Tag Archives: bad night

Friday 23rd January 2026 – EVEN AS I TYPE …

… these notes, I really ought to be making tea. But the truth is that I have a churning stomach right now and running through a list of possible menus that I might eat, there isn’t one that appeals to me. All it seems to do is to make my stomach churn over even more.

As well as that, although I’m feeling somewhat better than I did this time last night, I’m still feeling a lot worse than I ought to be, so the aim is to do what I have to do as soon as I am able to do it and then head off to bed again, in the hope that yet another good sleep will do me some good.

Not like yesterday, which, despite my early, really early night, didn’t go according to plan.

As I mentioned yesterday, despite going to bed at 19:25 or thereabouts, I was awake again four hours later. And although I said that “I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep”, I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and showing no sign of dropping off.

At some point though, I must have gone back off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm, and it took me completely by surprise. And I must admit that I have never felt less like leaving the bed as I did this morning. It took me an age to rise up to my feet and head off to the bathroom. As a result, I was running really late for everything else.

In the bathroom, I changed my clothes, having been in the same clothes without a change for forty-eight hours and I washed my undies. I like to keep on top of my clothes like that, having spent years living out of a suitcase. And then, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the Soviet Union last night in my van. There had been some kind of concert supposed to take place, so I was in this village or small town down in the south of the Soviet Union on my way to Asia and I bumped into these two American girls who were also going to this concert. We went into this room and there were probably thirty or forty people standing around. So we sat down and waited for something to happen. We were expecting this music concert and then perhaps a discussion about what came out in the songs, that kind of thing. But I fell asleep, and when I awoke about ten minutes later, everyone else was asleep too except these two American girls. They were looking at their watch and one of them said “well, we may as well go. There’s a bus back to the USA in an hour. In the end, the three of us left, with all these other people asleep. Outside, there was plenty of snow, and we walked, and where the bus was due to be picked up was at this car park and there were two white MkIII Ford Zephyrs there with the word LEI written on the badge instead of “Ford Zephyr”. The girls went to stand there, and in the end, I invited them to come with me to Asia, but they were reluctant. They asked me if I’d ever been there before. I replied “no, but I have travelling in the blood”. I said that I’d been a taxi driver, coach driver, chauffeur and I’ve travelled the Northern Hemisphere all on my own in the past, and my father was a lorry driver so it’s all in the blood. But they were very reluctant, so in the end I left them and climbed over the roof of one of these Ford Zephyrs to head back to the van. I heard one of them say to the other one “it’s a shame that he’s such an untidy person” so I was thinking that maybe if I’d been more tidy, they might have come. I walked over to where I’d parked the van but couldn’t see it. This looked nothing like where I remembered having parked it. I thought that I must be in the wrong place so I tried to retrace my steps and ended up miles out of town trying to find the van. Where I was, all the snow had melted and it was an urban scene with trees in the distance. I wandered through all of these buildings, trying to find my way out to see if the van was behind them, but I couldn’t find my way out of these buildings. I was wandering around for ages. In the end, I found myself on a train. I was standing by a window, looking out to see if I could see the van somewhere, but I heard a commotion behind me. It was a teacher with a bunch of maybe ten girls. She’d gone to find the ticket controller. It seemed that some English-speaking people were sitting in these girls’ seats and she had to make them move. She spoke to them in English, so I spoke to her about the van. She said that she couldn’t help me. I need to see the police. I replied that the van hasn’t been stolen – I just can’t find it and in any case, I can’t speak Russian. I tried to speak some Russian from what I remembered but made a mess of it and she really wasn’t able to help me at all.

What a strange dream that was! For a start, I did learn to speak Russian, although I’ve forgotten most of it now. That started off when I was working for Shearings and I’d heard that they were trying to win a contract with an American travel agency to transport American tourists behind the Iron Curtain to “visit their roots”. It sounded probably the most fascinating coach-driving work ever, so I found a local Russian exile who taught me over a period of six months. When the company announced that they were looking for drivers to go behind the Iron Curtain, I naturally volunteered.
"Why should we select you ahead of everyone else?"
"Well, actually, I can speak some Russian"
It was the most fantastic work that I have ever done, and I enjoyed every moment of it, even if it did mean a relentless diet of wiener schnitzel.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dream, I could easily imagine myself at one time driving through the Soviet Union to Asia, somewhere like pre-revolutionary Iran, but the political climate east of Poland and Romania these days would put anyone off. And wandering around aimlessly looking for my van because I’d forgotten where it was parked is just like me, especially these days.

As for the white Ford Zephyrs, I couldn’t ever imagine them being in the Soviet Union, whether under a different maker’s name or not. They are much more likely to have been ZIL 111G vehicles, although if you were to see one of those, you would know that you are in trouble, because they were only ever given to members of the Politburo.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise this morning. Fitted with a mask, she stormed into the apartment and attended to my legs. She had a go at measuring my temperature with my thermometer and it’s still quite high. However, she doesn’t think much of my thermometer and she’ll bring her own tomorrow.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still discussing pottery, and now, we’ve moved on to how we are able to identify the different potters. There’s a fascinating list of potters’ marks and some equally fascinationg comments such as "this little fragment is an example of pottery classified by Dragendorff as ‘Dragendorff 37’, and there is a sample of this ware in a museum in (some obscure town in) Bulgaria."

Back in here, I had a variety of things to do, not having attended to my affairs as I should for the last forty-eight hours, and then I had last night’s notes to write.

They are now online, and then I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working.

In the meantime, I was having a good chat with Liz, who was giving me loads of motherly advice about how to find natural remedies to deal with my current health issues, and later on a brief exchange of messages with Rosemary.

There was football too. On Tuesday night Stranraer had played Queen’s Park of the second tier in the Scottish Cup on a swamp in a monsoon and had beaten the Spiders 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw during one hundred and twenty minutes.

In theory, they now have a match at Ibrox against Glasgow Rangers, but the behind-the-scenes and off-the-field controversy after the game will need to be resolved first before it’s confirmed.

But that’s about everything, really. I suppose that there’s much more about which to write, such as my faithful cleaner coming down to do her stuff, but instead, I’m going to bed. And good riddance to me. I really don’t know how to cope with this latest illness. It’s getting on my wick and it’s high time that something happens before I go berserk.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Soviet Union … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a man in the Red Square holding up a pice of paper.
I asked a local – a very vocal local yokel – what he was doing, and he replied "protesting, of course."
"But what about?" I asked.
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Why would he need to put that on his sign? Everyone knows what’s wrong! ".
Two minutes later, a police van pulls up and they drag him inside.
"So what’s he done now?"
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Everyone knows what he did!".

0

Thursday 22nd January 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

And for a change, I’m not going to start with “As I have said before …” because you are probably just as fed up of reading it as I am of typing it and as I am of it happening.

But I really was quite ill yesterday. As I mentioned, it was some time shortly after 20:00 (and had I not fallen asleep in the chair after I’d finished my notes, it might well have been not so long after 20:00 too) when I climbed into bed, fully clothed, threw the bedding over me and went straight to sleep.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 02:30.

After that, I lay there, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible and, if possible, go back to sleep but, I thought, without much success. However, it certainly wasn’t four hours later when the alarm went off at 06:29, so at some point, I must have dozed off to sleep for a couple of hours without realising it.

It took quite a while, much longer than it ought, to extricate myself from underneath the covers, and then I staggered into the bathroom. At least, I was feeling a little better than I was last night.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the USA last night and had ended up in a motel where I was waiting for my friends to arrive. The receptionist was a rather simple boy who couldn’t speak very well and I had a great deal of difficulty understanding him. There was an old black-and-white film on the television about a group of people, men and women, who were escaping from somewhere. One or two of them were caught and were rescued. The film was probably from the early 1930s and it was an interesting one so I was trying to watch it but this boy kept on interrupting me. He mentioned something and I said “well, that’s pretty small beer really” to which he said “yes, we have nine of those”. Then he had to open the door for the stairs up to the rooms to let a dog out but the dog came down, looked around, and went back upstairs again so he closed it. At some point, I’d left the motel and ended up in Montreal. I went to look at this huge basilica that was built of brick and was going to photograph it but I couldn’t find a place to park the car. Everywhere was “no parking” and there were one or two police patrols so I thought that I would have to come back and do this on foot again, but I couldn’t think when I’d be able to. I drove a little out of town to try to find a place to see if I could have a good view with a telephoto lens but I noticed that time was running on so I had to abandon that idea too. Then I was walking back to the railway station. The streets were crowded and I was trying to watch this film as I was walking but the film kept on freezing and when it began to move again, it had actually finished. It was really disappointing for me that I’d missed the end. But outside one of the big stores in Montreal was a guy with a barrow with all kinds of things on it from the store such as pencils, paper, writing pads, sweets and everything. As I walked past, I thought that maybe I’d buy a bag of sweets or something to take with me on the train. I thought that I had five minutes so I nipped into the store. It was something like Woolworth’s or British Home Stores. Despite a good search, I couldn’t find where all of the sweets were and I began to feel rather disappointed that I’d have nothing to take with me on the train.

There’s a story about a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I stayed in 2002, that relates to this, but the World isn’t ready to hear it and I doubt if it ever will be. As for the basilica, the big brick-built basilica is actually the Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur at Koekelberg on the northern edge of Brussels and although the view of it and its situation that I had in this dream is nothing like its actual situation, it’s very similar to its situation in a dream that I had a few months ago.

I’d been to Manchester with my niece’s eldest daughter. We’d been roaming around the different TV studios. We’d seen several performances being recorded and we’d even seen a football match taking place in one of the studios there between Llanelli and Y Barri. On the way back, we bumped into one of my father’s friends from Winsford who asked us if we’d had a good time, what we’d done and where we’d been. I noticed that gradually he was separating my niece’s daughter from me and having a very intimate chat with her at the other end of the street. I wondered what was happening between the two of them and what was going on.

This is a kind of situation that I could easily imagine, had it been a different girl (not a daughter of my niece) and a different friend of my father. But the indoor football match is “interesting”, to say the least. There are very few full-size indoor stadia in the World, and certainly none in the JD Cymru League.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual to sort out my legs. She was her usual chatty self but didn’t stay long. I could then go on to make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still telling us about pottery – it seems that there’s a long way to go in this. And I’ve learned two interesting facts about Roman pottery –
Firstly, pottery from the earlier period of the occupation at Trimontium (up to, say, 120 AD) is of better quality than the later period (from, say, 140 AD until 180 AD). That’s unusual. You’d expect it to be the reverse.
Secondly, even in 1909, the examination and cataloguing of Roman pottery had reached such an intense degree that even without the potter’s stamp on his wares, they were able in many cases to identify the potter, his workshop and even the period during which he was working.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. But I had noticed that my health was starting to slip back again and my cough, which had calmed down for a moment, had now returned with a vengeance.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for the taxi to take me to dialysis, all the time feeling weaker and weaker.

It was actually quite a struggle to walk to the car and even more of a struggle at the other end to walk to my bed. By now, I was freezing cold and eventually, they were obliged to bring me a blanket.

That made very little difference, so they took my temperature – thirty-seven point seven degrees. The nurse telephoned the doctor, who told her to check it again in an hour.

After an hour, during which I became even worse, she checked the temperature again. This time, it was thirty-eight point four degrees. She telephoned the doctor again and Emilie the Cute Consultant came a-running.

She performed various examinations (including a Covid test, which was negative) and took several samples and said that she’d let me have the results tomorrow and that she’d send any prescription necessary directly to my chemist.

When the taxi came for me, I could barely walk out to it. It was a most undignified stagger. However, I made sure that the driver wore a face mask because I don’t want to infect her with whatever I’ve caught. When I sent my message to my cleaner giving her an idea of when I’d be back, I told her to wear a face mask too.

While I was at it, I sent a message to Isabelle the Nurse to tell her to wear a mask when she calls tomorrow. I don’t want her to spread my viruses around her patients.

When I arrived back here, it was 19:20, and by 19:25, I was in bed, fully-clothed yet again. There was just time to take off my shoes, but no time (or desire) to make any food. Once in bed, my cleaner threw the quilt over me and went on her way, and I went straight to sleep.

Round about 23:30, I awoke, and thought that it might be a good idea if I were to post an entry to say that at least, I’m still alive. Alison must have read it quite quickly because we ended up having a little chat about our health problems. She has a few of her own right now. We’re all growing old and it’s sad.

After that, I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep.

But before I doze off again, seeing as we have been talking about face masks … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone why it was that doctors and nurses always wear face masks around the hospital.
"Is it to prevent the spread of infection?" they asked.
"Oh no" I replied. "It’s that if ever they make a mistake or do something wrong, you can’t identify them and bring them into Court."

0

Tuesday 20th January 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the next morning.

So last night, having had a quick, ready-made tea and with nothing much to say for myself … "makes a change" – ed … I was able to finish everything off at some kind of respectable time, like 21:55, and I was in bed about twenty minutes later.

Not only that, I was fast asleep quite quickly too despite the wracking cough and the stabbing pain in my foot, and there I lay until all of … errr … 02:30. And that, dear reader, was that.

Well, not exactly, to be honest. I did manage to fall asleep again round about 04:30 but only for about 30 minutes. I lay there for another half-hour trying my best to go back to sleep, but in the end, I abandoned the idea and left the bed.

Taking full advantage of the early start, I dictated the radio notes for no fewer than three radio programmes that were in the pipeline. I’d even managed to edit one of them by the time the alarm sounded.

When the alarm sounded, I headed off into the bathroom for a superficial wash (because I’ll be showering later) and then wandered off for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find that, despite the short night, I had actually managed to go travelling.

For some reason, there were a few of us being handcuffed. First of all, when they went to try to handcuff me, they dropped the handcuffs and fell about twenty feet down onto the ground. It took them quite some recovery time in order to rescue them. Then, when they had rescued them and they had to start again, it still wasn’t actually working correctly at all and I had a feeling that my whole upper body was totally twisted round and I had no idea what was going on when this was happening

As Europe prepares for imminent war, this dream is not as far-fetched as it may seem. As well as that, I’ve been deliberately steering clear of commenting on the state of current events because there is much more going to be going on in the very near future, but it’s interesting to recap on something that I WROTE IN MAY 2005 that is likely to come to pass in the very near future.

This was about a tribe of Africans, somewhere in Africa in years gone by who had invented a process of heating water. They had managed to make flexible copper pipe and had succeeded in coiling it around the chimney of a cast-iron stove. They poured cold water in at one end that went down a pipe and swirled around the coil that was around the chimney. When the chimney was lit, it heated the water and the water came out the other side and it was quite hot. This was the kind of thing that took the earliest European explorers completely by surprise.

This was actually a project of mine for down on the farm when I finally had my big stove installed on the ground floor. However, we never managed to make it that far. But it would be interesting indeed if some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Africans had developed flexible copper piping.

I had plenty of things to do in the garden so I went outside and began to make a start. I was gradually organising everything and there were all these people heading past. They all seemed to be on their way to the local school, the children and adults. They were chatting and one of them was talking about the swimming baths, and they might need a bath cap to go into the swimming pool. They were trying to arrange between themselves where to pick one up and who would lend one to them. There were a couple of little girls going past, picking wild flowers as they went. Then I had to go for a walk to somewhere else so I set off. It was up some kind of hill and there was that much water, even though it was a nice day, that the road was like a river. It was very difficult to find a dry spot in order to go to where I wanted to go. My appointment was at 17:30 but I’d set out at 17:00, but I’d seen this motorcycle for sale, a big five-litre two-wheeled thing, and I was so impressed with it that I thought that I would come back to have a ride on it and maybe even to buy it. But one thing that I’d been noticing throughout this dream was that I wasn’t on my crutches at all and was walking quite normally. When someone asked me about it, I said that I had days when I could walk around like this and other days when I needed crutches. But it’s rather embarrassing when I go back to school when I’m on crutches because I’m called all kinds of names by the other kids.

My house at Gainsborough Road was at a junction of roads that led to four different schools so there were always kids and parents going past. The motorbike was interesting too – five litres on two wheels! But how many times is this now that I’ve been walking without my crutches during the night?

Isabelle the Nurse came by this morning to start her round. She was dressed as a leopard today, furry jacket and spotted slacks. We had a brief chat and then she pushed off, leaving me to my breakfast and A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

Today, we’ve moved on beyond armour and are discussing weapons. James Curle has identified some of the swords as being of Celtic origin and believes that this indicates that a cohort of native mercenaries was recruited to swell the numbers in the garrison.

On the other hand, it could equally mean that it was Celtic warriors from Galloway who actually attacked the fort and drove out the Romans, causing them to flee to Hadrian’s Wall in round about 120 AD.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for my lesson. It was another one that passed quite well, due to the amount of preparation that I’d done. I wish that I could persevere and do this all the time.

When my faithful cleaner appeared, she shooed me into the bathroom for a shower, so I’m a nice, clean boy now. And then I had to pack up and wrap the computer that I’m sending back to my online retailer, mainly because it was so late arriving.

Once my cleaner had left, I attacked the next radio programme whose notes I’d dictated earlier. That’s now finished and ready to go, and there was even time to make a start on the next one.

Tea was the last of the leek, potato and mushroom soup, which I had with some bread out of the freezer. It was followed by Christmas cake, which still seems to be going strong. Not much left now, and then I can go back to the jam roly-poly and the spotted dick.

But right now, I’m off to bed again, hoping for a better night tonight, although I doubt it very much with this cough, this pain in my foot and now my nose that’s streaming like a tap again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about kids going to school … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once heard a story about someone who refused to go.
When his mother asked him why, he replied "I don’t want to go to school. All the kids hate me, all the teachers hate me, all the dinner ladies hate me, the gardener and the secretary hate me, and even Norah the Nit-Nurse hates me. In fact, everyone hates me<"
"Look dear" said his mother, soothingly. "You have to go to school"
"Give me one good reason why."
"Well, dear, You ARE the Headmaster."

0

Tuesday 13th January 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why they send me on these wild goose chases halfway around the country and back so that some specialist in some hospital somewhere can tell me exactly what I already know and have known for several months.

As if I don’t have enough to do with my time.

And especially if it means crawling out of bed at some ridiculous time like 05:00.

Yes! 05:00! So last night I went without any food for tea, dashed through my notes, which were on-line at 20:27 precisely, the earliest time … "and by a long way too" – ed … that they have ever so been. And by the time that I finally made it into bed, it was just coming up to 21:00.

And when was the last time that I’d been in bed that early when I’ve not been feeling unwell?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s an absolute waste of time going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So there I was, tossing and turning in bed, trying desperately to go back to sleep at just before 02:00.

That was a waste of time too, and I lay there, semi-comatose, until the alarm went off at 05:00 when I hauled myself out of bed and staggered off into the bathroom to make myself look pretty.

And that was also a waste of time.

The taxi came a few minutes early and luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers, the one who “presses on” like an old-school taxi driver and always has plenty to say for herself. She helped me finish my packing and then we set off.

So far, I’d been without food for almost twenty-four hours and without drink for about fifteen hours. I work on the principle of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey” — after all, four hours or so in a taxi is a long time. Nevertheless, I packed a couple of slices of my “energy flapjack” and a small bottle of water in case I have a diabetic crisis along the way.

We had a good run and a good chat all the way as far as Mantes-La-Jolie, in between Rouen and Paris, and that was where we hit the traffic and the farmers’ demonstrations. A wrong turn on the prif led us out on the autoroute towards Rungis and Orly further complicated affairs, and what was looking at one stage like an easy 09:45 arrival for my 10:30 appointment turned out to be a panic-stricken 11:25.

Having to find me a wheelchair (it’s a different building so I didn’t know where the doctor was and how far I’d have to walk, and we were already hours late) and having to understand the unnecessarily complicated system of lifts didn’t help matters.

While we were stuck in traffic, I’d telephoned the doctor to say that we’d be late, so he let in several patients ahead of me, which was quite natural. Consequently, it was 12:25 when I was finally seen.

He poked and prodded me, put all these needles into my muscles and passed an electrical current through them to test my nerve reactions, and then examined the results.

Before he began to test me, he asked me how I was feeling and whether there was any sign of improvement. I told him that I was feeling lousy as usual and I was sure that there was a definite deterioration since my examination last January.

His conclusion was "I’m very sorry to say that there is no improvement, and you are right about the deterioration."

As I said just now, I could have told him that without having to go all the way to Paris. What a waste of a day!

While I was there, I asked him about the stabbing pain in my foot. He told me that as my nervous system is slowly breaking down, things like this are to be expected and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. He actually put it into a more scientific explanation, but that was the gist of it.

My chauffeur was waiting for me when I came out, and after I’d been to warm my feet, we headed to the car. Getting out of the wheelchair was exciting, but in the end I managed it and we headed for home.

On the way back, I fell asleep twice, which is no surprise considering my bad night, and we arrived home to disappointing weather. In Paris, it had been bright sunshine, beautiful clear blue skies and quite warm for the time of year. Here in Granville, it was overcast, raining, windy and cold. At least we’d had no hold-ups on the road to delay us.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and instead of a disgusting drink, I had a caffeine-packed energy drink. And I needed it too after over twenty-four hours of nothing to drink.

Having disposed of that, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes. I was actually surprised that there were some.

I can only remember fragments of this dream but there was something about being at home. We were in Vine Tree Avenue and there was something about the weather, but I can’t remember what. Then, my mother came into the living room to find out what we’d been doing. In this little box, I had a very, very small puppy. My mother asked about it and I replied that I’d found it somewhere. She had a look at it, and she agreed that it was really small, and because of its small size, we could keep it. There was much more to it than this, but I can’t remember anything once I awoke.

What interrupted my reverie, as I found out later on, was that in reaching for the dictaphone, I dropped the battery charger and all of the spare batteries onto the floor from off the little table behind the bedhead I shall have to pick that up in due course. But me with a puppy? Not that that’s ever likely to happen. Dogs and I just don’t get on. Give me a cat or two … "or three or four" – ed … any day.

Tea was the other half of Sunday’s pizza, which I wolfed down because there was football on the television, Y Barri v Llanelli. Y Barri scored a goal after two minutes but surprisingly, Llanelli, well-adrift at the foot of the table, managed to equalise.

It was only delaying the inevitable though, as Y Barri scored four more before the hour was up. You could see than Llanelli had effectively abandoned the game after that because their heads went down and they lost interest in chasing the ball, but Y Barri, once more, refused to turn the screw and played possession football for most of the rest of the game instead of going for the jugular.

That was disappointing.

And so, with aching foot and totally exhausted, I’m off to bed.
granville
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my trip to Paris and the Neurology department … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor told me "there’s some good news and some bad news#34;
"What’s the bad news?" I asked.
"The bad news is that you are going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life"
"And what’s the good news?"
"I can get you a fair price for your crutches."

0

Sunday 11th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a miserable day today. Partly for reasons that I’ll mention in due course, and partly for reasons that I won’t mention. Either way, once more, it’s quite obvious that I’m ill again.

With this new computer, everything happened so much faster, as I briefly mentioned last night. Instead of grinding out the time until after midnight, everything was finished by 23:10 and I was soon in bed under the covers.

And there I lay, with something of a disturbed sleep. I’m not sure exactly how many times I awoke, but it was more than just a few. Even so, I was fast asleep when Isabelle breezed in on the latest storm. And it was a storm too – not quite on a par with that a couple of days ago, but even so …

She hardly awoke me, which was good. She peeled back the quilt, did her stuff and then left, while I went back to sleep.

It was 09:35 when I finally left the bed, and after a quick wash, I went into the kitchen for breakfast.

First task was the croissants. And I remembered to fold them the correct way today. They didn’t come out too badly, I suppose, for an amateur process. I had two with my porridge and coffee and left the other four for subsequent Sundays.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I was in hospital, and I heard about the plan to restrict the password to exclude certain patients who were presumably no longer of any medical value. It’s a password that the nurse uses when she comes on Sundays for that really long word with whatever it is that is supposed to awaken me. They couldn’t work out which word to use instead of it. There were several that they also used on Sunday morning so there wasn’t really one that was memorable or instantly used in the way that 999 was so they weren’t able to access it.

This is an intriguing dream. I can see some kind of logic in it, but I’ve no idea where it came from or where it was going.

There was a girl from school whom I was seeing. I’d just started work and we were still drifting around together. After lunch, on my way back to the office, I’d get whoever it was who was with me to drop me off at her house so that I could say “hello” and have a little chat, then I’d dash on down the street to try to make up the lost time. This went on for several weeks. But one day, I was running a little late and when I turned up at her house, her mother was there but she wasn’t. She was in one of the bedrooms, standing on a ladder doing something in the attic and saw me arrive. So she came downstairs and said that she’d gone into town with someone. It wasn’t her father or something like that but I can’t remember who. She was on a red bicycle and the other person was on a bicycle of some odd colour. At that point, her father arrived. He gave me a really heavy pair of gauntlets and wheeled out a form of three-wheeled tricycle, with a seat at the back on which to sit and pedal and a seat in between the two front wheels facing forwards for a passenger. He urged me to climb in but for some reason, I took some time and he made a sarcastic comment, and then he pedalled off with me, trying to find where this girl had gone, his daughter.

This is another intriguing dream. Who is the girl? The girl whom I was dating after leaving school while whe was carrying on was one of the girls who came to see me a few weeks ago. She was three years younger than me. However, I’m certain that it wasn’t her, even if she did fit into one or two of the characteristics of this dream.

As for the rickshaw, a friend of mine in Munich has – or had – a 1920s rickshaw that he used for running around the town, and I’ve been driven around a local town in it.

Did I dictate that dream about the girl whom I used to go to see at lunchtimes? I’m sure that I did, … "yes, you did" – ed …but later on in that dream we were all sorting out a few kinds of things and my stepbrother Paul had had a bang in the back of his car so we’d been ordering bits and pieces for it as well as ordering other things. And sure enough, little by little, the packages came. I was half-expecting to have a package from this girl who had disappeared because I didn’t know if I’d said that I’d gone up there once afterwards and the house was empty and they had all gone. I never heard from her after that. So these parcels kept on arriving and my mother was rather frustrated because she was having to run around. One day she came in with an enormous parcel tucked under her arm. We said “oh, that’s the rear valance”. but when we unwrapped it, it wasn’t just the rear valance but the whole rear panel. It was painted the correct colour for the car and the number plate was already installed. It even had “Jaguar Ford” written on the back in some kind of stylish graphics instead of just the plain, ordinary “Ford” Of course, we all made some kind of remark about that to my step-brother, about the posh car that he was going to have There was a rear bumper too, and he looked at it and said “no-one’s going to bend this if they drive into it” Then he started to make arrangements with someone whom we knew to cut out the old, damaged bodywork. And then up the back gardens from down the street came some young woman. She looked at us all and said “lounging around again, are you?” She saw me with a mug of coffee in my hands and said “and time for tea for you”. So we all had a little social chat for ten minutes.

The colour of the car is actually the colour of my father’s MkV Cortina, which is languishing down the field on my farm waiting for me to pull out the engine and gearbox, although this will never happen now, of course. The back panel has another significant meaning, and it breaks my heart to think of how stupid I must have been one evening in 1983, when I acted decisively without thinking things through, and made the totally wrong decision that ended up costing me far, far more than I saved. If I could turn the clock back in time, it would have been to that moment.

As for my stepbrother, he was a lovely guy and would do anything for you. However, he fell in with the wrong crowd, was taken to the cleaner’s and died of a brain aneurysm, the same as his father.

I didn’t dictate that dream about that girl leaving. I’d gone up to her house to see her but she’d gone, the house was all closed etc. so I had to set off for home. What I had was one of these butcher’s bikes, the tricycle thing with the seat at the back and in between the two wheels was a large box where the butcher would put the meat in for deliveries, etc., one of the earliest versions of the bakfiets. I had to go home, and I was trying to think of how to go home without encountering any hills because it was difficult to manoeuvre up and down and I came up with a way back via Warmingham without going up any hills. So I set off, and I’d been going a couple of hundred yards when I thought “this is crazy because I’ll be going about seven or eight miles round and my house is only about a mile and a half from here, if that, so why don’t I just go home and struggle with the one hill that’s in between it?”. So that was what I decided to do. When I was back home, I didn’t remember how I’d actually arrived. I couldn’t remember the route or anything and I didn’t recall being out of breath. But this was when these parcels began to arrive, and I was there, hopeful that something would happen with a parcel for me. But there was something somewhere about after I’d been to that girl’s house and gone to the end of the street, there was a huge slope down to the left. You’d have to go down this cutting, down this slope to reach the railway station, which was one of these provincial things with just two platforms. If you were to cross the line to the other platform, that was actually down on top of an embankment because the slope was that steep and the embankment was quite high too. At the bottom, there was a road and I walked down this road somewhere somehow, and there were lots of people walking up it. There were the substantial ruins of a castle, one of these medieval, fourteenth-century Edwardian castles, and they were almost intact. You’d see all the carvings in the brickwork to make it look like a piece of beauty as well as a fortress, and lots of people were making comments about it and so was I. It looked wonderful, but I carried on walking and I’m not sure where all of this fitted in.

It’s disturbing me deeply, this story about the girl who keeps on appearing in my dreams and then disappearing. I’d love to know who she is. The butcher’s bike is quite an interesting object to appear in this dream, that’s for sure. I worked out that I was somewhere round by Hungerford Road in Crewe, so I could have come down and up Macon way which is much less steep than either Mill Street or Edleston Road. And then, even less steep, I could have gone the other way down to Crewe Green roundabout and then along Crewe Green Road.

The medieval castle and the footpath alongside it relate to the city walls at Leuven, although they are alongside a river, not alongside a railway station in a Welsh valley, the name of which totally escapes me at the moment.

This took me up to a disgusting drink break, following which I dismantled an external drive box to rescue the hard drive which has now handed in its hat and which I’ll have to rescue one of these days, and carried on with the updating of this computer.

There was football too – Forfar v Stranraer. And while the Loons had the lion’s share of the play in the first half, Stranraer wiped the floor with them in the second and were 2-1 up and cruising, only to be undone by a sucker-punch deep into injury time.

After that, there were the bread and pizza to make. And for a change, instead of sunflower seeds, I ground up a large handful of Brazil nuts and used them.

While I was at it, I baked the vegan pie and that looks lovely too. I’ll slice it into eight in the week and put seven slices in the freezer ready for another time.

The bread looks wonderful and the pizza was nice too, although I only ate half of it again.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow afternoon and then Paris on Tuesday. We seem to be back where we were a couple of months ago.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval castles … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of tourists were being shown around Caernarfon Castle not so long ago..
"This castle is unique in history" said the guide. "In the seven hundred years that it’s been here, there have been no repairs and no restoration project carried out on the building."
"That’s an amazing coincidence" said one of the tourists. "It must have the same landlord that we do."

0

Friday 9th January 2026 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the storm.

Having abandoned everything after tea and gone to bed, I settled down underneath the quilt and fell sleep quite quickly. And there I lay until all of … errr … 02:39.

The wind that awoke me was the noisiest that I have ever encountered – and believe me, I’ve heard some noisy ones. It sounded as if it was definitely at its climax and it carried on like that for at least two hours. Sleep was impossible

Round about 05:00, having lain awake for a couple of hours, I left the bed, had a wash, went to take my medicine and to make my hot drink, and then came back in here to write up yesterday’s notes. They are all done and dusted now and posted online.

It took much longer than expected, due to this steam-driven computing that I’m using at the moment, And that led me to think of a cunning plan, more of which anon.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with the breeze and didn’t stay long. She mentioned that she had not encountered any fallen trees on her circuit so far, or seen any visible sings of damage. One thing that she mentioned though was that just up the coast at Cherbourg, a gust of 213 kph had been recorded, and surely that’s a record for this area.

After she left, I made breakfast – the usual porridge, toast and coffee. However, it left me with the most terrible stomach ache and I really was feeling quite ill afterwards.

With the wind having died down slightly, it was quieter in the office and so, the early start having caught up with me, I went to lie down for a while to catch up with my beauty sleep and to try to sleep off this stomach ache.

So there I lay until all of … errr … 11:45. That was a good two hours, and I felt as if I’d needed it too. There was plenty of work to do, tidying up files and the like, but the most important was to start another batch of home-made baked beans.

Rather than try again with soaking dried beans, I’d bought a large tin of beans soaked in brine. I want to see if these are any more successful – i.e. less hard. That first batch that I made really were too hard.

The beans themselves are too big for baked beans. They are about twice the size of normal ones, but you have to go with what you’ve got, I suppose.

In the meantime, I’d had a parcel delivery. It was a laptop computer, but not the one that I want. It was the one that I’d tried to cancel and which should, according to the supplier, be still at the factory. So what’s going on here then?

All that I know is that it will be going back on Monday once the confirmation of receipt is lodged at the supplier’s office. In the meantime, I’ll wait for the other.

That took me up to my cleaner arriving, and the first thing that she did after she’d organised the bathroom was to shoo me under the shower to make up for that which I didn’t have on Tuesday. While I was washing, she picked up the huge pile of paper that was lying on the floor following my tidying-up the other day, and rushed it to the bin across the road.

After she left, I put my cunning plan … "see above" – ed … into action.

What I did was to take out the desktop computer from the cupboard where I’d put it the other day, and I began to strip it down.

The aim was to take out the power pack, see if there was a built-in fuse, and if not, to note the details of the pack so that I could order a new one.

After a lengthy struggle, I finally managed to locate the securing screws and remove them, and then to deal with taking out the power pack. But this is where "the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy".

Unbelievably, the cables are hard-wired into the transformer rather than being plugged in. And whoever had assembled it had obviously done so before the motherboard had gone in, because there was no way to move the cables without dismantling practically everything.

Nevertheless, we did have a Plan B. If I have a motherboard, a case, a processor, 96GB of RAM, a DVD drive etc, I’m halfway to an office computer anyway. Disks are easy to obtain , so is a power pack, and so would be an uprated processor.

Consequently, I sent an e-mail to the computer technician at the radio, to involve him or one of his friends into helping me rebuild this one into an even leaner, fitter, fighting machine. We’ll have to see if he replies. It’s certainly going to be quicker and cheaper than the only quote that I’ve had to date. I’m still trying to recover after that one.

While I was a-dismantling, I had a message on the ‘phone. "Can you spare a minute?"

It was Rosemary with a little problem and needed some quick help. So there we were, one hour and sixteen minutes later, still chatting about not very much. She seems to think quite highly of my theory, a theory that I have had for some time, that Caligula, Putin and Xi in China have had an agreement to divide up the World between them – Caligula in the Americas, Putin in Europe and Xi in Asia.

This explains Caligula’s mad panic about Greenland. He’s suddenly realised that when Russia occupies Denmark, it will also inherit Greenland as a colony of Denmark. And when Russia is installed in Greenland, it can control the North Atlantic and also the North-West Passage to the Pacific, and he’s scared stiff.

That, in my opinion, was one of Hitler’s two big mistakes – the first was not pushing on and taking Gibraltar and the second was not landing several divisions of troops in Iceland and Greenland while he had the upper hand.

Hard at work later, I suddenly realised that I’d forgotten to transcribe the dictaphone notes, so that was the next task.

There was something about my cousins in Whitchurch in Shropshire and something else that involved some kind of stately home owner, a Lord or something or other. I remember saying to him that really, he should have been able to have his own car. He replied that he did at one time, before all of this happened, but that’s all that I seem to be able to remember of this

My father’s sister and her husband had ten children (I think that my family was trying to start a new race of humans) and their progress around from farm to farm can be plotted by where her children ended up. Some are in Bronington still, some are in Whitchurch, some are in Barbridge and some are in Crewe. I lost count a long time ago of who is where.

All of that work had worn me out and I ended up crashing out again for twenty minutes. That took me up to tea time so I wandered off into the kitchen.

Tea was sausage, chips and home-made baked beans followed by Christmas cake for pudding. The beans were OK, I suppose, but they aren’t like real baked beans and I’ll have to do my best to liberate some more real ones, I suppose. A tray of twenty-four tins from a leading manufacturer costs €53:99 delivered, and I suppose that I shall have to bite the bullet one of these days.

But not now of course, because I’m off to bed. The wind has died down considerably from earlier and it’s a lot quieter now. Looking at the data from the weather station down the road, we had gusts of wind at the apogee of the storm blowing as much as 140 kph and that’s some going. And although it’s gusting a lot less, it’s still wreaking havoc. It should have been the final round of matches in the first phase of the JD Cymru League tonight but every single one has been postponed until Tuesday night. So there’s nothing else to do but go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Caligula … "well, one of us has" – ed …, three men met in a prison cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, after the next Presidential election in 2028.
They ask the first one why he was in prison. "I’ve been here since 2025" he replied. "I was a bitter opponent of Caligula"
They turn to the second one. "And you?"
"I’ve been here since just after the recent election. I was a fanatical supporter of Caligula"
They turn to the third one. "And you?"
"I’ve only just arrived" he replied. "And I am Caligula."

0

Tuesday 6th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But that’s not surprising. After all, if you don’t go to sleep, you can’t dream, can you?

Last night, I remember saying “The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be”. And I was not wrong either. It really was total agony.

What was the worst thing about this was that it really was an early night. I’d put a lot of effort into finishing off my notes etc and was in bed by 22:15, looking forward to at least eight hours of beauty sleep … "and he needs it too" – ed …

However, being wracked one minute by a fierce, stabbing pain in the foot and the next minute by an intense coughing fit, I just lay there in agony, watching the clock go round and round. When it reached about 05:30, I thought “I’m bound to fall asleep at some point” so I switched off the alarm, thinking that I’d at least sleep through until Isabelle the Nurse would come.

That didn’t work, though, and at 07:25, I couldn’t stand it any more and sat on the edge of the bed.

It took a good fifteen minutes to raise myself to my feet, and then I cleared off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then went for my hot drink and medication. Surprisingly, I began to feel a little better after the hot drink. I wonder if I’m being dehydrated too much at dialysis, or whether the liquid is coming from the wrong place.

Back in here, I’d barely sat down to restart work when Isabelle the Nurse came in. While she sorted out my legs, she showed me some photos of her daughter in Paris yesterday. It wasn’t the daughter she wanted me to see but the snow. And it was impressive, although not as impressive as my galvanised steel dustbin, nor as impressive as all of the snow around St.Lô that my taxi driver had shown me yesterday.

After she left, I made breakfast. But strangely, and for the first time ever, I didn’t finish my porridge. I wasn’t in the mood for it and I don’t know why. Usually, it’s the food that I most look forward to. I didn’t even finish my toast, complete with the last serving of mushroom pâté, but that was for a different reason.

What happened instead was that my head slowly began to spin around and I started to feel light-headed. I decided that the best place for me to be would be in bed, so I tried to stand up.

The first attempt was a miserable failure, so I breathed deeply and made a superhuman effort to try to rise to my feet, and then all the lights went out.

Some time later, I awoke. I was lying on the floor, surrounded by a fallen chair and a few other bits and pieces.

“This isn’t going me much good” I said to myself, although there wasn’t really much that I could do about it. I can’t rise to my feet at all if I’m flat out on the ground. And my ‘phone was in the bedroom. So I went on all fours into the bedroom to find the phone to send a message to see if my faithful cleaner was still at home. But no, she’d gone out.

In the end, I rolled over onto my back and, pushing with my feet against the office chair that was wedged against the desk, I managed to slide up and onto the bed It took me twenty minutes to do it, though.

To recover, I lay on the bed for a while until I felt better. And that was when I noticed, to my dismay, that there were only twenty minutes to the start of my Welsh class and I’d done no revision yet. I was seriously thinking of abandoning it today, but I did what I could and then I went to join it.

Surprisingly, it all went quite well and I actually enjoyed it. It’s a shame that I won’t be present next week, but I have to go to Paris for the news about how the chemotherapy went. Not that I need to be told, because I already have a good idea of that they will tell me.

Once the lesson was over, I sent my order off to the supermarket. I saw that the only delivery slot left was between 16:00 and 18:00 so I booked it quickly before it was taken.

My faithful cleaner turned up at about 14:15 to do her stuff and to put me in the shower, but I declined. It’s not a sensible idea for me to shower if I’m unsteady on my feet as I am right now. “We’ll see how I am on Friday” I told her.

Margaret Thatcher once said something like "anyone can do a good day’s work when they are feeling like it. The secret of success is to do a hard day’s work when you aren’t feeling like it."

And so it was today; even though I was feeling wretched, I attacked the next radio programme. And by the time that I’d finished, I’d edited a concert track down to about fifty-eight minutes and written enough speech to cover about two and a half minutes. That’s plenty to be going on with. There was even time to start the next one too, which is also a concert.

The LeCLerc order should have arrived by 18:00 at the latest. They had telephoned me at 17:56 to say that they are running late, which is no surprise in this weather. What was a surprise was that they turned up at 19:35, just as I was taking a bag of frozen food out of the freezer. Never mind though – I put the cooling and cold stuff in the fridge or the freezer and I’ll tackle the rest tomorrow, and I continued.to make tea.

Tonight, it was a taco roll with beans à la mexicaine, but not as à la mexicaine as I like them, of course and veg, followed by Christmas cake. Once more, it was a struggle to eat them, although I managed it. And right now, I’m off to bed, hoping yet again for another good sleep and another hard-working day on the radio. The new laptop should be coming too, which should make things a little easier.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about falling down … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was in a pub once where there was a man staggering around, falling over, not being able to stand upright.
The landlord came over to throw him out, but I intervened. "Let me see if I can find his address and I’ll take him home."
So I reached down and rummaged through his pockets. I found an address. It wasn’t too far away so two friends helped me carry him to his doorstep.
His wife opened the door so we explained what had happened, about him staggering about, falling over and not being able to stand up, so we brought him home to save him the disgrace of being thrown out.
"Very good" she replied. "Now, where’s his wheelchair?"

0

Tuesday 30th December 2025 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… catastrophe, I’m feeling a little better again today. However, it will be interesting to see if I can keep on going until I finish everything.

Not like last night, when I ground to a halt round about 22:00 and couldn’t carry on. That was the quickest slide into fatigue that I have ever had, because half an hour earlier, I was feeling quite sprightly.

Anyway, after I’d fallen asleep in the chair yet again, once I’d awoken, I decided to go straight to bed and finish off everything the next morning. That’s why those of you who came to read my notes overnight may have found some rather terse notes instead of the entry that is there now.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I stayed, flat out and dead to the World, until all of … errr … 03:20. Mind you, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly until at least … errr … 03:50.

That was, unfortunately, my lot. Despite trying everything that I could, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep so round about 05:45, I gave it up and arose from the Dead. That was when I attacked the rest of the notes.

As well as that, I was chatting online to Alison, who is also ill and can’t sleep. We really are a right pair. There’s no hope for us. What a way to spend the Christmas break – flat out ill in bed!

While I was pondering over the aforesaid, I was beginning to wonder. Falling asleep at 22:00 or thereabouts and waking up at 04:00? Has my body clock reset itself somehow? So how do I reset it to how it was before?

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up and then into the kitchen for the medication. Everything today, though, was done at a rather leisurely pace. I was in no mood to hurry.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were in my car heading back towards Crewe when the song THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN came onto the radio. We were listening to that on the way home. That’s really all of this that I remember. It’s another one that evaporated the moment that I grabbed hold of the dictaphone.

She’s a girl who fascinates me. She’s small, with masses and masses of wild, dark hair, and I could easily imagine her playing a demon violin. That’s why the song is so relevant. You probably know the song – it’s based on a traditional American folk song from the Nineteenth Century and first recorded by Buster Carter and Preston Young in 1931 under the title “A Lazy Farmer Boy”

It was popularised by Alison Krauss and Union Station, but you have never ever heard it played quite like in the video clip. Along with Le Vent du Nord’s “Forillon”, which you can find AT ABOUT 49:00 ON THIS VIDEO CLIP, it’s probably one of the most extraordinary pieces of music you’ll ever hear. If you don’t know what the French word ‘déchainé’ means, just listen to, or watch, the solos in the songs, and you’ll need no further explanation.

And later on, I was up in the High Arctic, up in Goose Bay with someone else. It might even have been the aforementioned nurse from dialysis. We had to go back to Québec, so there’s a bus that leaves, and we climbed aboard the bus, an old yellow school bus, and it set off. There were about half a dozen passengers on it and there was a woman driving it. But before we climbed on board, we were sitting in another bus somewhere. As it pulled into Goose Bay, whoever was with me was asleep at the other end of the bus. We saw a VW camper with a caravan on the back pull off the road into a rest area. Instead of going in a complete arc and round, the driver tried to cut off the arc to make the entry smaller and became stuck on a rock. I nudged whoever was with me, or shouted to her, or gesticulated to her. As she turned round, the driver tried to go a little further on, but he overturned the vehicle. Our bus stopped and the driver alighted – it was a woman – and she helped them roll this camper thing back onto its four wheels. Then, we drove into the town where we picked up some more people. It was school chucking-out time and the kids were all there in British school uniforms, hanging around on this corner by this petrol station. I thought that this was weird for Labrador. On the bus back, we were talking, and some people were saying “whatever would we have done before we had the current crop of social media?”. I asked “does anyone remember ‘MySpace’?”. Apparently, no-one did, and I felt terribly old at that point. Then someone mentioned that it might have been the first, so I asked “what about First Class that we had at the university? The only thing was that all of the computers had to be physically connected by a server. If they were all working off the same server, you would have a really impressive social network, which many of us did at the time”. Then it began to go dark and I began to feel tired. I was thinking to myself “how long is it going to be before we reach Québec? Should we have brought some food with us?. I thought that I’d go down to the front to talk to the driver to find out if there’s any chance of stopping somewhere, maybe at Labrador City, to go to buy some food, but I fell asleep at that point.

It’s impressive that I could recognise in a dream that some British school uniforms would be totally out of place in Labrador. Not so impressive, though, that I thought that Goose Bay was in the High Arctic, which of course it isn’t.

Does anyone else remember social networks like MySpace? Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, my Myspace account was still active after all these years. And “First Class” – that was the university’s social network. It was quite primitive but still, thirty years ago, what did you expect? And it was designed by one man and one man only, whom I actually met. You didn’t have to be physically connected to the university’s intranet to use it, but it was only accessible by logging in to the intranet, which you could do via an internet connection.

And those were the days, weren’t they? Internet at 9.6 kbps. But then again, in the 1980s I was running a taxi business on an Apple II computer, and all that had was 2 x 5.25-inch floppy discs. Look at my setup now!

The nurse turned up, still as cheerful as ever. We had a brief chat and then he cleared off, leaving me to make breakfast.

And I’m still reading about Roman military engineering, although what the book on “Congreve’s Rockets” that I was reading had to do with Roman military engineering I really don’t know. It shows just how easily I can be sidetracked.

After breakfast, the chiropodist arrived. She took one look at my feet and sighed with despair. But in the half-hour that she was here, she did a really good job on my feet and toenails, and I was so impressed. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Back in here, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme, and by the time that I’d knocked off for a disgusting drink break, all of the music had been chosen, edited, remixed, paired and segued.

After my drink, I was sitting here slowly sinking into a semi-daze when the door burst open and in came my faithful cleaner. Any chance of a rest evaporated at that moment and when she’d done her stuff, I was ushered into the bathroom ad stuck under the shower. So now, I’m a nice, clean boy again … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

While I was in the shower, my cleaner was changing my bedding, putting my new sheet, quilt cover and pillowcases on – my Christmas presents to myself. And the setup is beautiful. It’s a very dark blue with planets, stars and asteroids all over it. I saw it in an online store and had a coup de coeur. I’m glad that I did. It goes really nicely with the dark blue of my bedroom curtains.

After she had left, I began to write the notes for the music that I’d just sorted out. I also had a chat with Liz too but she disappeared before I’d had a chance to tell her that Santa had paid me another visit last night or early this morning.

Tea tonight was the last of those strange curry-filled burgers with rice and veg followed by Christmas pudding and … CUSTARD! As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends in the World. No-one could wish for better

What I wish for now, though, is my bed. I’ve managed to fight my way through to the end without falling asleep, and seeing that I’ve been awake since 03:50, that’s something of a miracle. And a nice clean me in a nice clean bed is something to anticipate, that’s for sure. Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about asteroids … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once told me that Asterix the Gaul went into the European Space Centre.
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some asteroids" he replied. "And then a polar bear went into the optician’s"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some polaroids" he replied. "And then hurdler David Hemery went into the waste room at the local hospital’s surgical centre"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"I don’t know" he replied. "He didn’t say."

0

Monday 22nd December 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again!

After yesterday’s long and marvellous lie-in, it didn’t take us too long to revert to our usual habits, did it? As in “wide awake at 03:45”.

That was rather a shame because for once, I made a determined effort to finish everything early. And I did too – except that I fell asleep on my chair at some point. By the time that I’d awoken and made myself ready for bed, it was 23:15. That is, however, still earlier than some have been just recently, and I was soon asleep.

Waking up at 03:45 was definitely not part of the plan though.

Once I was awake, I tried everything that I could think of, in order to go back to sleep, but nothing seemed to work. In the end, I decided to make some use of an early start, so round about 05:00, I arose from the Dead and carried on with the editing of the radio notes that I’d dictated yesterday. I was glad that I did, too, because that programme is now all ready and assembled. All it needs is the joining track to connect the two halves, but that’s been chosen and the text written, ready for dictation when I next have an early start.

When the alarm went off, I went into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Next stop was in the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink and my medication, and then back in here to see where I’d been during the night. I was back on the taxis again last night. I’d had to go somewhere to do a lot of things but I can’t remember what but my father gave me some money towards it. So I set off to do these things that I’ve been asked to do. Coming back, I went round to one of my former bosses. he was talking about going back into the taxis again and we talked about sharing my car – that I’d do the day shift and he’d do the nights, or vice versa. He asked me how it would work. I told him to never mind, and I’d try to work out some kind of procedure. On the way home, I stopped at the top of Clifton Avenue (or was it Clifton Street?). There was a yard down there at the back, down one of the entries where I was going to go. Before I went, I took out the account book that we had and went to photograph it, or one of the pages of it, which I was going to use to divide up to show the jobs that I did and the jobs that he would do when he took over, with one page for each day between the two of us. I went to photograph it, but it was really dark and the photo came out all blurry. I thought “never mind. I’ll do this in the daylight sometime”. But there were several people coming up the avenue or road there where I was parked. It was really quite a noisy street. There was one couple who were very quiet and didn’t say anything very much, but there were two guys coming up there who were laughing and joking. I was rather concerned about having my camera in my hand at that time of night with those two about. There was a third couple who were coming to a house at the top of the hill. They were boisterous of the kind that you have when you have had a considerable amount of drink. The next thing that I remember, I was in a car on my way to take some people to Oswestry.

There wouldn’t ever be any danger of me allowing someone to drive my car, apart from Nerina, of couse. Nerina was actually quite a good driver, but then again, she had had plenty of practice. The description of the “upper class” terraced houses from the end of the Victorian era around the Clifton Avenue/Clifton Street area is surprisingly accurate, even down to the alleyway and the yard.

And I did several trips in taxis down to Oswestry and that area.

Later on when it was dark, I was back inside the school. There was no-one around and all the lights were off. I just had a small torch with me that I used, to see where I was and park myself correctly on the road. After a few minutes’ discussion, we’d finished preparing the car for Nerina so the other guy came along to have this penalty shoot-out. He tried three shots, and Nerina saved one, and he missed the other two. He thought that this was going to be a really strange enterprise, and in the end I talked to the aforementioned former boss, and he agreed to drive when I was not driving. Then we talked about this bed in either Clifton Avenue or Clifton Street, about how we can divide up the jobs and the day between the two of us

But whatever is this all about? It seems to be something of a continuation of the preceding dream, but it doesn’t ‘arf shoot off along quite a tangent.

The nurse was early today. It’s the final day before his break so I imagine that he wants to be finished early. He didn’t stay long, either, and was soon on his way.

After he’d gone, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Well, when I say that I “read some more”, there wasn’t all that much more to read. That book is now finished and tomorrow, I’ll be starting something new. I hope that it’s something interesting.

Our author Thomas Codrington seemed to have managed to bog himself down in a mass of confusion the closer towards the end we came. I wonder whether it was one of these projects that sounded so good at the beginning but saw him lose interest as time passed by and he was unable to resolve some of the inevitable problems.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I attacked my Welsh homework. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. this is probably the toughest assignment that I have done, but I think that I might have broken the back of it now. Another good day should see me finish it, I hope.

At 12:00 I knocked off so that my faithful cleaner could apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then to await the taxi. For a change, it was bang on time but it was to no avail as we had to go to Sartilly to pick up someone else.

We were a few minutes late arriving at the dialysis centre and to make matters worse, there was a medical emergency going on. Consequently, it was 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

There were a few interruptions, including from one of the doctors (but not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately), and it wasn’t until 18:15 when I was finally uncoupled.

It took a while to sort me out, but the driver was here and waiting. One of the young, chatty guys, we had a good talk on the way home and it was quite an enjoyable drive. Back here, we met a neighbour who had a lot to say for himself, so it was round about 20:00 when I began tea.

Not that it took too long to make. It was the half-pizza left over from Sunday and just needed rewarming, and followed my more vegan fruitcake and mango sorbet.

Then, I made a start on soaking the white beans because tomorrow, I have a cookery festival, all on my own, with baked beans and vegan Wellington on the agenda.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep yet AGAIN!

But seeing as we have been talking about my trip home from the dialysis centre … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the things that we were talking about was the superior nature of German technology.
It reminds me of that old joke "how many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb? "
"I don’t know. How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?"
"None. A German lightbulb is correctly engineered and so never needs changing."

0

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that starting work at 11:00 on a Sunday morning was some good going, how about starting at 12:00 today, then?

Not that it felt like it was going to be anything like that. As usual, thanks to drifting off to sleep on a couple of occasions while I was typing out my notes, it was another night where I failed miserably to beat my 22:30 deadline. In fact, it was so long ago that I was in bed before 23:30 that I can’t even remember when it was.

Anyway, when I had finally finished, it was more like 23:30 and I was really glad to be tucked up in my little cot. However, as seems to be the case these days, it wasn’t for long. It was 03:44 in fact when I opened my eyes, although a few coughing fits earlier had awoken me for a brief moment here and there.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at that point. I lay there tossing and turning and watching the time on the ‘phone advance round to about 05:00. I began to think “give it half an hour and I’ll get up and do some work, like dictate the outstanding radio notes”.

The next thing that I remember was the nurse shaking me awake. Apparently I’d gone back to sleep again at some point. He sorted out my legs but wasn’t very happy about doing it while I was in bed. Mind you, neither was I. I’d have much rather been up and about and working rather than lying in my stinking pit, but there you go.

After he left, I reckoned that I’d give it a few more minutes and raise myself from the Dead, but it was somewhat more than a few more minutes. Actually, it was about 10:15 when I next awoke, and at that point I decided that I’d better shoot into action, otherwise I’ll be in here all day.

It was a quick nip into the bathroom and then a slow stroll into the living room to check the washing and to make breakfast. More porridge and coffee with two of the strange croissants that I made last Sunday. How could I possibly have rolled them inside out?

There was no rush at all this morning, and so it was midday when I was finally back in here. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was still on the taxis last night, and so was Nerina. There was something happening about a coat of hers that had had a bowl of porridge fall on it so she was thinking of throwing it away. However, her mother, even though she didn’t really know what was wrong with it, said that she’d have a close look at it and see what she could do. That’s all that I remember of this.

There’s definitely something of an obsession with taxis right now, and I’ve no idea why. Those days are long behind me and they can stay behind me for all that I care. By the way, Nerina’s mother was a tailoress and she could work miracles with a piece of cloth.

Later on, I was in Crewe doing my shopping last night. I’d been to Woolworth’s to buy a few things. I’d sorted out what I’d needed and the shop assistant came along and tipped them into my bag and I paid for everything. I was then supposed to go to Marks and Spencers, but when I looked, I didn’t have very much time and had to go to the railway station. I picked up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and set out to walk. I found myself a couple of minutes later on a motorway interchange, the one up near Northwich. I had to walk all the way down the motorway to come off at Sandbach and then walk across to Crewe and had about fifteen or twenty minutes to do it so I thought that I should have to hurry. I set off down the slip road and there was a policeman there with his dog. The dog barked, which frightened the policeman. I walked past them and was looking at the traffic on the motorway bridge a little further down the hill. They were driving along normally on this bridge when suddenly, they leapt into the air and landed again as if they had hit a large object on the road. I was wondering what was happening there, but I thought that I didn’t have the time to stop and look because I had my train very shortly.

Those were the days when Woollies was next to Marks and Sparks. Woollies has long since closed down and Marks and Sparks has moved onto the new retail park where we used to go speedwaying and banger racing all those years ago. What a sad state of affairs that was when they demolished the old railway sports ground thirty or so years ago.

However, imagine walking down the motorway from Northwich to Sandbach, especially in about ten minutes.

There were also a few things going round in my head when I awoke that I didn’t dictate. Two things that I remember, so I don’t know if they were dreams or not, were firstly, there was some famous TV presenter sitting at a table with us who suddenly started to spout off a vicious anti-Welsh rant, to such an extent that I became violently angry. The second was being in a pub with friends of mine when suddenly one of them put on the table a very large and very dangerous-looking knife in a sheath. I remember saying that I’d told him on several occasions not to bring it out with him and that he was risking seven years in prison carrying it about with him.

Next, we had a footfest. Stranraer v Dumbarton. And while the unbeaten run goes on, it was a very poor, lacklustre performance that saw them creep to a very unsatisfactory 1-1 draw against Dumbarton. But with a squad containing five strikers, every one of whom is out injured right now, it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t manage to launch any kind of attack at all.

After that, I had the misfortune of coming across the St Johnstone-Greenock Morton game. And it was embarrassing to watch Morton slither to a miserable 5-0 defeat. Their squad just isn’t up to Championship-level football and I’ve noticed in a couple of previous games that several of their players look less than interested in what’s happening out there on the field.

For some reason, it was as quiet as the grave out there right now, so I decided to dictate the radio notes before the endless streams of tourists go strolling past.

When I’d finished, I edited the notes for the joining track for one of the radio programmes. That programme is now assembled and ready to go. It was actually thirteen seconds over the hour, but a judicious piece of editing enabled it to fit the timescale exactly.

Next task was to edit the other notes, which are the major part of the following programme. I didn’t get very far into those before it was time to knock off and go a-baking. Homemade bread and homemade pizza were on the list for today, so I made a couple of piles of dough.

While it was all festering, I came in here and did a few more bits and pieces of my Welsh homework. And this is a really difficult exercise because it’s revising a lesson that we learnt when I was absent in chemotherapy a few weeks ago.

So back in the kitchen, the bread and pizza were all made, and the pizza, such as I ate, was delicious. But once more, there’s half of it left that I shall finish off for tea tomorrow. All that remains to cook for Christmas now is the vegan Wellington, for which Liz sent me a recipe a couple of years ago, and the hash browns.

As well as that, I might try a little experiment. I’ve received a recipe for homemade baked beans and, struggling to find any good ones here, I might give it a try and see how they work out.

But that’s for Tuesday. Tonight, I’m off to bed, probably to dream about more taxis and wake up at some silly time in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about cleaning clothes and porridge … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a late working session in the White House, Monica Lewinsky went into the local dry cleaner’s to pick up a dress she had left behind for cleaning.
As the cashier handed her the dress, she said "Thank you Miss Lewinsky. Come again!"
"No" replied Monica. "Porridge this time."

0

Friday 19th December 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again!

Yet again, I awoke at some totally ridiculous hour – to wit, 02:55 – this morning. That’s four consecutive days, if I remember correctly … "not that there’s much hope of that" – ed …

It’s hard to believe that I’m awake so early in the morning after the nights that I’ve been having, when I’ve been so tired that I’ve fallen asleep while typing my notes.

Last night was another night when I fell asleep mid-type. And by the time that I’d awoken, finished everything and gone to bed, what might have been an early start was now something like 23:30.

As usual, I fell asleep quite quickly, which was no surprise seeing how tired I was. What was a surprise was how quickly I awoke.

So there I was, tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, but to absolutely no avail. In the end, round about 04:50, I abandoned all attempts at sleeping and rose from the Dead.

Taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the text for the joining track for one of the radio programmes and then all of the notes for another one that I’d written earlier in the week. That was a huge slice of work to do, so I’m glad that I had this early start.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I went into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication and the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Nerina last night, and we were in Shavington. For some reason, we had two girls living with us. They were in their early 20s, I imagine, but I had to take them to primary school in the morning. I’ve no idea why. Then Nerina, who turned out then to be another friend instead of Nerina, was signing up for a university course on the internet. I had as well, and there was another woman too. We were given all of the books and all of the paperwork and given a machine that related in some way to the exam. However, we couldn’t work out how this machine worked. I thought that it would be something that we would learn as we worked our way through the course, but apparently, there was an exam on the very first day, or this was the impression that we had from the paperwork, and none of us were able to do it. This woman was rather upset by it and we felt really sorry for her being upset. The other two of us thought that we’d be able to puzzle it out as time went on and work out about this exam. In the meantime, we needed it to be confirmed about when the date of this exam was. I suggested that my friend sign up for the university’s intranet group to see who else was online whom we could ask. She said that she needed to have a dozen names but didn’t know anyone. I suggested that she sign up anyway and trawl through the names to see if there was anyone whom she recognised from when she was there on a previous occasion. This was turning into a difficult problem so in the end, she said that if I were going to take the two girls to school tomorrow morning, why don’t we go early? She’d come with me and we’d go for a coffee, and then she could find a few footpaths to walk round while she cleared her head. I asked her “where could you find a cup of coffee in Shavington anywhere?”. She agreed that there really wasn’t anywhere. Not even the bakery had a place where you could sit and drink coffee.

Back in those days, and probably still today, there was nowhere in Shavington to go for a coffee. There wasn’t even a bakery. And these two adult girls going to primary school is an interesting subject.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, we discussed in brief the university’s intranet system and the utter chaos that reigned on there. It’s probably much more focused and managed there these days, which is a shame because the chaotic nature of the intranet was quite enjoyable from a bystander’s point of view.

The nurse put in an appearance as usual. I’m worried about his cheerful state of mind these days. He’s been like this for several months now and it’s not normal. I don’t know what he puts in his morning cuppa but I wish that he’d bring some of it round here.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s still all at sea with his forts in South Wales. He’s tracing Iter XV from Gloucester into Wales but, according to him, "there is little evidence of a Roman road either from Gloucester or on to Monmouth, where no Roman remains are known.".

Today, we know that Monmouth is the Roman town of Blestium and considerable Roman remains have been uncovered there. And, being more confused, he puts Ariconium near Littledean, whereas modern research places it twenty or so miles north near Ross-on-Wye.

After breakfast, I came in here and edited the first lot of notes that I’d dictated. And then, assembling the programme, I was thirteen seconds over so that called for some editing to bring it down to the one-hour time limit

Next task was the second, long batch of notes. And by the time that I finished work, they were all edited and the programme assembled into its two halves. I chose the joining track and then wrote out the notes for it, ready for dictation the next early morning.

Everything should have been finished much earlier than it was but we had a few interruptions. Firstly, the postie came with a couple of packets, and then the cleaner turned up to do her stuff. Thirdly, and regrettably, I crashed out on the chair here, not that that’s any surprise.

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, a small salad and some vegan nuggets, followed by a slice of fruitcake and soya dessert. And now, I’m off to bed to try again to have a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about university … "well, one of us has" – ed … an Oxbridge graduate went into the office for his first day at work. The manager handed him a mop and bucket and told him to clean the floor.
"I’ll have you know that I’m an Oxbridge graduate!" roared the new starter.
"Oh right" said the manager. "In that case, come over here and I’ll show you how to use them."

0

Thursday 18th December 2025 – FOR THE THIRD …

… time in three days, I’ve woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning. Once more, I didn’t look to see what time it was but the good thing about this one this time was that after an hour or so, I managed to go back to sleep.

In fact, yesterday evening was a carbon copy of the previous evening. Despite a good start to writing the notes, I dillied and dallied trying to find the motivation to work, and by the time that I’d finished everything, I was exhausted and crashed out once more on my chair here in the office.

Consequently, by the time that I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom and come back in here, it was after 23:30 and I slid gratefully into bed, ready for a good sleep. So much for wishful thinking.

As I mentioned earlier, I’d woken at some point but eventually managed to go back to sleep until the alarm went off.

And here, I was a miserable failure. When the first alarm sounded, I awoke quite quickly, but I must have immediately gone back to sleep because when the second one rang, I was still under the covers in bed.

Eventually, I managed to drag myself into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up, and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis later. And then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were at work, preparing for the Christmas holidays so everything was rather relaxed and we were light-heartedly fooling around a little. Someone had found some kind of airgun that would plant some kind of object onto clothes, etc. They were using it to shoot at things, people, etc. It was one of my sisters, in fact. She and her friend went upstairs to another office. I’d been taking no real attention to this while it had been going on but later on, I happened to look at one of the feet of STRAWBERRY MOOSE and found that he had one of these embedded in his feet. I said that I’d have a word with her about it. I went to find the ‘phone sheet with people’s names on it but there was so much rubbish, with papers and newspapers all over my desk and the more that I looked, the worse it was becoming, as I couldn’t find this piece of paper anywhere. One of the women told me – she said “you’d better watch out because the deputy headmaster is in there with them now”. I carried on searching anyway and I was coming across tonnes of papers that I never knew that I had that I could do with taking home and sorting. Then someone knocked on my window and made a gesture as if they were going. I thought “well, it’s still a couple of days yet to the holidays, so they can’t be going yet, surely?”. However, a minute or two later when I looked, she was quite a way off down the road, so maybe she had had permission to finish so much earlier; I don’t know.

So I’m back at work then. I thought that I’d retired a week or two ago. But it seems that I’m becoming confused, what with the office and the deputy headmaster. Still, it’s quite easy for me to become confused at the best of times. It’s also nice to see His Nibs making an appearance, even if he has just been shot in the hoof.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my feet. He didn’t stay long so I could concentrate on making breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Our author is still struggling with his siting of several Roman camps on Iter XII of the Itinerarium Provinciarum Antoni Augusti. He states quite categorically that "no traces of Roman stations are known at Loughor, Neath, or near Cowbridge". Although he notes that the distance given from Burrium (modern-day Usk) to Gobannium corresponds with the distance to Abergavenny, "The indications of a Roman road on to Abergavenny are only a few short lengths of boundary along the present road, and no Roman remains are known at Abergavenny. "

Modern research has revealed some quite substantial Roman remains at “Loughor, Neath, or near Cowbridge” that leave no doubt that these were major Roman camps, and construction work in modern times has revealed substantial remains of a large Roman settlement underneath what is today the town centre of Abergavenny.

After breakfast, I came back in here to start work. There were some things to do, and then I carried on with the next radio programme. I don’t know where this fit of energy has come from, but I managed to choose the rest of the tracks, edit, pair and segue everything, and then write the notes for most of it.

It’s a shame that there aren’t many more days like this. I could certainly do with them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and just after she left, the taxi turned up, twenty-five minutes early. It was a struggle to reach the car, what with the howling gale raging all around outside and I needed help to walk to the road And being early away didn’t help much because we had two other people to pick up.

We were the same time as usual arriving at dialysis and I was seen quite quickly. Once I was plugged in, I was left pretty much alone, which suits me fine. I checked on the news and then revised my Welsh, even though we don’t have a lesson for three weeks.

One of my favourite drivers, the chatty one from the other day, brought me home, but via a circuitous route to pick up and drop off someone else along the way.

The howling gale had increased in intensity while I’d been away so I was dropped off at the back door. The car can pull up right to the door there, so there’s much less distance to walk in the wind and I feel much more secure if I’m dropped there.

My cleaner helped me in and sorted me out, and then after she had left, I made tea. It was a mushroom risotto made with all fresh ingredients, and I should really have enjoyed it but about half of it ended up in the waste bin. I really was in no mood, and I don’t know why.

The fruitcake and soya dessert were delicious though.

So having fallen asleep three times already while typing out my notes, I’m off to bed to see what happens tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Roman remains in Abergavenny … "well, one of us has" – ed … I read an article that claims that Abergavenny museum "has a stunning array of Roman urns"
When I mentioned it to someone today, they asked me "what’s a Roman urn?"
Without thinking, I replied "about ten denarii a week."

0

Wednesday 17th December 2025 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… we had another horrible night, when I was awake at some ridiculous hour.

Don’t ask me what time it was, because I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to demoralise myself even more than I already am, but judging by how long I remained awake afterwards, it can’t have been any later than yesterday.

It’s difficult to understand why I’ve woken up so early just now. I’ve been really exhausted at the end of the last couple of previous evenings – last night, I crashed out for forty-five minutes as soon as I’d finished writing my notes – and so by rights, I ought to be flat-out until the alarm goes off, as on Sunday morning.

And so, what with my unexpected forty-five minutes away with the fairies, yesterday was another late night, much later than it should have been.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long and I was soon awake. And there I lay, just as on the previous morning, tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable so that I could go back to sleep again.

It must have worked to some degree because the alarm going off at 06:29 awoke me. I’ve no idea when I fell asleep, but it can’t have been very long beforehand.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead, and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up.

After the medication and the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was at a football match somewhere in Scotland. When I saw the reports of the game afterwards, I saw that the number of points that each team had gained at that game was 224. I thought that it was a really unusual number so I wondered how they had managed it. I remembered bits about the game but not very much, but most of the action was on the terraces between the spectators, where there were some confrontations. I remember two opposing supporters being frogmarched up to the back of the stand by a group of the other supporters and pinned against the wall there. The thing that really caught my eye about this was, just outside the ground were some tenement flats, and a group of football supporters made a couple of kinds of these human pyramids up against the wall, as high as the fifth floor of these tenements. When someone had climbed up to the top, they could knock on the window and some other young kid living in that tenement could wrestle a window open because it was really tough and climb out, climb back down the human pyramid and go off with his friends. And it wasn’t just once that it happened – it was twice.

Football is another one of those subjects that seems to be recurring quite often in my dreams. The rest of it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but the story of the human pyramid reminded me of a real event in Crewe forty or more years ago when a new “singles disco” opened in the town. There were fifteen guys and just one girl who attended, so we all had visions of the men forming a human pyramid to dance with the girl.

I had a visit from Zero last night. There was a lot of tidying up that needed doing in the basement so I was down there moving all the books around. One box of books fell from the top shelf so I picked it up and threw it back. However, it didn’t land quite correctly – it fell down again. When I picked it up and went to throw it for the second time, I didn’t have the strength. My brother came down with another box of books. I told him to leave it here and I’d throw it onto the top. We began to talk about the work that I was doing down there, which was tidying up the clothes and tidying up the face image gallery. He wondered whether I ought to be doing something else, but I told him that this was what I had been told to do and this was what I was doing. So I was busy trying to sort out these boxes and everything else, and then I decided to spend ten minutes on the clothes. I began to sort them out and move them around and came across some of Roxanne’s dresses. I put them on hangers and hung them up in the cupboard. Just then, Zero came down in this beautiful, gorgeous peacock-blue dress, a kind of formal attire. While I was sorting out these other dresses, I handed a hanger to her to put her dress on. She told me that she wanted to keep on wearing it. I told her that it might be damaged if she’s playing about in it and it will be ruined. She’d be far better off hanging it up. She replied that she’d go to check with her mother. She left and then came back five minutes later while I was still sorting out these dresses and these faces and throwing these boxes of books onto the top and not being able to. She said that her mum had said that she can continue to wear it throughout the evening. In that case, I gave her a peck on the cheek and we carried on talking for a while.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see you again. I can still see the dress that she was wearing, and it really was lovely. Far too nice to wear as a casual dress. But we actually did find a few of Roxanne’s dresses – her confirmation dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and an evening dress with a jacket – here when we unpacked an old suitcase that had been lying around for ages since the Duysbergh days. There were a couple of her dolls too.

And as usual, someone from my family comes along to spike my guns just when things are becoming interesting.

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. I asked him if he knew of any chiropodists because I have a prescription for one to come here to sort out my feet. He said that there’s one with whom he co-operates, and he’ll put her in touch with me.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re at the Wansdyke in South-West England and he’s going against the prevailing trend at that period, suggesting that the dyke was built after the road, rather than before it, as most people back then thought.

As it happens, he’s probably right, because when part of the dyke was excavated in modern times, they found a couple of late-Roman coins on top of the level of the underlying ground underneath the dyke, indicating that the dyke was built on top of the coins.

He’s still struggling with his forts on one of the Itineraries – trying to locate them somewhere along the southern shore of the Severn whereas today, they have been pretty well identified with places in South Wales.

After breakfast, I came in here where I had things to do, and then I set about writing the notes for the radio programme for which I’d chosen the music the other day.

There were numerous interruptions, such as the disgusting drink break and a telephone call from the chiropodist. She’ll be coming round on 30th December at 10:00, which is good news.

When the notes were finished, I had a letter to write and an order to send off to an online retailer for some more supplies, including the handrails for the shower. I’m hoping to have those fitted in early January so that I can be much more autonomous in the shower. In fact, there are a few things around here that need doing, so I’ll need to contact the guy who installed the kitchen.

With the time that was left, I began to choose the music for another radio programme. I want to try to do two programmes a week now that I’m settled back in here and there’s no chemotherapy or Centre de Ré-education to worry me.

In the end, I only finished about half of that because, as you might expect, I fell asleep for forty minutes on my chair.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It should have been with ratatouille, but to my surprise, I found that I’d forgotten to order any tins just now. The fruitcake and soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …. but before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my visit from Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember saying to her how much I missed her.
"I love you terribly" I said
"I know" she replied "but I’m sure that you’re doing your best."

0

Tuesday 16th December 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

The last thing that you expect when you go to bed at 23:30 is to be wide awake again at 02:45, with no possibility whatsoever of going back to sleep.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been tired on Monday evening. I was in fact in something of a state when I was typing out my notes and I fell asleep three or four times—on one occasion almost falling off my chair. I was desperate to go to bed.

When I finally did make it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. What was even worse was that it wasn’t a drowsy me lying there in bed but a wide-awake, fully alert me … "within certain limits, of course" – ed … I was even contemplating leaving the bed, but much as I like having these early starts, 02:45 is something of an exaggeration.

So I lay there, watching the clock go round – 03:30, 04:00, 04:30, 05:00 – resolving that at 05:30 I would leave the bed and start to do some work. However, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so at some point between 05:00 and 05:30 I must have fallen asleep again.

You’ve no idea just how difficult it was to haul myself out of bed at that point. I would have given all that I own, and more besides, to have been able to crawl back in under the covers. But that’s not getting the baby bathed, so in the end I summoned up the strength …

… Or, at least I thought I had, but I couldn’t pull myself up off the bed into an upright position this morning. I mentioned the other day that I noticed yet another problem with my leg, and here we are again this morning. This is going to turn out to be something serious.

Eventually, I made it into the bathroom and had a good scrub and then into the kitchen for my medication and hot ginger, honey and lemon drink. But while I was taking the meds, I was thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m going to keep a note of when I have these really bad nights and compare them with my dialysis sessions to see whether there is any connection.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, not that there had been much time to go anywhere. We were in the USA last night at the house of some people. There was an American football game on, so we were watching it half-heartedly, although there was one of the classic comedy films on the other channel. I would have much rather watched that, but “when in Rome” and all that. The conversation began to become rather political and began to become somewhat extreme. After a couple of people had left, I said to one of the girls who was staying behind “I hope that those people aren’t going to get into trouble for what they have been saying. I don’t really want that to happen”. She said something like “things aren’t as bad as the media make out”. Then I was looking at some stuff from the university. It turned out that there had been a scandal about the production of some of the documents, so I actually tracked my way down into the university’s intranet system using my old identity and password to find out what was happening. The first thing that I’d noticed was that the system had changed dramatically. It was no longer the free-for-all that it used to be, but it was very closely structured, and there was very little on there that was not to do with studying. The one particular chat group on there was discussing this situation but very obliquely. No-one seemed to be getting down to the serious issues that had taken place, despite how hard I looked, so I posted one or two messages on there, but no-one seemed to respond. Eventually, I found out that it seemed to have been, in the view of one or two people, more of an administrative issue than a question of personal incompetence or something. But then we were deciding that those of us who were remaining were going to paint some furniture. I had a paintbrush in my hand to paint some kind of primer on the wood. When it had all been primed, I went to wash the paintbrush to put on the top coat, but the two sinks in the kitchen were full of dirty water and full of dirty crockery. In the end, I rinsed out the brush in the dirty water. One of the other girls came in. She looked at what I was doing and said “don’t go busting a gut, Eric, will you?”.

Leaving aside my current health situation, there are other reasons too why I won’t be going to the USA any time soon, so this dream is unlikely to repeat itself in real life. However, it’s usually quite true that the media quite often exaggerate and blow up out of all proportion many of the events that take place in the World, but nevertheless, there’s an undercurrent of suppression, oppression and unpleasantness currently unfolding in the Western World and I’m glad that I shan’t be around to see it unfold. I feel sorry for those people younger than me who will have to live through it when it reaches its climax.

As for the dirty sink, that’s just how my style of living used to be before I cleaned up my act – and cleaned up my kitchen.

Another thing that I’d discovered was that in my rush to go to bed last night, I’d forgotten to note the statistics.

The nurse turned up as usual, a big smile on his face. He certainly seems to be a lot happier since he went on his holidays back in the summer. He sorted out my legs, and then I could push on, make breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re poring over Devon at the moment, and he’s making a couple of assumptions about certain Roman forts that he believes to be there, namely Leucarum. and Moridunum, but modern thought is that these places are in South-West Wales, at Llwchwr and Caerfyrddin respectively.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson, once I’d remembered to plug in my webcam. We had an informal Christmas party today as we were doing some work, and the atmosphere was quite relaxed. In fact, it was another lesson in which I did very well and it goes to show the benefit of taking some time to revise. Now, if only what I had learned would succeed in staying in my head…

After the lesson, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the door and organised the shower for me. So while she was cleaning the apartment, I was stuck underneath the shower having a good hose down. But it’s certainly true that I’m not as well as I have been. I had one or two uncomfortable moments under there this afternoon.

After she left, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme. And now, that’s all chosen, remixed, edited, paired and segued. That took until about 17:30 or thereabouts, and at that point I couldn’t keep on going any longer. I decided to close my eyes and relax for five minutes.

The next thing that I recalled, it was 19:20. My new office chair is certainly comfortable, and I’m glad about that.

While I was asleep, I was on a coach trip. I’d ushered everyone on board and was looking for a friend of mine, but couldn’t see her. Instead, I found an empty seat so I asked if it would be OK if I were to sit there. It was a young blonde-haired girl and she said “yes”, so I sat down and we drove off. leter on, we came to some kind of halt where a couple of people alighted from the coach. I went round to look at a cylinder head that I was bringing with me, went in to fetch a can of oil, and then squirted some more oil onto the valve gear I then put the oil back. i was going to fetch a cup of coffee so I asked the girl, who was sitting in her seat, if she’d like a coffee. Se siad “yes”, and after much debate, she decided that she would like it with sugar but no milk, and in a large cup. I went and found the coffee, but the coffee was cold so I asked one of the guys behind the till whether there was any objection if I were to make a coffee because I’d missed the coffee from earlier. He asked me whether I could do it from an urn with a spout or would I like him to do it? I said that he could do it. In the meantime, I’d organised two large fibre cups and . One of them already had somehow some coffee in it, but it was cold. I explained that the coffee was cold because I was doing other things, so he went off to make some

Whatever this is all about, I really don’t know. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything at all.

Tea tonight was mashed potato, veg and one of these strange, spicy burgers that I bought a while ago, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. It seems that I have no trouble eating mashed potato so I had a 5 kg sack delivered the other day. As long as I can eat that with plenty of vegan butter, I’ll be doing OK, I reckon.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover after that wicked night last night. But we shall see how it works out. Things never seem to go to plan when I’m talking about sleeping.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about Welsh and that untidy kitchen … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from Chester who married a Welsh girl.
He told her "the secret of a happy marriage and a happy home life is to have a happy husband. And what makes me happy is coming home to a kiss and a cuddle, my slippers waiting by the fireside, a hot mug of coffee and a nice tidy house instead of this mess in which we seem to be living right now."
For the first two days, he didn’t see any improvement. However, on the third day, things were a little different. The swelling began to go down and he could open his right eye a little.

0

Wednesday 10th December 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… visitors around today.

Or, rather, visitor. One of the other inhabitants rang me up to see if I was in. When I told him that I was, he came down for a sociable chat.

That’s what I like about this building. There’s a solidarity among the inhabitants that you don’t seem to find in many other places these days.

Having said that, I wish that I could have found some solidarity during the night to rock me back to sleep when I awoke unexpectedly.

Last night, I hadn’t rushed very quickly through the things that I needed to do. It was round about 23:30 when I finally went to bed, in some kind of hope that, after the turbulent times the previous night, I might at least manage seven hours sleep before the alarm were to go off.

That was why I was so disappointed when I awoke at … errr … 00:15. I’d hardly had time to go off to sleep. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there, vegetating, for a whole four hours until in the end I was totally fed up.

At that point, about 05:10, I decided that I may as well take advantage of the early start, so I heaved myself out of bed. I wrote the notes for the two tracks that will join the first of the two radio programmes that I had been preparing.

Having written them, I dictated them, edited them and then assembled the programme. By the time that the alarm should have gone off (I’d switched it off when I left the bed), the programme was up and running at exactly the right length after some judicious editing.

After that, I went into the bathroom and sorted myself out and then into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My mother was in some kind of a kitchen somewhere to do with cookery. We kids were waiting outside to hear the results. While I was looking out of the window, I noticed a second-hand car site at the side of the hotel where we were. One of the vehicles that they had on the forecourt was a turquoise and white Ford Corsair estate. It looked beautiful, so I said to my mother that if she wins, I’ve seen the car that we should have, and we can all go away. However, she didn’t seem to be all that interested. Later on, I was out in my van and came to a weird junction where you had to cross over an island to reach the other side to turn left. On this island was a load of tram tracks. As I was approaching this island, some young kid on a pair of roller skates came roaring down the hill. I could see that this kid was going to turn in front of me where the tram tracks were. Once I was sure that that was the way in which he was going, I put my foot on the brakes of the van, but he saw me, panicked and fell over. I leaned out of the van to ask him if he was OK, but he picked himself up – and fell over again. At that moment, an ambulance appeared, picked up the boy and disappeared. I saw the boy’s photo many years later in an ancient news report. But while I was in the hotel with my mother and was moving around, I noticed that I wasn’t using my crutches, so I happened to mention it to her. Later on still, I was out for a walk around the park. When we reached the far end, there was a wire across the entrance and you had to climb over or climb under it. I reached the entrance and threw my front leg over it, pulled my rear leg up behind me, but of course it couldn’t go very far and I became tangled in the wire. All of the local passers-by had to help me untangle myself and then I could move on. It was the most memorable Christmas that I’d had, this particular one at that time

My mother being in a cookery competition would be a surprise to anyone who had eaten a meal at our house in the past. I shan’t go into detail because it brings back far too many unhappy memories of what she used to serve up. However, I do remember that it was because of her cooking that my brother and I began to experiment with baking cakes.

We also used to have a second-hand car sales yard across the road from where we lived in Davenport Avenue. On one occasion it had a Ford Corsair 1500 GT for sale, a dark red saloon, and how I used to admire it.and wish that I had the £195 to buy it. The Corsairs were beautiful cars, but not as nice as the Ford Classic, which was probably the most beautiful British car to ever grace the roads.

As for what the boy on the roller skates was doing, I have no idea. He doesn’t seem to fit in at all. The bit about being tangled up in a fence would probably be par for the course if I were to try to climb over a fence in my present state, and once again, we’re going places without our crutches.

Isabelle the Nurse came along as usual, and we had a discussion about the ‘flu jab and the Covid booster that I’m supposed to have. She’ll do the ‘flu jab with no problems (the injection is actually in my fridge even as we speak) provided that the dialysis centre says that I’m healthy enough.

The Covid injection is a different matter. The wholesale injections only come in packs of six, so she needs five more patients to sign up before she can order a packet. However, she assures me that I’m on the waiting list.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we’re supposed to be strolling down Akeman Street but as usual, I’ve been sidetracked elsewhere. Back into the Scottish borders, in fact.

A chance remark led me to look for the Roman fort of Bremenium in Northumberland and the chance remark that "across the stream is the site of a temporary marching camp". Of course, I had to go for a look, and it was WELL WORTH THE VISIT .

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago, we talked about the collection of different Roman camps at Chew Green. There’s mention of a road from Bremenium to Chew Green with a large Roman camp halfway along the road. Once more, I went for a wander around. So HERE’S ANOTHER ONE to add to your collection.

After breakfast, I had plenty of things to do, but I was interrupted by the arrival of my neighbour.

It’s very nice to see people, that’s for sure, and neighbours even more so. I made coffee for us and we had a good chat about this and that, which was nice. He stayed for about half an hour or so and as he left, I told him that he was welcome to come anytime. I know that I’m not the most sociable of people but I have to make an effort.

Back in here, I made a start on editing the recording for the next radio programme. However, I knocked off at some point to go to make a cake.

In the end, I decided on a fruit cake. I have plenty of sultanas and there were some figs left over from the Christmas pudding. I diced the figs into small pieces, mixed them with the raisins and than tipped them into a typical cake mix

As I said the other day, I baked it for longer on a lower heat lower down in the oven and it seems to have baked really well. I wish that I knew why the tops of my cakes keep on cracking, though.

Back in here, I finished off editing, assembling the programme, choosing the final track, writing and dictating the notes for that, and then assembling the programme completely. So that’s two radio programmes completed today.

The programme might have been finished earlier too, except that for about half an hour or so, I crashed out. No surprise, seeing how short my night was.

Tea was mashed potato, veggies and a slice of vegan pie, followed by a slice of my delicious fruitcake with chocolate soya sauce.

So dialysis tomorrow, and how I am not looking forward to that. I suppose that I’d better wander off to bed and make the most of what’s left of the night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my mother’s cooking … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember as a kid watching a film about Dracula and dashing in to tell my father.
"There’s a film on the telly and a man just killed Dracula with a stake."
"That’s nothing" he replied. "Your mother can do that with a plate of egg and chips."

0