. She reminded me a little of Percy Penguin, probably in her late teens or early twenties but she wasn’t very switched on. You had to explain even the simplest of tasks to her three or four times before you thought that she might have grasped it. Everything that she was doing was always a couple of tasks behind for example I remember telling her once to do something then telling her to do something else then telling her to do something else, but she came back with a problem about the first thing “yes, I’ve emptied the bath” which she should have emptied ten or fifteen minutes ago. It was very hard for anyone to look after her because she was so willing that she’d run around trying to do things and being too eager, she’d usually do them incorrectly or there would be a mistake where she’d forget something so all her work would have to be re-done. It was terribly frustrating because she was a lovely, keen, willing girl but she just could not grasp the same ideas that we had as quickly as we did.

“I remember telling her once to do something then telling her to do something else then telling her to do something else” – hark at me, barking out the orders. Who do I think I am? However, as we very well know, some people are like that and need to have orders barked at them if ever you wish to accomplish anything. Sometimes, organisation can be something of a thankless task.

The nurse came round as usual and he seemed much more like his old self – almost friendly in fact. However he asked if I had been down to the pharmacy to pick up the anaesthetic cream.

and so I asked him how he thought that I should have gone down there but he didn’t answer me. Instead, after much beating about the bush he asked me if I’d received the prescription.
"What prescription?"
"For the anaesthetic cream"
"I’ve not had any prescription"

It turns out that I should have had a prescription for the anaesthetic cream, I should have collected (or arranged to have it collected) it from the pharmacy and everything should be ready for the nurse to apply the cream because I start dialysis on Tuesday.

"No I don’t" I replied. "Apart from anything else, I told them right at the beginning that I’m not free on Tuesdays"

Then we had the usual argument that I have with everyone in the medical profession. Their job is to keep me alive, and the longer they do so, the more of a success it is.

However that all comes with a payoff with regard to the quality of life. I’m determined to have some quality in my life and if it means that I shuffle off this mortal coil six months or a year or two years earlier, I couldn’t care less.

There’s no way that I’m going to finish my days living like a vegetable in a Home. As Neil Young said, BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO FADE AWAY

As you might expect, the nurse was horrified but that’s just too bad. That’s the way it is. If they come for me on Tuesday I’m not going and that’s all there is to say about the matter.

After he left I made breakfast and then sat down to read my book. I’ve finished the book on THE ICKNIELD WAY and have started on THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN

That’s a book written in 1923 as a collection of lectures that were presented at Toronto University. It doesn’t pretend to be a scholarly tome but more of a lightweight approach as an introduction to what will inevitably be an inexhaustible study

Once breakfast was over I made some more bread. I’d used up the last of the old loaf this morning.

The bread didn’t rise as well as I would have liked. Nevertheless it’s quite light and fluffy. It was really nice having a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch made with totally fresh, soft home-made bread.

This afternoon I had a chat with Alison on the internet and also rang Rosemary back after Friday when I fell asleep.

Rosemary’s garden s doing really well, which is nice, but we didn’t have much time to chat – only a short one of one hour and seventeen minutes – because I had a caller at the door.

My transformer (thanks, Grahame, for the heads-up) to power the Genz-Benz has arrived at last. But I can’t use it yet because the power cable that I need wasn’t included with the order. That’s coming from the USA apparently and will be here in a few days time. So we still aren’t up and running.

And then we had the football. It’s sad to say it, but Llansawel are already down, in my opinion, after just a handful of games. If form is anything to go by, the remaining relegation place should be occupied by either Aberystwyth or Y Ffint, and they were playing each other this afternoon.

It’s smething of a grudge match because Aberystwyth’s manager apparently said something unkind about Y Fflint when they were relegated a couple of seasons ago, and that has rankled with Lee Fowler, Y Fflint’s manager.

So far this season I’ve already seen each club, and for a team second-bottom with no points, I’ve been impressed with Y Fflint. They’ve taken the attack to the opposition and have been robbed of some of the spoils on a couple of occasions just by the cruellest of bad luck.

On the other hand, although Aberystwyth haven’t impressed me, they always seem to find something special at the important moments.

Today’s game was actually quite entertaining. It roared from end to end and each team created quite a few chances. It was littered with mistakes though – neither team could hang onto the ball and would lose possession far too easily.

For once though, Y Fflint had the rub of the green and while the score of 2-0 in their favour might be an exaggeration, you have to ride your luck when you can. If they play with this kind of spirit and enthusiasm and their luck holds, they should be OK but sometimes this league can be cruel.

Tea tonight was as usual, a baked potato with salad and one of my breaded quorn fillets followed by home-made apple crumble. I know that my meals are quite repetitive but I happen to like them and that’s what’s important.

So right now I’m off to bed, later than usual but with a lie-in until 08:00. And won’t I be happy when I can say goodbye to all of this nonsense with the nurses?

But all of this talk about people self-identifying reminds me of the man who went to the psychiatrists
"Doctor! Doctor! I think that I’m a dog"
"Really?" asked the psychiatrist. "How long is it that you’ve had this feeling?"
"Ever since I was a puppy"
"I think that you’d better lie down on my couch"
"I can’t" replied the man. "I’m not allowed to"

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Thursday 5th September 2024 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… excitement, things seem to have quietened down today. And having straightened things out with the nurse, he seems to be much more compliant this morning.

However, it remains to be seen whether this new state of calm persists, or whether it is simply the calm before the storm

But after the storm yesterday I tried to find enough calm to go to bed early but once more I was swept up in a tidal wave of things that needed to be done and it was once more quite late by the time that everything was finished and I could go to bed.

And glad I was to find my way under the covers because the effort of everything right now, from climbing up all the stairs to having brain-fade with this course, is driving me berserk and it’s completely wearing me out.

Once in the bed I fell asleep quite quickly yet again and there I stayed, flat out, until all of … errr … 01:55. Luckily, after a few minutes of tossing and turning I was able to go back to sleep again.

But the fact that I’m awakening so easily tells me that it isn’t sleepiness that’s tiring me out, it’s exhaustion. And that’s the kind of thing that’s worrying.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was helping a young African boy to read but I’ve really no idea why. That’s all that I can remember of that which is a shame because it would be the kind of thing that’s bound to be interesting.

Having made it to the bathroom I had a really good wash and scrub up, changed all my clothes and washed my trousers and undies in the sink. That’s a habit that I picked up during the days in which I was living out of a suitcase and which I try to keep up.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise there was something on there. This was where I had a LORD OF THE RINGS dream but you don’t really need to know any more about this dream, especially if you are eating your meal right now.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream like this. At one time I was having them quite regularly, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but they seem to have calmed down just recently, in a similar way in which Zero, Castor and TOTGA have slipped off the radar. But if I could have the one type of dream as long as I had the other, then I would. As STEVE MILLER ONCE SANG, "you know you gotta go through hell before you get to heaven".

When the nurse came round, he was much calmer and quieter, almost subdued. He didn’t have much to say although he reckoned that the time that it’s taking my legs to heal, I’d be better off speaking to a skin specialist and the next time I see the doctor I should mention it.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading my book while I ate. Today my prose-writing poet has referred us to a series of books written by a local Berkshire author called Eleanor Hayden. Apart from the fact that she’s one of the rare female authors of that epoch, he waxes lyrical over several pages about her books, concluding with "her (books) will last somehow or other as long as an old wall"

With a recommendation like that she has to be worth reading, and to my surprise, ONE OF HER BOOKS IS AVAILABLE. Considering the flowery prose that he is prone to use, then if he’s impressed by hers then it really has to be something.

And then it was class time. Day Four of Five. And once more we bashed through three more units and I’m exhausted. We had a 15-minute chat session at the end of the lesson and by then I had total brain-fade and so, it seemed, did everything else.

But at least if we’re overwhelmed by the course, the people are really nice. As I said the other day, I know a few of them from other courses but one person whom I didn’t know is actually a classically-trained flautist who plays other musical instruments.

At the moment she’s learning to play the harp, so I told her about Roxanne whose Wednesday afternoon activity back in Brussels was learning to play the harp, which was very impressive in a child of eight years old. I wonder if she kept it up.

During the pauses I didn’t do much except to unwind, and once the course had finished and I’d had my hot chocolate, I came in here and crashed out.

The cleaner came in too for a chat. They’ve a couple of additions to the vegan cheese range at LeClerc so she wanted to see if I’d identified a variety that I like. Mmmmm – Cheddar Cheese is on offer …

At some point during the day, and I can’t remember when, I’d had a ‘phone call. The clinic place in Avranches wants to know the name and address of the nurse so that they can send him a prescription.

This may be to put the anaesthetic cream on my arm, and if so it’s a sign that the start of dialysis is approaching rapidly. God help me – an God help the people who are going to have to try to connect me.

For tea tonight I tried an experiment. I put a couple of handfuls of frozen veg into the microwave and a frozen slice of pie into the air fryer with the heat turned right down.

Fifteen minutes I gave them, and when they were finished they were perfect. A knob or two of butter on the veg and I had a lovely tea tonight.

However I was more interested in the experiment of defrosting and reheating in the air fryer. Defrosting in the microwave is all very well but it makes the pastry go all soggy. Using the big oven is a waste of resources for that so it was worth a run in the air fryer to see what happens.

And apart from the fact that it ended up rather dry, which is not really a problem, it worked exactly as it should.

And so right now I’m off to bed ready for my final Summer School tomorrow. And much as I have enjoyed it all, I’m exhausted and I shall be glad of the rest.

But talking about the nurse, the course and everything else driving me berserk, I’m reminded of the story told to me by one of the doctors at the hospital.
Apparently someone had come into the Accident and Emergency with a car steering wheel, the column of which was embedded in his groin
"How on earth did that happen?" asked the doctor
"I’ve no idea" replied the patient "but I’ll tell you something. It’s driving me nuts"

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Sunday 1st September 2024 – SUNDAY NIGHT IS …

… pizza night. And tonight’s pizza was an absolute classic.

This vegan cheese that my cleaner found for me really is the business and I hope that LeClerc keeps on stocking it. I shall have to give her instructions to find some more of it just in case …

That’s the highlight of the day, it has to be said It wasn’t really a good day today unfortunately.

Last night was pretty good though. With nothing to dictate (I’m keeping off the two projects that I’ve done because I want to review them first) I was in bed before midnight.

Of course, 23:00 is my planned curfew time but as there’s no alarm until 08:00 on a Sunday morning I can stretch a point.

Once in bed even I was surprised at the speed at which I fell asleep and there I stayed until … errr … 07:15 when I awoke.

Awake I may have been but leaving my stinking pit? Not on your Nellie! Even though I couldn’t go back to sleep I didn’t give in and leave the bed. There I stayed until the alarm went off.

Staggering off to the bathroom, I had a good wash and clean-up and then back in here to wait for the nurse to come. There was time to transcribe the dictaphone notes while I was waiting. There was someone who was having some kind of control because people were being examined for what they were carrying. One guy was carrying a kilo of something or other and when they asked what it was, he gave the name in French for it, which of course the people didn’t understand. It sounded pretty banal and ordinary enough but with the name being in French and they not understanding it they were rather concerned. They decided that they would give him a thorough search. In the meantime there were all kinds of explanations and arguments about this particular name and how everyone really ought to know what it was etc

This is the thing though, isn’t it? You ask any schoolgirl of my generation what a bèchamel sauce or a bain-marie are, and they’d know without hesitation. But nowadays the emphasis on schools is to pass the exam and lift your school up the league table, and these subsidiary lessons have gone by the board. Educating kids isn’t just passing exams, except in the UK where it’s the exam that counts and nothing else matters.

The nurse came round to sort me out this morning and also to interrogate me over my pizza. He’s probably looking for cookery tips, I suppose, but I don’t have too many to give him. I just do things and adapt recipes to suit my tastes and diet.

Breakfast was next, a nice, slow leisurely stride into morning with porridge, toast, coffee and juice. And a tonne of medication of course. I took y time, reading more of my book on THE ICKNIELD WAY.

Interestingly, the author tells us of an abandoned railway that he crossed on his walk. Not surprising but this is 1906. It appears that there was a railway into Newmarket that only operated for a handful of years and upon the bankruptcy of the operators it closed down – in 1851. One of the very first railway closures.

Just to make sure, I looked at an aerial photo of the area and there are still a few vestiges of the line remaining today.

Back in here there was football. Stranraer were away at Bonnyrigg so there was no stream this morning. Instead I watched East Fife stick five past Clyde with Nathan Austin, who’s far too good for this division, stick anther two to go with the three that he scored last week

One of my groundhoppers was out and about too so we ended up with a Scottish Cup match between Bo’ness Athletic and Kilwinning Rangers. Bo’ness won with a comfortable 2-0 scoreline.

But there’s something going on with these groundhoppers. There are three patrolling the grounds in Scotland and three or four patrolling them on the Irish mainland.

It’s a major initiative, I know, from the Scottish FA to publicise the game and flood social media and the internet in general with the games, but I’m wondering about these groundhoppers. Their output is all pretty much of a same style with similar editing and the like, so I’m wondering if there’s a School of Journalism somewhere that’s pushing these guys out to practise their art.

Lunch was a taco roll with salad filling, seeing as I’ve run out of bread. And I had to rush because I had Hamilton Academicals v Airdrie United. The Accies 2-0 up with just minutes to go to the final whistle but then two moments of inattention and that, dear reader, was that.

At this point I fell asleep for a while but woke up in time to head to the kitchen.

First task was to make some dough for bread. While it was rising, I took the pizza dough that I’d taken from the freezer after lunch and now that it was defrosted, gave it a good working over and rolled it out onto its tray.

And with half an oven to fill I made another crumble like the one the other day. And it looked delicious.

The bread dough had now risen so I gave that its second kneading and put it in its mould.

While I was waiting I cleared up and washed up everything, and when the bread dough was ready I put it and the crumble in the oven

While they were baking I assembled my pizza and had a chat on-line with a neighbour who had contacted me and very kindly brought me some more strawberries

When the bread and the crumble were cooked the pizza went in. And when it came out, it was absolute perfection.

So right now I’m off to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight tomorrow.

But talking of abandoned railway lines and stations and the like, there’s a railway station in the North of England called “Dent” – which is all very well, but it’s almost five miles from the town whose name it carries, and over some steep hills too.
One day an American tourist staggered into a pub in the town and exclaimed "why did they build the goddam railway station so far from the goddam town?"
"Well" said the landlord "I suppose that they thought it a good idea to build it close to the railway line."

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Saturday 31st August 2024 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… typical Saturday when I seem to have rather regrettably spent most of the day asleep.

It beats me why it seems to be that Saturday I grind down to a complete halt without actually making any progress whatsoever with the mountain of work that I need to do.

Mind you, admittedly I was rather late last night going to bed. Never mind midnight – it was long after that when I finally hit the sack and crawled into bed.

Once more, I was asleep quite rapidly and there I stayed until the alarm sounded at 07:00. There might have been the odd bit of tossing and turning during the night but nothing to worry about.

So at 07:00 I staggered off into the bathroom and did what I had to do, including washing my shorts. That’s a regular Saturday task and even though they had been through the machine earlier in the week they still went in through the washbasin.

Next task was to deal with the washing-up from last night which I hadn’t touched. What with the football running so late last night I’d just finished off here and gone straight to bed and left it. I know that it’s my pet peeve but if there’s a choice between washing-up and bed, it’s no contest.

Third task was to put away the frozen carrots. They’d been all prepared and had been draining on the worktop overnight. If they go into the freezer too wet they all cling together in one big clump.

The freezer is jam-packed full and it was something of a struggle to have everything fitted in – even more of a struggle than it normally is. I really need to empty some of the stuff but I’m not sure how to do it as I’m sure that the stuff in there is breeding and multiplying behind my back

Finally I could make it back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a game at Hwlffordd. The team was playing against someone else. It was under enquiry by the Secret Service who believed that the players of one team were communicating with the enemy, presumably by the fashion in which they were playing. They had observers there watching the game very closely. Because the secret escaped that there was at least one observer there that changed a few people’s thoughts about the situation but we pressed on al the same. Although we didn’t find anything when we had criticisms to answer about it we could point to the fact that we waited until all of our enquiries were completed before making a report and if we hadn’t sent the observers to watch the game the report would have been frivolous, unclear and possibly incorrect.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we were at Hwlffordd for a match last night. But whether the Secret Service was represented there was another thing. There were probably a couple of managers of local teams though, surreptitiously sizing up the opposition for the future.

By the way, I mentioned that I’d try to find a video of Hwlffordd’s sublime third goal last night. To my surprise it’s not been edited by the broadcasting company from the video of the game so I’ve done it myself and you can WATCH IT IN ALL ITS GLORY.

Believe me, it’s well-worth it. You won’t see a finer goal like this anywhere else.

Later on I was at work and the Occupational Guidance came to see me. He was only a young guy. We had a chat about my health. He then asked me if I’d take a little walk, a few steps so that he could see how I managed. I told him that I was totally unable to walk under any circumstances without my crutches so he replied “well, I’ve just seen you walk around the office on your crutches so why don’t you walk a few paces for me so that I can observe you properly?”. I stood up, picked up my crutches and set off on a little walk around the office.

Strangely enough, when I was awake I couldn’t think of the name of the job of the person who comes to check how you are coping with everyday life after an illness or injury. Yet there I am in a dream and I can come out with words like “Occupational Guidance”. I ought to go to sleep more often. But it’s all very well these people coming round to check on me, but they ought to be proposing things to help me out. I’ve had the thing to help me ride the porcelain horse but that’s all.

The nurse came round as usual and went through the process of changing the plasters on my legs and sorting out the puttees. He was quite gossipy but didn’t really say very much and was soon off on his way. I would have thought that after all this time there would have been an improvement by now but that’s not happening and it fills me full of dismay.

After he left I made breakfast and had a very leisurely start to the weekend reading some more of my book on THE ICKNIELD WAY.

What’s interesting with these old books is to see what they have to say and surmise from the evidence that was available 100 or so years ago, and while you’re reading, read a more modern version, say, from Wikipedia, that tells us about these places but with the benefit of another 100 years of research and evolution of archaeological skills.

For example, an earthwork that was described in an ancient book as “probably a Danish camp and certainly not much older” was noted in Wikipedia (which is not always correct I hasten to add) as “archaeological investigations in 1992 revealed it to be an Ancient British camp dating from Before the Romans”

In the book I’m reading there’s talk of a “derelict but magnificent packhorse bridge” whereas the village entry in Wikipedia tells us of “an old bridge which was demolished some time in the 1970s”.

After breakfast I came in here and vegetated for a while. I seem to be taking ages to liven up and start work. Once I was up and running I prepared the video extract that I mentioned earlier so that seems to be working well enough

Then I went to wash the puttees that had been soaking in a bowl for several days. They should be nice and clean now and drying quite nicely in the bathroom.

This afternoon I went to make a start on the next radio programme but regrettably I crashed out and that, I’m afraid, was that for quite a while.

Once I awoke there was more football on the Internet.

Apart from leaving the washing-up overnight, another one of my pet peeves is this modern, totally suicidal habit of playing the ball out from the goal-kicks.

In my day we had big towering centre-forwards matched by big towering defenders. Wingers pumping high crosses into the penalty area led to some famous aerial duels with forwards like Jeff Astle, Joe Jordan and Brendan O’Callaghan battling it out with centre-halves like Ron Yeats, John Wile and Gordon McQueen.

Goalkeepers added to the mix with potent long kicks pumped upfield and it all added to the chaos, panic and confusion in the opposition’s penalty area.

But these days, it’s all of this possession football where the object is to hang on to the ball as long as possible. It’s all very well if you have the skill but if you don’t, it’s a disaster.

Y FFlint, second-bottom of the table, were rather fortuitously 2-0 up against another team down there in the basement, Y Barri, and then they concede two soft goals. So with the game drawing to a conclusion they win a goal kick so they decide to hang on to the ball so that the match would end in a draw.

Anyone care to guess what happened? You can find out HERE. What a shambles. If I were Y Fflint’s manager Lee Fowler I’d be furious.

seriously though, it’s going to be a long hard struggle for Y Fflint. Their only hope is that maybe either Aberystwyth or Y Barri are worse than they are. They can’t go throwing away points like this, especially against the other teams stuck in the basement with them.

Tea tonight was another one of my delicious breaded quorn fillets with a vegan salad and baked potato. A different brand of quorn fillet and not as good unfortunately but we have to try these new vegan products that LeClerc offer if we want to encourage them to keep expanding their range.

So that’s everything for tonight. I’ll go to bed and start again tomorrow I reckon

But that story about the Occupational Therapist reminds me of the story about the guy who hobbled into the Chemist’s and asked to be shown some talcum powder
"Walk this way" said the chemist.
"If I could walk that way" said the man "I wouldn’t be needing the talcum powder."

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Thursday 29th August 2024 – THEY’LL BE DANCING …

… in the streets of TNS tonight!

For the first time ever, after over 30 years of trying, a Welsh football club has finally qualified for a Group stage of a European competition.

Admittedly, it’s only the Europa Conference, the least of the three competitions, but it’s a Group stage nevertheless. So hats off to manager Craig Harrison and his team. And to Chairman Mike Harris who has supported the team, the League, and Welsh club football in general since the mid-nineties

It’s quite fair to say that his support has somewhat distorted the power dynamics of the League, not always in any way that is favourable to to the other clubs and this minimum of €3,000,000 prize money will distort it even more. But it’s still a magnificent achievement

What would also be a magnificent achievement would be if I were able to go to bed before 23:00 but again last night I fell way short – or, rather, overshot rather badly. I don’t know what I’m doing or where the time is going these days but everything seems to be taking so long.

There was no reason at all to be late last night but nevertheless it was approaching midnight when I finally hit the hay.

The good news was that I didn’t need much rocking. I was asleep quite quickly and despite waking up a couple of times for no good reason, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Then it was a rather undignified stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good wash. And then a lap or two around the apartment collecting up the dirty clothes and the like, and setting the washing machine off on the go. I’m running low on clothes again.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and more importantly, to see who went with me. Nerina came the other night, which made a pleasant change from members of my family, but I’m still living in hope that Castor, Zero and TOTGA will come back at some point.

No such luck last night though. I had another one of these phantom awakenings. I awoke being sure that I’d heard the alarm for a big Welsh football team whose name I’ve forgotten up to the place opposite Arbroath where I’d come to buy some things. The two of us came back down to the ground ready to meet the players and to explain our tactic and hope that they’d enjoy it but I would of course be like a fish out of water if I confronted the players because I had the ability to find out what they would do about him and this game of games and nothing at all about the Game of Thrones

And if anyone can make any sense of that little lot, please let me know.

I was at work and I actually had a date with my Greek friend. Of course people in the Diffusion service heard about it and contacted me to chivvy me and tease me about it but I didn’t pay it any attention. It wasn’t until they started talking about what she was going to eat for breakfast that I began to think much more carefully about what was going on. Suddenly I had a mail but couldn’t find out who it was from but it was about the following day and it was headed “breakfast”. Looking down the list was like a breakfast that you could order from the place where we were staying, whether it was a Continental breakfast or Healthy breakfast or Cooked breakfast etc. She’d chosen the Energetic breakfast, or someone had chosen it, and sent it to me. This is where I began to think “is it she who is coming to see me? Am I to expect a new keen energetic Greek friend or the old lethargic one? I’m not too sure. Or is she finally going to forget that she’s a human being and participate in some of the joys of being human? I don’t know. It all sounded too good to be true to me and if they do sound too good to be true then they usually are. We shall see

That was rather a strange dream too. But as for my Greek lady-friend, she was strange too. Whenever I was “with” someone else she was attaching herself to me in a rather bewildering fashion to such an extent that even Roxanne noticed, but when I was on my own she kept a very considerable distance away from me. It was a shame really because she was a lovely girl, so much so that if I had ever had to choose between her and the Irish girl who also kept a very discreet distance from me, I would have had quite a struggle. However, both of them had far more sense than to ever become seriously entangled with me and I can’t say that I blame them. I know that if I ever were given the choice, I’d untangle myself quite rapidly, and hats off to Nerina who lasted almost nine years

That’s the first road sign that we’ve seen for Middle Earth, The Falls of Gondolin, and that’s where we turn off on our adventure and side-track ourselves in that direction to find out what Tolkien wrote when he wrote about the fall of the city, see who was involved and what the story and what the story was all about

Yes, THE FALL OF GONDOLIN is not a place but a book, one of the adventures of Middle-Earth written by Tolkien. But you could immediately imagine it being on a road sign referring to a cascade of water somewhere in the vicinity

The nurse came round and sorted me out, but he didn’t stay long. He couldn’t make his wi-fi card reader connect to the internet to read my health card so he took it with him to return later.

By now the washing was finished so I emptied the machine and hung everything up, then went for breakfast and to carry on READING MY BOOK ON THE ICKNIELD WAY for a while. These ancient books are really quite interesting and absorbing.

While I was at it, I did some research into the author. He was called Edward Thomas and is much better-known as a poet. But despite him being married and of somewhat senior years, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles in World War I and was killed at Arras in 1917

It was another slow start to the day but once I’d managed to wind myself up I attacked the second one of my outstanding projects for the radio.

That’s now finished too, although as usual, I’ll go through the text that I’ve written and there will probably be several rewrites and amendments before it’s ready for recording

Just a couple more holes to fill in in my sequence before I can carry on roaring off into the sunset.

But I still am struggling somewhat with this huge pile of concerts, trying to work out dates and running orders. And as seems to be the case, we have nothing at all for weeks and then half a dozen concerts on the same day. So which one do you choose?

That is definitely what you might call a “First-World Problem”.

There was the break for hot chocolate and home-made ginger cake (and thanks, John, for the helpful suggestion) and also, regrettably, to crash out for a while.

My cleaner brought up the post this afternoon, but no Health Card. Either the nurse forgot or else he still couldn’t make his card reader connect.

But then we had the football – TNS v the Lithuanian champions, FC Panevezys

TNS had, to everyone’s surprise, including their own, won 3-0 away from home in the first leg. But with no fit striker they simply packed the midfield and played possession football for the whole 90 minutes.

It ended up as a 0-0 draw, which also surprised no-one, but that as all that they needed to go through the final stage of the qualifying tournament to reach the Group stages, the first Welsh club to do so since Welsh clubs began to compete in European competition following the creation of the League of Wales in 1992

Strangely enough, TNS DID have a striker on the bench.

A couple of weeks ago, in an effort to avoid a fixture pile-up, they sent out what was effectively a reserve team to play Y Fflint. In the close season they had signed a winger from Caernarfon, Sion Bradley, and in the game at Y FFlint they played Bradley as a makeshift centre-forward.

And badger me if he didn’t score a hat-trick

Had it been me in charge of TNS I’d have put him on the field tonight up front to see if lightning would strike twice

However, my opinion is that why TNS signed Sion Bradley was not that they wanted him or needed him, but it was to stop him going to Connah’s Quay to replace Jordan Davies.

No tea tonight regrettably. The football came in the way of all that. So I’ll go to bed hungry and have a good breakfast in the morning.

At least I’ll be in some kind of shape. There will be some heavy heads at Park Hall in the morning

But that reminds me. Amongst the crowd celebrating at Park Hall Stadium tonight was a Polar Bear
He went up to the bar and said "a double gin and …. lemonade"
"What’s with the pause?" asked the barman
"I was born with them" replied Nanook

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Saturday 10th August 2024 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… all that much better today than it was yesterday. There has been a slight improvement to be sure but almost anything would be an improvement over what surely must have been one of the worst days of my life.

It was another late night last night. and I’m not talking about midnight or anything respectably late but I’m talking about times like 02:00, that sort of thing.

Something awoke me at 05:45 and I’ve no idea what it was. At te time I was in the middle of some kind of panic attack thing about how I must catch a bus to somewhere, a long-distance coach. I have to be somewhere else by 08:00 to board this bus and I’ve no idea what time it is and when the alarm goes off will I have time to go – another one of these panic attacks. But whatever awoke me sounded so real that I actually left the bed to answer my phone, which hadn’t rung or even received a message, so I’ve absolutely no idea why I would have done that.

Having made sure that there was nothing going on that might have been of an importance I went back to bed.

These days I’ve had a few of these panic attacks while I’m asleep.. I wonder if some part of my body is telling me something and that I need to take heed. But I really can’t think where I have to be that involves any kind of travel that I would undertake in a long-distance bus. The only place where I would ever be likely to want to take one would be between Montréal and Florenceville in New Brunswick, but not even that bus runs any more.

Once I was back in bed there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE I staggered off into the bathroom to have a good scrub, wash my night-time shorts and change my clothes. I have to look my best for Isabelle’s last day before she goes off on a well-deserved break.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in a scrapyard somewhere and we had an old Class 20 or similar shunter. For some reason we had to go to a quarry. At the quarry was another one of the same type of machine. There was some issue involving the driver of that particular machine so as we were there one of our people drove it. There was a huge argument and he ended up escaping in this machine, not before he’s destroyed half of their infrastructure, driven over the top of a crane cutting the bodywork etc. The bailiffs or someone turned up at our place and wanted to take away our machine thinking that it was theirs but when they compared the registration numbers of our train with the registration numbers of the locomotive from the quarry they found out that it wasn’t the same so they couldn’t take it, so they left Then the guy turned up with this machine from a quarry so we ended up with two identical machines due to people losing their temper

Actually, I know someone who has a Class 20 diesel locomotive. He might even have more. He’s the neighbour of a former friend of mine and runs a company in Staffordshire hiring out locomotives to various railway companies and has a useful side-line ingoing round various locomotive breakers yards rescuing the more valuable spare parts. He started off with just one locomotive that he had bought to preserve but made a fortune hiring it out to the builders of the Channel Tunnel and, like Topsy, his business “just growed”.

Isabelle was in “chat” mode again today and she spent some time here. Having covered for her boss’s absence on holiday she’s now going off for ten days. He starts back tomorrow and their cycle of “one week on, one week off” begins again.

While I was having breakfast I was reading about the Maginnis Gulch Stampede, or Montana’s Phantom Gold Rush, an incident that was played to perfection in CARRY ON COWBOY

But for those of you who have expressed an interest, the book is called FOLLOWING OLD TRAILS, written by a newspaperman called Arthur L Stone.

Later on in the morning there were the highlights of last night’s game between Queen’s Park and Livingston, and then I joined that guy I mentioned the other day, Blair McNally, for a trip to the East end of Glasgow for Vale of Clyde v Port Glasgow Athletic, a proper amateur football match in about the eighth level of the Scottish Pyramid.

This afternoon I’ve been tracking down concert dates. And much to my surprise, because of all the ones that I’ve done this is the first, I came across one that took place on a date on which I will have a radio broadcast within the current cycle of programmes that I’m preparing.

So on 21st March next year we’ll be having a live concert from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1974. This afternoon I’ve mixed the music for the concert and I’ve written half of the notes. I could have written more but unfortunately I was away with the fairies for a while at some point.

While I was at it, I came across a few other interesting bits and pieces, and finally turned my hand to downloading a concert that had been sent to me by one of the musicians who took part, featuring the almost-last concert on which my hero Deke Leonard played.

It’s a real pity though because of how the dates fall, this one won’t be broadcast for several years yet.

Tea tonight was one of my favourite quorn steaks in breadcrumbs, with baked potato and vegan salad. And it was delicious as always. Something that I eat every week but why not if I enjoy it.

So now I’m going to dictate the next batch of radio notes and then I’m going to try to go to bed at something like a reasonable time.

But talking of “Carry On Cowboy” reminds me of the two bandits (one of whom was Sid James) talking to the Indian chief Big Heap (Charles Hawtrey)

Big Heap – "And this is my son, Little Heap"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "How"
Big Heap – "And this is my squaw. I bought her for two buffalo skins"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "Never mind how. Where?"

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Tuesday 30th July 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely tea tonight.

With plenty of stuffing in the fridge left over from yesterday, ordinarily I’d be having a taco roll with rice tonight followed by a leftover curry tomorrow and something different on Thursday

However when I was reading back a couple of years in my blog I noticed a reference to pies, and it suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t had a really good pie for ages.

Add into the equation the fact that I need to bake some bread as I have now run out, so the oven will be on, but the bread will only take up half an oven. There’s half an oven going spare.

And so the answer is pretty obvious. I hope that I can remember how to bake a pie because it’s been years

It’s also been years since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. At least, that’s what it seems like. And last night was no different. It was another late night when I finally crawled into my stinking pit

And once again, I didn’t need much rocking before I was fast asleep, dead to the World.

And there I remained until all of … errr … 04:15. This is becoming a habit.

However, today I managed to go back to sleep, at least for a short while. But since then I’ve had an annoying itch in my right wrist that is driving me to distraction. It’s been going all day.

Add to that the persistent dull throb in the left wrist where I had the operation and all in all, I’m in something of a mess.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom where I sorted myself out for the day and washed the crepe bandages that had been soaking for the last 24 hours. They are now hung up to dry.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone from the night. Someone rang me up to talk about a friend’s illness and how it was going to affect me. They rang a couple of times and wanted to speak to me about this kind of thing, making sure that I was aware of what was happening and what was going on, which was a surprise when you are asleep like that sometimes. I’ve no idea why

Then Nerina and I were living in Gainsborough Road. We were working on the Industrial Estate there. It was time to go to work but only one of the alarms had worked, which was mine, so I took my pushbike and began to cycle to work. Nerina, realising that I was going to work, dashed out of bed, dashed to wash, dashed to put on her clean clothes then leaped onto her bike and chased after me. She passed me at the corner and cycled off into the distance. There were one or two other guys who were cycling with her. I was hoping that she would find a place where she’d no longer cycle and she’d have to walk. For me, I was quite happy to push on on the bike but Nerina was rather more difficult. She wanted really to lose any confrontation like lhat. She was one of these people who would only do it if if it was all marked out and mapped out etc. But on this particular run she ended up talking to a couple of other guys as she was cycling and it was an effort to keep up with them that she made this distance between the two of us and once again there was nothing that I could do to close this gap.

All of this sounds familiar too, but that’s all water that has long-since flown under the bridge.

My friend from Stoke on Trent joined the Open University and began to study but he lacked the self-discipline and was unable to make much progress. He didn’t have what it took to knuckle down like that on a six-year course. We had a few arguments about his studying but in the end I left him to do what he wanted to do rather than what he ought to be doing and it all went pear-shaped. But it was interesting listening to someone at the University talking about the OU’s Marketing. First of all, they obviously hit the students with all of the renewal business etc but eventually they hit the sleazy Newsgroups and sleazy chatrooms to invite their members along. Some of their members did quite well at studying too when you consider their background. There was certainly plenty of different people and plenty of different classes studying at the University and I was glad to have been there at a very interesting time when we had their own new chat system where we could actually see how things were evolving

So I’m now running marketing campaigns in my sleep. But had this taken place 25 years ago when I was at University there would have been plenty of sleazy Newsgroups to go at. Usenet was at its anarchic, chaotic height and there were all kinds of things going on in its hidden bowels and a Marketing campaign would have had plenty of room to manoeuvre. As for self-discipline, a lot of people totally underestimated the amount of self-discipline you needed to study at the Open University, with no tutors and lecturers sitting over you, and work, colleagues and family getting in the way. I had to revise my study plan considerably after the events of 2001 which meant that we were working practically permanent overtime. But our chat system, “First Class”, was excellent. Hats off to the designers of that. We had hours of endless fun and games

I was teasing one of the kids who belonged to one of the women. I asked her what she wanted for dessert, whether she wanted Christmas cake or Christmas pudding. She couldn’t make up her mind so I told her that seeing as the Christmas cake was mine if she chose pudding I’d give her a slice of Christmas cake too but she was dithering about, umming and ahhing, couldn’t make up her mind so I was quite busy teasing her while all of this was going on but she still hadn’t made up her mind.

Teasing kids is all good fun as long as you know where to draw the line, because there is a point where although the adults think that it’s hilarious, it’s no longer fun for the kids. You need to stop a long time before then. However, I wonder who the kid was. She wasn’t one of my three favourite young ladies, which is a shame.

It’s Isabelle today for the next week or two. She was her usual cheerful self but she couldn’t hang around as she had a blood test to do back at her office. She was in and out in 5 minutes doing my puttees, but she didn’t forget to give me my injection.

After she left, I had breakfast and then for about an hour afterwards I did something that I haven’t done for ages – nice and comfy on my breakfast chair, I read my book, BYWAYS IN BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY or, rather, finished it off. I had about 100 pages to go but I was so deeply engrossed that after I’d eaten my toast I just carried on until the end.

The book, published in 1912, explains the author’s theory that many churches are built on old pagan religious sites to a plan that is proto-pagan in origin. It’s a fascinating book, as are most of these ancient tomes stored on-line.

It’s amazing how much has been forgotten too, when you read the facts that are disclosed within its pages that never made it onto the internet and into Wikipedia. And with people now just doing their research on Wikipedia and going nowhere else, all these facts will be lost for ever.

When I’d finished my book I phoned up the hospital at Avranches to say that I won’t be going to this appointment at the private hospital. But the surgeon and his assistant are away until 18th August. Could I call back after then?

So tell me – what good is this emergency number that I was given.

And then there were the final radio notes to edit from the batch that I dictated on Saturday night.

These radio notes are important because it’s for a live concert. There’s a World-famous live album recorded 50-odd years ago but the entire recording of the whole concert has somehow found its way into my possession, so on the anniversary of its recording I’ll be doing my own live concert and you’ll hear the album as it was meant to be, not how the producers wanted it.

This was something else that so engrossed me that I forgot my lunch.

After my mid-afternoon hot chocolate I set about making the dough for the loaf for the next few days.

And while the dough was proofing I had to think about the pie. The traditional recipe is 1 part flour to one part margarine, but I seem to remember that vegan margarine is much more oleaginous so I just used 50% of the butter and that worked out really well.

There wasn’t quite enough filling but a small tin of lentils did the job perfectly. And with the pastry that was left over from my mix I made an apfel strudel.

The oven was nice and full so I put everything in to bake while I washed up and cleaned up.

A pan full of potatoes and veg with gravy was next on the agenda and that was all tipped onto a plate with a slice of the pie.

One thing that I vowed never to do, but I did it all the same, was to eat at my desk.

But TNS were playing Ferencvaros of Hungary in the second leg of a Champions League match.

Following a defeat in Budapest they had their backs against the wall but they held out for 43 minutes when a goal that was so far offside that even the player scoring it looked with amazement at the linesman who had kept his flag well down

And when TNS conceded a penalty with 30 minutes to go to fall even further behind, then that was it. But they battled on bravely and deep into stoppage time scored a consolation goal. But to be quite honest, the Ferencvaros players had long-since clocked off for the night.

It’s fair comment to say that having drawn the top seed at this stage in the competition, the draw for this round wasn’t very kind to TNS.

But TNS and its officials have aspirations of competing in the Group stages, and they’ll encounter plenty of teams as good as Ferencvaros and many seeded teams much better who will join the competition at a later stage. So heavy defeats will become the norm if things don’t change.

On that note I’m going to prepare myself for bed. It’s another late night but it can’t be helped.

But going back to the old days of Usenet, it reminded me of that slogan that just about summed up everything about it
"Usenet – where men are men….. and where women are men …..and where children are Law Enforcement Officers"
Who will ever forget that “14 year old girl” trying to entrap a “15 year old boy” and he eventually took the bait and agreed to meet the girl.
It was in fact an elaborate sting operation by one County in California posing as a girl in the hope of catching a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage boy. What they caught instead was the Cybercrime Unit of the neighbouring County posing as a teenage boy hoping to catch a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage girl

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Sunday 16th June 2024 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… all that much more today than I did yesterday.

Quite possibly because I was catching up on my sleep from last night. It was another late night, probably the latest of all just recently. As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … time has gone out of the window in this place.

Hours, days, weeks – I haven’t a clue where I am really and as we know judging by recent events, neither has the hospital. One of these days our two eccentric circles will correspond, only for them to fall apart again.

Tomorrow anyway, we seem to agree on one thing, and that is that I’m going to Paris. However it now seems, judging by a text message that I’ve had that my appointment has been advanced to 11:05 from 12:30.

Clearly, Paris should be joining in this group of eccentric circular timespans because there is no way in this World that I’m going to be there for then. My taxi isn’t picking me up until 08:30 and it’s about a 4-hour drive. I keep on telling them in Paris that with all the best will in the World I can’t respond to last-minute additions or changes, with all of the logistical difficulties that are involved, especially when I only receive the notification on a Sunday when the taxi office is closed.

So it’s going to be 12:30 whether they like it or not, and if it’s too late so they have to cancel, then that’s too bad. With this latest round of hospital treatment here, I obviously have other fish to fry at the moment and we’ll worry about my cancer treatment at another moment.

Anyway, I was having a good read of all of these notes and things last night, completely lost track of time and ended up crawling shamefully into bed long after everyone else and hoping that no-one noticed.

It was pretty much useless though; I don’t know what time it was but it sounds as if they are dismantling a factory outside my bedroom door. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard so much racket inside a hospital as what’s going on at the moment and going to sleep was pretty impossible for quite a while.

But go to sleep I did eventually, hoping for a night like last night but no such luck. We had the 06:15 whirlwind and blitz though our rooms, and the 08:00 diabetes test. 0.79 mine was today, just on the limit for orange juice. The nurse didn’t think it worth it but I wasn’t going to miss out on extra orange juice. Ohh no!

Breakfast was late today which was a shame because I was starving. And the coffee was cold so they must have been held up somewhere which is not a surprise because firstly there’s a new guy on the ward who seems to need a lot of people buzzing around him judging by his tone of voice and secondly, there was much more movement than usual of people in beds coming and going, pushed by the orderlies but having to be positioned and so on by the auxiliaries

After breakfast I had a good scrub and then watched a film – INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY, the second film of the trilogy. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’ve downloaded a good few of these films onto my laptop for when I’m on my travels and bored in a hotel. I’ll never tire of Gordon Harker

And watch for the young girl at the piano right at the start of the film. She appears in tiny cameo roles in quite a few films of this nature during this period, and I still haven’t worked out why.

The doctor from yesterday came round to see how I was, so I had to pause the film. She seems now to agree that it is in fact Tuesday that I do go home, which is good news, but there’s still plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this respect.

More good news is that she weighed me. There are two target weights that I try to reach. The first is my “inactive” weight when I’m not running or keeping fit, and the second is my “active” weight when I am. And the weighing machine tells me that, fully clothed, I’m now below my inactive weight heading for my active weight target.

She of course thinks that it’s this water retention issue sorting itself out but I put it down to the starvation rations in this place.

The Creatine level is stable – at … err … 440. She told me that that was good news but I told her that it would be better news if it were stable at 270 where it was before all of this performance began or even stable at below 100 where it’s supposed to be. What’s this “300 is a critical level” thing all about?

Her reply was that I seem to be coping really well with the limitations and it would have been a different matter entirely had my body not responded to the shock treatment that they gave me when I came in.

After she left I carried on watching my film. Lunch was late too, but for a change I received everything that I was supposed to. Things are definitely looking up in that respect

This afternoon I watched another film, BEHIND GREEN LIGHTS, a cheesy detective thriller from 1946 with William Gargan and Carole Landis who are both actors far too good for this sort of script. Nevertheless, for passing an idle 90 minutes, there have been worse ideas than watching this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too which was a surprise. Amongst the people taken by surprise by our sudden movement was a certain Frenchman who was standing in the middle of where we pitched our tents shaking his head found by the military police wondering where we’d all gone. Apparently he used to come here every evening for reasons like … and was able to skip past the guards on the perimeter until he made it to the centre of the camp and whoever was billeted here

And then, it seems, I had a very similar dream later on. Similar, but in more detail and our mysterious man’s nationality had changed. Apparently the departure of 131 Squadron for the UK was so rapid that amongst the items left behind on the abandoned airfield in North Africa and recovered by a Recovery Unit was a young, immaculately dressed Italian man. Apparently he had been in the habit every might of climbing the barbed wire perimeter defences totally unobserved so that he could visit his “friend”, for whatever purpose one can only imagine. The departure had been so sudden that the airman hadn’t had the time to communicate the fact, and there was the Italian man, having climbed the barbed wire defences once more, face to face with an Irate Recovery Squad Officer.

For the record, 131 Squadron was a bomber squadron in World War I and a fighter squadron in World War II, yet I was convinced that I was discussing a bomber squadron which makes sense, with all this stuff that I’ve been reading. The squadron never served in North Africa anyway. In World War II it served in England, Wales and India, flying Spitfires and, later, Thunderbolts.

The rest of the day has been spent either working on more radio stuff or else reading more notes. Anything to keep out of mischief.

Tomorrow then, I’m off to Paris. What happens next, we’ll find out when we arrive. Apparently I’ll be given a picnic for midday by the hospital but that will remain to be seen. If the journey goes OK they’ll throw me out of here on Tuesday and I’ll resume the battle with just the Visiting Nurses keeping an eye on me, not that they did that too well just now.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I contracted this cancer back in 2015, the advice that every medical professional in Castle Anthrax gave me was to “save your strength for the struggle that lies ahead” and left me in no doubt that it would be a struggle. So despite all of the setbacks that we have had, the battle will go on.

First, though, I’ll go to see what the fight down the corridor is all about. But not before I mention that the story about Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the Australian airman yesterday reminded me of something else. I think that it was Percy Penguin, bless her, who told me about the time that the Queen Mother visited the Home where she worked.
There was one old lady who clearly no longer had both paddles in the water who objected to the fuss being made, and expressed herself in “forthright” terms.
"Don’t you know who I am?" said the Queen Mother indignantly
"No dear" said the old woman "but ask the matron. She’ll tell you"

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Friday 26th April 2024 – IT’S FLAMING DIFFICULT …

… trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t want to listen but only wants to speak.

The doctor’s surgery rang me up at the end of the afternoon to tell me that the blood test this morning had failed and needs to be done again, so he’s prepared a prescription and it’s stuck on his noticeboard to be picked up.

Ordinarily what would now happen is that I would ask my faithful cleaner to pick it up tomorrow. I’d then show it to the nurse on Sunday and she’d have to go away to fetch the equipment and come back on Monday to take it

However I had an idea.

The nurse’s office is in the same building so I rang her up to see if she was going into her office before coming here. If so she could pick up the prescription, fetch what she needed from her office and the blood test would be done on Saturday morning, two days earlier.

Simple enough?

You have absolutely no idea how complicated and involved the whole procedure came once the nurse answered the ‘phone. A simple “yes I am going into the office first” or “no, I’m not going into the office first” was all that was required.

Instead it turned out to be more like “War and Peace” and I’m still not convinced that my message was understood. We’ll find out in the morning, I suppose.

Last night I was in bed early for a change, which was very nice, but once more it took an age to go off to sleep which was a shame.

Once I was asleep though I didn’t move an inch. Not even to reach for the dictaphone because there’s nothing recorded on there from during the night. No-one came to join me on any nocturnal ramble, which is a pity.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed, switched it off and then staggered off to perform the usual morning routine.

More medication than before, of course. I swear that you can hear me rattle as I walk with all of the pills that I’m taking.

Once I’d washed down everything I laid out the dining area as she likes it and then made the dough for the batch of bread for the weekend. Very important, that.

For once, the nurse missed her aim with the blood test and had to have a second go. She’s usually quite good at finding the vein compared to her colleague who struggles. She then dressed my wound and put on my puttees.

Next stop was to prepare a shopping list for my cleaner. Mushrooms, cucumber and one or two supplies from the chemist’s. The nurse told me that we were running low of certain things

When the bread was ready and baked I made myself some cheese on toast in the air fryer and had it for a late breakfast / early lunch along with a nice, hot, strong coffee. That ought to cheer me up.

This afternoon I’ve been going through my shopping list because at some point next week I need a delivery and I’ve forgotten half of the stuff that I need. I bet that there will be a few items missing too when I finally send off the order because I’m really confusing myself these days.

Fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) several waves of sleep, I finally wrote the blog entries for last week when I was in hospital and didn’t have the travelling laptop with me. Thanks to what’s available at ARCHIVE.ORG and various other similar sites. I have a huge library of films and books on the computer and what with all of the music, I’m never short of things to pass the time, apart from all of the work that I need to do.

While I was doing all of that, the cleaner came round and whizzed through the apartment. Now it looks as if someone respectable lives here, and we can’t go having that.

Tea was a vegan salad with chips and some of these vegan nugget things. Really nice it was too There’s nothing like a good salad

So if I’m lucky I might have an early night tonight ready for the battle with the nurse tomorrow. She’s not going to be too happy, but I can’t help that.

But nurses are never very happy anyway. I remember once seeing a nurse walking down the corridor of a hospital with … errr … part of her upper body uncovered
"What’s going on here?" I asked
"It’s the trouble with these Junior Doctors" she said. "They never put anything away when they’ve finished with it"

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Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

… I bought a cheap hamburger press, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It was rather like an old flat iron made of plastic, with all kinds of sizes that fit inside each other like a Russian doll

It was rather cheap, both in price and quality, so I didn’t think that it would be all that much good. However I have to say that despite all that, I really am impressed with it. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin, and that will stir a few memories from times long-gone.

Actually my friend in Munich sent me ages ago a packet of dried stuff that he’d found in a vegan shop down there and posted it to me. So today I added water and mixed it, left it alone to do its thing and then out came the hamburger press

It actually made a nice, professional job of the rehydrated stuff and I now have four big, really solid burgers and as I said just now, I’m almost as impressed with them as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

“Whatever happened to that?” I asked myself. The last time that I saw it, it was being used as a brazier to burn a pile of weeds down the garden when I used to have my raised beds and vegetable plots. It’s probably now thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with weeds and been pulled into the soil.

It’s 10 years ago since I last planted any veg down on the farm. I had quite a lot of stuff there that year too. The following year I cracked on with the bedroom all the way through the spring and summer ad finished it – and actually moved in.

But we all know what happened in the autumn that year, don’t we?

It was almost 10 years that I lived full-time down on the farm and despite the primitive conditions I really enjoyed it. I keep on thinking – and hoping – that I’ll go back to live down there once more but I doubt that I’ll ever see it again.

For a start, I can no longer drive, and that’s always going to be a serious consideration. And then regular readers of this rubbish will recall the photos of when I was last there and it was overwhelmed by brambles. I no longer have the energy to fight my way to the front door.

Last time it took three of us – Rosemary, Ingrid and Yours Truly – a whole afternoon to reach the front door, and the time before that it was with Terry and he had brought his industrial-scale equipment to clear the path.

Still, as Dan Quayle once famously said, "It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back"

So I shall go past into the back and say that for a change I was in something of a hurry to go to bed last night. I didn’t hang about at all.

It was another good sleep as well and I was fighting fit (well, sort-of) when the alarm aronsed me from my slumbers.

First thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 15.1/9.0 this morning, up from 14.5/9.3 last night. So something must have annoyed me last night. And if you want to know what it was, you’ll have to read on.

After the medication I came back in here, but not for long. The nurse, having been late yesterday, was early today. Today’s moan was that the plastic bag I’d put out for him wasn’t big enough and that I need to wash my puttees. I wonder what tomorrow’s will be

The bread for my cheese on toast was delicious. I had a really nice breakfast later this morning. And then I had a pleasant relax and watched a film.

Another film that has come out of copyright is HELLZAPOPPIN’ so I spent a very pleasant 85 minutes watching it, and it was nice to relax for a change.

It’s not a film to everyone’s taste because it’s partly a musical and "YOU’RE NOT GOING INTO THE SONG WHILE I’M HERE" but where its interest lies is that if ever you want to know where all of the humourists of the 1960s and early 70s like Monty Python and Marty Feldman obtained their ideas, it’s all here, everything and much more besides, and it was done in 1941.

As far as comedy and humour goes, it was light years ahead of its time and will still run the course today.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We’d all gone out as a family together. We all had lifts with various different people so we were all spread out amongst the cars etc. A guy in a mobile home, the type that’s a shell that fits onto the back of your vehicle, took a fancy to one of my sisters. He persuaded her to travel with him. They disappeared but the rest of us kept going in a kind of convoy. We ended up stopping for the night somewhere at the side of a river. Just then this guy appeared with his camper. He wound down his window and said that he was terribly sorry but something had happened to our sister – some other people had come along, taken her, kidnapped her and carried her off. My mother said “I bet that she’s in the back of your camper”, just strode over there and wrenched open the door. My sister was in there on the bed lying down. She began to tell her tale of woe about everything that had happened to her, with my mother and brother becoming more and more angry as the story unfolded about this kidnap.

So there you are – that’s the reason that my blood pressure was up. I had the family round last night. I don’t ask them to come to visit me during the night but they always seem to, far too often for my liking. Why can’t I have Zero, TOTGA and Castor round as often as them?

But kidnapping my family members one by one sounds like a good idea. But you can all think of an idea for the ransom note – "pay us £5,000 or we’ll send them back".

That reminds me of the time when I fuelled up in Stoke on Trent only to find that I’d left my wallet behind at home. I had to leave my friend at the petrol station as hostage while I went to his house to fetch some money

When I told his wife what was the problem she told me not to bother going back, and to leave him there for good

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed we had a taxi job to do, to drive someone up to Newcastle upon Tyne for a meeting and then take them on to Edinburgh later. There was only one daytime driver and me about. The receptionist left a note for the daytime driver “be in the office 04:40 ready for a long trip”. I thought that long trips and office workers all on account etc don’t pay very much in tips if anything so I’d go to do that and let the driver carry on doing normal jobs. The only car we had was an old two-door Japanese thing from the late 1960s or early 1970s. It made something of a racket but I’d been out a few times in it and it seemed to do the job. A good long run like that would probably do it good. Of course Edinburgh – I had my niece in Edinburgh so I could go to see her. I tried to contact her but there was no luck. I thought “should I just turn up at the University there and speak to her?”. I thought that that’s probably not a good idea. But I was impressed that we had this job, going all that way but I was really disappointed that we didn’t have a better car available other than this old Japanese thing.

And that was an age-old problem too. We’d occasionally have some really high-quality work to do but never seemed to have a decent car available to do it, and when we did have a really decent car we’d never have the work. At times I despaired.

This afternoon I went a food-making.

Firstly, as I said, my friend in Munich had sent me some burger mix so I added the water, stirred it all in and then left it to fester for 20 minutes as according to the instructions

There was a box of do-it-yourself falafel powder on the shelves as I discovered when I did some tidying up a few weeks ago. So I added some water to that and left that to fester as per the instructions.

While that was doing its stuff the first lot was ready so with the hamburger press I made four really good and solid burger-types of things. They are busy freezing even as we speak.

As for the falafel, I divided that up into little balls and they are busy freezing too, along with a couple of balls that I made from the left-over stuff from the first mix.

But I’m pleased with this hamburger press as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s really simple and cheap but it made some really solid burgers and it gives me much more confidence about making more burgers from ad-hoc ingredients.

Finally there was the home-made mayonnaise. And once again, that seemed to work in spades. I made it rather more liquidy than before so we’ll see how that works out. It ended up making quite a lot more than I can use in its shelf-life, so I’ve sealed to top on the jars quite tightly.

Yes, having learned my lesson, I’ve put the mayonnaise in a better container or two.

Then we had the football – Y Bala V Connah’s Quay Nomads in one if the Welsh Cup semi-finals, played at Llandudno’s picturesque ground. And it was actually being broadcast on foreign carriers too after the disappointments of the last few games.

The first 75 minutes of the match were nothing to write home about, but it’s really hard to play creative football in a tornado.

However both sides made a couple of substitutions with 15 minutes to go and that kickstarted the game dramatically. Those last 15 minutes wee much more like the football we’d expect to see and Aron Williams scored a late winner to push the Nomads into the finals.

But spare a thought for Josh Ukek of Y Bala, who will probably go down in the record books as being on the field for the shortest period of time ever.

He came on as a substitute for Bala late in the game but almost immediately Kieran Smith, a central defender, was sent off for two bookings. Now a central defender down, Colin Caton, the Bala manager, now wanted to send on a central defender off the bench to shore up the defence.

And Ukek, who had only just come onto the field, was the man who was withdrawn to make way.

Tea was as usual a salad, baked potato and breaded quorn fillet. I know that it all seems to be the same, but I happen to like it so I don’t care.

And now rather late this evening, I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm in the morning for the nurse is coming (so I’ve washed my puttees already) so I’ll feel like death for the rest of the day. Today, I actually fell asleep for five minutes during the football.

But before I go, that story about tightly closing the lid on the mayonnaise jar did remind me of the guy who rang up his doctor
"You know those pills that you gave me to give me strength?"
"Yes" said the doctor. "How are they going?"
"I don’t know" replied the man. "I can’t get the top off the bottle".

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Wednesday 13th March 2024 – THE DEED IS …

… done and I’m now registered for an Easter Welsh course with … errr … Caefyrddyn

Enrolling on a Welsh course rather like Macbeth and the murder of Duncan actually and "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". Caerfyrddyn was the only centre that had any spaces left on its Easter revision course when I went to sign up.

It’s a symbol of how popular learning Welsh became at Covid. When the courses were face-to-face (or wyneb-wyneb for regular readers of this rubbish who recall a dream a week or so ago) they had about 100 applicants each year. When Covid hit and the courses went over to video-conferencing, they had 1031 applicants.

That’s not the kind of thing for which infrastructure exists and they had to be quite inventive to fit everyone in

With my class, I’m quite lucky because already being involved and registered, my place is assured. However, for this revision course, I’m dropping down two levels and so I have had to re-register

So with studying a course down in the south, I’ll be saying things like gyda-gylid instead of efo-gylid and caeth e instead of cafodd o. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago why it was that the Welsh language evolved differently in the south and in in the north.

If I had had any sense, not that that is likely of course, I should have enrolled last night while I was talking about it and maybe I would have found something more convenient. But instead I had a little relax to unwind before going to bed.

Once in bed though I felt nothing at all. Nothing whatever and it was as if I’d slept all the way through the night undisturbed.

When the alarm went off though I was already awake and it didn’t take much to have me out of bed.

First stop as usual was the blood pressure. 16.0/10.0 this morning, compared to 17.4/10.6 last night. It really MUST have been a calm, comfortable night.

Second stop was to go to take my medication for the moment, half a tonne of it as usual. And then some tidying up ready for the nurse to come round. I’d like her to think that people actually lived here.

We had a good chat about the things that the hospital wants the local nursing staff to do. Some of the things don’t come within their remit, so it’s tough luck on me but the rest is going to start tomorrow at 08:45 and how I’m not looking forward to that, especially on a Sunday

She took the blood sample and gave me my weekly injection of the Last Resort and then wandered off while I organised some breakfast.

The coffee is really nice around here, and my flapjack is definitely a success. I’ll make some more of that another time if I can remember the ingredients that I used. They biscuits that I made on Sunday are overcooked, but not so much as they are in-edible. I’ll make more of those too at some point.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And I must have been stark out last night as I remember nothing at all of these. Did I dictate the dream about the person that I’d killed in that motel room? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … He was beaten quite badly and I was about to finish him off when someone began to come into his room. I quickly had to clean him up, tidy him up and remove as many visible marks a possible to make it look as if he was treating himself for his wounds before they came in, which was difficult. Somehow I managed it and he passed by quite normally without having any suspicions. Then I had to restart these videos, all three of them, to find out exactly where the secret place was where you had to puncture the skin in order to kill someone – someone had worked out that you could leave very minimal marks by just putting something long and pointed in through these three places. He’d prepared a video of it, that I’d been watching but of course with this other guy coming into the motel room to see what was happening I actually lost the place in the video and couldn’t find it again on all three tapes for all three points on the body

That’s the stuff that dreams are made of, isn’t it? If videos like that really did exist and I really did have access to them, there would be far fewer people on this planet than there are today. I can think of quite a few who would shuffle off this mortal coil with my assistance, if I had any say in the matter.

But I di have some gruesome dreams; don’t I? And many have been far more gruesome than this. It reminds me of Dr Cameron in Tannochbrae in the good old days of Dr Finlay’s Casebook – or Dr Kenley’s Feesbook
"And what’s the matter, Janet?" asked Dr Cameron
"Och Dr Cameron, it’s gruesome" she replied
"Well, look again Janet" he said. "It’s gruesome more"

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was going on a flight somewhere so I had to walk through the airport and look for my train to London. I eventually arrived at the station part and the next train to London was 22:02. It was only 21:00 so I thought that it was going to be cutting it a little too fine. I’d better go to find something to eat. I found what looked like a bakery or hot food stand and asked if they had a pâté végétale. She replied “no, no” and pointed to half a dozen things that she had on the shelves, the usual mainstream type of normal kind of food. She did have some large fruit bread. I thought that I could buy one of those but that would be quite a waste because I wouldn’t be able to eat all of that.

Not that anything like that would normally bother me, especially if I’m going on a flight somewhere. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I always take food with me on a plane. I’ve learnt from bitter experience that you can’t rely on airlines to always respect special diets on their planes, and it’s a long way and a long time across the Atlantic with nothing to eat.

Yes, my spicy or fruit bread has saved me from a fate worse than death on many occasions, as have my Subway sandwiches from the airport at Montreal. Consequently a large fruit bread would have been a gift from Heaven on a flight from an airport

Back in here and surfing around on the internet looking for something, I made a fantastic discovery. Carol Reed’s famous and spectacular film THE THIRD MAN starring Orson Cart and Joseph Cotton is now out of copyright and is available to download

What a film that is, too. It’s not so much the acting and the dialogue but the way that it’s directed that makes it a classic – with all these cuts of ordinary, old people filtered into the scenes that really give it the kind of panic-stricken atmosphere that must have existed in the immediate post-war Vienna.

My acquaintance with Vienna is somewhat more recent than that. And the last time I was there, actually in the city, was 1998 when I took a 15-tonne lorry there from Brussels.

It’s a film that in my opinion is on a par with THE MALTESE FALCON as one of the greatest films of all time.

The cleaner came round with my missing pieces today, and it’s a shame but she’ll have to be going back because the nurse needs some stuff to treat me, so she’ll write out a prescription tomorrow morning. We’ll go through the medication tomorrow too and see where I’m short, as one or two things are running out.

But poor cleaner. She’s not had much of a rest on her week off, has she?

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off the notes for the radio programme that I began the other day. They are done and ready for dictation sometime, but I’m not sure when. It won’t be at 01:00 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, I’ll tell you that, not it I’m having to be up and about by 08:45.

After a session on the guitar I went for tea – another one of my delicious leftover curries with naan bread.

But while I was in the freezer I noticed that I seem to be running low on frozen vegetables again. It looks as if my last pre-Easter order from the supermarket will be going off on Monday.

That means that I’d better check my hot cross bun recipe and make sure that I have everything that I need. And then work out how to make the dough rise properly.

Hot cross buns are made with milk, not water, and that makes the issue far more complicated. I tell you – it’s not easy baking and being a master-chef when your oven only works when it wants to and you don’t have a clue what you’re doing anyway.

But you can’t have an Easter without hot-cross buns so I’d better learn quite quickly. It’ll give me something to eat while I’m taking part in my Welsh lesson, I suppose

At least I don’t have to worry about the Easter bunny coming to visit me. It’s not like the time years ago, when I had that part-time job just before Easter looking after these small bunny-like creatures just after they were born and making sure that they grew into responsible adults.

That was what I would call a hare-raising experience.

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Wednesday 10th January 2024 – IT’S AMAZING …

… how much of a big difference a couple of little actions can make. And that’s something that I’m going to remember for the future, that’s for sure.

This morning, they brought me two bread rolls for breakfast. And a couple of hours later they brought me a mid-morning coffee. You really have no idea and can’t possibly imagine how much those little gestures have meant to me and how much they have improved my morale from yesterday’s miserable efforts.

Mind you, I did have a shower and clothes-washing session in between. Years of living on the road has taught me to take advantage of every shower that comes my way because sometimes they are hard to find. And when you do find a shower, take your clothes in with you and give them as good a wash as you possibly can.

That’s an old tip that I learnt from the Bible –
"while shepherds washed their socks one night
all seated round the tub
the Angel of the Lord came down
and gave them all a scrub."

Something else that cheered me up were the messages that I received yesterday

Sean wrote to me to say what a horrible night Monday must have been and to keep my chin up for things can only improve. And he was right this morning, as I have already said. That bread roll and coffee, and your message, cheered me up immeasurably.

Grahame’s message cheered me up too. In fact it made me laugh. I’d been talking about hallucinating and Hawkwind, and he wanted to tell me about the time that he did both together many years ago. I thought that that was an avenue down which it was unwise to go any further.

But it did remind me of the time that Nerina took me to see Hawkwind at Keele University one night. Nerina is quite a bit younger than me so when the band came onstage she rushed to the front like all the young’uns do.

After a while she came to look for me and found me standing at the back
"Why don’t you come to the front?" she asked. "The view is so much better there"
"That’s as may be" I replied " but hey! The smell is so much better at the back, man."

Rhys wrote to me a short while ago but his message is buried under … gulp … 450-odd others that have come in while I’ve been busy sorting out transport and all that kind of thing.

He thinks that I’ll outlive everyone else who has had this illness and set new records. Well, I didn’t feel like that yesterday but a good night’s sleep and my bread roll and coffee fired me with a new enthusiasm, and who knows? It won’t be for the want of trying, and it won’t be for the lack of support either, medical or moral. Not that “moral” is a word that is usually used when I’m about.

But to be serious … "for once" – ed … Rhys was one of my close friends from University and I was lucky enough to be honoured to be best man at his wedding in South Carolina in 2005

The marriage didn’t last as long as it ought and poor Gretchen is no longer with us which is a shame for Rhys and her family.

But I remember the wedding – and more importantly, the weekend afterwards while they were away – vividly. I met a young Mexican girl at the wedding and we spent a lovely weekend together down at Charleston and then back at Columbia for a Widespread Panic concert on the Sunday night.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a certain weakness for Southern Rock – groups where the lead guitar solos can sometimes go on for several weeks, groups like the Marshall Tucker Band, The Outlaws, Doc Holliday and Blackberry Smoke (who I photographed when I was official photographer for the Fredericton Jazz and Blues Festival in Canada).

But the leading group of all, surprisingly unknown in Europe, is Widespread Panic. I’d first encountered them when I was with Onion River Radio in Montpelier in Vermont years ago and I’d always wanted to catch them at a concert because like most Southern Rock groups, it’s simply not possible to reproduce on an album what they actually do onstage.

Anyway, there they were, topping the bill at the Three Rivers Festival that Sunday night in Columbia so Itzé and I blagged a couple of tickets (Press Passes always come in useful at times like this) and that was that.

Even now I still keep in touch with them and they’ve been kind enough to send me a few concerts to broadcast on my radio programmes

When I was on my marathon trek in 2017 saying goodbye to everyone whom I knew in North America, I managed to meet up with Rhys again and we had a weekend together. But the journey took so much out of me that afterwards I ended up at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina where I holed up for several days to recover my strength ready to go back to base.

Not the first time that I’d been to Myrtle Beach either. I’d been there in 2005 for a weekend too.

And that was strange. I thought (and still do) that Myrtle Beach is a bit of a dump – Rhyl with the sun, in fact.

But when I worked at that strange American company in Brussels where I met Alison, there was this woman going on about this brilliant place my the seaside where her husband had taken her for her honeymoon a couple of years back.

She espoused at great length about it and finally mentioned its name. Myrtle Beach. "Ohhh, Myrtle Beach" I said. "I was there last year. I thought that it was a bit of a dump. I’ll bring my photos in and show you"

Funnily enough, we never heard another word about Myrtle Beach. But the people there were strange. It was like being on another planet.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … hospital, I mentioned a “good night” a little earlier.

That was obtained by the simple expedient of putting the perfusion pump in the bathroom and closing the door. And for once, I had enough silence that I could have a good night’s sleep.

Well, not quite. There I was, asleep, listening to Hawkwind’s MOTORWAY CITY in my dreams when one of my sisters brought me a really strange kind of bun like a cupcake with chocolate over the top and one or two other decorations but it smelt of onions. I wondered what it was going to be. Just then I actually awoke because of something on the music to which I was listening. I awoke, to find that it was “Motorway City” actually playing so in the end I switched off everything and went back to sleep. But it was quite strange having this onion-flavoured bun given to me by one of my sisters.

By about 06:00 my reverie came to an end as someone came by to take a blood sample, and that was that.

It was an endless stream of medical staff doing all kinds of things in here today, but an ominous sign is the doctor saying that she’ll send a physiotherapist to see me. If I’m going home soon that would be totally unnecessary so it looks as if I’m in here for longue durée as they say around here.

Some of the morning’s activities have already been mentioned, particularly the messages that I’ve received. It’s nice to hear from my audience so if you’re a new subscriber, of which there are more than a few just recently, or a long-time lurker, send me a message to say “hello”. There’s a link to a form at the bottom right corner.

Just be mindful that if you have a gmail address, I can’t reply to you. I’ll either say something on here, or if it’s private, you’ll receive a reply from STRAWBERRY MOOSE.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to decipher where I’d been during the night. And I’d put some miles in too. A friend of mine lives in Canada just inside the border. Right by where she lives was a railway bridge, called “Cedar Bridge”. It was a prominent feature of the landscape so all the slaves and everyone escaping the USA would flood across the border and head for Cedar Bridge. That would be the symbol that they’d reached safety. It was an iron bridge over the railway built for pedestrians only. One night at some point but I can’t remember the date it was just swept away. Cedar Bridge was destroyed. It was a terrible loss as a symbol of freedom from persecution for a great many people.

And then I’d received an absolute mountain of paperwork from a hospital in Canada about my illness, a mountain of it. I had to go through it and scan it all which took for ever. Then I had to post some of it to somewhere and some of it to somewhere else so it became incredibly complicated. I was halfway through doing it when I received another e-mail with some more stuff and some stuff that cancelled some of the first stuff. I had to restart what I was doing but I’d forgotten where I was. I’d lost my place. Then I had to send some information to my brother. The only way that I could do that was to send it to my niece and ask her to contact him. That started to become even more complicated still. I was there with all these papers and all these e-mails with all of these forwarding and “copy to you” kind of stuff. It was incredible. I was just so confused with it all and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if anyone else was too. When it came to writing up my notes at night it just turned into a load of gibberish. I just couldn’t seem to make it make sense

That sounds about right. I’m submerged in paperwork from my hospital visits and can’t sort them out properly before I’m overwhelmed with yet more from another hospital stay which contradicts everything that I previously received.

Later on, I won a prize in a competition. It was a baby pig. How on earth was I going to cope with a baby pig? A group of us who had had to go our separate ways arranged to meet at the Cheshire Cat in Nantwich. I eventually found my way there with this pig screaming and squealing and wriggling in my hands so in the end I just let it go. I didn’t know what else to do. Then I saw a bus go past, a bus from my school. It had “Competitors” written on it. There were loads of schoolkids on it, many of the ones whom I was hoping to see in the Cheshire Cat. I thought “this is going to be a wash-out, isn’t it?”. I reached the door of the Cheshire Cat. There was a Bouncer o duty. I asked him how many people were in. He replied “about 2”. I said “I’d better go to buy a 3rd drink, hadn’t I?”. When I walked in I found one of my friends sitting at a table with 2 other guys. I asked my friend what he wanted to drink. He wanted a beer but these other 2 guys wanted rum and coke. I thought “2 beers and 2 rum and cokes is going to cost me a fortune too”. Instead of going to the bar the main way I decided that I’d take a short cut through the crack in the wall which I did and ended up in the middle of 2 girls having a dancing class. They were girls whom I knew so I thought “at least I’m going to have some pleasant company” because I’m going to end up chatting to these 2 girls, I hoped. But this was all turning into a complete, confused mess too. I thought to myself that with all this going on today and I’m not having any luck whatsoever. I was having all this work to do and I just don’t understand any of it.

“… turning into a complete, confused mess”. And that’s something with which I can relate at the present moment, right enough.

Back in that dream again later, I had to leave so off I went. It was a Friday and I couldn’t go back on the Saturday so I was back Sunday lunchtime thinking that I still had 2 drinks left in the tap that I’d bought on Friday. There were just 2 people in there so I left myself in the glorious arms of the folk singer Miss Colwill who has figured in these dreams in the past but I don’t know where she fitted into this dream tonight.

And who is Miss Colwill? The names “Ruth Colwill” and “Rebecca Colwill” came immediately to my mind but there’s no trace of either

But stepping back into a dream again. Why can’t I do that whenever I’m about to lay my grubby paws on Castor, TOTGA or Zero?

Everything came to a dead stop round about lunchtime when they brought me a glass of sodium sulphide. And for several hours afterwards I was away with the fairies.

In mid-afternoon a discreet mug of coffee smuggled into my room revived me somewhat And I carried on with my studies of Victorian methods of tree pruning. I’m not sure why because I won’t be pruning any trees ever again. But in these ancient, 150 year-old books that you can download for free fromARCHIVE;ORG there are tons of useful, long-forgotten facts.

Tea was rubbish as usual but somewhere along the line the needle in my hand had been dislodged so all the perfusion was running up my arm. In the end the nurse had to take it out and stick it in somewhere else.

In fact he asked me to tell him where I would like him to stick it and, do you know, I was sorely tempted …

More sodium sulphide has found its way into here so in a minute I’ll stick the perfusion machine in the bathroom, switch off the Hawkwind playlist that’s been playing for the last couple of days, and hope for another pleasant 5 or 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep like last night.

But whether or not I’ll get it is another thing. There’s too much going on here for that. So I’ll just hope for pleasant dreams

Look out Castor, TOTGA and Zero! Hee I come!

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