Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Thursday 19th October 2023 – IT GOES WITHOUT …

… saying that last night was just as bad as the others that I’ve been having just recently. Having a nightmare at about 03:00 didn’t help matters any.

Anyway, as a result it was another difficult crawl out of bed when the alarm went off

What surprised me though is that I seem to be moving rather better than I was a couple of days ago – to such an extent that I actually managed to walk 14 paces without grabbing hold of any support, and that’s an improvement over the last few weeks.

So I made it into the living room and had my medication. Then I came back in here and checked my mails and messages. There wasn’t anything exciting in the mail this morning – no letters or messages from any Health Insurance people. Time is running out.

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was a review of what needed to be done in the garden, tasks performed, items bought, etc to prepare it. From there we went on to a football match which Morton won 4-0 which was to the disadvantage of Oldham Athletic. Someone was saying that it’s a shame that Morton’s new manager didn’t score a goal. Someone pointed out that he did in fact score a penalty earlier on in the match. When we had a look to see who it was I saw that it was one of the existing players but I couldn’t remember now who it was.

So later on, back to where we were before. One of the Morton players had pushed this guy who was his manager, pushed him around in a wheelchair during part of the match, pushing him around to show him off to the team or vice versa, something like that.

I was in a dream later with Nerina. She was going off to do a taxi job and I was preparing the cars ready to go out. One of the estates didn’t have an MoT on it. We’d let it expire while we’d been away. We had to go to check it over to make sure that it was OK. I was taking out the radios etc ready. I decided that I’d go through the diary, check on all the big jobs that we usually do and go through for when they were ready for renewal to see if that would give me a clue about how I could manage the car MoTs better. Nerina was going out to do a couple of jobs so she was confused about what was going to be happening to the radio in the office if I was outside fixing all the cars.

There was also something else, as I mentioned earlier, but you don’t really want to know about that.

This morning I’ve been sorting out paperwork and making another assault on a different target. They actually replied too, telling me that I had the wrong address. But at least they posted the correct one so I could redirect my correspondence.

They also provided a phone number that I could ring, so if no-one has contacted me by mid-morning tomorrow I’ll phone them.

There’s also a personal profile that I need to create for the French Government’s healthcare site so I spent some time doing that. It might be too late for that to be of any use but you never know.

All in all, it took me an age to do everything this morning.

This afternoon I finished off pairing the music for the third radio programme in this batch that I’ve just done and then I wrote out all the notes.

Before I go to bed later I’ll dictate the notes for the first one. I did four one after the other last time and I was exhausted by the end so I’ll do one at a time over the next few days.

My neighbour gave me the phone number of her ergotherapist. She told me that she was very impressed with the one who came to see her so I may as well try to have an appointment with the same one. He wasn’t in but his secretary took a message.

My cleaner came by too to bring me a letter. It’s good news from the Belgian Social Security – I’ve had a pay-rise for my pension. Whatever am I going to do with this extra €1:02 a month?

Tea tonight was an attack on the European Burger Mountain in my fridge, with pasta and veg and the rest of that vegan pesto from the other day. Pretty basic, but pretty nice.

So when I’ve dictated the radio notes, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be shopping and then I imagine that I’ll be panicking about this trip on Monday, making a raft of phone calls and eventually, I imagine, making a phone call to book a train.

It’ll be a blooming miracle if this taxi thing comes off.

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Wednesday 18th October 2023 – THESE NIGHTS ARE …

… not getting any better. It was another dismal night of being awake for hour after hour after hour.

And then being flat out asleep, dead to the world, when the alarm went off.

And so with having slept for probably about half an hour it was a very weary me that staggered to my feet when the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had some correspondence that needed my attention. I’ve sold yet another photo from my adventures around Labrador and you’ve no idea just how many hoops you have to jump through for $200.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I’ve sold a fair few of my p =hotos but this is the most that I’ve ever received for one.

There was then the information that I needed to collect, which I mentioned yesterday. That took a good while and then I could send it all off by internet. A phone call won’t be sufficient because they will need to see the information that I have.

While I was at it, I decided to contact my former employers. They have a Social Services and Welfare department so I may as well try to involve them in whatever problems I have going on. The more the merrier, I reckon.

At that point, I drifted off into the Arms of Morpheus for a good half-hour. And then I sent off a couple of radio programmes to be broadcast this weekend and next weekend.

Climbing into the bath, even using a wooden box as a step, was almost impossible. I had a real struggle to fight my way in, and finding my way out again wasn’t all that much easier. This is starting to become rather grim.

While the cleaner was here I attacked the notes for the radio programmes and not only did I whizz through one from start to finish, I did some of the next one too. If I’m lucky and don’t have too many distractions I’ll be able to finish that one tomorrow.

After the cleaner left I had my hot chocolate and then attacked the washing. That’s everything now done for the moment.

But have you any idea how difficult it is for me to move a basket full of moist washing into the bay where I keep the clothes airer? It’s this kind of simple thing that is causing me all kinds of anguish right now.

There was (surprisingly) some stuff on the dictaphone. I was doing something with a rock group last night. Things weren’t working out too well so at some point I went round to the place where we kept all our things and began to take everything away that was mine. I noticed that some of them had actually got together with one or two other people and were in the process of trying to create something but I didn’t want them to use my things. I was in an extremely bad temper, even down to things like my telephone answering machine so I took it away. They had changed the message on it so many times that it was now absolutely useless anyway. I ended up with seven or eight bags that I dragged off as best as I could, came back to my bedroom at home and dumped the lot on the floor while I sat and thought about my next move.

It was then our students’ union annual conference taking place at some hotel in Manchester. Things were so up-in-the-air and so confused that I set out from home with absolutely nothing except the clothes that I was wearing. I boarded the tram that whisked me off. When I arrived in Manchester I eventually found the venue. It was a very small hotel with several floors but no matter where I went I couldn’t find anyone in charge of the organising. No-one would give me any papers or any timetable, I didn’t know anything about having food etc. There was a meeting taking place on the Sunday to which I’d been invited but there was nothing at all like that. The guy running that particular meeting grabbed hold of me and asked me why I hadn’t done a few things. I explained that I needed paperwork so he wandered off. I spent all that Friday evening wandering around this hotel trying to find someone to give me some information to tell me what on earth was actually going on and what I was expected to do.

Not of course that it makes no difference because I don’t ever know what I’m doing. That was always the advantage of living in a small village – if you didn’t have a clue what you were doing, everyone else knew.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné using the leftover stuffing lengthened with a large handful of peanuts. What with all of the bulghour that was already in there, there’s enough protein in that lot to sink a ship.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I wonder how much good the mails and letters that I’ve written today will bring. Probably not a lot, but if you ask, you might receive, or you might not so there’s a 50/50 chance. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive at all.

But we’ll find out soon enough. But if no-one actually does anything, I can see myself walking to Paris on Monday morning.

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Tuesday 17th October 2023 – THIS TRIP TO PARIS …

…is becoming more and more complicated as each day passes.

My cleaner took the paper to the Health Insurance people for stamping. However, because it’s more than a certain amount it needs to be pre-approved by their head office.

"You should have your reply in 15 days" said the clerk to my cleaner.

And I travel on Monday.

But be that as it may, I ended up having another miserable night. What with a raging thirst and the stabbing pains back in the sole of my right foot, I was pretty much fed up of how the night went.

However even though I saw 06:40 come round, I was flat out asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00. And as you might expect, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave my stinking pit.

Anyway, there I was. And after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been to a Remembrance Day parade. There were whole choirs of people including soldiers and civilians singing the Eric Bogle song NO MAN’S LAND two or three or four times consecutively, one after the other. I’ve no idea why because there’s nothing else that I remember

And then Nerina and I had been on holiday and had just come home. We’d slowly started to unpack. I couldn’t find half the things that I’d taken with me, CDs, that kind of thing and I was going round in circles. Nerina decided that she’d go to bed and I suddenly got it in my head that I’d go home. I left our house and began to walk on my crutches down West Street in Crewe. A train pulled up but it pulled up further down the platform than it usually would and a tram came in right behind it. By the time I reached the train to board it, it pulled away and left me standing there. Then I looked at my ticket and found that it was for travelling in the opposite direction, not out towards Nantwich. I stopped for a think and decided that I’d head back into the town centre. It was a wet evening but somehow very nice. I walked into the town centre, which became part of the old Brussels town centre. I couldn’t find a chip shop that was open. There were all these wonderful smells from barbecues, food stands and the brewery was creating quite an odour as it was working. I was aimlessly wandering around taking it all in. Then I wondered why it was that I was thinking that I was heading home because I was actually living with Nerina. My home was there. I thought that I’d set out back and wander back towards home. I noticed that by now I wasn’t using my crutches. I was going slowly but I seemed to be walking much better and didn’t need them. I was totally at a loss as to what was happening. I was going down these stone steps at the back of the town centre etc. Although my right leg was hurting it was still keeping me upright. I remember thinking that it’s a beautiful evening out here in the town centre just wandering around, looking around, taking in all the smells and sights. Maybe the two of us ought to come out and do this kind of thing more often

Later on I was with Nerina again. We were wandering around a shopping street somewhere in a tourist area in a city like Bruges. For some reason we became separated and I was on my own. There was something like a tiny kiddy’s tricycle that you’d sit on and push along with your feet. Someone disabled was using it. I found another, sat on it and began to push myself along the street on it. It was really interesting because there was a whole new perspective of views that you could imagine that a small child would have when it was being hustled along by its parents. I was taking it all in and slowly going down the street. Suddenly I heard her call in the distance, wondering where I’d got to. I thought “never mind. She’s heading in the right direction. She’ll catch me up quite quickly. I just carried on pushing myself along through the crowds on this kiddy’s scooter.

Having done that, I had to fight off a huge wave of sleep and then sit down and prepare for my Welsh lesson.

And to my surprise, the Welsh lesson went really well and I actually enjoyed it. That makes quite a change, the way things have been just recently.

Once the lesson was over, I had to wait for the doctor’s office to open and then I could telephone him. I spoke to his secretary and explained the issue with the Health Insurance. She promised that she would tackle them herself and let me know how things develop.

Next issue was to see about a vehicle to take me. My idea is that if I wait until I have confirmation that the cost is taken in charge, there will probably be no vehicle available. If I book one now and, if the cost won’t be reimbursed, I can always cancel it.

And cancelled it will be, if it’s not reimbursed. I only wanted to borrow the vehicle for half a day, not to buy it.

But there is another plan going through my head about this trip, and it will involve the collection of a mass of paperwork and a phone call to Italy.

More of this anon.

For what remained of the afternoon I chose some more music for the next couple of radio programmes and paired off the music for one of them.

After tea, which was a taco roll with rice and veg, there was football. Y Barri v Pontypridd

This was a typical lower-table derby match – at least, during the first half – with a few moments that could best be described as “warm”.

In the second half the game came to life and there were actually some moments of sublime skill. Y Barri’s opening goal, scored by Harrison Bright, was one of the best that I’ve seen for a while.

In the end Y Barri won 2-0 and if it hadn’t been for Wales under-21 goalkeeper George Ratcliffe in the Ponty goal, they could have had a hatful.

Y Barri’s centre-forward Kayne McLaggon is one of the best attackers that I’ve seen in Wales and he would have been able to take on the best if he ever had had some decent service. He’s been carrying their attack for years – up until this season.

A few years ago I saw a few games in the WPL where a young centre-forward called Ollie Hulbert played on loan for Cardiff Metro from Bristol Rovers and he impressed me very much. Y Barri signed him this summer and I reckon that once he and McLaggon work themselves out, and when they finally have some luck, they’ll be an unstoppable force up front.

So later than usual, I’m off to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow so I need to be on form. I hope that I have a better night than last night.

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Friday 13th October 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… really good decision that I made for this morning.

As I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can no longer climb into the bus at the Port because there’s no pavement at the bus stop so I’m having to climb in from street level.

Consequently, if I want to go out (and I ought to go out at least once per week) I have to think again.

Right out on the edge of town off the beaten track is the quartier of St Nicolas.

It was formerly a village in its own right but was absorbed into Granville during the regrouping of communes some time ago, and so it has all of its own services which, to most people’s surprise, have remained intact.

There’s one of these typical small 1960s-type of shopping centres which is only 100 metres from a bus stop on the bus route that starts and finishes outside my front door. When I was out there on Monday, I checked the bus stops and to my delight, the pavements at both are raised to exactly the correct height.

There’s a chemists and a Post Office right next door to each other and then there’s the Carrefour supermarket. Much bigger than the one in town with a greater variety of produce.

There is a downside to it, in that the time between the bus dropping me off, completing its run, turning round and coming back is only 12 minutes, and that’s not enough.

However, that’s not a problem because there’s a bakery in the supermarket that bakes fresh bread and sells coffee. So I had a lovely rest with a nice hot coffee while I waited for the next bus.

There’s a lot going on there with a lot of people about and they all seem quite friendly too, so it was a really good idea to go there and I’ll be doing it more often.

Yesterday evening I’d psyched myself up for it by going to bed early but it made no difference because it took ages to go off to sleep. At least the night wasn’t as restless as some have been just recently.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream about someone who had quite a few cats. For some reason he’d locked them up into one particular room, gone away and left them. The cats succeeded in breaking down one of the things that he’d erected to block off the fireplace. By means of the chimney they were then able to move around the entire house. There was much more to it than that but that was all that I can remember when the alarm went off.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a dream about cats, hasn’t it?

After the medication I had to finish off the letters from yesterday and print off some paperwork to go with them, and then I hit the streets.

The bus was already here outside so I staggered on board and we set off for our journey. At St Nicolas I went to the Post Office to post the letters and then off to the supermarket for the shopping, followed by a nice hot coffee while I waited for the bus.

Climbing back on board was much easier, for which I was extremely grateful, and the climb back up the stairs seemed to be a little less difficult. In fact, I think that i’m moving about a little bit easier that I was before I set out. Mind you, that’s not saying too much because things have been difficult just recently.

For a very late breakfast I eschewed the cheese on toast and had some soup with the crusty bread that I had bought. It really was delicious, and I’ll have some more of that.

Back in here, I crashed out – quite definitively too, and for at least an hour. That’s no surprise at all.

Once I’d recovered I sat down and bashed out another radio programme. That’s the last one of the four that I dictated last Saturday night. Tomorrow I’ll carry on with the next one in the pipeline. I’m going to try to do two next week as I’m in hospital the week after.

There was stuff on the dictaphone from last night too. I’ve been packing up a room where I’d been staying for a few days ready to go off on an expedition. I’m going to have to go through all of the stuff because I’m going to be limited on what I can take. When I looked through the stuff I was surprised at all of the things that were there, all kinds of stuff that I’d been dragging around with me that I must have emptied out of a vehicle – glass bottles, jars, tons of papers etc. I had to be really severe about disposing of it all. Some of it is quite valuable in an intrinsic or sentimental way but the fact is that I simply can’t carry it so I’ll have to dispose of it and just take what I need for the journey and maybe one or two other things that would come in handy for the journey that I could use again. If it won’t be handy for the journey I’d have to throw it away whether I like it or not and that is filling me full of depression. Not that that’s any surprise because I have a hard time throwing things away.

There was something going on about a house party with a lot of people there, a few who were disabled. While I can’t remember very much about this dream I remember that some kind of cards were distributed among the people – you took your chance and took a card. The receipt of a disability card entitled you to certain things. The first person who pulled out a disability card was someone who was extremely able-bodied and active. That caused quite a gasp around the place as they tried to work out what it would mean for this extremely active person to have a disability card.

So now I’m dreaming about disabilities and handicapped people. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs for me to be in. Realisation sinks in slowly, but it sinks in deep.

Tea tonight was chips and salad with some falafel. Nothing special but nevertheless quite nice. Tomorrow I have one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets, and I’ll probably go for a baked potato with that.

So now I’m off to bed, flushed with success about having made a good decision for my shopping. It’s not all that often that things that I plan seem to come off so I shall bask in the glory of that until I probably fall out of the bus next weekend.

By the way, you did all listen to my radio programme on Friday night, didn’t you? If not, you can hear it on Saturday evening.

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Thursday 12th October 2023 – I’VE JUST FOUND …

… myself flat out on the chair asleep. I’ve no idea why but what it probably means that I’m going to have another restless night tonight.

Actually, last night was one of the better nights that I’ve had just recently and I didn’t move around much during the night. The only problem was that there wasn’t enough of it. It was extremely late when I went to bed

You’ve no idea how much of a struggle it was to leave the bed when the alarm went off, but I did manage to beat the second alarm to my feet.

And I was right about what I thought yesterday about the fall that I had making things worse. I can’t walk with just one crutch now, and I can no longer rise up from my knees.

After the medication I came back in here and didn’t do very much for quite a while as I slowly came round into the Land of the Living.

However I was disturbed on several occasions. Firstly the nurse came round. The hospital want me to have a blood test before I go so I had asked him if he would do it. He came round to collect the prescription to check what he needed to bring with him when he comes.

Next was the doctor’s secretary. I’d written to him a few days ago and apparently he wants to come round to see me to discuss the points that I raised. We tentatively arranged Tuesday morning, but that will of course depend on his other commitments.

After that was the cleaner. The forms for this Autonomy service had arrived in my letter box so she brought it up to me. There’s tons of stuff that they need, including bank details and a medical certificate. So I’m glad that my doctor will come round to see me.

There’s something going round in the back of my mind that someone else disturbed me too but I can’t think of who it was.

Despite the much calmer night, there was still some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I’d been away for a few days and was coming back home to Virlet in my yellow Cortina estate. When I pulled round at the front of the house there was my mother and some small girls cutting up some firewood, burning brambles etc. My mother looked at me and burst out into a tirade of nonsense about “what on earth am I doing coming home?”. She’s the one who’s supposed to be working tonight. How’s she going to make her money if I keep on taking hours away from her? I didn’t understand anything. I’d been away from home for a few days, I’d just come home and I was going to go to bed, sleep for a week and leave everyone else to do the work as I usually do on a Saturday night. I’d no intention of taking any work away. Instead we had this absolutely hysterical outburst

There was also something about a demonstration taking place going from somewhere in the Midlands to the Isle of Anglesey, coming by Virlet. Out of all the people taking part they had arrested one motorcyclist for something or other. I had a look at his motorbike. It was a big 4-cylinder thing. I tried to climb onto it to sit in the seat but found that I couldn’t. That was when I reluctantly came to the opinion that motorcycling is not going to be for me now.

Next thing to do was to to deal with the correspondence that’s been building up. Some of it is extremely important too and can’t be left loitering around for too long. It was extremely complicated too and involved a lot of research. But now that’s all done and I can take it to the Post Office tomorrow.

That’s one thing to which I’m looking forward about going on the bus to St Nicolas. They have said that the Carrefour is bigger than the one here, it’s much closer to the bus stops, which are both raised to a reasonable height, but the crucial point is that the supermarket, the Post office and a Chemist are all right next door to each other so I don’t have to stagger very far.

There isn’t much time though so I suppose that I’ll be having a coffee in the Agora Centre while I wait for the following bus.

The rest of the day was spent working on another one of the radio programmes for which I dictated the notes at the weekend. That’s all assembled now, and there’s just one of that batch left to do. That’s the task for tomorrow afternoon.

Tea was exciting tonight. To create some room in the freezer I finished off the last slice of the lasagna that I made a while ago. I had with it steamed vegetables and vegan cheese sauce. all of that gave it a certain je ne sais quoi.

So now that I’m awake again I’m off to bed and if I have as good a sleep as I had last night I’ll be more than happy. I just hope that it’s much longer than last night.

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Wednesday 11th October 2023 – I ALMOST FELL …

… out of the bath this afternoon. as I was climbing out, my right knee gave way again and luckily I was able to grab hold of the shelving unit before I hit the ground.

Not that it’s any surprise. I was wondering how long it would be before I actually fell over in here. I’ve been expecting it for quite a while.

But I’ll tell you one thing for nothing – and that is that I was right about what I’ve been thinking. I’ve had the idea for quite a while that each time the leg folds up it seems to make things worse subsequently. And that certainly seems to be the case today.

Not that things could be much worse actually. It was yet another miserable night although while I had the pain in my foot again, I didn’t have all of the burning in the lower leg. But whatever it was, it still kept me awake for much of the night.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and had something of a battle to leave the bed.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages it took me a good while to come round into the Land of the Living and then I sorted out the rest of the food that needed to be put away.

And there was quite a bit of it too. It’s not exactly that I’ve gone berserk but I need a minimum order of €50:00 before they deliver so I’ve had to think about things that I’ll need sooner or later when it comes to making up a large enough order.

Next stop was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. And there was an enormous pile of it too. I was with someone who might have been Captain Povey from the Navy Lark last night. he was telling everyone about how his wife had gone on a course and afterwards he was intending to apply for a course so he could go to join her, which was met with a great deal of guffaw from a lot of people. The scene then moved to Crewe, a railway station. But to reach the railway station you had to go down what was called the Horse Landing last night. They’d extended the station out from the main part of the building to that particular point. All the vehicles. All the vehicles were driving down the Horse Landing to drop off. As we watched, there were two old Mark II Consuls or Zephyrs. One was being driven by a woman. Both the vehicles picked up fares at the same time at the bus stop and both were to go down to the railway station. One got away quite quickly but the other was in all kinds of problems. It took a good deal of time to actually depart. It then put its indicator out to turn left down the Horse Landing. It was a standard series II big Ford like that with a roof bar with the taxi sign. I was interested to know that the indicators weren’t on the bar but where they normally would be, on the bodywork. I thought that that would make life confusing as they would be less visible than if they would be up on the top where everyone could see them.

Later on I was at another railway station that was all built in wood. It was in beautiful repair and the colours were all reds and yellows and lilacs, it all went really well together. To access it you had to walk round by a car park somewhere where there were bus stands, crush barriers etc. Even though it was no real practical plan, the fact that it was a beautiful building, I loved actually going there to it and walking around down the path that led to the front door.

It had been hot, miserable and sweaty while I was having the other dream just now but when I started to think that I’d roll the bedclothes back it was cold but it became a really nice environment for me to sit back, relax and sleep which might sound strange because there was nothing happening. Just me and the cool breeze here trying to sleep.

And then I was back in that dream at that pretty wooden station again. A vehicle began to reverse across the car park and made the people crossing there dodge for the pavement. One woman wasn’t quick enough and the bus almost hit her. She fell to the ground and her fibre mug of coffee went everywhere. In the end the crowd called out for the driver to stop. Luckily he did so before he ran over the woman. That would have been painful if she’d actually ended up underneath it.

We were back in an earlier dream where I’d been visiting some kind of hotel. Several members of my family were there but weren’t actually involved in it. I’d gone to my little sister’s room to have a look round and for one or two things while she wasn’t there. I was quite distracted so I left everything as it was, including some of my things there while I went to do what else needed doing. But time caught up with me and I could hear all kinds of people moving around in the building. I thought that I’d better run back to her room to collect all my things and hurry back to my room. One of the things that I had in that room was STRAWBERRY MOOSE and he wasn’t very easy to smuggle down the corridor so I was looking for a towel in which to wrap him so that I could pretend that he was a bundle of clothes. As usual, every time I organised something it created 2 other problems. Going forward to gather my things and leave the room as quickly as possible, there were just more and more things coming along to delay me. I felt that at any moment now I’d be caught and have to explain what I’m doing.

We were back in that hotel where I’d been just now. We were preparing to leave so we effectively left, but we’d left behind all our things. In the end we went back. The room in which my sister had stayed was an absolute mess. There was all amount of stuff everywhere. My brother had been sharing the room too so there were things of his there. At that moment the receptionist knocked at the door to ask about breakfast. She saw the state of the room and made some kind of commentary so I thought that we’d better start to pack it up. I was holding up clothes etc asking “whose is this?” and throwing them to the person concerned. By now my sister had transformed into Zero and she was now being an extremely busy bee, dashing around getting all her things together. Every time she had a bag prepared she’d rush off downstairs with it and then rush back upstairs again for the next one. This was going on quite quickly and the room was being emptied quite quickly. I had a smile, and her parents saw me smiling. They asked me why so I explained that I’d met a girl a few years ago who would have been Zero’s age now. I could see exactly the same characteristics, exactly the same behaviour and it’s really funny to think that even though they come from opposite sides of the World they seem to have become clones of each other. That was what was making me smile.

So hello again to Zero. It was nice to see her again. And strangely enough, when I was on a ferry across the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland and Labrador, I did bump into a girl who would have been the spiting image of an “a few years-older Zero”. And there was also the girl in the café in Brussels.

For the rest of the day I finished the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. That took an effort to align because it ended up over-running by quite a distance and I had to do some hefty editing

In between, I went to have a shower and to meet my fate as I climbed out At least, though, I’m nice and clean. But what I’m going to do is to look for some plastic boxes that I can use as steps to climb in and out of the bath until I can make a better arrangement. I’m disappointed that I’ve had no reply as yet to my letter to the doctor.

While the cleaner was here I wrote the notes for part of another radio programme. But we also had a good chat, part of which was that I’ll tell her and the other housebound inhabitant of the building when I’m next about to order from the supermarket.

If I can persuade them to add in their orders to mine, I can make up the €50:00 without having to go mad myself, help out everyone else and the delivery charge is the same no matter how much I order so it makes no real difference to me.

For tea tonight I had a left-over curry, and I made some naan bread dough seeing as I now have some soya yogurt. And it really did taste nice too

So much later than usual, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I have a few letters to write and a few radio programmes to prepare. The if the doctor isn’t going to reply, I’ll need to sort out a train and a couple of taxis to go to the hospital. I don’t want to leave myself stranded.

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Tuesday 10th October 2023 – I WISH THAT I …

… hadn’t bitten the bullet and sent off that mega-food order this afternoon.

No sooner had I pressed “send”, received the acknowledgement and watched the money go out of my account when along came an e-mail

“Dear Mr Hall. You are requested to come to the hospital for 11:00 on Monday 23rd October. Please set aside one week”.

And so that, dear reader, is that.

As it happens, it was nice to have some good news for a change. After all, I had quite a dreadful night.

It was rather later than I would have liked to have gone to bed but an ache in my foot made it difficult to sleep. The pain slowly spread up the leg until by about 02:00 my entire lower right leg felt as if it was on fire.

Consequently I spent most of the rest of the night rubbing mint-tinted cold cream into my leg in the hope that the sensation would die down.

At some point I must have gone to sleep because there was something on the dictaphone from the night. I was with my friend from the Wirral and someone else last night. I don’t know what we were doing at the start but we’d ended up at Middlewich and gone to see my father’s factory. We went in through the back door of course and worked our way round through the garage. My father was working at a vice. I asked him if he’d seen (someone). He replied “yes, he’s upstairs” so we went up the stairs onto the gallery while whoever it was was doing what he had come here to do. My father came up a few minutes later. He had a razor and a few other things. It looked as if he was going to shave someone. Then I realised that someone was going into hospital for an operation that afternoon so I imagined that the shaving is due to that so he was there with the razor. He turned to me and asked “are you ready?. I asked “ready for what?”. He replied “you’re donating the tubes, aren’t you?”. I answered “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t want to be involved or anything. If you want to take something out of my body just hit me with a piece of wood and do it while I’m unconscious, and don’t say anything. I don’t want to know about the procedure or anything else that happens”.

Not very much but I was surprised that there was anything at all on there.

When the alarm went off I went and had my medication and then checked my mails and messages. Having then transcribed the dictaphone notes I sat down to revise my welsh but regrettably fell asleep at the computer.

Armed with my coffee and fruit bun, I joined the lesson and to my surprise it seemed to pass quite well. However, my brain is still all churned up with rubbish and nothing seems to stick.

After the lesson I went through the shopping list to update it and have several goes at sending it. Some of the stuff that I wanted wasn’t in stock, and then the order fell below the minimum £50:00 limit so I had to track down some more supplies that I might need.

My weekly shopping bill for food usually runs out at about €35:00 and I was buying for a fortnight, so I was bewildered as to why I couldn’t reach €50:00 with ease.

What I should have done, I suppose, is to have asked one or two of the other housebound people in the building if they needed anything that I could have ordered for them.

And then I had the e-mail from the hospital. They want me to have a blood test before I go, so I had to ring the nurse to arrange for him to come round on the Saturday before I go to do the necessary.

But even though I’m looking forward to the stay in the hospital and the likelihood of having some kind of treatment that might possibly help me, I’m not looking forward to the journey. In fact, I have the feeling that the strain of the travelling is wiping out all of the benefits of whatever treatment I might be having, and more besides.

Next task was to ring up the people who handle the Autonomy issues. I spoke to them almost a fortnight ago and they promised to send me a form, but it’s never been received. I rang them back to hustle them along and they agreed to send me another one.

Let’s hope that this one arrives.

Rosemary rang me too and we had a really good chat about all kinds of things, but it wasn’t one of our usual marathon chats because the doorbell rang – the delivery guy with my food. Some of it was frozen and there was a lot of chilled food so it all needed to be put away as quickly as possible.

So right now, not only is there not even one cubic millimetre of space in the freezer, there’s not even one cubic millimetre of space in the fridge either. At least I won’t be going hungry for several weeks, even if I don’t go out again.

While I was doing all kinds of stuff with the food, Rosemary had texted me back. She has one of these small Land Rovers so I’d asked her to raise the seat to its highest position and then measure the height of the seat from the ground. The answer was “60 centimetres”.

My chair here is 50 centimetres off the ground and it’s something of a struggle to rise to my feet. If I’m to buy a different car, it needs to have a seat more than 50 cms off the ground to make it easier for me to stand up so I need to have a few measurements lined up.

What’s annoying is that Strider’s seat is exactly the right height for this kind of thing. It was so easy to get in and out of him. I suppose that in theory I could have him shipped over here but he’s as old as Caliburn and salt on the roads in Maritime Canada haven’t been kind to him.

As well as that, his engine is an old-generation V6 “Cologne” engine of 4.0 litre and drinks petrol like there’s no tomorrow.

With what time remained (and there was some, after all of that) I edited the notes for another radio programme and that’s now ready to be assembled and completed, but not tonight. I’m exhausted.

As I had my wraps delivered I could have a taco roll for tea, with some of the leftover stuffing. There’s a little left so I’ll make a curry tomorrow. But now that I have some soya yoghurt I can make some naan bread to have with it. I’m not quite sure where I’ll put the leftover dough rolls but I’ll worry about that tomorrow, I suppose.

So now I’m off to bed now that I’ve finished my notes. I’m hoping for a much better night tonight and tomorrow I’ll have to put away the rest of the food. There isn’t any room right now to put anything.

But give me a week or so and there might be some space somewhere – and then I’ll be off to the hospital. I hope that they will be able to do something that might improve my situation and I can go back to have something like a better quality of life.

Mind you, I do have to admit, I can’t complain too much. At least I seem to be doing OK for food right now.

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Monday 9th October 2023 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… and about this morning.

There’s something happening at the radio studio and for my sins I’m involved in it so I’ve been out at St Nicolas.

And some good news is that while I was there I was able to inspect the bus stops near the other Carrefour supermarket and the pavements are indeed raised up. So this trip to the supermarket at St Nicholas on Friday may well be on.

My cleaner tells me that she reckons that it’s bigger than the one down by the port and so I might be able to choose from a wider range of produce and that will be good news.

But meanwhile, back in the bed, I had another depressing night tossing and turning at round about 06:45 I was thinking about raising myself from the dead but I fell asleep and had to be awoken by the alarm.

The shower didn’t look as inviting as it did yesterday so I had a strip-down wash in the bathroom and then when I received a message to say that my lift was on its way I struggled down the stairs.

At the radio station the climb up the stairs to the first floor was agony and I was glad to sit down. A mug of hot coffee was thrust into my sweaty mitt (followed by another one) and then we spent the morning working.

As for what we were doing, you’ll find out on Friday, maybe.

From the radio station I was given a lift back home where I staggered up the stairs into my office and didn’t move for a considerable period of time, which was hardly no surprise.

There was quite a bit of stuff on the dictaphone from the night, which probably accounted for the turbulent night. I had to go to see my solicitor. My siblings were invited too. A few of us set out from here on the train to go to the next railway station but when we pulled in, the next train that we needed to catch was already there. On crutches, I can’t rush so by the time I’d alighted the next train had gone. There was no-one else at all standing around. Eventually I found my way on the next train to the next station and went to the solicitor’s office but there was only me in the waiting room. I waited for a while, then my brother and his wife appeared followed by my other sister. We waited for a few minutes and in the end my brother’s wife opened the door to see if whoever was missing was in there. He came out quite angrily. Apparently he’d been looking at some papers thinking that we hadn’t turned up. He said “I might have expected a knock on the door!”. We apologised and explained the situation to him, that we’d all been held up by confusion with the trains.

There was something else but I can’t remember very much about it, something about being in my doctor’s office. There were some fruit cakes like mine so i wrapped one in a napkin and went to put it in my pocket. There was much more to it but I can’t remember any more apart from that.

I was in Virlet later on last night. There was a girl with me. We were putting things into the back room but the things were being damaged after it had been left in there. We wondered what was happening to it. She had to go somewhere so off she went. A short while later I heard the most incredible noise outside. They’d come by with a big kind of earthmover thing to go into the field at the back. There were probably half a dozen men with it. One of them came dashing around to ask “where’s the toilet?”. I replied “I don’t know. There’s probably one in that field somewhere”. he asked “could I use yours?”. I replied “no. We don’t have one installed yet”. All these guys were rushing around etc and eventually disappeared. I went back to do what I was doing. Then I happened to look quite by chance into the back room and saw 2 squirrels. That would explain why the things in there were being damaged. In the end I was having a good look around and hunt around for things like the Ryobi drill that had somehow gone into an outhouse. I suddenly looked up and there was a guy there with an enormous pair of shears in the doorway to my house looking as if he wanted to talk to me about something.

I was then back doing my Philip Marlowe impressions. I had a huge 1940s-type American convertible that was parked in a lock-up garage. When I went to fetch it out there was a car parked there with 2 guys sitting in it talking about business. I went in and started up my car and much to my surprise it started immediately. I had to manoeuvre around the garage to try to exit but the door had blown closed. I was having to stop, leave the car and open the doors. One of the guys opened one for me so I tried to squeeze trough but I couldn’t because there were a couple of bicycles in the way against the other door. I had to stop and try to leave the car again to move the bicycles. The 2 guys began to move the bicycles for me. In the meantime the interior of the garage was becoming full of exhaust fumes and was beginning to become rather uncomfortable.

At some point during the night I was out with the Liz who died in 2009. We were walking around somewhere and I happened to make the observation “look – I’m walking around without my crutches”. It wasn’t a very steady walk but it was a vast improvement on how I’d been the previous day. Everyone was quite impressed with it but they told me not to push it too much. Let it slowly develop if it is improving. We were sitting down having a coffee when a girl whom we knew came by. Liz had gone to the bathroom by this time so there were just me and the girl and it took me a minute to recognise her. She said “I’m glad that I’ve caught you because the football is kicking off in half an hour”. I had a look in my programme of events and she was actually correct. I’d have to get a move on if I wanted to go to watch this game from the beginning.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with pasta and vegetables. The stuffing was excellent but I don’t think that I’ll be having my usual taco roll with the remainder because I forgot last time I was at LeClerc to buy any wraps.

What I’ll have to do tomorrow is to order some, so after my Welsh lesson tomorrow I’ll place an on-line order. If it arrives later in the day, all well and good, but if not I’ll have to make other plans.

That’s what you call “First World Problems”.

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Sunday 8th October 2023 – SO MUCH FOR MY …

… lie-in this morning. I was actually up and about by 09:30 this morning.

What’s even more surprising about that was that I didn’t go to bed until after 02:00 this morning. 7.5 hours isn’t all that much sleep on a weekday, but on a Sunday morning it’s quite depressing.

However, I should have been in bed a long time before 02:00. Once I’d finished what I was doing I began to dictate the notes for the 4 radio programmes that I have in the pipeline. And I won’t be doing that again.

Four programmes one after the other is too much to dictate in one session. Firstly, my throat was cracking up by the end of it and secondly, I was too tired to concentrate and I was making all kinds of mistakes.

So once I was up and about, I had my medication and then checked my mails and messages. And once everything was ready and I wound myself up, I began to edit the notes for one of the programmes.

After I’d finished making the programme I went and had lunch. And then I had a go at having a shower.

Earlier on in the morning I’d had a try at climbing into the bath and it seemed that I managed to do it, after quite a struggle. And so I bit the bullet and … errr … took the plunge.

Climbing in was one thing. Climbing out was something else completely but I finally managed it, and it wasn’t as difficult as it had been on Wednesday.

It’s still not much good though and I need to do something about it.

Strangely enough, after my shower I crashed out on the chair for a while and once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living, I went and did some baking. Now I have a pile of pizza dough and a large batch of fruit buns that will last me for the next few weeks.

While it was all busy proofing I had a listen to the dictaphone notes from the night to see where I’d been. I was walking through Nantwich with my doctor, going down Hospital Street. He was explaining to me what he wanted me to do over the next few weeks and next period of time. I asked him about different kinds of things for walking. He said that I needn’t do so much but that was not the point because I wasn’t supposed to be walking anyway. Obviously I still had to live and do my things. I asked about maybe having a bicycle. He said that it was clearly impractical and one or two other things like that. He suggested that we wait until the end of this current series of prescriptions before we decide on what we are going to do and where we are going to go, any more than we are at the moment. It would give us time to reflect and to find out what the alternatives are. I was quite disappointed but he was the guy in charge so we carried on walking down Hospital Street talking about nothing in particular.

And then I was in hospital last night. I was in one of the rooms where they sort out the stuff that arrives from other sections of the hospital. The first thing that came was a huge box on wheels full of all kinds of different bits and pieces that they were sorting out to send off to whoever needed it. The other one was wheeled in – something on four wheels with a handle at one end, wheeled in by a private soldier. It had on it “this is the box that Jimmy Fallon told us to prefer but we forgot”. There was a nurse there who had some kind of machine that was supposed to help people prepare for a bath. I’d tried to use it last time but for some reason the nurse muscled me out of it. I was determined to take my place in the queue and have a shower however the nurse in charge said “I have something special for you – something that I meant to give you last time”. She produced another weird kind of machine. She then asked me what I was doing in this queue. I told her, and she said basically that I have to forget about that for now because this other job has cropped up. I can see that I’m never going to be able to have this shower, am I?

Later on I was in a second-hand record and video shop with a few people last night. We were discussing certain films, books and the new copyright regulations. I mentioned HARRY POTTER AND THE DEADY HALLOWS which for some reason, was only available from one particular source, the official source of the copyright holder. You couldn’t buy it on Amazon or anywhere like that. When they tightened up the copyright laws, they decided that they didn’t have the right, even though they were the copyright holders, to sell this film so they stopped selling it with the result that there was no legitimate of buying the film anywhere. People were coming up with all kinds of ideas about how to make sure that you had a copy, like borrowing one and taping it etc. While this discussion was going on I walked out and went across the road. My niece had been talking to someone on the ‘phone about insurance, saying how much she’d had to pay just for her vehicle and my vehicle for a weekend to go somewhere to do something special. It was cheaper to have an annual premium anywhere else. I thought that I’d be over here in this other shop for when she decides to come out, but I hope that there will be some kind of organisation about a meal as I have no money on me at the moment.

Finally, I was with a French – or European – girl, it might have been Cecile or Laurence. We were supposed to be going out somewhere but she was in the kitchen cooking. I went in to ask her what she was making and to remind her that we needed to hurry. She said that she was making a meal of some description with beef, or, at least, she said that she would if she had some English sugar. I bent down, opened a cupboard, took out a packet and dumped it on the table. “Is this what you need?”. She laughed and I gave her the sugar. I gave her a tin in which I keep the sugar and said “when you’ve opened the bag can you pour the rest in here?” which she thought was strange because the tin wasn’t all that clean. When she’d finished everything I had to pour it into a plastic bag but ended up missing my aim with half the contents down the outside of the bag and all over my hand which was scalding to death so I put it quickly into some cold water. I had on my watch too so I ended up with my watch in the water.

My pizza tonight was excellent once more and it would have been one of the best ever had I not dropped a spoonful of oregano onto one corner of it.

But now that that’s all done and my notes are written, I’ll go back to preparing my on-line order for later on in the week. But I’ll be struggling to make it up to €50:00 because a lot of stuff that I usually buy isn’t available on delivery. The vegan range is particularly devastated and the vegan cheese isn’t there. That’s a tragedy.

But I’ll have to do the best I can and hope that one of these days I’ll be able to sort something out. I must admit that I did miss my little trip out to the shops.

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Saturday 7th October 2023 – HAVING HAD MY …

… first of what will probably be many Saturdays without going to the supermarket, I’ve been quite busy again nevertheless.

It actually all got off to a good start too with me being up and about before the alarm went off. Not by much, I have to say, but all the same it was still an early start.

And yes, there will still be an alarm on a Saturday morning. I have to keep up a routine otherwise I’ll just melt away into oblivion.

After the medication it took me a while to come round into the Land of the Living and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. There was some kind of dream about an old couple who had a young baby living with them. They were all living in squalid circumstances. Some man came along to try to take the baby away to give it a cleaner existence but he had to be extremely careful in the way he approached and tackled it. If the grandparents thought that the baby was being taken away for ever then they wouldn’t be quite so co-operative in letting him come in and see the baby. This evolved into my being at my sister’s old house in Gresty Road. I had to leave there and go home. It was a 7-hour drive. The bathroom was really insalubrious and I hated that end of the house so I wasn’t going to go there to have a wash. I’d wait until I’d reached home if I could. All of the stuff that I needed to pack into Caliburn which otherwise would have to go out of the back through the bathroom and down the fire escape and out through the back yard to where the car was parked wasn’t going to happen. I’d have to take it out of the front. I’d need to fetch Caliburn round to the front but there was no waiting or no parking there. I’d be interrupting everyone and risking a parking ticket by doing that. While I was thinking about what I was going to do I found a huge, enormous box of Quality Street chocolates so I took a large handful and went and sat to eat them. I realised that I couldn’t wait because with an extremely long journey, the longer it too to sort myself out the longer it would take to reach home. I really wanted to be on the road as quickly as possible.

And later I was in a pop group playing drums last night. I only had a really cheap beyond-basic kit but I didn’t do too badly and I could keep the beat of the songs. We were sitting there rehearsing once and there was another drummer there. he began to play some kind of drum beat music and I joined in. Much to my surprise it was quite accurate. The guitarist joined in, playing a guitar piece that I recognised but I can’t name it. The guitarist said that he was playing this particular track because it was one that he’d like to work out. By now I was playing the guitar but I wasn’t at all confident in the idea that I’d be able to master this song to a sufficient standard to be able to perform on stage.

Nerina and I were then running our business last night, going through the cars cleaning them from top to bottom to within an inch of their lives etc, having them really sorted out. Another taxi driver from a different company came round to see what we were doing and for a chat. It slipped out in the conversation that I’d won a contract with a major motor vehicle repair place in Northwich. He asked whether that was the place that dealt with rebuilding cars after accidents or after they’d been out on lease. I replied “as a matter of fact it is but I’m far more interested in their military vehicles”. he said “you mean training vehicles?”. I replied “no. I mean vehicles that have been used by Generals being chauffeured around etc”. We were busy washing one of the cars at that point. When we scraped away the years of grime and washed it we found that one of the doors was distorted and there was paint of a different colour on it. We wondered how that was happening. In the meantime Nerina was having trouble with a jug of warm water. She shouted so I went in to see what she was doing and to juggle with this huge jug of hot water. The other driver said that he’d like to see me for a while sometime if I could spare him the time. he wanted to talk to me about his business. I didn’t really understand what he meant by that but I’ll talk to anyone so I said that I’d let him know when I was free, something like that.

After that four of us were going off to watch car racing somewhere. We stopped off at a motorway service station to have a coffee. Here we bumped into my friend from Munich on his way there so we had a really lengthy chat with him and talked about his plans. We then went back to our motor bikes. It really was a beautiful afternoon made for motorbiking. We thought that it would be lovely to be out on the road in this beautiful weather. We could have a nice leisurely ride up the drive of the place where this hotel had been built.

At another point I was sitting on a beach somewhere and a vendor came round selling mugs of hot coffee. I’m not sure why I wanted a hot coffee in the middle of summer but it was £1:30 so he poured me a mug of coffee. While I went through my pocket for the money he wandered off somewhere. Just then I heard a voice behind so I said “£1:30” but it was in fact a man asking me if I’d seen his wife. Of course I hadn’t so I said “no” so he wandered off. The coffee vendor came back. He stood there for quite some time waiting for me to sort out my money while I had it in my hand. parked right opposite me was a Standard 10 which had a Canterbury registration number so I must have been in Kent at that particular time.

Finally, there were several of us wandering around the London Underground, some of us who knew each other well and one girl who didn’t. When we arrived at a main underground station we found all the doors locked and we were effectively locked inside. I saw a door open and someone emerge so I went to grab the door before it closed so that we could leave but it turned out to be the door of the gents’. We all then decided to make for the main-line platforms and go home that way, my group going one way on one train and our lone friend another way on another. We all agreed to meet here at some other time. I asked “whereabouts here,” and someone else replied “here – on this spot”.

As you can see, it was quite a mobile night and I didn’t have much sleep at all. It’s no surprise therefore that I fell asleep again at some point later in the morning. And for an hour or so as well.

But I also spent a lot of time this morning making a start on updating the blog entries. I hadn’t added the dreams that took place when I was in Leuven just now so I edited all of those and brought them up to date.

This afternoon I wrote out the notes for the music that I selected yesterday for another radio programme. They are now complete and tonight before I go to bed I’ll dictate as many of them as I can.

It’s the kind of thing that has to be done late at night because there’s too much noise outside during the day with traffic going past and buses idling at the bus stop.

There was football on the internet later on early in the evening – Pontypridd v Hwlffordd in the Welsh Premier League.

It was a proper basement battle that in the first half was quite agricultural and Pontypridd were well on top. Hwlffordd improved quite considerably in the second half but the sending off of Tyreese Owen for two yellow cards put paid to any hopes of a revival, even if they did have a couple of excellent chances.

The final score was 2-0 for Pontypridd and that was probably about right. It’s difficult to explain what has happened down in south-west Wales. Hwlffordd did really well in the latter half of last season and performed quite well in Europe, but the fire has gone right out.

Tea tonight was salad and chips and one of those vegetable burgers of which I bought a supply a while back at Noz, along with a vegan salad. Of course, with Noz being off the agenda now I’m not sure what I’ll be doing when the stockpiled stuff from there runs out.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’ll dictate the radio notes and then go to bed. A nice lie-in tomorrow will do me god so I hope that it actually works.

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Friday 6th October 2023 – IT’S NOW OFFICIAL.

In the post this morning came my two disability permits. One for me and one for any car in which I might be travelling. It’s a sign of the times of course and something that will inevitably happen to all of you at some time or another. All I can say is that I’ve had a good run for my money

All I need now is a car which I can drive, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. For that, I’ll have to see what these people at APA have to tell me, but even now they STILL haven’t sent me the forms that they promised a week ago. This is going to be a lengthy process.

My sleep last night was a lengthy process too. For two nights on the run now I’ve slept right through until the alarm went off. And then I had a struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

There was time to listen to the messages on the dictaphone before I did anything else. There was some kind of uprising taking place. All the citizens were required to rally to the defence of their city. Someone was suspected of being behind all of this so hat they called for was to examine the metadata of a couple of files on his computer to see whether they had been altered in any way that might give grounds for some kind of suspicion. When they asked for this information he did everything he could to defy them, delay them etc until in the end they were all swamped by all the mails that were coming from the citizens so it was going to be so it was going to be something much more complicated than it might have been had they done it a day earlier.

And then I was working for a company last night and had to go round to collect a debt from someone that was owed. I went round to their house, and it took some finding. When I arrived I knocked on the door but it swung open so I walked in and shouted. Eventually an old woman came into the kitchen and asked why I was there. I explained that she had a bill to pay. She apologised and said that she’d pay it so I went back to my office. There was some kind of building project taking place that needed to be done quietly so we decided that we’d do it in the dark. At night we dressed in clothes, it was a wet and windy November night. When everything was quiet and everyone had gone we set out. It was then that I realised that I didn’t have my gloves. I was told that I had to have them. They were on the floor by the washing machine in the laundry room So I’d have to run back to fetch them while everyone waited for me. That was quite a long way but I thought that it would really be uncomfortable working in this without gloves so I’d best set off.

We were back in Davenport Avenue later. It wasn’t exactly like it but a mirror image. Nerina and I were tidying up a few things because we were having visitors. It turned out that my friend Malou and her friend were coming to visit and we were going to hang around together and then go off out. Nerina was busy planning in her mind who she’d allocate with who and decided that I’d take Malou in my car. I didn’t want to explain to Nerina that there was no tax or MoT on my car but in fact it was probably a wise idea to go in Malou’s car but she was quite insistent so when it reached the time to go outside one of our party (I can’t remember who) was at the front of the house and saw Malou pull into the drive with her friend. We walked down from the bottom of the drive up to the street to meet them. I remember thinking “my house is so untidy, such a tip, that i’m not sure that this is a good idea to go inviting people to my house” … "nothing new there" – ed …

Finally I was with Alison and another girl walking around Brussels. We ended up around a section that was really modern. There were all these huge aeroplanes flying overhead and it really looked like something out of another world. It was dark and misty and these aeroplanes were so impressive flying through the low clouds at night like this with all their lights on. Then we decided to carry on walking but there was a really good view there so I stopped to take a couple of photos. Then I wandered off to take some photos of my bedroom window which was only a couple of hundred yards away. I dashed off and took the photos. I could hear some people talking outside as if their conversations weren’t being overheard. That was really interesting. In the end I set off back out again. I hadn’t gone far when I realised that I’d forgotten my camera. I carried on anyway. There was a woman on crutches with a couple of kids, and lots of other people. I couldn’t see Alison. I thought to myself that maybe we should have made better arrangements to meet than this. Suddenly she was at my elbow and told me that she’d put on the shelf all the information concerning our trip. I told her that I’d been keeping a log for the whole month and that was all together too. We sat down to work out where we want to go

Then I headed out for the bus as I had things to do in the town. I’d taken with me the letter that I’d written yesterday to the doctor, with the intention of giving it to the receptionist. But as you might expect, the way things are these days, there was a strike on and the receptionist wasn’t it.

Round at the Carrefour I did the shopping and made it back in time for the bus. It was a struggle to climb aboard, as I imagined that it would be.

However, there was some good news. I’d interrogated the driver and he told me that the bus stop at St Nicholas does indeed have an elevated platform so boarding the bus for coming home shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The big difficulty though is that there is only 12 minutes between the bus dropping me off and it coming back again, and that is going to cause a few problems of its own.

Mind you, after how I felt after my trip out today, I don’t think that I’ll be going anywhere again. I can’t keep this up. it’s really hard to believe that it wasn’t all that many weeks ago that I walked back from town after a shopping trip.

Back here, having staggered up the stairs under my heavy load, I made my coffee and my cheese on toast, and then came back back in here where, in a marvellous fit of bravado, I finished off the arrears of the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital last autumn.

My cleaner came round to see me afterwards. I’d sent her a message about my failure to leave the letter at the doctor’s. I’d asked her if she would take it for me on one of her forays down to town next week. I realy and honestly don’t think that I could do it, and it’s quite an important letter.

Something else that I did this afternoon was to bake a loaf of bread. With not going out tomorrow I won’t be having one of my lovely crusty baguettes so I need to do something about that if I want my cheese on toast.

In fact, going back to baking isn’t a bad idea really. At some point in the proceedings I have to make more fruit buns and more pizza dough so it seems like a good moment to have another go at making a vegan pie. I picked up some potatoes today so I have enough to keep me going for a while.

Finally, I chose all of the music for another radio programme and paired it off. If I can write the notes for that tomorrow I’ll have four sets of notes to dictate and that will give me something to do over the next week

Tea tonight was a burger on a bun with salad and a baked potato. Nothing special at all but quite nice for a change.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a really busy day as you can see, and I’ve crashed out once this afternoon already, but only for a few minutes. Now I want to crash out for a good while and sleep until the morning.

Then I’ll see what can be done about all the things that need resolving. There are plenty of those.

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Thursday 5th October 2023 – I’M HAVING TO …

… go back to the hospital at Paris in a couple of weeks. They rang me up today to tell me.

The original proposal was to give me a series of intravenous antibiotic perfusions that I could take at home over the period of a week. However they’ve had a close look at my medical results from my last visit and decided that my medical state is far too fragile for the perfusion to take place without medical supervision.

Therefore they are calling me in and moving on directly to the next stage of the proceedings, whatever that might be.

It’s nice to see that they aren’t going to let the grass grow under their feet and that they are pressing on regardless. One thing that I’m sure of is that I can’t carry on like this much longer.

The big question is though “how am I going to make it to the hospital?” because I don’t want to have to go through that journey again. As I’ve said before, I can feel things slipping away day by day.

Something that I didn’t actually go through today was the stress of an early start. I was flat out when the alarm went off, miles away in the Land of Nod.

Nevertheless I struggled to my feet and went to take my medication and to check my mails and messages.

Once I’d dragged myself round into the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was a new boy on a way to a class on board an old double-decker bus. I was the only passenger. The bus stopped to pick up a teacher. Apparently something had gone wrong somewhere and he was looking for the culprit. For some reason he fastened on me although it was nothing at all to do with me. I told him what I knew about anything, which wasn’t much, and he grudgingly accepted. In the end he said “drop me off at (such and such) bus stop”. I had no idea where this bus stop was, being new, so I just rang the bell for the next stop. Sure enough the bus stopped. He alighted first and I was about to alight second. The driver had obviously seem the person alighting in his mirror and he put his foot down at that point to move off. I was half on, half off the bus so the back of the bus hit me on the top of the pelvis and spun me off onto the ground on my face. It didn’t half hurt.

Later on I was round at someone’s house having a coffee, chatting to him and his wife. He asked me to tell them a limerick. As usual, I couldn’t think of one on demand like that. It took me ages. In the end I went to the bathroom and came back with a really weak effort. They guy then began to tell me a joke about another man who had come to his house. This joke went on and on and on. When he finally reached the punchline I thought that it wasn’t funny at all. he looked at me and said “you’re a case apart, you are”. This joke that went on for ages just fell completely flat.

And then we’d been camping somewhere. I’d had to leave Nerina and return home for something or other. I drove back all the way. I ended up going a strange way that I didn’t recognise. I suddenly found myself back on the road that I knew and couldn’t work out how I’d reached that particular point. I drove home and ended up talking to a few members of my family. I then emptied my vehicle and prepared to go back to pick her up to bring her home. It was about a 7-hour trip each way so I was effectively going to be driving 21 hours out of 24. Back at home I’d been into the house, which was our old one in Vine Tree Avenue. Someone had been in to feed the cats because the key was still in the lock in the bathroom door. On the way out I had to close the barrier. A little baby girl who was there told me how to close it. I’d seen some shoes that were really caked in mud and it turned out that they were my aunt Doreen’s. My father began to chat to this little girl about her. When we were about to set off the discussion came round to my yellow Cortina estate, about how it needs to go for its MoT etc. I wasn’t very optimistic be he said that he’d take it anyway. I wasn’t looking forward to having the fail certificate for that to tell me everything that needed doing. He was telling me about his own car, another Cortina where he’d had to change a couple of bushes in order for that to pass its MoT. In the meantime I was about to set off to go back to where we’d been camping to pick up Nerina and bring her home ready to go to work next morning. Looking at my watch I was going to be cutting it fine to have her back here in time to go to work.

Once I’d finished the notes from last night I cracked on with another batch of arrears and if I keep on going like this, I’ll have them finished by the end of the weekend. And then I can set out to update all of my notes. It’s high time that I did my best to catch up on various arrears of work that are hanging around.

Over the past few weeks or so there has been quite a large amount of correspondence piling up. I went through all of that this morning and filed away a pile of stuff. A few other letters needed scanning so that I can have copies, and there are one or two forms to fill in that I’ll have to complete quite soon.

And while we’re on the subject, I’ve heard that my disability cards have now been printed and are on their way. They should be here by the middle of next week. Not that the driving permit will do me much good because of course I’m no longer going to drive – unless something rather dramatic crops up out of this hospital treatment.

There have been a couple of very long messages to write too. One of which concerns Strider, my Ford Ranger in Canada. I’ve decided, for obvious reasons, that he’ll have to go the Way of the West.

It’s a shame really because the seat is exactly the right height for me to slide into and it’s an automatic too I could in principle drive him as I am. There would be no issue shipping him to Europe but with an old-technology V6 4.0 litre engine he drinks petrol like it’s going out of fashion, which it is, but that’s not what I mean.

Had I been healthy, it wouldn’t have been a problem because I have a variety of diesel engines down on the farm that would slide right in. But if I were well enough to change an engine, I would be well enough to carry on driving Caliburn.

Next task was to write a letter to my doctor. There are several issues that have cropped up just recently that I feel he ought to know. That includes the question of travel to Paris, and also involves some of the stuff that I scanned today.

We’ve not finished yet. Yesterday I said that I needed to prepare an emergency bag in case I’m whisked off to hospital at a moment’s notice. That took a while but it’s all ready now.

The rest of the day was spent finishing off writing the notes for the second radio programme and then ripping through the third one. They are well over half-way written now.

Tea tonight was interesting and I enjoyed it very much. It was pasta and lots of vegetables, and when it was cooked, fried in vegan butter with vegan cheese and vegan tomato pesto. I’ve had some really nice meals just recently and this was certainly one to match the best of them.

So having written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m going to have a go at going into town tomorrow morning. I’m not too optimistic that it will turn out well but I’ll have to give it a go and see where it takes me.

There’s some food that I need and it will have to be at the local supermarket by the port as I have to drop off the letter at the doctor’s. I can quiz the bus driver to see what the bus stop is like at St Nicholas, if it’s any better for me to climb in and out of the bus.

But before everything I’ll just go through the supermarket’s on-line catalogue to carry on making my list of my favourite products. If I can do that, it’ll make my on-line shopping easier.

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Wednesday 4th October 2023 – I COULDNT GET …

… out of the bath this afternoon.

Getting in the bath was difficult enough but getting out of it was even worse. It was quite a struggle and I’m sure that it took longer to climb out than it did to actually take a shower.

There’s no doubt about it. As I might have said the other day, my condition is deteriorating before my eyes and I’m at the limit right now of where I’m going to need some serious help.

On Friday I’m going to attempt to go into town on the bus but I’m not optimistic. The difficult part is climbing back on board the bus because there’s no kerb there and it’s a long way up. But there is a ramp on the other side of the road and if necessary I’ll have to get on the bus as it heads out of town and do a full circuit.

But I have begun to prepare an emergency pack with the vital necessities in it. It’s as well to be on the safe side.

Even more strange news is that once again I was up before the alarm – at 05:30 this morning and I could have been up half an hour before that too.

But I’ve had a very productive day because apart from beginning to assemble my emergency pack, I’ve been attacking the radio programme. I’ve finished off collecting and pairing off the music for three programmes, written the notes for one of them and am well on the way for doing the second.

What else I’ve been doing is going through the local supermarket’s on-line shopping programme because I have a feeling that I’ll be using it very shortly.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too so I transcribed that. I was with a group of people in a kind-of classroom situation and we were discussion one of PG Wodehouse’s novels. It turned out that the hero, his valet and someone else, having left someone’s home, had each procured some kind of minibus thing or taxi to take them to the railway station where they’d caught the train home. A while later, maybe a few days, we were still discussing PG Wodehouse and a similar kind of situation came up. The teacher asked if anyone knew how these people would have returned home. I volunteered the same kind of way of doing it with the minibuses and the train. For some reason I expressed myself really badly and the teacher didn’t really listen very much to my answer. That led me to believe that it must have been incorrect but she did ask everyone to guess so I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t all that happy or keen when someone like me did.

Then there was something about being at a famous actor’s house, all sitting around as she reminisced about a few stories of her younger days. A while later – it may have been a couple of days – I was there on my own. I was treated to another gala performance of all of this, which was really impressive considering how old she was and what her illnesses were.

As well as that, I’ve transcribed a few more entries from last autumn. There aren’t that many to transcribe now – just 10 or so and I’m hoping that I’ll have those finished by the end of the weekend. Then I can set about updating the entries for that period.

My cleaner came round and was horrified to see the set of steps in the bathroom. She thinks that I’m courting disaster by trying to climb into the bath. But I’m not sure what other alternatives there are. In any case, it’s not climbing into the bath that worries me – it’s climbing out.

We talked about the possibility that she would be able to do my shopping for me at LeClerc but she pointed out a few quite understandable, major pitfalls and I’ll have to pass on that for the moment.

It’s no surprise that at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for an hour or so. This early start really did take its toll of me.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carne based on the rest of the leftovers from Monday. So now I’ll have to plan some exciting meals. Once I make some room in the freezer I’m going to bake a vegan pie again. I haven’t had one for ages and I really fancy some potatoes veg and gravy.

But that’s all for another time. Right now I’m off to bed and tomorrow I’ll carry on with the radio stuff. I’m going to go all out for the next few weeks and try to build up a store of stuff. I have a feeling that it won’t be long before I’ll be needing it.

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Tuesday 3rd October 2023 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I’m up and about before the alarm goes off.

Nothing like as dramatic as Monday. In fact, I only beat the alarm by a handful of minutes, but beat it I did all the same. I don’t know what’s going on right now.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I was actually dreaming about mobility scooters etc during the night which would be good and which would not, what type should I buy etc.

Later on I was on an expedition to the Far North and came across a camp of reasonably-modern explorers that had been abandoned. There was a load of stuff lying around, including all kinds of artefacts that had been discovered and labelled, and things like entrails of different types of seal going back hundreds of years and “the presence of (something) ruled out the presence of (something else)”. Some of the people with me found a couple of photographs of a girl but they were quite busy looking at that and making comments. I was quite busy looking at the collection of books, finding that there were several books in this collection that I actually owned. There was plenty of snow about and it was fairly cold but there didn’t seem to be any reason why this camp should have been abandoned in this way and what happened to the people who were camping here. We hadn’t met anyone on our travels around.

I was back in the High Arctic later. I’d been away for 3 weeks there and I’d still worn the same tee-shirt every day for all that time. I was going through the notes of the expedition that I’d found because I’d heard a story that my journalist friend from Pittsburgh had been part of the expedition and had made some discoveries so I looked through the notes for her name. Of course it wasn’t there that I could see and in any case it probably would have been in her maiden name anyway.

Having done that, I transcribed a few entries from the backlog of stuff from last autumn. There are now just 7 days left to transcribe but some of them are quite long files so it’s not going to be as quick as I would expect.

Once today’s lot was out of the way I sat down and prepared for my Welsh lesson. And then armed with my coffee and fruit bun, I connected up to the lesson.

The camera works really well. I’m impressed with the quality of the video, much better than that cheap throwaway camera that I found in a cheap shop, and the microphone is excellent too. Although it’s a comparatively cheap camera, it’s a reputable make and that probably makes a difference.

The lesson passed quite well, which was a surprise. I actually enjoyed it and that’s not something that happens every week.

Once I’d eaten my lunchtime fruit I spent the afternoon doing some radio stuff. I’ve chosen a whole pile of music for a few programmes in advance, and shuffled a few things around.

When I’ve finished the notes for the ones that I’ve prepared, I’ll be over 6 months in advance again and I want to keep on going like this. When the inevitable happens, I want to make sure that things go on (and on, and on).

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing from last night, accompanied by rice and vegetables. It was really nice, just as all my meals seem to be.

So now I’m going to have another go at nipping out for the last of the stuff in Caliburn. I didn’t feel up to it last night.

Tomorrow, the cleaner is coming round again, and I want to have a good chat with her.

The idea of going to do a big shop at LeClerc is now on hold until I’ve sorted out how I’m going to sort out my transport arrangements. Consequently, I’m going to ask her if she’d go once every fortnight for me and do my shopping on my behalf.

It is of course possible to order my food on line but they don’t have all of the things that I buy, and whatever they do have is quite expensive. If I’m going to pay someone, I may as well pay someone who will do what I want rather than what they want.

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Monday 2nd October 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

… believe this, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but at 04:20 this morning I was actually up and about.

And as it happens, I could have been up and about before that too because I spent a good 30 minutes trying to go back to sleep before I finally gave it up as a bad job.

By the time the first alarm went off I had finished one of the radio programmes on which I’d been working and had almost finished the second.

However, it’s not all roses. My condition is deteriorating by the minute and this morning I couldn’t even manage to climb into the bath to take a shower. It took me all of my force and guile to make it into the bath and then I had a difficult task of trying to stay upright while I showered.

The nurse came round and although he didn’t give me my Aranesp (I’ve had a mail from the hospital telling me to pause the injections) we had something of a chat about a few other things.

After he’d left I had a few things to do – the first of which was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Mobility and Inclusion Department of the département.

They have now confirmed that I am entitled to a disabled person’s card and also a disabled parking permit. They want a photo of me for the card but the easiest way to do this is to create a personal account on the French Government’s “personal space” website.

On there, you can upload a photo of yourself and then it can be cross-referenced to any other Government site. You need a special code in order to set it up and they had sent it to me. It’s a rather complicated procedure but it works because eventually I had an acknowledgement.

Halfway through doing that, I crashed out and that’s no surprise. My 04:20 start was killing.

Once I’d recovered I had a coffee and a fruit bun, and then chose the music for the next radio programme.

Rosemary rang up for a chat so I made use of the opportunity to configure the new webcam that I’d bought the other day on-line. Not that she wants to see me of course, but I was more interested in the built-in microphone. That works an absolute treat, apparently, so I can now do on-line calls from the big computer in here.

As well as that, I’ve been chatting to several of my friends on-line. There’s something going on at the radio so I’ve been deep in conversation with them making a few plans and doing some work ready for an appointment next Monday.

Something else that I’ve been doing is thinking about motability scooters. However I want a motability scooter with Attitude so I’ve been thinking about some of these three-wheeled scooter things with the two close-coupled wheels at the front.

Several of my friends are still involved with motor bikes so I’ve been seeking advice.

There was the dictaphone to deal with too. I was in something like a Paul Temple adventure as Temple himself, investigating a kidnapping or murder that was taking place in Granville at the back of the market down there towards the car park. I went down there to look and was able to hop on and off the bus but everything else came to satisfy me. At one moment a guy whom I knew came over for a chat but he said that he wasn’t Temple. There were several other people who looked as if they were either doing something or waiting for them to be clear of what they were doing but we weren’t able to identify them at that moment

Later on I took the bus and went to the St Nicolas quartier of the town. When I alighted I saw Christophe there. We had a big chat about my health condition. Unfortunately I can’t remember very much of what this chat was like. Later on a girl and I were in an office working. She had to go through a rung binder and write down certain details about the information that was on cards in there. I was busy doing something else that was much more exciting. The phone rang which meant that she had to do something different. She turned to me and told me that I had to carry on her job. I understood that I was senior to her- it’s not really for her to tell me what to do . She asked if that was OK so I replied “no. I’d much rather do the job that I’d been doing”. She said “I’ve done half of it for you”. My argument was “it was your job. Doing your job means that I’m not doing mine”.

Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about going to the quartier St Nicolas. The bus that I take into town drops me off at the bus stop by the port but for the return journey, there’s no raised kerb so I really struggle to climb back into the bus and it’s not going to be any easier as time goes on.

However, at the St Nicolas bus stop, there’s a little shopping precinct with a small Carrefour, a Post Office and a Pharmacy. I’m wondering if the kerb is going to be any better there.

There is a downside to this, in that I’ll only have 15 minutes to do my shopping before the bus comes back so I’m going to be struggling for time. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Meanwhile, back in my dreams, I was round at the house of a former friend of mine showing him a new stuffed animal that I’d had – some kind of green furry rabbit. He had all of his dogs there. There was a cat there that was my particular favourite but I didn’t get on with any of the dogs. This cat was quite friendly with me. At some point there wa sa party about to take place so they’d cleaned up the house. I was absolutely tired by this and had to go to lie down. I went upstairs to the room where I usually crashed out but they’d folded the sofa up now so it was the sofa and not a bed. I just lay down on it any old how with a blanket over me and it was all the dogs that came to join me on the bed, not my favourite cat.

For about half an hour or so I transcribed a few notes from the arrears of last autumn. It should have been much more but I rather regrettably crashed out again.

Tea tonight was another stuffed pepper, and that was really tasty too. But that’s all that I’m going to be doing. I’m exhausted now so I’m going to crawl into bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form.

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