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Saturday 13th September 2025 – JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT …

… last night, I suddenly awoke, with another one of these quite dramatic awakenings.

And about five seconds after I awoke, I received a message on the telephone. It really was an astonishing coincidence, almost as if awakening five seconds before the message was in anticipation of its arrival.

It wasn’t all that much beforehand that I’d actually come to bed, after another one of the slow, depressing evenings that I seem to be having these days. And I was so tired, yet again, that I must have gone off quite rapidly to sleep. It’s a shame that I couldn’t have remained asleep, though, but then that’s what usually happens.

It took an age to go back to sleep too, but once I’d slipped into the arms of Morpheus, there I stayed until the alarm sounded. And that woke me up quite dramatically too, I can tell you.

At that moment, we were back in World War I when the Germans were storming a trench full of Greek soldiers. They had launched a few shells into a few Greek pill-boxes and stormed the trenches. There were piles of dead people around, so they went through, identified the wounded and shot them on the spot. There was one person who was a British officer leading a Greek troop. They questioned him about a few different things but as he didn’t have the correct answers to what they wanted, they shot him too. But we were working somewhere behind the lines, watching a captive balloon or Zeppelin or something that had escaped from its moorings and was flying at a very low height around the edge of the cliffs. We were worried that it would collide with the church steeple, so we were trying to work out a way, if we could, of diverting it away because if we were to fire at it, it would explode and that would make more damage. In the meantime, we had been repairing a few watches and things like that. We actually had one working, but then we decided that we weren’t happy so we dismantled it to have another attempt. At this moment, the girls came along and looked at what we were doing. They couldn’t understand why we had decided to do it a second time. I was talking to one of the guys about new technology and how powerful it was. He was saying that how he wished that he had bought a new 2GB memory stick while their prices were low, because a new 2GB one these days would cost $64. I replied that a 64GB one would only cost $2, the way that technology is going these days.

There’s a bit of everything in there. The bit about colliding with the steeple relates to a discussion that I had the other day with one of the taxi drivers, when we were watching the Nazguls flying around near the spire of the Eglise Notre Dame de Lihou. As for the rest, it seems to relate to little snippets of conversation that I’ve had now and again with different people.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes, but as you have already read them, I needn’t have bothered mentioning it.

The nurse was next, still in his cheerful mood, and then it was breakfast and a new book.

While I was reading COLONEL CARRINGTON’S TESTIMONY, I noticed that he had written several others and so I began today to read his BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that IN 2013 and 2014 I roamed up and down the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York visiting the sites of the battles of the Revolutionary War and also of the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, including the site of Fort William Henry, the fort that featured prominently in Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

One of the places that I visited in 2013 was Fort Ticonderoga, and I noticed from Carrington’s description of the siege of the fort that "The Americans neglected to fortify Sugar Loaf Hill", a prominent eminence overlooking the fort, ⁣strong>"deeming it inaccessible.".

You probably noticed just now that STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I walked quite comfortably to the top, and so did several other people. And there’s still a British cannon up there that the British Army managed to drag up the hill.

After breakfast, I came in here to begin a new radio programme, and in fact I’m currently working on two of them right now because, halfway through choosing the music for one, I realised that I’d missed one. Still, variety is the spice of life.

When my faithful cleaner came down to apply my anaesthetic cream, she brought with her my electronic drum kit. That was a one-day wonder, that was. I bought it as a challenge, something to do during lockdown, but my legs gave out before I was able to master it.

It was the boss who came to fetch me today and we had quite a quick drive down to Avranches. I was connected up quite quickly too and then I could concentrate on Y Barri v Y Bala.

Y Bala had only conceded four goals all season up to date, but Y Barri doubled that total with comparative ease and could (and should) have had a bagful more except for the inspired performance of former Salford City goalkeeper Joel Torrance.

It was nevertheless an exciting game and you can see the highlights HERE if you are of such a mind.

Although I finished my dialysis earlier than usual, I had to wait to be unplugged, and then finally the boss brought me back in the most astonishing rainstorm that was engulfing Avranches.

Ironically, it wasn’t raining at Granville when I returned. It was a nice, leisurely walk back to my apartment in the howling gale, which has now been blowing for several days.

For a change, Tea tonight was a burger with baked potato – one of those luxury burgers that are really delicious. And now, I’m off to bed in the hope of a good lie-in tomorrow. I need one after all of this.

But I forgot to mention my ‘phone message from during the night. It reads "(we) will see you Friday November 7 for a few days fly back on November 11.". This visit from Canada looks as if it may well be happening.

But seeing as we have been talking about Ticonderoga and The Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was at Ticonderoga where I told my famous story to one of the American tour guides.
Sent on a spying mission by Colonel Munro to find out about the French forces in Fort Ticonderoga, Hawkeye and Chingachgook approach the fort very carefully
"How many soldiers do you think there are in the fort?" asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. "About 300" he replied
"And how many cannon?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. "About 30"
"And how many horses?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. "About 60"
"And how many native allies?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. "About 200"
"That’s incredible" said Hawkeye. "Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?"
"Ohh no" replied Chingachgook. "If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort"
The response of the tour guide was "that’s incredible! I never knew that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came to Ticonderoga. I shall have to amend the tourist leaflets."
Which just goes to show, as Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve felt as ill as I have today?

And how long is it since I’ve been to bed well before 23:00 (21:56 was when last night’s notes were published) and slept right through until the alarm sounded at 06:29?

Yes, it has been a day of all kinds of records, some of them unwelcome, and I hope that things improve quite rapidly as I can’t go on like this.

Last night, though, I was in all kinds of states. I was feeling nauseous, my head was spinning round and I was absolutely flat-out tired. I dashed through my notes and staggered through my preparations for the night, and then fell into bed.

During the night, I remember nothing at all, and no-one was more surprised than me to still be asleep when the alarm went off. It’s been an age since that has happened. It took me a while to stagger to my feet too – for two pins I’d have gone back to bed – and even longer to go to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Once I was ready, which took a lot longer than it ought, I went into the kitchen to take my morning medication. I must try to return to my old routine now that everything is calming down. I’ve forgotten the medication more times than I care to remember just recently.

There was a task that remained uncompleted from when I was taken ill at dialysis yesterday. I was in the middle of splitting a music soundtrack, and I’d only completed “less than half” of it. There’s no time like the present so I had a good go at that to finish it off.

The nurse interrupted me with his visit, and I do have to say that since he’s come back from his holiday, he’s become quite likeable as he was when I first met him. He was disappointed that the Hound of the Baskervilles has left though.

Breakfast was next, and it was nice to have an unhurried, leisurely meal looking out of the window at the World as it walked by. Much as I liked the view from upstairs, outside here on the ground floor is much more animated.

Back in here, I can’t remember what I did next. It wasn’t to go through my usual routine of seeing what had gone on during the night and transcribing the dictaphone notes, that’s for sure. It was probably something to do with trying to find some of the things that I need that have been put into boxes, there to remain, probably forever.

There were a few people online with whom I wanted to chat, so that passed some time as well.

After lunch, I had a foot-fest. There had been a whole series of matches in the J D Cymru League yesterday and I had purposefully refrained from reading about them because the live match would have been when I was on my way home, so I wanted to watch it all in one go as if it were a live game.

So this afternoon I had Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint from yesterday afternoon. And having watched Llanelli throw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 to Llansawel the other day, this time it was the turn of Y Fflint to throw away a 2-goal lead, to go down 3-2.

For the first half, Connah’s Quay were awful and Y Fflint made it look easy. But at half-time, the Nomads made no fewer than four substitutions, the first time that I have ever seen so many changes at half-time by one club. It obviously worked, because they stormed away throughout the second half.

There were also all of the highlights of the other matches, including Colwyn Bay’s impressive 1-1 draw against perennial champions TNS. After four matches, Caernarfon are currently leading the table, and it’s been a very long time since that has happened.

What with one thing and another, I’d almost forgotten the dictaphone notes. They were next on the list and the massive “War And Peace” from the previous night is now online. I’ve no idea what must have been going on during the other night, but there are tons of stuff, and it’s well-worth a read.

Having done that, I could then turn my attention to last night’s notes. At some point during the night I dreamed that my cleaner came down with a whole load of stuff that had been sitting around and about the apartment, and threatened me under pain of dire retribution to start to move anything around. However, I was in bed at the time and certainly didn’t feel like getting up so I didn’t say anything. I just left her to go about doing it. But after a good half-hour or so, I had a look at the time. It was 02:26 so it must have been a dream that I had had, probably because I couldn’t see any changes to any of the piles in here. So now I have to try to go back to sleep and hope that I can manage it before all my staff desert it all for the goldfields.

Firstly, I can’t remember awakening at 02:26. And then we’ve had dreams within dreams before now, and I always find them to be an interesting phenomenon. Finally, the incident about the staff deserting for the goldfields reminds me of a VERY AMUSING INCIDENT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN LABRADOR. Who will ever forget "Gold Strike at Bear Creek"?

Later on, we’d moved into some new digs. I was sitting there, comfortably thinking that when we all go out on Tuesday, I would go and buy a motorbike for myself. That way, I could travel to and from work and everywhere I want to go much more easily. Of course, my brother thought that the idea was silly. He said that it would be two weeks before I fell off it, or something like that. However, I decided that that was what I would do. In the end, I ended up having a discussion with the landlady of where we were staying. She talked about different things, and I happened to mention that I might go back on the buses. She said that that was a huge jump up from driving a car. Did I think that I’d be safe? Did I think that I wouldn’t have any problems? Etc. I told her that I used to drive for Shearings, which lit up her eyes. She said “ohh, well you’ll probably remember me then”. Just as she was about to say why, the alarm went off.

Apart from my family sticking the oar in, imagine these days still being asleep when the alarm went off. Had I been awake, I would have missed this little voyage.

All through the day, I had been feeling nauseous, my head had been spinning and by the late afternoon, my vision had become blurred and I could hardly see what I was doing. I couldn’t find the force to stand up and I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, even though I’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

However, I forced myself into the kitchen, later than usual, and made a bowl of pasta and vegetables with one of the vegan burgers that I have. I didn’t feel like eating it but if I don’t make an effort, I’m going to be seriously ill one of these days … "as if you aren’t already" – ed …

Standing up afterwards, my head was spinning around and I could barely find the energy to stay standing upright, crutches or not.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, horribly late.

But seeing as we have been talking about the saloon in CARRY ON COWBOY … "well, one of us has" – ed … in the same saloon, the local preacher came in to preach to the cowboys about the evils of the demon drink.
"Would you like a whisky first?" asked the bartender.
"No evil liquor should ever touch my lips" roared the preacher. "I would rather spend the night in a brothel with a woman of ill-repute!"
At that, several cowboys dashed up to the bar and handed back their whiskies to the bartender.
"Why are you doing this?" asked the aforementioned.
"Well" replied the cowboys "we didn’t realise that we had a choice."

Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… will see me installed downstairs, if all goes according to plan. It won’t be everything down there of course – just the essentials like the bed, the office and the kitchen. That’s the important part of everything. The rest will arrive when it arrives.

But it won’t be without its vicissitudes though. I’ve had the “summons” to attend hospital on Tuesday next week for chemotherapy, staying over until Wednesday afternoon. And it’s to Paris again. It seems that my plea to be treated at Rennes has fallen on deaf ears.

Something else that has fallen on deaf ears – my own this time – is my plea to be in bed by 23:00. Once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out

For no good reason, except that yesterday I appear to have written WAR AND PEACE instead of the usual notes, and that must have taken an age. And by the time that It’d taken the stats and backed up the computers, it was probably closer to 00:30 than anything else.

That’s not the worst of it. I was wide-awake at 01:50. So wide-awake that I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed. However, second thoughts prevailed and I curled up under the covers again, where eventually I managed to go back to sleep.

Not for long though, because I had one of these dramatic awakenings at – would you believe – 04:10.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and so round about 05:00 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in the bathroom having a good wash, having already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And not dictated them once, but twice. I made something of a pig’s ear of the first attempts and it was easier to start again.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in dialysis, but we were allowed to be up and about while we were being pumped around. There was one guy there who had a tablecloth over the top of his table and it looked as if he was baking. He was weighing out certain quantities of this and certain quantities of that. The guy who was in charge of supervising the dialysis section told him basically to stop doing that and to concentrate on being dialysed. However, the guy didn’t listen and carried on so the guy in charge began to make a few sarcastic remarks, such as “it looks as if you are making the tea for your mother” etc. In the end, the guy said that he was passing the time making this whatever it was and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever he likes during the period of dialysis provided that he doesn’t upset or disturb the other people. It looked as if the guy in charge was going to have some kind of argument, but the first guy said “if you had been here a couple of hours earlier, you would have seen three women here from the other group making folders for different purposes. At that point, I stuck my hand up and said that if everyone were allowed to do all kinds of different things and people could do all kinds of different things during dialysis, I think that the period of dialysis would pass so much quicker than it seems to do at the moment”. The guy in charge wasn’t very impressed. He just put his head down and just totally ignored everything after that

Dialysis is quite literally the bane of my life. It really is three and a half hours wasted each time because there is nothing that one can do. We lie in bed, not allowed to move in case we disturb something, and no exercise of any value, nor any entertainment other than a TV is provided.

One thing about which I have been badgering them is to provide things like pedicures, bed-yoga sessions so that we could profit from the time that we are there, but that seems to have fallen on stony ground too.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood this morning. Only three more days and then she’s off on holiday for a fortnight. That’s good news for her, but not so good for those of us remaining behind because we have her oppo for two weeks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve had our first meeting with Dr Dionysus Lardner. He was the Magnus Pyke of his day, one of the very first people to take science out of the laboratories and put it on the breakfast table in the ordinary home.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t always accurate in the events that he predicted. He told a tribunal hearing once that if the brakes failed on a heavily laden train going down a slope, it could reach speeds of 120 mph. Gooch and his boss, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had to remind him that there are such things as friction and wind resistance, and these would slow the train down considerably.

He also predicted that the larger the steamship, the more fuel it would need, and there wouldn’t be the space on board for all the coal, failing to understand that if you double the breadth and width of something, you increase the volume fourfold.

Try it yourself – for example, if you have two metres width and two metres length, at one metre high, you have four cubic metres of space. But if you double the length and width, i.e. four metres width and four metres length, at one metre high you have a volume of sixteen cubic metres.

And so there’s plenty of room for extra coal.

Further along in the book, I stumbled upon one of my favourite quotes. Gooch talks about the early days of railway operation, saying "When I look back upon that time, it is a marvel to me that we escaped serious accidents. It was no uncommon thing to take an engine out on the line to look for a late train that was expected, and many times have I seen the train coming and reversed the engine, and ran back out of its way as quickly as I could. What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now ?"

Yes, "What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now?" How many times have I said that when reminiscing about my adolescence and young adulthood?

We have however reached the interesting part of the book. He’s off on the Great Eastern laying the telegraph cables along the sea bed from Valencia in Ireland to Heart’s Content on the island of Newfoundland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED HEART’S CONTENT ON OUR MEGA-VOYAGE AROUND NORTH AMERICA IN 2017 when I went to say goodbye to all of my friends in Canada and the USA. Who would have thought that I’d still be here eight years later, defying all the odds

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated and despite several interruptions, they are all now finished and the radio programmes assembled. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the next one.

Seeing as we have been talking about interruptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the first one was the man who came to repair the electric door opening device. In a fit of pique and bad temper, I sent a somewhat … errr … intemperate mail to the building’s management team and, to my surprise, they reacted.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff too, and that included putting me in the shower. Do you realise? That was the last time that I’ll have to clamber into the bath to have a shower. Te next shower that I have will be in my shower downstairs.

That is, if the plumber extricates his digit. He’s not the fastest of workers and he’s not going to have this finished by the time I come home from Paris. Mind you, he seems to be making a very thorough and solid job of everything.

Sadly, I also crashed out today, which is no surprise seeing how little sleep I’ve been having just recently. It was the hospital that awoke me, telling me the news about chemotherapy. And it was tough trying to follow the conversation, seeing that I was still somewhere up in the clouds.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry. One of the best that I have ever made, I reckon. And now I’m off to bed for a really good sleep ready for a good afternoon at dialysis. There’s nothing like optimism, is there?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my pleas falling on deaf ears … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the situation to my niece in Canada, with whom I have been talking today.
"That’s no surprise" She said. "The rest of the family thinks that you are a miserable pleader – or something like that, anyway."

Saturday 2nd August 2025 – TODAY’S DIALYSIS SESSION …

… was totally horrible.

Not so much the session but the aftermath. I was totally drained, totally exhausted and I felt as if the end of the World had come. When BILBO BAGGINS said "I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.", I knew exactly what he meant.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a particularly early start either. Although it was quite late by the time I finished my notes, the stats and the back-up, I slept all the way right through without moving until 06:20 – nine minutes before the alarm.

So while you admire a couple of photos of my freshly-painted living room, once more in a colour rather brighter than that which I had chosen, and with the curtain rail over the door in the wrong place, I shall tell you about my day.

When I awoke, I really was feeling rotten but a Herculean effort saw me sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off at 06:29

But it didn’t galvanise me into action though. It classes as an early start because I was out of bed and with my feet in contact with the floor when the alarm went off, but that’s how it stayed for a good fifteen minutes.

Eventually, I managed to drag myself in some kind of undignified fashion into the bathroom where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and I also hand-washed some clothes. With not having many clothes, I try to keep on top of things when I can.

In the kitchen, I dealt with the medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Jordan Davies had left Greenock Morton last night and had signed for a football club in Wales. His arrival was heralded by the club and they made a big issue out of it with headlines in the local paper etc. However, when he was on his way to the football ground to be greeted by the chairman etc, he was involved in a car crash and was killed. That was really the end of all of that. All of the celebrations were cancelled and it ended up being something of a really damp squib of an affair.

It’s no surprise that they would have cancelled the celebrations after that. However, this dream is a combination of two different things.

Actually, Jordan Davies has left Greenock Morton and yesterday he signed for Colwyn Bay AFC in the JD Cymru League. But the part about death in transit refers to Emiliano Sala, whose aeroplane crashed as he was flying from Nantes to play for Cardiff City in 2019.

Isabelle the Nurse came in a little later to deal with my injection, the last in this series, and to sort out my legs. There are all kinds of events taking place in the town tomorrow so she told me that she has no idea what time she will arrive.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still in Westminster, discussing inter alia the enormous list of famous and important people buried in Westminster Abbey.

But it’s John Stow’s little personal remarks that are so interesting and amusing. When he is talking about the raising of funds to rebuilt St Margaret’s Church, he tells us about King Henry III banning all trade in merchandise for fifteen days, which the citizens were obliged to redeem by paying the King two thousand pounds of silver because of the King "devising how to extort money from the citizens of London."

That’s nothing compared to his remarks concerning the revised works of Geoffrey Chaucer which were "twice increased through mine own painful labours" and "again beautified with notes by me." Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that if it weren’t for my own overwhelming modesty, I would be perfect, but not even I would write quite like that.

Still, if you have a trumpet, you may as well blow it.

As a matter of a more serious nature, he talks about the Great London Floods of 1236 and 1242. In the former flood, the Palace of Westminster was flooded and "men did row with wherries in the midst of the hall, being forced to ride to their chambers.". In the latter, "in the great hall of Westminster men took their horses because the water ran over it."

Back in here, I had some things to find to take downstairs and then I sorted out the photos from Thursday (which you have seen just now) and do it quickly too because my cleaner was coming early.

After she’d fitted my anaesthetic patches we measured all of the furniture in the living room, took one of the CD and DVD columns with us, and went downstairs with some masking tape to mark on the floor exactly where all of the furniture will go in the living room downstairs.

That’s important because the Saturday and the Monday afternoon, I’ll have dialysis and then on the Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be having chemotherapy in Paris so anyone who will be here to help me will need to know where to put everything if I’m not here.

The chief driver of the taxi company turned up to collect me, and he was early too so it’s just as well that I was ready.

We arrived at Avranches much earlier than planned, and so as usual I had to wait an age to be seen and plugged it. At least, I had good company because Alexi looked after me today.

At first, I was really drowsy, due in no small measure to the fact that my blood pressure dropped to 7.7/5.6, which is about the lowest that it has been.

Once I’d recovered, I spent most of the afternoon trying to find a series of books called “The Paston Letters” – a book containing all of the correspondence issued by the Paston family in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century.

These six volumes are extremely important because firstly, they give an eyewitness report of the Wars of the Roses, as seen by the ordinary man in the street who suffered so much, and secondly, they cover the period of the evolution of the English language from Medieval English to Early Modern English and the official codification and standardisation of the language following the invention of William Caxton’s printing press.

As usual, having arrived early, I was late being disconnected and then I had to wait ten minutes for the taxi. Even then, the driver had another passenger to drop off at Brehal up the coast and she wanted to take him first, which annoyed me greatly but there wasn’t much that I could do about it.

Consequently, I was just as late coming home as I might otherwise have been had I left here late.

Climbing the stairs in my weakened state was awful and when I made it into here I had to sit down for half an hour to recover before I could make tea.

So a baked potato, vegan salad and breadcrumbed quorn slice later, I’m off to bed, totally wasted after all of my exertions. I really need to be downstairs as quickly as possible because I can’t keep on going like this. It’s awful.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the floods … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time of the Great Flood of Crewe a while back.
When the Municipal Buildings were flooded, they decided that they would take advantage of the situation and play a game of water polo.
"Was it a success?" I asked.
"Not really" came the reply. "Most of the horses drowned."

Friday 25th July 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was last night.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past, me still being up and wandering about the apartment (and anywhere else) at 02:15 would be a fairly common sight, so seeing me wandering around at 02:15 this morning would have been nothing unusual – except that I went to bed at about 22:30, had been asleep, and was now wide awake, out of bed and working.

That’s something that has happened only extremely rarely in the past.

For a change, I actually made a really great effort and dashed through my notes for the day, took the stats, backed up the computer, sorted myself out in the bathroom and then climbed into bed, all by 22:30 or thereabouts.

Once more, I was asleep quite quickly too, but not for long. Round about 01:00, I sat bolt upright again, wide awake, drenched in sweat. It was unbelievable.

Nothing that I could do would make me go back to sleep. I was hot and uncomfortable and really couldn’t settle. After just over an hour of trying, I left the bed and had a wash.

The first thing that I did when I came back in here was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I didn’t expect to find anything on the dictaphone in view of the somewhat diminished time span involved, but I was surprised. There was something going on in some American magazine about people and hospitals and ill-health etc. For some reason, I’d been asked to download some kind of article and upload something else etc. They were talking about me on a radio show doing this. I had the book in front of me but I couldn’t find the article and I couldn’t see any of the addresses or anything but they were urging me on to do this and I was hunting through this book trying to find the correct page but I was getting nowhere. I know that one of the people involved in this whom I had to download or upload had zebra-striped white and black hair and I was wondering more about that. I was trying to find this book but every time I turned a page there was either nothing on it or it was one of these intercalcary sheets etc. I just wondered how on earth I was going to find this.

So we’re back thinking about hospitals again, are we? It seems to be a major preoccupation of mine right now. Having some kind of panic attack in a dream is also becoming something of a regular occurrence, and that’s quite possibly also something of some significance.

The second thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I had written just before going off to Paris. That took much longer than it should have done too, because my computer screen decided to go to sleep in mid-type and it took me a few minutes to restart it.

In the meantime, I had to stop and restart the ZOOM H8 because I didn’t know how long it would take to restart the screen and I didn’t want the recording running away with itself.

Once I’d finished that, the next task was quite surprising. I actually went rather further than Dave Crosby, because, although I didn’t have the ‘flu for Christmas, I’m definitely not feeling up to par and it was increasing my paranoia, like looking in the mirror and seeing a police car.

However, I wasn’t giving in an inch to fear and I promised myself this year that I’d do something about it, so I went on the attack.

A nice, trim and tidy me came back in here and I watched a football match, with the Skunks putting eight past Annan Athletic in Tuesday’s Scottish League Cup match.

When the alarm went off, I went to have a good wash and sort myself out, and then a leisurely stroll into the kitchen to take my medication.

After that, I didn’t have long to wait. The nurse was very early this morning and, like a fool, he asked how I was so I gave him both barrels and I bet that he regretted asking. He saw to my knee and to my legs and then cleared off rather sharpish-like so that I could make breakfast.

Not that I made it very far as my faithful cleaner came to interrupt me. I’d heard her moving around in her apartment upstairs so I knew that she was awake, so I sent her a message asking about some medication that I needed. She knew where it was and pointed me in the right direction.

Once sh’d left I could carry on making breakfast, not that I wanted much but I have to eat after all, and then read some more of MY BOOK while I ate what little there was.

Our author, John Stow, is still wandering around the pre-Great Fire churches of London, and between the two of us, we have made a rather interesting discovery.

At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the Duke of Bourbon was captured and held for ransom. Although the ransom was paid, and on a couple of occasions too, he was never released and never returned to his home.

Our author has been wandering around the old Greyfriars Church and in there is a tombstone, so he says, of "John, Duke of Bourbon and Anjou, Earl of Claremond, Montpensier and Baron Beaujeu, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt, kept prisoner eighteen years and deceased 1433."

That explains why he never returned home, but being held prisoner for eighteen years despite the payment of a couple of ransoms, that seems to be rather extreme.

Another interruption was the President of the Residents’ Committee who came to see how I was, which was very nice of her. She spent half an hour chatting, and I gave her the key to downstairs so she could go for a little inspection. She was well-impressed.

After breakfast, I sorted out some more things to go downstairs and then eventually came back in here to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier.

Not that I kept going for long. I soon drifted off into sleep, sitting on my chair, and for once I wasn’t surprised or disappointed.

In fact, I fell asleep in the chair on a couple of occasions for about twenty minutes here and there. And I was having some gorgeous psychedelic dreams that faded in and out, just as I had one a long time ago when they were giving me some perfusion at one of the hospitals where I’ve been. There’s only one that I remember, and that was telling a friend of mine that I’d be down to see him at about 14:00 when I leave to go to see a girl with whom I’d been invited to stay for a while in the run-up to Christmas. He asked me her name and honestly, I couldn’t remember it, so I’ sure that he thought that I was bluffing. But after he left, I remembered that I couldn’t drive and that there was no contrôle technique on the van, so what was I going to do about this visit? And then another friend of mine came in to give me some presents that had arrived. We shook one and it rattled so we opened it, and it turned out to be a plastic box full of waffles. I can’t eat them of course so I offered them to her, and she snatched the plastic box out of my hands and made off with her booty.

But there were several like this, in such a short space of time, and they all slipped out through my fingers. It was simply impossible to try to record them.

My cleaner came round at about 14:00 to do her stuff and found me engaged in an on-line chat, with a robot from my telephone company. I need to sort out the line to the apartment downstairs for when I move. It took well over an hour to do what should have been a relatively simple task, but at least it’s going to go ahead with no complications.

And that reminds me. I have made an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that, if it turns out to be wrong, the person who made the decision is executed.

The decision is that I am slowly moving the moveable stuff downstairs and just before my next chemotherapy, which seems to be about the 19th of August, my bed and office will be going down there too, so that when I return, I won’t have to climb the stairs. The rest of the stuff can come down to join me at a later date when there are people to help.

That’s regardless of the state of the apartment, whether the work is finished or not. I’ve been speaking to the kitchen fitter and told him that as of now, the bedroom is the priority followed by the part of the bathroom that is not the shower. The shower is going to be extremely complicated.

Eventually, I finished the radio programme and now have to look for one more track to finish it off. I can do that on Saturday and Sunday, but that’s going to be complicated too.

Tea was a baked potato, small salad and falafel. All of it very small, in fact, because I’m not hungry.

Actually, I’m fed up, I’m in pain, I’m ill and I’m not looking forward to dialysis tomorrow where I expect once more to be detained for at least four hours. I really can’t take much more of this.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Jean, Duke of Bourbon and the Battle of Agincourt … "well, one of us has" – ed … as he was leaving his château, he gave the keys of his wife’s chastity belt to his oldest and most faithful servant.
"Here, take these keys" he said to the servant. "While I’m away at battle, you are the only person who I can trust with them". And he set off on his shining white charger.
He hadn’t gone half a mile before the oldest and most faithful servant caught up with him, panting and out of breath.
"My Lord, my Lord" he gasped. "You’ve given me the wrong key."

Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

… is looking wonderful, it really is.

It’s not finished yet – it probably needs another full day’s work – but even so, it’s quite impressive as it is. The oven and microwave are installed and the hob will be next, and then it will just be a case of the final touches. But it really is impressive.

It will be another five weeks or so before I’ll be moving in. It seems that the weekend round about 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August is when a few volunteers have offered to come along to help, although I’ll be hoping to move a pile of stuff before then, if I can. So if anyone is at a loss for a few things to do one week or one weekend in the near future…

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, it was another late night last night by the time everything was finished. Or, rather, it wasn’t finished because I had forgotten, would you believe, the backing up of the computer.

But anyway, once I was finally in bed, there I stayed until 06:27 precisely, two minutes before the alarm was due to go off, and I managed to struggle to my feet to beat the alarm. But if that’s not impeccable timing then I don’t know what is.

After a good wash and my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was having some kind of injection because of all these foreigners who were coming to play football around here. Many people were disillusioned by the fact that they had signed a lot of the youth players from English clubs because they were thinking that the academies of these clubs were of absolutely no useful purpose at all – it was simply a paperwork exercise to show that the club has some kind of development certificate and there was no possibility of these young boys ever being included in some kind of first team round-up and some kind of Premier League involvement in due course. Most of these lads were destined to have the job when they reached the end of the age group.

This actually refers to a discussion that some of us were having on a football news forum yesterday, talking about how many under-17, under-18, under-19 etc football academy players, even youth internationals, are now playing part-time in non-league or minor league football, saying that these football academies are really nothing but window-dressing for the clubs concerned, simply to abide by certain rules and regulations with absolutely no intention at all of promoting local youth talent.

Isabelle the Nurse came in to see me and gave my knee some heat treatment, and then she attended to my legs.

After she left, the kitchen fitter put his sooty foot in the door. I organised him and he wandered off to start work. I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author is still giving us the conducted tour of various churches. He tells us that in the Church of St Mary Woolnoth there is a memorial to"Thomas Roch and Andrew Michael, vintners, and Joan, their wife." And I’m definitely eager to find out more information about that cosy set-up.

Interestingly too, he tells us that "in divers countries, dairy houses or cottages wherein they make butter and cheese, are usually called ‘wicks’.". A “wich” is quite often associated with a salt town and has other meanings in Norse and in Anglo-Saxon too, but Stow’s interpretation of the ending is certainly food … "groan" – ed … for thought.

After breakfast, I came back in here to sort out the radio notes that I dictated yesterday. In total, there is about twenty-five minutes’ worth and that’s going to take an age to edit. I shall be here for the next two months doing that, I reckon, and miss the actual programme dates if I’m not careful.

My faithful cleaner came along and sorted me out with my anaesthetic patches, and I came back in here to carry on working.

The driver who came to pick me up was the Belgian girl and I like her very much so we had a lovely chat all the way down to Avranches, except for the time when she was having an argument with one of her children on the telephone. I suppose that a pair of eleven-year-old twins would be a handful for anyone.

My luck was in at the dialysis centre. I was attended to by Julie the Cook who showed me some photos of her latest culinary creations. And wonderful they are too. But she had a lot of trouble coupling me up to the machine today and for quite a while, my machine kept on sounding the alarm.

One of the doctors came to see me today to ask me how I was. I told him that it’s pointless asking me because they don’t do anything about what I’ve told them already. So he departed with a flea in his ear.

The dietician was next to come along, with a prescription for forty-eight samples each of four different varieties of a new protein drink. I wonder what all of that will be like.

And then all Hell let loose. There’s a patient who has a four-hour dialysis session who is currently in hospital at Granville. His session is due to start at 14:00 but the ambulance didn’t bring him until after 15:30, meaning that the girls have to stay until about 20:00 this evening. It goes without saying that they were not too happy about it, and they expressed their displeasure quite forcibly to the ambulance crew.

There’s another person there who is … errr … well, he <DOESN’T HAVE BOTH PADDLES IN THE WATER. He was an endless source of trouble and stress to the nurses this afternoon and in the end, one of them had to sit with him for quite a while to keep an eye on what he was up to.

For once, I was unplugged quite quickly and the taxi was waiting for me too so we were soon on our way home. We came back via the town centre so that we could have a look at the chaos with the rebuilding paused for the summer, and then the driver dropped me off at home where my faithful cleaner was waiting.

First thing that I did was to go to inspect the kitchen and to chat with the kitchen-fitter and his wife who was helping. And my kitchen does look lovely. He’s done a really good job and I’m well-impressed. It will be even better when it’s finished.

Mind you, I had a very late tea tonight because I had to wait for an age while he finished off and packed up his tools.

He also presented me with a bill to date, and after I’d paid it, I had to go to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Tea tonight was just like The Carmichaels, as SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. It was too late to cook a proper meal.

So now I’m off to bed, later than I would like. And I need to be on form as there’s a lot to do tomorrow. There’s the Sunday Woodstock notes to continue to edit and also June and Catherine are coming round to see me before they head off back to South Germany.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the kitchen fitter … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked him if he would like to install a mirror for me in the kitchen.
He thought for a while and then replied "ohh yes, why not? That’s just the kind of job that I could see myself doing."

Sunday 15th June 2025 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… day that I have had today. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had such an interesting day.

Well, actually, that’s not really fair. A friend of mine was over here for a couple of days several weeks ago and we had a very good and interesting time. And today (and these last few days in fact) were just as interesting and enjoyable.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t have many friends, but those whom I have are the best in the World. No-one has better friends than I do.

So last night, I had another gentle meander around in cyberspace, sometimes looking for things on the internet and sometimes even writing my notes. But in any case it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until all of … errr … 05:10 when something awoke me. I’ve no idea what it was but anyway, I was awake and that was that.

“Being awake” is of course not the same thing as “leaving the bed”. That is something quite different. So there I was lying there vegetating when I thought “hang on – I have things to do” and left the bed. This was round about 05:30.

Everyone else was asleep so I sat down and began to transcribe the notes on the dictaphone. They were laying out some young girl last night, a 3D model of one. She had died. They were dressing her in whatever funeral clothes that they could find and making her ready for burial.

This was quite a morbid theme for the night when I’m supposed to be relaxing. And even now, I can still see the scene. Interestingly, they were dressing her in white. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that when I was going through the wardrobe in here the other day sorting out things that I’ll be taking downstairs, I came across Roxanne’s communion dress and a bridesmaid’s dress that she wore that her mother left behind when our relationship ended. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw them out.

There are lots of things – clothes, toys, a bike and so on of Roxanne’s that I still have that were left behind down on the farm that I came across when I scrapped the caravan in which we lived when we went down there at first on our holidays. It’s rather too late now to worry about what’s going to become of it, but whoever draws the short straw and has to sort out my effects is going to have something of a time trying to untangle everything.

Once I’d finished the dictaphone notes (which, let’s face it, didn’t take long) I sorted out the rest of the music for my biodiversity radio programme. That’s all chosen, edited, remixed and segued now, and I even began to write the notes. However, round about 07:15 I detected signs of people stirring so I went to join them.

After I’d had a good wash and scrub up we all sat around talking and drinking coffee until the nurse arrived. And he was once more taken unawares by the Hound of the Baskervilles. Consequently, he didn’t stay long and we could push on and make breakfast.

While breakfast was a-making, I set my friend a task TO PROVE THAT HE IS WORTHY. I mentioned the other day that I needed someone to place an advert on a certain Social Media Group to try to find a plumber. I was going to ask my friend Liz to do it but I can’t keep on asking her to do things for me or she’ll soon become fed up, so I set my friend onto the task.

While I was eating my breakfast, I sent off my on-line order for the oven, microwave, fridge-freezer and a few other things. They will start to arrive in midweek and carry on into the beginning of next week. So now it looks as if we are off, up and running.

To cement our progress, we sorted out some things and took them downstairs to put in the new place. That’s right! WE ARE BEGINNING TO MOVE IN! Slowly, it has to be said, but nevertheless …

Once we’d sorted out what needed to go downstairs, we decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and go out.

The first place that we visited was the radio’s studio at St Nicolas so that my friend knew where it was for the future, and then we had a nice, steady drive in the sunshine all the way down to the Pointe de Carolles where he took the Hound of the Baskervilles for a run on the beach and I went for a coffee.

That wasn’t as easy as it sounded either because it was lunchtime and the place was full. They offered me a kind-of casual table outside but the seats were no good for me. Eventually, they found a spare seat with armrests where I could sit down and, more importantly, lift myself out again.

When they had finished their walkies they came to join me and we were there for about an hour in the sun having coffee. And the cute little serving wench who waited on us can hand it to me on a platter any time she likes.

Interestingly, there were several young children wandering around, dressed in white. I asked the aforementioned serving wench about it, and she replied that the local kids had had their communion today. After that dream about the girl being laid out for her funeral, dressed in white, and Roxanne’s communion dress, that was a real coincidence.

We climbed back into the car and drove on down the coast and into Avranches to fuel up, and then carried on along the coast in the beautiful weather, admiring the view until we reached St Malo.

It’s years since I’ve been to St Malo and I can’t remember it at all compared to how it is now. But I sat on the side of the harbour watching the shipping while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged its master off for another walk. And why I didn’t take a ‘photo of the first “Ship of the Day” since I was in MONTREAL THE 30th SEPTEMBER 2022 I really don’t know.

Back in the car, we had a nice, steady drive home, coming through the town centre to see the chaos that they are creating with these “improvements”. And all that I can say is that it’s better than Crewe Town Centre right now, that’s for sure.

Another nice surprise is that someone had replied to the advert that my friend had placed this morning. So now I have a plumber/handyman coming to see me on Friday afternoon to have a look at the job that needs doing downstairs in the bathroom. That might even be taking off at this rate.

For tea tonight I made another pizza, a large square one this time and that went down really well. There’s even some left over so my friend has bagged that for lunch tomorrow while I’m at dialysis.

So now, I’m off to bed, exhausted following a really wonderful day. I don’t have enough of those so I’ll make the most of whatever I can have.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about watching the boats in St Malo harbour … "well, one of us has" – ed … I spent a lot of time looking at this strange type of elasticated sailing boat that was there, flying the flag of one of these Middle-Eastern Emirate countries.
It was so unusual that I asked a local yokel about it.
He was a very vocal local yokel too, and told me "it’s a very famous boat, that one. Didn’t you know?"
"No, I’m afraid that I didn’t." I said
"It’s so famous" he said "that a very famous poem has been written about it"
"Which one was that?" I asked, bitterly regretting ten seconds later having done so
"It’s ‘The Rubber Yacht of Omar Khayyam’"

Friday 30th May 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… another day when I seem to have accomplished a great deal, and I’m not sure why.

The biggest news of the day is that my magnum opus, the “Woodstock Weekend” is now finished to all intents and purposes.

The second news is that I now have a kitchen fitter lined up for next month. All I need now is a plumber and tiler, but heaven alone knows where I’m going to find one of those.

It’s all possibly something to do with the fact that I actually made it into bed last night at 22:45 – the first time (barring ill-health) that I’ve been in bed prior to 23:00 for quite some considerable time. And I was so tired that I needed it too. It was quite a difficult day yesterday.

Once in bed I was asleep almost immediately and that was how I remained until about 06:05 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings, of which I seem to have been having quite a few just recently.

When I awoke I was doing some stage effects for Genesis. They were trying to make some kind of thing similar to dry ice but would actually foam up. It involved putting it into a cardboard box and leaving it to ferment for a minute or two, then watching the reaction. We made very little progress in that because they were still trying to work out what would be the best way to go about it. We were in the middle of a discussion like that when I awoke. There was one thing, and that was all the music on that particular album was credited to “Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett” which was strange.

Dry Ice used to be quite a thing with Genesis’s live performances back in the Peter Gabriel days, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he had indeed been thinking about going one step beyond with an adaptation of his dry ice formula. It’s also interesting to see that Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were mentioned separately to the rest of Genesis. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that when Gabriel left, it ripped the heart out of the group and when Hackett left, that was really the end. Mind you, anyone who has listened carefully to TRESPASS will realise that Anthony Phillips, one of Hackett’s predecessors, could do just as well.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was in the kitchen sorting out my medication, and then I came back in here to find out what was on the dictaphone from last night. The current incarnation of the needs of the group began. The first thing that they did was to round everyone up from their homes and bring them into little squares here and there. They then explained to everyone what they intended to do and cried out for the people to support them so that people would bow down and kneel and pray in homage for their town. This didn’t last very long though because they decided that everyone who was currently being injected would have to be pierced instead. This meant a lot of work and … fell asleep here … I was one of the people there and I was asked to kneel. I explained that I couldn’t but they didn’t accept the explanation and I was dragged off and told to prepare to go to a Gulag somewhere in the Soviet Union

That is another dream of which I have absolutely no recollection at all, which is no surprise seeing how incoherent it is … "not that it makes a difference" – ed … And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when I’m dictating these dreams, I actually am asleep. But when I say that I’ve fallen asleep, what happens is that the dictaphone goes quiet, and then you can begin to hear my heavy breathing. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned that on many occasions in the past but I shall mention it once again for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days.

And more than just a few too. Yesterday, according to the stats, we had 256 readers and we’ve not had that many since the halcyon days of the internet 20 or so years ago. Now if everyone who had visited had bought something using the Amazon links that litter these pages, I would receive a nice little commission that would set me up for the next few months. After all, I deserve it for all of this entertainment I’m providing.

There was time for me to go surfing through the internet to my Welsh Course provider and look for a Summer School or two. And now I’m fixed up with a Sunday School at the beginning of July and a week’s course in the middle of July. While I was looking through the short courses to see what was happening, I came across a WELSH FOR FOOTBALL SUPPORTERS from which many of you lot will benefit when you watch the highlights of the JD Cymru League games that I post regularly.

It’s the “other” nurse back on duty today until next Monday and as there were no blood tests or injections today, seeing as he won’t do them, he came early. And that meant that he left early too and I could crack on and make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve now moved on from Old Sarum and have arrived at Scarborough Castle. And in a book that is supposed to be concerned with “The Medieval Military Architecture of England”, we’ve spent rather a lot of time discussing the arrival of the Saxons, which, in theory, may well be considered to be medieval, but almost nothing of their architecture is extant.

He tells us that in the years to 1189, the castle cost a total of £682/15/3d, which shows that they had accountants back in those days too.

We also have another one of these classic tongue-twisting sentences that he loves to impose upon us every now and again. He tells us that "Percy, however, did not long retain this manor, for Eudo of Champagne, kinsman, and by marriage nephew to the conqueror, on the departure of Drogo le Brevere, the reputed founder of the Norman works at Skipsea Castle, received from William the land of Holderness, and with it, probably, the adjacent manor of Falsgrave."

Back in here again, I made a start on my Woodstock programme and by the time that I knocked off, it was all finished – a marathon forty-six minutes of text to be dictated at some point. It won’t be done this weekend though because I’m going to spend a couple of days reading through it a couple of times. There will bound to be some amendments here and there as we go along, and I don’t expect the programmes to be assembled for a couple of weeks yet.

There were, as usual, several interruptions. There were two disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner came along to do her thing (and came back later with some stuff from the chemist’s) and then there was a lengthy discussion with a joiner-type person who wants to fit my kitchen.

We’d had a lengthy chat 10 or so days ago and he’d been pricing things and working everything out. I had an idea in my head of what the likely price would be, and his estimate came in at about €15:00 over what I was expecting, so I wasn’t going to argue with that. When we’d spoken earlier, he’d come up with a few good suggestions so it seems as if he knows what he’s talking about.

All I need now is a tiler and a plumber, but I’ll worry about that in due course, I suppose.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with air-fried potato cubes and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. As I’ve now run out of my breaded quorn fillets, I wonder what I’m going to have for tea tomorrow.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed, ready to Fight the Good Fight at the dialysis centre tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about visitors … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the talks that we used to give when we were up in Labrador as winter was approaching – remember that July and August are the only months of the year in Labrador in which snow is uncommon. There is never a month when there is no snow, and I’ve fought snowdrifts in September, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
We used to warn people that Labrador in late Autumn and early Spring is when they would be likely to encounter both brown bears and polar bears.
"When people are hiking in the interior, they usually wear small bells on their clothing and carry a pepper spray." I’d say. "They are useful if you ever encounter a brown bear. The bells will frighten it away but if they approach, the pepper spray will drive them off."
"What do you use to drive off a polar bear?" they would ask.
"There is no defence against a polar bear" I would reply.
"So how do you make yourself aware of which bears are about?"
"You need to be alert and examine the ground around you as you walk. Look out for bear droppings. Brown bear droppings will usually have seeds and leaves mixed in with them" I would say
"And polar bear droppings?"
"They usually have small bells and grains of pepper in them."

Tuesday 13th May 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this afternoon that I vowed never to do unless there was a dire necessity to so do, and that was to go back to bed for a while.

Mind you, there actually was a dire necessity this afternoon. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s absolutely pointless trying to go to bed early. All it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

Not that last night was all that early either. It was quite a struggle for some reason to keep my concentration going and I kept on drifting off down little side alleys when I should have been working and finishing everything off.

Once I’d finished doing what needed to be done, it was quite another matter to find the energy to haul myself out of my seat and head off into the bathroom to prepare for the night. However, once I finally made it into bed, I remember nothing. I must have been out in an instant.

And as I implied just now, we had another early start. We’ve had some early starts in the past, that’s for sure, but awakening at 03:05 is something like extremism. It’s not as if I went back to sleep either, but I was tossing and turning for quite a while to no good purpose.

Eventually, round about 05:00, I gave up the struggle and raised myself from the Undead. In the bathroom, I sorted myself out and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

It was about 05:45 when I finally came back in here. It was deadly quiet outside – not even the goélands were cackling – so I made the most of my early start by dictating the radio notes that I had written on Sunday for the eleventh track of programme 260313.

Pressing on, I remixed and edited them and then combined them with the two halves of the programme that I had already assembled. I ended up being, would you believe, as much as twenty-eight seconds over. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s enough superfluous stuff in what I dictate that can be edited out without changing the sense, the meaning or the rhythm, that it was no real problem to cut the programme down to exactly one hour.

So that was a job well done, making the most of the unexpected hour or two.

There was time to transcribe the dictaphone notes, and I’m still scratching my head about these. Firstly, over the fact that there were some. Less than four hours’ sleep doesn’t give you very much time to wander off, but somehow I managed it. The second surprising thing is the actual contents of the notes themselves. What on earth must I have been doing?

Starting off, I dreamed that I was in hospital, having to be compressed at the end of a session of dialysis but there was much more to it than that because I had to have some kind of other treatment too. This meant that I couldn’t really leave the bed so they had to take me home on a stretcher. From where I was in the hospital, all the windows looked out into the mountains. You could see cars in the distance simply by the reflection of the sun in their windscreens. This went on for miles. We were there, trying to guess which one was our vehicle that would be picking us up. I ended up trying to sit up, which I managed, and they gave me some kind of programme towards when I should be able to walk and when I should be able to leave the bed etc but I was convinced that I was going to complete this programme much sooner than they wanted me to and I was already making plans to rise up and leave the bed even though I shouldn’t be able to do that, I wasn’t going to let this illness get in my way of getting up.

This reminds me of when I was in North-Eastern USA in 2019. I’d been reading John Bourke’s book ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK about his spell serving with General Crook on their mission to pacify … "you mean ‘exterminate’" – ed … the Native Americans. Bourke tells of the success that they had in tracking raiding parties … "you mean ‘groups of people defending their homeland’" – ed … thanks to the use of the heliograph. The air was so clear up there that a heliograph message flashed off a mirror could be seen fifty miles away. When I was up there in Montana looking for the remains of Fort CF Smith, I saw the sunlight reflecting off the roof of a corn silo, all of forty miles away.

As for hauling myself out of bed when I’m not supposed to, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have “previous” in this respect. I’m determined not to let this illness get the better of me and I’ll fight until the end

And then I stepped back into that dream again. After they had given me an injection, they said that I could go home. I had to take my time really slowly to sit up in bed, by which time my neighbour was eating a meal and it must have been really difficult for her to concentrate. She kept on looking round and I could see the shelves and the parcels shelf behind the rear seat. She wondered how I was going to travel six hundred miles on that … fell asleep here … it came to the point that I’d had to walk and was going to do my best to do it properly on my béquille.

Whatever that dream is all about, I don’t have the faintest idea. Although I do have to say that if I’m sharing a room with a charming young woman, I wouldn’t be in any great rush to leave the hospital, that’s for sure.

It was nearly time to leave the hospital. I was dressed and all my things were packed etc. I knew that it wasn’t going to be as simple as it sounded because of the distances that these drivers have to cover every day. They couldn’t be here on demand like you might think that they would so I was prepared for a wait. There were a couple of young nurses assigned to help me climb into the van but I didn’t really encourage them because I knew that it was going to be far simpler the … fell asleep here … I had these nurses assigned to me to help me climb into the car but I didn’t know where or when or whatever that was going to arrive. There’s much more to it than this but I keep falling asleep so I can’t dictate it and I can’t remember most of it anyway but it was about me being prepared to leave the hospital in a taxi.

This is clearly related to the struggle that I had to climb into the minibus yesterday. I wish that they had allowed two nurses to come to help me into the thing. They could have come home with me too and helped me out of the vehicle, up the stairs and into the bed.

Well, there’s no harm in wishing, is there?

It’s the male nurse’s turn to work for this coming week. He duly turned up and tried to begin a discussion about my stay at the hospital. I’m not sure how many times I had to tell him that I didn’t want to discuss it and he was still going on about it when he left.

Once he’d gone I could press on and make breakfast, with my lovely fresh bread from Sunday, and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’ve now left Ludlow Castle after having had a good chat about the history, and having passed by several minor edifices, we’re now at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire where, doubtless, we’ll have another guided tour of whatever is left of the castle without any kind of discussion about the military architecture of the place.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh class until the lesson began and then, to my surprise considering that I’d been absent for two weeks, I had a rather successful lesson and I was quite pleased with what I had accomplished. So what’s been happening here?

This afternoon, I had a visit from one of these agencies who responded to my advert about my new apartment. After only thirty seconds of discussion, I decided that they were not for me. It became evident only too quickly that it wouldn’t be my project but theirs.

We had fatuous questions like "what about the insulation of the apartment? That will need checking" and "those radiators will have to go" and "it’ll all need a good coat of paint too" etc etc.

The crowning glory was the discussion about the kitchen
"What’s your budget on the kitchen?"
"The apartment is rather a budget apartment, 40m². It’s pointless, if not ridiculous, putting a deluxe kitchen in there. But on the other hand, I don’t want a ‘bargain-basement, economy’ kitchen"
"I see" she replied. "So you’re looking at about €15,000 then. And we can sort out some nice electromenager too."

In other words, they can sling their hook.

This renovation is turning out to be much more complicated than I ever imagined, simply because I can’t persuade tradesmen to turn up. I would give all that I had … "and more besides" – ed … to have a reliable artisan who would be happy to do just what I wanted him to do.

Throughout the afternoon I’d been going colder and colder until I was feeling really uncomfortable. My head was spinning round and I could feel myself sliding into one of these spells that I have where I’m not able to function at all.

That was the cue to set the alarm for ninety minutes hence and climb into bed underneath the bedclothes, fully clothed. I blame it on less than four hours sleep last night, myself.

After I awoke, it was a struggle to leave the bed, but once I was up and about I concentrated on choosing the music for programme 260417. There are quite a few gaps in the series but I’ll start to fill those once I finish my Woodstock weekend, whenever that might be.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, delicious as usual. And now I’m off to bed, hoping to have a decent night’s sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about our Welsh class … "well, one of us has" – ed …one of my classmates had said earlier that she would be late as she had to go for a memory exam at the local hospital.
However, as the lesson began, there she was.
"What happened to the memory exam?" I asked her
"Ohhh damn!" she replied. "I’ve forgotten to go".

Saturday 19th April 2025 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING.

Four hours in dialysis with the machine going full-tilt. It’s enough to finish anyone off. But at least I’m down to my target weight so with a little luck I might only have to stay for three and a half hours on Monday. We shall see.

Things might have been different and I might have been less exhausted had I gone to bed earlier instead of hanging about until some stupid kind of time, but there we are … "or were" – ed ….

To make things worse, it was a miserable night and I don’t think that I had much sleep, waking up here and there every half hour or so. At one stage I was even planning on leaving the bed but I gave up that idea quite quickly.

When the alarm went off I was however fast asleep and it was, as you might expect, a desperate stagger to my feet to beat the second alarm. And in the bathroom I had a good wash ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis, and I hand-washed my socks, undies and night attire.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, I had actually been out and about on my travels during the night. A girl was being examined for some kind of issue with her legs. She’s on a kind-of operating table on her back with her legs in the air and they are examining them. The doctor tells her to put them into the neutral position which she tries. After a little manipulation … "PERSONipulation" – ed … the surgeon or doctor manages to put her legs into some kind of neutral position. He tells her “well, that’s much easier, isn’t it? Perhaps you should have done that at some kind of earlier point in the examination or even beforehand, but I’ll make a mark now to let them know where it’s all correct”.

It’s much easier for me – I simply press “CNTRL-Z” and that puts any selected 3-D object or character into a neutral pose. That dream did remind me somewhat of some of my 3D work when I was living down on the farm.

And then I was back in that dream … "which dream?" – ed … later on. Some thieves had stolen a train with the ammunition on it. They were heading off for wherever it was. They were taking their time, not in any rush, and had stopped to have a meal somewhere. In the meantime, a group of Indians had been removed from a town and were not happy. They found these men and explained to them what was happening and that there was a train on its way towards them. What they did was that they started up the train and set it to going back down the line with all aboard at the maximum permitted speed of seven mph. When they were just a few hundred yards away from a collision they leapt off the footplate and the trains ploughed into each other. Carriages were destroyed, carriages went everywhere. They were saying that over 200 people were killed, including 131 in one carriage. All the wagons ran loose and even sheltering behind the rocks was not saving them from the wagons rolling up on them. There was even a railway wagon that had come from Russia on board this train and it rolled to a stop right at the feet of one of these robbers.

That plot sounds just like a cross between the plot of THE WILD BUNCH and that of A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, two films that spend a lot of time on my playlist. As for the wagon though, whilst Russian wagons ring no bells with me, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we once encountered a railway box-car with “Alaskan Agriculture” on it.

Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

The nurse was chatting to me this morning, telling me what I should do about the situation in the apartment downstairs. When he finished, I told him that I had a letting agent who was doing all of that. "But still …" he said, and started again.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still in Kenilworth Castle where, on page 147, this rather peculiar paragraph caught my eye. What do you make of this? "The character of the ground makes it probable that the Norman fortress had but one entrance. This could not have been on the east, west, or south fronts, as the ground was low and marshy ; nor on the north, where the ditch is wide and deep."

The next thing that caught my eye was on page 150 where he tells us "the succession of great events which led to the death of the earl, and the celebrated siege of Kenilworth, belong to the history of England rather than to that of Kenilworth, and form one of its most interesting and most valuable chapters. The subject has fallen under the pen of Mr. Green, and has found a place in the pages of the Archaeological Journal (vol. xxi. p. 277), where the course of the events is disentangled, and very clearly narrated, and their political significance and bearing upon the constitutional history of our country treated in a manner both brilliant and profound"

He then devotes several pages to telling us about the Siege of Kenilworth.

Back in here, I carried on with the remote repairing of Rosemary’s computer. She is now connected to the internet with the aid of an Ethernet cable (but not the Wi-Fi) and has an antivirus installed. She ran a scan of the computer which came up with nothing (which was a pity because I had hopes for that) and when my cleaner arrived to fit my patches and I had to go, she was performing a deep scan.

After the cleaner had fitted my patches I had to wait for my taxi and was packing my bags for my next Paris hospitalisation when it pulled up. It was the boss again and we had a chatty drive down to Avranches.

Late in meant late coupled up and with a four-hour session I could see that it was going to be late. The blood pressure is set to be tested every half-hour and every half hour the nurses had to come running because of the wailing machine, complaining about my unbelievably low blood pressure today

In the end they set the machine to every fifteen minutes, so they had to come twice as often.

While all of this was going on, I was trying to watch the football. Caernarfon were playing Cardiff Metro for the privilege of finishing fourth. There wasn’t as much skill as I would have expected but it was an exciting game that roared from one end to the other.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, this was it. The Met had most of the play in the first half and were leading 1-0, quite deservedly, at half-time. But whatever Richard Davies put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a swig of that myself. The Cofis came out of the blocks at an incredible rate, had most of the play in the second half and eventually won 2-1.

And I’ll have to be careful what I say at dialysis in the future. A nurse and I were talking about my diet and Emilie the Cute Consultant heard it from across the room and came to join in. I hope that she can’t hear me call her “Emilie the Cute Consultant” when I’m here and she’s there.

It was a very, very weary me who staggered to the car to come home and I was glad to be back. Coming up the stairs was a very long, hard trudge tonight.

So having had my tea of baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed. I don’t think that I’ll be awake long tonight and I’ll be surprised if I awaken early, but dialysis is a funny thing.

But seeing as we have been talking about acute hearing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the snail, the tortoise and the sloth having a party when they run out of beer.
They draw lots and the tortoise loses, so they send him to buy more beer.
Three weeks later they begin to complain. "We should never have sent that tortoise" said the snail. "He’s so lazy and bone-idle"
"I know" said the sloth. "For all the good that he does, he may as well not be here"
Just then a voice from outside the door shouts "if you lot continue to bad-mouth me like this, I shan’t go for the beer at all!"

Wednesday 9th April 2025 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision. And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is on that if it turns out to be the wrong decision, the person who made it is executed.

It’s amazing the thoughts that go through your head when you are lying there in bed at … gulp … 05:20 in the morning trying rather unsuccessfully to go back to sleep after another dramatic awakening, but there we are. I put the time to good use.

It wasn’t as if I’d been to bed early either. In principle I could have been in bed at a realistic time last night but as usual, just as I’m about to make up my mind to stagger off to bed after doing everything that I needed to do, a decent concert comes round on the playlist and so I find something to do as a good excuse for staying up to listen to it.

Eventually though, I go off to bed and go straight to sleep, only to awaken bolt-upright at 05:20 wondering why I’m still in bed when I was convinced that a couple of hours ago I’d arisen from the bed and gone into the kitchen.

So while I was pondering and musing, I was thinking. And one of the things about which I was thinking was that I’m never going to go back to sleep so I may as well raise myself from the bed and do some work.

Into the bathroom for a cursory wash today, after all, it is Wednesday and shower day, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and to my surprise, despite the short night, I’d been out and about on a couple of occasions. I had to board a bus to go somewhere, and I was with a friend of mine. We climbed on board but the bus was crowded and there were people sitting on the floor. We found some space on one of the side seats over the rear wheel arch but there were some people sitting right in front of it on the floor so we had to manoeuvre our feet around. One of the people on the floor objected. I told them that my feet have to go somewhere but they carried on complaining so I told them that if they didn’t like it, they should have sat on the seat when it became vacant and then they could have put their feet on the floor but they were still extremely unhappy. In the end I couldn’t care less and began to take the mickey out of them for complaining.

Back on the bus again after last night? That seems to be becoming something of a regular occasion. I could understand the situation if I were driving it but as a passenger, that’s hardly likely. When I was fit I would walk miles and miles without even thinking about it. I remember in Brussels a few years ago when I was going to the hospital at Leuven and went for a little walk around one afternoon – and covered nineteen kilometres. And how far did I walk with Hannah on that Sunday when I was showing her around Brussels?

Later on I was driving taxis again. I was parked on the rank and was ready to pull away when another vehicle came along, drove past and reversed into a space at the side of me, another taxi, a white Hillman Hunter. As he pulled into this space he hit the front of my car. I climbed out to see what the damage was but there wasn’t a great deal. The guy wasn’t really all that apologetic. He asked me if I’d seen the guitar, some package, a similar thing. I said that someone had left a package yesterday and I’d put it in the boot of his car for him. He didn’t remember seeing it when he looked so I told him that I was certain that it was there and if it’s not there I probably still have it at home and I’ll sort it out for later.

Yes, “again”. That’s becoming far too much of a regular dream too, or is it a nightmare? If I had my time back and had to go through it again, I would have changed a great deal of what happened. I made some very poor decisions back then but hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it? And as was once said in the USA "it’s hard to remember, when you are up to your neck in alligators, that all you are trying to do is to drain the swamp".

Having put that out of the way I had plenty of work to do and I cracked on. I was hard at it when Isabelle the Nurse arrived to sort me out. We talked about my compression socks and she’ll remind the secretary of my doctor.

After she left I made breakfast. The loaf that I made before going to bed is absolutely excellent and made some lovely toast. I munched away on it while I was reading MY NEW BOOK.

This book has now turned into a whistle-stop tour of castles. We’ve probably been to six or seven this morning, just a quick walk around and then teleported ourselves on to the next one, in alphabetical order. With 669 pages at which to go, we are going to be covering a lot of ground at this rate.

Back in here, I began to concentrate.

My decision – about which I talked earlier – is that no matter what evolves downstairs, I’m going to rip out the kitchen and throw it away. I’ve been planning my own kitchen thanks to that 3D app about which I spoke the other day, and I’ve made myself a lovely kitchen and so I’m going to go with it and make my new apartment look really nice and practical.

Electrical appliances are next so I spent a couple of hours looking at fridge-freezers and built-in ovens and microwaves. In the end, my brain had turned to porridge so I abandoned the process. There were thousands and thousands and I had no idea what I wanted or what I needed.

It was at that point I had a good idea, and I contacted Rosemary. Just a short chat this morning – a mere fifty-seven yea … errr … minutes. But knowing how much care and effort Rosemary puts into checking things out, I set her a task TO PROVE THAT SHE IS WORTHY.

What I did was to tell her what I thought would be my requirements and what my budget is. And if she had my budget and my requirements, what would she buy?

She immediately made a couple of suggestions that had not occurred to me, and then she had to go to sort out a taxi to take her to hospital as she’s having some surgery in a couple of weeks. But she’s on the case which is just as well because I didn’t know who else to ask and I couldn’t sort it out on my own.

My faithful cleaner made a suggestion too. She reckons that this organisation with which I’m registered – the one that bends over backwards to help handicapped and disabled people stay in their own homes – might be able to offer some sort of assistance with the move and the fitting out of the apartment to suit my needs and requirements.

Having given the matter some thought, I wrote to them to see what they would have to say.

Then I had to send off the receipt for the new telephone and return one of the products that I’d bought from Amazon because they had sent the wrong one.

When my cleaner arrived this afternoon she helped me into the shower and I had a really good scrub up that made me feel so much better and then after a disgusting drink break, I cracked on with the radio programme.

But the time that I stopped for tea, I’d chosen all of the music (which wasn’t easy, as I said yesterday), edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written all of the notes. That was a really busy spell of work and I was exhausted.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. But there was so much left over that I added a couple of small potatoes, a jar of that korma mix that I bought ages ago, and made enough for three meals and the one that I ate tonight was delicious.

The naan was perfection too – definitely one of my better ones.

So it’s bedtime now, if the stabbing pain that has started up in my right heel will let me. Despite the late night and early start, I only had one or two wobbles during the day but kept on going until the end. But dialysis tomorrow of course, so we shall see.

Seeing as we have been talking about buses and Crosville the other day … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember back in Crewe in the early 1970s and the Lodekkas were beginning to be phased out. The Bristol VRTs arrived and were equipped for one-man operation.
During the first week there were several accidents and on one occasion I was there when the police were interviewing the driver
"So can you tell us what happened?" the police asked
"I’ve no idea" replied the driver. "I was upstairs collecting the fares when the accident happened".

Monday 7th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… short session of three and a half hours at the dialysis centre today. Even though I wobbled a couple of times and crashed out for five minutes, I made it to the end

But seeing as we are talking about crashing out … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was in a different bed today where I could see everyone else in the public ward. And without exception, everyone else crashed out shortly after their machines were set under way. That doesn’t make me feel quite so bad now about crashing out.

Something else that we very nearly had this morning was another early start. Despite not going to bed until late, I was awake at about 06:40 and was debating whether to raise myself from the Dead – I’d even put the light on – when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE beat me to it

It’s quite surprising that I was awake so early because I didn’t go to bed until after 01:00. I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing up well before that but as usual something came along to disrupt me and I can’t remember what it was right now. It was probably a very good concert and I’ll always postpone bedtime if something decent comes round on the playlist. … "Actually, you were designing kitchens" – ed …

But once in bed I fell asleep quite quickly, but only for a short while and then we were back on the turbulent, somewhat mobile nights.

Whatever it was that awoke me at 06:40 left no impression on me whatsoever. It wasn’t the bin lorry, and it wasn’t the hot food delivery to the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs either because they both turned up when I was awake and trying to summon up the courage and the energy to leave the bed.

Billy Cotton made up my mind for me and his rattle certainly is raucous coming from this new ‘phone. No-one will sleep through this, that’s for sure

In the bathroom I had a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and no-one was more surprised than me to see all of the stuff thereupon. When I switched on my computer there was a message “you must go to full-screen view for this” it said, so I pressed on the full screen and there was a humanoid figure, a female one. Apparently I must have been trying to manoeuvre some of the limbs during a 3D exercise or something and somehow I’d become distracted and closed the window before I’d finished what it was that I was going. Now that I was in this full-screen I could read all the notes and see which would be the best way to resolve the issue with which the error message was dealing.

It goes without saying that in the middle of the night I didn’t actually switch on the computer. But manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed … the limbs of 3D characters is something that I did quite often when I was working in 3D down on the farm.

Then there was that I had to put a fascia panel across underneath the fridge and the model initiative size before its transform so that I know where everything should be

This of course makes no sense at all, but then what does? As we have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … There are all kinds of rubbish that comes to the fore during my nocturnal rambles … "and not just then either" – ed … But the fascia panel reminds me of something that I saw when I was looking at kitchens. A plinth of wood to cover the feet of the units, four metres long by about ten centimetres wide, will cost me €39:00

Later on I had another visit during the night. I was actually in hospital. At one stage in my life I’d fathered a child with someone but the relationship didn’t stick and the mother and I went our separate ways. I was in hospital last night and into my room came the sister of this girl and her mother and my little daughter who was about three or four with a couple of other small kids. I chatted to them all because I liked them. My daughter climbed onto my bed, standing there having quite a long chat about her birthday, what she’d had for her birthday, what she was going to do with her birthday money and everything like that. It was a lovely dream.

It’s a question that I’ve often been asked – "do you have any kids?" and my response is always the same – "none that I know of – no-one has come knocking on the door yet". Nerina didn’t want any kids – we’d had a couple of long talks about that – and that suited me at the time. It was only when Laurence, Roxanne and I set up home together in Jette that I realised just how much fun kids could be, especially girls. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that all kids should be girls, they should be born when they are five and at age eleven they should go into hibernation until they reach eighteen.

And then we were on holiday somewhere. We started off by going in a car and it was evening. We were driving towards Chester and came to Bluestones crossroads and turned right up the A51. We were heading towards the reservoir and noticed that the traffic had stopped so we stopped too. I could see the lights in the distance – this was a huge, enormous queue of vehicles that stretched for miles. We began to think about turning round and going back across country via Worleston, that way. Just then, a lorry came down pulling a bus with it and the bus had all been smashed in. There was another breakdown vehicle behind it pulling something else. Then the police came and told everyone to go back. They had us roll backwards down the hill towards Bluestones again so I let off our handbrake to roll back and all of a sudden rolled at an incredible rate of speed almost out of control. I really had to apply the brakes to make it stop but for that little moment it was frightening.

It was frightening too, I can tell you. I can still see it now.

And finally, I stepped back into that dream again. There was a group of us and we were going on holiday again. This time we were back at the hotel where we had started and a bus pulled up, dropped off a load of people and went again. A few minutes later another bus from the same company, one in Calveley, dropped people off as well. We wondered if this was anything to do with the accident and these people were maybe passengers on one of those buses that had been in an accident and the bus had brought me here. This time we left again and boarded a bus, an old double-decker. I was with two other guys so I grabbed a pair of seats with a free one in front but they all wanted to sit at the back. I looked round but there was no place to sit at the back so they couldn’t really do that anyway. Then we set off and were out doing something and all came back. We’d been through a forest and had been told to be careful in the forest. There were these people gathering the old decayed wood and burning it. One of them was pushing some kind of load and came to a T-junction in the forest path but instead of stopping, they just went straight on and straight through the undergrowth opposite the T-junction. We thought to ourselves “that’s not being careful, is it?”. Then we heard some music, trumpets and trombones. We had a look and it was one of these West Indian marching bands in the forest playing their instruments to entertain the workers presumably. We thought “we’d seen these on the road a little earlier. I wonder what they are doing here”. We came back to the bus and we boarded it. I grabbed three seats but the other two guys complained that they wanted to sit at the back but there was only one seat free at the back so again I wasn’t quite sure how they were all going to manage to sit at the back.

Why there should be a West Indian marching band in a forest in the UK is totally beyond my comprehension. As for the bus though, I travelled on loads of Crosville “K-series” buses, the type that they had before the Lodekka with the five-eater bench seats upstairs and the aisle down the offside. Crash boxes and manual steering, they were wicked beasts and once someone worked out the principle of the cranked axles so that they could drop the floors by a foot and the Lodekkas arrived, they soon all disappeared.

The nurse tells me that I need new compression socks – the ones that I have are wearing out rapidly, he seems to think. So as I don’t go near my doctor’s these days, I set him the task of persuading my doctor to write out a prescription.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished our guided tour of Dursley Castle and have gone north to Durham. At the moment we’re talking about the history of Durham Castle and at least, the history of these places is interesting, but I don’t imagine that it will be too long before we have the guided tour.

Back in here I attacked the Welsh homework and one of the things that I had to do was to write a review of a film that deals with Crime and Punishment so I chose THE ITALIAN JOB, one of my favourite films. There was a second option, which was to write about famous criminals in your area. I considered that option for a moment but I decided to let someone else write my life story.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and it was a good job that she was early because so was the taxi. It was my favourite taxi driver, back from her holiday and the two other passengers with me in the car with her, we were regaled with tales of her holiday adventures.

The ‘phone rang en route. It was the hospital in Paris telling me that according to the hospital register I’m expected on Monday 5th May in the afternoon so I need my dialysis in the morning. But ominously, they have arranged a session of dialysis for me there on the Thursday. That is ominous. It looks as if it’s going to be a long stay in Paris.

We arrived early at dialysis and had to wait fifteen minutes for them to open the door. I was third to be plugged in and the good news was that I need only stay for three and a half hours.

While I was being dialysed I backed up the computer and while I was sorting some things out on the laptop I came across a book about the ephemeral railway line near where I used to live in the Auvergne. It took forty years to agree to build it, ten years to build and lasted just eight years before it closed down.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came for a chat to see how I was doing, which was nice of her. I mentioned to her about Paris but I’m not going to confirm it until I have a formal summons in my sweaty little mitt.

My taxi was waiting for me when I was unplugged and we had a nice, chatty drive back home. My cleaner was waiting for me and helped me upstairs. And wasn’t it lovely to be back home at 18:35?

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with veg and pasta followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. There’s plenty of stuffing left for the next few days too.

Now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow. I need to be on form.

But before I go, one of the things that Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned was this stomach x-ray that has been prescribed for me at the end of May.
"Why are they doing that?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" I replied."I imagined that you had prescribed it"
"It’s nothing that I have asked them to do" she answered
"And there I was" I said "thinking that you wanted to see more of me. And let’s face it, once you’ve seen the contents of my stomach there’s not an awful lot more of me left that you won’t have seen"

Thursday 27th March 2025 – I HOPE THAT NO-ONE …

… panicked after reading my previous message.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the Summer when I was in hospital at Avranches I had one of those collapses that I had quite frequently at home during that period, and awoke to find a group of panicking nurses and doctors around my bedside. They reckoned that it was a diabetic coma.

And so this afternoon, there I was in my bed at the dialysis centre, working away on the travelling laptop, when I began to shake and feel nauseous. That was exactly how I felt when my pancreatic issues began in 1991 and I thought “surely not again! As if I don’t have enough to worry about!”.

A few minutes later I had an enormous wave of fatigue, the room began to spin around and a haze descended across my vision. I blinked my eyes to clear my vision and when I opened them, my bed had been positioned flat instead of upright, the foot of the bed had been raised up and every member of the medical staff in the centre, including Emilie the Cute Consultant, was flapping around my bed.

Apparently I’d gone into another coma and had been out of my tree for about ten minutes.

It’s actually probably the best sleep that I’ve had for several days because last night it was another 02:30 finish, waiting for my algorithm to finish (and it did finish this time, too).

Being in bed is one thing. Going to sleep is quite a different thing entirely and I’m not sure that I slept for very long at all. When the alarm went off it was a very weary me who staggered to my feet and crawled off to the bathroom for a wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but as I expected, there was nothing on it. You can’t dream if you don’t go to sleep (well, you can but that’s another story too).

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning. She’s noticed that the oedemas on my legs have returned to a very slight degree. That’s bad news because it means that they’ll be turning the dialysis machine up to pump out more water.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still exploring stone circles and avenues in Devon and Cornwall and checking their alignment.

He considers that many of these circles are aligned to witness the rising or setting of the star Arcturus, the fourth-brightest star in the sky after Sirius, Canopus and Alpha Centauri, all four of which also figure prominently in the alignment of prehistoric structures throughout the World.

One thing that he hasn’t done, which would be an interesting project, would be to go back to our book on folklore and plot the worship of Arcturus in different time periods and different cultures to see if there’s any relation between them and the waves of migration across Europe in prehistoric times. It wouldn’t surprise me if something interesting turned up.

Back in here I had plenty of things to do and I was right in the middle of them when I noticed that it was after 12:00 and the taxi will be here shortly so I’d better make a move. I’d sorted everything out and was almost ready when my cleaner arrived in a state of breathlessness to fit my anaesthetic patches.

It was the “boss” who came to pick me up. We had someone else in the car too and he drove us all the way to Avranches where he dropped me off and carried on with his other passenger.

At the centre I was one of the first to arrive and they treated me with an ice-pack while they waited for “the doctor” to come to look at my fitting with the x-ray machine.

“The doctor” turned out to be Emilie the Cute Consultant who examined my implant closely, recommended that in future they inject elsewhere and even marked my skin for future reference so that my cleaner will know where to put the patches. She photographed it and gave me a copy for future reference.

Plugging me in the old places wasn’t as painful as it has been, thanks to the ice pack, and I leaned the good news that the time has been reduced to three and a half hours. After that, i could crack on with work.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came back for a chat later – about my health unfortunately. She was with me for about twenty minutes talking about all kinds of things and more good news is that I can dispense with two more lots of tablets. She’s not really all that happy about reducing my time but “we’ll give it a go and we’ll see”.

She did discuss with me all kinds of options, including psychiatric care. "But you don’t need that, do you? You don’t suffer from depression or anything". All of the different characters who live inside my head roared with laughter at that and told me that I ought to be nominated for an Oscar.

And then we had the drama. All kinds of people running around in a panic. Apparently I was just sitting there, totally unresponsive, eyes wide-open in a kind-of cataleptic daze. They honestly thought that I’d died. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however that we’ve talked previously about these cataleptic dazes that I sometimes have

Interestingly, my blood pressure was at 8.0 and it won’t go much lower than that without serious consequences so they abandoned the dialysis session. I still had to stay lying down for an hour or so before I could sit up. They were not happy at all.

So that looks as if it might be the end of the three-and-a-half hour experiment which is a shame. My heart can’t withstand the force of the machine, although the machine has run faster than that in the past.

A very groggy me staggered to the taxi and back here, I came upstairs, flung off my shoes and went straight to bed, fully clothed. And there I stayed until after midnight when I arose to type out my notes.

Now I’m going back to bed where I shall sleep until my name becomes Epic van Winkle and who cares about anything else?

But that little discussion with Emilie the Cute Consultant reminded me of one of the SAINT TRINIANS films when a riot in the school was taxing the patience of the headmistress who had taken over from Alastair Sim.
"I have a feeling that very shortly I shall be the only one around here who can actually produce a certificate to prove my sanity !"

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… whatever of any interest happening today. I can’t think when it last was that I had such an uneventful day.

There was even a decent sleep for once. It may well have been late by the time that I went to bed, quite a while after midnight in fact, but I was soon asleep, which is no surprise after the difficult night the previous day … "??" – ed ….

Once in bed and asleep, I stayed asleep right the way through the night with no recollection whatever of awakening and it’s been a while since that’s happened too.

When the alarm did go off, I was away with the fairies – but not in any manner that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. I was doing something with a pair of lady’s shoes but I’ve no idea what because immediately that the alarm sounded I awoke and the whole lot evaporated completely.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, some deodorant and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on at Avranches.

There was also some washing to do, and amazing as it might seem, having taken care to wash my clothes before another large pile builds up, there was still too much for the washing machine. This is becoming ridiculous – either my clothes are growing or the washing machine is shrinking . There certainly aren’t more clothes than before.

With nothing on the dictaphone this morning, I could crack on and do some more unzipping. There’s not all that many left to do now but I keep on finding more and more that I hadn’t found earlier.

Isabelle the Nurse was late as usual, no thanks to the roadworks in the town centre where they are rebuilding the square outside the Mairie. As well as that, they’ve suddenly and spontaneously decided to carry out more roadworks elsewhere in the town centre that’s blocking part of the one-way system and it’s a nightmare.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve begun to discuss the influence of Christianity on folklore. He is of the opinion that "Christianity was both antagonistic to and tolerant of pagan custom and belief. In principle and purpose it was antagonistic. In practice it was tolerant where it could tolerate safely. At the centre it aimed at purity of Christian doctrine, locally it permitted pagan practices to be continued under Christian auspices. In the earliest days it set itself against all forms of idolatry and non-Christian practices"

He goes on to quote from Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE saying that "in later days, after the fifth century it accepted both pagan practice and pagan ritual."

It’s interesting that he picks the fifth century. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410AD and by the Vandals in 455AD and in 476AD the “barbarian” Odoacer seized the throne of Rome. This influx of foreigners into the city of Rome doubtless weakened the grip of the Church .

Pope Gregory wrote in 601AD to Abbott Mellitus who was on the point of going as a missionary to England "because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of. the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to all things for their sustenance"

Our author adds "This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual."

In fact, judging by the deterioration of the pure Christian faith in the way that it is practised these days by many so-called Christians, there’s a very strong argument that suggests that rather than the Christian faith having absorbed some facets of paganism, it’s more as if paganism has absorbed some (and only some) facets of Christianity. The more uncomfortable aspects of pure Christian belief have been abandoned a long time ago, if ever they were there at all.

Back in here I attacked the Woodstock radio project and I now have all of the music that I need – at least one track from every artist (even the ones that I didn’t believe that I could find) except one. And that’s because Sly and the Family Stone don’t really fit into my programmes and I’ll have to omit one or two groups anyway.

My cleaner turned up later to fit my patches and then the taxi, driven by the boss, turned up to run me to Avranches.

Once more, I was one of the first there and had to wait until they had cleaned up from the morning. Once I made it to my bed I was the fourth to receive attention (I don’t move as quickly as the others) and then I could settle down to watch the football.

Welsh Cup semi-final today between Connah’s Quay Nomads of the Premier League and Llanelli of the second tier. The Nomads are having a wretched season by their standards and Llanelli are leading their division so it was always going to be a tight affair.

The gulf in class and quality was evident however but even though the Nomads had most of the possession they went in at the break 1-0 down because of a penalty. Both sides had hit the bar however.

Two inspired substitutions at half-time turned the game around for the Nomads. They were 2-1 up in a couple of minutes before Llanelli had had time to re-adjust but once they had adapted to the new situation they held on to the end, having had a couple of chances of their own.

It was another one of those really exciting games however, with plenty of entertainment for the neutral fans.

After that I began to sort through the music for the Woodstock project until it was time to be unplugged.

The same driver brought me home – early once again. I could relax and unwind for an hour or so with my disgusting drink.

Tea tonight was a chiliburger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. The same as last week’s, and the week before etc, but still just as delicious.

So right now I’ll dictate my radio notes and then go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow, bread making and so on

While we’re on the subject of pagan ritual and belief … "well, one of us iss" – ed … to tell a little secret, I had my suspicions that Nerina might have been in touch with things that we know not what. Not long after we had come together, we were out driving when she touched my leg. I immediately turned into a lay-by
It made me suspicious, especially when we were in the local supermarket once and she wanted to buy a new broom to sweep the yard.
At the check-out I told the cashier "don’t bother to wrap it – she’ll fly it home"

Friday 28th February 2025 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… my magnum opus at long last. And magnum is hardly the word. Having slashed the music as much as possible (out of the thirty-two acts that appeared at Woodstock I have included a mere ten) and written as little as possible to accompany it,, I am now looking for suggestions as to how to fit one hour and forty-four minutes of programme into a one-hour slot.

Had I done the “essential Woodstock” as I was planning to do, I would have ended up with probably about four hours.

Anyway, that will be Saturday night’s dictation and I can wrack my brains on Sunday as to how I am going to do it

It was a very weary process though today, not helped by the fact that I was up until late again. Another good concert came around on the playlist and that kept me up while I listened to it. I had to switch off the computer rather hastily once it had finished just in case something else interesting came around.

And last night I tried a novel experiment. I turned the heating in the bedroom right down, to see if that might improve the situation about all this perspiring.

Once in bed, it took, as usual, an age to go off to sleep and then as is the case these days … "??" – ed … we had another turbulent night… "!!" – ed … when I was tossing and turning from one side of the bed to the other. Not perspiring as much though. Maybe the room is too hot.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep, walking through Chester and having an urgent need to go to the bathroom. I dived into a café where I knew the toilets were. The waitress moaned at me so I said that we’d sort out the coffee later. “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go”. I dashed downstairs but took one look at the bathroom and decided that I wasn’t going to waste any time in that place. What was interesting was that the WC had a view through an open window right across the river where anyone going past on a boat could see what was going on.
.
Between 1972 and 1974 I had a couple of happy years living and working in Chester, finding my feet after leaving school and running away from home. I should have made much more of my stay there than I did but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Surprisingly, there are things going on in my head right now where Chester actually does figure quite considerably, but the World isn’t ready to hear that story right now either.

After a good wash and scrub up I went for the medication and then came back into Ice Station Zebra where I turned up the heating and listened to the dictaphone. There was an athletics tournament taking place in Scotland. The winner of the tournament was the town of Edinburgh and so Edinburgh announced that it was actually going to re-partake in some kind of national competition again because this was the forty-fourth time in succession that the town had actually finished top in events like this, measured on the performances of the athletes compared to the athletes of other towns that were in this particular competition.

Forty-fourth time in succession? Sounds like TNS winning the Welsh Premier League, doesn’t it? Penybont have blown up spectacularly after leading the table for a while and if they carry on at this rate Hwlffordd could well overtake them into second place, something that seemed most unlikely six weeks ago.

Did I dictate the dream where I was with someone and my apartment needed tidying up … "no you didn’t" – ed …. Some guy and his young daughter came round and decided that they would spend a whole day helping me. She used the Welsh term ysbridoli – “a spirit” or “to inspire” – to describe how they were feeling when her father said that they had set out really early in order to have a really good day at it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would come round and tidy up my apartment for me right now? Tidying up is not my strong point, as anyone who has been anywhere where I have been will tell you. Ezra Pound once said of Ford Madox Ford "Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos" and “Fordy” is not alone in this skill.

Finally there were two friends who lived next door to each other. One of them was married but the other friend was having an affair with his wife. This had been going on for some time. Suddenly the other guy found out about it, didn’t say anything but waited until the man said something to him that he and the wife wanted to run away. The married man pulled out a revolver or was it an automatic, and waved it around in front of the guy’s nose. The guy said “you can’t be serious about this?” so the guy just pulled the trigger and shot him. He had then to dash into work because he was late and had to think of a way of making sure that people thought that he was at work. He waited until a delivery lorry came in and then spent all the morning helping them unload the delivery lorry. The police though were quite suspicious of him because someone had put some rubbish into the waste bin earlier that morning when at the time he was supposed to have been at work but wasn’t. They didn’t know who it was who had done that and suspected that it was him

The things about which I dream are sometimes really weird and have no explanation at all that I can see.

Isabelle the Nurse was late again today. She didn’t stay long, but was in quite a good mood. She’ll be here tomorrow but on Sunday she’s off for a week Carnavalling. I reminded her to show me the photos afterwards.

Once she’d left, it was breakfast and BOOK time. Today, our author has spend about fifteen pages waxing lyrical about the South Downs, how the butterflies are fluttering in the gorse and baby lambs are baa-ing from the hedgerows and stuff like that, nothing whatever to do with any earthworks at all.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not sure exactly who his audience is intended to be. It’s certainly a very restricted circulation and he seems to be casting more and more people adrift as he goes along.

And then back in here I began to finish off the radio programme.

There were the usual Friday interruptions, such as half a slice of flapjack, my cleaner coming around to do her stuff and then the disgusting drink break. However, by about 18:00 it was all finished – at least, as far as I can for the moment until I start the editing once it’s been dictated.

But what do you leave out?

That was always my problem at University – “write 5,000 words on …”. How do you do that? I just used to write out what I had to say, which was probably three times as long, and then ruthlessly edit it down to something approaching the total because it was the only way that I knew how.

However, my editing was never ruthless enough, and when it was, you’d end up with these strange remarks from your tutor, like "you should have fitted … in"

"Yes" I replied. "Where should I have fitted it? And what should I have left out so that I had room to include it?"

Strangely enough, the tutor would never give you an answer to that.

But that’s the trouble with being an older (I won’t use the term “mature”, so as to avoid all kinds of ribald comment) student. I was studying for pleasure and interest, not because I wanted a job, and what I was doing only ended up having the vaguest relevance to what they wanted me to study. So I wasn’t all that concerned about following the rules slavishly.

What’s the point of a word count anyway? The only way that it makes any sense at all is to spare the tutors some sleepless nights as 30 equivalents of WAR AND PEACE drop onto their desks.

Meanwhile, I digress … "again" – ed …

Tea tonight was air-fried chips with falafel and a salad – a small helping. And no pudding either. I’m really not very hungry these days.

So I’m off to bed to make ready to go to dialysis in the afternoon where I’ll hatch the football and read through my notes ready for dictation. But it’s Dydd Gwyl Dewi so I have leek soup to make. That will be tea on Saturday night, with some freshly baked bread.

But seeing as we are talking about Dydd Gwyl Dewi … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once met a Welsh woman who was complaining about the fact that she had seventeen children
"Didn’t your husband ever take precautions?" I asked her. "Does he know about ‘French letters’?"
"Ohh yes, he knows about those" she said "but he uses a ‘Welsh letter’"
"What’s that?" I asked
"It’s a French letter with a leek in it."

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality