Tag Archives: eric hall

Monday 29th July 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely chat this morning.

Round about 10:30 I noticed that Ingrid had come on line. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chat so I ‘phoned her up to find out her latest news.

Like most of us these days, it’s a mixture of good and bad but it’s still nice to keep in touch with each other and exchange our news regardless of what type of news it is

Something else that was nice was to be in bed before 23:00 last night and it’s been a long time since that’s happened. I’d all-but given that idea up as an unrealised ambition, but there we are.

With having prepared the pizza dough and the pizza early, I’d soon eaten it and cleaned up the kitchen (I try to do that every night – I don’t like to wake up to the washing-up), then I came in here to write up my notes.

Everything was all done and dusted by about 22:30 so I just had to undress and roll up my puttees before hitting the hay.

And once again, I didn’t need much rocking. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall I have a little … well, mantra, I suppose, that I follow when I’m in bed to give me an idea of how long it takes to fall asleep. And I haven’t reached the end of it yet, certainly not last night.

Despite everything though, I was awake again at 04:15 for some reason. But there’s no danger whatever of my leaving the bed at that time. I curled up and went back to sleep, and that’s where STRAWBERRY MOOSE found me when the alarm went off.

On my way to the bathroom I took my puttees into the living room. And in that distance, a mere handful of yards, I managed to lose yet another clip for my puttees. I’ve absolutely no idea what’s going on with those. There is no rhyme or reason why they should disappear, and nowhere for them to go.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and change of clothes, washed the clothes that I’d taken off and then put into the bowl the crêpe bandages from the last few days and left them to soak ready to clean tonight.

Back in here again, nursing a thirst that you could photograph, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I’d gone far too by the looks of things. I was miles away on some kind of visit to the hospital. They checked me over and gave me a couple of injections. They gave me a tablet and I began to hallucinate. I had a kind-of hallucinatory dream at that point where I was just seeing all kinds of shapes like speech bubbles that kept appearing and disappearing etc. That went on for several minutes. Someone from the hospital said “doesn’t that feel better than a ponction lombaire or whatever it was, which of course it does but I couldn’t understand what they were doing and what was the significance of it. It just seemed to me to be a series of random tests but there was this kind-of geodesic dome thing in there that was containing all the balls, stopping them all flying everywhere I suppose but it was so big that you couldn’t actually see it. To all intents and purposes there was nothing there doing that. It was all just so surreal.

And that reminds me of the hallucinations that I had when they started me on that anti-potassium powder. Until I’d become used to the stuff I was all over the place. I could honestly have sold that down the back streets of a Paris suburb and made a fortune. And, of course, anything, absolutely anything, is better than a ponction lombaire – except for a ponction thoracic

I was working in the same place as my father. I wanted a couple of days off so I told my boss that I had to take my motorbike in to have some work done on it. I asked for a couple of days off which were granted. When I was off on the first day he sent a mail around saying that he’d recalculated everyone’s holidays and I only had two days left. I couldn’t understand where all my holidays had gone to so the first thing that I did was to go back into the office and cancel the day’s leave for tomorrow. He looked at me and asked “is your motorcycle done?”. I suddenly couldn’t think what he meant but it suddenly hit me and I said “yes, that’s OK”. He wanted to speak to my father but my father was having this intense private conversation about his leave and how many more days he wanted off etc but it was difficult for him to talk with the boss there and difficult for the boss to interrupt and difficult for the boss to comprehend what was happening so I interrupted him again to ask how come I’d only had two days leave left. He began to go through my list of entitlement of my days that I’d taken off already. I could see that there was some kind of mistake but I could see that he wasn’t particularly sure about anything and carried on going through it. I thought that the only thing to do was to wait until he’d finished and if he hadn’t picked up the mistake then I’d pick it up but it was all extremely confusing. I certainly felt that I had a lot more than just two days annual leave left. It was only July and most of my annual leave wasn’t taken off until the last week in August and the first week in September.

We always used to take our holidays the first two weeks of September. The brats would be back at school and out of the way but the weather would still be nice and all of the venues would be open. My last holiday was at the end of September though, in 2022 when I went to Canada. But that was due to force of circumstances

My team was called out to do some work on a road maintenance thing. When we turned up there was equipment everywhere, material everywhere and this road maintenance thing was a right mess of total confusion. We eventually tracked down a couple of guys. They were supposed to be edging off people’s gardens where they were overgrown, their hedges, on the public highway. We asked them how far they’d gone with that they were doing. They replied “nothing” – that was why they had called us out. One of my friends said something and this led to something of a brawl between the two teams. Of course the boss stepped in and stopped it. He said that it was totally ridiculous. He said that we’d come here to do a job and all we needed was some information – how much of the job they had done and how much they hadn’t done. If they tell us, we can start. It seems ridiculous that they’ve contracted for this and called us in as subcontractors because we’re cheap, and just because we’re cheap all we’ll end up doing is brawling amongst ourselves. It’s totally futile. We’ll never have anything done unless someone gets a grip and tells us now “how far have they gone with this job or are we expected to do it all? If so, let’s get on with it”.

Not quite a regular theme, but people making even the most simple task into something that is complicated way beyond belief seems to be the way of the modern World and its inhabitants. But my griping reminds me of Great Western Railway chairman Sir Daniel Gooch at a Railway Inspectorate hearing saying that "it’s high time we threw all these modern safety contraptions into the fire and returned to he business of running railways"

I’d stepped back into that period of dream about the road-mending. We were there doing the job that we were supposed to do when suddenly a bull appeared around the corner and began to charge at all of our equipment and personnel. I’ve no idea where it came from and why it was here but it was an extremely aggressive bull all the same

It beats me why I can step back into a banal nondescript dream like that but whenever I’m with Zero or TOTGA or Castor I can never manage to do so. You would think that after all of these years I’d be able to summon up my female companions at will

There was some time left before the nurse arrived so I began to watch a football match from the weekend – Queens Park v Kelty Hearts. It was interesting to me because after all of these years and complications involving Hampden Park, the stadium known as “Lesser Hampden” at the side of Hampden Park is finally complete and the Spiders, who own Hampden Park and used to play their home games there, now finally have a home that they can truly call their own. And while I won’t ever be able to watch a game there, I was there in spirit virtually this morning.

It’s the nurse’s last day today for a while. He’s off on his holidays. It’s Isabelle for the foreseeable future starting tomorrow so I hope that she’s in a good mood.

The nurse this morning was reasonably happy with everything which was good. Things are so much better when the nurses are cheerful and happy.

After he’d gone I had breakfast. And then I came back in here to watch the football.

This is THE LINK to the game. It’s interesting because firstly, you get to see Little Hampden, and secondly, you’ll see the most one-sided football match that I’ve seen for many a year.

Kelty Hearts were not just bad, they were appalling. They lost the game 6-0 and they were lucky to get nil. Had it not been for the heroics of their ‘keeper and some inept finishing by the Spiders’ forwards, we could have had a cricket score here. Dominic Thomas even blazed a penalty miles over the bar after it had been awarded shortly after the kick-off.

And then Ingrid was there so we had a chat. She told me inter alia that after a spell just now in hospital, there’s nothing more that can be done for her left leg. She’s had to give up all kinds of things, including her beloved walking and cycling

But it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good. Wondering how she was now going to move around, do her shopping etc, a woman in her village mentioned in the middle of a conversation that she was planning on exchanging her car, an elderly but perfectly serviceable Toyota diesel automatic, for a new one.

Of course, if it’s your left leg that will no longer work you can still drive an automatic. And when you find an insurance company that will recognise all of your no-claims discount from your previous car insurance years ago, the rest is, as they say, history.

And so in the near future I might be having another visit. I hope so because I like Ingrid. In fact, I like all my friends and wish that they’d all visit me more often.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent working on radio stuff. The second long radio notes has now been edited, the programme has been assembled, the final track has been chosen and the notes written ready for dictation.

Something else I’ve been doing too is to make a start, or a re-start, should I say, on the notes about my trip to Jersey in 2022. There’s about 100 photos that need editing and the notes writing. The longer I leave them, the harder it will become to do it.

But apart from the two bad falls that I had, that was a really good trip and I wish that I’d gone over there on other occasions instead of leaving it until the last moment when I was at the limit of being able to do it.

To my surprise, I only crashed out for about 20 minutes today. And if that’s not progress I don’t know what is. I hope that I can keep it up.

The cleaner stuck her head in the door to give me some post. I’m summoned again to that hospital in Avranches where I had that dispute. So that’s another phone call to organise.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg. Plenty of stuffing left but I have a cunning plan for that tomorrow. I’m planning a baking afternoon seeing as it looks as if I’ll be running out of bread.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed. Late again, but not all that late. Let’s see how many puttee clips I can lose tonight.

But dreaming about that bull reminds me of a sign that I saw in a field near Ironbridge when we were looking for a place to camp once.
"I let people use this field for free, but the bull may make a charge."

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Sunday 28th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… some excellent pizzas in my time but tonight’s pizza has beaten everything that I have ever made.

At first I thought that it was going to be a total disaster. I’d forgotten to add the oil to the mix and didn’t realise until far too late. As a result, the dough for tonight’s pizza was sticking to my silicon baking mat when I was rolling it out and we had something of a struggle.

But when it came out of the oven the base had fluffed up really well and was extremely light. Consequently it cooked even better than usual and if I could make pizzas like this all the time I’d be more than satisfied

Something else that I want to mention is to go back to something that I said a week or so ago about part-time teams playing full-time teams

This morning I was watching Aberdeen, full-time professionals of the Scottish Premier Division v Dumbarton, a part-time team promoted to the third from the fourth tier at the close season.

The first half was pretty even, finishing 0-0 at the break. Immediately from the restart (and I do mean “immediately”) before Dumbarton had come up to speed, they conceded 2 goals.

The score was 3-0 to Aberdeen with just 6 minutes to go, but it finished 6-0, as Dumbarton ran completely out of steam at the end and Aberdeen put them to the sword. It was a perfect example of what I had been saying, and I’m convinced that I’m correct.

Last night I ran out of steam quite late as it happened. Not that I’m complaining though because I dictated a pile of stuff for the radio and I’m catching up rapidly with the backlog, which suits me fine. I now have a pile of stuff ready for editing, which is good news as it will keep me out of mischief for a while.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. I was soon asleep and stayed that way for quite a while.

It was about 06:45 when I awoke but there was no danger of my leaving the bed at that time of day. It’s Sunday and a lie-in, although the days when I could lie in until midday and later are long-gone thanks to the visit of the nurse.

At 08:00 when the alarm went off I fell out of bed and began to organise myself.

And I seem to have lost another clip for my puttees. I’m convinced beyond all doubt that I picked up two in here but when I arrived in the living room I only had one and I’ve no idea where the other one has gone, despite a thorough search. In the end I had to raid the stores for another.

But it beats me how stuff can go missing in here. There’s quite simply nowhere for it to go where it can be missed or lost.

And of course the nurse was early today. I was only half-washed and half-dressed and I had something of panic-stricken five minutes to prepare myself while he was round at my neighbour’s

He seems to think that the wound in my arm has healed so well that in a week or so I won’t need the plaster. But he can have another think about that. I’ve no idea what they did, I don’t want to know and I don’t want to see it.

Yes – when they finally come to try to plug me in we’re going to have a panic attack like we’ve never had before, but that’s a bridge that we’ll cross when we come to it.

After he left I had a very leisurely breakfast and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There was a girl being interviewed on the radio about relationships with her boyfriend. She was regretting that her boyfriend was not the romantic type and recounted an episode where they had once come to some kind of big puddle in their path. While they were debating what to do, a passer-by came past, picked her up and carried her across the puddle and put her on the other side. She said that it was a shame that her boyfriend had never done anything like that. A few weeks later they found a big puddle in their path. He promptly agreed to pick her up to carry her. He stepped into the puddle but it was an extremely deep one that went up to his waist and he was stranded in there with his girlfriend. It just never worked out romantically as it ought to.

That’s a situation with which I can relate. Nothing seems ever to work out the way that I want it to either and it all inevitably ends up pear-shaped. I reached a stage a long time ago where I’d just let nature take its course and so much the better because then there’s far less to worry about. Some people seem to have a natural flair for this sort of thing, but someone somewhere has been given my share as well, I think.

And then I had the football. Stranraer weren’t playing this weekend so I had to look somewhere else for a game, and came across Aberdeen v Dumbarton, as I mentioned.

With a Premier Division team playing at home against a third-tier side there was only ever going to be one winner, but Dumbarton gave their hosts a fright, having the ball in the net after just a couple of minutes, only for it to be ruled out for offside

It took Aberdeen a while but once they were up to speed the inevitable rampage began.

After the game had finished I began to edit the notes that I’d dictated. The notes for the three additional tracks to make three complete programmes were completed first. They are all dealt with and assembled

At this point I broke off and made myself a salad sandwich for lunch, completely forgetting that I have this mushroom soup to make. Ahh well ….

For the first part of the afternoon I had one of the longer radio programmes to edit. That’s all done and the programme has been assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and the notes written awaiting dictation which will happen on Saturday night if nothing else happens to disrupt my plans.

Round about 16:00 I couldn’t decide whether to go to sleep or go for my hot chocolate. I chose the latter which was a good decision.

And then I had pizza dough to make as I’ve run out. As I mentioned earlier I forgot the oil but not to worry – the pizza dough rose like a lift.

Two balls are in the freezer and the third was used for tea tonight and as I said, it was the best pizza that I have ever made.

And so on that note I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight this week. Considering that Sunday is a Day f Rest when I don’t ever work, I have put my back into it today and accomplished a great deal. I ought to have a Day of Rest more often
It makes a change from when I rang up my boss and told him that I wasn’t coming into work today
"What’s the matter?" he asked
"I”m having a vision issue right now" I replied
"What’s wrong with your vision?" he asked
"I just can’t see myself working today" I replied.

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Saturday 27th July 2024 – HAVING HAD A COUPLE …

… of days where I haven’t crashed out at all, or nearly so, during the day, I made up for it today.

It wasn’t quite as bad as last Saturday where I spent all afternoon crashed out until teatime, but it wasn’t far off.

That’s quite a disappointment, as I’m sure that you can imagine. I thought that I was getting over this spell of dramatic tiredness, but apparently not. I’ll just have to keep on plugging away and hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll find a solution.

It’s not as if I was particularly late in bed.

It wasn’t 23:00, that’s for sure, but it was near enough to make no difference, and I slept right through until … errr … 04:15.

No danger of my leaving the bed at that time though. I curled up under the quilt and went back to sleep until the alarm went off at 07:00.

The ‘phone was plugged into the computer, charging up, so it was a scramble across the bedroom to switch it off when it rang. And then it was an ungainly stagger into the bathroom.

After I’d washed I had to sort out the puttees. Moaning Minnie had wanted them washing so they had been soaking overnight. This morning I gave them a good hand-washing and hung them in the bathroom to dry.

There already was a pair that I’d washed a few days ago so I took those down and rolled them up ready for use today.

Next job was to tidy up the LeClerc shopping bags that are all over the place and put them one inside another. There’s a consigne or “deposit” of €0:20 per bag that I receive back when I turn the bags in to the deliverer on his next trip so I don’t want to lose or damage them.

There was time then to come in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My father was working for a company in transport again. In the garage they had an old, disreputable type of van-thing that they used to go out to breakdowns on. It was always my father and his friend who went. I noticed that my father was becoming rather sullen and sulky so I asked him why. It turns out that he’d had a row with his partner at work. The guy was being difficult about putting on his seatbelt. Anyway the next day the two of us were out in this old van. I was trying to make the seatbelt fasten but it didn’t work and it left an oily stain on my clothes. My father said that now his friend had stated quite flatly and frankly that he’s no longer putting on his seatbelt under any circumstances and that had rather soured their relationship. We were talking about it and trying to find other things for my father to do in his spare time. He did some taxi driving at one point but said that with his friend being difficult now and he drives for another company and has friends here and there, my father is going to have to stop driving as my father doesn’t want any unpleasantness if he confronts any of these people while they are out doing the evening taxi driving so we were having to think of other things that my father could do to pass the time.

At my father’s place they had a series of big Mercedes vans and he and his colleagues were off all over the UK sorting out breakdowns on the lorries, all mostly old Foden and ERF glass-fibre cab stuff. Anything else would fall apart in weeks due to the effects of the salt, but they and their contractors had Fodens that were 20-odd years old and still doing a heavy day’s work. Nothing luxurious about them at all but they would go for ever

But it looks as if my family’s intervention in my night-time travels will go on for ever. It beats me why this would be the case. During the day I don’t think about them at all yet here they are. On the other hand, I can think about Zero, Castor and TOTGA all I like but do they put in an appearance in my dreams? I should be so lucky.

Later on, I was called out for my bad singing by a group of readers of a Scottish rock magazine so I thought that I’d better do something to defend myself. I began to debate whether to announce to the world the fact that I’m suffering from this illness, whether it would be a good idea and what would be the consequences if I did, going on a circuit of concerts to reassure the fans was hardly the correct thing to do if I’m going to claim to be too ill to sing properly so I’ll have to think very carefully about what to do to restore my popularity with my rock fans in Scotland.

This dream is actually an allegory. It relates to an incident involving Scotland that took place in 2007-2008 and from which certain issues are still reverberating around even today, with one or two unfortunate and unwilling victims swept up in the chaos. Still, that’s a pretty good description of real life. There are innocent victims swept up in the chaos of everyone’s story. And as for my singing, well, the less said about that the better.

The nurse was going to wash my feet today so I had to have everything ready, including a clean towel and flannel. He had a moan about the towel not being clean enough, but that’s as clean as it gets with my washing machine.

He has a point of course, and I can see it. If I catch an infection, he’ll be blamed regardless of what he has done, so he needs to cover himself. But it’s still quite depressing all the same.

The puttees weren’t particularly clean either, despite the good wash that this set had had at the beginning of the week, but he bit his tongue about them.

After he left I made myself some breakfast and read for a while my book on the siting of churches in Medieval times. We’re onto an interesting chapter about burials where a chariot and horse, and presumably a charioteer or two, were interred with the deceased. It’s all good stuff.

Later on, after a very slow start to the day, I began to think about this radio programme.

It’ll take place early – very early – in the New Year and it has a certain theme, but that’s as far as I’d gone with it. Today, I set about choosing the music.

As usual, after my efforts yesterday, I have far too much. It would be much easier if I only had a dozen, but today I had to pick 10 – or 8 longer ones – from a selection of at least 21. Anyway, eventually, after being away with the fairies for a couple of hours I have 8 sorted out plus a reserve supply of a couple in case I need them.

Once I’d organised this much I set down to think about what I’m going to write. And I made a little stat when Rosemary rang me up for a chat, which was nice. I can’t go working all the time.

This was just a short chat this time – a mere hour and eleven minutes.

But I teased her by saying that she’s becoming a crazy cat lady. Not only is she regaling me with tales of Myrtille’s latest activities, she’s also told me that Myrtille is bringing a friend round, a scrawny, half-starved black and white cat.

Anyone who knows anything at all about cats will know that there is nothing surprising about any of this. It won’t be long before Rosemary has half a dozen cats winding their bodies around her legs.

Tea tonight was one of my lovely breaded quorn fillets with salad and baked potato. My air fryer is doing a great job but I’m sure that it can do much, much more than I’m doing with it.

That’s something that I’ll be doing when I move downstairs – having a decent oven, a decent microwave and plenty of space to work. And I can’t wait. This 10 months will seem like 10 years.

In a mad fit of enthusiasm I even found the time to dictate a huge pile of arrears for the radio notes. I’ll start editing those tomorrow after I’ve watched the highlights of today’s football matches. I’m now up to February next year which is where I want to be

It’s the Olympics here in France now, and nothing can be further from my mind than that. But we’ve had a team of Olympic athletes being shown around the old walled town today and they came by here. My cleaner told me to go to the window to look.

Whoever they were, they were dressed all in blue track suit stuff but I didn’t recognise anything. I don’t have a clue who they were.

But it did remind me of an incident at the 1986 European Championships at Stuttgart where Fatima Whitbread won the Gold for Britain in the Pentathlon with an absolutely magnificent throw of the javelin that broke all records and even cleared the safety fence at the far end of the stadium
Ten minutes later, the news was announced, followed by "and the gold medal in javelin-catching has been awarded to Herr Heinz Schmidt, who was walking his dog in the park in the background".
Ten minutes later there was another announcement. "Please cancel that last message. Unfortunately, there is no provision in the rules of the European Championships for medals to be awarded posthumously."

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Friday 26th July 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… 2 kilos of carrots washed, cleaned, peeled diced blanched and draining ready to go in the freezer.

It’s a good job that I made some room in there. But when 2ks of carrots are cheaper than 1kg it makes sense to buy the bulk offering.

The freezer will be full of carrots and I’ll have them coming out of my ears but I’m not going to turn down an offer like this.

It’s possible to buy frozen carrots of course but I find that they are pumped too full of water, go soggy and taste like damp cardboard when they are cooked. It’s much nicer to freeze my own.

They aren’t the only vegetables that I freeze. Brussels sprouts and broccoli are regular candidates. And I’d freeze a lot more if I had the capacity.

It’s not just the vegetables that are freezing. I’m freezing too. In fact, I’ve put on a jacket as I’m typing because it’s perishing. What the hell happened to summer?

It was cold last night, but not as cold as thins. Cold enough though for me to be in a hurry to go to bed and although it was after 23:00, it wasn’t after 23:00 by much

And once again I was soon asleep, and slept right the way through to all of … errr … 04:15. After that it was a night, or rather, a morning of tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off I was doing something around Leicester – I’m not exactly sure what. I was in a bedroom with a load of bunk beds in it like in the military or something like that but I can’t remember now exactly what I was doing. Of course when the alarm went off I forgot absolutely everything except these little pictures and images that I’d managed to keep.

That was what I dictated anyway and it probably means something to someone, but not to me. The only time I ever made it to Leicester was with Shearings on a feeder.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and brush up, but cut myself shaving (or, rather, reopened the cut from the previous time). Consequently I was bleeding everywhere for most of the morning, making more of a mess.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where else I’d been during the night. There was something to do with a football match. A player had to be brought onto the field after about 67 minutes. He needed taking to the stadium and the only person there was someone’s father who could do it. However he was a pretty bad driver so the footballer wasn’t interested in going with him at all. They had to use all kinds of persuasive powers to have him step into that car at the appropriate time as well as using all kinds of threats and violence against the other player in the defence to make sure that he did the job correctly without any obstructions or hindrance. But it was a nerve-wracking time to have these substitutes organised when they weren’t even in the stadium and the match was well under way.

That’s all pretty meaningless nonsense too. But it all underlines the fact that Zero never ever came back after that night a week or so ago and that TOTGA and Castor seem to have gone for ever. They haven’t been around for ages.

And that’s sad – my three favourite young ladies deserting me like this. It seems that everyone these days is voting with his feet.

So bleeding profusely from the upper lip and the nurse gave me the injection of Binocrit to thin my blood. That makes a lot of sense. And he had a good moan again this morning about the state of my puttees. They were washed only two or three days ago but he thinks that they should be washed every day.

But he’s had that. As if I have the time to be doing stuff like that. I have more than enough other things to do.

Like eat breakfast of course, which I did immediately after he left, with fresh toast cut from the loaf that I made yesterday. And my medication, including the Kardegic to thin my blood out even more, so as to keep up the bleeding from my upper lip.

After breakfast I had a play around with my shopping order, completing that and sending it off. They had the olive oil in again so I ordered another bottle. That’s three bottles that I have in stock now, but sometimes it’s hard to find and I have to buy the full-price stuff. There’s a ton of difference in price between a proprietary brand and LeClerc’s own..

All they were short of was mushrooms. No 250 gramme punnets but they had 500 grammes ones so I bought one of those and I’ll have a mushroom soup with the extra mushrooms tomorrow for lunch

While we’re on the subject of lunch … "well, one of us is" – ed … after I’d sent off my order I went for lunch, and had one of these chocolate bread things that I made yesterday.

The taste and texture is certainly different, but it’s not disagreeable.

So –
Boil up 400 ml of water
Keep it bubbling on a low heat and add 35 grammes of cocoa powder and mix well in.
When it’s mixed well in, take off the heat
add
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
25ml oil
150 grammes flour
mix it all up very well, put in a large bowl to cool.

While it’s cooling –
in an smaller bowl start with 80ml warm water
5 grammes yeast
20 grammes sugar
Dissolve it all together

when it’s dissolved properly, add it all to the larger bowl
add 200 grammes flour

Mix it all up together as if you were making bread.
Cover and leave for 40 minutes

then divide into 10 and make into balls
leave another 15 minutes
Then bake 180°C for 30 minutes
dust with icing sugar.

They you’ll have the strangest bread rolls you’re ever likely to have, but you won’t be disappointed.

This afternoon I’ve been radioing. Having put my Hawkfest out of the way and preparing for a live album concert, there’s a special programme that I want to do in between all of this.

At the start of the year next year it will be the birthday of someone who is not at first glance associated with rock music but has inspired a whole generation of kids, and many musicians took their inspiration from him.

There are a great many rock and folk tracks that contain either outright or otherwise more subtle tributes to him and his creations so this afternoon I’ve been tracking them down.

Not just the songs either but the details and the quotes from the musicians.

So I’m going to be working on this special radio programme next, fitting it around the preparation of the normal run of programmes. I have to keep cracking on regardless with those.

My cleaner was here this afternoon cleaning up and we had a really good chat. And then the LeClerc delivery guy came with my order so I had to knuckle down and do some work for a change. I’ve still not put everything away yet.

Tea was a vegan salad with chips from the air fryer with some of these vegan nugget things, now that I’ve bought some more.

And having written my notes, I’m now off to bed.

But talking of the radio, earlier in the year we had a snowstorm here so we made a public service announcement "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the even-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
The next day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the odd-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
On the third day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car ….. " and there was a power cut
"Drat" said one guy. "I don’t know where to leave the car today."
After thinking for a while his wife replied "I suppose we’d better leave it in the garage then"

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Thursday 25th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision.

And for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one that you make where if it all goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

My decision is that I am not taking off my puttees until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed ready to climb in last thing at night.

Especially after last night where I was sitting in a pool of blood for ages trying to stop the flow that was pouring out of the hole in my leg. My blood is so thin with this Kardegic powder and this Binocrit injection that it pours out non-stop without even an attempt at slowing down.

The idea with thinning out my blood is to make it easier for my heart to lift it but like anything else, solving one problem created a bucket-load of others and we just go round and round in circles. Do I have a heart attack or do I bleed to death?

So there was I trying to slap on plasters and in the end it was one of the big ones that the nurse uses. Not that it stopped it very much, but it stopped it enough that I could crawl into bed.

Glad I was to be in there too, late as it might have been. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

At about 06:15 I awoke but ended up going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I was disorientated at 06:15 but that was nothing to how I felt at 07:00. It took me several minutes to gather my wits which, seeing how few wits I have these days, took longer than it ought to have done.

First thing was to inspect the damage. And the place was in rather a mess after last night, and so were my clothes and slippers. So after washing me, I washed everything else

Eventually I made it back in here and I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’d been on a shopping trip. On the way there in the car I was listening to a radio programme about mistreated children. They were talking about children who had been abandoned and placed in foster homes, how their parents had made all the wrong decisions, like their whole houses were furnished by IKEA, all this kind of thing. It had been bad money management that had put these families into difficulties. The conversation went on to talk about children who had no possessions and were never allowed to do anything. They thought “what kind of life did these children have to live? How awful it was”. They were busy discussing this. In the meantime I’d turned up at this shop in Crewe at the Market Precinct place. I hadn’t actually bought anything but I’d walked through and was going happily outside. It started to talk about people who had gone to the aid of these children even in adult life. I thought of Percy Penguin of course but I must have been totally distracted because just after leaving the shop I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought “God what have I done now?”. It was the manager of the shop, very apologetic, saying that I’d been charged £15:00 too much. I wasn’t sure how that was possible because I hadn’t been near a till and I’d not actually bought anything at all. However I was interested to see what his story was so I followed him back into the store and up to one of the cash points where I thought tha we’d be able to sort out any problem.

Once more, I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I’m not likely to be going round the Market Precinct Shopping Centre in Crewe any time soon, that’s for sure. I can’t really tie that in with anything else but as for the story about mistreated children, we all have our own tales to tell. I’m totally convinced that this idea of a happy home with happy parents and 2.4 children and 1.8 cars is nothing but a total myth and exists nowhere except in the minds of people who shoot margarine adverts for television.

The nurse was dismayed that I’d used one of “his” plasters on this bleeding. And he was even more dismayed to find that the leg started to bleed as soon as he ripped off the plaster so he had to use an extra one this morning. It’s not his day, is it?

But he managed to clean off the dried blood on my leg that I couldn’t reach. I really am in a right state, aren’t I?

After he left, I had breakfast with the last of the bread and then a leisurely start to the day. I wasn’t in any great hurry, which seems to be the story of my life right now.

Once I’d wound myself up, I paired off the music for the next radio programme and segued the pairs, and then carried on writing the notes. And by mid-afternoon I’d finished them all. That included stopping for lunch at some point in the proceedings.

With no bread left, I decided that I’d make some more this afternoon. But I’d also seen a strange recipe for making a kind-of chocolate bread, or maybe chocolate muffins with yeast. For want of anything better to do, I thought that I’d give it a try.

The bread was quite easy to make of course but this chocolate stuff was bizarre. It’s rather like an oil cake but with water and only a small amount of oil, and then with added yeast.

My home-made loaf of bread was perfection itself but these chocolate bun things are, well, interesting. It’ll be a few days before I tell you what they are like because they are planned as a replacement for my flapjacks, the supply of which is temporarily exhausted, so I won’t get to them until Monday or Tuesday.

But they certainly look as if they might be nice

Tea tonight was delicious. I need to make space in my freezer so I had some of my lasagne with steamed veg in a cheese sauce. My vegan lasagne definitely worked and I was impressed with that, almost as much as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

So that’s everything for today. I’m going to unwind my puttees and then go to bed. Tomorrow morning I must send an order to LeClerc. I don’t need much but it still needs to be sent

But talking about home-made bread, when Liz, Zero and a few others of us went to Chester Zoo all those years ago, we saw a loaf of bread in one of the cages.
And so we asked one of the keepers "why is that loaf there in that cage?"
"It’s quite Ok sir" he replied. "It’s bread in captivity"

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Wednesday 24th July 2024 – MY LITTLE COMMENT …

… yesterday about the “Evening Sentinel” awoke a few memories.

Going back 60 years, the bus that ran between leek and Hanley on the outbound journey used to drive without stopping, past hordes of potential passengers

There were regular complaints about this and on one occasion it was brought up in a meeting of the City Council.

Being questioned on the issue, the Councillor in charge of the City’s transport, Arthur Chollerton, replied "but if the bus stopped for the passengers it would disrupt the timetable!"

70 Years ago, you could imagine the kind of scathing comment that a remark like that would have attracted in a leading local newspaper with a wide circulation.

Eighteen months ago, they re-opened a new railway line in Devon. However, they only re-opened some of the previous railway stations, despite a considerable demand for hem all to be re-opened and even some new ones built.

Se despite the fact that there were passengers ready and waiting to be carried by the train, they were being left behind.

When asked why, the result that I received was that "we couldn’t fit those stations into the timetable"

It seems that the satire of the previous couple of generations is becoming the reality of the current one, and consequently I am waiting for the day that strange women living in ponds distributing swords becomes an acceptable way of choosing your leader.

Let’s face it, compared with a system that chose Johnson, Truss, May and Trump, it can’t be any worse.

But going back to trains in Devon not stopping, one day someone will tell the train-operating companies that if the trains didn’t stop at all for passengers and ran light between different termini they would have a much better chance of keeping to time.

And once they realise that, we’re all snookered.

But to give you a better example of how screwed-up railways in the UK are, there’s a railway station at the back of Coventry City’s football ground.

At the final whistle the platform is swamped with fans trying to catch a train back to town and the train is overwhelmed. The railway company’s response – “let’s not have the train stopping there after the game. The fans can go on the bus”

Of course, why should the railway company care about passengers? It makes its money from the subsidies off the taxpayer so it couldn’t care less whether there are passengers or not.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was another late night when I ended up going to bed long after 23:00. But nothing new there. It seems to be the current trend, to go to bed later and later.

But once more, once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking at all and once I was asleep I stayed asleep, right the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00. and it’s been a long time since that’s happened.

When the alarm went off I was being involved in the situation at Sparta Prague where they were having to be relegated for a certain reason. They’d just made a 0-0 draw with a Polish team in the European Cup but something had obviously gone wrong and I was in the middle of trying to sort it out and untangle it when the alarm went off.

Don’t ask me what I’d be doing with Sparta Prague because they haven’t come up in any conversation any time. As for “a Polish Team”, Caernarfon are to play against Legia Warzawa in the next round of the Europa League

So having had a good wash and transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as they were, I waited for the nurse to arrive.

When he turned up he saw to m legs and then attended to my arm. Even though it hurts and is quite tender, he didn’t have anything to say about its condition. So no news is good news as far as I’m concerned.

After he left I had my breakfast and then Liz came on line so we had a chat. And it was a Rosemaryesque chat too, that went on for one hour and twenty minutes. But it was different in that we actually had a lot to discuss. It wasn’t just an aimless, meandering chat.

So having sorted out a few things Liz wandered off for a coffee and I started work.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is to download and reformat a couple of concerts from a Canadian group called “Black Mountain” (thanks, Amber). They featured at a Hawkfest a while back and they recorded a live concert for German television

Despite everything, I’m trying to add to my repertoire of concerts and other live recordings, and I’m trying to encourage other artists to send me recordings of their concerts. It’s my aim to broadcast them on the radio on the anniversary of their taking place.

There’s still a lot of good music out there somewhere but it is difficult to find.

And then I’ve been choosing music for another radio programme and have even begun to write up the notes. Let’s crack on while I still can.

My cleaner came round today and we had a good chat. I’d actually finished my tac return so I gave it to her to post next time she’s at the Post Office. She also told me something about what is (or isn’t) happening downstairs and which confirms a suspicion that I’ve had for a while.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan, and the naan was perfection itself. I seem to have found the knack of making those now which is quite satisfying.

So now I’m off to bed, later than expected. I scratched my leg earlier and you wouldn’t believe the amount of blood that went everywhere. I’ve had to plaster myself up and wash the floor of the office round by where I sit.

My leg is still bleeding now, about an hour after it started. But with the blood being so thin what do you expect?

It does remind me of the time a short-tempered doctor and a nurse with only an imperfect grasp of English went to see the patient in the next bed to me who had come in from a road accident.
"The patient, nurse. How is he?"
"Him footballer at Crewe Alexandra" replied the nurse. "Him bleeding terrible"
"Never mind his qualifications" roared the doctor "How’s his condition?"

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Tuesday 23rd July 2024 – THESE LATE NIGHTS …

… and early mornings are slowly beginning to catch up with me.

After all, I can’t keep on going to bed at midnight and getting up at … gulp … 06:15 night after night and morning after morning without something giving in the middle.

This evening I should have been searching for an anonymous VPN somewhere to which I could have connected the computer so that I could have watched Ferencvaros v TNS but I was simply too tired to concentrate on what I was doing.

That’s a shame because in order to enable me to do it I’d rushed through the evening’s chores and had tea prepared and cooked on the tray ready to eat all within 28 minutes flat and if that’s not a record in recent times, I don’t know what is.

Actually, it wasn’t midnight when I went to bed last night. It might not actually have been 23:00 but it was a much more reasonable time nevertheless

And I was asleep quite quickly too. I don’t seem to need much rocking these days once STRAWBERRY MOOSE has tucked me up and read the bedtime story

However, I was awake yet again at some kind of silly hour. By 06:15 I’d given up any thought of going back to sleep and was actually up and about yet again.

After I’d had a wash and a shave I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And what I dictated, verbatim, was Round about the early part of the morning I awoke from quite a deep sleep. A picture rolled into my mind that I needed to go to hospital to have my bandage re-fixed because it had slipped. However the district nurse managed to make it look a little better. When I went to hospital the first thing that they did was to ask me about the dressing so I explained what was happening about it so they set to to undo it to have a closer look. They had actually taken all of the bandage off before I was able to turn round on my heels all the way to the (… fell asleep here …)
So whatever is the significance of all that, I don’t know.

Next task was to write a letter.

Well, it wasn’t actually. It was to track down the siège social or “registered office” of a certain company and the name of its Director General. And then to write a letter.

It concerns the affairs at this hospital last week. I’ve decided to fight the good fight at the top of the tree by writing not to the hospital but to the Director General of the company.

Not that it will do much good. I don’t expect any results or anything at all to change, but seeing as I don’t have a spleen to vent these days, I have to find other ways of expressing my displeasure

The nurse was in a rush this morning. He gave me my injection, dealt with my legs and that was basically it. He didn’t hang around much at all.

But I wish that he’d put things away when he’s finished with them. My life is totally chaotic and disorganised and the only way that I can cope is by having a place for everything and everything in its place.

If something isn’t where it’s supposed to be or where I expect it to be, then I’m sunk. I can fall into some enormous depths of chaos totally on my own without any help from anyone else.

After he left I had a leisurely breakfast and then came in here for a nice, slow start to the day.

There’s been some good news this morning, which is nice, because as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

The recorded devilry letter to my tenant telling her that the lease isn’t to be renewed has been delivered and the receipt returned to the agent. And so it’s official that, barring any last-minute hiccups, I shall take possession in about 10 months time.

Mind you, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip. “Never be sure of the bird on your plate until you have your fork stuck in it”. I’ll believe all of this when I’m actually unlocking the front door with the genuine set of keys.

Although I feel bad about ending someone’s tenancy, it has to be said that firstly, if a property is offered for sale it has to be offered first to the sitting tenant. It’s changed hands twice since she’s been in there so she’s had two chances to buy it.

Secondly, this apartment in which I’m sitting right now is more-or-less identical to the one downstairs, apart from the 25 Steps it takes to climb up to it, and I have offered to swap accommodation so that she can move in here, but she’s turned down that opportunity

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I carried on with where I’d left off with the notes for the final radio programme that I dictated on Saturday night.

That’s all done now, the programme is prepared, the final track has been chosen and the notes for that written ready to dictate on Saturday night.

It took me long enough but I wasn’t in a hurry, and besides, I had a little … errrr … relax here and there while I was doing it.

Making tea tonight was a mad scramble to be ready in time for kick-off. Nevertheless my rice and taco roll were cooked to perfection and were delicious. But I couldn’t concentrate on trying to configure the computer for the football.

However we did end up with a football match, and what a match it was.

One of the biggest rivalries in football is in Ireland between Dundalk and Drogheda. Drogheda are bottom of the table, having been soundly beaten by Dundalk a short while ago in a match that triggered off all kinds of nonsense reminiscent of the worst days of the 1970s

And so we had the Irish Cup, where Drogheda were at home to … errr … Dundalk.

With a whole town itching for revenge in a packed cauldron of a stadium with an atmosphere you could cut with a knife this game was played at 100 miles per hour and ended with Drogheda having their revenge, winning 2-1.

The Dundalk fans were contained within the stadium by an enormous force of police until long after the Drogheda fans had dispersed and so the worst excesses of the previous match were avoided.

Which was a shame because it’s much more exciting when most of the action takes place on the terraces. We all need more passion in our lives. I know that I do.

There was something else that I saw earlier this afternoon that reminded me of the 1970s.

This modern habit of “playing the ball out of defence” that has led to more loss of possession and more goals conceded than I could ever imagine has been getting on my nerves this last couple of years.

But this afternoon I watched the highlights of a Scottish Cup game between Spartans and Bonnyrigg Rose where we had two goalkeepers really travelling back in time, launching enormous clearances out of their own penalty area into the opponents’ penalty area.

Modern players have forgotten, or never learned, how to deal with this kind of tactic and there was all kinds of chaos going on at the back. Nothing wrong with a return to the good old days of 6’5″ Ross Jack of Crystal Palace leading the line against battle-hardened centre-halves like Ian Ure and Gordon McQueen

So on that note I’m off to bed. It’s too dark for any more football anyway.

But that reminds me of the time Port Vale moved to their new ground at Burslem in the mid-1950s and they had their floodlights installed – one of the first grounds in England to have floodlights.
They wanted to have some sort of showcase occasion to celebrate the switching-on of their new floodlights and, according to the headlines in next day’s Evening Sentinel "Neighbours Stoke City did the honours with a match"

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Monday 22nd July 2024 – I HAVE NO IDEA …

… what on earth is going on right now with my flaming body.

It’s quite obvious that whatever time I decide to go to bed, it’s making no difference whatsoever.

For example, last night I FINALLY made it into bed at something like a reasonable time

However, I was wide awake at 05:15 (not OUT OF MY BRAIN ON THE TRAIN unfortunately) and up and about at 05:45, long before the alarm went off at 07:00.

You really can’t make up a story quite like this.

To complicate matters further, although I did crash out this afternoon at one point, it was for just about 20 minutes or so, not several hours like on Saturday.

So I dunno. But I wish that I did.

Last night I’m not quite sure what happened either because for some reason or other I’d finished everything that I’d needed to finish by 22:10 and that’s certainly a new departure for me. As a result, I had a leisurely stroll through the evening and at 23:00 I was already tucked up in bed with STRAWBERRY MOOSE

It didn’t take me long to drop off to sleep either which was also nice. But regrettably, I was soon awake again, as I mentioned earlier.

There’s no point lying in bed tossing and turning and being unable to sleep. I may as well be sitting on my chair unable to sleep watching Clyde stuff five goals past a hapless Edinburgh City at Meadowbank. That’s not exactly productive either but with a mug of instant coffee for a change, it was rather nice.

At the final whistle I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was working in a design bureau, working on some kind of design for a hovercraft. We’d had some kind of office party the previous evening and everyone had had quite a lot to drink and it had all passed off really well. This afternoon they sent me to tidy up. I began to collect up bits of drinks etc and taking them downstairs for people to finish off. Someone noticed that there was a bottle missing. It was the Nuits St George wine that someone had brought. I said “if it’s that ‘Jeux Sans Frontières’ stuff I didn’t bring that down because it was pretty awful rubbish” and everyone agreed with me. They all wanted to know what was happening with a bottle of Special Brew lager that I’d brought down. I discreetly, but with a bit of a show to give them a bit of a laugh, smuggled that up to my desk. One of the girls there looked at one of her colleagues and said "that ought to make his hovercraft go a little faster".

Apart from the fact that it’s been over 30 years since I last drank any alcohol and it will be another 30 years at least before the next one, working in a design bureau on a hovercraft is yet another string to my rather comprehensive night-time bow. But anyone who knows anything at all about me will know that it’s a total waste of everyone’s time expecting me to tidy up anything anywhere, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall

I’m not sure if I’ve dictated this … "you didn’t" – ed … but we had some kind of office meeting that ended up as a football match between two teams. It was quite fiercely contested but at the end it was a 2-2 draw. While this had been going on there had been some tidying up in the office. Someone found some files that should not have been there – they should have been filed away in the ‘distrained’ for years. They’d been extracted from the main run and were waiting to be taken downstairs to the storeroom. While I was there I volunteered to go to do that. That caused a few raised eyebrows because there was a Government propaganda film on at that time too that we had to watch. Downstairs, I found that all the cupboards had been locked and, even worse, the handles had been taken away so that you couldn’t open the door (… fell asleep here …) it was some kind of murderer

And putting things away too? I don’t understand this, just as I don’t understand the significance of the final couple of words. I’ve obviously missed something somewhere.

(I found myself dictating into my hand again). I needed some work doing. A company came and gave me a quote but they needed to record my bank account details it wasn’t possible to do so I told them to make a charge of £5:00 and I’d pay it with my credit card. That way the card details would be entered on the file and they’d be there ready for use. On the final invoice, make a deduction for the £5:00 that I’d paid at the start. That way everything would be all nicely arranged. They’d have all of my details on the file anyway which I thought was an easy way of resolving the situation but for some reason they wanted to make it much more complicated than it ought to have been for this question of the £5:00 and the question of the bank account details.

The simplest solutions are quite often the best, but sometimes they seem to be the most complicated for some people. But in this respect, I suppose I ought to begin thinking about the work that I need doing on the apartment downstairs, like the bath ripping out and a walk-in shower installing. Only about 10 months and if the agents have done their job, I can move in.

When the nurse came round he organised me quite quickly which was difficult because there was a lot to do. He thinks that this wound in my arm is weeping blood but it’s clean and not going septic so there’s no cause to worry.

However, I suppose that that’s why the hospital wants it checked every couple of days.

On that subject, there’s going to be some kind of “issue” tomorrow. I’ve had a letter inviting me for an appointment wit ths surgeon – at that private hospital. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have vowed never to put a single foot on the premises of that maudit établissement ever again.

So tomorrow I’m going to ring him up to tell him, and to tell him why. Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me.

After the nurse left I had breakfast and then a leisurely start to the day.

Once I’d awoken properly I made a start on the fourth of the five lots of dictation that I did on Saturday night. That’s now completely edited, the programme is assembled, the final track is chosen and the notes for it written, awaiting dictation.

And then I waded into the fifth one and that’s over halfway through. Hopefully I can finish that by tomorrow lunchtime and I can get on with other things. I have something in mind for this week that’s quite exciting.

My cleaner stuck her head in here to drop off the letter from the hospital and for a chat. She seems to be quite cheerful and perky today which is good news.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg. And I think that at some point this week I may have to send off a food order. supplies are holding up but you can never allow yourself to run short when you are in no position yourself to go and stock up.

So let’s see if I can have a decent sleep tonight and a nice lie-in tomorrow morning

Not much chance of that though. I’ll have to keep on bashing away at this until I move downstairs. And then I’m going to buy the biggest microwave oven that I can find.
… "why would you want to do that?" – ed …
"So that I can put my bed in it. That way I can have my eight hours sleep in just twenty minutes."

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Sunday 21st July 2024 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S LITTLE …

… commotion, it’s been a much better day today.

To my surprise, and probably yours as well, I didn’t actually fall asleep once. Not even for a minute.

And not only that, firstly it was a late night again last night and I was actually up and about early this morning before the alarm went off.

So don’t ask me what’s going on because I don’t have a clue.

Last night after I’d finished writing up my notes I set about dictating some radio notes. For two programmes there were just the notes for the additional tracks but then in a mad fit of enthusiasm I dictated no fewer than three lots of completed notes.

One of them was complicated by the fact that there was a track in there that shouldn’t have been. It seems that I copied and pasted it into the wrong place several weeks ago and had been looking for it ever since.

Well, I’m glad that I found it.

When I finished dictating I slowly unwound and then eventually headed off to my nice warm bed. And I can’t say that I was sorry to hit the hay because regardless of how comfortable my chair here might be, there is absolutely no substitute for being underneath the quilt on my lovely mattress.

As you might expect, it took an age to drop off to sleep but I wasn’t too concerned as long as I was in the warm. But sleep I must have done eventually because I awoke with a start at about 07:30.

With an 08:00 alarm on Sundays I had half an hour to wait but instead I raised myself from the dead and set about sorting myself out. There was even time to check the dictaphone before the nurse came. Joining the list of unlikely heroes is Richard Jones. When he came onto the field his only contribution was touching the ball once and saying “it’s OK” but the fact is that that touch of the ball has been crucial and he’s just won the game for his club – coming on as substitute, touching the ball once and that was it. We could do with a few more subs like that I should say throughout the year to be going on with.

This dream about this footballer went on and on. I must have dreamed it about three or four times because it was still circulating around later on when I awoke, so I’ve no idea why it would be such a thing of significance at all. It seems pretty strange to me.

There was something too about me having an idea for a Gothic horror novel and trying to contact an established female author who wrote that kind of thing so that I could tell her my ideas and she could help me prepare something. I eventually tracked her down and we arranged to meet. Unfortunately when we met she was on her way somewhere else and didn’t have very much time. I could only give her the briefest outline of what was in my mind and she could only give me the briefest reply. I felt in all honesty that it had been something of a waste of time, this meeting, which was a shame because I would have liked to have discussed my idea at great length with her in order to give her an opportunity to consider it and then come back to me to prepare a plan but by the sound of things, after this brief meeting nothing at all like this will ever happen. I felt really disappointed

And quite honestly if I had a good idea about a story I wouldn’t be hawking it around anywhere. I’d be writing it myself. In fact at the moment I have several ideas for good stories but regrettably they won’t ever be written. I only have so much time and all of that is dedicated to other things.

The nurse was late this morning. She was pleased to see clean puttees but not so pleased to see the tangled mess that the bandage on my arm had become. Of course I blamed it on STRAWBERRY MOOSE which will have to do. IN the olden days I’d blame things like that on the cat.

After she left I had breakfast and then watched Stranraer lose gracefully 3-0 against Hamilton Academicals in the Scottish League Cup

In fact, we had something of a footfest throughout the day as other clubs posted online the highlights of their cup games. No exciting or unexpected results though which was a shame.

The rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes that I dictated. The notes for the two “additional tracks” have been edited and those programmes have now been prepared. That takes me up to 27th December incidentally.

And then I edited the first of the three longer notes and prepared the programme as far as I could. I’ve worked out how long the 11th track needs to be, chosen it and remixed it, and written the notes for it. I’ll do the other two during the course of the week.

Yes, I’m cracking on with this. I need to leave behind me a nice big batch ready for broadcasting after I’ve gone.

After my salad sandwich for lunch I took some pizza dough out of the freezer and it had been defrosting during the afternoon. I kneaded it and rolled it out this evening and made myself a delicious pizza. The dough rose beautifully to help me make one of the best pizzas that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed. It’s the male nurse again starting tomorrow. Isabelle is on her week off. So what is he going to find that’s wrong, I wonder.

There is of course some kind of upset going on here with the nurses. My neighbour asked the nurse "what do you think I should do about this mole that’s suddenly appeared on my cheek?"
"Don’t worry about it" replied the nurse. "Next time you go outside it’ll find its way back to its burrow."

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Saturday 20th July 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible, miserable, depressing afternoon curled up on my chair in the office fast asleep, totally out of this World and I’m totally fed up of all of this as well.

It’s reaching the state where I just can’t seem to accomplish anything, because I’m either too tired or fast asleep. And there’s so much that I have to do with so little time left to do it and I’m going to run out long before I’m ready to go.

It’s not as if I’m having any devastatingly late nights that are making me this tired. It’s quite true that being in bed by my target time of 23:00 is more of an ambition than a reality, but it’s not as if it’s 02:00 or 03:00, or anything like that.

And then, if I were so tired, why would I awaken at 06:00 and 06:15? Surely the situation would be that when the alarm goes off at 07:00 I couldn’t find what it takes for me to leave my bed.

In fact, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not unusual for me to be up and about before the alarm goes off.

Last night was another night that was later than I would have liked – but not all that late. And once more, it didn’t take long for me to go to sleep once I was curled up under the quilt.

And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 07:00. Mind you, I had awoken at 06:15 but thought “sod that for a game of soldiers” and curled up under the quilt again for a final 45 minutes.

When the alarm went off I went into the bathroom for a wash, and then washed some of my clothes – the shorts that I wear in bed, my trousers and my undies. I try to hand-wash stuff like this on a regular basis to keep up the habit.

Years spent living out of a suitcase have taught me the necessity of keeping o top of the washing when I can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a summer job on a farm. Basically, they’d given me a Series I Land Rover, an ancient thing that was dropping to bits, to run around, fetch and carry stuff all over the farm and all over the neighbourhood. I was having a great time that summer doing all of that. It came down to the last day. I’d parked up the Land Rover, found everyone and went to say “goodbye”. I asked them where they put the diesel. They replied “in the tank down at the bottom of the yard but they didn’t have the time to do it at the moment”. They asked me where the diesel was. I replied “in the tank of the Land Rover”. We had a chat, and the subject of the Land Rover came up. They said that they were going to scrap it. I told them that I thought that a crazy idea to scrap it. Even if they daren’t risk running the Land Rover around on the road with no tax, no insurance and no MoT, running around the big farm that they have from one end to the other a Land Rover is an ideal vehicle for that. But there was some guy with some ancient 1940s saloon who was doing pretty much the same thing, he looked rather distressed at the idea that they’d scrap his saloon instead but I said that there’s nothing better than a Land Rover for this kind of work, fetching and carrying around a farm. In the end I said my goodbyes and set off for the railway station on foot. I thought to myself “what a really good summer I’ve had doing this”.

In actual fact I did have a Summer job working on a farm back in 1972. After our school exams finished, we were excused attendance so while we were waiting for the results I found a job on the harvesting. Hardest work that I ever did but at 18 you can do it, and I was saving up money, desperately, because once I had my results in my sweaty little mitt I was escaping from that madhouse in which I’d been living. I preferred to take my chances in the big wild World. I ended up in Chester working in an insurance company with a little bedsit in Hoole, and I was incredibly happy, as well as being totally broke.

When Isabelle came I passed on the congratulations from the clinic yesterday for what she and my cleaner had done to my arm. She checked the wound and changed the dressing again, and then dealt with my legs. She told me off about the state of my puttees and ordered (yes, ordered) me to prepare the clean ones for tomorrow, and gave instructions on the best way to clean these ones

after she left, I had breakfast, and then had a busy morning, which was just as well seeing as how the rest of the day panned out.

The radio programme on which I’d been working was first, and I finished that off and that’s all ready for dictation at some point (minus the final track of course)

Next task was something that I’d been meaning to do for a while, and that was to unwrap the Genz-Benz.

When I was in Ottawa I saw a beautiful 200-watt Genz-Benz bass combo in a pawn shop and fell in love. It was on sale for peanuts and at the time I had aspirations of going back on the road, so it found its way into the back of Strider.

Of course, Canada is over so there was no point in leaving it there so when I was in Canada in 2022 I wrapped it up and posted it to Rosemary. She brought it up the other week and it’s been sitting in its protective coating in a corner of the apartment ever since.

So now it’s unpacked and it looks just as beautiful as it did in 2019 when I saw it. Unfortunately, the voltage selector has been blanked off so I can’t switch it to 230 volt, and so I was tracking down a power transformer on line. I’ll have to wait a little longer to listen to how beautiful it sounds when I can run the Gibson EB3 through it.

This led to a little tidying up and rearrangement of the apartment, and a desperate search for a power cable because it seems that the one that was with it has been lost somewhere in transit which is a shame.

One thing is certain though, that is if I ever want any packaging doing ever again, a combination of my niece’s husband, Rosemary and Mr Ukrainian would be totally unbeatable.

For lunch I had a salad sandwich made with my beautiful fresh bread. My loaf yesterday is an absolute masterpiece and is by far and away the best bread that I’ve ever made. Apart from the fact that my mould is somewhat flexible and makes strange-shaped bread, this loaf would pass muster with the best shop-bought bread.

It was at this point that everything started to go South, and with all of the things that I have to do, I jus slept. I managed to make it into the kitchen for my mid-afternoon hot chocolate but I was soon back to sleep again where I stayed until 19:00.

Tea tonight was baked potato with vegan salad and one of my favourite breadcrumbed quornburgers that I like.

So now my puttees are soaking in warm water as per Isabelle’s instructions and the clean ones are rolled up waiting for the morning. I’m in my clean shorts about to do some dictation before I go to bed

That’s enough about today. Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. But let’s see where I get to with these radio notes. I can’t dictate more than a couple of programmes as my voice starts to break up after a while.

With these bad throats I have to be careful about the medicine that I take. Lemon juice used to be recommended but it’s fallen into disrepute after the incident at the Catholic School, the Blessed John Sheard High School, in Crewe a while back.
One of the girls went into the Mother Superior’s office and said "Mother Superior! Mother Superior! I think that I’m pregnant. What can I do?"
"You can suck the juice of six lemons" replied the Mother Superior
"Will that stop me being pregnant?" asked the girl
"No" replied the Mother Superior "but it’ll wipe that silly smile off your face!"

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Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

"things could be worse!"

And so I smiled. And sure enough, things were worse.

It’s difficult to believe just how things are unravelling here right at the moment. Getting ready for bed last night after finishing my notes, I fell over.

It was another one of these “falling over backwards” things like I had in the kitchen the other day. This time though it was in the bedroom.

What is hard to believe and it’s true all the same, that despite all of the rubbish, mess, guitars and everything that clutter up this place, I actually hit the ground on my back without hitting anything on the way down. And the chances of that happening must have been extremely remote, to say the least.

It took me about half an hour to make it to my feet. Some kind of weird gyration from a sitting position into being able to crawl onto the bed with the aid of a well-stuffed suitcase as some kind of half-way step

But what a state to get into. I had visions of pulling the quilt down and sleeping on top of the carpet until Isabelle the nurse would rescue me in the morning.

However I struggled back upright, finished what I had to do and then rather happily crawled into bed with a sigh of relief.

After all of the exertions I was totally surprised to be wide awake at about 06:15 and I was actually up and about before the alarm went off

This morning I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave and change of clothes if I’m going out. And then waiting for Isabelle the nurse, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my taxis last night. We had a town, we had a plot of land so we decided that we’d set up something there and run the taxis from it. I had a nice little garage and a couple of cars but while I was talking about setting up everything I awoke in the middle of it and lost all of the momentum in the dream that I was having which was a shame

Not really a shame. I might have enjoyed running a taxi business 40 years ago but the gloss soon wore off and I wouldn’t go back to doing it again, not even during a dream, thank you very much.

And then I was expecting to slip into the estate of a relative of mine who was dying. What was important about this was that there had been another relative who had died under mysterious circumstances abroad and his body had been in a deep-freeze for years while people argued about where he was to go and what he was to do etc. I suspected that the British Coroner was unwilling to accept the body because he’d have to perform a post-mortem on it. There had been this huge campaign for years to bring this person’s body and that of several other people in similar circumstances, to bring them home and lay them to rest. The first thing that I did when I inherited the estate was to contact some firm of undertakers and make arrangements for this body to be brought back to the UK. I was expecting to be besieged by the Press and by news reporters but no-one actually came to visit me last night about this. The only person who set foot on my premises was my brother and I didn’t really know what he wanted. It was certainly nothing to do with this particular thing but after all the fuss and bother that had been made when the relative who died had refused to repatriate the relative from abroad, the fact that I issued repatriation instructions immediately that I took over the estate and that passed unnoticed, it was totally bizarre.

My greatest wish is that no-one repatriates me to the UK. I own a burial plot in the cemetery at Ixelles in Brussels where Marianne is interred but I don’t want to go there either. I want to be put in a natural cemetery and a tree planted on top of me. That’s how I shall live for ever – being absorbed into the roots of a tree that will grow and grow.

Finally I was living at home and wanted a bath so I stuck my head in the bathroom. My little sister was in the bath and my two younger brothers were drying themselves so I thought “never mind – I’ll have a bath again”. I went off to do something or other. On the way back I heard some noise in the bathroom so I went to see. Now my sister had left the bath so I thought “ahh, here’s a bath full of water free”. My brother said “the shower by the way is totally useless but the bath is wonderful” so I thought “I’m really looking forward to getting into the bath at last and having a good wash. I certainly need one”.

Ahhh the good old days – all in the bath, oldest first while the water is hotter. If we are lucky there might be a bit of hot water left in the baby burco water boiler – careful not to scald yourself when you pour it into the bucket and tip it into the bath.

All the smaller kids in the bath together. “ohh look, a bubble-bath” – yes, it was baked beans on toast for tea

Apart from the fact that I don’t have two brothers, anyone who goes on about “the good old days” will receive a smack in the mouth. There was nothing whatever that was good about them.

Isabelle was late coming. There’s all kinds of chaos going on all over the place this morning apparently. She didn’t wait around long because she was in a hurry so she cleared off quickly and I had a rather late breakfast.

The taxi was late coming too. All of their computing system and radio control has broken down and they are driving around with pencil and notepad with a list of jobs. Just like back in the 1960s before radio control in fact. Nothing seems to be working this morning.

They were all working at the Nephrology Clinic – at least, the people who saw me were. Unfortunately Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there to soothe my fevered brow but her sidekick was and I told him my tale of woe about being held to ransom at the clinic down the road.

He had the decency to be upset and apologetic, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to set even one foot ever again in that maudit établissement

And it turned out that while Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there, she’d been talking about me to the others and some of my little secrets are now in the public domain.

Still, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s NOT being talked about. It’s nice to know that Emilie the Cute Consultant thinks that I’m worth talking about.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … Nephrology Clinic, the consultant there admired the work that my cleaner and Isabelle the nurse had done. He considered that I’m lucky in having such good and attentive people around me.

There’s localised swelling but the wound itself is healing, it’s not septic and he’s pleased with the progress.

He can’t explain the panic the other night because there were no obvious signs. If we hadn’t imagined it, which I assured him that we hadn’t, he reckoned that my little team of helpers had resolved everything on the spot in the nick of time.

While I was waiting for my taxi back his secretary went off in search of an orange juice. And just as she came back with apple juice, the taxi arrived.

On getting in I texted my cleaner to say that we were on our way back, only for him to announce that we had other pick-ups.

So eventually with a full car of passengers we headed back to Granville. The driver asked if he could practise his English on the way home so we had a very interesting chat on the way home

Back here I had a salad for lunch and then came in here where I promptly crashed out. And how. I was dead to the World. I hadn’t even noticed that my cleaner had been and gone.

Rosemary rang me for a chat and it must have been a very strange chat at first as I struggled to awaken.

After she’d finished I had my hot chocolate and then made a loaf of bread. While that was proofing i made some naan dough

And then I could finally have the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to to, catching up with radio stuff. I should have finished off that radio programme today but what with one thing and another I didn’t.

So don’t forget, Saturday night, my Hawkfest at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time, 15:00 Toronto time.

But thinking of all of the kids in the bath together reminds me of the noble Lord being attended to at his bath by his manservant, Wibble.
Suddenly the noble Lord breaks wind in the water. And the manservant dashes off and comes back with a hot water bottle.
"Why have you brought that?" asked the noble Lord
"You asked for it, My Lord" said Wibble
"I asked for it?"
"Yes, my Lord" replied Wibble. "I heard you clearly. You said ‘what about a water bottle, Wibble’ "

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Thursday 18th July 2024 – LAST NIGHT I FINISHED …

… my notes with "Which way did it go?"

So which way did the early night that I promised myself go last night?

It ended up being long after midnight with the cleaner and I mopping up blood yet again and I tell you that I’m thoroughly sick of all this.

When I took off my jacket while undressing there was a blood-soaked bulge on my arm where a plaster was supposed to be. Of course I’m not touching anything like that (I really am nesh) so in the end my loyal cleaner came down.

It’s really lucky that she’s here. She has all of the first-aid certificates and the like so she was able to clean everything up, inspect the arm, consider that there was no real damage and bandage it up again.

It took her long enough but she did a really professional job and bound it round with a long strip wrap to hold everything in place until the morning so that at least I wouldn’t bleed to death during the night.

After all of that I could go to bed.

But not to sleep. I wasn’t in the mood which was hardly any surprise. All in all, things were pretty miserable and there was nothing on the dictaphone of course. Zero didn’t come back to continue part II of our voyage which was a disappointment.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and a cursory inspection showed no signs of anything unusual or out-of-the-ordinary, no trails of blood anywhere so I had a good wash and came back in here to wait for the nurse.

When she came, she had a look at my arm. She changed the dressing, commented on the good job that my cleaner had made, and remarked that she thought that my wrist was swollen.

She did a check of my fingers to make sure that everything moved as it should but she still wasn’t satisfied. She urged me to contact the hospital as soon as she left.

Not quite as soon as she left though. I wasn’t going to do without my breakfast.

When I was sipping a mug of coffee afterwards I rang them up. Apparently the surgeon is only there on Tuesdays, but his secretary will tell him that I called with a problem. So I can’t see what use this “24-hour number” is to anyone.

Meanwhile, the nurse called me She’d had the same irrelevant response when she phoned them so she went to see my doctor who has his office in the same building where she is.

He’s away on holiday, of course he will be at a time like this, but he has a locum and she will come round at lunchtime.

Meanwhile, my cleaner came round. She’d brought back more supplies, and wanted to know how I was getting on so I gave her the good news.

This locum – the first thing that she did when she came round was to hold my hand and feel my pulse. And I’ll tell you – she can hold my hand and feel my pulse any time she likes.

She thinks that my wrist is running a temperature but she didn’t want to disturb any of the bandaging as there doesn’t seem to be a problem as far as that goes.

She made several ‘phone calls, gave me a couple of phone numbers that are more likely to produce a response than the one that failed so miserably, and told me that if all else fails I mustn’t hesitate to telephone the emergency services.

She then wrote out a prescription for yet more dressings, which my cleaner came down to fetch.

An hour or so after everyone had gone and come back, I had a ‘phone call.

The neurosurgeon’s secretary called me. "we’ve heard from your doctor" she said. "We’re all quite concerned here. Can you come tomorrow at 11:30 to see the neurosurgeon and have an echograph?"

So that’s the taxi booked for 10:45 then. I wonder at just what point the Social Services will become fed up of paying for me to go gallivanting across northern France at the taxpayer’s expense.

In between all of this I’ve been trying to prepare a radio programme. I’m chosen all of the music, paired it off and begun to write the notes.

Not that I’ve gone very far, and I could have done much more had it not been for a little wobble at one point. But with no sleep last night it’s hardly a surprise.

There’s been no food tonight either except a bag of crisps and some biscuits. I’ve been watching the football, and watching hearts break all over Europe

Caernarfon clung on to win through to the next round but Bala were cruelly denied progress by a very late goal in Estonia and Connah’s Quay in Wales by two very late goals, one right at the end of normal time to be pegged back and then a killer punch right at the end of extra time.

But the fact is that there’s a wealth of difference between teams in Europe and teams in the UK, in style of play and in temperament too.

British teams tend to ride their luck instead of relying on technique and fitness. There’s too much of the “it’ll be all right on the night” about them.

When I interviewed Granville’s manager a while back about fitness levels between full-time teams and part-time teams, I brought up the subject of part-time teams running out of steam.

He poo-pooed the idea, and then Granville conceded three very late goals after matching Olympique de Marseille toe-to-toe for 75 minutes.

After tonight’s results, I’m more-than-ever convinced that there’s something in what I said to him and one day I’ll produce some statistics.

But not tonight because I’m going to bed in the hope of a decent sleep and some pleasant dreams, preferably in the company of Zero if she comes back after the other night.

But on the subject of statistics, and vital statistics at that,; I remember a civil servant friend of mine who went to buy a new bra for his wife
"what size, sir?" asked the shop assistant
"Sixteen and a half" he said
"Sixteen and a half?" repeated the shop assistant, rather puzzled
"That’s right" said the customer "My bowler hat is size eight and a quarter …"

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Wednesday 17th July 2024 – I CAN’T BELIEVE …

… the nerve, or cheek of some people.

Highway robbery at the point of a pistol is a fairly common phenomenon, but highway robbery at the point of a card reader is something else again.

But anyway, more of that anon. Retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Where was I?

Ohh yes, finishing off my bread and carrot purée and going to bed.

But not to sleep, unfortunately. It was a long, long night listening to my neighbour snoring away and waiting for the inevitable 06:00 stampede as the nightshift dashes to finish off its tasks before the day shift comes on at 07:00.

They gave me a diabetes check and it went off the scale, so no orange juice for me which was a shame. But I’m convinced that their reader must be wrong. How could it be off the scale when I’ve had next-to-nothing to eat for 36 hours?

After breakfast (which included jam despite the diabetes check) a doctor came to see me. She didn’t have much to say for herself but I managed to winkle out of her that I’d be leaving at 10:30

With that news I contacted my faithful cleaner but she told me that she wouldn’t be home until 13:00. And so I asked the staff here if I could postpone my departure but I was told in no uncertain terms to sod off and like it.

With that news I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night while I was waiting. Some doctor here was looking for an e-mail about my health but he’d filed it away somewhere on line and when he’d gone to fetch it back it had disappeared so he was found rounding up all of his colleagues to come and look, to see whether any of them could help to try to find out how to fetch it back

That sounds about right for “cloud” storage systems. Everyone else can access the document except the person who posted it there. I’m afraid that I still favour the old traditional method of copying to USB key. There’s one plugged into this computer into which I back up every night, and there’s a “travelling key” on my keyring that I use for moving documents about between the big desktop machine and the portable that I take with me when I go anywhere.

And then Zero had come to see me during the night. She was in something of a bad mood, saying that she had to go to see the physiotherapist a week on Monday. Her step-father insisted, so I wanted to find out why. She told me that it was to fetch the results, the “results” she said in inverted commas, so I imagined that it was something to do with an incident that had happened a couple of weeks earlier in respect of which a complaint had been lodged. I thought that this was going to be the decisive moment but for some reason or other she was clearly not happy at all about having to go and I couldn’t understand why

How lovely to see Zero again after all this time. Wasn’t it nice of her to come to see me? But it wasn’t very nice to see an unhappy Zero, that’s for sure. I much prefer the lovely smiling face, puffy cheeks, green flashing eyes and all those miles of vibrant red hair. But a “step-father”? What’s become of her real dad? That’s worth a story all by itself. I wonder if I’ll have part two of this episode any time soon.

While all of this was going on, someone from the admin office came to see me and asked about my Health Insurance. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t have the State insurance system. I have a private health insurance paid for by the European Commission so I gave them the form and also a copy of the form that they can use to seek direct billing.

The above is quite important, as you’ll see as the story unfolds.

The taxi turned up for me bang on time so we went to the Admissions Office to collect the paperwork for leaving, and this was where I was “held up” with the card reader

"That’s One thousand five hundred and seventy two Euros and 68 cents please"

"You have my Health Insurance details there" I said "and a form to apply for direct billing"

"It’s an assurance that I don’t recognise" (like, the European Union and she doesn’t recognise it) "so you’ll have to pay"

She was totally and utterly intransigent, apart from being too utterly bone-idle to scan my documents and send them off.

So eventually I made it home and as the taxi driver was helping me up the 25 Steps the phone rang. It was Isabelle the nurse. She’d heard that I was back on the loose and would I like my legs seeing to?

A cheerful word and a smiling face is always welcome so I told her to come round. By the time she arrived, so had I and she was able to sort me out.

She wasn’t impressed with what the hospital want her to do. She didn’t think that it was her job but with a good grace (which was nice to find someone with good grace after this morning) she agreed to do it.

She needed a lot of equipment and material so she wrote herself out a prescription and said she’ll leave it at the pharmacy. My faithful cleaner can pick up the articles this afternoon.

When my cleaner came round later we went through the medication, worked out what we were short of, and she went down into town to do the business. Poor thing – she had a struggle to come back with all of the supplies for the nurse. She’ll have to bring some back tomorrow, bless her.

So in my nice clean kitchen I made a taco roll for tea with rice and veg. It should be “leftover curry” night tomorrow but it’s also football so it’ll be pasta and veg, with the curry on Friday. It’ll probably walk out of the fridge on its own by then.

So having washed my puttees tonight, I’m going to bed nice and early, still fuming about today’s events but hoping that if I’m lucky Zero will come to console me. Good news is hard to find and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But going back to the hospital, my room-mate had a rather bad habit of … errr … breaking wind. And it was quite embarrassing at times.
At one moment, whilst being examined, poked and prodded by a doctor he let out an extremely loud raspberry
Obviously, to save his embarrassment, the doctor turned to his nurse and said "stop that, nurse!"
"Certainly, doctor" she replied. "Which way did it go?"

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Tuesday 16th July 2024 = I’M STILL ALIVE …

… but in indescribable agony I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this. In fact, one way or another I’ve not had a very good day today.

Just like last night actually. Once more it was a very late night, not that I was bothered because if I’m tired I can sleep at the hospital. I won’t have much else to do there.

Nevertheless I slept right through until the alarm went off at 07:00 with just the odd bit of tossing and turning here and there

But as the alarm sounded I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, completely forgetting that I’m supposed to be using this special shampoo detergent stuff.

While I was waiting for the nurse to arrive I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I went during the night. This competition is now coming down to a knock-out between clubs rather than based on a league performance. There aren’t too many clubs or teams left and newspaper reporters are interviewing. They are astonished at how much has been spent but someone seems to think that it’s worth every penny and brings an enormous amount of revenue from advertising. And everyone doing this would have a team of his own racing in these races considering that it would put his town on the map. There were several other chairmen who thought it important that their team climbed onto the world stage and played this type of event for the attraction of the World all looking on and making sure that they did all their best

Where that came from, I don’t know. But it certainly seems to be true. I remember when Llandudno surprisingly won the Welsh Cup and qualified for Europe, the town council sponsored the club’s shirts for the European games and paid the travelling expenses of the club simply for the reason that the club’s presence on the European stage would attract enough tourists to the town to make it a financially viable proposition. And who am I to argue with Llandudno Town Council?

What I found was that there were too many small, tiny shopkeepers or market traders standing on this market each selling very high turnover goods which meant that there was no speciality or anything like that. It was all pretty much the same. There was nothing to choose between any of them. Where you bought your magazine from was by random and it made no difference. They weren’t sufficiently skilled in the products that they were selling. One of the shopkeepers was trying to market some kind of typing course but admitted that he hadn’t managed to work it himself . He had no idea how he could actually make it work but was still trying his best to sell it on to members of the public. I thought to myself that people with just one or two racks of magazines in a place like this just aren’t going to make any difference whatsoever. It needs one or possibly two major sellers to come in to reorganise it with a much wider range of goods and know much more about their product and generally go out to sell the stuff instead of being haphazard, hoping that someone would come along and buy it. I thought that it was very depressing and dismal that they were just sitting back letting the World roll by. They should have been out there selling their wares. But definitely half a dozen people with one magazine rack each trying to make a living in a place like this was never going to be a possibility. It just needed one or maybe two major players who could go for the variety of product and go all-out to try to grab hold of the passing trade.

So as well as fighting wars and inventing machinery in my sleep, I’m now running some kind of Cost Accounting and Business Planning service. I’ve definitely been doing something wrong all these years if I can think of all of these exciting and satisfying ways of earning a living while I’m asleep. The sad part about it is that not only am I asleep while all of this is going on, so are my clients. If they were awake and paying me good money for my services and advice, I’d clean up.

There was also something about a friend of mine asking me why some other friends of ours who had been in France as long as we had, hadn’t succeeded in accumulating more resources. She pointed out to her house, the holiday cottage and so on that they had managed to accumulate without too much effort and wondered why they hadn’t managed to do the same.

And that’s true too. In the Auvergne you can have as much property as you like. The place is littered with all kinds of tiny farms that are abandoned and available for next to nothing. The mechanisation of agriculture in France after World War II and the industrialisation of the country led to a flight of all the young people to the towns. All the old people died off and the houses were simply left to abandon.

The nurse came and did her best to cheer me up which was nice, seeing as I’d lost yet another clip for my puttees. I was expecting an argument. She’s given me a few tips about the hospital and then wished me luck.

No breakfast for me this morning. I have to be without food so instead I checked over my packing and made sure that I had everything that I needed. This requirement about “medication in the original boxes” is ridiculous, especially just for one night’s stay.

Next was to make some sandwiches because, without doubt, the food, if in fact I receive anything, is going to be rubbish. And if I’m without food all morning, I’ll be needing something.

Back in here I had a few letters to write and things like that but I was taken by surprise by the taxi that turned up a good 20 minutes early and I was nothing like ready. Nevertheless, we went with what we had.

It was a lovely drive down to Avranches and how I enjoyed smelling the open countryside for the first time since I don’t know when. It’s a shame that there wasn’t more of it.

It’s the Polyclinic, not the hospital, where I’m going. And finding my room was rather complicated as we turned up at the lunch hour. Eventually someone directed us to my room, which it seems I’m going to be sharing.

A nurse checked me in and asked me a load of questions, most of which I answered wrongly. She had to fetch an electric razor to shave my arm – what did I know about doing it – and then she wandered off.

They gave me a load of paper clothes to wear and once I’d changed, they wheeled me away in a wheelchair as far as surgery where they put me on a trolley and took me into a corner of the room.

While I was waiting, I fell asleep. I was dreaming that I was dreaming and dictating the dream into my dictaphone but someone snatched the dictaphone from me, threw it onto the bed and wheeled me off somewhere. There I was for hours hoping that at least they would be able to take me back to wherever it was that the dictaphone had landed and that it had been switched off so that the batteries hadn’t gone flat

It was another panic attack but with everything that’s going on right now, that’s not a surprise. I’m surprised that I’ve not had more of them just recently.

They moved the bed across the room (waking me up). “Hold out your arm” said someone, so I did.

Next thing that I remember, it was a couple of hours later, there was a big white plaster on my arm and a pain going all the way up into my shoulder. But at least the worst is over (I think) and it was done exactly as I would have liked it – no fuss, no explanation, no nothing. Knock me out and get on with it.

They took me back to my room and put me to bed where I slept for an hour or two before gradually coming back round into the Land of the Living

And then I had to hassle them for my meal. They seemed quite reluctant to bring it, although I can’t see why. I made sure that I had plenty of bread for my soup and my main course of carrot purée (and that’s it), thinking that I’m glad that I made my butties. I’ll need those if things don’t buck up.

One of the nurses asked about the pain. It’s been increasing all the time as the anaesthetic has worn off. When I mentioned it to a nurse she came back immediately with some Doliprane. Which I refused, of course. The whole of France is awash with Doliprane.

Seriously though, if you have a pain, it’s for a reason. And if you hide or mask that pain and put effort on joints that really need time to relax and recover, you can do more harm than good

So gritting my teeth, I went to bed.

And my arm in a sling reminds me of the well known Austrian who invented the brassiere, Otto Titsling

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Monday 15th July 2024 – SO H-HOUR …

… is 13:00 tomorrow. At least, that’s what time I’m expected to be present and standing by my bed. The operation will presumably be rather later than that.

and that’s a shame. I was hoping for an early start, while the knife is still sharp, but it’s not to be. The taxi is coming for me at 12:15 and then it’ll be “panic stations” for the next God-knows how long.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a horror of hospitals, tubes, pipes and the like. Since all of this began in 2015 I’ve been living my nightmare almost every single day and believe me, it’s not made me any more accustomed to it.

Something else to which I am not accustomed is “going to bed early”. It won’t be happening today but it did last night. Being in bed before my target time of 23:00 is a very rare event these days indeed.

And I slept the Sleep of the Dead too, all the way through until 06:15 when the glass lorry came to collect the glass from the recycling bin across the road.

And if you want to know a good definition of “noise”, stand outside here when he drops the contents of the bin into the back of his lorry.

He made such a racket that I was thinking of getting up to face the day but discretion is the better part of valour and I curled up under the quilt again to have my money’s worth

When the alarm went off I headed to the bathroom to sort myself out and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having some kind of holiday, people who were handicapped or disabled in some way or other had gone to a holiday camp. There was a compere there trying to introduce everything. He was dressed in sandals and socks, and his sandals were far too big for him. He was generally crooning away there and I thought to myself “look at the state of him”. I happened to mention it to a couple of other people who wee in one of the rooms that they should have gone to look at him but they thought that there was nothing happening in the other rooms so I told them that they’d be surprised. There were about 20 people altogether milling around in the three or four different rooms. Things looked as if they might be starting to liven up, and not before time. While I was back there with my head stuck in the door looking at what was happening in that room someone noticed me and said that they had an invitation here for the Duchess of Claibourne. I told them to pass the invitation to me because I knew all about it. She’s being asked to prepare to appear on a TV programme, something like “Tomorrow’s World” or something like thzt and I know all about it. Even so it was still surprising that they’d asked these people to look after the Duchess of Claibourne when their own meeting was pretty poorly attended and there wasn’t a great deal of anything going on with the proceedings and last night it wasn’t until 23:00 that they could go to bed (… fell asleep here …) so in one of the rooms with some of the people in it there was a room with a drinking container with a handle on it for people who needed it. There was something going on in there but I fell asleep while I was trying to line it up to see what was happening so I missed the beginning of what was going on with all these uninspiring people being here and being in charge of the organisation.

As for who the Duchess of Claibourne is, she’s a character in a series of books written by someone called CS Harris and I can safely say without fear of contradiction that I’d absolutely no idea that there ever was such a person, real or fictitious, and I’ve never read a book by the aforementioned author. Where the name has come from in my dream I have no idea. But there was a lot of talk about 15 years ago about these holiday camps for disabled people, so it’s taken quite a while to come round to feature in a dream. Quite frankly, I can’t think of anything more ghastly. I’d rather stay at home, I reckon, the presence of the Duchess of Claibourne notwithstanding.

When the nurse came round she bandaged me up, had a little chat and then left. I have the impression that she’s trying to raise my morale right now which is nice of her. I could certainly do with it. It’s a shame she won’t be there in Avranches to hold my hand.

After breakfast I came back in here, and then had to track down the details about my next Welsh course. I have to sign up before the end of the month so I thought that I’d do it today.

With a little help from one of my friends I managed to find the correct course (at least, I hope that it’s the correct one) and while I was at at, I found a week’s course with another provider that starts when my next Summer School finishes and goes over what we (should have) learned this year.

One of my plans was to redo this year because I’d missed most of it with my various appointments and to do it with another provider to save embarrassment, but this seems to be the best of both words. Not to mention that it’s only going to cost £15:00 and I even have 50% discount from that.

In the future I’ll be looking out for a few more short courses like this. I’ve probably done half a dozen or so at least and it keeps me off the streets.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door too. She’d been into town this morning and they had the disinfectant stuff that the nurse needs so she dropped off a packet. I need to keep the nurse stocked up with supplies. But this place, there’s so much in the way of medication around here that I could open a pharmacy.

The hospital rang up at this point. They want me there standing by my bed at 13:00 and they gave me a whole list of “do’s” and “don’t”. But frankly I’m past caring. They want me to have a shower, but that’s out of the question of course.

They want me to not only bring my medication but to bring it in its boxes. For God’s sake, I’m going in a taxi, not a blasted lorry.

And then they want me to shave my arm ready. I don’t even know where they are going to make the incision.

My general, habitual lack of preparedness means that I’ll probably get it in the neck when I arrive, especially if the Beast from the Hôpital in the Baie is on duty but I don’t care.

This afternoon I was dealing with the fourth lot of radio notes that I’d dictated. They are all edited now, the final track has been chosen and I was on the point of writing the notes when Rosemary rang for a chat.

She’s back now from gallivanting around Italy and wanted to tell me how she got on so we had another one of our phone calls. Rather a short one today – only one hour and twelve minutes. We’re losing our touch.

After the call I stretched out for a minute and as a result was way late for making tea tonight; hence my lateness tonight.

We had stuffed pepper for tea again, with plenty of stuffing left over for the next few days. So for those of you who say that I want stuffing, I now have plenty, thank you. It’ll do for later in the week.

But not tonight, Josephine. I’m off to bed, ready for my appointment with destiny tomorrow. I mustn’t forget to pack my things, for I’m supposed to be staying the night. But as for that, we shall see.

One of the things that Rosemary and I discussed was adoption. We have some very strange conversations sometimes.
But it did remind me of the little boy who asked his dad "daddy, am I adopted?"
"Of course not, son" replied the father
"Really, daddy?" insisted the boy
"Absolutely" assured the father. "Why, out of a whole orphanage full of abandoned children, would anyone have chosen YOU?"

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