Thursday 15th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS …

… Day Four of my Summer School.

And I’ve no idea what’s happening here but things seem to be going quite well with this course. That’s something that I don’t understand because usually I struggle to get to grips with everything. I don’t know what I’m doing right but I wish that I could do it more often

So while some things seem to be going my way, cà plâne pour moi as Plastic Bertrand once said, I wish that everything else was too.

Like actually being in bed at something like a reasonable hour instead of hours late, as seems to be the case these days. It was another “almost midnight” when I slid underneath the covers last night

Once again I was asleep quite quickly. In fact my little bedtime mantra hardly had time to get underway before I was off with the fairies. And that was that until all of … errr … 04:30.

But no chance of my showing a leg at that time of the morning these days. I curled back up underneath the covers and there I stayed until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RACKET at 07:00.

When the World stopped spinning round I made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up to make myself pretty, but I suspect that it might take more time than I have available to do something like that

Instead, I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been hot-rodding around the town, doing doughnuts, things like that and the police had come along and caught me. But there was something important going on and I was waiting for some kind of news about this but all the police were interested in doing was to give me a very long lecture about the perils of careless driving etc. I was perfectly aware of what’s happening and it was all just getting in the way of this ‘phone call that I was expecting. I thought that they’d never ever finish this discussion with me and I’ll miss this ‘phone call if they carry on much longer.

It’s an absolute certainty that if any member of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest were to find me performing stunts with a car, it wouldn’t be a lecture that I’d receive. I remember, back in the olden days, a friend of mine performing a few stunts on a car park in Crewe late at night and actually being summoned under the local council by-laws for “using a car park for purposes other than parking”. Mind you, it was right next to the police station so what did he expect? He should have been more circumspect.

The nurse didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was in and out quite quickly, leaving me in peace to have my breakfast and carry on reading my book. I’m quite engrossed in this book and not only that, it’s had me hot on the trail of a couple of other books on the subject of the forts on the Bozeman Trail.

If you followed the link that I posted the other day, you’d had walked with me several miles along the Bozeman Trail to the site of the Fetterman massacre where Lieutenant Fetterman and his soldiers were cut down by Red Cloud’s warriors

That was a brilliant trip, that one in the Summer of 2019 where I visited all of the sites of the major confrontations between the Native Americans and the European settlers and soldiers, including such places as the Powder River, Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn

And, as usual, LITTLE BIG ANTLERS accompanied me.

One of these days I must finish off editing all of these …gulp … 6,000 photos that I took of my trip and post them on line before it’s too late.

There was more homework to do so I tackled that and then went to join my lesson.

As I said earlier, it passed off quite well despite a really flaky internet connection somewhere and I only fell asleep twice. We seem to be making a little progress in this respect although it’s far too early to start crowing quite yet.

When the lesson was over I made myself some hot chocolate and had a slice of chocolate cake, and then came back in here to edit the final batch of radio notes.

That’s all done now and tomorrow morning I’ll finish off everything by joining it all together, choosing the final track and writing the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg – a long time since I’d had something from the European Burger Mountain.

Mind you, it’s not so much of a mountain these days. I’ve whittled it down since it reached the heady heights and overflowed the fridge. That was a long time ago.

So now I have a few things to do and than I’m off to bed.

But talking about performing stunts in cars, I remember hearing of a really hairy drive once where a guy set out to impress his friends and scare his girlfriend.
After screeching around a few corners, with tyres burning and engine overheating he turned to his girlfriend and, indicating the smoking tyres and burning Castrol R oil, said "now smell that!"
"Smell it?" she asked. "I’m sitting in it!"

Wednesday 14th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS..

…the Assessment that was.

And I’m still here to tell the tale after all of that. Not that there was all that to still be here after, because she was here and gone withinghalf an hour and I don’t know what all the panic was about.

Last night would have been another quite early night except for … you guessed it … trying to staunch a flow of blood.

This time it was on my left arm. Somehow I’d managed to knock it just a few inches from where I had the operation and it was bleeding copiously. Putting a plaster on it slowed down the flow and eventually I could crawl off into bed, having done everything that I needed to do.

And once again I was asleep quite quickly, something that seems to be a habit these days.

What else seems to be a habit these days is waking up early. I’ve no idea how early because somehow my watch became detached from my wrist during the night and I couldn’t find it in the bed

It didn’t take long to go back to sleep but I was tossing and turning for the rest of the early morning until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Switching off the alarm I made my way to the bathroom to make myself look pretty and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At one stage I dictated As I was getting ready to get into bed the original recording leapt out of my hands and darted across the room somewhere and left me standing there looking pretty silly with this piece of live broadcasting stuff being carted about around the room. I didn’t half look silly while all of that was going on trying to calm it down and reunite it with me

Whatever that’s supposed to mean I have no idea at all. I’d been asleep in bed for quite some time when I dictated that so I quite clearly wasn’t “getting ready for bed”. The rest of that dream makes absolutely no sense whatever but there again, it’s a dream so it’s not really supposed to.

Later on I was doing a video of a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle. I let my tongue run away with me when I was criticising Raith Rovers. As a result, Raith Rovers contacted me with several admissions and insisted that I record a separate radio programme to apologise to their club based on the information that they provided me to put the matter right. Football fans are renowned for letting their tongues run away but they should still be governed by the laws of slander and governed by other appropriate laws and rules. Fair play to Raith Rovers who took a very mature and adult way around the affair dealing with the issue. But I wish that I knew what it was that I had said because I’d never commented on a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle in my life. I’ve no idea where this dream was coming from.

These days it’s quite dangerous to let one’s tongue run away with one. Occasionally you might find some incendiary comment or two within these pages but I won’t print anything definite unless either I have the evidence to support it or the remarks have been published elsewhere. Of course, if you ask a question, such as “is it true that …?” , that’s not libellous and as well as that the High Courts have ruled that neither vulgar abuse nor exaggerated hyperbole nor rhetorical hyperbole nor “colourful adjectives” is libellous. But what this has to do with Raith Rivers and Partick Thistle I really don’t know. They won’t be dancing in the streets of Raith tonight, folks!

And then there was something about having to interrogate that woman about that part where he thinks that she has the same name as some other woman who was quite famously associated with some footballers at one time and air traffic control when they called a delayed flight pinged him to say that if the bust with the passengers on board were to drive past him on their way to the ‘plane the driver of the bus would respect him for his decision.

And that’s a mystery to me too, what’s happening there. In fact, I must have spent a totally clueless night with all of this. I’m clearly overlooking the key to all these mysteries.

When the nurse came he tried his best to raise my morale, but that’s rather a difficult thing to do these days. I seem to be in the Slough of Despond again, and for no good reason. Not even a good breakfast cheered me up afterwards

Back in here I listened to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied, I sent it off to be included in the stream.

When the person from the Government came round she interviewed me for about 45 minutes.

The question of going into a Home never came up. She didn’t even say that I didn’t need to. It was just something that was taken for granted I suppose.

She thinks I ought to have much more help though. She would like my cleaner to come in every day but I drew the line at that. In the end she said that she would tell the Committee that I need help three times per week and hope that they approve it.

She didn’t really come up with any practical points about my life here although she agreed that once I’m downstairs things would be better. She didn’t offer any solutions about being in there earlier.

She did know and recommend a couple of garages that do conversions to cars to make them suitable for handicapped people, so that’s back on the agenda for next year too

One thing that surprised me was a question that she asked. We’d talked about who helps me and is it sufficient or do I need to be taken under the wing of a big organisation who can help with my care. I told her about my helpful cleaner and she asked "do you declare her?" (presumably to the Tax Office).

As it happens, I do. But she asked in such a matter-of-fact tone that it almost seemed to be the normal way of proceedings not to declare her.

After she left I had a coffee and then joined my Welsh class. Once more, it was quite successful which was nice. I’d done the homework so at least I was all clued up

My cleaner came in and skipped lightly around the apartment while I was at my lessons, and she disappeared afterwards just as quietly without disturbing me which was nice of her.

And during the lesson I only fell asleep once, and that was during a break. I soon awoke when class restarted.

After my hot chocolate and cake, I had a ‘phone call. Someone had sent me a message and I needed to call back.

It turns out that another friend of mine in Germany, the husband of another University colleague, has died. He was quite elderly and had several major health issues, but unfortunately he had one issue too many.

When I was in Germany last I visited them and we had a pleasant afternoon out by the local lake. I’ll just have to remember times like that. But this old age thing is terrible. The Grim Reaper is waiting round the corner for all of us.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread, but it was a leftover curry with a difference. I still have these jars of Korma that I bought and which need eating at some time so I heaved one into the curry tonight and made enough for two nights. The other lot will be frozen for another time. I need to start up my cooking again.

So right now I’m going to go to bed ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. Let’s see if I can manage without bleeding everywhere. It’s no joke, this trail of blood that I leave all over the apartment that my cleaner has to deal with.

Still, it could be worse, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m complaining. At least I’m still here and people are looking after me. Imagine what would happen if I were ill like this and in the UK.

In on eof the hospitals I met a guy who had been a patient in a British hospital. There, the surgeon said "xr have some good news and some bad news"
"OK doctor" said the man. "Tell me the bad news first"
"I’m afraid that in all the confusion we cut off the wrong leg"
"Good grief!" exclaimed the man. "What’s the good news?"
"The good news" said the surgeon "is that your bad leg is getting better".

Tuesday 13th August 2024 – DAY TWO …

… of my Summer School passed by today.

And to my surprise, it all went really well. I’ve no idea what’s happened there, but that’s simply not normal. Things just don’t go quite like that.

So last night I washed my puttees and went to bed in something of a hurry. It was later than I would like – about 23:30 – but that’s not late enough to be worried by anything.

It didn’t take me long to go off to sleep either. Just a matter of minutes. Although I can’t remember falling asleep, I know how far I reached with my little bedtime mantra and it wasn’t far at all. Still, with not crashing out at all during the day I must have been quite wasted.

Once I was asleep, I slept through all the way until about … errr … 05:30 when something outside must have awoken me. I’ve no idea what it was and I didn’t go to find out. I just pulled the bedclothes tighter, and had my RAIN SPLATTERED WINDOWS MADE ME DECIDE TO STAY IN BED I’d have dreamed of summertime instead.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I fell out of bed and once the room stopped spinning round I headed for the bathroom for a good scrub up. I have to look my best for these on-line meetings, even if I don’t feel much like it.

And I managed to dress without falling over of having to sit down and that’s some kind pf progress. And if you think that it’s strange that I’m celebrating something like this as being an achievement, you just don’t understand the state that I’m in.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. That big freshwater lake in South America was due to close so I’d gone down there to hire a boat and was messing about on the water before it all disappears. In the meantime while I was down there it seemed that there had been some kind of incident. A tractor had driven straight through the crowd from some fellow’s field onto the road, scattering everyone. What an insane use of language. There were many words here that I had never heard before in the UK and in some respects I was glad that I don’t because some of these people are really out of control and this is appalling.

There aren’t too many words that I have never heard before. working in a pool of chauffeurs from all corners of the European Union speaking a variety of different languages and having been as popular as I was with my colleagues, you can imagine that I’ve heard them all at close quarters too. But this reminds me of my prevarications a couple of years ago – I was always going to learn to sail “next week” or “next month”, and look at me now. It’s an object (or maybe even an abject) lesson of “never put off until tomorrow any plans that you can do today”.

I was taking a coach trip somewhere. I had to give my passengers an afternoon out and there was a nuclear power station in the vicinity of where we were going so I went round there and tried to speak to someone about the possibility of bringing my coach and tourists around for a look. The guy whom I saw explained that it would be rather difficult because of the organisation of the factory. I said that the factory would be organised into three parts. There would be the equipment, the operation and the security and we would just be interested in the operations, how the thing worked and what it did etc but the guy was extremely stubborn and made the point that with the building and plant not being equipped for this kind of thing we could lead to all kinds of problems about security etc. I was still in the middle of an argument trying to convince him when I awoke.

When I worked for … "he means “employed by”" – ed … Shearings, my coach tours were fun. I never stopped at the usual motorway service stations. I know that on one occasion I even managed to arrange a coffee break in a local monastery. People had their money’s worth. In all seriousness, if I could have taken them for a guided tour and coffee break around a nuclear power station, I would have done without a second thought.

When I was trying to organise myself I dropped a carton of milk that I was drinking into a bucket of cold water that was standing close by me. Of course all the milk and all the water mixed and I was extremely disappointed in that because I was enjoying that carton of milk .

And it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve done something stupid like that either.

The nurse came around to deal with my legs and to give me my injection. I’m not sure if I’ve told you that the blood test results came bac a few days ago – and they make grim reading.

But I’ve received the message loud and clear about the plaster on my operation from the other day. The nurse is ignoring it completely. He and his colleague think that I no longer need it, and medically they are probably correct.

However, psychologically I’m certain that I do, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and tending to my psychological needs is just as important as attending to any other needs.

After he left, I had breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I’ve finally reached the part that interested me – that of Nelson Story’s famous cattle drive along the Bozeman Trail at the time of the Fetterman Massacre.

One of the reasons why it’s so interesting is that it was written 35 years after the disaster that befell Fetterman’s patrol along the Bozeman Trail near Fort Phil Kearny, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED IN 2019, and after several public enquiries had been held to establish the true facts and after written memoirs had been published, the old myths, legends and falsehoods were still circulating.

Back in here after breakfast I did my Welsh homework. And to my dismay we weren’t asked for it. It wasn’t even discussed. Nevertheless, I suppose that there’s a point in doing it so I’ll press on

As I mentioned earlier, the Welsh lesson passed off quite well and I only fell asleep twice – but on both occasions there was a dramatic and instant awakening and the second time pumped enough adrenalin around to stay awake for the rest of the day.

At the end of the lesson I went into the kitchen for my cocoa and chocolate cake. The cake was nice and cold, having been in an airtight container in the fridge.

That’s at least one good thing to come out of this – that even though I’m trying to do away with plastic here, I can’t do without them completely and had to rescue a couple of containers from the stock that I’d put to one side

Once I’d wound down I chose the final track for the radio programme that I’d been editing, and written, the notes for it.

There’s one radio programme left of this batch that I recorded so I’ll start on that tomorrow.

But tomorrow I’m having my assessment. Not that it’s likely, but we could be moving into an entirely new ball-game. It wouldn’t be a disaster if I were to be placed in a Home, but it wouldn’t be far off. As long as it’s not a Home where the jacket fastens at the back.

Tea was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg. Plenty of stuffing left so its going to be a lovely leftover curry for tea tomorrow night, with rice and a naan bread.

So that’s me finished for the night. If I’m lucky I might have an early night but I’m not betting on it. There’s still plenty of stuff to do.

But going back to what I said earlier about going to the Monastery, we had a guided tour around the place
"But you can’t go in this room" explained the guide
"Why not?" asked one of the tourists
"It’s the … errr …. laundry" he replied
"What does he mean by that?" whispered another tourist
"He means that it’s where the monks go when they want to deal with their filthy habits" I explained.

Monday 12th August 2024 – AND SO THAT WAS …

… Day One of my three weeks (two weeks, then a pause for Bank Holiday week, and then the final week) Welsh Summer School

And such is the way of the World that this cycle of courses, that has run all through the summer, isn’t a series of repeated courses. It’s one long course that’s been broken up into several segments.

So here I am again, going over the latter part of the course yet again when it was the start of the course that I wanted – the period when I was in Canada and then in hospital.

It seems to me that I’m fated never to do this part of the course.

One thing about it though is that it at least made sure that I was in bed at something like a respectable time last night. Later than 23:00 it has to be said, but not by al that much by the time that I’d finished doing everything that I have to do.

And once in be I was asleep quickly too. I awoke briefly at about 06:15 but went back to sleep until the alarm roused me from my reverie

It was something like a disreputable stagger into the bathroom where I had a good scrub up and sorted myself out for the day to come.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My cleaner put in an appearance during the night. She was going on about my unkempt appearance, my wild hair, my beard and so on so I resolved to tidy myself up. The first thing that I did was to cut my hair. I was in a hotel room and to get to this room I had to climb up about forty stairs. It was much easier to climb because they were all in a straight line than it was to come into the stairs here so I was in my room in no time. I sat down and took out my hair cutter and began to cut my hair. One thing that I’d noticed was that someone had been in my room. It was supposed to have been tidied but it looked as if a tornado had hit it. There was a half-burnt still-smoking cigar on the floor which I thought was totally strange. I began to shave my head with my hair clippers to try to make myself look more respectable but I thought “I wonder what they are going to say at the reception desk when they’d seen some wild-haired guy go up to claim his room and some neat-looking stranger coming down.

Actually I’d had a shave this morning – the first time for several days – and my hair does need cutting. It’s not quite at the “Wild Man of Borneo” stage but I could certainly put the willies up anyone who comes too close. And fancy my cleaner turning up during the night. This is the first time, I reckon, that she’s put in an appearance on a nocturnal ramble. So what’s going on here?

The nurse and I had a bit of a chat this morning. He wants to wash my feet at some point so I’ll have to wash the puttees from last week. They are currently soaking in the bowl that I use for washing my feet.

With him being early and being quick about it I had plenty of time to revise my Welsh for today, which means that I spent it reading the wrong units.

When the course started we counted heads. There were ten of us pupils, yet a total of fifteen had paid for the course. God alone knows where the others are.

And this tutor is someone whom I know because I’ve had her a few times before in Summer Schools and so on. She’s the archetypal example of South Walians who think that there’s nothing any further north of the Head of the Valleys except sheep and druids

For example, she was telling everyone that LLanelwy is the local name for what the English call Builth Wells, but the Welsh name for Builth Wells is “Llanfair-ym-Muallt”. The town of LLanelwy is what the English would call St Asaph

Not that I would correct her though. I don’t want to lose the goodwill of the teacher on the first day. There’s more than enough time to do that over the next three weeks without going to look for it.

She’s actually set us homework too. I suppose that she’s right. We have to push on with these courses otherwise there’s no point in doing them. I’ll do my homework in the morning and that will refresh me for the lesson tomorrow.

During the breaks I managed to finish off the radio programme whose notes I was editing on Sunday. There’s just the final track to choose and the notes to write for it which I’ll also do in the morning.

When the lesson finished I had my hot chocolate, and a slice of my delicious, soggy, gooey chocolate cake.

There’s enough here for a couple of weeks so I hope that it won’t go off or anything like that. I have it in an airtight tin but I’m going very shortly to move it into a plastic box to store in the fridge

And then I had a chat to Rosemary on the ‘phone. Just a short chat today – only 1 hour and 55 minutes. We seem to be finding our form again which is good news. But I really don’t know what we talk about in these ‘phone calls.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. With tons of stuffing left over for tomorrow and Wednesday too. The stuffing was different today and I’m not sure why. I don’t think that I’ve forgotten any ingredient. That’s usually why it tastes different.

So having washed my puttees and hung them up to dry I’m going to try to go to bed before there are any more disturbances and without bleeding to death

But talking of Wales reminds me of the Welsh sailor who was admitted to hospital here in Granville the other day
The matron came in and told one of the doctors "that sailor who’s just been admitted. He has the word ‘Ludo’ tattooed on … errr … a certain part of his anatomy"
The doctor was so surprised that he asked the young student nurse to check
She came back a short while later "Matron was wrong, sir" she told the doctor
"Is that so?" asked the doctor
"Yes" she replied. "It’s not ‘Ludo’, it’s ‘Llandudno’"

Sunday 11th August 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my idea of going to bed at “a reasonable time” last night.

"The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy" as the famous Robbie Burns once said.

However, it wasn’t grief and pain that came my way, but blood. And buckets of it too. In the distance and time that it had taken me to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, I’d knocked my legs somehow and there was blood pumping just about everywhere

Even as I look, there’s a trail of drops of blood leading from my chair to where the big plasters are. And even one of those wasn’t enough to stop or even slow down the bleeding

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, this is what happens when you have all of these blood-thinning products. It’s becoming a rather regular feature, which is regrettable.

So instead of lying down on my nice comfortable bed, there I was, sitting on a chair with a collection of plasters and bandages on an impossible task waiting for the blood to congeal.

For an incident that took place at about 23:45, it was long after 01:00 when I finally went to bed.

Once in bed, I slept all the way through to the alarm going off at 08:00. I don’t think that I moved a single muscle all night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and that’s where the nurse caught me. He’d come early and I hadn’t had time to wash, never mind change my clothes (and I still haven’t)

He talked a little about his holiday but otherwise didn’t have too much to say for himself and was soon gone. I could sit down to breakfast and to read my book. We’re talking about the dismantling of the narrow-gauge railway that ran to Wallace in Montana, a event that took place in 1895. That railway didn’t last all that long.

Back in here afterwards I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’m not sure what I was doing last night but I was with a group of people. There was something going on about a medical issue. We were all being treated one-by-one for some kind of illness, taking it in turns to go to hospital. One of the girls went in quite carefree and happy and we all seemed to make a note “well she’s going to have a good time there in the hospital. They’ll love her”. There was a little old lady who went in. We had to go to her cottage to collect her things in order to send them to the hospital where she would be staying. I was actually at her house collecting her things together ready to go when the alarm went off.

It reminds me of my neighbour. Someone pretty soon will have to come to her apartment and collect her things if she really is going to live in a Home. I always think that for that to happen is a pretty sad state of affairs. From what I know about these Homes, it’s just a place where the elderly go and just wait to die. There’s no dignity or humanity in any of them.

There was football on the internet afterwards – Clyde v Stranraer in the Scottish Fourth Tier. And it was one of those games where Stranraer had 99% of the play, hit the woodwork and did absolutely everything except score, whereas Clyde just had one attack upfield and a lucky ricochet was enough for a sucker punch and send everyone in the crowd home shaking their heads.

Afterwards I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed.

The first lot I had to do again. Somehow I’d managed to miss the first ten seconds of my dictating and I’ve no idea how on earth I did that.

And then I had to re-edit and remix the eleventh track because for some reason it had become mixed up with a pile of dictated notes. I’ve no idea how I managed to do that, but it really was a mess.

As a result, I’d only finished the two “additional tracks” prior to lunch. And it was a very late lunch at that.

Back in here after lunch I sat down – and the next thing that I remember, it was 16:30. I’d been stark out for over two hours and hadn’t felt a thing. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone to sleep. But while I was crashed out I was having a whole series of really exciting dreams but as I awoke the hole lot simply evaporated and I remembered nothing. How sad is that?

For half an hour I bashed away at some more radio notes and then went into the kitchen to make my bread for the week. And in a fit of mad enthusiasm, while the dough was proofing, I made a chocolate cake

While the cake was settling down and the dough was rising I rolled out the pizza dough for tea tonight. I’d taken the last lot out of the freezer just after lunch and it had been defrosting all afternoon.

There was football on the internet. Llansawel’s first game for over 25 years in the Premier League, and against Penybont too.

LLansawel had kept the core of their promotion-winning team and, as we know, there’s an enormous gulf between the Premier League and the second tier. It was quite evident and the score, 2-0 to Penybont, surprised no-one.

However, it was really good to watch a proper footballing duel between Llansawel’s veteran centre-forward Luke Bowen and Penybont’s centre-half, Dan Jefferies. A proper aerial combat of the type that reminded me of watching football back in the 1960s and early 70s

So having seen everyone of importance in the league already after just the first game, it’s going to be a long, hard season for Aberystwyth, Llansawel and FFlint. Those clubs are going to need to find some quality from somewhere, and quickly too.

The dough for tonight’s pizza was perfection itself. It had risen beautifully and was really light. And as usual, the toppings (mushroom, onion and olives with cheese, tomato sauce and cherry tomatoes, was second to none.

The batch of dough that I made where I forgot to add the oil has turned out to be the best that I have ever cooked.

The bread is fine too and my chocolate, orange and coconut cake looks delicious and I can’t wait to try that as of tomorrow afternoon when it’s cooled properly.

So right now I’m off to bed. I have three weeks of Welsh Summer School starting tomorrow at 10:30. Time that I was going to bed.

But before I go, Clayton Green has signed for Penybont from relegated Pontypridd United. He was playing today but his wife wasn’t there to watch the game. She was in church down the road where the vicar noticed her.
He turned to his verger and asked "is that Fanny Green on the front pew over there?"
"No Vicar" replied the verger. "It’s just the way the sunlight comes through the stained-glass window"

Saturday 10th August 2024 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… all that much better today than it was yesterday. There has been a slight improvement to be sure but almost anything would be an improvement over what surely must have been one of the worst days of my life.

It was another late night last night. and I’m not talking about midnight or anything respectably late but I’m talking about times like 02:00, that sort of thing.

Something awoke me at 05:45 and I’ve no idea what it was. At te time I was in the middle of some kind of panic attack thing about how I must catch a bus to somewhere, a long-distance coach. I have to be somewhere else by 08:00 to board this bus and I’ve no idea what time it is and when the alarm goes off will I have time to go – another one of these panic attacks. But whatever awoke me sounded so real that I actually left the bed to answer my phone, which hadn’t rung or even received a message, so I’ve absolutely no idea why I would have done that.

Having made sure that there was nothing going on that might have been of an importance I went back to bed.

These days I’ve had a few of these panic attacks while I’m asleep.. I wonder if some part of my body is telling me something and that I need to take heed. But I really can’t think where I have to be that involves any kind of travel that I would undertake in a long-distance bus. The only place where I would ever be likely to want to take one would be between Montréal and Florenceville in New Brunswick, but not even that bus runs any more.

Once I was back in bed there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE I staggered off into the bathroom to have a good scrub, wash my night-time shorts and change my clothes. I have to look my best for Isabelle’s last day before she goes off on a well-deserved break.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in a scrapyard somewhere and we had an old Class 20 or similar shunter. For some reason we had to go to a quarry. At the quarry was another one of the same type of machine. There was some issue involving the driver of that particular machine so as we were there one of our people drove it. There was a huge argument and he ended up escaping in this machine, not before he’s destroyed half of their infrastructure, driven over the top of a crane cutting the bodywork etc. The bailiffs or someone turned up at our place and wanted to take away our machine thinking that it was theirs but when they compared the registration numbers of our train with the registration numbers of the locomotive from the quarry they found out that it wasn’t the same so they couldn’t take it, so they left Then the guy turned up with this machine from a quarry so we ended up with two identical machines due to people losing their temper

Actually, I know someone who has a Class 20 diesel locomotive. He might even have more. He’s the neighbour of a former friend of mine and runs a company in Staffordshire hiring out locomotives to various railway companies and has a useful side-line ingoing round various locomotive breakers yards rescuing the more valuable spare parts. He started off with just one locomotive that he had bought to preserve but made a fortune hiring it out to the builders of the Channel Tunnel and, like Topsy, his business “just growed”.

Isabelle was in “chat” mode again today and she spent some time here. Having covered for her boss’s absence on holiday she’s now going off for ten days. He starts back tomorrow and their cycle of “one week on, one week off” begins again.

While I was having breakfast I was reading about the Maginnis Gulch Stampede, or Montana’s Phantom Gold Rush, an incident that was played to perfection in CARRY ON COWBOY

But for those of you who have expressed an interest, the book is called FOLLOWING OLD TRAILS, written by a newspaperman called Arthur L Stone.

Later on in the morning there were the highlights of last night’s game between Queen’s Park and Livingston, and then I joined that guy I mentioned the other day, Blair McNally, for a trip to the East end of Glasgow for Vale of Clyde v Port Glasgow Athletic, a proper amateur football match in about the eighth level of the Scottish Pyramid.

This afternoon I’ve been tracking down concert dates. And much to my surprise, because of all the ones that I’ve done this is the first, I came across one that took place on a date on which I will have a radio broadcast within the current cycle of programmes that I’m preparing.

So on 21st March next year we’ll be having a live concert from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1974. This afternoon I’ve mixed the music for the concert and I’ve written half of the notes. I could have written more but unfortunately I was away with the fairies for a while at some point.

While I was at it, I came across a few other interesting bits and pieces, and finally turned my hand to downloading a concert that had been sent to me by one of the musicians who took part, featuring the almost-last concert on which my hero Deke Leonard played.

It’s a real pity though because of how the dates fall, this one won’t be broadcast for several years yet.

Tea tonight was one of my favourite quorn steaks in breadcrumbs, with baked potato and vegan salad. And it was delicious as always. Something that I eat every week but why not if I enjoy it.

So now I’m going to dictate the next batch of radio notes and then I’m going to try to go to bed at something like a reasonable time.

But talking of “Carry On Cowboy” reminds me of the two bandits (one of whom was Sid James) talking to the Indian chief Big Heap (Charles Hawtrey)

Big Heap – "And this is my son, Little Heap"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "How"
Big Heap – "And this is my squaw. I bought her for two buffalo skins"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "Never mind how. Where?"

Friday 9th August 2024 – I’M HAVING A …

… really bad day today

Or, in fact, I was having a really bad day yesterday because it’s now tomorrow as I’m typing all of this

It’s been one of those days where I’ve accomplished next-to-nothing, done nothing at all and whatever I have done just hasn’t gone according to plan.

It all went wrong on Thursday afternoon. As I mentioned, I fell asleep in the afternoon and was totally out of it for a couple of hours.

And so we had the inevitable result, which I now recognise after having had several months to work it out. Too physically exhausted to haul myself out of my comfortable chair but not tired enough to go to sleep.

And so here I sat for several hours trying to find the energy from somewhere to haul myself across the couple of feet between my chair and the bed. And it was long after 01:30 before I finally pulled myself together and pulled myself up by the bootstraps

That of course is all very well, but waking up at 05:30 was definitely not part of any plan, and neither was staying awake either but there I was, wide-awake but too physically exhausted to rise up from my stinking pit.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I made it reluctantly into the bathroom to have a wash and so on, and then came back in here.

To my surprise, and probably yours, there was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was with that old van from a couple of nights ago. I Had it back at our old house in Vine Tree Avenue. I took my tool box out ready to take away with me because my other car was parked in Edleston Road and needed picking up. The first thing that I needed to do was to check the keys. I had them but I didn’t actually have the keys for this old van. I thought that I must have left them in my coat on the inside. I went inside the van to fetch the coat and took out the keys from it and went to cross the two coats together as my battlefield cross but the big female lion objected and batted everything with her paw

As it happens, the van in my dreams I can see even now. It’s a light grey Austin A35 van and I certainly never ever had one of those when I was young. Probably the only vehicle that I didn’t own back in those days. I did have one of its big brothers, BILL BADGER, the Austin A60 or half-ton van that I mentioned yesterday. I paid £60:00 for that van, had it for several years, and had my money back several times thanks to the work that it did and the miles that we travelled, tucked in between the lorries on the motorway. No way was I going faster than about 50-55 mph with BMC’s single leading shoe drum brakes all round. Not even a hint of a disc brake.

When I was awoken by the alarm I was reliving an episode of DIRTY HARRY. Clint Eastwood had been detained in a roadside stop and made to sit on the pavement. While he was sitting there a policeman recognised him, came over and gave him a great big kick. Of course that inevitable started a riot and that was the point that I’d reached when the alarm went off. .

And so I must have gone back to sleep at some point. But it’s been a long time since there’s been a really good free-for-all down the High Street. We had a few in Chester in 1973-74 but that was about it.

The nurse was quite chatty today and had a lot to say for herself but I can’t remember much of it. She still thinks that I’m a wimp because I won’t take off this plaster on my arm but that’s how it is I’m afraid. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll have the panic attack to end all panic attacks when it comes to coupling me up.

After she left I had breakfast and read my book for a while, reading about the lynchings in the town of Hell’s Gate, Montana, how nine people out of the 12 who lived there "died without going through the intermediate stage of being ill" as the author so eloquently put it.

Back in here it took me an age to come round to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few senses I have these days. What shocked me out of my lethargic torpor was a message from my cleaner "mushrooms? I’m coming homs."

Blimey! It’s 12:30 already, I’ve done nothing and I’ll miss my slot for my LeClerc order. And now my cleaner is on her way home, if they don’t have what I want on delivery, it’s too late to buy it anywhere else now.

When my cleaner came round I was preparing my order from LeClerc so she added a few housekeeping items onto it and I sent it off.

The fridge had defrosted itself during the night so there was water all over the kitchen floor and donning waders and a lifejacket, my cleaner valiantly attacked the pool of water. And there I was thinking what a good job it was that we put down that lino on top of the wooden floor in the kitchen area.

This afternoon I’ve been hunting down another pile of concerts, comparing setlists and the like. And also tracking down missing tracks that were omitted from the published versions of live concerts.

The sad fact is that with almost every concert that I’ve encountered, the published version is often far shorter than the actual versions. What’s missing is sometimes much more interesting than what was included. For that reason you’ve probably never ever heard Joni Mitchell tell her audience that they were "behaving like a bunch of tourists" or Dennis Yeahy scream "brilliant!" in the middle of a Santana concert.

The shopping eventually turned up and I put most of it away, and then I came in here where I sat down and ran out of steam.

And here I’ve sat ever since then. I’ve had no food today since breakfast except a few crackers with my coffee and right now I’m beyond caring. And if I’m off my food you know that I’m not well.

But I’ll sort myself out and maybe find the energy from somewhere to go to bed. I dunno It’s been a strange day, a really long one, but although I’ve not crashed out at all, I’ve been too tired to do anything.

But if I can’t sleep tonight I’ll try counting sheep like that shepherd in Cumbria – "… five, six, seven, hello darling, nine …"
"Did you say ‘hello darling’ to sheep number eight?" asked a passing tourist
"Yes he did" replied the sheep. "He’s my fa-a-a-a-a ther"

Thursday 8th August 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… why but I’m absolutely whacked this afternoon. Anyone would think that I haven’t slept for a month

At least, that’s what it feels like. It’s not true of course because I managed a couple of hours last night where I was away with the fairies

Just a couple of hours mind you. I had another late night. Before going to bed I stumbled across the report with a difference of a football match in Scotland.

There’s a guy who goes around all the Scottish and Irish football grounds and broadcasts commentaries from within the huddled masses on the terraces, giving marks out of ten for the quality of the meat pies and the public conveniences as well. A proper football report.

For a while now I’ve been following his exploits because he’s doing exactly what I would have done, and have done too in better times, and I can enjoy vicariously the excitement of being swept up in a passionate crowd.

Last night I caught him at Palmerston Park, Dumfries for Queen of the South v Arbroath so I stayed up to watch the kippers be well and truly smoked by the home team.

It’s years since I’ve stood on the terraces there at Palmerston Park. 1977 or 1978 if I remember correctly. The height of the “troubles” and I was the only one who would take a British-registered van to Northern Ireland (where I was once arrested by an Army patrol, but that’s another story).

And on the way back once, seeing the crowds swarming across the river, I followed them.

It was on one of those trips that I had that classic encounter that I’m sure that I’ve mentioned before – the young girl from school who was serving in that pub at Galgate where I stopped for a pint on the way home.

One thing led to another and a few weeks later I’d lured her back to my lair and my old black cat Tuppence, the most anti-social cat you can imagine (like her owner), went and sat on her knee.

"Even my cat likes her!" I thought to myself, and invited her back to my lair for another encounter

"Yes, but you’ll have to get rid of that cat! I hate cats!" she said.

Of course it goes without saying that I kept my cat for another twelve or so years. She knew what she was doing – driving away all the competition for my affection.

Of course, with Nerina she didn’t stand a chance. Nerina loved cats and as soon as she came into my house it was "ohhh! A cat!" and she had Tuppence in her arms before Tuppence had time to think.

Yes, I had so much affection from my cats that the first thing that I’ll do when I’m downstairs is to have a female cat come to live with me.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I went to bed late last night after the football and was awoken again at some silly hour of the morning and I’ve no idea why.

Nevertheless I stayed in bed until the alarm went off and then I had a very unsteady lurch into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Given the rather difficult night, I wasn’t surprised – just disappointed – to find that there was nothing from the night on the dictaphone. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I seem to have these days is whatever goes on during the night.

The nurse was in chat mode this morning and we had a good discussion about my neighbour, who apparently is destined for a Home near Bayeux. It did make me wonder where they would send me if I had to go into a Home. Presumably one where the jackets do up at the back.

After she left I had breakfast and carried on reading my book about Montana at the turn of the Twentieth Century. We’re reading about the trip “Judge Woody” made to arrive in the Territory and I suppose that tomorrow we’ll find out more about the early days of Law Enforcement and Justice.

It was another slow start to the morning, and then once I started work I was busy.

First task is to go through another batch of concerts and try to date them. There’s a wiki on line called SETLIST where people who have been to concerts publish the setlist that was played. By comparing that with the setlist performed in the concert that I have, I can match them up.

However, not every setlist is published and of those that are, I’m convinced that one or two are wrong.

Having dealt with a batch of those, I then attacked the special project on which I’m working for the radio. I gave that a couple of hours of my time.

There was more that I could have done but regrettably, I was away with the fairies for a couple of hours late this afternoon.

Well-away too. I felt dreadful when I awoke and I have to do better than this

My cleaner came round to drop off more medication and we had an interesting chat for half an hour about kitchens and buying and selling apartments. But no news about she downstairs in my apartment.

Tea tonight was the last slice of lasagne with veg and vegan cheese sauce – only really to make more room in the freezer because tomorrow I have an order that I want to sent to LeClerc and I need the space.

So having done that I’ll unwind a little before going to bed and hope that nothing comes along to deflect me from an early night

But on-line shopping. There’s an interesting phenomenon. I was once talking to my friend Josée in Montréal. I told her that shipping in North American was really borjing
"Why is that?" she asked
"Well" I replied. "In North America, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops you’ve seen a mall"

Wednesday 7th August 2024 – HAVING TALKED LAST …

… night about Liz, it was quite apposite that Liz should be sending me messages this morning, as I found after finishing my toilet

And so we had a nice little chat, which is always very pleasant. I do like talking to my friends.

And that reminds me – one or two people just recently have asked me for my Whatsapp details so they too can have a nice little chat with me.

So if you don’t have my details, send me a message, using the “contact Me” link at the bottom of the page to the right, to ask me for them. I need to enlarge the circle of my friends, as Jeremy Thorpe once said to Norman Scott.

But not at 23:00 or thereabouts, unless it’s an emergency. I’m trying desperately to be in bed by 23:00 and failing miserably. And not for the want of trying. And believe me, I am very trying, as many people will testify.

Last night was a dismal failure, as you might expect. By the time that I’d sorted out my puttees and washed my trousers it was much nearer midnight than 23:00 when I finally hit the hay.

And once again, I didn’t have much sleep. Although awakening at 06:15 is a much better proposition than 02:15 or whenever it was last night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and some clean clothes, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. I was with a friend on our way to Chester. Somehow we lost our way in all the houses round by Upton on the big estate there. We were making our way slowly towards the town but didn’t seem to be making any progress. I kept on thinking about where I might be. This was confirmed a minute or two later by seeing a sign so I knew that we were in the right direction but actually making much progress was rather dubious. It was quite late at night and we had things to do. As we rounded a roundabout – by now we were on foot – we fell in with an old lady. She was wondering what we were doing out at this ridiculous time of morning so she began to interrogate us. There was me, my friend, Zero’s parents and a fifth person whom I can’t remember but it certainly wasn’t Zero. And how could it not be Zero if her parents were there? That’s the worst part of dreams like this. The old lady asked if we were all locals so we said “no”. She asked where we were from so I explained. She asked what we were doing. We let this carry on for ages with her chiselling out tiny little facts each time. We were spinning this out for ever. In the end we turned up at a house that was being renovated. It was actually one of ours although it wasn’t why we were here. We came to this house and began to settle down in it ready to do some work. That confused her, but it also confused us. We’d been talking about the taxis and how we’d been getting on. Did I look after the cars? Why did I choose the cars that I did? etc. I had the feeling that for the whole night I was being interrogated about a whole section of my life. Again I was just giving the bare minimum possible answer to the question and letting whoever it was – it might have been my friend or it might have been Zero’s father – chisel the information out stone by stone. What we were going to do in Chester I really can’t remember now but it involved parking up in that little street at the back of Frodsham Street between Frodsham Street and the city walls. Why that would be the case I don’t know.

But I’m impressed that I can remember the obscure geography of Chester. It’s 50 years since I lived there and although it was one of the happier moments of my life I never ever went back to live there. It was a beautiful city with a lot going on and some really nice people

Later on I was talking to another friend on the phone about a Scottish football game. I was sounding all enthusiastic about going. It was some kind of important game taking place I think at the Hamilton Stadium. In the end Terry asked me “is there plenty of parking there?” because he might come and bring the kids. I was just on the point of explaining that there was a lot of parking in Hamilton Town Centre when the alarm went off and awoke me so Terry now will never know.

Strangely, during the evening yesterday I was watching last season’s Scottish Amateur Cup Final played between St Patrick’s and Castlemilk, which took place at Hamilton’s football ground.

Liz and I were chatting on line while all of this was going on. A couple of us have a little project on the go and we’re trying to find a convenient time for all of us to be available to have a group chat. But if we all keep on collecting appointments like we seem to be doing, it’s probably going to take place at 03:00 one morning some day whenever.

The nurse came round this morning as usual, and seemed to have more time to spare today, so she was in “chat” mode. She’s doing her best to raise my spirits at the moment because she can tell that I’m flagging.

Not that it’s anything to worry about. It’s just that this relentless cycle of visits from the nurse, and trips to the hospital and all this huge pile of medication – the combined total of everything is depressing me

And as Sam and Bilbo said to each other in Lord of the Rings
"Have you thought of an ending?"
"Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant.”"

She went through the supplies to make a list of what she needed and then after she left I had a breakfast and carried on reading my book about Montana at the turn of the 20th Century.

We’ve reached a very interesting passage about the construction of the “Milwaukie Road” railway through the Rockies and the construction of the St Paul Pass Tunnel.

He told some exciting stories about the town of Taft – a railway town situate at one end of the tunnel. Apparently in the first census of the town the chief occupation was “railroad worker” and the second most popular occupation was “prostitute”.

And when all of the snow melted that first winter that the town was there, they discovered 17 dead bodies.

Yes, the West really was Wild in those days. And all these little anecdotes are in danger of being lost to posterity because no-one is reading these books any more.

After breakfast I had a leisurely start to the day and once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I started on the notes for the radio programme that I started yesterday.

Having fought, sometimes unsuccessfully, wave after wave of fatigue, they are now all written and ready for dictation whenever I can find a moment – presumably on Saturday night.

So starting tomorrow I’ll finish off this little radio project that I have in mind for the start of the year. There are all kinds of people who have contributed so much to the history of rock music despite being totally unaware of the fact and one of the most important needs to be honoured.

In the middle of it all my cleaner came round and we went through my medication to see what I needed, and then I packed her off into town to fetch it.

But woe is me! Oh me miserum! as they would have said in Ancient Rome. My prescription, made out at the end of April, has now expired and I’ve had no news about going to hospital in Paris where it will be renewed.

Consequently I had to write a letter to my doctor to ask him to write a fresh one and hope that he will. That will probably mean yet another visit but it can’t be helped.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, and delicious it was too. I ought to have more of that, but I don’t have the leftovers to go with it.

So now I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow. More of the same, I imagine.

But before I go, talking in Latin reminded me of that American Senator how advertised "wanted – Latin teacher. Native speaker preferred!"
Suppressing their laughter, his colleagues asked him why he wanted one
"I’m being posted to Bolivia" he replied. "They say that that’s in Latin America and I want to be able to speak with the locals"

Tuesday 6th August 2024 – ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO …

… I was wandering around Fredericton in New Brunswick when I came across a sign that said something like “on this spot in August 1894 nothing happened”.

And I remember another film that I once saw that included the line “in this village in 1853 a tree fell down, and the locals have talked about nothing else ever since”.

That’s exactly the kind of day that I’ve had today

It was another late night when I went to bed after everything that I had to do, and I was asleep even quicker than usual, which is one thing, I suppose.

But going to sleep earlier means that I awaken even earlier, which is a problem in itself but when it’s 02:15 that’s just ridiculous. Luckily I managed to go back to sleep again fairly quickly but not for long.

And that’s how it went on for the rest of the night. All in all it was quite a depressing way to try to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 it was a struggle to get to my feet. The room and the bed were spinning around much more rapidly than they usually do first thing in the morning.

They tell me that that’s due to low blood pressure, and I ought to be monitoring it. Regular readers of this rubbish will however recall that earlier in the year I did, and I have a notebook full of readings to prove it. But no-one ever told me what to do with the readings, and how to raise my blood pressure to an acceptable level and so it seemed like a waste of time

However once I was on my feet I staggered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and to have a shave – otherwise my face would qualify me to play bass for ZZ Top

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised by the amount of stuff on it. There was a big group of us who hung around together in the USA One was of course a nice girl. This girl and I became friendly, but not as friendly as I would have liked to be, which was a shame. She was being pursued by a guy who was a junior congressman but she wasn’t particularly sure why but she suspected that she might have made a good trophy wife and that was possibly maybe his interest in her. She wasn’t convinced that it was sincere and was just “politician’s bluff” and she tended to leave it. One day she, I, this politician and one or two of his friends were together. He engaged her in conversation and was busy chatting away with her. I could see that she was not enjoying the experience. I had a blackboard and some chalk so I was writing an account of what I was seeing, about this girl being chatted up by this junior congressman but she’s not happy in the least and he’s pushing things but wasting his time etc. While I was busy doing this I turned my back to them and carried on. The girl came to sit next to me and made one or two suggestions about the two of us going for lunch together, something like that. I was still writing this stuff about her and this congressman on the board then he turned up. He was most offended by what I was writing. He asked me if that was what I thought. I told him that it was so he asked if he was going to have some kind of grief from me. I told him that I didn’t understand what he means. It’s not my intention to resort to violence at any moment. What about anything else? He was pushing me then either to try to have some kind of response or try to goad me into making some kind of intemperate remark or doing some kind of intemperate reaction. I could see that unless I was very careful this whole situation was going to go South at a rather rapid rate of knots too quickly for me to be in any kind of control of it.

Here I go again, with a girl almost within my reach but not quite. And a situation rapidly escalating out of control through no fault of my own and there’s nothing that I can do about it. All of this has a very familiar ring.

Did I dictate the first half of this dream about this situation about people having to challenge about Health Insurance etc … "no you didn’t" – ed … but eventually the second part is that the get down and produce some videos showing escapers, getaways. I could see the one from my situation shown on this video so it looked as if the people concerned thought that they were getting away with it and evidently gave me a real incentive to fight even harder for justice. But as I say, although justice was eventually on my side, trying to have the Judge’s decision enforced was something far more complicated and is still awaiting implementation after all these years.

This sounds like a right load of gibberish but there’s an underlying truth in it, in that having Right, Justice and the Law on your side is all very well, but any decision that is made has to be enforced and the situation isn’t complete until enforcement is made. Any other interpretation of the situation is meaningless.

There had been some kind of museum display at a museum in Crewe. When we first arrived we couldn’t find out where we were going so we ended up going back home and borrowing a compass. Then we arrived again but the exhibit wasn’t going to be shown until the last hour so we all went back home again. At the end of the evening we all trooped off to the museum. The first thing that we did was to check the compass, how is it performing? Bang on! absolutely perfect! Once we had the museum hall in view we took a final check with the compass and sure enough it was exactly what we wanted. We walked into this building. As we approached the top of the steps someone began a conversation with one member of our party. He was telling us about Crewe Alexandra’s football match that afternoon. Their star defender had apparently scored an own goal, the second that he’s scored in as many weeks. He had a moan about it. One thing that I noticed was that this guy was blind so I turned to my friend and whispered to him “I suppose that his guide dog told him about the match” which did not go down very well but I thought that it was hilarious

So now I’m telling jokes – and good jokes too – in my sleep. I must admit that when I transcribed that little note I did have a good laugh. But it also underlines the fact that having a sense of humour is dying a death these days. Modern people won’t find it funny but I’m 50 years behind the times – a museum piece myself, if you like. I don’t belong in this modern World.

The nurse had a good moan at me this morning. I must have bled at some point because one of my trouser legs has a load of blood on the inside. She told me off and ordered me to wash them. It’s called “laying down the law” and I have to obey. She didn’t tell me what the “or else” meant.

After she left I had a leisurely breakfast, reading my book on walks around Montana in 1911 and 1912 and you’ll be surprised how interesting it is. The author was discussing the signing of the peace treaty with the native Americans 20-odd years before and had quite a lot to say on the procedure, especially about on how many of the obligations of the Government that were subsequently overlooked.

And then after a slow start to the morning I made a start on the next radio programme.

Actually, not the next one. I’d leapt a few dates because there are three or four weeks that are going to be really complicated. So today I decided to bite the bullet and attack one of them.

For that, I needed a pile of music that I didn’t have and so I’ve been tracking down obscure music from obscure groups, downloading it, converting it to an acceptable format, choosing selected tracks, remixing them and then pairing them off.

And then if that’s not enough, making a good start on writing the notes. I’ve not gone very far with that, and I could have done better had I not gone away with the fairies at one point. I’m actually impressed that I managed two whole days, Sunday and Monday, without crashing out at all after the events of Saturday.

My cleaner stuck her head in and gave me the cheese she’d bought for me at LeClerc. But it seems that the vegan cheese slices have disappeared off the shelves. So what’s going on here then?

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. It might be simple fare but it’s nice and tasty and that’s what counts.

So having written my notes I’ll wash my trousers to keep the nurse happy and then go to bed

But talking of museum pieces and the like, My friend Liz seems to think that it’s appropriate that I’ve bought an apartment in an Ancient Monument. "You’re actually something of an Ancient Monument yourself" she told me.
"You’re too kind, Liz" I told her ."What you really mean is that I’m an old ruin"

Monday 5th August 2024 – A WEEK ON WEDNESDAY ..

… that is, the 14th August, I’m being assessed for “assisted living”.

This is the long-awaited follow-up to my visit at the start of the year to the Centre de Re-education and the discussions I had with the various ergotherapists.

This is when then decide whether I need to go into a Home or whether I can continue to live here. And if the latter, what level of support will I need to assure my autonomy.

As it happens, although I have a tendency to moan a lot about my situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and things are slowly becoming more and more difficult, I’m confident that I’ll still be here for the foreseeable future.

Of course, a nice young aide menagère, or “domestic help” wouldn’t go amiss and I wouldn’t say “no” if one were offered to sooth my fevered brow, but knowing my luck, it wouldn’t be a nice nubile nymphet but a retired Bulgarian weightlifter

So we shall see how the future unfolds. But it’s nice to see that things are beginning to move rapidly. At this rate, there won’t be any time left at all in the month of August with all of these appointments and visits.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, despite everything that I said last night, I ended up going to bed quite late yet again. I was waylaid by, would you believe, the West Asian Football Federation’s final in the women’s tournament between those two powerhouses of the female football world, errr … Jordan v Nepal

It actually went down to penalties, which was why it finished so late. And it was Jordan that took the honours.

Surprisingly, the game was much better than it ought to have been. Nepal had the better of the play, as it happened, but they struggled to match the speed of the Jordanians on a counter-attack.

So late to bed once more, I slept right through until the alarm went off, and then had a very shaky start to the morning as I struggled to come to terms with the speed at which the room and bed were spinning round.

Once in the bathroom I scrubbed myself up but left the spare set of puttees soaking until tonight. That will do them a world of good.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was one of these chaotic dreams about being in laboratory but there were bits and pieces everywhere that were either attached to me or falling to the ground or getting in my way. I couldn’t clear them out from in front of me at all. Everything that I touched seemed to be connected to me in some way or other, either physically or spiritually or something like that. I couldn’t have some kind of clear way walking around this laboratory. It was just like being in one of these fairgrounds where everything is attached to everything else and you have to somehow find your way to the end but there was no possibility of doing that last night, it was just so chaotic, all this stuff.

These chaotic dreams occur every now and again and I suppose that it’s really all a symptom of my chaotic life. And it’s nothing like as chaotic as it used to be either. I used to live in total chaos.

In fact, someone once asked me my day (a Wednesday) and time (03:00) of birth, and they produced from somewhere for my birthday one of these in-depth horoscopes.

It’s absolutely frightening as to how accurate it is. It talks about how I live in my own little world totally oblivious of the rest of the World and concludes with "your life and living arrangements seem to be total chaos but that bothers people around you far more than it ever bothers you"

And never were truer words ever spoken. Poor Nerina. She had a really difficult job on her hands and she deserves a medal for having stuck to it for almost nine years.

When the nurse came, we had an interesting chat about seagulls. There are several types of course but here in France we have two common species, mouettes and goëlands. She was using the words interchangeably so I asked her the difference.

She replied that she didn’t know, and set me a task, to prove that I am worthy. Namely, to find out the difference for tomorrow.

After she left I had a nice leisurely breakfast reading about the forced removal of the Flathead tribe of native Americans from their reservation to another reservation that they will share with the existing occupants so that their land could be sold – to the benefit of the American Government.

That kind of thing was pretty much commonplace in the USA in the 1880s and 1890s. If the native Americans refused to move, they were simply massacred, and I’ve walked across the site of the most outrageous massacre of native American civilians, at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1894, when I was there in 2019

Much of the day has been spent today working on the final lot of notes that I dictated on Saturday night. They are all done now, the two halves of the programme are assembled and the joining track has been chosen with its notes written ready for dictation.

And considering that the other day we were discussing Dave Arbus, it seems appropriate that the track that I chose was one by East of Eden.

First though, I had a listen to my programme about John Mayall. It’s actually quite good and I’m quite pleased with it. So I sent it off to Headquarters for inclusion in the stream for this weekend.

The rest of the day was spent tidying up the paperwork. I’m sure that it all grows when my back is turned. It doesn’t matter how many pieces I file away, I always find one piece somewhere that I’ve overlooked.

My cleaner stuck her head in the door to bring the post – including the letter about my visit. We had a chat about my neighbour too. We’re all wondering what is going on with her as we’ve had no news

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg. And delicious it was too. Plenty of stuffing left, so its taco roll tomorrow and a leftover curry on Wednesday. I’ll leave off the pie foe a while

So having washed my puttees now and hung them up to dry I’ve written my notes and I’m off to bed. Late again but it can’t be helped. It seems to be the current state of affairs.

But going back to the story of my apartment, Friedrich Nietzsche once famously wrote "You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star. Out of chaos comes order."
However, he died in 1900 – a long time before I was born. Had he been alivr during my lifetime he would have written something completely different.

Sunday 4th August 2024 – ♫ PANCAKE TUESDAY …♫

♫ … Eric’s busy baking♫

But leaving aside the question of whether or not it is a Tuesday today, Eric has been a very busy boy in the kitchen this afternoon.

We now have another loaf all ready and baked so that we can start the week tomorrow with fresh bread for our toast, and we have a monster flapjack cut into 12 slices that will keep the blaidd from the drws, as they say in Caernarfon, for the next few weeks

When I made my lunchtime sandwiches yesterday I noticed that I didn’t have much bread left so I made a mental note to myself that some baking wold be involved in the proceedings at some point today.

And I was not wrong. When I looked last night, I reckoned that there might be enough for toast and maybe for a sandwich at lunchtime but that would be it.

So I sorted myself out and put my puttees to soak in a bowl of soapy hot water, where they still are after 24 hours. If that doesn’t clean them to the nurse’s satisfaction then nothing will.

When I’d done that I rolled up the other pair and put them ready for the morning.

Before going to bed I dictated a pile of notes for the radio programmes ready to edit. I didn’t do too many because I could feel myself flagging as I was dictating, and making too many silly mistakes.

Nevertheless, it was still after midnight and I was letting it all hang out. I had hoped to be in bed a long time before this

And it was a miserable night too. I’m glad that I didn’t have to wake up until 08:00 today.

But when the alarm went off I was already awake. I’d been awake for a while. Dog-tired as I was when I went to bed, I’d gone off to sleep quite quickly but I’d woken up far too early.

After having a wash and a clean-up I came in here to listen to the dictaphone. And I was amazed at all the stuff on there. No wonder it had been a miserable night. I was going to make a pizza but I had the horrible realisation that I hadn’t taken the pizza dough out of the freezer at Sunday lunchtime. Then I suddenly realised that it’s still Saturday night and I’m still in bed so I don’t need to quite make the pizza as yet so I turned over and tried to go back to sleep again.

That was one of these “panic attack’ dreams that I have every so often. You have to admit – it’s not everyone who can make a pizza while he’s in bed asleep.

Then there was something about it being someone’s birthday and that seemed to affect a couple of rock groups and their music but I’m not quite sure how and I seemed to have forgotten part of the dream that included that but it generated onwards towards birthdays and cooking, people putting birthday recipes and birthday ideas for meals altogether. I was going to comment on a couple which I’d sorted out because they could be so easily changed to vegan but while writing out the notes I seem to have lost the thread completely. I started writing basically gibberish and in the end pressed “send” and sent it because I couldn’t think of what else I needed to say and sending anything at this stage is better than sending nothing. It was a really confused and miserable night last night with all kinds of activity and things going on with which I didn’t really get to grips.

It seems that I wasn’t just writing gibberish last night. I was speaking it too

I was at school and we had some project to do, to talk about our teachers. I was working away in a corner and another girl came to sit close to me so we ended up chatting while we were working. I’d picked as my subject one of the teachers who was married to another one. His wife was a former accountant and accounts manager. We were fantasising why the male prof didn’t like the idea too much of working on the internet. We came to the conclusion that it was because his wife didn’t let him because she was too busy doing other things with it, and why he was so late handing work back to us was because she would go through it with a fine toothcomb and being a teacher herself and an accountant she would absolutely have to find some fault with it. We were fantasising things about this that went on for ages. None of it was very complimentary and none of it was stuff that I could write down but it was still interesting. One of the teachers then came over to us with a big pile of notes. She said to the girl “I have your results here from the previous project. Would you like me to read them to you?” so the girl said “yes”. The teacher said “some of them are very confidential”, looking at me. The girl said “that’s all OK. I don’t mind Eric knowing anything of things like that”. “Yes, but one or two of them concern Eric”. I replied “don’t worry about making any comments about me. You might have comments to say for the first time but a lot of other people will have said them before this, I promise you”. It went on like this. This was another one of these nice warm comfortable dreams that I have some times and don’t have enough of and that I wish could go on for ever and ever

Yes, this is much more like the kind of dream that I want to have. I’ve had a few dreams, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that focus on a girl and me at school back in our schooldays. And if only my schooldays had happened like this. All these girls hanging around me and I wish that I knew who they were and why they weren’t there when it mattered.

Later on I’m making my afternoon cocoa and I have it in the pan. I’m stirring away, talking about other things and thinking about loads of other things too while I’m doing it. I seem to be there for ages and ages and notice tat this chocolate now is starting to congeal. That can’t be right so I have a look and the gas has gone out in the little rechaud thing that I used for heating my chocolate and I’ve been standing there for the last I don’t know how long stirring it and it’s not made the slightest bit of difference. It’s just been going colder and colder and colder. Now I’m going to have to heat it up and wait for that to happen and it’s hot enough. I can see me being here with this all night.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that that’s happened, trying to cook a meal and the gas has been out for quite a while

I was in the European Union’s building in Brussels. It was time to go so I prepared to leave and picked up my briefcase, then picked up a long cane and began to push my briefcase along the floor in front of me. Quite a few people gave me some strange looks, some stranger than others including one woman who was extremely suspicious. When I reached the exit door at the interior of the building I picked it up and immediately went to open it. All the people dived for cover so I took out my laptop and packet of sandwiches. Before I had time to do anything again I was overwhelmed by security guards who insisted on demanding to know what I was doing. I told them to mind their own business and we had another stand-off in that … fell asleep here …

Yes, over the years I had a few good stand-offs with the Security guards. They were totally lacking in an understanding of what was happening in the modern World. The period in which we were living was changing rapidly and dramatically, far too quickly for them.

I was back giving a girl advice on buying a computer for her studies. She could have a grant to enable her to buy a computer but she needed to know the specifications and so on. I explained to her the maximum specifications that the Open University would allow under this grant but I also explained to her that firstly they didn’t check and secondly, as long as she didn’t tell them any different they weren’t going to know about what her computer was so we had a little discussion along those lines while she was having a look through the sales pages to see whether she could find anything suitable.

When I was living in Brussels I lost count of the number of computers I built and repaired. That was another field that was changing dramatically and rapidly and I was lucky enough to be there during that little window where we had SX, DX and Pentium architecture and I could cope with that. However I was left behind rather rapidly at that point.

Did I dictate the dream where we were all back in France again and there was something going on and someone had to submit some kind of written document … "no you didn’t" – ed … so one of our group took it upon herself to do it, and then asked if we needed any amendments before she sent it off. The problem was that this document was a complete mess and needed a total rewrite and revision before we could send it. I’m no journeyman so I could have cleared it up but … fell asleep here … which is a shame because this sounds as if it might have been interesting.

We had a new wheelchair for a friend of mine. I assembled it but couldn’t tighten it up because two of the straps that we needed to bring the whole thing into tension once there was a weight on it were not supplied with the kit and we had to fetch those extra. I explained to my friend that she’s going to be a bit flopping around on this. She was concerned about her blood test – if the blood test that she goes to takes for ever, how’s she going to cope? I explained to her that there was nothing wrong with the actual comfort of the machine, it’s just one or two pieces missing but she didn’t seem to understand. In the end I sat her in the machine and had things arranged as they normally would be. We were there for an hour or something then I set them up as they would be when we had the straps in there. Everything seemed to be much better so I asked her if she was comfortable but again she didn’t reply. Once I pressed her, she kept on going on about her blood test. I’ve no idea what was happening with her there but she was being extremely un-cooperative about this new wheelchair.

Phew! After that I’m exhausted. It’s no surprise that I was feeling pretty tired

In the middle of sorting this out the nurse came and dealt with my legs. She had rather more time than usual so we had a little chat which was nice

But as a result it was rather a late breakfast but the coffee was nevertheless really nice.

Back in here I watched Stranraer stroll to a 2-0 lead quite comfortably and then throw it away in the final stages of the game. They should have been out of sight and down the road a long time before the end of the game, and Peterhead only had two shots on goal during the whole match …

Then I’ve been radioing. The notes for two additional tracks have been edited and the radio programmes have been assembled. They are complete and ready to go. And then the first of the two longer ones is all edited and assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and remixed and the notes written ready for dictating.

Doing the final editing for the last one that I dictated is tomorrow’s task, if I choose to accept it

And then we had the baking. That was after my hot chocolate. I have a loaf, a flapjack and I also baked a pizza for tea and that really was delicious. Just as good as last weekend’s.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, I hope.

But did you note the phrase “another stand-off”. It wouldn’t be the first one. I remember a memo that came round saying “Fonctionnaires are reminded that they cannot bring their children into the office” and there I was, wandering around the building with Roxanne.
"Haven’t you read the memo about children in the office?" roared a a Security guard
"Ohh yes, I read it" I replied
"So why have you brought her in? She’s not allowed"
"But the memo talks about … ‘bringing your child …’"
"That’s right" he shouted
"But she’s not my child" I explained.

Saturday 3rd August 2024 – SO WHERE DID …

… Saturday go?

As for me, I didn’t go anywhere. I spent most of the day on my chair here in the office and much of the time I was fast asleep. It was pretty much a repeat of last Saturday, and the Saturday before that.

It seems that this Saturday thing is becoming a habit, and I don’t understand why

It’s not as if I had a particularly late night last night. To my surprise, and probably yours too, I was in bed by 23:00. Not by much, it has to be said, but enough to make it worth celebrating.

And I was asleep quite quickly too. In fact I had hardly begun my little night-time mantra before I was off with the fairies

But a strange thing happened this morning. I heard the alarm go off so I switched it off and after a stretch and a yawn, I pitched myself up onto the side of the bed.

Usually, I wait for the second alarm to go off, by which time the room and bed have stopped spinning so I can get off. But today – no second alarm.

So after several very long minutes I went to check the phone to make sure that I’ve not switched it off by accident – and there it was, still switched on, and the time was 06:55, five minutes before the first alarm is due to go off.

And it did do off on time too. So what was it that had awoken me earlier? Now there’s a mystery if ever I saw one.

In the bathroom the first thing that I had to do was to wash my watch. I’m bleeding from the wrist right underneath where the watch sits and there’s blood all over the watch. I can see this being an endless process, waking up in the morning and wiping the blood from somewhere.

We can’t go on for much longer with all of these blood-thinning products. I can see serious problems ahead if ever I have a real injury.

Having had a good wash and remembering to wash my shorts this weekend, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been for a walk around a seaside town with a friend of mine. We were appalled by the state of the beach. It was nothing but a huge rubbish dump and the smell of urine was overpowering from the water. We walked around for ten minutes and wondered how on earth the people living in the area could possibly put up with the stench that was driving me berserk. Then I set out for home. As I started for home I was overtaken by one of these Crosville Ford Transits that was heading into town. I was walking but found that I could keep pace with it. We walked all the way to Shavington with his bus just in front of me. It pulled into Shavington and went in round behind the Pony Express place at Sugarloaf Corner but I took the short cut across the front of the chip shop where I bought some chips for supper … fell asleep here … so there I was back home again with this Ford Transit bus again about 20 yards away. I wondered “what on earth was this doing? It’s travelled all the way from the top end of Crewe with no passengers on it at all to come into Shavington and then just sit here and do nothing

And I could really and honestly smell the stench of urine during this dream. It was overwhelming

Later on, I dictated One confusion was the number. It was 3230-whatever but I kept on saying the number wrong, getting the order like the numbers in the wrong place but eventually I managed to sort it out with a bit of confusion.

This obviously relates to something, but I really have no idea what. But as we know from past experience, I seem to be missing out on a lot of dreams that happen but I seem not to record. One of them was that famous dream a couple of months ago involving Castor, and we can’t not record dreams where she, Zero or TOTGA are involved. That would really be the end

The nurse didn’t take long to sort me out today. She was in and out in 10 minutes, her usual cheerful, bubbly self. She wants me to wash my puttees tonight and use the clean ones starting tomorrow, and showed me a few unhygienic marks on these. I wanted to tell her that that was her fault, not putting the plasters on the right places, but I reckon that it’s probably not a good idea to antagonise unnecessarily the person who puts the antiseptic and plasters on my wounds.

After she left I had breakfast and carried on reading my book about someone’s walks around Montana in 1910 and 1911.

While I’m reading, I have the internet running in the background and looking up all of the places that he visited and seeing just how many changes there have been in the 100-odd years since he wrote. It’s a fascinating study and, as I’ve said, so many of his observations and notes that he made from talking to the elderly settlers who had come there when the territory were first settled have failed to make it into modern historical reminiscence.

So much of this early pioneer history has been lost, and will be forgotten for ever as long as research today is just being conducted with the aid of Wikipedia and nothing else. I have a feeling that people are going to forget how to research.

It’s all very well people asking you “what did you learn at University?”. I leaned far, far more than just whatever there was on my course and, surprisingly, the place where I learned the most was in “OUSA Debate” and the other big Current Affairs chatroom whose name I have forgotten but will remember the moment I press “publish”.

In here I sat down to plan out my day, and the next thing that I remember, it was 12:43 and I had a splitting headache. I’d slept for about two hours, just like that. No recollection whatever of anything.

Falkirk’s match against Queen’s Park was on the internet so I watched the Bairns beat the Spiders and then made myself a sandwich.

Back in here after lunch I started to edit the notes that I’d dictated about John Mayall.

By the time that I’d finished this afternoon I’d assembled the programme and choosing the 11 tracks and the text from scratch I ended up 81 seconds over my hour.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I always include in my notes a lot of filler so removing 81 seconds of it was time-consuming but not defeating.

Now I have a programme assembled that features many artists who played with him before he left to live in the USA and if all goes according to plan it will be broadcast next weekend.

Remember, you can hear me and my programmes at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS on Friday and Saturday at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time and 15:00 Toronto time and there are podcasts recorded to hear later if you miss them.

The excitement was obviously far too much for me because I crashed out yet again and that was depressing. I need to be doing much better than this. I can’t keep on falling asleep.

But anyway I recovered just in time for tea – another one of my favourite breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and salad. The lettuce was looking rather sad but nevertheless I used what I had to. I just can’t seem to keep lettuce for any length of time.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to dictate the next batch of arrears, put my puttees in to soak and hope that I can make it back in here without knocking my legs and bleeding to death

But before I go, I have to say that I have been taken to task about some of the humour that exudes from these pages. Someone seems to think that they are becoming far too full of smut.
"Don’t you know what good clean fun is?" wailed one contributor.
Well of course I don’t so I e-mailed her back. "You tell me. What good is it?"

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of lovely chats on the internet this afternoon.

The first was with one of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee who was so helpful when it came to buying the apartment downstairs

And the second was with a close fried who lives in Newport. He was actually best man at my wedding and we still keep in touch.

However last night, I wasn’t anywhere like in touch with my ideal night-time curfew of 23:00. It was actually after midnight before I finally hit the sack, running as late as I was. The list of things that I have to do before going to bed seems to have grown longer and longer.

But once I was in bed, I didn’t reach all that far into my little mantra before I fell asleep. That’s one good thing – that I’m asleep quite quickly whereas in the olden days I’d be tossing and turning for hours.

There were no stone cutter, no diggers, no nothing going on outside this morning so I slept all the way through until about … errr …. 06:15 when something must have awoken me. And I lay there semi-comatose until the alarm went off at 07:00.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and sorted out some clean clothes. Who knows? I might get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Clinic so I have to look my best.

With clean clothes, it meant that I could give my undies and trousers a scrub in the sink. These days I wear these shell-suit trousers all the time because they wash and dry in no time, which is good news seeing how filthy I can be.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I was doing during the night. I was in Shavington going to catch the bus to Nantwich and for some reason or other decided to walk up to the bus stop at the Elephant and Castle. I set out to walk and on my way I noticed in the distance the Farmer’s Daughter who has figured on these pages once or twice but she had short hair and that suited her head really well. She walked off somewhere and I was debating whether to go to follow her to see where she was going and to see whether I could summon up some kind of excuse to have a good chat. I walked up to where the Elephant and Castle is and put my hand out to turn right even though I was walking on foot. A couple of kids on the pavement, tiny kids who were presumably going to catch the bus to school saw me and waited on the edge of the pavement until I went past. There on the right hand side was an Austin Cambridge but it was “A” registration as in 1983 or 1984 but they stopped making Cambridges in 1967 and any vehicle that was subsequently registered would have had an age-related plate fitted to it, so why was this one carrying the plate of such a recent date. That was a complete mystery that needed to be resolved.

Yes, well I’ll tell you something for nothing and that I would not have been convinced if she wanted to cut her hair. I’m afraid that I’m quite the male chauvinist when it comes to girls’ hair. I think that long hair on girls is absolutely beautiful and it’s a cardinal sin for a girl to set out to disfigure that which nature has blessed her. But I’m impressed that I can remember banal details about car registration numbers and years of manufacture while I’m asleep.

As for The Farmer’s Daughter, there hangs a long tale that might be one of the many recounted at my funeral.

The taxi came bang on time which was nice and another passenger already in there graciously yielded up the front seat – it’s much easier for me to pop in and out of the front.

We set off for Avranches and first had to drop off the other passenger at the hospital, and then take me to the clinic across the road and up the hill.

This is a brand-new building and it does look impressive, although it beats me why they couldn’t have built it onto the existing hospital.

The nurse is there is one who has seen me before and she remembered me, which is rather sad going, I suppose. Once seen …

She asked me a load of questions about my current symptoms, and either she’s excellent at prognostication, the symptoms from which I’m suffering are well-known, she’s a regular reader of this rubbish or else she’s in league with the Devil.

It was interesting when she asked me things like "when you go to sleep in the afternoon, is it a sudden, dramatic sleep with no warning and no realisation that you’ve been asleep?"

You can say that again.

She weighed me again. And having been down past Target Weight 01 and close to Target Weight 02, my current weight is depressing to say the least.

She took off all of my bandages and dressings and commented about how well the surgery was looking. "Would I like to see?"

And so I told her to clear off and put a dressing on it, and it took her a while to do it. I think that she was hoping that I’d catch sight of it.

She’s formally forbidden me to wrap a dressing around the arm – just leave the plaster on it. And she’s going to ‘phone up the nurse and give her instructions. And so I’m suspicious.

But some good has come out of this meeting. I told her of my woes at the private clinic. She was horrified. Being a terminally ill patient, I’m entitled to 100% of my healthcare covered by the State. She showed me the paper that she has which confirms it.

The Private Clinic had no right to make me pay even a penny. So she’s asked to see a copy of the receipt and she’ll take it up with the Hospital’s Welfare Department

After she’d taken a blood sample she threw me out and the taxi brought me home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me up the stairs and into my apartment.

She seems to think that I’m moving better than I did previously, and how I wish that it were true

Not having had anything to eat or drink as yet, I sat down to breakfast. And couldn’t move for a while afterwards, so when the nurse came round to deal with me later, the place was a tip with breakfast dishes everywhere.

After she left, I had some ‘phone calls to make.

The President of the Residents’ Committee is returning on Sunday so we had a good that about this and that.

It included the latest news about our neighbour, currently residing in the hospital. Things are not looking to bright for her future and we may have seen the last of her in this building

Once we had hung up I made a drink and then ‘phoned a friend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned a project that I might be starting at some point.

It’s had a couple of false starts and deciding that it can’t go on for ever and can’t be delayed much longer, I have decided to go in a different direction.

This actually means calling for help. After all, the key to success has been knowing where to stop and when to seek the advice of experts, and if you have friends who can be depended up to help you in this respect, then so much the better.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is at the end of a chat that lasted a Rosemaryesque one hour and 15 minutes, I was a long way further down the road than I was after several months of prevaricating

Tea tonight was pie and veg, the last slice which was a shame because it was so nice. And it was followed by apple turnover and soya cream

Yes, my air fryer is great for warming up slices of pie and apple turnovers.

So now I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good sleep, and I mustn’t forget to wash my shorts in the morning. I forgot last week. Why I wash them on Saturdays is because with not going to bed until later, they have longer to dry.

But before I go to bed, let me tell you about the Clinic at Avranches and the guy in the next cubicle to me.
He works in the quarry down the road and wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way when they detonated some explosive.
"And it’s badly damaged my … errr … ummm …" he said, groping for the polite word.
"Rectum?" asked the nurse, helpfully
"Well" said the man "in all honesty it’s not done ’em much good"

Thursday 1st August 2024 – IF EVER I …

… lay my hands on the person who started up a stone-cutter and cement mixer outside my window at … gulp … 05:30 this morning, they’ll be eating their meals through a straw for the next couple of weeks.

They say that if violence is the answer, it must have been a pretty stupid question, but it was certainly the most stupid question that I could think of, asking if it was OK to do something like that.

What made it worse was that by the time the nurse came at 08:30, whoever had done it had done what they were doing, packed up and cleared off.

That was quite a shame too because for once in my life I was in bed early – I actually made it into bed before 23:00. Not by much, it has to be said, but by enough to make it worthy of note.

And I was asleep quite quickly too, so I was looking forward to a really good sleep. But alas, it was not to be.

Once whoever it was stated up with whatever it was that he was doing, sleep was impossible and so I just lay there semi-comatose until the alarm went off. And then I fell out of bed and went about my business.

After a good wash and brush up and shave this morning, without cutting myself for once so avoiding bleeding everywhere, I came in here for a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

However, the stone cutter etc had disturbed me to such an extent that there was nothing on the dictaphone this morning, and that’s disappointing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what goes on during the night is the only excitement that I have these days.

When the nurse came she caught me in flagrant delit watching a football match on the internet, and to my shame I can’t remember who it was now. It must have been an exciting game.

But she changed the plasters on my legs, burst a blister and dealt with my puttees. She thinks that I’m nesh, still wanting the would on my arm to be covered up, and I told her that she was perfectly right – I am, and I don’t care who knows it.

After she left I had a slow start to the morning and then launched myself into my radio programme.

And by the time I knocked off this evening, I’d written all the notes, dictated them and begun to edit them. There are 19 minutes worth of notes to edit and I’m looking to finish with about 13.

It was a task that I was hoping to have completed by this evening but that’s not possible – and with me being at the hospital tomorrow morning I won’t have it finished for this weekend so it will have to do for next week.

There was a lengthy pause in the middle of the day as I had forgotten about the mushrooms.

Last weekend when I ordered from LeClerc they had no 250 gramme punnets of mushrooms so I bought a 500 gramme one with the intention of making some soup with the extra mushrooms. However I’d forgotten.

When I went to fetch a tomato from the fridge for my sandwiches at lunchtime I came across the mushrooms so I set out to make a mushroom soup

And it was delicious too with my fresh bread. I’m really enjoying making soups, especially when I have the correct equipment to do so. This old heavy-duty whizzer makes short work of everything, including some of the accessories that were supplied with it.

It’s a good job that I had a cooked meal at lunchtime as it was a snack tea tonight. Caernarfon were playing the return leg of their match against Legia Warsawa.

Facing a heavy defeat from the first leg, it wasn’t really any better at Nantporth. The gulf in class was evident, even more so that the other night.

The fates are really conspiring against Welsh teams right now. Making it through to the second round of European competition after good wins in the First Round, but both teams being drawn against the strongest seeded teams in their respective tournaments

But in Caernarfon’s case, even though they were swept aside unceremoniously, they’ve gone home with €350,000 of UEFA’s money and probably a lot more too from sponsorship and TV rights, etc

So right now I’m going to do the washing up and then go to bed.

But I’m hearing a story about a young girl, a TNS supporter who travelled with the fans to Budapest for the Ferencvaros match first leg the other week, telling her mother "mummy, mummy, while I was in Budapest watching TNS I’m afraid … well … errr … that I’ve become pregnant"
"How do you know, dear?" asked her mother. "Have you had a check-up?"
"No, mummy" replied the girl. "He was a Hungarian"

EPIC HALL

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

Thursday 15th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS …

Wednesday 14th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS..

Tuesday 13th August 2024 – DAY TWO …

Monday 12th August 2024 – AND SO THAT WAS …

Sunday 11th August 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

Saturday 10th August 2024 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

Friday 9th August 2024 – I’M HAVING A …

Thursday 8th August 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

Wednesday 7th August 2024 – HAVING TALKED LAST …

Tuesday 6th August 2024 – ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO …

Monday 5th August 2024 – A WEEK ON WEDNESDAY ..

Sunday 4th August 2024 – ♫ PANCAKE TUESDAY …♫

Saturday 3rd August 2024 – SO WHERE DID …

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

Thursday 1st August 2024 – IF EVER I …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring