Tag Archives: hospital

Monday 30th November 2015 – THIS WAS A TOTAL DISASTER.

We had the usual performance of falling asleep in the middle of a film, being awoken relentlessly during the middle of the night, the injections, the blood tests, the total rubbish food etc etc.

And then the doctor appeared. He wasn’t totally convinced that I had a phlebite – he was more of the opinion that I was suffering from an infection and he proposed a course of antibiotics. I told him that I didn’t agree with the use of antibiotics but he reckoned that it was essential given the gravity of the situation.

Anyway, a short while later, it was agreed that I should go back to the hospital at Montlucon. After all, they had been treating me in the past and they will still be treating me later in the week. Accordingly a private ambulance arrived to take me. And then this is where it all went from bad to worse.

In France, you have to pay for ambulance services, and this is covered by your health insurance, which means effectively that 99% of people don’t actually pay for it. But with my insurance scheme I have to pay for most things unless they are pris en charge and with this being sprung on me at the very last moment, I hadn’t had the opportunity to make a phone call to arrange it. And so I had to pay … gulp … €190.

And the driver asked me if I could pay for it, to which I replied that if we stopped at a cash machine. And then five minutes later she asked me “do you really have your cards on you?” to which I went totally berserk. It’s a long time since I’ve been insulted like that, and I’ll tell you something – I bet it’s been a long time since she’s been insulted like she was just then by the time that I had finished.

Some people might say that it’s not very gallant of me, but my response is that you shouldn’t give it out if you can’t take it back.

Back at Montlucon, the receptionist at the hospital asked me what I was going to do about my outstanding bill. I replied “nothing at all”.
She looked at me strangely, and so I continued “when I came here the other Friday, I gave your emergency admissions people my Insurance card with contact details and everything on it, so that you could set up a direct billing account on the spot, but they refused to do anything about it.
“And so I had a form sent to me on Monday and I filled it in and gave it to you on Tuesday to fax off so that you would know that it had gone and that you had a copy with all of the details, but you refused to do that too, and so as far as I’m concerned, what’s happening now is all your problem, not mine. I couldn’t care less”.

Back up here, the doctor looked at my arm and was horrified by what he saw. He was astonished that I had been discharged like this. He drew quite carefully on my arm the area of interest.

They managed to rustle up some food for me and even though it was rather ad-hoc, it was streets better than anything that I had had to eat in Riom.

I was ushered into a bedroom where a rather elderly gentleman was already installed. And as the afternoon drew on, I could see that it was going to be another one of “these” nights as my room-mate was clearly not at the races. But what did help was that one of the nurses found a type-of alcohol-impregnated covering that was freezing cold and when she put it on my inflamed arm, I could feel the relief immediately and I wish that someone had thought of doing that a few days ago.

And then the pantomime began. My room-mate had a seizure. I was evacuated and eventually ended up in a totally empty room, with my bed, chair, table and possessions following on behind. And so I settled down again, only for it to be decided that the empty room was more valuable as an empty room and I was moved yet again, this time to one of the empty day wards.

I had my alcohol pad changed, and then settled down for third-time lucky. I switched on a film and slowly dozed off into a deep sleep.

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Sunday 29th November 2015 – AND SO BACK AGAIN …

… in hospital, and back to the usual hospital routine. An early night, falling asleep watching a film on the laptop, and then waking up at about 02:00, lying awake for a few hours and then dropping off again just in time to be awoken by the continual comings and goings of nurses in and out of my room.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I was in Vine Tree Avenue in Shavington, where we lived in the 1960s, and I was working on my 2000E saloon, TNY 143 M, sanding down the offside rear wing where I’d just welded on a wheel arch repair panel, and Nerina turned up. We were admiring a tree in the garden next door in Edwards Avenue – a small tree or plant about 2.5 metres high that looked like a very immature weeping willow – and we decided that we would like a cutting to go in our garden here too.

Strangely, when I went back to sleep a few hours later, I stepped right back into the dream where I had left off and was reading a catalogue that was displaying all kinds of kinky Christmas underwear made of tinsel. Nerina didn’t think very much of that and made a few typical disparaging remarks, and I was thinking that it was a good job that she hadn’t noticed what I’d been looking at on the first 10 pages of the catalogue.

So after breakfast, such as it was, we had what can only be described as a perfect example of extreme boredom. I hadn’t brought anything with me because I hadn’t expected to be here, so no laptop and a flat battery in the telephone because I didn’t have the charger. There wasn’t anything around to read either which was even worse.

But I did find a brochure about the terms and conditions of the hospital so I can tell you all about that now. And apparently I have the right to have a person of my choice in my room with me, and a spare bed will be provided. I did wonder what Kate Bush might be doing right now, and they needn’t bother about the spare bed.

At 15:00 Liz came round and brought me some clothes, my wash bag, a phone charger and the laptop. And not just that, but a couple of snacks too. Which is just as well because the food in this hospital is thoroughly disgusting. Part of the hospital’s charter, which I read assiduously this morning, tells me that the hospital will “take into account the tastes and the eating habits … of the patient”. How they do that is simply to remove from the plate anything that one isn’t allowed to eat. and so for lunch I had half a plate of carrots and green beans, and for tea I had half a plate of overcooked courgette. And that was that. It’s a question of whether they find out what’s wrong with me before I die of starvation. I can see me striking up quite an acquaintance with the lady who runs the cafe across the road and having regular wisits from her;

But there’s another thing as well about the hospital at Riom that is even more important. And that is that there is no internet. Luckily, Liz had helped me to set up “tethering” on my mobile phone and so I can stay in some kind of contact with the outside world.

But whether or not the outside world wants to keep in touch with me is another matter. Of my 132 “friends” on my social network, I’ve had just 14 expressions of best wishes. I know that everyone has their social network account for their own particular reasons and that’s not an issue with anyone, but I don’t see the point of being “friends” with anyone if you aren’t going to take an interest in them and their own personal issues. Consequently I’ve had yet another major purge of my “friends” list. and quite right too. it’ll soon be down to just me.

On that note I settled down to watch a film on the laptop because it’s the most sure-fire way that I know of falling asl……

… ZZZZZZZZ

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Saturday 28th November 2015 – DAY THREE …

… of my rehabilitation has ended up being something of a disaster. I had the worst night’s sleep yet.

I had a couple of hours sleep but that was basically it – I remember watching the clock go round at least three hours and I didn’t watch it after that – but I did somehow manage to go back to sleep, because I woke up again at just after 09:00.

By this time, my right arm was swollen out of all recognition and was starting to turn a blotchy red. When I had briefly chatted with the nurse on the phone about this yesterday, he told me that if it started to go red, I needed to have something done about it. As a result, we telephoned Liz and Terry’s doctor in Les Ancizes and as luck would have it, she was there and so we went round.

There’s no doubt that the world is a small place, and getting smaller day by day. The doctor’s son (or was it nephew?) had the same day and month of birth than me, and she was born in the same year as me. Furthermore, she comes from Romania and closer discussion revealed that she came from Brasov, which, as long-term readers of this rubbish will recall from one of its many, many previous reincarnations long-lost in the mists of time, was the scene of some of my many triumphs back in the early 1990s.

But returning to our moutons, as the French say, apparently I have a phlébite, which judging by a few things that people have subsequently said, might be a blood clot in the arm. I had to seek immediate attention, and the casualty department at Riom was by far the closest.

And so here I am. I’ve been inspected by a couple of nurses and a junior doctor, I’ve been injected with warfarin to stop the blood clotting (so it’s a good job that I’m really not a rat) and then I was stuck on a trolley in the corridor waiting my turn for a scan on the arm.

Unfortunately, despite waiting about 4 hours, we ran out of time and so I’ve been “detained” until at least Monday. I felt sorry for Liz who had to wait this long for no good purpose, but at least she nipped out to buy me some grub because I’ve missed all of the meals in here and I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast

They’ve found me a single room for the next two nights, and this was touch-and-go. Riom Hospital is quite small and there’s not much in the budget, but the rooms are light and airy and comfortable enough although the walls haven’t been painted since the place was built.

And so I wonder what the nurses are going to be like here. There has to be some kind of consolation for being stuck back in a blasted hospital yet again.

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Thursday 26th November 2015 – DAY ONE …

… of my rehabilitation starts today. And I celebrated by staying in bed until 08:30. Liz was up early and gone by the time that I surfaced, and so Terry was babysitting me because he has no work on the go at the moment.

My night hadn’t been quite so good though. I’d been asleep for a while but then I woke up at about 04:00 with the pain in my right arm. I had a quick ride of the porcelain horse and then couldn’t go back to sleep for ages, and so I wasn’t really with it for most of the morning.

I had two phone calls – the first one to say that I have to go back to the hospital next Thursday morning at 08:15 (yawnnnnnnnn) for a scan, and the second one to say that I have to go back yet again the following day where I shall be told the results of all of these examinations and some kind of treatment schedule to be discussed.

But one thing good seems to be that as they aren’t in such of a rush to start any treatment, it can’t be anything really serious. I would have imagined that if lights had been flashing all over the place something would have been done immediately – I mean, look how quickly they had me in when the results of my first blood test were announced. I was summoned within minutes.

So apart from that, I’ve not done very much at all. But then, that’s what rehabilitation is all about. I’ve done some of my course work again and watched some sport on the TV, and then I went off to bed.

It’s warm here, the food is excellent, the bed is comfortable and the company is so convivial. I can’t think of anywhere better to be while all of this is going on.

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Wednesday 25th November 2015 – I’VE BEEN DISCHARGED

Well, expelled, more like. Liz came by to pick me up at about 18:00 to take me home. She had to wait half an hour because the hospital hadn’t quite finished with me, but I soon put all of my things together, got dressed, and we were off.

Stopping off at the bank on the way back to start to build up a little war chest for the future, we were back at Liz and Terry’s for about 19:30. After a quick snack, because I wasn’t all that hungry, I wandered off to the bed that they had prepared for me, and that was that.

The plan now is that I’ll have a district nurse coming to see me twice a week to take a blood sample, and I’ll be summoned back to hospital in a week or so for a scan. Once they’ve assimilated all of the results, they’ll call me in again to discuss what they might be able to do for me.

But last night, with the difficulties that I’d had the previous evening, I was in bed by 20:00 and fell asleep while I was watching a film. As a result I was awake before the dawn chorus started. This morning’s blood sample was a farce – it took 5 goes and 2 nurses to find a vein that worked. I’m looking even more like a dartboard now.

This morning I was left pretty much to my own devices but it all kicked off this afternoon. They came to change my pochette of vitamins, only to discover that my right arm was incredibly swollen – no wonder it was hurting so much – and so they had to fit the drain in my left arm. And then I had another 2 pochettes of blood. I also had a biopsy, where they chipped a bit of bone off my pelvis to take away for examination and that’s the most painful thing that I have ever experienced.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The young Eurasian student nurse came to take my blood pressure this afternoon and with the drain having been moved, she needed to reach my other arm. Her solution to this was to lean right across me, in her low-cut nurse’s uniform with no t-shirt on underneath.
“Ohh – your blood pressure is up, and your pulse is racing a little”
“Really?” I replied. “I can’t think why”

Clearly I’m not as ill as I think that I am.

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Tuesday 24th November 2015 – NOT AGAIN!

Yes, I had another bad night.

As most of you know, I’m a night person rather than a day person, and so being awake at midnight is no big deal to me. In fact last night at midnight I was watching a film on the laptop. It’s a good job that I’ve downloaded all of those films and radio programmes from www.archive.org for when I go off on my travels.

The result of all of this was that from about 04:30 we had a new type of dawn chorus – a relentless stream of nurses and doctors performing all kinds of rituals on me. By the time breakfast came round at 08:30 I had given up trying to go back to sleep.

No blood transfusions today – just a prise de sang and a change of vitamin pochette.

After lunch, Liz came round to visit seeing as how she’s teaching here today. Amongst the things that she brought me was a form to sign from my insurance company about paying my bills, and also a vegan cheese and tomato sandwich, which was the nicest thing that I’ve eaten for a while. The mobile library came past too and I liberated a couple of books.

Later on, the doctor came by with the news. It seems that they are ruling out leukaemia for the moment and focusing more on lymphoma. This can be fatal in some circumstances but they reckon that in my case it’s not very profound and so there’s quite a bit of hope.

The plan is that I can be liberated tomorrow and go home (although it seems that I’ll be going home to Liz and Terry) for a week. And then when the results have been collated (which might be a week or so) they’ll call me back to see what they can propose for me.

The important thing is that I’m likely to be here for a good while yet. You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.

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Monday 23rd November 2015 – AT LAST!

Yes, a good night’s sleep. It took me ages to drop off but once I fell asleep that was me gone away with the fairies and I felt absolutely nothing at all. Totally painless.

And for once, no-one came to bother me during the night (well, if they did, I know nothing about it) and the morning visits were later than usual so I had a really good night’s sleep. And didn’t I feel better next morning?

I’d been on my travels during the night too. In the south of France during the war and a member of SOE had just paddled ashore in his canoe, evading a German canoe patrol just offshore (you could tell the Germans because they had 2-pronged tridents with points that pointed outwards). As he paddled along the road (yes, you ought to be used to thins right now) a Vichy patrol consisting of an old man in a Citroen H-type van silently pulled up alongside him and leapt on top of him. This is where I came in and I cracked the old guy sharply across the back of the head with a Stillsons wrench.

I had a quiet morning doing my University course but I was quickly interrupted several times in rapid succession.

Firstly, it seems that they suspect that I have leukaemia so they wanted a bone marrow sample, and that’s not something to be undertaken lightly – I’ll promise you that. And then I had a new room-mate – a guy in his 70s or maybe even older.

But what was nice was that Ingrid came to visit. She’s Dutch and lives in Biollet and came to the Anglo-French group. She works as a Health Visitor and one of her clients is in hospital here, so she popped in to say hello and have a really good chat. That was quite a pleasant surprise.

While Ingrid was here, one of the nurses came by and dropped a packet on the table. “Take this with you when you go – it’s your tea”
“When I go?”
“Ohh yes – you’re moving”
I thought that the issues that I’d been having had resolved themselves but it seems that they have resolved themselves into another direction. I’ve now been moved to a new department – the Oncology/Haematology department – and so it’s looking very much as if their suspicions are indeed lurching towards leukaemia.

I’ve a lovely little room here all to myself. Nice and modern with en-suite facilities – I’ve paid good money to sleep in far worse hotels and motels than this and for once my luck seems to be in, although the nurses aren’t quite as young, vibrant and exciting, which is a disappointment.

But you can’t have everything, I suppose.

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Sunday 22nd November 2015 – THINGS HAVE A HABIT OF WORKING …

… themselves out if you let them, no matter how unlikely it might seem at the time.

My plan about getting off to sleep didn’t work at all because it wasn’t long that I was awoken by the earth-shattering roar of a VC 10 taking off just about 8 feet from my ear, and that was that. At 04:00 the night nurse came round on her rounds and by this time, having had quite enough, I told her quite plainly that I wasn’t going to spend a third night like this. If another room couldn’t be found for me, I was going to discharge myself and that would be that.

Mind you, I must have had something by the way of sleep because I was at Dover during the night, standing on the concrete pan that was formerly the hovercraft terminal (which isn’t there) looking at a huge storm breaking over an island just offshore (that isn’t there either) and watching a group of boys trying to encourage a group of young girls to join in.

But anyway, after breakfast, and I was flat-out exhausted, my neighbour was having an “issue” with the medical staff, something to do with the question of having a shower. There was some unpleasantness involved in this discussion and it ended round about lunchtime by him dressing and leaving the room.

Later on that afternoon, while I was having my next blood transfusion, a team of nurses came in, stripped my neighbour’s bed and started to clean all around his side of the room. It appears that, quite astonishingly, my neighbour has decided to discharge himself, and he’s cleared off home.

There are no admissions scheduled for today, and so unless there’s an emergency during the night I’m going to be on my own tonight. That means that I’ll be having a good night’s sleep (I hope) and so I’ll be fit for whatever the world can throw at me tomorrow.

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Saturday 21st November 2015 – HELL!

Yes, it looks as if I’ve arrived in hell.

I can cope with most things, including hospital food, but sleep is quite important for me too and while I don’t particularly need a lot, I just become miserable and in a bad mood the less sleep I have.

And this is why I am miserable and in a foul temper right now, because my neighbour is a big guy and has the loudest snore that I have ever encountered. Sleep is totally impossible if he’s dropped off and I am going to be having a long, sad stay in this hospital.

The prognosis isn’t all that good either. The three pochettes of blood that I had last night have done some good. I’m supposed to have a blood-count of 15 or so for my haemoglobin and I now have 5.8, which is a far cry from the 3.8 that I had when I arrived. No wonder that I’ve been so exhausted and pale just recently. But even this improvement is far from adequate and so the transfusions will have to continue.

Talking of hospital food though, I spent about 20 minutes last night talking about my diet to the admissions doctor, and another 15 minutes this morning to my personal doctor. And so for lunch they have brought me a chicken dinner.

I had a nice surprise this afternoon though. Liz put in an appearance with a big bag of grapes and we had quite a long chat. That cheered me up considerably. What also cheered me up is that winter has arrived. It’s -5°C outside and we’ve had the first snows of the year, and I’m inside in the comparative warmth being waited on hand and foot by a bevy of beautiful nurses. So there’s an up-side for everything.

After Liz left, I had tea. And for some reason, the boiled potatoes in their jacket smeared with vegetable margarine was the nicest thing that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off for an early night. Liz brought some ear plugs for me and I’ve fitted them. If I can fall asleep before my neighbour, I might stand a chance.

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Friday 20th November 2015 – AHH WELL!

So here I am.

It’s 08:00 in the morning and I crawl (and I do mean crawl) out of bed. I can safely say that I’ve never felt as bad as all of this. Getting down to Caliburn was something of a struggle and I’m sure that I couldn’t see straight as I drove down to Pionsat for my blood test. A surprise awaited me at the reception of the medical centre – on duty was one of the girls who runs the pie hut at FCPSH.

So having dealt with the blood test, I staggered back here and had my breakfast (luckily I’d prepared it before I went off) and then crashed out on the sofa.

I managed a coffee at about midday and then crashed out again, to be awoken by the telephone at 14:30. It was the doctor. “You have a very bad case of anaemia and you need to go to the hospital at once. I’ve prepared a file for you and there’s an ambulance voucher here at the office”

An ambulance voucher is one thing, but finding an ambulance is something else. In the end I ring up Terry and Liz, but they are out, but Rosemary is in and so she comes to the rescue. I have just about enough strength to throw a few things into a bag and then we are off.

At the hospital I check in, but I don’t even have enough time to find a seat before I’m whisked off into an emergency room and stuck on a bed. They couple me up to a vitamin tube and give me a good interrogation – and after about an hour, the blood arrived.

I had one “pochette” of blood in the emergency room and then they took me up to a room where they gave me two others.
“We have to check your blood pressure every 15 minutes during the transfusion process” explained the nurse.
“I’m a very light sleeper” I replied
“Well you are going to be in for a very long night” she answered.
And she was right.

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Monday 3rd August 2015 – I HATE PEOPLE …

… who post on the internet photos of what they have been eating.

vegan meal clermont ferrand puy de dome franceHowever, just very occasionally, there are rare occasions where a meal merits being photographed, and this is one of them.

Right in the centre of Clermont-Ferrand this lunchtime, not one of the restaurants had a vegan meal on offer, but there was one where the chef was busy plying his art (and art it was) in the corner of the dining area and so I went over for a chat.

And this is the result. And no complaints whatever from me. I had a struggle to finish it.

So after a telephone call at a time where quite often I hadn’t even been to bed, I was down at Sauret Besserve and picked up Liz, and off we went to Riom for Liz’s hospital appointment.

I had a wait of about 50 minutes for a groggy-looking Liz to emerge, and then we went off for a coffee so that she could recover.

Next stop was the Auchan but there weren’t any of the Nikon D7000 cameras there – it’s an end-of-range deal and the prices had been slashed so I wasn’t expecting much, but nevertheless, we were nearby so it was worth a try.

tram clermont ferrand puy de dome franceAnd then a first for Liz.

We decided to go into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and the tram lines pass at the rear of the Auchan so, leaving Caliburn on the car park, we hopped on a tram that whisked us silently and effortlessly into the city.

€1:50 a ticket and there can’t be much better value than that. Anyone who has driven into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and tried to find a parking place will tell you all about that.

We went for a walk, went to the Tourist Information office and down to the Conseil-General – and I had a brainwave. I need to insure Strider, the Ranger, in Canada and I wondered if I could obtain a printout of my licence showing my motoring history.

We queued for a good while and, at the counter, “yes, we can do that. Do you have your driving licence?”
So I duly produced it
“And do you have your identoty papers?”
“Ohh blast! I’ve left them in Caliburn, haven’t I?”
“We are really supposed to see some identity papers in order to do this over the counter, but I’ll tell you what – let’s do it anyway”

So there we were!

pope urban II crusade cathedral clermont ferrand puy de dome franceBack to the city square and in the shadow of Pope Urban II preaching the First Crusade to the pigeons fluttering around the Cathedral, we had our lunch.

Back on the tram and off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais programmes for the next few weeks, giving Samantha Fish her first run-out, and then back home.

All in all a quite profitable day.

And hats off to the reception staff at the hospital at Riom, hats off to the chef in Clermont Ferrand and hats off also to the lady at the driving licence desk at the Prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. Things are definitely looking up!

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Thursday 4th December 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that I was in bed before 23:00?

It wasn’t last night, to be sure, but it wasn’t long after 23:00. Certainly at 23:00 I was downstairs taking the stats, the last thing that I do before going to bed.

However I was awake at about 06:00, despite having an exciting night where I was in Montreal. I’d been to see someone about mounting a wind turbine on my land in New Brunswick but he told me that it was a waste of time. In fact he had had the same idea as me and bought some land on the Canada side of the Mars Hill wind farm in the USA, but has decided to sell it on as the projected extension of the farm wasn’t ever going to happen. We then had a long drive around Montreal with me taking the wrong turnings all the time, and him jumping out of the car each time that I did so, and waiting for me on the corner when I realised my error and turned back.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep and was tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

After breakfast, I went round to Liz and Terry’s. Liz was at work but Terry had a medical appointment at Riom and needed someone to go with him.

That was a pleasant morning, not the least of reasons being that I met a couple of people there who go to watch the football at Pionsat. I have’t seen then for w while, and it turned out that the guy has been quite ill. He’s had an operation in the hospital and was going back for a check-up.

On our way home, we had a major surprise. Just outside Les Ancizes we noticed something big and black moving at quite a substantial rate of knots across the field in the distance. As it drew closer (and what a good artist it was) we realised that it was a sanglier – a wild boar – and one of the biggest that I had ever seen. He roared across the field and right across the road in front of us – a really impressive sight. Magnificent beasts, these wild boar. No wonder I love living right out here.

I stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat to do my shopping. These shopping trips are getting earlier and earlier in the week but there’s no point going out shopping when I don’t need to.

And isn’t this attitude a change?

Back here I don’t know what happened but at one moment I was sitting eating my lunch (it was 15:00) and the next thing I remember, it was 18:06. I had crashed out completely and I’ve no idea why, especially after my early night last night.

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Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now. 

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

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Saturday 15th December 2012 – I DIDN’T BLOG …

… last night before going to bed, and I bet that you were all disappointed.

But no matter, I’ll serve it up this morning for you.

Actually, I was far too busy, working on the radio programmes and it was 02:30 before I went to bed. “If you have the inspiration, keep on at it”, as the actress once famously said to the bishop.

But at least it’s all finished today, all …errr … 60kbs of it. That’s the equivalent of almost 2 hours of discussion.

And then you have to add the ad-libs in too and then of course the music that we’ll be playing in between – so that should be enough for the next three years.

At least, I hope so. As I said yesterday, it’ll all come in handy.

And so, apart from writing the radio programme, that was that

The weather warmed up dramatically this morning and it was 17°C in my room when I woke up. That makes a nice change, and at least I was comfortable without the fire when I was doing the radio programme

Shopping was next on the agenda and so a run out to St Eloy-les-Mines was called for.

But there’s been a change of plan as far as the diet goes. Pasta doesn’t work in the oven, and rice is a bit samey day after day and so I’ve bought a big bag of potatoes. Baked spuds should be just about fine for the rest of the winter I think.

But while I’m on the subject of changes, I’ve changed the room around a little.

I’ve moved a bookcase or two and shuffled the pair of chests of drawers around a little, and now the end wall underneath the little window at the side of the oven became miraculously free.

Remember the table that I brought up here a while ago? That’s gone nicely just there and I now actually have a kind of kitchen in that corner. Won’t that be really handy for the winter.

And I’ve finally heard from Bill.

I set Marianne a task viz to contact the hospital. Marianne is not easily brushed aside and managed to find out where he was. So she came up with a number and so I rang him.

He’s out of danger but he’s not himself yet. Time will tell but I’m so relieved.

I was really worried.

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Tuesday 11th December 2012 – I rang …

… Marianne’s house this morning to enquire after her well-being and she was there. She told me that she had been released. “Expelled, more like” I told her, but it was nice to hear her voice. She certainly sounded better than she did the last time that I spoke to her.

What wasn’t so good was the news that I had from Rosemarie when she phoned up later. It appears that Bill has been rushed to hospital, quite ill apparently. That’s really sad news because his general health isn’t so good at all. I do hope that he recovers quickly.

Apart from that, the Christmas Special is progressing nicely. There’s enough now to make a decent programme and when Liz tells me of her choice of music I can tidy it up and finish it off.

I’ll be glad when it’s all done – I can go back to bringing up to date the Quebec web pages upon which I’ve been working since the summer.

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