Tag Archives: eric hall

Saturday 12th October 2024 – WE HAD A …

… crisis in the Dialysis Centre this evening. The hole in the implant in my arm refused to close up after they pulled out the needle and we ended up with the place looking like a slaughterhouse.

“That’s the kind of thing that happens occasionally” said the nurse. And they want me to do the dialysis procedure myself at home. They must be joking. There is no chance whatever of that ever happening.

There was however a good chance of my going to bed last night at some kind of respectable hour. It wasn’t 23:00 by the time that I finished everything that I needed to do and crawled into bed but it was pretty close. There wasn’t much in it at all

Soon enough I was asleep, hoping to catch up on the sleep that I had missed the previous night, but it wasn’t to be. It was another one of these turbulent nights of which I’ve been having far too many. When the alarm went off Nerina and I were sitting in one of these plazas and were surrounded by food courts somewhere in Italy. We couldn’t make up our minds in which place to eat. We were being harassed by a couple of waiters from one establishment who wanted us to eat there. They were obviously making suggestions all the time. Nerina wanted to look at all the other menus so I had to stand up and go to the next restaurant, pick up a new menu, bring it back, read it, take it back, take the next one, all the way round the food court, all the time that these two waiters were harassing us about this and about that. In the end we decided, or rather, Nerina decided that the pizzeria in the corner would be the place where we’d order our meal so these two waiters went over with me to this restaurant to tell them that I was their best friend, all this kind of thing, but I suspected that there was something going on here that wasn’t quite right, about them receiving a commission or bumping up the bill or something like that. It all seemed to be extremely strange to me.

In the past we sat at plenty of places like that all over Europe. We’d wait for our holidays until the brats were back at school because the weather was usually nice, everywhere was still open and we’d have all the time in the World without being harassed by impatient waiters trying to clear us out ready for the next lot of tourists.

In one restaurant in Brest in Finisterre I remember that we were the only diners. They put us in a window seat to make the place look busy from the outside and then took their time serving us so that we stayed put. No-one came to clear away the table or give us the bill so we stood up. Still no-one came, so I worked out roughly how much the meal was, put the money on the table,, and walked out. And still no-one came.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I staggered into the bathroom, had a good wash and scrub up, had a shave and applied the deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then loaded up the washing machine, forgetting to put my gants de toilette in there.

Once the washing machine was off on its way I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was working a school holiday job down in the South of England as a teacher of some description. I can’t remember too much about this unfortunately but I know that there was something to do with a small child being carried by his mother into the showers. We were talking about trees, how deciduous trees all go to sleep in the autumn and the leaves fall off. I showed him another tree, which was a kind-of wire brush screwed to the wall of the shower which people would use to clean their football boots etc before rinsing them off. It was all extremely surreal and I can’t remember very much of it but that was it.

Me? A teacher? I think not. I wouldn’t be any good. I don’t “do” preparation but work it out as I go along and that would never work with a classful of screaming brats

Later on I had a nightmare about a whole pile of glass bottles on the table that was just on the point of falling off. I had a panic-stricken awakening to try to grab hold of them but what was actually happening was that my feet were sliding out of the bed at that point and just about to fall on the floor. Luckily I stopped that quickly enough.

That’s much more like my kind of dream, falling out of bed. I’ve fallen out of a few of them in my time, sometimes with no help at all and sometimes with some help from someone else.

So the alarm went off at 07:00. I left the bed and went to wash and dress. I happened to look at the watch and I was still in bed. It was 05:00 and all of that had been a lively, exciting, vivid dream.

Judging by the timestamp of the audio file it was actually 05:15 and it goes without saying that I didn’t actually leave the bed. But by the sound of things we had another phantom alarm during the night.

And finally it was in the immediate post-war period and I was wandering around Crewe. We’d seen a few tanks go through. As I went round a corner there was a motorcycle shop there, Paul Wolf Motorcycles. Outside was a Triumph Tiger Cub 200cc, one of the very early ones with the footboards and the accelerator pedal. It said “good home needed” so I thought “I wonder if this is for sale? Does he have anything else interesting?”. I went in, and it was a labyrinth inside, steps up and down into the bowels of the earth all the way down. There must have been thirty or forty flights of stairs to the level of the river where he had his kind-of garage and workshop. There was a huge row going on between him and a few other people about someone who should have come in to see something but hadn’t but he ws going to come in now. I saw a guy come in from the side door which was actually on the level of his reception desk about eighty feet below. I thought “that must be an easier way in”. Then I looked back behind me and realised that there were just as many steps back up as there were down. It was easier to go down than it was to come up. But then what if I couldn’t find my way back up from the ground level where his office was? I was beginning to have another one of these disturbed quandaries during the night.

It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these dreams littered with indecision. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at one stage it was a regular feature like the cars scattered all over the town, so I wonder what’s bringing it back. I wish that someone would bring back Castor, Zero and TOTGA and even The Vanilla Queen.

And there was a Paul Wolf Motorcycles, in Market Street in Crewe in the old Co-op store years ago.

Isabelle the nurse didn’t have much to say for herself today. I think that she said it all yesterday. But after she left I hung up the washing on the clothes airer and went to make my breakfast.

The WANDERINGS OF AN ANTIQUARY have taken us to Bignor Roman villa today. Thomas Wright gives us probably the best account of how it looked when it was discovered and states that it was the largest Roman villa in the UK. But that’s before the full extent of the Fishbourne Roman Palace was known

Back in here I had a chat with Alison on the internet and reviewed the work that I’d done during the week ready for dictation tonight. I need to take more care of what I type but it’s difficult with my vision these days and so wfvr wzpq. Last time I dictated some notes I found myself in a frightful muddle because a mistype presented another word that completely altered what it was that I was trying to say.

My cleaner turned up to fit the anaesthetic patches for me to and the taxi turned up a little earlier too. This was a vehicle from the other side of Avranches that had dropped someone off at the Centre de Re-education and was no on its way to pick up someone from the hospital at Rennes to take them back home. I was apparently something to make the empty journey pay. Not that I mind, of course.

There were very few of us there today, both patients and staff. It was a weekend team and while they were efficient they were far from sociable. And it goes without saying that I didn’t get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant.

Once they’d plugged me in, I was left totally alone except for the doctor who asked if I was OK – five seconds of attention. I had plenty of time to study my Welsh, now that I have uploaded the correct book, and almost reach the end of the biography of Lewis Carroll

It’s difficult to know what to make of him. With the benefit of hindsight many of his remarks could be taken in the wrong way that would be quite alarming but in the late Victorian era were probably quite innocent. They certainly aren’t on the same level as remarks made by someone like Frank Harris.

And then when they took the needles out we had quite the drama. Compresses, anti-coagulants, you name it, we had it. It quite wore me out and I was just sitting there with my eyes closed.

It took so long that my taxi went with the other passenger and I had to climb into a later one that ended up going all around the back of beyond to drop off someone else. Not that I minded because it was one of the nicer drivers who had taken me to Paris once and I quite like her.

My cleaner was there waiting and she watched as I hauled myself up the stairs. Today I managed six steps without lifting my leg up with my hand. I’d lost another 1.3 kg today so that might explain it.

Tea was a burger on a bap with salad and baked potato, and I was ready for it too. So now I’ll dictate my notes and go to bed.

But the dreams tonight and the hospital remind me about the patient with a broken leg.
A new arrival asked him "what’s the matter with you?"
"Appendicitis" he replied.
"But all the plaster?"
"Ohh, that" he replied. "I fell off the operating table".

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Friday 11th October 2024 – IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday 10th October 2024 – TODAY IT WAS …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How times have changed since 1898!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 9th October 2024 – I DON’T KNOW …

… where all this energy is coming from, but I know where it’s going. I’m about three quarters of the way through tomorrow’s work already.

The way things are going, I’m beginning to wish that I’d had this dialysis a long time ago. It’s quite constraining of course but if I can keep on going like this, even in the short term, it might even be worth the disruption. I only wish that it wasn’t so painful.

But there’s one thing that can be said for it, and that was that with having finished everything at a reasonable hour last night I was in bed before 23:00. And that doesn’t happen very often.

It wasn’t long before I was away with the fairies either, although I did refrain from engaging in anything on which the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine might comment.

Asleep I stayed too for quite some considerable time, which was just as well given the events of the previous night. I’ve no idea what time it was that I awoke briefly, but I was soon back to sleep again.

It was a struggle to raise myself from the bed this morning when the alarm went off and I almost missed the second alarm. That would have been a cardinal sin, right enough.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was working on a car last night, a Ford Cortina MkI, changing the front wheel bearings. It was interesting to say the least watching me try to stand up after lying on the floor. I spent hours but I couldn’t set the adjustment of the wheel bearings correctly. In the end I set them to “something like” and gave up. While I was repairing it I was thinking “who’s going to fix Nerina’s car after I’ve died?” and “if the head gasket blows on this I’d have to go round to see my father but he’s really not likely to be interested – maybe after supper I think but I’m on the way of dying and I have to think about things like this”. While I was working there there was this young Chinese girl looking at me from out of a window. I thought to myself that sometimes it’s very nice to have an audience and maybe she does this kind of thing, watching people all the time – she might know (…fell asleep here …)

Back in the past I had a couple of Cortina Mk Is. The first one was great. Back in 1973 I was working for an insurance company and this car was a write-off. It had been hit in the front offside and was judged to be beyond economical repair. It was in our car park on its way to the scrapyard and owed the company £12:50. Nevertheless it was taxed and MoT’d for seven months so I bought it, patched it up with body-filler, stuck a headlight in the mess and ran it. When the MoT ran out and it wouldn’t pass the next, I loaded a friend and her baby into the car and drove it to the scrapyard to weigh it in. The owner looked at me, looked at the girl, looked at the baby and said “I’m terribly sorry son. I can’t give you any more than £15:00 for this”.

As for having my father fix my car, the highlight of my life was my father once asking me if I’d fix his because he couldn’t manage to do it. I treasured that moment for years.

Later on I found a job working in an Old People’s Home thanks to an agency. I had to start at 08:00 so I set out at 07:40 and parked where I thought this Home was. It turned out to be a big, expensive hotel so I roamed around for a couple of minutes and couldn’t find anything. Somehow I ended up in the basement and asked one of the personnel there behind the desk. He took me to the fire door, opened it and pointed to a building and said “it’s that one” so I set out to walk. It was much further than I anticipated. When I reached the building I went in. The ground floor was like a storage area. There was a couple of people wandering around so I asked them. They said that the Old People’s Home is further up. I looked around but there was no lift so I thought “how do these old people leave if they want to go for a walk or go out in a wheelchair?”. I walked up two flights of stairs – I was walking quite easily. I finally found the Old Peoples Home and the reception desk where they were very pleased to see me, saying “oh good, you’re here at last”. I thought about whether I should recount my adventures to them but I decided against it.

As if I’m ever likely to be working in an Old Person’s Home. But strangely enough, even though I can’t remember anything about the dream itself, I can still see the buildings. The hotel was a huge chalet-roofed place on the type in which I’ve stayed at Lech in Austria. Lech of course was a small town in Austria through which we drove on our honeymoon on our way to see Nerina’s relatives in Milan. It was such a beautiful town that we vowed to go back there again. I don’t know if Nerina ever made it back but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been back there ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS and of course, it is the favourite town in Europe OF STRAWBERRY MOOSE where he runs A TAXI SERVICE advertising his favourite hobby.

Isabelle the nurse came along and took a blood sample from me. Hit the vein straight away, totally painless and no drama either. She has “the touch”, quite unlike her colleague, so it’s no surprise that she gets to take all of the samples. Everyone waits until its her turn on the rota before they ask for their blood samples to be taken.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY BOOK. Today we’re wandering around Aldborough in North Yorkshire and looking at the remains of the Roman town of Isurium. What’s interesting is that back in the 1850s there wasn’t a railway station anywhere near the town so he and his friends thought absolutely nothing of alighting from the train at the nearest railway station and walking several miles to the town and then back again later. These people were obviously made of sterner stuff than people today.

It’s also interesting that, in the days before preservation and museums, many of the householders who had uncovered mosaic floors in their gardens were quite happily exhibiting them, “price sixpence” but, as he says, "as all these inscriptions have followed each other within a few paces , we shall become alarmed at the expensive character which a visit to it is likely soon to assume , if an additional sixpence is to be levied on every fragment of building that turns up . The remains indicated by these inscriptions are so far , however, of sufficient interest to repay the visitor for the small sum demanded for showing them ."

Back in here I attacked the outstanding notes for the radio programme that I was preparing yesterday and now these are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That meant a stop for lunch – a slice of flapjack and some fruit. The supplies of fruit are running low so tomorrow I’ll have to think about preparing a supermarket order for Friday afternoon

This afternoon, having completed the day’s work already, I was planning on relaxing but instead I had a fit of enthusiasm again and carried on working.

Sometime next year, the International Day of Refugees falls on a day that my programme will be broadcast, and you’d be surprised just how many refugees there are in rock music

Edgar Froese and Johannes Krauledat fled from the Russians in Tilsit in the same column of refugees as my friend Lorna’s mother. Holger Czukay was expelled from Danzig, the parents of Gary Weinrib and Chaim Witz were survivors of Auschwitz and Belsen, Cait O’Riordan fled from Nigeria, and that’s just a handful of names.

It seems to me that a programme of music recorded by refugees would be a good idea for a programme. So accordingly I’ve been tracking down music recorded by refugees or their offspring and I’m now at the stage where I’m pairing it off and segueing it

That was tomorrow’s task but I’ll finish it off and start to write the notes. If I can finish early on Friday I’ll have a couple of hours off which will be nice.

During the proceedings my cleaner arrived and she helped me have a shower. I had a good idea too – if one wooden box on the chair made things easier, two boxes would make it easier still. And so it was too. I could swing into the bath with a lot fewer problems.

You have no idea just how wonderful it is to be under a shower after all this time. I really do feel so much better and so much happier with having had a good soak. Just wait until I’m downstairs and I have my walk-in shower

There was an interruption for the hot chocolate and coconut cake of course, after which I made a batch of dough for the garlic naan.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry of course, with rice, veg and a naan bread, delicious as usual. In fact it was one of the best that I’ve mad. The naan was cooked to perfection, for once in my life. The rest of the dough is rolled up into individual balls and stuck in the freezer for the future.

So now I’m off to bed for some beauty sleep before my trip to the Dialysis Centre tomorrow

But the story of the admission fees reminds me of the time that the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station were built. There was an official inspection followed by a guided tour for the public.
The leaflet that was prepared to announce the showing proudly advertise the price "two shillings and sixpence – or two shillings and sevenpence if you want to see all of it"

0

Tuesday 8th October 2024 – AS SEEMS TO BE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 7th October 2024 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… tastes absolutely delicious. I cut it up and put it in the fridge this evening and there were still some crumbs lying about so I was tempted to have a sample. And I’m glad that I did. I made a mental note to make this for pudding another time because it really was nice.

What made a big difference was to whizz up the ingredients instead of mixing them in a bowl with a spoon. Everything was properly and thoroughly mixed in, and that is definitely progress.

So what can I try to make next?

One thing that I can try to make is a concerted effort to be in bed at a reasonable time. Last night I actually managed it too, and with going to sleep fairly early I had a good sleep all the way through to … errr … 06:00

That might not seem much, but it’s a lot better than some nights have been just recently.

And then I managed to drift off back to sleep because when the alarm went off, I was miles away.

In fact there was a dream going on. I was working with a girl and she had this very irritating habit of whenever i said something she gave her agreement by using some phrase and she said it two or three times and it really got on my nerves. I wish that I could remember the phrase now but the dream had only just started when the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I had a good wash, a shave and a wash of the clothes, including the socks. And I applied plenty of deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant and you can laugh all you want to, I don’t care.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. We were all back at work and we had a military unit that had come along and been transplanted in. The General was one of these people who was a stickler for propriety. Everything had to be done absolutely perfectly so it was only natural that people began to mimic his actions, his way of saluting, his way of talking etc. It became something of a standing joke. One day he happened to come across a group of civilians, one of whom was one of his fiercest critics. After he’d talked to them for a couple of minutes he turned to that civilian and said “well, aren’t you going to salute me?”. The civilian, rising to the challenge, gave him an absolutely perfect military salute, an exact copy of what he would have done, and came out with a phrase that the General would have used, and exactly in the right accent. The General turned to the civilian and said “do you know, Mr so-and-so, that is probably the best thing that you have ever done” and walked away. Of course it became quite a subject for discussion in the office canteen about the General having seen to be the right kind of person for the people to take the mickey, and a person who would appreciate a good joke

We did have a Military Unit in the office and the General in charge was a Finnish General whose claim to fame was that he had been kidnapped by one of the groups of militia in Lebanon and held to ransom. When his chauffeur was away somewhere and my boss was in the USA I was given the task of driving him around for a week and after I finished he gave me a huge lumberjack’s axe which I have down on the farm. In his apartment just as you go in was a big stuffed brown bear in pouncing pose on its hind legs. "I shot that" he proudly announced.

But there’s a funny story related to that. There was a party at his place and people from all over Europe were there, all speaking English no matter where they came from. One woman asked him about the bear and when he said that he’d shot it, she asked what they did. He replied "we ate it". There is a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding when you are using a second language, and she went around telling the rest of the party how the General, having shot his bear, then sat down in the tundra under a tree and tucked in, presumably without cooking it.

There was then also something about me living at home and meeting up with a group of kids. There seemed to be a youngish girl who took something of a fancy to me. She would always seek me out and spend a lot of time chatting. I happened to quite like her so I used in some ways to encourage it. We ended up chatting to each other on the ‘phone quite a lot. On one particular occasion she went down to the swimming baths but I had to work until 14:00. I told her that I’d give her a ring when I’d finished to see how the water was. Round about 13:40 there was nothing else happening at all so I ‘phoned her and asked her about the water, asked her about everything and told her that I’d be down shortly. I put everything away and went to see my mother to tell her that I was going down to the swimming baths. She must have heard my conversation because she made some kind of remark. Then she brought me a cup of tea and I had the impression that it was almost as if she was preventing me from going. I wasn’t really sure why but out of politeness I sat and drank the tea. I know who this girl is too. I did actually quite like her and I’m trying to thing of her name but I just can’t

This girl is so familiar that when I saw her in my dream I didn’t mind that it was she rather than Zero who had come to see me. So I really wish that I knew who she was because I really have no idea and that is just so sad. And how familiar is it that a member of my family will try to spike my guns?

Telephones in the baths is a novel idea too. In my day it was wristwatches that caused the most problems. I flooded one or two beyond repair and so did many others. How many ‘phones would be flooded these days? I’ve not been to the swimming baths since the happy days at Commentry when I used to go every Saturday afternoon on my way home from the shops at Montluçon.

The nurse came round and we had an even quicker record time today. He’s really got the wind up about something. Maybe it’s my deodorant, I dunno.

But after he left I had breakfast and read MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright is still poking around the Iron Age Hillforts on the Shropshire-Herefordshire-Radnorshire-Montgomeryshire border

On our way round we inspected a megalith that was standing in a field near the village of Whitcott Keysett. Sad to say, it was flattened and smashed as recently as 1944. I could weep.

Back in here I attacked the next radio programme and all of the music has now been chosen, paired off and segued. Next task was to review the programme that will be broadcast on Friday and then send it off. Finally I made a start on my Welsh homework.

There was also a moment to ‘phone up the Dialysis Centre to confirm that they had my headphones. And I hadn’t, until then, realised that I was entitled to a locker in the dressing room.

All of that took me up to 12:10 when my cleaner came to fit the anaesthetic patches on my arm. We had a chat and then she departed hence and I made a start on cutting up my apple cake, but once more the taxi came early.

We had a good chat all the way down to the centre where I arrived really early so they could start quite quickly. One of the needles was fairly painful but the other, I hardly felt at all.

They had put me in a room today, presumably because I misbehaved last time, I dunno, but it did mean that I was hardly interrupted and I could crack on.

My Welsh homework was finished quite quickly and I could carry on reading Lewis Carroll’s biography.

And what do you make of this paragraph? It was written by the editor of “Aunt Judy’s Magazine” reviewing one of Carroll’s works
"Some of the touches are so exquisite, one would have thought nothing short of intercourse with fairies could have put them into your head"

Of course when we look at words like “brilliant” and “fantastic”, they have long-since lost their literal meaning and modern usage has given them a completely different meaning

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and although she gave me a wave, she kept well away from my lair. The chief of the unit came to see me and try to pitch me on this home dialysis. Instead I told him about the issues with my foot and he agreed that it’s probably a trapped nerve. He’s going to arrange a body scan and an IRM.

Eventually they unplugged me, weighed me and threw me out. Half of the weight that I had lost last time had stayed lost and today I lost another 1.7kg.

The driver who brought me home was another candidate for The Driver From Hell. As fast as it was possible to go and driving so close to the car in front that we would have all been done for if someone further in front had applied the brakes. I was glad to be home.

This evening I could only manage one step without using my hand to lift up my leg, and it was a struggle to make the last two stairs. That’s a backward step … "very good" – ed … and I’m disappointed by that.

After my cleaner had sorted me out and left, I checked the Welsh homework that I’d done and then sent it off.

Tea was as usual a stuffed pepper. And I’m going to stop buying tomatoes from LeClerc. They are going bad quicker than I can use them.

So now having finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than I would have liked.

But seeing as we have been talking about second languages … "well, one of us is" – ed …what’s even funnier though is when people come out with something that you wouldn’t expect when they are speaking a foreign language. I have learned in many, many different languages of Europe certain phrases that would never be taught at school and many of my colleagues have learnt them in English, seeing as I was the only English-speaker in the whole of my unit.
One day I was looking for one of my Italian colleagues, and saw him down the far end of a crowded corridor.
"Domenico" I shouted. "What are you doing right now?"
"Eric" he shouted back in his lovely Italian accent "I am doing bugger all"
And there was a deathly silence in the corridor. How was I supposed to know that a committee from the British Permanent Representation, including the Ambassador, was being shown around the building?

0

Sunday 6th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 5th October 2024 – GUESS WHO …

… came to see me during the night last night?

That’s right. Out of the gloom and murk came none other than Castor, back again after an absence that has been far too long

Even now I can still see her, which is no surprise. After all, they say that absence make the heart grow fonder, and the absence has certainly been long enough to tax my emotional wellbeing. We need more nights like this – that goes without saying.

What might help considerably would be if I could manage to be in bed at a reasonable hour. Last night was of course especially late with the football running on like it did and then everything that I needed to do afterwards. And it would have been even later had I not washed up at half-time.

But once I was in bed I was in bed, and there I stayed. I don’t have many memories of anything much during the night and seem to think that I stayed asleep until the alarm went off at 07:00. And that seems to be a rare thing these days too.

After I’d closed down the alarm I staggered off into the bathroom to wash myself, my shorts and my undies. I need to keep myself and my clothes as clean as I can. Having said that though, I forgot to wash my socks. I must try to remember that.

Despite the raucous roars of laughter from my friends last time, I still applied a liberal helping of deodorant so that I smell nice in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Dialysis Centre.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night. That was when I realised that Castor had been to see me last night. And not just Castor either but Castor AND Pollux. There was some kind of communal bathhouse place where everyone would sit around the lip of a bath underneath a jet of water where they could regulate the temperature themselves to whatever they liked, very hot or very cold. The idea was that it was more of a social thing than anything else and was very popular with the ethnic community. I had to go into Hanley as I was organising a raid on the market. I was wandering around looking at the products, looking at the men’s suits that were hanging there. There was an “Adult Shop” there and the girl who was partnered with me had never seen one so she was trying to peer into the window to see what was on offer while I was looking at the products that they were selling – from everything to start off the process all the way down later on through to the end and the kiddies’ pushchairs. They had some suits too and I though that that was a funny place to be measured. At the signal I moved a cart across the street that I was watching so no-one could leave and then we advanced in and herded all the people up to check their papers. When we came to the communal bathhouse I noticed Castor and Pollux sitting on the edge. I just discreetly walked up to them and turned on their tap so they had a soaking. I expected them to be outraged or something like that but Pollux said “ooh. Please turn the tap off for a minute but turn it back on again for the second half for 32 seconds”. I stood there and waited while they chatted amongst themselves. Just then some local Indian guy came up and began to talk to them. He pointed out something in the distance. It was a couple of people in a Jeep driving through the desert and some other activity out there. They began to talk about this and to comment on it. In the meantime I was counting. When it reached the appropriate moment I turned on the jet of water and soaked them again which completely interrupted the conversation

Whatever prompted this raid on the Market at Hanley? It would have been much easier the last time that I had been there because the Market is now indoors in the basement of the new shopping precinct that they built on the site of the old Port Vale football ground, and they could simply close the doors

And a desert in Stoke on Trent? What they are more likely to see these days is an industrial wilderness. All of the old heavy industry that used to be in the Potteries has now gone, and gone for good like in most other places in the UK.

There was also something about body positions … "presumably relating to the adult shop – ed" … in some kind of factory… "can’t be Stoke on Trent then – ed" …. Someone was saying that they didn’t know what use it was but maybe it’ll come in handy if they are doing first aid lessons. But that’s all that I can remember of that.

There’s also a very vague memory of walking – showing off my new-found skill to someone and proud of it too.

The nurse came rather later than usual and talked about not very much. He was soon gone and I could make my breakfast and read in peace. My reading of the excavations at Holborough came to an end and following yet another diversions, I’m now on the sands at Minnis Bay, just down the road from where my mother lived, investigating some Medieval wells that have recently been discovered

Once I’d finished breakfast I came back in here and I made an executive decision. For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be wrong, the person making it is executed.

Anyway, as I have far too much work to do to be able to take a Day of Rest on Sundays as I used to do, I have decided that Saturdays will be a couple of hours of rest – from the end of breakfast until the taxi comes at lunchtime, I shall emulate my namesake the mathematician and do three fifth of five eights of … err … nothing.

And so I did.

When the cleaner came she fitted my patches, helped me pack my things and we were busy chatting away when the taxi arrived. I was all on my own today down to the Centre and there weren’t all that many of us there today either.

The girls coupled me up a lot less painfully that on some occasions, but then it took them a good while to make the machine work. Everything was being difficult today.

Once we were up and running I listened to some music and read Lewis Carroll’s biography until it was time to go.

There weren’t all that many interruptions. My blood sugar level is still far too low so they were plying me with orange juice for much of the time that I was there. And now, at home I have to have a blood test. For that, I shall wait until next week, like everyone else.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too but she gave me a wide berth and didn’t even give me a wave, which I found rather disappointing.

Once I’d finished I had a good ride back home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. And to my surprise, I could make three stairs without using my hand to lift my foot before I ran out of steam. It was still a pretty rapid climb compared to at the beginning.

Back in here I found that I’d forgotten my headphones. That’s a tragedy and no mistake I shall have to ‘phone them on Monday morning.

Tea was as usual a baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by spotted dick and caramel soya cream. All very nice indeed.

But now I’m going to dictate this two lots of radio notes and then go to bed for a good sleep, in the hope that Castor comes to see me again. YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS right enough.

But talking about the “Adult Shop” … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of when one opened in Crewe years ago. When the guy next door wanted to sell his house, the Estate Agent used a previous picture of the house that showed the previous occupant of the premises next door – “The Christian Science Reading Rooms” and I’m sure that you think that I’m making this up. Personally, I don’t know which one would be the more embarrassing.

However, some woman wasn’t so embarrassed, and she sneaked in for a good look around.
Later that night in bed she mentioned “foreplay” to her husband, so he went outside and brought back three friends.

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Friday 4th October 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

… be another late night tonight.

In fact it’s going to be a rather long day because not only is it going to be a late night, it was an early morning too. When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already just about to begin to make the bread after having had a good wash.

Then again, it was an early night last night. Somehow I managed to have everything finished by 22:30 and it wasn’t many minutes later that I actually climbed into bed.

Once in there, it didn’t take me long to go off into the Land of Nod. All in all, it’s about time that I had a night like that

It was about 06:00 when I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how I tried so in the end I gave it up as a bad job, climbed out of bed and went off for a good scrub down.

Having finished that I went into the kitchen, scrubbed down the worktop and began to make the bread. I decided against trying to make some bread rolls, for the rather prosaic reason is that there’s no room in the freezer to stock them and it’s pretty pointless making just one.

But once again, the dough didn’t rise as much as I would like. That’s bizarre because the pizza dough goes up like a lift so there’s nothing wrong with my technique. All that I can think of is that it’s the flour. This stuff is the special bread flour, while the pizza dough is made of the cheapest plain flour, so that’s quite strange.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night. It wasn’t as exciting as last night unfortunately. I was sure that I had just been spotted by the police as I was driving using my ‘phone at the same time so that’s one point on my licence and a fine that I could well do without. Even worse, I hadn’t been paying my mobile ‘phone bills for a while so the ‘phone company is now going to start to chase after me. And then the car didn’t have any tax or MoT so I had a feeling that the book was now going to be thrown at me and they would be intent upon making me suffer for this. I sat down and thought about how I could clear all of the bills and all of the backlog but it would be the end of April before I had any money available and that’s a long time to wait and I didn’t think that anyone in these kinds of organisations would wait that long. As I was walking through Belgium … "Brussels actually" – ed … around the Inner Ring near the old theatre that had been boarded up I was thinking about all of this and wondering whether the fines from the traffic police or the fines about the mobile ‘phone would come first and how they would all affect my driving licence. I reckoned that I would be in for a very bad six months before things would ever improve

Fortunately most of my transgressions occurred before the days of mobile ‘phones, ANPR and computerised police forces. I would have been totally out-of-place and totally unprepared for the modern World. When I think back to how we used to behave back in the late 60s and early 70s, I’m reminded of Daniel Gooch and his "whatever would be said of that mode of proceeding today?"

But it’s a shame that I didn’t meet that girl from last night again. That reminds me of Lee Jackson singing YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

The nurse was in a good humour again this morning and was in chat mode again, although he didn’t say anything important . Mind you, he gave me some instructions about more supplies that we need. We seem to be running low yet again

After he left I gave the bread its second kneading and then went to make breakfast and carry on reading the REPORT OF THE EXCAVATION of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Holborough.

We’ve finished our examination of early Anglo-Saxon grave goods with specific reference to pot-hangers, and moved on to pathology lessons, having a master class on skulls with specific reference to dentistry. There’s no doubt that if I could absorb all of this book I’d be an expert on Anglo Saxon physical history. It’s one of the most fascinating books that I’ve ever read.

After putting the bread in the oven I came back in here and started work.

Today I’ve been a very busy boy. I’ve cracked on and completed all of the notes for the next radio programme. That burst of energy took me completely by surprise.

And there was a couple of pauses too. Firstly, I had to take the bread out of the oven when it was finished. It’s not perfect but it does look really good, that’s for sure.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a small one today – one hour and thirty-four minutes

Then there was a leisurely lunch – cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwiches on fresh, soft, delicious bread followed by a pile of fruit. The bread really was nice.

The cleaner came down too and had a good blitz through the apartment. Now it looks as if someone actually lives here, which is always nice

My afternoon hot chocolate was rather late today, and back in here I rather regrettably crashed out while I was doing something else. Only for about 20 minutes though, so I can’t complain too much. A few weeks ago it would have been for a couple of hours.

Tea was a rather rushed chips, salad and vegan nuggets. Rushed because we had football – Penybont v Barry Town

After their famous victory against TNS, Penybont somehow managed to lose against Llansawel, the bottom club in their following game, and when they went 1-0 down early in this game I thought “here we go again”

But whatever Rhys Griffiths put in their half-time cuppa, I wouldn’t mind a swig of it because they ran out 4-1 winners in the end. And we were treated to some of the finest goals that you would ever see

The standard of football was excellent – over the last couple of seasons we are really seeing an improvement in quality – and Penybont were the better team. But 4-1 is something of an exaggeration because Barry were much better than that.

And once more, this was another game where both I and the commentators thought that the referee must be refereeing a completely different game to the one that we were watching.

So right now I’m going to go to bed. I want a good sleep as tomorrow I have two lots of radio notes to dictate so it’ll be a late night.

But the match tonight made me feel rather sorry for Barry Town who deserved much better than to lose by three goals. It reminded me of Harry Carpenter trying his best to console Ken Norton after he had been badly beaten in a boxing match by Mohammad Ali
"Cheer up, Ken" he said. "Without you, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight".

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Thursday 3rd October 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… early start this morning.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was actually in the bathroom having a good wash.

It wasn’t as if it was a particularly early night either. It wasn’t very far off 23:00 but still rather the wrong side of it by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and found the energy to haul myself up out of my comfortable chair.

One thing though – and that I didn’t need much rocking. I’d barely started my little mantra before I was off away with the fairies.

It was something of a turbulent night too with a fair amount of tossing and turning as I struggled to make myself comfortable. And at least I wasn’t being wracked with pain from my foot like the previous night.

But wide-awake at 06:00 and I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how I tried and by 06:45 I gave it up as a bad job and hauled myself out of my stinking pit.

Apart from a good wash, I had a shave and a change of clothes. After all, it’s dialysis later and I might even get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant if I’m lucky. I can but hope.

Back here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere. And I was astonished by the distance that I must have travelled during the night.

Oui – j’étais hospitalisé I was kept in hospital. I was taken away to a bed, installed there and then left. Some time later I had to race to the bathroom. I managed that and when I came back there were quite a few people standing around who seemed quite concerned about what I was doing. I managed to make my way through the crowd and back to bed which this five circles was some kind of burnt wrestling ground. Then going off along the coast I was being put away I passed the postal town of Sandwich so I explained to my aunt (…fell asleep here …) I’ve fallen asleep dictating again, haven’t I? So where was I? Yes, I was in a hospital. People were interested in me etc. I left the bed to go to the bathroom and when I came back there was a crowd of people around my bed. One of them was a doctor. She came over and began to chat to me, quite friendly and quite socially so I wondered what I’d done to her to make her behave like that.

What’s impressive about this is that I was “asleep” for 53 minutes and could still remember some of the dream well enough to repeat it. As for the town of Sandwich, we were there just now with Thomas Wright and that’s why maybe I remember it. It’s the old stamping ground of my mother who was raised just along the coast at Birchington so naturally her sister would be there too.

I had a girlfriend who had started work delivering pizzas at a new pizza place on Nantwich Road in Crewe near the Royal Hotel so I went along to see how she was doing. While we were chatting she had a job to do so she went out and left me behind. I noticed that the pizzas there were really cheap, starting at £3:50. I asked the girl who was serving if they were busy. She replied that they had only just opened. They had noticed that Nantwich Road was the main centre of nightlife in Crewe so they thought that they’d tap into it, people going all along Nantwich Road rather than down to the town centre. They’d had a branch in Nantwich at one time but they had closed it after a few weeks because they wanted to concentrate their efforts on Crewe, which probably meant that they weren’t doing anything in Nantwich at all. She was quite sociable too and had a good long chat with me while I waited for my girlfriend to come back

There was in fact an Italian restaurant that opened just along there and we went to it a few times. It wasn’t too bad, I suppose. For Crewe it was quite exotic but by Italian standards it was rather sad. The location, on the main road across South Cheshire to the M6, didn’t help matters much

A short while later we were in a blue Ford Cortina like PMB, a Cortina Mk I. We turned up at a car park and pulled up. I still had the lights on so a couple of people began to sit down and eating something. I told them that I was – my girlfriend told them that we were going to turn off the lights as we had to protect the battery and did they mind?. While we were talking their car rolled out of the parking space and rolled across the road and hit a van that was embedded in the wall, a Bedford CA. We then had to sort this out. We found the owner of the Bedford CA – he was someone living nearby. They arranged that they’d move their car back into the car parking space and push this van back across the road into this person’s drive. There was some scrap in their drive so they said that they would put the scrap in the back of the van and have it weighed in. Of course I went to have a look at the van to see if it was of any use to me. My girlfriend told me off. She said that I had enough vehicles as it was already. I thought that that was a shame because this CA seemed to be in a reasonably tidy condition.

It’s difficult to believe that I’m surrounded by girlfriends tonight after everything that I’ve been through – and girlfriends with their heads screwed on too. But the girl who was most associated with my blue Cortina was the one who, after she left school, went to Bangor University. She had her head well and truly screwed on correctly and she would have made my life hell. I would have been on a very short leash, I bet, if she had had her way.

There was a City of London University class, although it was supposed to be the University of Kent and they were building their models out of wire mesh and papier maché which I thought was interesting.

I met a lovely girl. She was young with long blond hair. I know who she is and I’ve met her before. We hit it off really well. We were chatting away and she was telling me about her car going for its MoT – Contrôle Technique – in Belgium etc. She announced, after we had been talking for about an hour that she had a boyfriend, which disappointed me but she was still extremely friendly and I liked her very much. She happened to mention that he was coming round to pick her up the following lunchtime. So I caught the bus to the town centre and walked all the way out to her house. I loitered around there for a while and sure enough this boy turned up and went there. She came out and climbed into her car, drove away and came back again. Then the two of them walked off somewhere. They walked back into the city centre so I followed them at a really discreet distance and watched them for a while. They were both in a café and when he left to go to the bathroom I just sent her a message saying coucou . I didn’t know how this would work but I had a nice, chatty message back. They walked off back into the town centre and were sitting in a café so I was quite some distance away watching them. He finally stood up and left so I walked over to her. There was a big, beaming smile on her face. She looked ever so pleased to see me. I sat down by her and we carried on talking. She was telling me that she’d been discussing babies with her boyfriend. I said “you’re not planning on having a baby yet, are you?”. She said “no, but loneliness catches up with us in the end. It’ll catch up with you, Mr Hall one day” so I laughed. We carried on having this really wonderful chat. It was ever such a nice dream and I was really sorry when it ended

It took place along Hoole Road in Chester which was where she lived and I know the café where we met the second time – a modern brick and glass place and she was sitting in a window seat. It’s a café in a shopping centre and I can’t think where. The girl, I recognised her. I know her from Hanley and she had cancer too at a young age. But following her about – perfectly normal behaviour in the perfectly normal 60s and 70s but in the paranoid World in which everyone lives today and is scared to death of just about everything, I’d probably end up with 10 years in prison.

As for babies, I have no objection whatever to taking part in the fabrication thereof but there would never be any possibility of me going into a delivery room to witness the final output. How glad I was that Nerina didn’t want a child because of that. Being the youngest in her family, she told me that she was fed up of babysitting and that was enough for her. She did though ask me once “what would you say if I said that I was pregnant?”. I remember it well because we were walking up Mill Street at the time and a comment like that took the wind right out of my sails. I replied that I’d be scared to death. I didn’t refuse outright – I would have been prepared to negotiate on one condition – that she went into the delivery room on her own and I didn’t want any recriminations afterwards about it. This phobia that I have about hospitals would never have dragged me into the delivery room but I’d be waiting when she came out. I had to go to see her once in hospital and I had a panic attack after 15 minutes and had to leave. It’s hard to explain this phobia and what I’ve been going through since November 2015. I’ve had eight years of nightmare and no-one can understand it.

And then there was another dream. We were in a car going into Crewe. It was a white Ford Cortina. When we reached Gresty we took the road that goes down through the Mucky Bridge and as we came out the other side we took the little grass road that runs into the back of Crewe. Some woman was there and for some reason she’d tied a barbed wire strand across the road but I drove right underneath it. That road brought us into Crewe by way of the old castle so I pointed out the old castle to everyone and I pointed out the view. I said that the view is so much nicer from the top of the old castle. I used to come here for lunch in the old days. We reminisced a little about those days when I lived at that end of the town, then we carried on driving into the town.

You can’t take a car down the track into Crewe from the Mucky Bridge, and there certainly isn’t a castle there. These days there’s a council estate but in my day it was open fields. In the dream though the road went along a crest with a beautiful view away down both sides across a wide valley far below. And at a certain rocky outcrop to the right there were the remains of a Norman keep. It really was stunning.

The nurse was in a much better humour this morning. I’ve not seen him like this for quite a while. He’s probably just been paid, I reckon. That’s what may well have made a difference.

After he left I made breakfast and read, not my book, but the REPORT OF THE EXCAVATION of the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery on which they were walking.

And if at any time you want to follow a course about identifying Anglo-Saxon artefacts, you can do no better than make a start by reading this publication. The author doesn’t just go into identifying an item that the team uncovered, he explains the physical characteristics of why it is what it is, and the absence of physical characteristics that makes it not something else.

It’s certainly a fascinating book from that point of view, and also from many other points of view too. It’s hard to believe that Thomas Wright and his friends, keen amateur archaeologists that they were, were walking on this cemetery without realising. And how many other Anglo-Saxon cemeteries there are that we are all walking on without realising it.

Back in here I spent the morning choosing the music for another radio programme, reformatting it, remixing it and pairing it off. That’s all done now and I’ll write the notes for it tomorrow. And I had a play on the acoustic guitar too.

My cleaner put in an appearance and put my anaesthetic patches on my arm and sorted me out, The taxi came quite early. It was one from Avranches who had dropped off a patient at the Centre de Re-education and was going to run me down the road on his way back. Not that I minded – after all, it’s free to me and I wouldn’t have this service in any other country.

We picked up a passenger on the outskirts of Avranches and our driver dropped both of us off at the Dialysis Clinic. And I must be in their bad books because I was put in one of the separate rooms today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant saw me and gave me a wave – all four fingers too, not just two. Mind you, she kept well away from my lair. She must be a regular reader of this rubbish.

There wasn’t much of a wait before I was coupled up, a lot less painlessly than some times, and I passed the afternoon reading the manual of a computer program that I’ve recently downloaded.

At one point I did doze off for about 20 minutes but after the night that I had, it’s not anything worrying.

Once they let me out there was a taxi waiting to take me home. The driver and the other passenger were in full chat mode and talked incessantly all the way home and I was exhausted just listening. After the other passenger left the car, it was my turn to be on the receiving end.

My cleaner was here waiting when I arrived and she watched me up the stairs. She thinks that there’s a great improvement in how I cope with the stairs now. Once more, I could climb the fist stair without lifting up my leg with me hand.

This is indeed progress of some sort, but we shall have to see how long it lasts. Maybe this physiotherapy and these 28 sessions at the Centre de Re-education might help me in some way. But it does seem that Paris has forgotten all about me.

Tea tonight was out of the European Burger Mountain, with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, followed by spotted dick and caramel-flavoured soya cream. I’m running out of spotted dick now and I have a fancy for an apple cake. Does anyone have a good vegan recipe, or shall I just adapt my oil cake? I seem to have some success with that.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m baking bread tomorrow as I now have run out. I might even have ago at baking some baps, seeing as I have now run out. That will be an interesting project.

But seeing as we are talking about cemeteries … "well, one of us is" – ed …I’m reminded of the American who visited the Scottish cemetery in search of his ancestors.
He saw a grave with a headstone that read "Here lies Angus McTavish, a devoted father and loyal husband"
"Isn’t that just like the Scots" exclaimed the American "burying three men in one grave."

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Wednesday 2nd October 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… shower today. And you have absolutely no idea how nice it was and how much better I feel having had a really good soak under the jet of water

And I needed it too. Because I had a wretched night.

As I was finishing off the notes last night I began to feel that mysterious stabbing pain that I sometimes have in my right foot. Within half an hour I was absolutely doubled up in agony. It was the most severe attack that I have had to date and I have never hurt so much in all my life.

It was round about 01:30 when the need for sleep was such that it finally overwhelmed the pain and agony of what was going on and I could crawl into bed.

Despite the pain I did manage to fall asleep but it was a fitful, pitiful sleep that didn’t really do anyone, least of all, me, any good at all
.
When the alarm went off I crawled out of bed, still wracked by pain, and made my way into the bathroom where I had a good wash and scrub up despite everything.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my surprise, there was something recorded on there. It can’t have been such a bad night after all. I was with Roxanne and Laurence. We were wandering somewhere around Avranches and it was lunchtime. I was having health problems with this really bad attack of pain in the foot so I decided that I would have to sit down. I couldn’t walk any further. So we were sitting down on a chair alongside a wall somewhere. Suddenly I felt a splash on my shoulder. We were right underneath a bird’s nest. The two of us moved and sat at another table and had a chat for a while. Then she announced that she was going to have to go because she had to go to look for a job etc. She wasn’t sure how long it would take, whether her gran would help her but she needed to begin to move. She stood up and I pointed to a petrol station, the one that we had visited the other day, and said that I’d be waiting there if she decides to come back this way and Roxanne can meet me there if she likes. She said that she’d make a note of it and wandered off one way and I hobbled down to this garage as best as I could

What’s surprising about this is that even in a dream, I could remember an earlier dream. And it’s hardly likely that, even in a dream, I’d forget the pain that was stabbing my foot and running through my body along the central nerve

When the nurse came I mentioned to him about the pain in my foot but he didn’t seem to be interested. I think quite honestly that his heart isn’t in his work and he’s just going through the motions. It’s no surprise that his oppo is loaded up and snowed under with little tasks because I can’t be the only person who thinks like this.

After he left, I made breakfast and MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, is visiting the Medway Megaliths, a collection, of which Kit’s Coty House is one, of prominent megaliths in the Medway valley in Kent.

There’s a delightful, whimsical account of the excavation at which he assisted, of a prehistoric barrow on the chalk uplands at Holborough. They didn’t find much in the barrow but I carried out some further research, and it turned out that, unbeknown to them, while they were looking at the barrow they were standing on top of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

This only came to light when the Portland Cement company, who had bought the land to quarry the chalk for cement, began to unearth human bones in the 1940s. They stopped work and called in the archaeologists who uncovered 37 graves from the early Saxon period.

However, Thomas Wright had every reason to fear for the future of historically important artefacts. I tracked down the report of the excavation of the graves and there, in back-and-white, in chilling detail, is written that the archaeologists had learned that in 1943 a grave was uncovered and in there, apart from the human remains, there were two iron spearhads “that were disposed of to a scrap-metal merchant”.

That’s the Portland Cement company in 1943.

But that aside, here’s another little conundrum

A couple of days ago we were visiting all of the Roman ironworks around the Weald in the South-East of England, and that made me think.

Interestingly, our hero observes that Roman ironworking stopped practically dead in the Fifth Century and there was nothing for several centuries until a very primitive Saxon forge was uncovered, using nothing like the comparatively sophisticated techniques of the Romans.

In the days of the Romans the ironfields down there were the third most important iron-producing area in the whole of the Roman Empire, and once they restarted they slowly set off and as techniques evolved, still nothing like what the Romans could manage, they kept on going with a massive output almost until the 19th Century when coke replaced charcoal as the preferred fuel and the big Black Country industrial centres took off.

The current way of “politically-correct” thinking is that the Saxons, when they arrived, didn’t massacre the native British population but everyone lived quite happily side by side and gradually assimilated into one coherent race.

But leaving aside the absolutely overwhelming preponderance of Saxon place names in most of England and parts of Eastern Wales, all writing suddenly came to a dead stop until the monks like Alcuin and Bede began to assert themselves, urban life in the Roman towns came to a dead stop and the major, important Roman ironworks suddenly came to a dead stop and never really restarted.

It seems to me that there was a massive loss of all of the proto-Roman skills, most of which never ever restarted restarted. Take concrete, for instance. The Romans made massive use of concrete but it wasn’t until John Smeaton developed a technique in the 18th Century that it became a reliable construction material again. And the rediscovery of seawater-proof concrete is comparative recent.

All of this seems to suggest to me that there was a complete ethnic cleansing of the type that Pol Pot and Hitler would have been really proud. Even they managed to keep alive enough intellectuals to run the very basic needs of the societies that they had taken over.

Of course, “absence of evidence” is a totally different thing than “evidence of absence” but had here been some evidence, I’m sure that it would have been unearthed by now. But there’s nothing.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment I wrote off to the Centre de Re-education to say that I can’t come on 2nd December. They wrote back to tell me to communicate with them again when my programme is more clear, so I sent them another message to say that it won’t ever be any clearer than it is and presumably they are still thinking about their next move.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent finishing off the notes for the radio programme and doing some more stuff about my visit to Jersey two years ago, one of my very last adventures.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came in to do her stuff, and she helped me organise myself so that I could have a shower.

Putting the wooden box on the chair so that I could swivel myself into the bath easier was a master-stroke and worked perfectly, and much easier than last time when it was something of a battle to find my way into the tub.

Propping myself up with a crutch could soap myself down as far as I could reach, and I relied on the force of the rinsing water to clean the rest.

With the seat of the chair much higher because of the box I felt much more confident about sitting down from a standing position and it was much easier to swivel myself out of the bathtub.

So now here I am, a nice clean boy with nice clean hair and how nice it all feels. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to be downstairs, rip out the bath and have a walk-in shower installed. Then it will be a shower every day

Regrettably, for the first time for several days, I crashed out. But only for something like half an hour and after the wretched night that I’d had, it really wasn’t any surprise so I’m not disappointed.

Tea tonight was a beautiful leftover curry with rice, veg and a naan bread. That’s the last of the naan bread dough and I’ll have to make some more next week.

So now having finished my notes, I’m off to bed to catch up on my beauty sleep now that the pain has subsided somewhat. And don’t I need it?

But all of this talk about archaeology and graves reminds me of the archaeologist who had been on an excavation of a historic cemetery.
He wrote to his parents about his discoveries, saying "in one grave we found a skeleton wrapped in an ermine cloak with a big gold chain around his neck and a crown on his head. He was all dressed up like a Count."
His father turned to his mother and said "Look at this! All that money we spent on his education and he still can’t spell!"

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Tuesday 1st October 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning I was on my way back to sit in my office after having done everything that I needed to do this morning.

It seems to be the case that after a session at the Dialysis Clinic I awaken early, and a couple of times it’s been a complete awakening. And so it was this morning. Despite trying my best to go back to sleep I ended up tossing and turning around to no good purpose and in the end gave it up as a bad job.

It wasn’t as if it was an early night either. Once more I struggled to be in bed at a realistic time and failed miserably. After I’d done everything that I needed to do, I had some purchase to make on line and the web site froze. I had to wait until the confirmation of purchase e-mail came through before I could switch off the computer.

That seemed to take for ever and at one stage I rather lost interest but eventually it all worked out, I switched everything off and went to bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, as seems to be the case these days, and I only awoke once or twice during the night before the major awakening at about 06:00, and that was that.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And I was surprised that there was so much. A new King was appearing on the TV at some kind of church service. For some reason there were a few of us watching it. At a certain moment, as they were playing a very poignant song someone gave him a flower so he walked up to the plaque in the floor where his wife and child were buried, put the rose on top of the plaque and then lit a candle. Of course the cameras immediately panned to his new wife to see what she made of the situation. This was something that was extremely interesting, not just with me actually watching some kind of Royal ceremony. There was a lot of dispute amongst us watching it as to what was the actual significance of what he did. We all had our own, different opinions of it.

As if I’d ever be watching a TV programme, never mind one with some royalty on it. Whatever relevance Royalty might have had in this modern World was totally abolished by Lizzie’s failure to stand up to the crooked politicians who lied to her and who were wrecking the UK.

A little later we were just moving into a new house and were organising ourselves in there, and I decided that I’d go to have a bath. I went upstairs and someone had just had a bath and had left the water in. Whoever it was had cut their hair in it. I wasn’t too impressed so I drained out the water, cleaned the bath and began to fill it. It started off with the water out of one of the tanks which was already hot. I ran that into the bath until it began to go cold and then I switched over to the electrically heated tank and began to fill the bath again. At that point my sister and her friend came along, my little sister. They came along for a chat and both climbed into the bath. I asked them how the water was. They replied that it was nice so we began to talk about something that I’d read. There was an article in there that was talking about ten-score houses in this village I asked my little sister “how many are there in a score?”. She replied “twenty” so I replied “yes. So why didn’t they just say 200 houses? As they were messing about in the bath I happened to notice one of the cars. There was a kind of radiator attached underneath the rear that vented out near where the tow-bar was. I’d just put my hand down there and it was wet. I had a look and saw a big stream of water coming out from the radiator. I told my sister to go to tell her mother to make sure that someone had a look at it before someone went somewhere in the car next morning.

Presumably the first tank was a solar water tank. Some of my experiments with solar-heated water were really good and I had quite a few showers, totally unaided by any water other than what the sun had headed. And some of them I even had to cool down once I had my solar shower unit installed outside. What’s more, the idea that I can remember what a score is while I’m asleep is quite impressive.

And finally I was back at that local coach company in Crewe again, the one that features regularly in my nocturnal travels. They had just bought a big, massive double-decker for long-distance work. It had been off on its first trip. It had come back into the yard and they were checking it over. The passengers hadn’t been very kind to it and it needed a good clean. The driver was also saying that there was a whine coming from the engine. My first thought was that it was the turbo but the driver wasn’t convinced so we had the engine running but couldn’t hear any unusual noise. The boss tried to go into the engine bay. It was a sealed-in bay so he thought “how on earth do you escape from here if there’s a problem?” He was telling us that the propshaft actually stretches out down to the front past the gear lever. We were looking at the signwriting on it. Whoever it was who had written the loads of text on the side had obviously had some kind of bee in his bonnet. It turned out that the engine was not an original MAN engine, which would be totally bullet-proof but a licensed version built by a company called TMS. They were supposed to be extremely fragile so we were very disappointed. We asked why the company had sold it . He told us that they were planning to update and buy a whole new fleet but to date he’d only seen one of them. We talked about other buses. He looked at me and said “your coach is due for a change isn’t it?”. I replied that I was quite happy driving the old Ford around as long as I’m not going anywhere far in it. You can go into much tighter places with a Ford than you can with something modern. So he told us about the time that he went to Olympia. There were all these brand-new expensive coaches there and they all looked sideways at him when he turned up in the Ford. There was an old guy who used to hang around there and he was telling us stories of his travels and how he once saved the life of a traveller in Africa. We all asked how so he said that he told him not to drink the water. I asked where he came from. Was it Connemara? He looked at me strangely so I asked him two or three times. He replied “Warwick” which I found extremely hard to believe but anyway that was what he said

They did actually own one of these big coaches but they didn’t really have the work for it. It was more of a vanity thing, I suspect. They would have been better off buying another heavyweight 53-seater standard coach. Those double-deckers are specialist machines, expensive, thirsty, and need to be kept working. You can’t use them on a lot of jobs either.

And telling jokes in my dreams now? Do my nocturnal talents ever end? How I wish that I was able to do all of this during my waking hours and turn them into some kind of remunerative activity. The one thing that I always lacked in my life was a practical person who could help me make my ideas work. We could have ruled the World.

There was quite a bit of stuff that I needed to do to which I attended, and was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse.

It’s the boss for the next seven days so we have to be on our best behaviour. I mentioned that Emile the Cute Consultant is talking about Home Dialysis but he didn’t pick up on the suggestion. So I’ll wait until Isabelle is back and talk to her.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book. Today we’ve explored the sunken remains of a Roman pottery factory in the marshes at the mouth of the River Medway and then we moved downriver to inspect the Megalithic Menhirs of Kit’s Coty House.

One thing about his voyages is that I’m visiting (by proxy) places that I never even knew existed.

Another thing is that he casually mentions that he went to help his friend so he borrowed a spade and unearthed a few items. Then you read something much more modern and the investigations of his friends are described as “major investigations”.

In fact, when you see some of these modern reports that criticise severely the shoddy nature of those early investigations, it’s quite clear from his notes that they were never intended to be anything else.

Back in here I had my Welsh lesson to attend. And surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons that I have had for quite some considerable time. It beats me what’s happening there but I really seem to have finally got to grips with this lesson today.

My cleaner came in and brought me the post. And now, starting on 2nd December, the Centre de Re-education wants to offer me 28 sessions as before. Only problem is that I can’t go to the appointment because it clashes with my dialysis. I shall have to see about that.

It’s astonishing though that I’m now being double-booked for medical appointments. There’s the 30 physiotherapy sessions to fit in too, as well as a possible summons to Paris.

But I’m amazed at what is being offered to me, all free and for nothing, in order to keep my alive. I honestly can’t believe it. It’s as if I owe them money and they are keeping me alive until I pay it off.

One of the things that I was doing this morning was to look for a free video-editing course at either OpenLearn or Oxford University but I shall have to put that on hold for now, I reckon.

After lunch I set about the radio programme and despite all of the interruptions that I had I managed to pair off and segue the tracks that I have chosen and even write some of the notes. I can finish off the rest tomorrow

Tea was a delicious taco roll, but I have noticed that the microwave is less powerful than my old one. But it’s only until I move next year so as long as it keeps on going I’ll be able to manage.

So now I’m off to bed ready for the morning and the possibility of a shower. We decided at lunchtime that we’d have another go tomorrow. I mustn’t forget to ring the Water Board and tell them that it’s on its way.

But the story of all these medical appointments reminds me of the man who went to the doctor’s with this really bad attack of wind that was producing the most appalling, pungent output from the rear.
He’d only been in there five minutes before the doctor went out of the room. When he came back he was carrying a pole with a brass hook on the end.
"Good god!" exclaimed the man. "You’re not going to use that on me, are you?"
"Of course not" said the doctor. "I’m going to open the windows!"

0

Monday 30th September 2024 – I SAW EMILIE …

… the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 29th September 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was exceptional

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wile it was rising, I –

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

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

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

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

0

Saturday 28th September 2024 – ONE MORE DAY …

… in the Dialysis Clinic followed by another late night, followed by an early start on a Sunday again for the nurse. It’s relentless, all of this and there is no end in sight. Furthermore, I doubt if there ever will be.

But what happens at Christmas? It would surprise me (but there again, nothing surprises me any more) if the clinic were to be open on Christmas Day. And even if it were, would there be a taxi to take me? There are all these little things about which I need to think.

But not right now, of course. I’m beyond thinking. I’ve had a tough day, I’m deathly tired but I still have a lot to do so it’s going to be a late night.

Much later than last night in fact. And it was after midnight then when I could finally wrench myself out of my chair and into the bathroom. And that was when I noticed the cascade of blood from a wound in my leg. So off we go again. I’m fed up of that as well.

What I did in the end is to take one of the nurses’ sterile pads, fold it up against the wound and put some sticking plaster on it to hold it to the leg. That will have to do.

Once in bed I was asleep yet again quite quickly and only awoke a couple of times, perspiring away yet again. That seems to be becoming a habit as well.

When the alarm went off it took me a couple of minutes to rise to my feet and then to stagger across to the bathroom. No bread to make today.

However there was plenty of washing. My shorts, my socks, trousers and undies, and that’s before I could even think about washing myself. This sartorial elegance these days is proving to be too much for my routine. I might even end up being clean myself at this rate.

Back in here I attacked the dictaphone notes. Mountains of them too. I wanted to perform some experiments. That involved being outside so I set up a small kind of cubicle or tent inside the barn that I could use to change etc into some strange kind of clothes with a large woolly black mop as a hairpiece. I thought that if I were to set myself up there and then were to go outside I’d be fine. However it took so look to organise myself that everyone began to leave the house. The lorry driver who was leaving – he left at the same time every day – seemed to be leaving quite quickly and I was nowhere near ready to go to step outside so I knew that I was going to have problems doing what I had to do. One of my neighbours came down with his wife and he had to climb over my legs in order to find their way through the barn and go to the outdoors. He asked if I was living in here now. I relied “not exactly” and tried to explain the circumstances about where I was living but I was more interested in them clearing off so that I could continue making myself ready to go outside for just about what was left of the afternoon, most of which had disappeared with everyone either being late or hanging on. That I suppose included the Welsh class – I dunno – I can’t remember the Welsh class being there but I suppose that it must have been if I’m talking about it, I dunno but I still managed to get rid of everyone and carry on preparing myself in my little room or tent in the barn so that I could then step outside and do what’s needed.

And isn’t that the problem? I never see people for weeks then everyone turns up at once or they call me on the phone, and it’s always at just the wrong moment. I’m convinced that some people have installed a camera here at this apartment.

Did I dictate the dream about the old British couple and their mobile home thing towing a trailer? … "no you didn’t" – ed … They were somewhere in France heading back to the UK. I came across them on a car park and went over for a chat. While we were chatting, another vehicle pulled in on the car park and hit the trailer. I looked in the mirror and saw this car, which drove off across the car park to the far side. I ran after it and as I reached it a big woman, probably in her late 30s, a horsey type of person, alighted. She was in a car and trailer too. I asked her “why is it that you’ve driven all the way over here after hitting the trailer and making me run after you?” She went “ohh, I have my English insertion exam”. I said “you’d better come and sort out this trailer first that you’ve just hit”. She made a few disagreeable remarks, saying “that old guy is already in trouble for sexually assaulting me”. I couldn’t help thinking that no-one in their right minds would ever want to have any sexual contact with this woman at all. We stormed over to the old guy with his trailer with this woman still complaining that it was everyone else’s fault but hers, and how she had this important exam etc.

There are dozens of people like that whom we all know. “The rules are meant for the little people”. I know that I’m not exactly the best person to appeal to if you want someone to stick to the rules, but whatever comes out of it is no-one’s fault but my own. And if I can’t bewilder the opposition with brains, I will baffle them with b*llsh*t.

I was at a friend’s house and his mother came in and began to tell him off about something or other. After a couple of minutes she turned round to me and began to blame me, calling me all kinds of things as if it was all my fault, whatever it was that I had done. I’d contributed a little but it certainly wasn’t my responsibility. He had to nip out for ten minutes leaving me on my own with her. She continued to lecture with me while I was preparing to leave. I went downstairs into the kitchen. She was slitting eels open ready to jelly them. Of course I felt sick immediately but she carried on and carried on moaning at me. Then my friend came back so I said that I’d better go to say goodbye but I want to go to my garage next door and take away my tools because whatever is left in there you can have it. I have to liquidate some of my affairs and generally make a bit of space in my life. I’m never going to get round to doing these. I went next door to the garage. all the alarms were whistling because all the lights had been left on and the batteries were all low. I turned everything off but I couldn’t turn off the lights in the main room for some reason. Then I began to go through my tools and collecting the ones that I needed. I suddenly realised that there was far too much stuff here for me to take away. There’s nowhere for me to keep it back in my flat so I’ve no idea now what I’m going to do about anything. I am just so confused. That’s another dream about having garages and Ford Cortinas scattered halfway around the World isn’t it? I’ve had plenty of these in the past.

And I tell you what – I’m impressed that I can remember my previous dreams while I’m dreaming. That’s some achievement. But it’s true that in our dreams in the past we’ve had Ford Cortinas and workshops dotted about all over the place. Just like the old days, in fact. But I did once have a friend whose mother was from an island in the Mediterranean, and she was rather … well, I was going to say “emotional” but ” volatile” is a much better word.

The nurse put her sooty foot in the door and sorted me out with bandages and so on. She taught me a new phrase as well. I told her that the only way I would leave this building would be horizontally, but she explained that she would say les pieds à l’avant – “feet first”. She told me that when she worked in a hospital she was always taught that it’s the heads to the wall in bed, and if you are pushing a trolley or a bed with a patient on it, it’s always head first if they are alive, and feet first if they are dead. hence the expression.

After she left I made breakfast and then settled down to read my book. Our hero, lamenting the dispersal of excavated treasures into private hands and subsequently disappearing, has now left Rutupiae and set out down the coast past Deal and has arrived at the Roman lighthouse at Dover

Of course, it goes without saying that I agree with him. What treasures have been lost by being found before there was a system of registration and recording? And walls demolished for the rubble at Rutupiae and Verulamium and elsewhere?

Back in here I didn’t do much – just watched the highlights of the week’s football and watched TNS turned over by Y Bala with a couple of mystery time goals

My cleaner came along and fitted my patches. She also brought me a fairly new baking tray and oven pan that were on their way to the dechetterie

The taxi came early today so I wasn’t ready. She had a fare at Avranches to pick up at 13:30 so she wanted to get ahead if she could. It doesn’t bother me. After all, it’s free so it’s not an issue.

We picked up someone else going to the clinic and we had a good chat all the way down there. We were quite early so we had to wait, but that’s no big deal.

Once in the ward I weighed myself, and some of the weight that I’d lost last time has stayed off. Not all of it, but to say goodbye to some is encouraging.

Next step was to clamber into bed where eventually after a little wait they coupled me up. Nothing like as much pain as the other day when I literally hit the roof.

While I was being done I amused myself by finishing off the tagging of the videos and then read my book on Curious Church Customs. That is, when I wasn’t asleep. I did have a doze for half an hour or so but that’s the first time for several days. Isn’t that a change?

The driver who brought me back was quite chatty and had a lot to say for himself, and then my cleaner watched me up the stairs. On one stair I could lift my foot by just the leg muscles without using my hands. Just one, but that’s an improvement. The first time for several months.

Football was next. And it was also a pleasure watching Caernarfon turn over Connah’s Quay 3-1, and well-worth it too. But they had to cope not only with the opposition but with being on the receiving end of some of the most bizarre refereeing decisions that I’ve seen for a while.

And if you think that it’s just me, there were several comments made from the commentators’ box too. The referee was clearly refereeing a different game to the one that we were watching.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap. When I looked in the freezer the other day I saw that I had enough burgers to last a lifetime – well, mine anyway. So I’d better start to eat them and make some space

So late again thanks to the football, I’ll dictate the radio notes and then go to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight tomorrow.

But thinking about cleaning myself up reminds me of A FILM in which another one of my heroes, Frankie Howerd, plays the rôle of a priest accompanying a leper in the Middle Ages.
There he is, ringing his bell and shouting "unclean! Unclean!"
And then he breaks the fourth wall, turns to the audience and says "well, let’s face it! It has been up to now, hasn’t it?"

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