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Saturday 31st May 2025 – AS I SHOULD …

… have expected (because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s par for the course), this idea of changing my dialysis to the mornings was just a brief, ephemeral illusion.

When I arrived there this afternoon, I told them that my cleaner and I had had a lengthy discussion and decided that it was a much more practical arrangement for us, only to be told "it’s OK – we’ve found another solution now."

What with everything through which I have gone over the past few years, I’m convinced that the medical service (everywhere in the World, not just here) fails to understand that we are not pawns on a chessboard that can be moved here and there at will or at a whim. We are human beings, with lives of our own to fulfil and (in my case at least) my own life and activities have a much higher priority that anything that the hospital can conjure up.

So, as you can probably tell, I was in a bad mood today.

There isn’t any special reason for that either. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed, it wasn’t all that late either. I was asleep quite quickly too, and there I stayed, totally flat out, until about 05:50.

It took something of an effort to raise myself from the Dead but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, washed the clothes that needed washing and was on my way to the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us from school again hanging around together. One of them was a girl from Shavington who went to Nuthurst, the exclusive private primary school in Nantwich. We were talking about the maths classes, discussing in particular these pyramid graph things that we used to do, describing how we used to do them and talking about one or two examples. This girl was saying that during one or two of her maths classes she became carried away and began to make one of these pyramid graph things for the pills but by the time she reached about the third row she just put the downward shafts and wrote underneath “lots and lots”. There was also something about someone whose idea of a pyramid graph was that if he had something like a small party and a big party he would just draw simply one line between the two elements and that would be his pyramid graph.

There’s a story about that girl too, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear

One thing that I, and, presumably, regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that just recently there has been a whole spate of these stories that the World is not yet ready to hear, coming into my subconscious mind during the night. There’s definitely an undercurrent of something, and I wish that I knew what it was. Maybe is simply a story of regrets for my wasted, mis-spent youth. But on the other hand, it’s certainly not wasted or mis-spent because everything about it was what brought me here. As Paul Peña once famously wrote and Steve Miller famously sang, YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH HELL BEFORE YOU GET TO HEAVEN

Later on, I was in Congleton with the guitarist and drummer with whom I used to play. We were going somewhere in my van and we reached a house. I left the van and said that I’d be back in a minute, and wandered off. Then I came back and we climbed into the van and went to the next place. I said again “I’ll be back in a minute”, left the van and went into the drive. There was a woman there smoking a cigarette. I asked her a question and she just gave me a strange look, so I asked it to her again. She just smiled and gave me a very non-committal answer so I’ve no idea what was the matter with her. I went round to the back of the house and knocked onto the door. I could hear someone say that there was someone at the door. At that moment a big tabby cat stuck its head through the window so I went to stroke it. Then some young guy came to the door. I told him that my guitarist wanted to see him. He grabbed his cigarettes, came outside and went down to the van. We ended up then in another house. His response was that he was really comfortable with the idea that people from the street could come and go into their house at any time they liked. When the guitarist came back from wherever he had been, they began to talk. The drummer joined in with the conversation. I felt that I was being isolated here and I’d no idea why. In the end I simply sat down and waited for everything to finish.

When that group came to an end back in the Winter of 1976, my intuition told me that I actually was being slowly isolated and edged out, which was a shame. And then I had a load of other preoccupations that stopped me from pressing on. For the next couple of summers I lived in my van with the winter spent in that squat. It was not a very happy time and it took me a while to sort myself out – a task that is still not finished 50 or so years further on.

The nurse was on time today for a change, and we had the usual banal chatter about nothing of any importance whatsoever.

After he left I could make my breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Scarborough, and we’ve now arrived at Skenfrith Castle, which is in that fine old English county of … errr … Monmouthshire.

And here we go again. On page 469 he tells us that "there is a sort of recess, which may have been the kitchen fireplace, the cooking being usually, in these towers, carried on in an upper floor".

Meanwhile, on page 471, he tells us that "The history of Skenfrith is obscure, but it is evident that it was built simply to contain a small garrison, and not at all as a private residence. The area contains no trace of hall, chapel, or kitchen."

Don’t you wish that he’d make up his mind?

Back in here, I’ve been chatting to plumbers. I posted an advertisement on one of these traders’ websites for someone to take away the bath and tile around where the bath used to be. I’ve had a few enquiries and I spent most of the morning following them up. We’ll see where this takes me.

My cleaner turned up, bang on time, to fit my anaesthetic patches and it was such a lovely day that we went outside to stand in the sunshine until the taxi arrived. And we took full advantage of the nice weather, because the taxi didn’t arrive until 13:05.

It was a nice, sunny drive down to Avranches and, to my surprise, I was seen quite quickly too. And only three and a half hours today which is good news. The less-than-good news is that the ice-cold spray that they recommended didn’t seem to do me much good and one of the pins hurt like Hades all through the session.

Early on, for about fifteen minutes, I crashed out but I soon got to grips with myself and pressed on to revise my Welsh, seeing as I’ll be in Paris on Tuesday instead of at my lesson. But it’s hard going when I’m wracked with pain like that. I really can’t concentrate.

Eventually I was let out and the same driver who brought me took me home in the sun and warmth. My cleaner was waiting for me and it was just as well, because it was a very, very weary me who climbed up these stairs. I shall really be glad to be downstairs and can cut out all of this.

Back in here I collapsed into a chair for a while and then eventually went to make tea. Falafel, baked potato and salad followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

So right now, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed, in the (vain) hope of having a nice, long sleep. It’s been a while since the last one and in principle, it’s a lie-in tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about pyramids … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that Frankie Howerd used to tell.
During World War II he used to say that he served in Egypt and on one occasion he was taken in an aeroplane to see the pyramids.
Halfway round the circuit, the plane was hit by a gust of wind. It turned upside-down and Frankie fell out.
The pilot recovered control and performed a circuit around to see if he could see anything, when suddenly there was a “thud” and Frankie was back in his seat.
"What the …" uttered the pilot
"Don’t you worry about it" said Frankie. "The point on that pyramid is sharper than it looks"

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Saturday 17th May 2025 – I AM CONVINCED …

… that they tried everything that they could at the dialysis centre this afternoon to make me run as late as possible. It’s been one of those days today.

In fact, it’s been one of those days all day today and it started last night, as a matter of fact. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I still managed to complete my notes by 22:30 and by the time that I’d done everything that needed doing, it was just about 23:05 when I finally fell into bed, hoping for a really good night’s sleep.

And believe it or not, I managed to stay asleep until all of … errr … 03:40 this morning.

Once I’d awoken, I tried as usual to go back to sleep seeing as it was such an early start, and eventually I did manage to drop back off, although it took quite a considerable while. I thought that it would never happen.

Having gone back to sleep, I awoke again at 06:15, and after trying for about 20 minutes to go back to sleep, I gave up and headed for the bathroom.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cure Consultant, I rounded up all of the winter coats and the like and put them in the washing machine so that the machine can do its stuff. It looked like a lovely day outside.

After I’d had my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And once more, I was surprised that there was so much stuff on it, bearing in mind how short a night it was.

There was some kind of confusion about Lee Dorsey and music. I think that Lee Dorsey used to write songs that were sung by females and Gerry Dorsey who used to write songs that were sung by males but I’m not sure why I thought of that and I’m not sure why it came into my mind.

In actual fact, not that it’s particularly important, Lee Dorsey is the old American pop singer who actually owned a car repair business and Gerry Dorsey is better-known as Engelbert Dumper truck

Later on I was being held prisoner in a house by some kind of weird kind of obscene bully. I was friendly with his daughter and he had a handicapped wife. The relationship between his daughter and me developed into something rather more than friendship. He was extremely unhappy about this and so were the rest of his children. They remembered her being with a parson and had spent eighteen months together. It was supposed to be the next big romance but it ended dramatically just before I came along. I was extremely resented by this man and his other children. The woman and I became quite friendly. I had a suspicion that this was going to be rather more than friends and I was trying desperately not to have any kind of involvement in anything that might be misconstrued in this respect because I was simply interested in the daughter despite all of the issues with her father. This woman and her husband began to have fierce arguments and I felt the situation becoming more and more uncomfortable until in the end the woman must have told her husband that she was going to leave him and run off with me. Of course that was the final trigger to an extremely unpleasant moment where I was quite literally forced into a room with all the family. The family first of all, that is, the other children of the man began to interrogate the daughter about the time that she’d spent with this priest guy. She was saying that what turned her off him was the idea that he was going to rescue all of these animals and keep them at home. They pointed out that she had a hamster or a gerbil or something. She replied “that’s hardly the same thing as that which this priest guy was trying to bring in to any kind of home where he would be living”. I could see that this situation was not going to turn out very well at all and I began to wish that I was somewhere else indeed. I didn’t really have much choice at that particular moment.

This next one was a return to the dream of that domineering, bully father where I was mentioning that I was being interviewed in the hope of tripping me up or of persuading the daughter of the house that I was not the man for her future. Either way, as the time passed, it was becoming less and less comfortable and I began to feel more and more anxious about the situation.

It’s been a while since I’ve had some kind of menacing dream like this one, and I certainly didn’t appreciate dropping back into it a second time. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can in real life easily find myself stepping into situations just like that, quite by accident and with no real effort at all

And then I was in hospital again after the biopsie musculaire having the wound checked over again. On the way I’d noticed a huge advert on a roadside advertising tablet, advertising the National Folk Dancing Championships taking place in the town. I’d checked my agenda and found that I was actually doing something on that particular day which would have been a shame because I would have loved to have gone and maybe to have competed but it’s rather late in the day now … fell asleep here … anyway so I would really have liked to have taken part but being in hospital, it was not possible.

This is another one of those dreams about which I remember absolutely nothing at all. However, I can say that these hospital issues are really getting to me these days, that’s for sure.

Finally, I was back living at home. Looking through the newspaper I saw a room to let with shower. I rang up about it and a very polite young Afro-Caribbean voice answered and gave me some information. I asked where it was and he replied that it was in Tiananmen Square in Crewe. I’d heard vaguely of that at one time and thought that it was near Bedford Street but he told me that it wasn’t so I set out to go to look at it. My car wasn’t outside the house. I suddenly realised that I’d left it in Bedford Street in a car park there. I had to walk to Bedford Street and walked into the car park where there was my old white Luton Transit that was parked in the car park. I climbed into that and to my surprise it started so I set off to go to look at this flat.

Wherever Tiananmen Square might be in Crewe, I really have no idea. It’s certainly not near Bedford Street. And there’s no car park there either

The nurse turned up, early as usual. He didn’t have anything to say for himself which was just as well because for some reason or other I was spoiling for a fight. I’ve no idea why, because nothing had happened to trigger off anything.

So after he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still at Norham, discussing the civilian architecture of the castle and mentioning the odd tower and curtain wall here and there in terms that I find difficult to understand.

But one thing is certain, and that is that we aren’t explaining anything about the whys and wherefores of the military features of the castle.

After breakfast I hung out the washing in the living room and opened the window seeing as it was such a lovely day, in the hope that it would soon dry.

Back in here I drafted a few advertisements about the work that I need doing, having split it up into individual tasks, and then posted it on this Chamber of Commerce website. And within no time at all I was swamped … "well, sort of" – ed … with replies and before I left for dialysis I’d already spoken to a few and arranged appointments.

When my cleaner turned up, she fitted my anaesthetic patches and sorted out a few things ready for my taxi to turn up. It was one of my favourite drivers, the Belgian girl with twins in the first year of High School across the car park. We picked up our usual Saturday afternoon passenger and we had a lovely chat all the way to Avranches.

We were early arriving at the centre but so was everyone else and I was last to be seen, as usual. There was a problem with someone’s connection so for quite a while all of the nurses were congregated around his bed.

There’s one of the nurses there who is not quite so attentive as the others, so guess who I had. At first she tried to run my machine for four hours, and I had to explain to her, and not once either, that she’s not deducted the 700 grammes for my shoes. It took a while for her to grasp the issue, recalculate the figures and switch the machine to three and a half hours.

And then she had three painful goes at coupling me up to the machine. so once again, all in all, it took one hour from my arrival to the start of the process.

My machine was misbehaving all the way through the session, and then once more, right at the end I had to wait an age to be uncoupled from the machine. I was thoroughly fed up by all of this.

It was the same taxi driver who brought me home which was nice. We had another interesting chat. And then my cleaner was waiting for me to watch me up the stairs.

Tea was a breaded quorn fillet, and I notice that I’m running low of those. I shall have to think of a Plan B.

But not right now because I’m going to dictate my radio notes and then go to bed, in hope of a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about dancing … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to one of these Country Dances in the local village hall, and I was so impressed. Everyone was leaping up and down and around quite energetically like some kind of Jitterbug Competition from the 1920s or like something out of HELLZAPOPPIN’
Finding a local standing around idly watching the show, I expressed my amazement.
"Don’t worry" said the local – a very vocal local yokel. "It won’t last long"
"Really?" I asked. "Why’s that?"
"They’ve sent for the caretaker" he replied. "He’ll soon turn off the underfloor heating."

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Monday 12th May 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… one of those days that has been a disaster from start to finish, a day when nothing has gone right at all.

At least, that’s how it seems The truth is that most of the disasters relate to this afternoon and concern the dialysis centre. The rest, well, ça va as they say around here.

The morning actually started quite brightly, but before we arrive at that point, let’s just mention last night, which was another late-night calamity when I couldn’t summon up the energy to go to bed early.

Not that it would have been early either. It would have been about 23:30 by the time that I finished my notes and that’s not early by any means. And even then, it took me over half an hour to stagger off into the bathroom and then into bed.

Nevertheless, I was asleep quite quickly though, but not for long. And I tossed and turned throughout the night until round about 06:30 when I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and headed off back into the bathroom.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. We had some silver pie base container things. For some reason we were going to have our evening meal in them. The girl who was nominated to do it had first of all to fetch our knitting files from Sam Apple Pie or wherever into the mix and merged properly. That took her a while. The supper came and it was leek soup … fell asleep here … I’m sure that one of the players playing alongside me was Adam Davies but anyway, going back to the story, these pie cases were flattened by some kind of road roller and we had to have them so that the sides came up again. We were managing a block of three hundred houses and apartments so imagine the cheer when one of them was rectified. Then it would go dark again and it, it would join one of the others that had yet been seen with floodlights and this carried on all the time. It was very, very rare that the product … fell asleep here … but we had these silver dishes and looking for one that we’d thrown out and trying to find one that was this Adam Davies, trying to make the sides stand up for some usage.

Adam Davies is of course centre-forward for Caernarfon, whom we watched yesterday, and “Sam Apple Pie” is the group in which my friend Dave Charles, the recording engineer for Rockfield Studios, played before joining “Help Yourself”. As for the rest of the dream, I’ll let you lot work it out and if you come up with an answer, don’t forget to let me know, because I don’t have a clue … "nothing new there" – ed ….

By the way, seeing as we are talking about Caernarfon … "well, one of us is" – ed … HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF YESTERDAY’S GAME

And next, we were offered a pile of dressed stone for two shillings apiece so we arranged for them to have these stones delivered to the Haurace (?). They brought it in through the ice and deposited it just by his front door so he couldn’t move it and couldn’t open his door. He had to start to put it away quickly and do it well so that we could press on but that wasn’t his speedy work at all, wasn’t his thing. He’d seen the things that take the ghost when he played with the cards from Metz and he wanted to go to … fell asleep here … and we were peddling works after six series of taking it, I suppose you’d call it, where each club has been on it for over a month. It doesn’t work beforehand like that.

It seems that I have ashlar … "and rubble" – ed … on the brain right now with all of this medieval architecture that I am reading. As for the rest of it, this is something else that seemed to degenerate into the usual load of … errr … nonsense.

Finally, I went for a walk with a couple of friends of mine. One of them might have been Cécile. We’d been strolling over this agricultural area where she said that she had bought some land. The further we walked, the closer we came to something that looked like an old mill with a big, tall chimney. It was an abandoned place in this field. I went to look at it, but as I did, my attention was distracted by something in a quarry that was covered in rocks. I climbed up this ladder into this quarry. There were these two boys playing at the foot of the ladder. In the quarry it turned out to be an old American 6×4 lorry, camouflaged by being covered over in rocks. I took a couple of photos of it and had a good look around it, then climbed back down. I nearly put my foot on the hand of one of these boys. I told him that it was dangerous, playing around like that. I walked off to rejoin my friends. They had come to some kind of ruined house of the kind that you find in North America. Cécile, if it was Cécile, was extremely depressed because she’d bought it thinking that it was a place to live but it was in fact a ruin. We had a really good look around inside it. There was abandoned furniture and everything and the floors were unsafe. It was in a terrible condition. The two girls decided that they would go upstairs so I said that I’d stay down here to take some photos because there was a really good view of the mill from up here on the top of this hill where we were at this house. I walked out onto the verandah ready to take some more photos of the mill while they were upstairs looking around.

Cécile of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, featured in my life quite significantly for a six-month period. And the American army lorry presumably relates to the one in the Grès de Lapeize … "we’re talking “ashlar” again" – ed … quarry at … errr … Lapeize where Clotilde lives, the quarry that we visited BACK IN 2010 and found the lorry. However, climbing up on a ladder to the quarry is a new departure.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up early. "I can’t stop long" she said. "There are plenty of blood tests to carry out back at the office". Of course, it’s her final day today before her week off, and her colleague’s “reluctance” in this respect is well-known.

After she left I made breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve had the guided tour of Ludlow Castle and we’re now having the potted history of the place. What this has to do with the “Medieval Military Architecture” I really have no idea.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and I actually managed to complete three-quarters of it. It was quite difficult too, especially seeing as I had missed the one-and-a-half lessons that covered this section.

When my faithful cleaner turned up, I was still bashing away at it, so I gave up and went to have my patches fitted.

And just as well that I did, because the taxi came early – 12:20. And it was my favourite driver too. After she installed me, she told me "we have to go to the Centre Normandy to pick up another passenger". So much for my hopes of an early arrival.

Even less chance too. The other passenger was in a wheelchair and he took some rounding up. It was 12:45 when we drove away from the “Normandy”.

And when we arrived, they weren’t ready for us. They had been explaining to a new stagière how to clean and then calibrate the machines.

There were some additional tests to perform on me too today, which meant that I wasn’t finally coupled up until 14:15, fifteen minutes after the effectiveness of the anaesthetic patches has worn off, so you can imagine how the coupling up went.

At least they left me alone pretty much once the machine began to work, although there were still some tests to carry out. But everyone finished at roughly the same time, so guess who was left until last.

Once I was finally sorted out, I went outside to find that the vehicle sent for me was the minibus. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have an extraordinary amount of difficulty climbing into it. In the centre, I’d banged my wounded leg putting on my shoes, and now I banged it again trying to enter the vehicle. And it was so complicated and difficult to climb in.

The torrential rainstorm didn’t help. I was soaked to the skin trying to climb in.

To cap it all, the guy in the wheelchair from the “Normandy” was in there already, and the driver wanted to drop him off first. Not much that I can do about it.

It was 19:30 when I arrived home, soaked, uncomfortable, in pain and completely fed up.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left for the rest of the week, followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

So now, thoroughly fed up and thoroughly exhausted, I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a hundred years.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about “Sam Apple Pie” and “Help Yourself” … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of when I was arranging my CDs on shelves down on the farm.
Half-way through the exercise I burst out laughing.
"What’s so funny?" asked Cécile
"Have a look!" I replied.
I’d been labelling the shelves with the musician at the start and the musician at the end, and one of my shelves was labelled "Help Yourself to Kate Bush."

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Sunday 11th May 2025 – WHAT A GAME …

… that was. Another fine illustration of the quality and excitement that exists in some of the matches in the JD Cymru League. And for a town of just 9800 people, the 1,568 people who flocked into the stadium to see the game were treated to a pulsating, entertaining match.

But that’s something to savour later. Let’s talk about last night first.

By the time that I finished my notes and whatever else I had to do, I was running miles behind as usual. And, completely exhausted, I made a total cod of the dictating that I had to do and it ended up as being one of the longest that I’ve done. There is going to be a huge pile of editing to do there.

Anyway, it was at about 00:30 that I ended up crawling into bed, and I fell asleep before I’d hardly begun my usual nighttime mantra

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens next. It’s the Sunday after a Saturday dialysis session and so round about 06:50 I was wide-awake. So much for my lie-in until 08:00. I lay there for a while tossing and turning but at about 07:05 I gave it up as a bad job and fell out of bed.

Off I staggered into the bathroom and cleaned myself up. Then I wandered into the kitchen for my medication, remembering to take the Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 that I should have taken yesterday.

Back in here I checked the dictaphone but there was nothing on it. That’s a disappointment because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only fun and excitement that I have these days is what does on during the night. And if it involves my family, it’s not much fun and not what I would call “exciting” either.

Instead, I made a start on the back-up that I should have done yesterday but I didn’t go very far because Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

She changed the plaster and cleaned the wound where I’d had this biopsy, lanced the blister where I’d had my compression sock that I couldn’t pull over the wound on Thursday, dealt with my legs and fitted my compression socks for me. She was grateful for everything that my faithful cleaner had fetched on Saturday but she had forgotten the prescription that she promised.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve finally left the Tower of London, not before doing some lengthy research into the Earls of Gloucester, and have now moved on to Ludlow Castle where, doubtless, the finer points of civilian architecture will be pointed out, at the expense of anything military.

Back in here, I had work to do.

The free trial period of an expensive antivirus that came when I installed Windows on my new System drive has now expired and so I disabled it. I have a favourite free antivirus – or, that is to say, I did – but just recently, it’s been picking and choosing what sites I can or cannot access.

It keeps telling me that even my own sites, that I wrote with my bare hands, are “unsafe”, not to mention many of the more famous sites on the web, many of which I access on a regular basis.

After a play around with it this morning, it still wouldn’t respond so I reluctantly uninstalled it. I used another one previous to this one, that I had rejected several years ago in favour of the new one, so I went back to install that one again, and it works just fine.

When I’d finished breakfast I had made some dough for a lunchtime bread roll. I baked it and then made some lovely cheese on toast for lunch. You’ve no idea how nice it tasted. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m really impressed with my air fryer, almost as much as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

This afternoon I made a start on the radio programme notes that I’d begun to edit just before going into hospital. And in a mad fit of energy I’d finished them, assembled the programme as far as I could, chosen the final track and written the notes ready for dictation next Saturday night.

There were of course the notes that I’d dictated last night but I ran out of time, which is probably just as well. I’ll try to catch up with those during the week some time.

There was more baking to do this afternoon. I’ve almost run out of bread so now seemed like a good time to make a loaf. I assembled enough ingredients for an 800-gramme loaf and with the correct amount of water thanks to my new scientific measuring gauge, with which I am also impressed etc etc, the dough rose up like a lift.

Not that I was watching it. I was in here watching Caernarfon play Cardiff Metropolitan for the right to play Hwlffordd next weekend for the coveted final spot in European competition in the summer.

The Caernarfon fans packed the ground and they had the privilege of being entertained to one of the fastest, most competitive games that I’ve seen all season.

The Cofis had the bulk of the attacking play but the Met’s defence stood firm and if their defence were to play like that in every game, they would be a force to be reckoned with. They had recognised long before the game that flying winger Louis Lloyd was the Cofis’ main attacking strength and had three men marking him throughout the game, giving him no room at all to move.

It wasn’t until near the end that the Met began to attack in numbers, and they created a few moments of panic in the Cofis’ defence.

And, would you believe, the match was decided by the very last kick of the game. You can see the game HERE or wait until the TV company has edited the highlights. But the highlights will miss the flavour of the game, that’s for sure.

While all of this was going on, I’d had some pizza dough, the last lot, defrosting in the kitchen. So while the bread was baking after the final whistle, I assembled my pizza.

The bread looks superb, the pizza tasted really good and everything now looks fine for the week to come. So I’ll finish my notes, back up the computer, take the statistics and then go to bed. Later than usual of course, but that’s just how things are these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about Isabelle the Nurse lancing my blister … "well, one of us has" – ed … they had a specialist unit once at Leighton Hospital near Crewe where a man was employed specifically to do just that.
However, I had head that it had closed down so I asked my friend who still lives there.
"It’s quite true" he said. "The unit has closed down"
"Why was that?" I asked, bitterly regretting ten seconds later that I had done so
"It was the man who lanced the boils and blisters" he replied. "He kept on falling off the horse."

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Saturday 10th May 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to switch the alarms back on this morning? That’s right. Bane of Britain has triumphed again.

Consequently I had a nice, long sleep until all of 07:31 when I suddenly awoke with one of these dramatic awakenings that I have every now and again. It was nice, bright sunlight outside so I immediately guessed that there was something wrong, so I glanced at the time.

And after another late night last night a really good sleep probably did me some good too. I was exhausted after the journey back and by the time that I’d finished my meal and was back in here I wasn’t fit for very much.

Nevertheless I wrote the notes and performed some of the backing- up and then crawled off to bed at about 23:40 or something. I was asleep quite quickly and, for a change, I was dead to the World throughout the entire night. I remember nothing whatever until I awoke at 07:31.

Once I’d realised exactly what time it was I dashed … "errr … quite" – ed … into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and sorted out the washing. Far too much to put in one machine so I just put the important things into the washing machine and set it off on its routine.

In the kitchen I had my medication, forgetting the vitamin D and the vitamin B12 that the hospital wants me to take and then back in here I was just about to check the dictaphone when Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She admired the huge plaster on my leg and read the prescription attentively. She made a list of what she needed and ticked off what we had, indicated on the hospital’s prescription what she needed, and then issued instructions as to what else she needed, promising to write a prescription for tomorrow.

After that, it was breakfast. And then I read more of MY BOOK. Except that I didn’t. I was side-tracked yet again, firstly reading about the curious antics of Ranulf Flambard, the treasurer of William Rufus and imprisoned by Henry I, only to become the first-ever prisoner known to have escaped from the Tower of London, and then of the downfall and subsequent resurgence of William de Forz and the siege and subsequent capture of Castle Bytham by Henry III.

You can probably understand why I was no good at being a University Student. I was always wandering off down alleyways that led me far away from my course syllabus.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about a ferry – a small one like one of the ones that they have here in Granville that go out to the Ile de Chausey. In some kind of tempest or hurricane it had been badly damaged. The ferry company had one of their previous ferries – it was sitting on a plinth outside their office. What they did was to take the boat off the plinth and put it in the water and began to use that. The damaged one, they hauled it out of the water and put it on the plinth. The owners of the company decided that they would give it a thorough overhaul and repair it. Then they would check it every three years for any kind of deterioration and keep on repairing it if it needed it so that if something similar happened again they could take the one off the plinth and drop that in the water and it would be ready to go without any problems whatsoever

There was a similar story about the “Gate Guardians”, the Spitfires and Hurricanes that stood on plinths outside former World War II airfields. When we were kids, on our way to North Wales, we always noticed the one at Hawarden Airfield. However, when the film BATTLE OF BRITAIN was proposed, all of the Gate Guardians were rounded up and where it was possible to do so, were put back into the air.

There was also something about being in hospital and a nurse doing something to me which impressed me so I said something. She replied that she was only a student nurse, which surprised me. I wonder who she was. I’ve had several student nurses attending to me in the past

After that? I had some e-mails to write. There is a mountain of correspondence here going back weeks that I really must answer. However, I must have let the time slip away with me because my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches when I was nowhere near ready.

She turned up, but the taxi didn’t. After waiting half an hour, I ‘phoned them up. "Ohh merde!" said the dispatcher in a voice loud enough that even my cleaner heard it. "I’ll find another vehicle for you".

We decided to go outside and wait, and we had a lovely forty minutes under the sun until an ambulance turned up. I hate them – it’s quite a fight for me to put myself inside – but if it’s the only vehicle available I can’t complain.

It was driven by the driver who took me to Paris. She told me that they had been on the autoroute not far from St-Lô when the call had come through. No wonder that it had taken so long to arrive. I told her that I didn’t understand any of this – after all, the taxi company had brought me back from Paris yesterday so they knew that I was at home.

Hours late at the dialysis centre, and what made it even worse was that it was a three-and-a-half hour session today. Had the taxi been on time, I could have had a very pleasant late afternoon back at my place.

The consolation was that I had Lexi and Océane dealing with me today. All of the nurses there are wonderful but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Lexi really does have the most delicate touch.

Who cares whether or not the coupling-up was painful? After Tuesday afternoon and the muscular biopsy, nothing else is painful. I had plenty of work to do, apart from sitting there watching the blood pressure slowly sink through the floor to a rather dangerous 88.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too, but she remained stoically in her little glass cage. If she wanted something, she sent one of the girls for it. It’s a shame that she’s no longer speaking to me after my revolt the other week.

This evening, I was the last one there so they were both dealing with me. While Lexi was compressing me, Océane was inspecting my feet. I told them that I had delayed my arrival on purpose so as to have the undivided attention of both of them.

The taxi was waiting for me to bring me home and we had a very silent drive back. My cleaner was waiting and she watched and helped a little while I struggled up the stairs. She’d been to the chemist’s to buy what was needed and had bought a lettuce and some potatoes for me.

After she left, I made tea. Baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and almond soya dessert.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. I have plenty of work to do tomorrow, and there’s footy too – Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro, the winner going on to meet Hwlffordd to compete for the vital third European spot, accompanying TNS and Penybont.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about student nurses … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not made correctly and taking a blood sample from me is not easy.
Nevertheless, I always encourage the student nurses to have a go. After all, they have to learn somewhere.
One of them was having so much difficulty that I told her "cheer up! If I leave this hospital alive, you won’t need to sit your exams. You will have earned your diploma by default."

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Thursday 1st May 2025 – WHEN I WAS SMALL …

… and Christmas trees were tall
We used to love while others used to play
Don’t ask me why, but time has passed us by
Someone else moved in from far away

Now we are tall and Christmas trees are small
And you don’t ask the time of day
But you and I, our love will never die
But guess we’ll cry come FIRST OF MAY

Happy Journée International de Travail – the “International Day of Work”, a day in which, with absolutely no sense of irony whatever, everyone celebrates work by taking a day off.

That is, of course, except the nurses and staff at the dialysis centre who were hard at it today. And hard it was too, because I have a head spinning round at I don’t know what speed, I’m feeling nauseous and I’m rather groggy on my feet. I shall be going to bed as soon as I finish these notes.

It’s probably something to do with another late night. It was after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed after I’d finished everything. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

During the night I awoke several times but I was fast asleep when the alarm went off this morning.

No-one ever felt less like leaving the bed than me this morning but I struggled to my feet and staggered off to sort myself out.

After a wash and shave (after all, I may meet Emilie the Cute Consultant) I went off to take my medication. And then back in here for the dictaphone notes.

And a special visitor came to see me during the night. Welcome back, Zero. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you! In the dream I can’t remember too much about this but there was certainly something about her being there. I’d had another dream during this particular dream, about Emilie the Cute Consultant who was there. She’d been treating me for something or other that meant that I had to stay over. There were all kinds of things that needed doing and I had to stay over in hospital. One of them was to do some kind of cleaning process. I was going to be heavily involved in that for some reason but I can’t remember where the border lay between the “dream within the dream” and the “dream”. At some point the idea was Zero was there so I was hoping that it would work out that Zero would be staying on too so that while I was doing the cleaning she would be there. I was desperately trying to negotiate myself onto some kind of work rota that would involve me actually doing the work when I knew that Zero was going to be present so that I could talk to her. But this was proving to be extremely complicated because every time I tried to approach Zero to talk to her, something happened and she kept on moving two steps away. I was trying all through this dream to end up next to her to speak to her, to end up on the same shift that would work when she was going to be present but it never seemed to happen. There always seemed to be something that was coming along to stand in my way again

More and more than ever before I’m convinced that it’s my subconscious that is keeping me apart from making a fool of myself over all of these young ladies during the night. It obviously knows something that I don’t know, but I’m not going to let that worry me. I shall live for the moment and cling on to whatever crumbs of comfort I can catch.

And next time anyone hears me bewail the fact that I never seem to step back into a dream involving any of my special young ladies, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, make sure to remind me that last night, Zero appeared again later on. It was her birthday and she was quite a young woman round about this time. I was wondering what had become of her, whether she was married, whether she had had children, everything like that. I was musing over this when the dream ended.

It often makes me wonder in reality where she is, what she’s doing, whether she’s married, whether she has kids. I mean, another one of my favourite young ladies is a grandmother these days. But whatever Zero is doing now, I hope that her life is happier than it was when I knew her. I felt really sorry for her back then, but there was nothing that I could do to help.

Later on, a friend of mine was managing a project for some young people and was finding it very difficult to go ahead. He said that the trouble with the younger people today was that they are so naïve. They are open to believe almost anything that someone tells them. “It’s making my life really difficult to bring them into the real World for any particular kind of project that they are trying to deal with”.

That’s something that I have noticed quite frequently these days.

The nurse came earlier than usual and we had a good chat. I told him that I’d missed his friend at that builders’ place yesterday. He didn’t know why but he imagines that she’ll be in contact with me. However, I have had another thought in this respect.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. Having passed by a few smaller piles, we’re now at the Tower of London and discussing William the Conqueror’s arrival on the scene and the beginning of the construction.

It’s likely that he will have a lot to say on the subject as it’s one of the most important places in the Capital. But seeing as its history is well-known, I would be surprised if we were to learn anything new.

Back in here I made a start on programme 260403. I’ve not gone very far but even making a start is some kind of progress, I suppose. I doubt if anything will be finished for dictating on Saturday night but I do have some unedited notes that need attention on Sunday.

My cleaner turned up as usual, but my taxi didn’t. After she had fitted my patches we waited and waited. In the end I telephoned. "We thought that you were still in hospital" said the despatcher.

Whoops! I knew that there was something that I had forgotten to do on Tuesday morning. That was what they call an omelette sur le visage moment.

The young garrulous driver turned up and the three of us (there was another passenger in the car) had a lively, chatty voyage all the way down to Avranches.

Today’s nurses were Océane, Amandine and Alexi. I really like Alexi – she has a very soft touch and it’s like being stroked rather than being handled. Mind you, they all have their little speciality and I like them all. I really do think that the nurses who work in dialysis here have been hand-picked for their charm. Even the Nursing Auxis are lovely.

The coupling-up was comparatively painless which was nice, and then I had plenty to do. I’m making a list of tasks to do downstairs and it’s growing longer by the minute.

Liz contacted me too, asking if it was convenient to chat – we’d had a brief on-line discussion this morning. It’s difficult to talk in dialysis so she’s going to contact me tomorrow.

Starting late, I was finished late, even though it was only three and a half hours today. I managed it without a crisis but as I mentioned earlier, the low blood pressure is knocking me out right now

The garrulous driver who took me brought me back, and we chatted all the way home. My cleaner was waiting and watched as I staggered up the stairs., rather worse for wear.

Tea was a delicious leftover curry, but no naan. And there was so much left over that there’s enough for two more meals in the future. Having emptied some stuff from the freezer, it’s filling up.

So now, much earlier than usual, I’m off to bed, hoping that Zero will come to see me again and that I wake up feeling much better than I do now.

One thing that I learned today is that my dialysis session is arranged for 08:00 on Monday, so I’ll be leaving here at 07:00. Which means leaving my bed at about 05:30 if I’m going to eat anything before I go.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Journée International de Travail … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina once told me "I’m totally fed up with all of the sexual harassment that I have while I’m doing my work"
"Well," I told her, "if you don’t like it, the answer is to give up this working from home and go back to the office."

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Wednesday 30th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… another wonderful day out today. And I’ve been shopping today again too. It was really pleasant to hit the streets again and I enjoyed it tremendously.

And that’s even after the lack of sleep that I had last night.

In fact, it was after 01:30 when I finally hit the sack. I was quite wound up after all of my efforts yesterday and couldn’t settle down. Instead, I found a few things t do on the computer and had a wander around in cyberspace doing a bit of this and a bit of that. As for “a bit of the other”, I managed to restrain myself.

When I finally made it into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for quite some considerable time.

However, I must have dropped off to sleep at some point because BILLY COTTON awoke me at 07:00.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as tired as I might have been. I made it into the bathroom and sorted myself out, as far as it is possible to do so, and then went into the kitchen for my medication.

There was a beautiful draught of air coming through the open window (I’d left it open all night). And as I sat there, the sun rose from behind the church and immediately the current of air became warm. I was only there ten minutes too.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and the answer was a predictable “nowhere”, given the amount of sleep that I had had.

The nurse was in full chat mode and for a change it was quite interesting. He also mentioned another one of his friends who had some kind of connection with a building company. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I know all about his friends.

While we’re on the subject of friends … "well, one of us is" – ed … my friend turned up shortly afterwards and we had a good chat as we waited for the builder to show up (late, as usual, but we expected that).

When he turned up, we found that he was quite efficient, quite frank and quite easy to talk to. He made me fully aware (however, I already knew) that there would be no guarantee or promise that his company could start work within my deadline. It was that that impressed me the most.

He’s arranged for an appointment on 3rd June (when I should have possession) to measure up and talk to his contractors. And it can’t be done any quicker than that.

After he left we had breakfast and continued our discussion for a while, tearing apart all kinds of ideas and plans for downstairs.

Eventually, we decided to make the most of the lovely weather and went out to the car – or, rather, we went outside and my friend went and brought the car to me.

Our first stop was at Donville-les-Bains. The branch of my bank there is much easier to access and parking is easier so I went in and drew out some cash – the first time since I can’t remember when. Not that I need it, because I do have an emergency supply here in the apartment and I haven’t spent any in ages – but it’s always handy to have around “just in case”. And I won’t have many other opportunities.

After we left, we went down the hill to the seafront and had a very, very leisurely drive along the coast as we chatted about old times. We saw some wonderful sights, and made quite a few U-turns as our path led up into various dead ends.

We decided to go to Coutances for lunch and my Artificial Intelligence search engine made several suggestions as to where a vegan could eat.

However, I don’t know what France has come to these days.

When Marechal Foch took over overall command of the French Army in 1918 it is said that he said that he only had two conditions – "a free hand with the Army, and two hours for lunch". We arrived in Coutances well before 14:00 only to find that every single restaurant that we tried had closed its kitchen at 13:30

We ended up at the LeClerc supermarket where we grabbed some “Tricatel” food, thanks to a couple of nice serving wenches who took their time closing at 14:30 so that we could just about have time to be served.

On the way back home we stopped at Noz, my first time since October 2023 where I struck lucky with some fabric softener, some coffee, some noodles and a pile of frozen vegan food.

Leaving Noz, we drove slap bang past the place that my nurse had mentioned, so we went in anyway. His friend wasn’t there but a helpful girl gave me several pointers and arranged an appointment for someone to come to see me. There’s no harm in it, I suppose.

On our arrival home, we found that my faithful cleaner had been to LeClerc in Granville and had found my pyjamas as well as more of those curry patties that we had bought yesterday.

For tea I had lasagna out of the freezer, making space to put in everything that we had bought. It’s not ‘arf crowded in there but it all went in, right enough.

Our chat, reminiscing about old times, continued for ages. He showed me some photos of our project in the UK – the “before” and the “after”. The “after” is so impressive and looks wonderful and we will soon be ready to start Stage Two of our project but the “before” photos are horrifying and I was genuinely appalled.

Eventually he left to go back to his hotel ready for an early night as he has to set off for back home at 05:30 tomorrow morning. We had a lovely two days together, going to places, catching up on old times and discussing new times, but what kind of state is this to be in when someone has to drive all the way from Newport in Shropshire to take me to the shops?

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than usual yet again. Dialysis tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I wonder if there will be any more feedback from my rebellion on Monday

We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about going down a few dead ends … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of a report on male sterility that was published a few years ago.
A newspaper had laid its hand on the article and the headlines the next day were "Male Sterility – a dead end?"

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Wednesday 16th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my hot cross buns. They have risen up like the proverbial lift and look absolutely magnificent. It just shows the difference that having an accurate water gauge makes. All these years that I’ve had some very hit-and-miss baking …

Something else that was magnificent last night was the fact that I was in bed by 23:00, for the first time for ages. I really appreciated it too, having blitzed through everything after tea – the notes, the statistics and the back-up et cetera.

As well as that, it didn’t take long to drop off either, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:55. Probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for ages.

When the alarm went off I was awake thinking about leaving the bed early but BILLY COTTON beat me to it. Surprisingly it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed.

In the bathroom I had a cursory wash (after all, it is shower day today) and then went 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. I had to meet Rosemary and we arranged to meet in London at one of the big railway station termini. She had a rough idea of when she’d be there. I was already in London so I said that I would be there or thereabouts. As the station is so big, I’ll just arrive there and we’ll contact each other by ‘phone or something. When it came time to go I set out on foot on my usual way. I suddenly realised that I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. Just at that moment I was walking past a house when a taxi pulled up. I asked the driver which was the best way to the railway station. He pointed out the way from which I had just come. Down at that end of the road was a dirt track that led through some kinds of fields or common. I asked “surely you don’t mean that I am to go past there?”. He replied “no, it’s a great big main four-lane road”. I realised then where I’d gone wrong – I’d gone wrong a long way before the junction back down the road. I asked “could you run me there?”. He replied “I can’t. I’m finishing work. I live here”. I tried to persuade him but it didn’t work. Another taxi pulled up so I asked him but the first driver told him not to bother – that I was going to walk. I was rather disappointed by the two of them. I set out to walk back and walked probably the quickest that I have ever walked in my life. Eventually I could see the railway station in the distance. There was a big road junction just before it. There were millions of cars milling around there trying to go through, totally ignoring the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing but people just surged across. Some girl in a car tried to drive through the crowd and the crowd was quite irate. They made something of a demonstration about it. In the end I extricated myself from this mess but still had ten minutes of walking to go and I thought that I was going to be late yet again.

This all rings a bell with me. I’ve walked down that dirt road and across those fields and common before during one of my previous nocturnal rambles, quite a while ago now. As well as that, I can see the railway station now. I was up on the top of a hill, something like Highgate in London. The railway station was on a slight rise across a valley, with its huge arched train shed clearly visible. However, we are once again overwhelmed in confusion and anxiety in a dream. Someone has commented on my anxiety and confusion dreams in the past and suggests that it might be due to stress. All I can say is that if my life now is stressful, what must my dreams have been like 40 years or so ago when I was running my taxis?

Later on I went back into that dream … "which dream is this?" – ed … I was wandering around Crewe near the Square, talking to a friend of mine while I was typing out some notes for the radio. One of the things that I was typing out was the notes of something about the Blues Brothers. At that moment friend climbed into his car and shot off just like the Blues Brothers did. of course, at that moment, a police car appeared. The police car went to block him off on the Square. I could see it all perfectly from my vantage point but my friend’s vantage point was obscured by the old Marks and Spencers building. When he came round the corner there he found himself face-to-face with the policeman. Of course he had to stop, he couldn’t really do anything. The policeman stepped out of his vehicle and the first thing that he did was to close the bonnet of my friend’s car – it was one of these bonnets that hinges from the front, not from the rear. He would often leave it open as he drove around, held only by the security catch

That reminds me of a time 40 or 50 years ago when we were all out late one night (or early in the morning, more like) in Crewe when there was a heavy snowfall. My friend took his car onto the public car park, that was totally empty, and was spinning round doing doughnuts on the slippery surface. What he had failed to take into account that it was right next to the police station. Two constables came out and gave him a ticket for “using a car park other than for the purpose of parking”.

The nurse was in a better humour today and was rather more cheerful than yesterday. However he didn’t stop for long and I could get on and make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Our trip around the castles of England (and Wales) is turning into a real whistle-stop tour. On some of these sites we aren’t discussing architecture of any type (never mind military architecture) because there are no extant remains, so I’m not convinced of the reason why we’ve even come here.

However, he does make an interesting observation when it comes to Huntingdon Castle. He tells us that "William the Conqueror was at Huntingdon 1068, when he ordered a castle to be built, evidently on the site of the old fortress restored by Edward the Elder in 918. The names in Domesday show how complete had been the removal of the larger English landowners."

We’ve talked rather a lot just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … about the ethnic cleansing that must have taken place as several waves of invaders overwhelmed the native population during the various invasions back in the early days of history and prehistory. So these “larger English landowners” – what happened to them? I can’t see them being allowed to remain, even as serfs and slaves, in the local area where they might command the respect and loyalty of their previous tenants and possibly incite a rebellion.

Back in here I had things to do that needed my attention, and then I cracked on with the radio programme. All of the notes for programme 260227 are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

There was time for a disgusting drink break and to sort out my faithful cleaner when she arrived. And then I had a wonderful shower and found some nice, clean clothes so that I shall look fine for Emily the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

After my cleaner left, I had my second disgusting drink and then I had things to do.

After breakfast I had put some lentils and split peas into the slow cooker and after an hour and the water had boiled, I rinsed them and then put them back in the slow cooker on the lowest heat with some clean water. So after the afternoon’s disgusting drink break I began to plan my lentil lasagna.

First though, I had hot cross buns to make. And here I almost had a disaster. I didn’t have enough vegan butter.

However, any oil is good, as we have proved with our oil cakes, so why not use coconut oil? I made a really good mix of flour, coconut oil, salt, yeast and mixed spices with warm soya milk and melted coconut oil – the correct amounts of liquid – and left it to fester.

While it was festering, I fried a large onion and some garlic in my wok, tipped the lentils and split peas in after I’d rinsed them again, along with a pack of this soya mince in tomato sauce that I wanted to try. In went some tomato sauce and herbs and so on and I left it to simmer away.

The dough for the hot cross buns had risen nicely so I added some sultanas, raisins and some orange essence, and kneaded it all again.

After it had stood for a while and risen again, I moulded the dough into six balls, flattened them and put them on the biscuit tray. I made some thick flour mix and with my icing piper, piped the crosses on the buns and left them to rise again.

While they were festering, I assembled my lasagna and made a vegan cheese sauce that I poured over the top, and stuck it all into the oven.

When it was cooked I put the hot cross buns in and then had a quarter of my lasagne with some vegetables. And it was delicious. Even better, there are three more slices to go into the freezer for another time. It was the lst of the orange, ginger and coconut cake today too. Tomorrow I’ll start on my chocolate cake.

Rosemary had rung up while I was baking so after I’d finished tea and washed up, we had a little chat. Not very long – only fifty-four minutes.

Consequently I’m running really late but never mind – I’m off to bed right now. Tomorrow is dialysis day and shopping order too.

But while we’re on the subject of buns … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had served in the Army in a regiment where the chief cook was Doctor Spooner’s brother.
"How interesting" I replied
"Very interesting" he said "especially when the Germans launched an attack on the kitchen"
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because Doctor Spooner’s brother personally led the counter-attack" he replied. "He went into action with all buns glazing"

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Tuesday 15th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a Day of Rest today.

Our Welsh class is on an Easter break this week and next week so I was planning on having a leisurely day today for a change.

What contributed to that particular idea was the fact that I had another very late night – long after 01:30 when I went to bed. But there again, a Marshall Tucker Band concert came round on the playlist and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have something of a weakness for Southern Rock and lead guitar solos that can sometimes last for as long as several weeks. After all, how many other Southern Rock bands can you name WHO CAN MUSTER UP A FLUTE?

So eventually I made it into bed and settled down for a good sleep only to awaken in a real panic when the alarm went off – sheets and bedding flying everywhere. For some reason or other I was convinced that I’d heard the alarm go off previously and that this was the second alarm.

As it happens, it wasn’t, because it went off five minutes later. So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The sad part about that was that I was off on an interesting little voyage at that particular moment and in the panic, the whole lot was wiped away completely and I can’t remember anything at all about it.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and then into the kitchen for the medication. It’s a non-dialysis day so I remembered the disgusting powder that I have to mix with water.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had a car parked on the lawn somewhere and the front end of it had sunk into the grass. We were debating on ways to manoeuvre it out. I would have expected that we would have raised up the front, put it on a couple of planks underneath the wheels and then pulled it backwards. My father though was going on about changing the gearbox. Even if it had been a practical proposition to change the gearbox, I didn’t understand how that was going to help to move the car out of the trenches that it had dug for itself.

The car, I can still see it now. It was my red Cortina Estate that I came in when I immigrated to Europe, all of my wordly possessions that remained, crammed into the back. I still have the car today – inter-galactic mileage and needs the valve guides replacing but apart from a spot of rot on the scuttle underneath the windscreen the bodywork is perfect and, rare for a Cortina, has never been welded. It’s sitting in my warehouse in Montaigut quietly gathering dust with the 2000E saloon that Nerina bought me once and my Citroën “Traction Avant”.

The nurse turned up early for the start of his week’s shift. No surprise, because he doesn’t have the injections or the blood tests to do, by popular request of his clients. He was complaining that he didn’t have much sleep last night, but that’s a quite common state of affairs around here.

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

We’ve finished our visit of Helmsley Castle and after a remarkably brief passage by Hereford Castle – a mere dozen pages devoted to one of the strongest fortifications in the Marches – we’re now visiting Hertford Castle.

Our author is once more tying himself up in knots. When talking about Helmsley, he tells us on page 106 that "it is possible that the whole may have been the work of Robert Fursan, especially as, remarkable as it is, it is not named in Domesday nor any early record"

However, on page 121, when talking about the town of Hertford, he tells us that the town of "Hertford was so held of the Confessor, and so accepted by the Conqueror, and entered in Domesday, which, however, as was not uncommon, makes no mention of the castle,"

So why is it remarkable that some castles such as Helmsley Castle aren’t in the Domesday Book, but not uncommon that others such as Hertford Castle are omitted?.

After breakfast I had some paperwork that needed attention and then I had quite an idle morning not doing anything except searching for items of personal interest on the Internet.

Something else that I did was to have another in-depth look at some Artificial Intelligence programs. Every day it seems that there are more and more slowly coming onto the streets every day. The latest one seems to be an automatic story writer. All you need is to write out the very basic outline of your plot, your main characters and their characteristics, press “send” and sit back to let the machine type out a book for you.

You can type as much – or as little – as you like for the story outline and so I had a little fun with it, testing out its limits and finding out what it could – and couldn’t or wouldn’t – do. But it’s going to spoil all kinds of creativity and imagination once it all becomes on-line.

While we are talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was told of a discussion between two people on the Internet about how someone, unable to find any secretarial assistance anywhere on the island where he lived, had engaged an AI bot to do all of the work for him and it seemed to be working fine.

Interesting as all of this might be, I couldn’t keep on doing that all day and in the end I began to concentrate on programme 260227 for the radio. First of all though, I checked over programme 250418 and sent it off for broadcast this coming weekend.

For 260227 I didn’t have half of the tracks that I needed so I had to hunt them down. One or two were quite obscure and took some finding but I found them in the end thanks to help from my Artificial Intelligence-powered search engine.

So all of the tracks are sorted out, re-edited and re-mixed, paired and segued. Tomorrow while my cleaner is here, I’ll write out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. For the rest of the week I can make a start on Saturday at Woodstock. There will also be a LeClerc order to prepare.

For tea tonight I searched through the freezer and found one of my aubergine and kidney-bean whatsits and cooked it with some pasta and veg, followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake and soya dessert. There is just one more slice of that cake, and then I’ll be into the chocolate cake.

Something else that I have to do tomorrow and not forget is to bake some hot cross buns. We can’t have Easter without toasted hot cross buns. The batch that I made last year weren’t particularly well-made but they tasted delicious all the same. I’m hoping that my new improved technique will improve things this year.

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

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … before I go I’ll tell you about the chat that I have just had with an Artificial Intelligence chatbot.
What I did was to ask it to tell me the funniest joke that it knew.
It came back with "A man takes his sick Chihuahua to the veterinarian. They’re immediately taken back to an exam room. After a while, a Labrador walks in, sniffs the Chihuahua for 10 minutes, then leaves. Next, a cat comes in, stares at the Chihuahua for 10 minutes, and leaves. Finally, the vet arrives, examines the dog, and prescribes some medicine.
The man is shocked and says, “That must be a mistake! I’ve only been here 20 minutes!”
The vet replies, “No mistake. It’s $100 for the lab test, $100 for the cat scan, and $50 for the medicine.”"
It finished by telling me " If you want, I can share more like this!" but I don’t think that I’ll bother. At least, when I remember a joke from the old “Plymouth Polytechnic” days (and that’s a story in itself) I don’t forget half of the story like my AI chatbot has just now. Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I’ll prefer natural stupidity any day.

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Sunday 13th April 2025 – A MANTELPIECE!

… "He means ‘Masterpiece’ " – ed …

Indeed I do. I’ve been a busy boy today, doing a pile of baking, and making use of my new scientific measuring gauge for the water. And everything that I cooked today turned out to be exactly as it is supposed to be – bread rising up like a lift, cakes actually looking like cakes and all of that kind of thing.

Probably, what contributed a lot to that was the fact that I’d had an early night. It was at about 23:05 when I’d finished everything that I would normally finish before going to bed, and then there was the dictating of the radio notes to do.

Even though I made yet another total hash of what I was supposed to be dictating, it was still all done by 23:40 and by 23:45 I was in bed. “Later than intended” I hear you say, but with a lie-in until 08:00, it can only be good news.

Mind you, what happened next does not need any explanation. It’s a Sunday after a Saturday afternoon dialysis session, isn’t it? And so by the time that the alarm went off, I’d been up and about for an hour and a half and was sitting at my desk working.

There had been the bathroom, of course, and there had been the medication. And next was the dictaphone. We were having a huge chat about adoption etc during the night. This conversation rolled on and on, and went on to the question of mutations and mutations of voice. There were other things taking place too. I know that on one occasion someone asked me a question and I answered “well, I’m not the busiest” or “it’s not the busiest, and it’s keeping me out of mischief”. However, I can’t remember what the question was now and that was disappointing.

Everything seemed to be in quite a turmoil during the evening. I have no idea what was going on there but it was certainly quite a mess.

And then I was in Wales somewhere. I had a lift with someone and they were driving me towards my destination. We went round a bend and there was this train, a tiny little narrow-gauge steam locomotive with a big parcels train behind it. It was just like that person had been talking about in a photograph. I said “you can drop me off here” because this was my destination. It was a narrow-gauge railway line and this was its terminus. They dropped me off and I wandered around the yard. I saw a locomotive with two carriages behind it. I thought “that must be my train to go”. I had to climb up onto the bank to climb into it. I became all dirty when I rubbed my shoulder against the boiler of the train. Then I had to find some treacle. In the end I found two tins of treacle but I was on the wrong side of the train. I had to throw these tins of treacle underneath the train and then walk round the front, hanging on to the front of the locomotive to make sure that I didn’t fall down the embankment. When I reached the other side, I heard a whistle, a steam whistle. I looked up and there was another train that I hadn’t seen, and a locomotive that was attached to three carriages. A double-decker bus just pulled up with a whole crowd of people on board. They were all heading towards that other train. I thought “maybe that’s my train” so I set out to try to run to catch it. Of course, I couldn’t run. I realised that I had no treacle, my backpack was open and everything was on the verge of falling out. I thought “I’m going to miss this train now and the next one is not for another several hours”. I was running and running and running towards this train. I couldn’t run and I was on my bad legs with no crutches. This was becoming a disaster

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Yesterday in fact when we were trying to run in vain to catch a bus. Today, I’m trying to run to catch a train. I wonder what I’ll be trying to run to catch tomorrow? But the idea of it being a narrow-gauge steam locomotive is quite interesting. I’ve not had a run out on a narrow-gauge train for years, and certainly not with any tins of treacle. What did treacle have to do with it anyway?

While I was waiting for Isabelle I had a surf through the internet for the highlights of yesterday’s games in Wales. Colwyn Bay will be joining Llanelli in the Premier League next season after their win at Penrhyncoch. I also found the highlights of the game we watched yesterday BETWEEN Y DRENEWYDD AND ABERYSTWITH and Niall Flint in full flight down the centre.

Isabelle the Nurse had a lot to say for herself, mainly about dialysis and compression socks, as she dealt with my legs and then she wandered off, leaving me to deal with breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

A few days ago, I wrote about our author, Geo T Clark, not being able to make up his mind about the system of dating that he uses. Here’s a delightful paragraph on page 87 where he discusses the history of the castle at Hastings "Henry, the fifth earl, who died in the reign of Richard I., left an only daughter, Alice, who married Ralph de Essoudun, who in her right became Earl of Eu, and so died in 1211. Their son, William, elected to become a subject of France, and,29 Henry III., his possessions in England escheated to the Crown, and were granted to Prince Edward. As early as 1227 King Henry allowed to Robert de Aubeville 10 marcs, half his salary, as keeper of the castle. The college was retained by Henry in his own hands. In 5 Edward III., the dean and canons petitioned to have the castle wall restored, it having been injured by the sea. In 1372, the castle was granted to John of Gaunt,"

If he wants to continue to use both forms of date, then that’s fine. But how many times does he change from one format to the other in that one paragraph? He needs at least to stick to the same style in each paragraph.

He is also following the trend of many of our previous authors in contradicting himself, and this time, within the space of just a handful of paragraphs. At the bottom of page 89, when talking about Hawarden Castle (which, in a book entitled “Medieval Military Architecture in England”, is actually in Wales), he tells us that "At Hawarden, the course of action seems to have been different. Here are no traces of Norman work or of the Norman style, and though the keep is unusually substantial".

However, over the page, not even half-way down, he tells us that "The entrance is at the ground level on the north-east side, from the main ward. It is marked by a broad, flat buttress, rather Norman in character,"

And to show you just how times and appreciation have changed since he published his book in 1884, also on page 90 he tells us that "the modern brick and stone wall replacing the battlement is rugged and broken, but in parts about 12 feet high, and intended to give elevation to the keep. The building thus made extensively visible has become a sort of parish cynosure, and, however irregular its appearance, it would scarcely be in good taste to remove the addition."

Can you imagine that? Early medieval stonework disfigured by modern brickwork and it would “scarcely be in good taste” to remove it?

Back in here, we had Stranraer away at Stirling Albion, and I totally despair. Stranraer were miles on top of this game and at 1-0 up at half-time and well in control at the hour mark looking as if they could score another goal or two at any moment, they then go and hand the Binos not one, not two, but three of the easiest goals that they will ever score in their whole lives with a series of schoolboy errors that defy any kind of description from me. If you really want to see how bad it was, THEN IT’S ALL YOURS

My bread roll for lunch was absolutely wonderful, made with just the right amount of water. It could not have been better and the new cheese that my cleaner brought finished it off a treat.

Back in here after lunch I attacked the radio programmes for which I dictated the notes last night. And by the time that I was ready for tea I’d completed the final track for programme 260206 and assembled it all so that it’s one hour long. I just had to remove eight seconds of text.

And then I finished programme 260220 as much as I could – edited the notes for the ten tracks, assembled the two halves of the programme, chose the final track and wrote the notes ready for dictation next Saturday night.

If you are wondering where programme 260213 is, that’s a concert that I dealt with years and years ago.

Despite all of that, there was baking. A sunflower-seed loaf and a chocolate oil-cake. The loaf, like the bread roll, is also wonderful and the cake is excellent too. The oil in there is half neutral vegetable oil, half coconut oil, and there’s orange essence and desiccated coconut in there too. All of the baking is cooling off ready for cutting and storing tomorrow morning.

Tonight’s pizza was another one of the best that I have ever made, cooked just right. If I could make the pizza every week just as I did tonight, I would be really happy

But that’s not for now. I’m off to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow, worse luck, and I’ll probably be there for four hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about adoption … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine being called for a discussion with his parents.
"Son we have to tell you?" said his father "did you know that you are adopted"
"Really?" said the boy. " Could I ever meet my birth parents?"
"We are your birth parents" replied his father. "Now go upstairs and pack. Your new family will be here to pick you up in ten minutes"

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Friday 11th April 2025 – AFTER BREAKFAST HAD …

… finished I cleared up, put the tray onto my little trolley, then my cup and then pushed the trolley into the bedroom where I could finish my coffee while I was working.

And then I had a brilliant idea – “if I want to finish off the coffee while I’m working, why didn’t I bring the coffee pot in here with me when I brought the mug and the tray?”. Sometimes I really wonder what is happening to me and my memory right now. It’s always been bad and became worse after my depressed fracture of the skull in the accident when I was taxi-driving in Sandbach, but these days it’s going even worse.

In fact my whole character changed after that accident. I must have had a brain injury or something and my whole life ever since then became a constant battle against reality … "and still is" – ed …. It took several years to come to terms with my new situation. However, all of that is another story completely, consisting of water that has long-since flown under the bridge.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I really was ill late night after the dialysis. And to prove that I can do it when I really try, I had finished all of my notes, taken the stats and done the back-up and was in bed by 22:50. And by 22:51 I was fast asleep.

Apart from one awakening, before midnight according to a timestamp on the dictaphone, I didn’t move until about 06:50 either. That was what I really call a good sleep. I must have needed it.

While I was debating whether or not to pull my head from out underneath the covers, BILLY COTTON beat me to it and I fell out of bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I sent a message to my faithful cleaner about my shopping and my new compression socks, and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. The first thing that happened was that a girl from school appeared in my dreams last night when I was asleep quite early. I was on the point of inviting her out for a date when suddenly I awoke up and she completely disappeared and took off, taking everything with her.

The first question that went through my mind when I transcribed this was “who the heck was she?”. I wish that I had recorded who she was. That would have been nice to know. All these girls turning up in my dreams and I’m not aware of them. However, awakening just as things are about to become interesting – there goes my subconscious again, keeping me out of mischief. If I am going to be diverted from my evil designs, I’d rather it was me than any member of my family coming along, something that usually happens.

Later on I was out on one of the French islands near the Equator checking vehicle registration numbers. They seemed to be arranged in groups of – two numbers – a number and a letter – two numbers … "numbers like 11-2A-33" – ed … and the plates were yellow with black writing rather like the current French rear number plates.

Why registration numbers of cars on a French island should interest me, I really have no idea. The only French island that appeals to me is St Pierre et Miquelon, the French DOM TOM off the coast of Newfoundland. I’ve told you before … "and on many occasion too" – ed … about the exciting event that happened while I was sailing past there in 2017 across the Gulf of St Lawrence.

And then my Greek friend came round and told me that she was going off on a holiday somewhere. After a little discussion it turned out that she was going on a week’s retreat somewhere in a monastery, a nunnery or something. We had something of a chat. I noticed that she was feeling particularly depressed. After a while we said goodbye to each other and she wandered away. A short while later another girl whom I quite liked came round – the sister of a friend of mine at school. We’d had a little something of an association at one time. She had this sheep that she was keeping in her apartment so we went to look at it. We ended up having to chase it around the apartment and catch it, and had a really good time. We arranged to meet at another moment so I went home. In the meantime, a third friend of mine, who lodged with me for a year once at Expo, was in her little apartment, a tiny place with just a bed and a toilet in it. I went round there and she had a friend with her so there were three of us. She asked “have you seen your Greek friend recently?”. I replied “yes, I saw her earlier”. She replied “well, do you know that she’s gone off?”. I replied “yes, I know. I was talking to her just before she left. She was telling me all of her plans”. This quite surprised my friend in that apartment. She didn’t realise that I’d been talking to her. She thought that she was the only person concerned in this story. She asked “do you know that she has a son?”. I replied “I’m sure that she hasn’t. After all, I’ve worked with her for years”. “Well, she’s talking about going to Paris” to which I replied that it didn’t surprise me because she occasionally had whims like that. She asked me what else I’d been up to. I replied that I’d been herding sheep and began to recount this story with my friend’s sister and hunting sheep around her apartment

My Greek friend was an interesting girl. When I went to work in Brussels the job that I was to take wasn’t ready for me so I worked in the document preparation department where I learned all about desktop publishing, printing layouts and so on. There were about twenty of us who started at about that time and we formed a little group to go ice-skating, the cinema, that kind of thing. Gradually, two by two, everyone paired off and I used to go around with my Greek friend. She blew very hot when she thought that I wasn’t interested but whenever I showed more than a passing interest in her, she cooled off dramatically. I reckon that she was frightened and I don’t blame her. After all, which member of the opposite sex would ever feel comfortable with me around?

The sister of my friend is an easy one to guess. She was much younger than us at school but even so we all knew that she was going to be a beautiful girl. Quite a few years later I was running parcels to Belfast – the only volunteer with a British-registered van to take freight to Belfast in the 1970s but I needed the money – and apart from stopping to watch Stranraer and being arrested at gunpoint by an Army patrol (those two events were not connected), on one occasion I stopped at Galgate just outside Lancaster for some fish and chips and a pint. And who should be serving behind the bar in the pub? She was a student at Lancaster earning some pocket money. Consequently every time that there was a parcel to go north I was always the first to volunteer.

When it came to Easter she had no means of going home so I went and picked her up. We saw each other a few times and then one night I invited her home. Tuppence, my old, anti-social black cat came and jumped on her lap, something that took me totally by surprise as it wasn’t like her at all, and I thought "ahhh – even the cat likes her".. On the way home I told her that I’d like to continue to see her even when she goes back to University and she replied "yes – but you’ll have to get rid of that cat! I hate cats!".

It goes without saying that I kept the cat. She was definitely the Lady of the House and she drove more than just that one girl away. She stood no chance with Nerina though. Nerina loved cats and as soon as she saw Tuppence it was "ohh, a cat!" and she had Tuppence in her arms before the cat had had time to think. Tuppence was the first of our rather large adopted family of felines. I often wonder if Nerina still has cats

There was also something else about being in the Army last night. One of the depots was closing down and they were selling a whole pile of things. I was interested in their lorry but they told me that they wanted £200 for it or something like that and I was unwilling to pay it because I couldn’t afford it. They talked about what vehicles I had and discussed a part-exchange but it wasn’t really practical. Then the discussion turned to motorcycles. They had a Kawasaki. I said “Kawasakis haven’t been imported into the UK yet. You can’t have a Kawasaki”. They replied “oh yes we have, a 1985 model”. That totally surprised me because I thought that we were in the 1950s. When I enquired the guy told me “well, it is 1987 you know”. I thought “well, I thought that it was 1957. We’d just been watching a film on the television in black and white and it was only made a short while ago”. I was expecting that we were in the 1950s but this officer insisted that it was 1987 and they had a 1985 Kawasaki. I didn’t understand what was going on at all.

… "”I didn’t understand what was going on at all” – nothing at all new there" – ed … But it really was a strange dream – being in 1987 but thinking that it was still 1957, not that I remember all that much about the latter year. Even more interestingly, if I really did believe that it was 1987, how did I even know about Kawasaki motorcycles, let alone that they hadn’t been imported into the UK “yet”?

Isabelle the Nurse came by to sort me out and she brought me the necessary prescription for my compression socks.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. Considering that it’s title is “Medieval Military Architecture in England”, today we arrived at Castle Harlech, which is well and truly on the west coast of Wales.

He’s pointed out hundreds of important factors that bear upon the engineering of the castle from a military point of view during his minute inspection of the civilian architecture, but not once does he give any indication of the purpose or the principle of that particular factor. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s disappointing because that was just what I was hoping to find in a book like this.

Back in here I made a start on my Woodstock extravaganza and by the time I’d finished, Friday was finished too. The notes that I have written for Friday run to a massive sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds and are likely to increase when I read through them a second time. Friday’s programme now runs out at one hour ten minutes and twenty-six seconds which, for a programme that is supposed to last one hour, will provide its own complications. Even if I remove some songs, the text will increase because I will have to say what has gone and why.

There were the usual interruptions. Two disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner coming to do her stuff and to sort out the medication, and the postman.

The postman brought two pieces of news. Firstly, regular readers of this rubbish will recall the bread-making issues that I have had in the past. The scientific water gauge that arrived today tells me that 200ml of water in the gauge is showing 230ml in the previous gauge that I used. That means that the previous gauge is under-reading by about 15% and will explain a lot about the shortcoming in my baking.

The second letter is one that I have been half-expecting. My tenant downstairs is asking for an extension of her lease until the end of June. Of course she can have an extension – I’ve never yet put anyone out into the street and I’ve no intention of doing so now. However, workmen will be going in as of the beginning of June to rip out the kitchen and the bathroom and fit the new kitchen and shower room whether she’s there or not, whether she likes it or not, and whether the water is cut off or not. And if the workmen use electricity and water while she is there, there is no possible way of splitting the bill so she will have to pay all of it. I’m not going to revise my plans at all.

By the time that I’d finished everything it was tea-time – air-fried chips with salad and a handful of those tiny nuggets that I found while I was tidying out the freezer, followed by more orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. The cake is nearly finished so Sunday I shall be baking. As it’s coming close to Easter, I shall go for a chocolate cake and see what happens.

Tomorrow is dialysis day of course and the vital match at the foot of the table between Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd. Aberystwyth are already relegated, of course, but Y Drenewydd, the only other ever-present team in the League since its formation, must win and hope that Llansawel lose against Y Ff lint to give themselves hope for the final match.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight is bedtime when I’ve finished my tasks and we’ll see how things unfold.

But seeing as we have been talking about my visits to Belfast … "well, one of us was" – ed … while I was there, I met an American visitor looking to find his roots.
He was clearly disappointed with what he saw, the violence, the destruction and so on, and loudly exclaimed, to anyone who would care to listen "I think that Belfast and Northern Ireland is the ass-hole of the World"
And some Northern Irishman standing nearby said, in an equally loud voice "if that’s the case, then he must be merely passing through it".

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Tuesday 8th April 2025 – I WAS ON THE PO …

… dium again today in the quiz in the Welsh class. I really don’t know what’s happening to me these days but I seem to be getting to grips much better with my Welsh than I was a year or two ago. Let’s hope that I can keep it up for the rest of the course. We’re so far behind on this one (Unit 11 out of 25) that I reckon that we’ll have another two years to do instead of the one that was programmed for the final course.

Perhaps my improvement was due to the better night that I had last night. I finished my notes, my statistics and my backing-up fairly early and in principle I could have been in bed by 23:00 but I can always find other things to distract me when I’m supposed to be doing something important, and it was almost midnight when I finally made it into bed.

As for the night itself, I remember nothing whatsoever. I must have been dead to the World and slept all the way through until the morning.

When I awoke it was still fairly dark so I was wondering what time it might be. I was giving the idea of looking at the time some serious thought when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE rent the heavens asunder. And so it was probably about 06:55 when I opened my eyes.

It was a struggle to my feet but I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went 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. We were in a class last night working on some kind of project. It was something of a mixture between a maths class, a language class and a logic class. We were going through a text, I suppose, and then we were moved into small groups and we had to discuss certain elements of what we’d been doing. One of these pieces was so complicated with these enormous words in it that it took absolutely ages for us to read it. It was very difficult to understand. Trying to make any headway on this project with this piece of work was extremely complicated. I think that everyone was in despair by the end of it. With five minutes to go before the end of the lesson the teacher said that we would concentrate now on doing something else. The first thing that she did was to ask us the answers to a couple of questions that she’d set before we’d been moved into groups. Of course, at that moment I couldn’t find my papers where I’d written the answers. I had a feeling that this particular lesson had been a total disaster today.

We’ve all had disasters like that in the past – missing out on something really important that has completely derailed a whole series of studies and left us stranded halfway back down the course. I’ve still not really recovered from missing all those weeks of my Welsh course in the autumn of 2022 when I spent two months in hospital in Belgium I used to try to make up for everything by going on a Summer School but dialysis has rendered that almost impossible now.

Isabelle the Nurse put her sooty foot in the door this morning. She’s started her week’s activity today. We talked about having some new compression socks, and it appears that her oppo has overlooked to tell her about it so we started the discussion again and she’ll see my doctor’s secretary to ask for a prescription.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY NEW BOOK. Our stay at Durham was very brief indeed and after passing by the castles at Eaton Socon and Ewyas Harold, we’ve now arrived at Exeter Castle.

At the moment, he’s setting the scene and I imagine that in a few days we’ll have the guided tour. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m disappointed by the fact that although he goes to great lengths to tell us what there is or was, he does not mention why they did it. I’d love to know more about the military principles that went into the design and building of all of this.

Another thing that I find confusing is his method of dating. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the change of calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752, the loss of 11 days, and the change of the New Year from 25th March to 1st January. Prior to that, it was the custom to date events by what they called the “regnal year” – such as “in the third year of the reign of Richard III” or “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth”. However, after 1752 it became the practice to date events by the actual calendar year, such as 2025 or 1939 or 1900 etc.

Not our author though. He’s insisting on using the regnal year to date almost everything, even though it had been out of fashion for 150 years when he started to write his book, and I’m having to exert myself in order to carry out some rapid mental calculation as I carry on reading.

Back in here I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off for marking, and then set down to revise and prepare for my lesson later this morning.

By the time that the lesson began I’d prepared almost the entire unit which is good news because the more I do today, the less I have to do next week. But it was just as well that I did because it was quite a short unit and we’ve almost finished it.

We had a quiz about the things that we should have learned last week and, in contrast to how my dream went, I finished on the podium. At one stage I had a run of eight questions correct, and I’ve never done that before in any Welsh class.

And my Welsh joke – it went down really well and if the tutor laughed out loud at it, then it must have been good.

After the disgusting drink break (we actually had the prescribed two today) I had a few things to do and then I began to choose the music for the next radio programme.

The very next one will be very easy because it relates to a concert. I already have all of the music and I wrote the text years ago when Liz and I were running “Radio Anglais” in the Auvergne, so I concentrated on the one after.

This one is another one that will be complicated because there are so many anniversaries that took place on that date. It will take careful selection to sort it out.

My cleaner stuck her head in the apartment too. She’d been to LeClerc and had found some slices of vegan cheese for me, so cheese on toast will be back on the menu for lunch on Sunday.

There should also have been a lengthy chat with my friend in the UK who is handling this ongoing project but he was unavoidably detained elsewhere with another matter so we agreed to continue our chat tomorrow.

Tea tonight was as usual a delicious taco roll with rice and veg followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing left too so seeing as how things are unfolding here, I might lengthen it and divide it into two so that there will be one for next week

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because I have bread to make. I forgot that this afternoon so I’ll rustle up a 300-gram loaf in the air fryer and then go to bed.

But before I go, I bet that you are all wondering about the Welsh joke that I told in class.
It’s not easy to say it in English because with Welsh being an ancient language, it follows really ancient grammar rules that were in place long before the Romanisation of modern Western European languages. One of those rules is that where a noun is “feminine”, the first letter of the adjective used to describe it may mutate
So – "Mae dau o blant yn cerdded yn y goedwig"
Two children are walking in the wood
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘edrych ar yr aderyn fawr yn y goeden’ "
The girl says ‘look at the big bird in the tree’
"Mae hogyn yn dweud ‘Aderyn MAWR – aderyn yn wrywaidd’ "
The boy said ‘Big bird – bird is masculine’ (so the adjective ‘big’ doesn’t mutate)
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘mae gen ti lygaid rhagorol’ "
The girl says ‘you have really good eyes’

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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"

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Friday 4th April 2025 – THIS BLASTED NEW …

… phone isn’t ‘arf complicated!

My previous telephone was made in 2016, according to the serial number, and it took a while to figure out but once I’d understood how it functioned, it was all quite straightforward. But even though I’ve had a smartphone for eight years (March 2017 in fact) and know much more about them than I ever did before, setting up my very first one was child’s play compared to this.

Yes, my faithful cleaner has been at it again, queueing up outside the ‘phone supplier’s at the end of lunchtime to pick up my new ‘phone, for which I am extremely grateful, but I bet that she isn’t after all of that.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. It was actually a surprisingly early night last night – 23:25 when I crawled into bed. And it would have been earlier too had I motivated myself to finish the notes and to do the backing up without being distracted.

But anyway, once in bed I fell asleep quite quickly too. But not for long. As seems to be typical after a dialysis session, I had another turbulent, perspiration-laden night, even though it was fairly cold.

Eventually, I awoke, and stayed awake too without any possibility of going back to sleep. And after lying there for about fifteen minutes and thinking to myself “why don’t I show a leg and raise myself from the Dead” the alarm suddenly went off and Billy Cotton’s RAUCOUS RATTLE beat me to it. There I was – if only I had been two minutes earlier, I could have recorded another “early start” to make my statistics look good.

So I wandered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was discussing things and life on board the space shuttle or the space station with a group of like-minded young people. We had a really good time. There was a string of characters known as an “Ouf”, there were massage sections and bed sections, dietician sections and you could even pick and change the modules that you were studying so that you would have a better choice of seeing more lectures. I chose the four principal ones of mine, Welsh, History, Geography and Geography and twenty-one other days afterwards to make up a full twenty-four-hour period that I could use for consulting just about everything including the Oracles at Delphi.

What was it that we were saying … "well, one of us was" – ed … the other week about my dreams making no sense at all? But going to see the High Priestess of the Oracle at Delphi, if she could tear herself away from chatting to Apollo, would be interesting, to say the least.

I was staying in a hotel with a group of people. We were on an excursion or tour or something. The last few days had been really beautiful weather so when I awoke at 05:00 I looked out of the window and saw the clear sky with no sun and decided that I would rise up. I prepared myself, washed myself etc and went downstairs and went outside. I went to my car to pick up a book. My car was parked right outside the door of the hotel. I found my book and thought “well, I’ll sit down here and read my book in the sunshine”. A few minutes later some of the girls who were on our trip came waling back but they had obviously been up early too. As they reached the front of the hotel they shouted up a few words to one of their colleagues who shouted something down again. They then said that they were going to go for a walk. They looked up at where my room was and shouted my name, saying “Eric, do you want to come for a walk with us?”. I replied “yes” from the car right behind them and the girls must have jumped about three feet in the air when I spoke from behind them. We all had a quick chat while I found my shoes ready to go for a walk.

The local town rang me up in the middle of the night as well. They wanted to write a feature on my recording studio at home and talk about some of the people who had been there. We made an arrangement etc so they came round. A few weeks later I was waiting at the ferry for something. The ferry that came in didn’t have half of the cars on board that it usually had. I went to have a look and it was full of these books, leaflets or magazines about the recording studio that I have in my home. I thought “this is completely exaggerated”. In the meantime I was at a folk concert. Several of the musicians were playing and one particular group had this awful habit that I detest of inviting their friends up on the stage to join them. They were telling a story about how three years ago someone local to them who they knew well had picked up the guitar, and now he’e going to play his first song to the public. He played an up-tempo rapid style arrangement of “Amazing Grace” which quite frankly was the worst song that I have ever heard from the stage in the past

Both those dreams have some kind of connection with my trip home from dialysis on Thursday. My taxi driver was formerly the manageress of a spa and massage parlour and we were having a good chat about that sort of thing on the way home. I told her about MY LEGENDARY STAY IN RENNES LES BAINS when I was hot on the trail of the Cathars and the legendary, if not mythical trail of the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau. That was of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I nipped out for a Sunday afternoon and didn’t come home for three weeks.

But going back to the story of the taxi driver, we wer so engrossed in our chat that when her data head shouted out vous êtes maintenant près du zone de dépose – “you are close to the dropping-off point”, she really did jump into the air from her seat. I saw her.

However, if that version really is the worst song that I have ever heard being played on a stage, it must have been dreadful. I will never ever forget BILLY DRE AND THE POOR BOYS across whom I had the misfortune to stumble when I was photographing the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Canada. Billy Dre had the letter “I” missing from his name and “poor” definitely summed up the musical talents of his boys.

The nurse didn’t hang around long this morning, but it was long enough to ask me who was going to do the renovations of the apartment downstairs because, as you might expect "I have a friend"

After he left, I could have breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. But not for long because as usual, I was distracted.

He made reference to the works of Matthew Paris, a thirteenth-century chronicler whose “Chronica Majora” is considered to be the first authentic attempt at creating a historical record of the British Isles. All the previous ones, such as Bede’s History, are full of myth, legend and polemic.

What also makes Paris’s work more interesting is that it’s littered with all kinds of personal notes, anecdotes and recollections that make if of much more value than a terse historical catalogue of events.

Our author, George Clark, makes reference to a translation in English, undertaken by an obscure country vicar, of the “Chronica Majora”, something for which I have been looking because my Latin isn’t up to all that much these days, and now that I know that a version exists, albeit made in 1852-84, I set off on its trail. And after much searching, I’ve tracked down all three volumes and they are now in the (long, long) list of books to read.

Back in here I set about a task that I had been meaning to do for ages, and that was to clean-out the back-up drive of redundant files from the radio shows. There’s no need to keep the music or the sound files except for the programmes not yet broadcast. All I need for the ones that have gone out are the completed programmes and the project files.

Next, I transferred over the project files and programmes for the ones that I have done since I last backed up, and blow me if I haven’t ended up with less space on the drive than I had before I started. I’m going to have to buy another 4TB disk for the back-up array and split the back-up into two.

We had the telephone to sort out next. I’d printed out the paperwork last night before going to bed, and my faithful cleaner sallied forth to the mobile ‘phone shop to wait until it opened.

And then she called me on the computer, (which would have been a lot easier for me to answer had I plugged the microphone in) with a pile of technical questions, and the shop assistant wanted to chat to me too. However, in the end all was good and she could leave with my telephone.

Back here, I set about the onerous task of configuring it.

First of all, there’s no SD card. It’s all on the internal memory (of 128GB) so it’s not just a case of swapping over the SD card. It’s possible to clone a new phone with the data and settings of an old one if the operating systems are the same. Not only that, but it involves downloading an app.

First of all then I had to fit the SIM card. And that wasn’t straightforward either but now it works. I downloaded the app onto the old ‘phone and then onto the new one, configured the Bluetooth settings and let it do its business.

Most of the stuff came over so I had to plug the new phone into the computer to copy the remainder over from there. And that wasn’t easy either because not only did I have to configure the ‘phone, I had to configure the computer too. Apparently USB linking isn’t supported on new ‘phones so I had to “persuade” it

Eventually, I could make the connection (and it took hours) and copy them over. But while I could see “my files” in the file manager, the directory that I had created, the ‘phone sounds wouldn’t identify them. Apparently personalising your ‘phone to that extent isn’t officially allowed either, but as you might expect, there’s an app available in the app store which I had to download onto the computer, check it for viruses and then load it onto the ‘phone and set it up.

It’s still not all set up as I would like, but the compass works, and so I identified Spica out of my window, now that “Skymap” is fully operational

Another issue has also arisen that came out of my cleaner’s visit to the telephone supplier. ADSL connection is ending in 2027 and everyone should be on fibre-optic by then (as an aside, I had fibre-optic in Belgium in 1997). However, where I live is in a historic building, part of the Patronym de France – the “French National Treasures” – and we aren’t allowed to deface the building. Knocking holes through the walls for cables is classed as defacing it.

And so I’ve been tracking down how to apply for fibre-optic and once I had a link I mailed everyone in the building of whom I could think, and we’ve all applied. We’ll let France Telecom and the Batiments de France fight it out between them. But we have all agreed, that if Batiments de France refuse to allow the work, we shall take out a procès against them. Internet and ‘phones these days are considered to be as essential as water, electricity and sewage connections.

In between all of that, I’ve been Woodstocking. My 6.5 minutes of notes has now grown to almost 17 minutes and I’m not even a quarter of the way through it yet. I have a feeling that I shall be having a lot of sleepless nights in the near future as I wade through this

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, vegan salad and vegan nuggets followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake and soya dessert, and then it was back in here to carry on and fight the good fight with the new ‘phone, write the notes and do the backing-up.

Now I’ve done all that I intend to do today, especially as it’s no tomorrow. So I’ll do the statistics, the backing-up and go to bed ready to carry on tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of new telephones … "well, one of us is" – ed … I can remember when Zero had her first mobile ‘phone back in the day
The ‘phone rang and she answered it, and was chatting away for about 20 minutes before she hung up
"20 minutes?" said her mother. "That was a short ‘phone call for you. Who was it?"
"I don’t know" replied Zero. "It was a wrong number."

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Thursday 20th March 2025 – A GREAT BIG …

… thanks to Julie the Cook who reunited me with the power cable for the travelling laptop this afternoon. Consequently, it’s all systems go again and I can go back to reading MY NEW BOOK. It’s been a very long few days without any reading matter at mealtime.

However, despite the absence of anything to read and consequently finishing my meals early, it was still a frightfully late night last night, even later than usual. In fact it was after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. What started off as listening to thirty-one and a half minutes or so of NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE – arguably the greatest jamband music track ever recorded, Felix Pappalardi (Cream’s producer and later murdered by his wife) on bass, and things just snowballed from there.

It was freezing during the night too. I forget how many times I awoke shivering in bed. And that’s a shame because having a nice clean bed in which to sleep, thanks to my faithful cleaner, I was hoping to spend many comfortable hours in it, but it wasn’t to be.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and it was a very weary, bedraggled me who staggered to his feet and off into the bathroom for a wash and shave.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And what a lovely surprise! Zero was there last night. I was round at her home. We all decided that we were going to go somewhere so it was a question of piling into the car. I imagined that i’d be sitting in the back seat with her so I was quite looking forward to the trip but when I reached the car she was sitting on the front passenger seat next to her father and I was obviously intended to go to sit on the seat at the back. But her mother and someone else there, they were teasing Zero terribly and I was really disappointed and annoyed to see it. In fact, I said something and finished by saying “at the end of the day, if you are fed up, you can come and sit on the back seat next to me” but I awoke before the dream became interesting.

Castor and even TOTGA may well have fallen off the edge of the nocturnal World but it’s lovely to see Zero again. I wish that she would make more appearances these days in whatever I’m up to during the night. However I shall refrain from mentioning fairies and the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in case my remarks are misconstrued. However, my subconscious is keeping me out of any suggestion of mischief again by keeping us apart. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether all of these nights where my family has intervened just as I am about to Get The Girl isn’t actually my subconscious sending out warning signals to me. It’s usually pretty good like that in real life so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were to do that in the nocturnal World.

At 08:15 I went to prepare myself for the taxi to arrive, in the absence of the nurse, and he appeared out of the woodwork just as I had finished putting on my second sock. So he went home with a flea in his ear.

Now that I’ve been to the opticians, I realise why it is that I didn’t understand where it was. It’s been so long since I’ve been out and about that where the optical clinic is, it was a shop the last time I saw it.

They gave me all kinds of tests, including squirting air into my eyes, and the result is that while my eyesight is not exactly what it should be and glasses could be prescribed if I wanted, they aren’t going to make too much of a difference. That’s good news in a way because I had laser surgery on my eyes in 1997 and whatever they did is still holding up

That was a very interesting situation, that. I was driving my boss back from Luxembourg when a small stone thrown up by a lorry on the other carriageway came through my open window and hit me in the eye. Without thinking, I rubbed it of course.

The cornea was damaged and needed surgery, and because it was an industrial accident the surgery was covered 100%. So just repair the damage, or go the whole hog in both eyes?

After my eyes had healed and I went back to work, the first job was to take the lorry down to Vienna. I really used to get out and about in those days.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr .. apartment I had a late breakfast with still no book as yet, and then came back in here. There wasn’t much time for anything because it was already late and my cleaner came along to fit my patches.

The taxi was early again but there was someone else to pick up and drop off on the way so I wasn’t all that early.

After Julie the Cook found my cable for me, she plugged me in to my machine, and it was back to the old painful moments again.

The dietician came to see me today and asked me about the food that i’m eating. She seems to be surprised at how little I am eating – I thought that I was eating quite a lot. She recommends that as of now I take two disgusting drinks every day because my protein level is falling rapidly.

But having talked at great length about my vegan diet, she asked me "which snack do you take from the trolley in mid-afternoon with your coffee?"
My reply was "which one of them is vegan?"
"Ohh yes"

And I really despair of modern humanity. Who needs a calculator to be able to work out that if you drink about 2 litres of milk a week, roughly how much do you drink per day? And if you eat 600 grammes of bread per week, what’s your daily intake?

After she left I had plenty of things to do, like update the travelling laptop and begin to hack a few very long sound-bytes into some more manageable sizes ready to edit one of these days. I’m trying to cope with all of the work outstanding while I’m at dialysis but it just seems to be making more

Another thing that I did was to have a look through Amazon and see what I would like to have in the kitchen of my new apartment – fittings and the like. I didn’t treat myself to a Christmas or birthday present because I want to spend the money to make my kitchen nice and easy in which to work.

The taxi was waiting to take me (and my travelling laptop power lead) back home and I was here for about 18:45. And then we had a panic because my medical card is not in my wallet where it ought to be. And that’s the trouble. Everything has to have its place and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. I shall have to turn the place upside-down tomorrow.

Tea tonight was the last of my vegan pies with steamed veg. Last week’s veg was something of a disappointment so instead of the microwave steamer I used the electric steamer and that worked so much better.

It’s only a low wattage thing but I used that down on the farm when there was an excess charge in the batteries and it worked really well. I used to have an enamel one that sits on the stove and I made good use of that in winter, but I gave that to Ingrid as a present for helping me pack the van when I moved to Leuven in 2016.

I had my book to read tonight at long last, and we have been discussing Anaximander. He was one of the earliest founders of modern geometry and geography and was one of the earliest people to realise that because of the rotation of the sun, the planets and the stars around the sky, the earth is actually in the centre of the universe with sky all around it rather than being a flat disk with the sky only above it.

However, his theory that the earth was a cylinder with humanity on the flat bit at the top was rather wide of the mark. It was apparent even in those days that the earth was round.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I’m Woodstocking tomorrow and hoping to find my medical card, wherever that may be.

Seeing as we have been talking about Anaximander and his theories … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "how many Londoners does it take to change a lightbulb"
"I don’t know" she replied. "How many does it take?"
"Only one" I replied. "They just hold the lightbulb up and wait for the World to turn around them"

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