Tag Archives: cleaner

Thursday 29th February 2024 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what the hell is happening to me right now.

Most of the afternoon I’ve spent fighting off wave after wave of sleep. In fact, it’s reached such a stage that I probably would have been better off and accomplished more had I succumbed and had a comfortable half-hour on the chair in the office.

The trouble is that it never turns out to be half an hour though. I could be crashed out on the chair for several weeks and it all would be the same.

Despite everything else it turned into another quite late night. I was browsing away on the internet before going to bed and came across a match between Stenhousemuir and someone who I’ve forgotten in the Scottish League Second Division.

It was such an exciting match that not only did I not remember the opposition but I can’t even remember the score. All I know is that in some kind of vague ethereal kind of way I know Stenhousemuir’s goalkeeper

So I watched the game until the final whistle (at least, according to the Internet broadcast which was running way in arrears) and then went off to bed.

When the alarm went, I fell out of bed as usual and the first thing that I did was to check my blood pressure. And to my surprise, it’s 12.9/8.0, which is well within the limits that they’ve set me. Last night it was 15.5/9.3 so that’s quite a significant drop.

So with the blood pressure medication apparently working, I went into the kitchen for some more, and a pile of the rest of the stuff too.

Back in here I sat down and began to deal with the dictaphone notes from the night. We started off with a group of us working on songs last night, a group of us. We were singing some of Help Yourself’s songs. The person who recorded it made something of a mess of it so we had to start again. In the meantime he went to fetch the albums and put the albums on for us to listen to. One of the tracks of course was MONA and the other one was WHO DO YOU LOVE (which is not by Help Yourself but by Quicksilver Messenger Service, but let’s not go letting facts get in the way of a good dream). I was getting everything ready when a woman came over to chat. She introduced herself and said that she was talking on behalf of her two children. They really loved these songs even though the timing was rather weird. We asked what about the timing that was weird. In the end she identified the gaps in between the songs. We said that if the gaps between the songs was the problem we could record the whole thing for her but have a gentle lead-in to each one where the album started. She seemed quite pleased with that. She asked me if I was going on a holiday this year I laughed and said “when I can get the timing right I’ll be going” to which she laughed too.

And later on one of our group was summoned to hospital. Although he currently couldn’t walk he was sent a taxi voucher and could apply for a taxi to go there. We went to reception to make this appointment. He left the paper with the agent and told her to book a taxi for him. After he’d gone she began and reached the letter C before she found a firm willing to take him. She wrote down all the details carefully but it turned out that that one was owned by her husband …fell asleep here …The people booked the taxi for him and sent him the details. But when it turned up the driver was actually his wife’s ex-husband so it was a very gloomy, depressing ride to Paris, and even worse because on the way back they had to stop to pick up something else. The conversation proved to be extremely difficult with this guy because of the issues that he was having with his wife’s ex-husband etc. Eventually he made it back home. When everyone learned about his trip to Paris we all tried our best to have the trip covered by another company but we couldn’t find another company that wanted to go to Paris so we could see that this was going to be an extremely difficult proposition getting this guy to Paris without the insurance company or his wife knowing about it

And that reminds me of the story of the woman who ordered a taxi to driver her and her new husband to the airport to go on their honeymoon the day after their marriage, only to find that the taxi was driven by her ex-husband. I could well imagine the conversation that took place during that 40-mile trip.

My taxi passengers were much different than that though, like the one whose claim to fame was to have beaten her partner to death with a frozen chicken. Crewe is a very strange place.

Having dealt with that, the next task was to hunt down some music. There are two tracks that I need for a radio programme that I’m preparing right now. and finding them is complicated. But it was worth it because I came across some more stuff that will come in handy too at a later date.

Then I had to download it all, convert it into a format that I could use and then edit it so that it’s suitable to broadcast. All of that takes time.

But it’s probably going to be worth it because while I was delving deep into some very lost archives I came across not just a copy of an album that was considered by Columbia Records to be their worst-selling album ever and abandoned quite quickly, but some songs that were actually recorded during the sessions but omitted from the pressing

So having assembled all of my music, I could pair it off and then join the music together in each pair, and then begin to write the notes. And I’m about a third of a way through them. I can hopefully finish off the rest tomorrow.

Things might have been much more advanced today had I not had to keep on fighting off these waves of sleep.

And then there was the nurse bringing back my medical card, then breakfast, followed by the cleaner bringing me to post, followed by the lunchtime fruit, and then the mid-afternoon hot chocolate.

That’s probably not all the interruptions either. It’s quite likely that there were others in amongst all of that but I can’t remember them now.

Tea tonight was a burger cooked in the air fryer and that was a success but the onions weren’t they don’t need 10 minutes in there with the burger – 5 minutes is plenty for them and I’ll have to remember that. They were somewhat … errr … overcooked.

Still, never mind. This air fryer is all one big learning curve. We’ll get there in the end.

But right now the only end that I seem to be getting to is the one at the end of my tether. I’m going through another one of those phases where I just can’t seem to actually accomplish anything.

There’s so much work around here, yet I start something and never seem to finish it, with all of these distractions going on and I don’t know how or am not able to stop them.

At times I feel rather like Fridtjof Nansen, the Polar explorer and humanitarian when he said "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"

But as Louis XIV said, "at our age, we must no longer expect good fortune". I shall just have to work harder.

Either that or put my bed in the microwave. That way I’ll have my 8 hours sleep in just 10 minutes.

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Friday 23rd February 2024 – MY DAY OF …

… baking was quite a success.

And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that

Yes, everything that I did today seemed to work and I’ve ended up with some pretty nice stuff. I’m quite pleased.

Ad for a change I actually had a good night too. In bed nice and early and I didn’t have much that kept me awake . And once I’d gone to sleep, I stayed asleep until the alarm went off.

Billy Cotton made me leave the bed and the first thing that I did was to take my blood pressure. 15.1/8.6. That’s low compared to how it has been. You can tell that I didn’t have a visit from Castor, Zero or TOTGA last night.

Before I went to bed it was 17.5/10.4 so the sleep did me some good by the looks of things.

After the morning medication the first thing that I did was to make the dough for the bread. And kneading it gently, as if I was massaging Zero’s clavicles, I was careful not to overwork it by resorting to violence.

When I was quite satisfied that it was ready, I rolled it out into a long sausage, cut it into three equal sections and then flattened it all down.

A handy small baking tray with a piece of baking paper was called into service upon which they could repose and hopefully rise.

Next step was to make the vegan cream filling. Whizz ip some milk until it’s quite frothy, add sugar, a little butter, vanilla extract, cornflour, and whizz it all up while slowly heating it in a saucepan.

That was complicated. I had the hand-whisk whisking it all over the kitchen until I managed to rig up a saucepan lid as a shield.

Meanwhile, melt some chocolate in the microwave and when it’s melted, whisk it well into the mixture

When It’s all whisked and nice and thick, leave it to cool. And there’s my chocolate cream filling.

Then the chocolate cake. A mixture of flour, sugar, oil, water and cocoa powder with a few extras. All mixed up into a kind-of batter-like goo, poured into a cake tray and then baked for 40 minutes.

By now the vegan cream was cold so it went in the fridge and I put the bread in the oven to bake.

They had risen quite nicely and were baked to perfection too so I had some lovely cheese on toast.

Rosemary rang me in the middle of everything so I phoned her back. Just a short chat today – a mere 58 minutes during which we put the World to rights but I also ended up going for a virtual drive around Montlucon.

Once everything was finished and the chaos was over I had a listen to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d started work but there was still a girl at school who I happened to like. For the last few mornings I’d been taking her into school. One particular morning we were running really late. It meant that I was going to be late for work if I dropped her off at school but nevertheless I was going to drop her off. We were preparing everything and panicking a little – I wasn’t dressed even. One of my friends came along and asked me what was happening. The girl briefly explained. He immediately said “I can run you into school to save Eric some bother”. I said that it’s no bother because I was quite interested in spending as much time as possible with her but he absolutely insisted and insisted until in the end she went off with him. I was furious. I sent him a text message “after all you promised me last time …” (because we’d had a similar situation a while ago where he’d done exactly the same thing and spiked my guns with a certain young lady. So I was set to go to work but there was a whole crowd of schoolkids around. I was in my Ford Cortina estate. I had to make the kids move so I could leave the car park but for some unknown reason they didn’t want to go. At that moment the car turned into a kind of cross between a bus and a taxi. All the kids were pleased because that was what they were waiting for. They said that they’d been waiting for a bus but the school had produced something else so there were some issues. I had to watch them safely aboard. I wasn’t sure which school they attended or where they went so in order to prevent a stampede I said “Primary School children first”. A few came on. Then I had to think of another way of dividing up these schoolkids so that I wouldn’t have all of them on board at once. But I was absolutely furious with my friend for spiking my guns with that other girl. It’s exactly what has happened before with him and it’s exactly what has happened in loads of dreams before this. Any time I’m anywhere close to getting the girl someone comes along to spoil it

Looking back at what I dictated, I was surprised that I’d been able to express myself like that during a dream. They must have been things that I felt quite deeply.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s usually my family who appear during the night and forestall all of my plans, sticking the baton dans la rue of whatever project I’m undertaking. They are always appearing at the crucial moment just as I’m about to Get The Girl and blow my chances out of the water.

But in the past, there have been a couple of friends who had the habit of doing that. One of them pretended to be looking after my best interests, as if I was senile or something, but in actual fact he had another agenda completely.

The second one, the one in the dream, he couldn’t stand to see anyone Get The Girl, whether he had already got a girl or not. He was of the opinion that only he should ever Get The Girl, no matter how many other girls he already had and that’s not an exaggeration either.

Anyway, this is all water under the bridge. There’s no point really in raking up stuff like this. Ambrose Bierce said "A year is a period of 365 disappointments" and we should all simply be resigned to it

It’s as I said though, there are some things that drag you down. Instead of trying to rise up, people simply want you to be down at their level. And in the end you either sink in with them or cast them all aside.

In Matthew 10:14 the Bible tells you "if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet"

So abandoning another good rant for the moment, the cleaner was here again so I finished off the radio notes and hacked a few sound-tracks about to extract and convert a few tracks that I need for the next programme.

While I was at it, I hacked around a few sound-tracks of Louis de Funès films to collect a few more sound-bytes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that although he’s been dead for several years, he and I have some interesting chats on my radio programmes.

Of course, having served on the Students’ Executive Committee and on other committees dealing with the various University bodies, I’m quite used to communicating with the deceased.

But Louis de Funès is my favourite French actor. Who will ever forget the MUSKATNOOS, HERR MULLER? or the NUDISTS sketches?

His sound-bytes really fit in well with my programmes and I keep on looking out for more in order to enlarge our conversations.

When the cleaner had gone I went into the kitchen, took the cake and cut it into 3 equal sizes. The took the cream from the fridge, whisked it again and used it as a filler in order to layer the slices. It was then wrapped in baking paper, clingfilm and put in the fridge.

And from what I tasted from the crumbs that were scattered around, it will be a world-beating cake. Nice and rich and chocolaty. I hope that it will last a while too. I’m fed up of things going off so quickly

Tea was chips from the air fryer with some of those vegan nuggets. There was a salad too which was delicious, and it would have been even more so had I remembered the mushrooms. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

The vegan mayonnaise that I made though is holding up really well and was delicious.

So no alarm in the morning, a nice lie-in with a cooked breakfast and chocolate cake for my afternoon snack. It doesn’t get much better than this. A nice lazy day is planned with a football match in the late afternoon and a cooked tea with vegan wellington and roast potatoes.

That should give me something to celebrate, right enough. And i deserve it. I never thought that I’d ever arrive here. But as Mae West said, "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

However, it’s too late to do anything about that now. I’ve managed to live to a ripe old age, and there’s no doubt that as I’ve grown older, I’ve certainly grown riper.

Anyone nearby will tell you that.

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Wednesday 21st February 2024 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why but I seem to have lost all of my motivation today.

It’s been rather flaky for several months, even years, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but today, there it was – gone. And never called me “mother” either.

It’s not as if I didn’t have a good night either. I was in bed early, wasn’t interrupted too much, all of that kind of thing. Anyone would have thought that I’d have been ready for anything.

But at some point during the night, and I wish that I knew where it was, all of my “get up and go” must have got up and gone, leaving me behind. And so that was that.

It was an early night too. It didn’t take too long to finish everything off after I’d done my notes. And then I hauled myself off to bed, pushing STRAWBERRY MOOSE out of the way. He’s worse than a cat, monopolising everything around here.

And for once, I had a good night’s sleep and I hardly remember being awoken at all during the night. I had my musculation band around my thighs, but it’s no good if it isn’t doing the exercises. I have been hoping for dramatic results from it but if things carry on like this, it’ll be unlikely.

And who was it a couple of months ago complaining about his awful sleep?

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to fetch the blood pressure tester to see where we are. Last night was 17.7/10.2 and this morning it was 16.3/9.6, and still no-one has told me what to do to try to reduce it to this mythical figure of 14.0/9.0

Following this, I dragged myself off into the kitchen for the medication, all 10 items of it (11 or even 12 if I need them). There are 5 (and maybe 6 or even 7) to be taken at night before going to bed, and that’s not including the painkillers that I’ve been prescribed but don’t take, so when I walk around, I rattle.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not a fan of painkillers. They’ll kill the pain for sure, and make it easier for you to move around, but how much damage are you doing to yourself by continuing to put weight on whatever is damaged and that you can’t feel it?

At least, with a pain, you know that you have to take it easy, walk rather gingerly, or find a work-around.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out what’s upon it. And there wasn’t much. Iceland was playing Scotland in a World Cup elimination match, the finals of the heats or whatever. The score had been 4-2 for Scotland in the first heat at Hampden and in the second heat the Icelanders were leading 2-0 so would qualify for the final stages on “away goals”. Then an incident occurred in the penalty area and a penalty was awarded to Scotland which they scored. Everyone looking at it later from slow motion replays couldn’t see any contact that might have led to a foul. It was up to the adjudicators to say that he’d awarded it because of contact – even though it was only slight, it was still contact. An Icelandic football player went over and punched him three times in the face. There was an inquiry and a really lengthy suspension for the Icelandic player. Even the newspapers said “you can’t do that as a football player”.

And this is all very reminiscent of the 1977 incident involving Joe Jordan and Welsh defender David Jones where Jordan clearly handled the ball in the Welsh penalty area during a World Cup qualifying match.

The referee however gave Scotland a penalty from which Scotland scored and which effectively ended Wales’s chance of qualifying for Argentina 1978 to which Scotland went.

Scotland also went to the 1990 World Cup in Rome and a few days before the start, as I was driving down the A500 towards the M6 overbridge, a double-decker bus went past overhead on its way southwards, painted dramatically overall as a blue-and-white saltire for Scotland.

Scotland’s performance at that World Cup was quite dismal and they were eliminated early. And as I was driving down the A500 towards the M6 overbridge a few days after their final match, a double-decker bus went past overhead on its way northwards, painted dramatically overall as a blue-and-white saltire for Scotland

Things had obviously not gone well.

Things didn’t go well for me today either, as I mentioned. The nurse came on time to give me my injection and to take a blood sample, and then I was left on my own for a while. I should have done plenty of work but somehow I just couldn’t make a start and I don’t know why.

We all have days like those, that’s for sure, but I seem to be having more of them than most

It was only when the cleaner arrived to clean the apartment and I had to stay in my room here that I actually pushed on and now the notes for the radio programme that I started yesterday are complete.

The aim once that was finished was to start on choosing the music for the next programme but I actually fell asleep, and not once either but twice and once in an … errr … very embarrassing place.

It reminds me of one particular time in Montreal.

Originally, I used to stay outside the city at Dorval, catch the 202 bus to the DuCollege Metro Station and then the underground into the city. It wasn’t until i became ill that I took up lodgings in the city centre.

Anyway, the problem with being in a hotel outside the city is that if I was feeling tired, I couldn’t go back to my room for a lie-down and a coffee.

However I did have certain places where I could go for a rest, but was always on the lookout for others.

One day while I was exploring the Complexe Desjardins shopping centre in the rue St Catherine, I came across the public conveniences. Now they looked clean, comfortable and tidy, and with my jacket rolled up tightly to make a good pillow, I was really comfortable riding the porcelain horse and leaning against the cubicle wall asleep.

What I hadn’t taken into account was that to deter the homeless and the layabouts like me from loitering, they arranged for an automatic flush of the toilets every 5 minutes, which was about 30 seconds after I’d gone to sleep.

That was quite embarrassing.

So being rather late for tea I was quite starving too. But it was another delicious leftover curry with vegetables, rice and a naan bread cooked to perfection and as I said last week, I’ll eat that again.

Something else that I’ve repeated about my tea … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is that the idea of using couscous as part of the filler for the stuffing has made a real difference – and a positive one at that.

So what will tomorrow bring? Gotthold Lessing tells us that "better counsel comes overnight" and I do feel better after a good, relaxing night’s sleep. But I don’t seem to be having too many of those right now. The last time that I had eight hours sleep, it took me three days to have them

In the meantime, I shall have to be just like Ernest Hemingway who said "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake".

And doesn’t that sound just like me?

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Friday 16th February 2024 – THIS WEEKEND’S BREAD …

… was not as good as last weekend’s, but much better than the weekend’s before.

And that’s a shame really. I massaged it gently as if I were massaging Zero’s clavicles (per Sean), used a little more water and folded it rather than fought it (per Liz) and adopted the tips that other people sent me and I’m sorry that I forgot who sent what, but that was that.

It seems that the difference is in the flour. When I used plain, industrial bleached flour it went up like a lift but with cereal flour or wholemeal flour it doesn’t go up anything like as well. But I’m not sure what to do about that. I don’t know enough about baking.

However, it seems that I know plenty about sleeping because despite going once more late to bed I actually had a good sleep yet again.

Not that you would have thought so because it was yet another night when I didn’t really feel like going to bed and could have sat up all night here in my chair. But I can’t make a habit of that so after a while I hauled myself off.

Billy Cotton awoke me from a deep, satisfying sleep. When it went off there was a musician, a guitarist rather like Carlos Santana or John McLaughlin who had a bassist and a drummer. he was playing under one name. For some reason or other the sound that he was creating wasn’t really what he wanted to do so he upped and went to San Francisco. Being there for a short while he recruited the two members of his group from before and brought them with him to San Francisco where they created a new group under the name of “The Family”. They began to play together again but the sound that they were creating was much more like the sound that he was trying to create. People were wondering what exactly was the difference between what he’s doing here and what he’s done when he was elsewhere but which didn’t really sound the same as what he’s producing now. What’s the difference? What’s he doing that’s making the sound better?

That’s not as bizarre as it might sound. I owned a van, an old J4, that would never start on the starter in Manchester. Anywhere else, yes, but not Manchester. It was as if the battery was flat so I had to use the starting handle

Once I changed the lead that went from the solenoid to the starter it would start anywhere, anytime. I came to the conclusion that one of the soldered joints was too susceptible to damp in the air in Manchester. So atmosphere plays a big part in things like that and really can influence the sound. I’ve even heard of records being recorded in toilets because of the differences in atmosphere.

But power trios of guitar, bass and drums. That’s the way forward, rather like Savoy Brown, The Groundhogs, Robin Trower, Budgie and so on. That was how I loved to play and if possible, sing as well but I always seemed to end up with guitarists who loved to sing too.

Yes, it seems that I’m dying to go back on the road. Rather like Bilbo Baggins and "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf". I want to see a stage and an audience again. Last time that I saw a stage was in Winnipeg in 2019 when I walked across the stage where my grandmother had topped the bill over acts like Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney 100 years ago.

But all of that is for another day. First thing was to check my blood pressure. A mere 15.1/8.0 this morning, and 16.0/8.5 last night. This medication might be beginning to work after all. It’ll be interesting to see what it will be tonight.

After heaping down the medication and doing the usual things that you need to do after 8 hours sleep, I washed my hands and then went to make the bread

It kneaded up quite nicely and when I reckoned that it was done I rolled it out into a long tube, cut it into three equal lengths and then flattened them down onto the baking tray.

There was a rice pudding to make too, seeing as I’m running short on desserts. And after all of the trouble last week, Brain of Britain remembered this week that he had a selection of bread moulds that would fit into the oven with the baking tray and one of those would be good enough to use as a rice pudding dish.

When the bread had finished baking I let it cool while I made coffee and then made some cheese on toast with one of the bread rolls. And it was lovely – warm fresh bread just out of the oven with cheese and toast all over it, washed down with strong black coffee.

After breakfast I came back in here to listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes. We were a brigade of soldiers last night being interviewed to go abroad to fight. Of course we had our families to consider so they asked us where we would like to go. Our response was that we’d like to go somewhere as close to base as possible but on the other hand if an interesting war was being fought somewhere 100 miles away we’d quite happily go there if there was good rail connections to come back to London where all out families were living. As most of us came from South London, the Wimbledon area, we reckoned that we were probably going to end up in South Africa anyway and given a chance to make a name for ourselves there rather than some mundane, dispirited and disorganised clash of arms closer to home in the UK maybe

We were back in the military again later on. The girl who lived next door to us in the family there was my eldest sister’s age but she was dealing in drugs and distributing them about the army base. It seemed at first that no-one was after her. She also had a little side-line going stealing sidecars from army motorbikes and sidecars and selling them on into civilian life. She’d borrow a motorcycle – fill in a form to say that she’d taken a motorcycle but in fact taken a motor cycle combination and undone the couplings so the combination of the sidecar and taken back the machine as it was just written on the form that it was a machine so she was covered in case anyone ever noticed that the sidecar was gone. She had sold several like that and was continuing onwards

But if that’s ever likely to happen – me in the military. If a war ever were to break out again I’d be in the Merchant Marine, unarmed, not fighting, but nevertheless in the front line confronting the odd submarine or ten.

And that reminds me of the time that I started my chauffeuring in Brussels.
"Are you armed, Mr Hall?"
"No I’m not" I replied
"But what would you do if we were confronted by an armed villain?"
"I’d rely on the force of my personality, Sir Brian" I replied.

We didn’t even have a police escort either. Just an ordinary, large family saloon with ordinary, not diplomatic, number places and we used to just pass by quietly and un-noticed. And he survived to live to a ripe old age of 82 and die peacefully in his bed despite my best efforts, which just goes to show …

After the dictaphone notes I had a few matters to attend to and then I began the next radio programme.

First task was to track down a film. And then to extract the sound-track, followed by cutting out a certain song which I needed for a forthcoming radio programme. And you’ve no idea how long that takes to do all of that.

But once it was done I had to track down another song and download that, and then convert both songs into a usable format.

Having collected them, I could then go on and collect another 8 to make the basis of a programme, pair them off and join them together.

By the time that I was ready to call it a day I’d written the notes for three of them too. I’ll try to have the other seven done tomorrow ready to dictate Saturday night, but that’s unlikely as there’s a lot happening, including Y Bala v Mynydd y Fflint in the Cwpan Cymraeg, live on Youtube.

The cleaner came round today and had a lap around the apartment. Now it looks as if someone lives here, and that’s always nice. It won’t last long, though.

Tea was some of those nuggets (first thing that I could grab from the freezer) with a vegan salad and chips. And it really is a nice meal. My air fryer really is good for the chips.

The salad is really good as well, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mushroom and olives with a liberal helping of vegan mayonnaise.

But while we’re on the subject of mayonnaise … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve found a recipe for making it without eggs and using a food processor. And seeing as I actually have a food processor I feel that I ought to try it out. In fact that might make a nice Sunday afternoon activity seeing as there’s no baking this weekend

As Keats said in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, "he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit", or as Aragorn said,"there are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark"

And "the end may be dark" will probably be a pretty good description of my home-made mayonnaise.

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Thursday 15th February 2024 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what’s happening to me right now.

Once again, I was absolutely flat-out this afternoon, sleeping quietly on my chair for a good 90 minutes. And nothing whatever disturbed me, not even a message on the ‘phone from Rosemary, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall the racket that this ‘phone makes whenever I receive a message or ‘phone call.

It was just like yesterday in fact, where I was well away with the fairies on the way home from Paris.

One thing that I can’t blame is tiredness. Just for a change I was in bed early and actually had a comfortable night’s sleep without waking too much.

Mind you, I could have done with another couple of hours when the alarm went off. It took me several minutes to work out what was going on (and that’s not unusual, is it?). What I mean by that is that I had the impression that there were several beds in here with several people, and a whole series of alarms was going off to awaken different people. I had a hard time believing that my alarm call was real.

But anyway I slid eventually to my feet and went for the blood pressure machine. 17.2/10.6 this morning. But as for last night’s, where did I record the figures? They aren’t written on my little booklet thing where I record them so I don’t have a clue.

They’ll turn up one day so I left them to it and went for my medication. Tons of it as usual and it’s really becoming quite ridiculous, but never mind. 10 tablets or powders in the morning and 5 at night before I go to bed is where we’re at right now.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was having a dream last night about the words dim ond da – that’s “not but good”, messing around with them, trying to fit them into different sentences that I’d written. Then we came across some of the radio notes that I’d written and just dictated. I decided that they were horrible and needed amending. I added in some bits but they were even worse, but then I couldn’t remember how to return to the original. That confused me for quite some time. When I did, I found that I’d still missed some out. Nevertheless the programme sounded better but there were so much more that I could do with this particular programme that I thought that I was going to start to rewrite it and dictate it again but that would have to be something that would have to be done later and not now.

And there have been more than just one or two occasions where this kind of thing has happened in real life when I’ve been writing a radio programme or editing a website, ending up forgetting all kinds of important things that I had included and somehow seemed to have managed to wipe out some important stuff that I really wanted to include.

This was another night where I was with my former friend. We were chatting to two other people whom we knew who we’d met some time previously. We’d arranged for this meeting so they came round . We showed them how to climb into my attic up the electric cable but the guy’s girlfriend was afraid to do it so my former friend’s wife stayed down with her and the other four of us climbed into the attic which was full of rubbish as usual. We spread ourselves out to make ourselves comfortable to talk. This started in the attic but ended up standing in Nantwich Road by the old police station. We were as usual discussing cars. My ex-friend was talking to him about several cars including one with a particular registration that would suit his wife but not while they were living in Porthcawl because it was a dangerous place to be apparently, according to him. I was talking to the other guy, telling him that I was having to dispose of some of my cars because I’d sold my house and had nowhere to keep them. I was renting a warehouse at the moment but that was precarious. However there was also a car that I wanted to buy, a yellow Ford Zephyr 6. While this was all going on there was a road rally taking place and all these old historic cars were going past. While I was talking to him about that particular one, I could hear something going past running on 5 cylinders instead of 6. It was this Zephyr so I pointed it out to him. I told him the story about how the driver had taken it out for a run 2 weeks ago but the insurance wasn’t correct at the time and he’d had a collision with a police car. As the policeman was looking round his car and preparing to nab him for no insurance, there was another bigger accident immediately right by them. The policeman went over to that and waved this guy away which was probably about the luckiest break that he’d ever had in his life

These days I seem to have a thing about Ford Zephyr 6s. There was one in my dreams a couple of nights ago and I’m sure that there have been others. They are MkIII Zephyrs, the kind that my father had in the late 60s and early 70s. Lovely, comfortable roomy cars with plenty of woomph.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned the one that I had – a MkIV model – that caught fire after a Jethro Tull concert in Manchester.

However, the story about “no insurance” rang a bell with me. When I was living in Winsford I bought a Rover 2000 at the auctions at Prees Heath and took a chance on driving it home. It goes without saying that I was pulled over by the police and asked for the documents for the car, like the MoT and the … errr … insurance.

Not having any of course, I pleaded ignorance and so was given the dreaded white slip “to produce your documents at your nearest Police Station within 5 days – or else …” – “or else” being anything from a slap on the wrist to three months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and in my case, it would be nearer the latter than the former. The Cheshire Constabulary and I didn’t get on very well.

Two days later I had a phone call – “this is PC Grindlay here. I stopped you the other day in that Rover. I forgot to write the date on the copy of the white slip. You will write it on for me, won’t you?”.
“Of course I will” I said, lying through my teeth. I could just picture the scene in the Nantwich Magistrates’ Court. “Five days from WHAT date, Your Honour?”.

But to be on the safe side I promptly put the Rover through the auctions at Queensferry so that someone else, presumably in North Wales, would have more headaches than I would.

Queensferry Auctions was quite fun though in the old days. Having little money we once bought a Citroen Dyane from a scrapyard for £25, drove it to Queensferry and put it through the auctions where it fetched £35. A few of those used to keep us going when we were hard-up

Another thing that we used to do when we were broke was to wander round the scrapyards and take the back seats out of cars. You’d be surprised at the amount of money that had slipped unnoticed out of people’s pockets.

It wasn’t just money either – all kinds of things were “salvaged” including, on one occasion, a really complicated food tester with temperature probe.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I started on the notes for the radio programme. There were several that I hadn’t written so I worked my way through them and now they are all ready for dictation on Saturday night. Hopefully all of the Carnivalers will have gone home by then and we’ll go back to being quiet again.

THis afternoon I was doing paperwork. It was the middle of October when I last filed away my papers so there were piles here in all kinds of heaps all over the place.

Anyway, they are now all sorted away, bills paid, actions taken and quite a few filed under CS. The place is looking much more like home now in my bedroom/office.

My cleaner came round too. Yesterday I’d given her the prescription that I’d had from Paris and she’d been this morning to the chemist’s. Now you can’t move around here for medication.

Then there was another task that needed doing now that it was after 09:00 in North America.

My Canadian bank card expired in March last year and of course I hadn’t been to North America this autumn and so didn’t have the new one.

After six months I had the dreaded “your account is now placed in suspense” notice so that was that. And then I had a letter from Service New Brunswick about paying my property taxes on my place there, which, with a suspended bank account, will be extremely difficult.

Consequently I had sent my niece along to ransack my mailbox and she found it under a pile of rubbish, and she posted it to me – the card, not the rubbish.

Now I needed to unfreeze the account and that was not the work of five minutes either. I shudder to think how much the ‘phone call will cost me at the end of the month but it needed to be done. So now my Canadian bank account is working, my bank card works, and the letter from Service New Brunswick wasn’t even the demand for payment in any case.

But buying that place in Canada was an ace of a move. No-one asks for Visas, your right of residence in Canada, that sort of thing in Canada. You can buy cars, take out insurance, open bank accounts, have mobile phones, absolutely everything as long as you can produce a property tax certificate.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve blagged my way through all kinds of situations that would have forestalled many other people, thanks to my little piece of Canada. I might have the noisiest, most mentally-unstable neighbours in the World on my southern border, but so what?

After that I went for my hot chocolate and then came back in here ready to work but as I mentioned earlier, I went off with the fairies instead. And I can tell you where I ended up too. I’d been running some kind of football training sessions for boys and girls. I’d heard a complaint that two boys had been overheard saying that they couldn’t wait to see a certain girl use the toilet again so I went to check and was confident that no-one using the toilet could be seen from outside. The rumours continued so I arranged for a piece of white canvas to be fitted to block the window arranged in such a way that it would shield the toilet but still allow light in. I was sure that there could be no possibility of anyone being seen from outside but the rumour gained ground again, I checked the toilet and was confident, so I didn’t really know what I could do now apart from bricking up the window. And I wasn’t convinced that that would stop the rumours either.

Tea tonight was that vegan sausage-meat patty with baked potato and a tin of mixed peppers that I’d found on the shelf. I felt rather like Mr Carmichael and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN.

The patty wasn’t a success. Not that it didn’t taste nice, but that in the fridge it hadn’t really kept its shape and consistency. But never mind – it was a rather ad-hoc thing using up some left-over stuffing. I’ll just have to work on it and improve my technique.

So right now I’m going to work on my sleep and improve my technique there. Having felt like Tommy Cooper this afternoon and "I knew a man who dreamed that he was awake, and when he awoke, he was!", I want to dream of nicer things.

However, rather like Barbara Follet, "my dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money" and that will be the end of the World if that does happen. It’s only my dreams that keep me going these days

And as Dietrich Bonhoffer said "the only fight that is lost is that which we give up" so I’ll go and fight the good fight in bed right now.

See you all tomorrow.

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Wednesday 14th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’ll be back in Paris at the end of April, despite what I said yesterday.

There’s a heart test already arranged for 24th April, so the doctor said “we’ll make it a stay for a few days and run a pile of tests on you”. Ahh well, can’t be helped, I suppose

All that way there and back and I was only with him for about 15 minutes, and even then he spent much of the time being interrupted on the phone by other people.

At least, it’s good practice, I suppose. Especially for me having to organise myself ready to travel.

Having had a good wash yesterday I still had plenty of things to do before I could go to bed so it was rather late when I finally crawled under my covers.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then to take my blood pressure. A mere 16.6/9.5 this morning – quite a change from the 18:8/10.9 of the night before.

Once I was up I dressed and then went to make my sandwiches for lunch – nice thick slices of home-made bread that had been stored in the freezer and left to defrost overnight, and filled with cheese, hummus, lettuce and tomato with garlic mayonnaise.

The taxi driver was someone who had run me round to the Centre de Re-education once so I knew her. We had a very interesting chat during which I learnt that she is on good terms with one of the guys off the radio. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" … – ed, the World is becoming far too small for my liking.

She’s not been taxi-driving long so she didn’t know the way very well, but I helped as well as I could and we arrived at the reception desk bang on time. And then I was called for the interview.

When I’d been there last time his office was right at the far end of the corridor and round the corner so I went to sit there. Today, his office was right next to the reception desk so he had to come to find me.
"Walk this way" he said, beckoning me in his direction
"If I could walk that way" I thought to myself "I wouldn’t be in this flaming hospital having this blasted treatment in the first place"

He went through all of my results with me, and everything seems to be an improvement (that’s not how it looks to me, but never mind) so he’s pleased with the progress of his cocktail of medication.

He thinks that an in-depth examination will be called for after a few weeks, and so he reckons transforming this day visit into a hospitalisation for several days.

One of the things that he suggested was another lumbar puncture – and I went cold at the thought.

As for all of my detailed and comprehensive notes about my blood pressure, he scarcely gave them a glance. So much for those then, I suppose.

Finding a nice quiet corner I ate my butties, went for a visit down the corridor and then found my taxi driver, and we set off for home.

Shame as it is to say it, I slept almost all of the way back and I’ve no idea why. But both the outward and the return journey were the most trouble-free that I have ever had. The traffic was slow-moving on the Prif but we weren’t ever held up, either on the outward or the return journey.

My cleaner was waiting for me when we arrived. She’d volunteered to help me up the stairs but strangely, I didn’t need it today. I could climb up all 25 steps without any help. So maybe there really IS progress after all. I must admit that last night, for the first time since my bad fall, I’d felt well enough to restart my musculation process with my elastic strap around my legs.

Back in the apartment I made myself a nice mug of boiling hot chocolate and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And there were tons of them. No wonder I was tired. I’d travelled miles during the night.

We were managing a rock group last night. The drummer in this group was only very young but was a prodigy, extremely good at his job so one of the other teams in the league decided that they wanted to sign him. I said that he’d only go if they made a ridiculous offer and we had another drummer to replace him. My team in the transfer window arranged a few more transfers in, a defender, an attacker and one player whom I didn’t know. I didn’t recognise his name so I wondered where he came from and what he did, thinking that he might be a replacement drummer to replace the one whom we were about to lose but it wasn’t. In fact he was another outfield player. So I explained to the club that it doesn’t matter how much money they offer, they can offer as much as you like but if he’s still under contract with us and we don’t have a replacement then he can’t leave for another club.

And that really does make a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Mr Teale, our geography teacher at school was telling our class about the Midwest USA. He was talking briefly about the Oregon and California Trail that they took. So when he finished I told him about the time that I’d visited there and seen it. I had my photos that I showed everyone. I mentioned the big baskets at the top of the hill where the descent into California starts, where back in the past they went through and found all old bits of wood lying along the trail. They picked them up and stuck them in this basket. It’s extremely likely that much of the wood in there comes from these crashed Pioneer wagons that failed to make the descent correctly and came to grief somewhere along there on towards the end of the trail on this downhill slope

Regular readers of this rubbish in another format will recall that we have spent a considerable time on the Oregon and California Trail. in 2002 I went to see the famous trail ruts and Register Cliff IN GUERNSEY, WYOMINGand then went back there IN 2019, and one day I’ll finish editing the … gulp! … 6,000 photos from my famous trip

Then I put some knock-out drops into the air when our Geography teacher and one of the other teachers were talking about the summit of the Oregon and California Trail. I’d been there of course and knew all about it but it seemed appropriate for the class to have a break and go to sleep so that the rest of the room could occupy ourselves for a bit

As for the summit of the trail, it’s not easy to know what is meant by it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been TO SOUTH PASS which is the watershed, where rivers to the east drain either into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, and to the west where rivers drain into the Pacific, so I suppose that that might be described as the summit.

However you’ll never lose a wagon down the descent there. Edwin Bryant, in his book WHAT I SAW IN CALIFORNIA described the slope either side as being so gentle that you’d hardly know that it was there, and that was my opinion too.

I also started later on talking about my Will, where I was going to leave money and to who. Actually finding it is a bit of a struggle but it was above the treeline on the route that these Oregon Trails took. But I found it sure enough and opened it to read. It’s different from the one that I have at home. My property will just be left to my heritee whoever that will be, with no mention of sorting it out amongst the people who ought to benefit so I hope that other people will understand, if they find this document, exactly what I want to do. I’ll have other ideas but I probably won’t get them down

That’s something that I really need to do – to write my will. It will be pretty straightforward and simple, and won’t take long. But that won’t be the end of the story because there will be a lot of work to be done in its respect and also in the respect of carrying out my wishes.

Apart from a few bits and pieces, it’s all going to be dropped into the lap of one person, and that person will certainly earn their share of the inheritance at the end of it. Mind you, they’ll deserve it

So who will that person be? The answer is that even though there’s a lot of ground between us, there’s really only one person honest and reliable enough in my entourage upon whom I could in theory rely.

And if that person doesn’t carry out my wishes? Well, there’s not much I can do about it, except to come back and haunt them, rather like the two gay ghosts who really gave each other the willies one night.

But that reminds me of Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz” who died in 2009) going in for a serious operation, and writing down a list of names
"Is this the list of people you want us to tell how it went, mum?" asked Kathryn?
"No, dear" replied Liz. "This is the list of people whom I’m going to come back and haunt if it all goes wrong".

Liz would have known about all of this, though. Having served on many University committees she’s had plenty of experience of holding hands sitting around a table and trying to contact the living.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed – as I said … "when?" – ed … but didn’t record, the people making this programme … "which programme?" – ed … presented her … "who?" – ed … with a teddy bear afterwards as a kind of memento of a trip that she’d made. Of course no-one from that voyage is with us these days except of course the teddy bear. That’s the only survivor of that first 1840s voyage across from East to West

That looks like an awful mess, doesn’t it? It looks as if it’s related to the Oregon and California Trail, but what’s the rest of it all about?

And then I was back at my little house in Winsford as well last night, wondering how things would have been if I’d actually stayed in Winsford and not taken the opportunity to move to Gainsborough Road in Crewe.

That’s a really good question. I quite liked my little house in Winsford but for some reason I felt really uncomfortable there.

Nevertheless, even though it was a Barratt House, I won’t ever hear a bad word against them as they helped me onto the property ladder. I went in three years from living in a van to owning (with a mortgage of course) a brand-new semi-detached house and I wouldn’t ever have done it without them.

While I was writing out my dictaphone notes I fell asleep again. It’s one of those days, I reckon, so in the end I went and made my leftover curry. It was delicious and the naan bread was cooked to absolute perfection. I’d eat all of this again and again if I could.

But now I’m off to bed. And I go, as Joachim du Bellay said, "heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage" “happy is he who like Ulysses has had a good journey”.

What I’ll be hoping is for more pleasant dreams like I used to have when TOTGA, Castor and Zero used to come to see me. It’s all very well giving me medication that has a side-effect of blanking them all out but as Tennessee Williams said, "If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels"

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Tuesday 13th February 2024 – I’VE BEEN SUMMONED …

… back to the Centre de Re-education. They’ve arranged a visit for me for the 5th March, and even sent me a bon de transport so that I can have a taxi there and back.

There were several pages of notes setting out my medical history and what they have discovered during the examination. They reached the conclusion that

  1. dealing with my case was difficult due to all kinds of problems
  2. technical aid is proposed
  3. a timed walk that should have taken 43 seconds took me 6 minutes
  4. a further appointment is planned

And so by the same post an appointment on 5th March was sent to me.

And at 09:20 too – be there 10 minutes beforehand. What do they think that I am? I know that I might be up and about on my own two legs by that time but I’d hardly say that I would be coherent enough to discuss my medical affairs so early in the morning.

Mind you, I’m hardly coherent at the best of times so I don’t suppose that it makes much difference

However, I’m intrigued as to this “technical aid”. I wonder what they have planned for me. There isn’t much that would work around here that immediately springs to my mind.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night, I couldn’t go to bed.

What I mean by that is that I couldn’t summon up the motivation to leave my comfortable chair and drag myself off to bed. Instead I wandered aimlessly through the internet and it was well after 01:00 when I dragged myself off.

You know the feeling though – when you can’t seem to find whatever it takes to raise yourself up and go to bed.

It would be no surprise to anyone if I had had a difficult start to the morning but instead I seemed to be quite lively for a change – and that’s a surprise. I shall have to do this more often

So I hauled myself off into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. We were back in some kind of music dispute between Hawkwind and a group called Wyneb Wyneb … "which is Welsh for Face-Face" – ed …. It concerned a song that Wyneb Wyneb wrote. There was a considerable amount of plagiarism in the song, so Hawkwind said, and they were very unhappy about it. The two groups found themselves at the same music festival and this led to a great deal of complication and confusion with people threatening to sue and to counter-sue etc. It was sorted out at the last minute by Wyneb Wyneb withdrawing from this concert and playing at another at a later date with a couple of other acts who were also withdrawn. Basically anyone who bought a ticket for the main concert and didn’t want to go because Wyneb Wyneb weren’t appearing could claim some kind of refund that would go towards the cost of a ticket for the next festival.

Anyone would think that I have an obsession with Hawkwind. They have been regular visitors during the night over the last couple of weeks. It would be interesting to find out what’s going on that’s triggered off something like that.

What else has happened ever since they’ve been appearing is that my whole dream pattern seems to have changed and they are nothing like what they were in the past. So is one of the tablets that I take in the evening playing havoc and disturbing my subconscious? Or is something else happening?

But be that as it may, I had a Welsh lesson to deal with and that went on until 16:30, with a couple of breaks and an interruption from my cleaner who brought me my post as mentioned above.

Once it was all over I had my hot chocolate and then had a good scrub down and a change of clothes to make myself all pretty for tomorrow.

During the breaks I was dealing with the radio programme that I’m planning, and writing the notes. I managed to complete some and was planning to write more but instead I crashed out this evening.

All through the lesson I was fighting off waves of sleep but my bad night eventually caught up with me and I didn’t finish it.

Tea was a nice taco roll with some of the rest of the stuffing, and I’ll finish that off tomorrow in a leftover curry with one of my naan breads. I’ll have to make some more naan dough sometime soon as I’m in danger of running out

So that’s it now, ready for tomorrow. I need to take some bread from the freezer to defrost ready to make my sandwiches because it will be a long day. My appointment is at 12:40 when I shall find out my future.

What I suspect is that they’ll transfer me to a more local hospital – either Caen or Rennes, and more likely the former. I’m sure they won’t keep me there, going back and forth to Paris with what it costs to transport me.

Nevertheless, "how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?" And knowing hospital food as I do, at least I had friends in Paris and Leuven who would smuggle me some supplies now and again. I know no-one in either Caen or Rennes who can help me break the monotony of the dreadful food supplied in these places..

And as Joni Mitchell SANG,
"I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favours
No one’s future to decide
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star-maker machinery
Behind the popular song"

And I am going back there tomorrow, maybe for the last time. I can’t see me going there again, certainly not unfettered and alive anyway.

That’s a shame because of all the times that I’ve walked through the city singing that song, and the nights that I’ve spent trying to get the metre of the song correct when I’m trying to play it on the guitar.

The last time that I walked through the city was almost two years ago, in the company of someone who figures regularly on these pages, usually during the night, but right now I can’t even wander around my apartment.

Frank Harris, in his rather … errr … explicit autobiography said "all human beings took what pleasure they could get whenever they could get it" and that’s certainly true of the past and the present. Make the best of whatever comes your way because that’s all that there is.

As for what happens after tomorrow, I shall just have to rely on my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche and "all along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand".

When I climb into that taxi in the morning I shall remember the words of Tom Bombadil – "be bold, but wary! Keep up your merry hearts, and ride to meet your fortune".

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Thursday 9th February 2024 – THIS MORNING AT …

… 02:44 I was sitting on the edge of my bed.

Not going to bed, or not getting up, but rubbing cold cream into my lower legs. It was as if my legs were on fire last night.

It had been like that for a couple of hours but in the end it became insupportable and I had to do something about it. And the cold cream actually worked too. After a couple of hours they had cooled down sufficiently for me to go back to sleep.

But not for long because the alarm went off at 07:00 as usual and I felt like absolute death. For any sum of money whatsoever I would have gone back to bed.

However I raised myself from the dead and took my blood pressure – 18.7/10.6, compared to last night’s 15.1/8.5 – and then went in search of my medication.

Having dealt with that, I had the weekend’s bread to make. And having taken on board everyone’s kind suggestions and different flour and different yeast I actually managed to make it rise somewhat.

There’s still a long way for my bread to go before I’m really happy with it, but it was definitely an improvement and actually looked like proper bread rolls too. The one that I ate for my cheese on toast was delicious.

However I’m rather depressed by my small oven and wish that I had the big one up here along with the furniture to fit it. As I said yesterday, I’d make a rice pudding and I did too, but the only dish that would fit in with the bread tray was a very small one and there ended up being not enough milk

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night – apart from the edge of my bed of course. I had two daughters last night. One was the kind of girl who enjoyed taking risks and getting into strange situations etc while the other was very much a stay-at-home orderly girl who wanted things to be much more orderly. She was going through some kind of crisis as to why she couldn’t possibly be like her sister. I was having to reassure her

And then we were on the subject of this young bassist again. At 15 years of age she left John Mayall to go to play in her own group. Of course that’s the story of Andy Fraser from Free in real life, and I’m ever so impressed that I could remember that fact in a dream.

Later on, Hawkwind were at a hotel. They were on tour. A flash of lightning hit the swimming pool and everyone was electrocuted. There were several stars at the time as well as Hawkwind’s bassist whose name I’ve forgotten. The Energency services arrived and first of all they began to deal with the American stars. Everyone else was left to wait. Robert Calvert and Nik Turner and the girl who was with them had to sit there and watch their bassist die in front of their eyes while all these other people were receiving first aid for relatively minor injuries

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve sat and watched someone die and it’s the most horrible experience on earth

What was more horrible about that though was although she was someone who was popular and had a wide circle of friends, she was totally deserted by everyone when she fell ill. She had to ring me up, who had been out of her life for seven years, to come and take care of her for her final months because no-one else would.

All of her religious friends said that they would pray for help but she needed far more help than that. And when they found out that she had a man in her apartment they were horrified, even though I (and Cécile for a short while until her mother fell ill) was the only one who had offered to take care of her.

Five months I was there watching her die, when all of her friends had turned their backs to her. It was a dreadful situation in which to be.

As it happens, I actually own a burial plot in Ixelles cemetery but I don’t want to be put in there. I want to be donated to science, where they can take out whatever organs they need, let students practise their arts on me, and then my remains, if there’s anything left, put in a natural cemetery with a tree growing on top

Not cremated though. I hate the idea of that.

But let’s not dwell on that kind of thing right now. Let’s dwell on me tidying up the kitchen and sorting a few things out later on. It looks quite tidy now, and that’s unusual

This afternoon I’ve been planning future radio programmes, and my plans have now taken me up until the end of November.

It’s amazing how much music I don’t have that I need for those next couple of months. I have a lot of hard work to do in preparing those problems, whenever I get round to it.

The cleaner came round today for an extra hour to carry on with the deep cleaning, and then finally, the garage turned up for Caliburn. He’s now gone for his annual check-over (not that I have been anywhere this last 12 months) and biennial major controle technique.

He needs attention to the headlights, that I know, and probably standing around for 4 months will have seized up an odd joint here and there.

The bodywork is looking tatty in one or two places too but this summer he’ll be 18 years old. What do you expect?

It was strange when the cleaner came. Having had a very disturbed night I was flat-out on my chair when she came in and I took some awakening. She brought with her the new medication, which is basically just double the medication I was taking before the lot of medication that I now have to abandon.

It’s crazy, isn’t it, all of this?

But never mind awakening, right now I’m going to take some sleeping. I’m feeling the effects of that bad night and need to catch up.

There’s the blood pressure to take, and the medication too but I’m also going to smother my legs in cold cream before retiring, just in case.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up like that soldier described in Paris-Match in the 1960s as "waiting for his fiancée in the uniform of the Cold Cream Guards".

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Thursday 8th February 2024 – WE’RE BACK TO …

… where we were a few months ago with the freezer, and how it’s now jam-packed to the brim with food.

Actually, that’s quite good news because it means that I don’t have to worry too much about from where my next meal is coming.

Having said that though, there are half a loaf, a bread finger and four bread baps in there that are taking up some of the place and if I were to eat those there would me more room in there, but I’m not ready to do that yet. As long as I can continue to make bread, I’ll make it and if there’s any left over, I’ll freeze it for another time with all of the rest that’s in there.

That will give me something about which I can think the next time that I’m lying in bed tossing and turning 1.e.not a night like last night where, despite having a late night I was out like a light and remember nothing at all until I awoke.

First job was to check the blood pressure + 17.4/10.5, a bit of a change from 18.2/11.6 this morning. There were also some note to tape to the dictaphone because when the alarm went off I was on another planet somewhere

After the medication I came back here to start work – or, at least, to try to, but once more it was really difficult to get going this morning

Once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This time, I had managed to go for a wander. There was a Led Zeppelin song going through my head last night. I was singing it and needed to know whether there was a background music being played with it or not. If the song had background music being played to it, it would be liable to tax. I’d have to pay money but how would I know whether there was any background music being played to it or not at this time of night when I’m asleep?

And I wasn’t surprised that I dictated that last night because I’ve given up being surprised by what goes on during the night

Later on there were two of my assembled pizzas. I had two of them done and they were in the fridge. They’d been in the fridge for several days. What I needed to do was to take them out and put the tomato sauce on. I was in the kitchen but it wasn’t mine. A small girl came along to help but I don’t know why she did that either.

So if I’m dreaming about my pizzas during the night that’s a sign of something, I’m sure. But putting the tomato sauce on top? No thank you very much

When the alarm went off I was dictating the notes for a radio programme. They included a young girl bassist. I was writing all kinds of notes about her and what she’d been doing. She was quite young. I’d made my way down from the start and I think that she was one of the ones who was almost near the end of the programme

All of that reminded me OF MATT MINGLEWOOD’S BASSIST whom I met when I was photographer for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton. As I believe I said at the time, she could come round and have a strum on my instrument any time she likes.

On the subject of radio programmes, that was today’s task but first I had to deal with a phone call. And it was exactly as I suspected it might be. "Mr Hall, we’ve had the blood test results. You have to stop taking medication X and take medication Y instead. I’ll send you a prescription."

So the prescription duly arrived, and then I had to change all of the print cartridges in the printer which is now printing and missing lines to I had to clean all of the print heads. So you ever have the feeling that it’s just not your day?

While I was printing off the prescription I printed off some paperwork about Strider. He’s now no longer officially mine and I hope that he has found a good home with his new owners.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a shame about Strider. We travelled tens of thousands of miles together from the semi-tropical climate of Georgia up to the frozen peri-Arctic wastes of Northern Labrador, as far as it’s possible to go by road northwards.

He’s just the right height for me to slide in and out and using the cruise control, I can drive him with just my left foot. But I’m over here and he’s over there and that’s that.

And Liz has been very helpful too. She sent me a little parcel that arrived today with a knee support in it and also a vegan cookbook, the same one that she used when she was starting out.

It’s all an early birthday present for me and she says that she hopes that I find the cookbook helpful. Secretly though, I think that she’s fed up of me asking her all these silly questions, but I know that you love me really.

Who was next to interrupt me? Ahhh yes – I had to send off my Leclerc order as I’m running low. And so are they with this farmers’ dispute. Quite a few items of the dairy line are not available and there are no substitutes

But that’s not a real problem if I run out of desserts. Strangely enough, as it happens, I have been fancying a rice pudding for ages so when I bake my bread for the weekend tomorrow morning, I might put a rice pudding in with enough to keep me going for several days.

So halfway through writing up my notes for the radio programme the Leclerc delivery came and so I had to sort out everything and put it away, as well as de-coring and de-pithing a couple of peppers to go into the freezer. I have to build my stocks back up.

Earlier on, I’d sent a message to my cleaner about the new prescription and she popped down to pick it up and tell me the latest gossip about the building.

Back at work and I’d almost finished the radio notes when Rosemary rang for a chat. Just a short chat this evening, only 52 minutes. Barely enough time for an exchange of pleasantries

By now it was tea-time and I fancied steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. But I found some veggie balls made out of kidney beans that needed eating and they went down with cheese sauce just as well as falafel.

While I’ve been typing up my notes, I’ve been listening to Al Stewart again and SWISS COTTAGE MANOEUVRES came round on the playlist.

Right near the end of the song are the words "and I couldn’t say what I had won or I’d lost, or even just what I had seen. But when I’m alone I just think of her once in a while". Does it remind you of anything?

It certainly reminds me of something. I’m still shaking my head over that three days in the High Arctic. It was the strangest period of the really strange life that I have led, and there’s still no explanation that I can work out about what was going on.

Let’s face it – I’m well aware of my own limits and this was way beyond anything that would have been contained within them. I certainly couldn’t explain whether I’d won or lost, and I certainly couldn’t explain what I had just seen.

But many of Al Stewart’s songs are like that. These are of some kind of vague pining for a lost adolescence that might have been, if only we had been older and wiser, and doesn’t that apply to most of us?

It’s often been said about “how I wish that I’d had all of my adolescence back, but with all the experience (and the money) that I have today. Wouldn’t things be different?”.

Mine certainly would have been, but I don’t think that it would have been better. It wasn’t until I left Crewe and came over here that I really began to encounter real life in a much wider cultural setting. But as Paul Pena wrote and Steve Miller sang in BIG OLD JET AIRLINER – "you know you gotta go through hell before you get to heaven"

And while this certainly isn’t heaven, living in Crewe was certainly hell

0

Monday 7th February 2024 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… at all on the dictaphone from last night. And it’s been a while since that happened.

And it wasn’t because I’d had a really good night’s sleep either. In fact quite the reverse. I don’t think that I slept for more than 5 minutes.

It wasn’t one of those nights where I lay tossing and turning for most of it but in fact there was all kinds of things going on in my brain – such as it is – and there were all kinds of images and things flashing up behind my closed eyelids.

It really was quite an extraordinary situation and I’ve never known anything like it. There was no point in grabbing the dictaphone to record anything because it was all happening so quickly.

But anyway, it was rather a waste of the nice clean bedding if I wasn’t going to enjoy and make the most of it.

So when the alarm went off I fell out of bed again, totally dead to the world, and went to take my blood pressure. 18.3/9.5, compared to 18.8/10.8 at bedtime last night.

Having done that I went off to take my medication, all of it, and then came back in here.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe I tried my best to stay awake. It’s Yoan’s turn to come round to inject me with the Last Resort and to take my blood sample and last time that he came, he found me stark out.

He had the usual battle to find a vein and then wandered off, leaving me to it.

And so today I’ve been alternating between working and fighting off waves of sleep, probably more of the latter, but not too successfully either.

Anyway, I’ve finished off the notes for the radio programme that I started on Monday, and then I’ve been tracking down music for the next one.

That one is going to be much more complicated and I didn’t have half of the music that I needed. Knowing that I didn’t have it was one thing and tracking it all down was something else completely.

And when I’d done it I had to work out a way to download it and then to convert it all to the correct format. It took me an age, especially as I was half-asleep for much of the time.

Eventually though I had all of the music that I needed and it’s all paired off ready for me to write the notes for it over the next few days

The cleaner came round today and decided to clean one of the shelves in the kitchen because she found a few stains. It appears that a can of fruit has burst somehow and the syrup has been leaking out making a mess everywhere.

But cleaning the shelves is one thing, putting all the stuff back is another, and then me looking for stuff and trying to find it later is something completely different again.

One thing that I learnt at a very early age was never to put anything away in someone else’s garage or kitchen.

When I’m at my niece’s in Canada I’ll happily wash up and dry the dishes but I won’t put the stuff away. You do that and you put it in what you think is the correct place but it isn’t and they can never find it again.

Yes, in the past I’ve spent hours looking for stuff that people have helpfully put away for me. Mind you, I’ve spent hours looking for stuff that I’ve also put away, so there’s no real difference.

The blood test results are in. Having stopped the anti-potassium stuff the potassium is now back above the upper limit.

As far as the rest of the measurements go, while the blood count is holding up for now with this “last resort” injection, the platelets count is now falling well below the acceptable limit and my carcinogenic protein, which should be less than 104.0 is now at 240.5 . The “active” part, that should be less than 11.8 is now at 27.2.

So I told me cleaner to stand by tomorrow for a new prescription changing more things round, or even giving me yet more medicine.

Tea tonight was a delicious, really delicious left-over curry with soya yoghurt and a naan bread. It really doesn’t get much better than that, honestly

As well as that I’ve had the guitars out – the bass as well as the acoustic. I’ve been listening to Al Stewart again and having a play around with a couple of his numbers.

We all know about ZERO SHE FLIES, to whom it relates, this “girl, she’s almost a woman” and the man “from the mountains watching her, biding his time”.

That’s a lovely track to play on the acoustic guitar and the bass line is really good too, if only I could get it right. The lyrics are really nice to sing but I can’t sing them and play bass at the same time – as yet.

Another track that I’ve been playing is MODERN TIMES.

Many of Al Stewart’s songs talk about the pain of growing up, of your teenage years, and we can all relate to them to a certain degree. “Modern Times” is a fantastic song for people like me desperate to cling on to whatever bit of youth they have left, and how our teenage friends have grown up quite differently to how we would have liked them to be

It’s probably the greatest song of its type, not to mention the lead guitar solo at the end of it.

It’s a song that I could play, either on the acoustic or on the bass, all night.

But not tonight because I’ve already crashed out once this evening after tea while I’ve been typing these notes. I’m going to bed and hope for better luck tonight with my nocturnal voyages.

But I have to laugh at some of the lyrics in “Modern Times”, where
"the red light girls were coming after me
For a forty dollar show"

Not long after I moved to Brussels one of my friends with his coach contacted me. There was a problem with it and he needed help.

In the middle of winter so I was dressed in my overalls and all kinds of woolly clothes of all shapes and descriptions to keep warm while I went down to help him change his starter motor.

Being underneath a coach for half an hour I was covered in oil from head to foot as we did it, and was in a right state when I set out to walk home.

And as I went underneath the arches at the Gare du Nord, a “lady of the night” emerged from the shadows and said to me, plastered in old engine oil and in dirty, filthy old clothes, "hello, sexy lover boy"

Despite knowing Brussels like the back of my hand, I hadn’t realised until then that the “ladies of the night” of the city all suffered from a visual impairment.

0

Tuesday 6th February 2024 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine.

She came in yesterday, as I mentioned (with no little embarrassment) yesterday and I gave her a shopping list for her weekly visit to Leclerc – there are several things that I need that aren’t available on home delivery.

There are plenty of really nice vegan recipes floating round, like the one for vegan sausage roll stuffing, that rely on chestnuts to give the food some flavour. I have a spare puff pastry roll left over from Christmas so some vegan sausage rolls would be nice but of course I have no chestnuts.

The issue with fresh ones is that you have to take off the outer skin and that’s a complicated procedure so I wanted some ready-cooked ones with the other skin removed.

And sure enough, even though I’ve searched everywhere in the shop and never found them, she’s put her hand on 2×200 gramme packets of steamed and vacuum-packed chestnuts.

So once I buy some mushrooms at the weekend it’s sausage rolls-a-gogo. Making those should keep me out of mischief for a while, I reckon.

And during the night I’d thought that I’d kept out of mischief too because I had another really good sleep and didn’t remember a thing about anything

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and too k my blood pressure again. 17.2/10.2 this morning compared to 18.3/11.3 last night

After the medication I went and gave myself a really good scrub in the bathroom so that I’d be fit and proper for my Welsh class, and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

And to my surprise, there were quite a few, considering that I knew nothing about last night. There was a Dutch rock group that was quite well-known. One of the musicians was taking quite a lot of medication so they were going through different kinds of medication to sort something out for him in a the same way that they are doing for me at the moment. This became quite a habit for there to be a lot of medication about but during Wold War II this was complicated but they did their best to keep him supplied with the medication that they needed to keep him alive. One day the Germans raided the group and a concert and wanted to go along and arrest them all. There was no indication as to how this ended but there was one person who helped this group a lot with their paperwork and administration and in some respects looked after the medication of this musician. After the war, no-one ever found out what had become of him. They interviewed a lot of people who were leaving the concert hall at the time. They can remember the Germans trying to frog-march someone out of the building but who collapsed and went lifeless during this frog-march so they ended up carrying him away. The suggestion was that this guy had bitten the cyanide capsule in his hollow tooth to do away with himself to avoid interrogation.

But talking about the medication, I’m sure that that’s what they are doing to me – trying various cocktails of medication to try to find one that works.

That’s not a criticism of the hospital by the way. We’ve all seen the reports that this illness is so rare that there is no approved treatment plan and that each case must be dealt with individually. So I give them full marks for wanting to try.

Anyway, after all of that, I had a visitor during the night again – and to think that I could remember nothing about it. Yes, Percy Penguin came round last night. The two of us went out. We were in Crewe Town Centre but I couldn’t remember where to go. Not that that would be a problem in real life because in Crewe I had a whole family who would be quite willing to tell me where to go, and probably did too. Anyway, wherever I was going to, I’d forgotten the way so I dropped off Percy Penguin in Delamere Street, did a beautiful U-turn and she climbed back into the car. We carried on through Market Street and Mill Street. We were talking about my health. She asked a whole variety of questions to which I didn’t really know the answer. She asked me if I’d had a picquire – injection for this and a picquire for that. I told her “no” so she told me that she was licensed to take blood so what she’d do about this mess was to make me a really good meal and then take my blood pressure and then take a blood sample, not just from the usual areas but also from areas that were different from anyone else to see what that’s like. I told her that I was extremely doubtful for a variety of reasons but she seemed to be quite confident about the idea and quite willing to have a go so I thought that I’d let her get on with it.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I wonder whatever happened to Percy Penguin. At one time she was the only light that shone through some very dark times.

One thing I’ll always remember was putting on a tape of QUADROPHENIA. on the cassette.
"What’s that?" she asked.
"It’s “Quadrophenia” by The Who" I replied. "Released in 1973"
"1973?" she snorted. "I wasn’t even born then!"

Yes, I keep on forgetting that I’m an Ancient Monument.

So having dealt with all of that, I prepared for my Welsh class. But not before I’d made a few phone calls.

And as a result, I’ve cut all my ties with Leuven. I’ve cancelled the appointments that were arranged for this week and told them that there’s no need to reschedule them. It’s pretty pointless if I can’t go there.

That’s a real shame. I loved the hospital, I loved the town, I loved the year or so that I spent living there and it goes without saying that I loved seeing Alison and the others who would travel up to see me from all over Europe.

But that trip in September killed me and I’m a lot worse than that now. Even if I were to make it there, I wouldn’t make it back. And there’s no point whatever in having the best treatment from the best hospital in Europe if the journey to and from is going to negate the effects of it.

The Welsh lesson went surprisingly well, so much so that I put Plan B into operation.

It’s half-term next week but browsing around the LEARN WELSH WEBSITE I found that Coleg Aberystwyth is running a two-day revision course on Monday and Tuesday for a level well down from where I’m supposed to be.

Nevertheless, it’s just what the doctor ordered, I reckon and it’s just £15 and there were 6 places left. That might fire me up a little. Only 5 places left now.

The advantage is that with it being Aberystwyth, it’s teaching the North Wales syllabus.

If you look at a map of Wales, you’ll see that there are two mountain masses divided by the valleys of the River Severn, Afon Dyfi and the Afon Mawddach. That’s a natural route from England to the Welsh coast and which invading armies have taken for 2000 years.

All of the fortifications that have been built there over that period have effectively divided the country into two and so the language has evolved differently in each area.

Curiously, some of the words that I’d learnt from my grandmother were “south-id” words rather than words from north-east Wales, and it wasn’t until I found her old Welsh family Bible after she died that I found out that her family actually came from the south in the past – presumably moving north like many families did when Gresford Colliery near Wrexham opened in 1908.

That was terrible, that. After she died all of her possessions went into a skip, including her ancient family Bible, written in Welsh, with her family tree in it going back several generations. I had to climb in after it to rescue it and many of my family wished that I’d stayed in the skip.

This afternoon the first thing that I did now that I’m nice and clean was to change the bedding. And when I took it off the quilt and pillows it walked into the bathroom on its own. I really ought to take much more care of myself and my hygiene that I do. I keep on overlooking some of these basic things that I ought to be doing so much better.

And then the cleaner came round with my shopping – and I wasn’t in the … errr … smallest room this time either.

But anyway, now I have more peppers, tiny tomatoes and vegan cheese as well as my precious chestnuts. Yes, I don’t know where I’d be without her, that’s for sure.

After all of that and my mid-afternoon hot chocolate, I carried on writing my radio notes and I’ve almost finished this programme now ready to dictate on Saturday night.

Tea tonight was a lovely taco roll filled with some of the leftover stuffing and accompanied by rice and veg. But this couscous stuffing seems to work quite well, better in fact than bulghour or quinoa so I might continue to use it. I’ve added couscous to my “list of favourites” on my Leclerc on-line shopping site to remind me.

It’s actually an advantage because couscous is available on-line whereas bulghour and quinoa – at least in loose form – are not.

So now having done my notes, it’s time for bed in my nice clean bedding.

Well, actually, it isn’t. There’s the blood pressure and the medication to take so it’ll be a while before I can rattle my way back to bed.

Nothing is easy these days with all of this, but we have to keep on going. What else is there to do? Bear Grylls, the adventurer and TV presenter said of his exciting travels "Life doesn’t reward the naturally clever or strong but those who can learn to fight and work hard and never quit", and I’m not going to quit until I’ve done the blood pressure, the medication and been to the … errr …. smallest room, preferably without the cleaner coming in.

0

Monday 5th February 2024 – YOU KNOW HOW …

… it goes around here – at least, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly how it goes.

You make a start on a simple job that should take 10 minutes, and one thing leads to another. And once you make a start you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are.

That’s how it went today – I wanted to choose a piece of music by Jim Croce for the next radio programme only I can’t find any.

So did I digitalise it during my mammoth digitalisation project of a couple of years ago? And if I didn’t, where the hell is the analogue tape from years ago? And why isn’t the tape deck working?

How many times have we been here before?

And that’s a shame because the day seemed to start so well. Despite having crashed out while writing my notes last night, I finished them quite early and in the absence of anything else I went and had an early night.

What’s more, I slept right through until the alarm went off in the morning and can’t remember a thing of what happened in bed.

When the alarm went off I checked my blood pressure again. 17.5/9.8 this morning compared to 19.8/12.4 last night.

What intrigues me is these “target figures” of 14.0/9.0. How am I supposed to reduce my blood pressure? What steps should I be taking?

It all seems pretty pointless to me to be told to control my blood pressure and not tell me how.

After the medication I came back in here to check the dictaphone notes to see if I’d been anywhere. And to my surprise there was quite a bit of stuff. I ended up living in Dungeness on the southeast point of England facing France. I just wanted to opt out of society. After a while I was persuaded to play a couple of folk gigs which they had to do with 2 people on the stage behind me ready to grab me if I fell over and pick up anything that fell down. They went well so we talked about a folk festival at Dungeness. We erected a stage and invited groups and audiences. It all seemed to go very well. One of the performers was a young girl. It seemed that every newspaper that interviewed her was only interested in if she was having “a physical affair” with another member of the band. She walked out of so many interviews as soon as they asked her that. There was another musician on stage, a young guy, who was really good and as well as singing, had the audience moving as well and had some really good exchanges with them. apart from the odd hiccup it all seemed to go really well

But that bit about the girl and the newspaper interviews – that’s another story that I could tell you but for the fact that the Statute of Limitations doesn’t cover the issues that would be raised.

However Dungeness was one of my favourite places to camp out, not the least of reasons being that I could pick up French wi-fi there and that was important in the days before roaming.

But while we’re on the subject of roaming … "well, one of us is" – ed … A few years ago I was in North America and because of the high cost of roaming over there I’d switched my ‘phone over from “any operator” to just the network of my supplier, which meant in effect that I wouldn’t pick up anything at all

Anyway, I took the ferry from Sydney in Nova Scotia across the Gulf of St Lawrence to Newfoundland to see my friend there and I went on the “long crossing” to Argentia, all 23 or so hours of it.

When we were about three-quarters of the way across, my ‘phone started to go berserk with all kinds of messages, missed phone calls and the like – alarms and bells going off everywhere.

Of course there are a couple of islands – St Pierre et Miquelon – in the Gulf of St Lawrence that are still French possessions, part of the DOMTOM (Dominions et Territoires Outre-Mer), relics of the old fishing station disputes of the 19th Century.

They are treated by the French as the UK treats, say, the Isle of Man, so all of the French companies are there, even my French network supplier, and as we sailed past, it was simply beaming to me my missed calls and messages as if we were anywhere in le Héxagone – mainland France.

After that I checked on the immigration rules for the islands and to my surprise, seeing as I hold a French residency card, there aren’t any. I began to think of a cunning plan but as we know, ill-health overwhelmed me.

Mind you, I’d have loved to have seen what the Sécu – the Social Security – would have said about paying for a taxi for me from there to Paris.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, we were playing that strange and weird game again that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It was the end of the season and we’d avoided relegation despite having no money and no crowd particularly. It was the end-of-season meal where everyone was supposed to be eating and making speeches. I came downstairs and followed the trail. I was swept up in the crowd and had to fight my way through. At the bottom of the stairs you either turned left into the concert or right into the refectory. I went right and chose my meal from a buffet type of thing. Someone, the President of our league I suppose spoke about our teams – ever-present in the league we were but we never did very well as we had no money etc. Other teams did much better but they had much better investment. I had to tell a poem about a departed friend so I had to write one more-or-less on the spot and read it out. That was rather a challenge because with his death I was in no mood to write or challenge them

Somewhere in that dream I was walking down the Avenue de L’Exposition. I had a job as a taxi driver for a company but I thought that my car was rather old and was embarrassed about it. On my way down the hill, coming up the hill was a Ford Zephyr 6 C-registration with a taxi sign on it so maybe my car wasn’t all that old after all. On thing that I learnt was that trips to the hospital were taking place by tour de rôle – each driver went on a rota and they did hospital trips in turn. At the road junction further down I found a pile of peas. I thought that they obviously belonged to the hospital because that’s the nearest big building so would they send a fleet of cars, one to take one of these peas individually to the hospital or not

Now that’s what I call a logical dream.

After the coffee and bread pudding I made a start on the next radio programme.

This one was going to be complicated. I needed to find some music by a couple of artists, one a guy called Tim Davis. He was the long-time drummer for Steve Miller but retired due to diabetes, of which after having his legs amputated, he died.

He wrote a couple of songs for the Steve Miller Band and sang on one or two of them, but my “usual sources” wasn’t able to distinguish which and there was considerable dispute about one of them. In the end, I had to delve deep down into the bowels of the internet to find some evidence upon which I can rely, only to find that I didn’t have the song, so I had to hunt down a copy of that.

Then there was Jim Croce. He spent years dithering as to whether he wanted to be a rock star and finally, after years of deliberation, he launched himself off into a search for stardom, only to be immediately killed in a ‘plane crash.

As I said earlier, I had some of his stuff somewhere and that ended up into turfing out almost every drawer, box and cupboard. And then I had to digitalise it once I could make the tape player work.

The track for which I was particularly looking was WALKING TO GEORGIA.

Where he’s going to in Georgia is Macon (“Mahh-com”, Jim, not “May-con”) and of course regular readers of this rubbish will recall having been with me on several occasions to Macon in Burgundy to see my friend Jean-Marc, with whose family I stayed on a student exchange when I was 16.

Best thing that I ever did, was to go on a student exchange and I’m glad that my great nieces in Canada have been on a few.

My trip opened up my eyes to the big wide world and a totally different culture, and I was never the same afterwards. Having been once, I was determined to go again – and again, and again etc.

But going back to Jim Croce and his song, “Walking to Georgia” to see his girl reminds me of the times that I walked back from Chester through the night to where I was living near Audlem after seeing my girl – all 30 or so miles of it.

Eventually I managed to sort out everything and by the time that I knocked off for tea, I’d chosen all of the music, paired it off and written the first couple of notes.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with stuffing based on couscous and it was quite nice. And although I’m running short of peppers, my faithful cleaner will buy me some more tomorrow. She came waltzing into the apartment and caught me in flagrante delicto riding the porcelain horse.

When I’m in here on my own I ought to develop some good habits, like closing the toilet door.

Anyway, she has her shopping list, and I’ve finished everything now, so I’ll check my blood pressure, take my medication and then go to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to be in good shape for it.

With this Welsh course I’ve no idea where I’m going with it. I’m miles behind everyone else and there’s another two years to go. I’m not sure whether I’ll finish the course or whether the course will finish me.

But I do have a cunning plan. It all went wrong two years ago so I might sign up with a different provider for an evening class for a course from two years ago and try to build up my bases again.

Coleg Gwent was usually pretty good so I might have a look and see what they can offer me.

Double-Welsh sounds almost as good as Double-Dutch and I can speak that fluently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But it sounds like a good idea to me. As Kenneth Williams once said, "I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance".

0

Thursday 1st February 2024 – I HAD A …

… visitor last night.

There I was, tucked well up under the bedclothes but in my head I could see my bedroom door

And then in came Zero

Whether or not I was dreaming, or whether or not I was hallucinating after taking another dose of that horrible sand-like medicine I really don’t know. It could have been either, I suppose

All that I could say is that it wasn’t for real. And isn’t that a shame?

It’s been a while since she put in an appearance. Apart from Castor who featured in a little voyage, the first for quite a while, a couple of weeks ago, my three favourite young ladies seemed to have fallen out of the picture.

Several others, such as The Vanilla Queen, have long ago dropped off the edge of whatever it is that goes on at night and I really would be disappointed if Castor, TOTGA and Zero were to go the same way, so it’s really nice to see Zero back in the fold again.

But while we’re on the subject of last night … "well, one of us is" – ed … instead of the nice early night that I promised myself, I ended up spending almost an hour cleaning the heads of a printer. How long should it take to print a medical prescription of one page of A4?

Having crashed out well and proper after tea, I was already running far later than I intended and that was the last thing that I needed.

And so in bed there I was and my mind was a-roving like it does. I was at work and one of my colleagues, a big aggressive guy, was complaining about one of our other colleagues who would never come when he was called. You had always to go to fetch him and he never seemed to be awake. This guy said “he’ll soon be awake in a minute. I’m going to sort him out”. He strode off down to the other end of the office. All of a sudden I heard my alarm go off and the strident tones of Billy Cotton, minus Band Show, shouting “WAYKEY WAY …… KAY!” followed by the opening bars of “Somebody Stole My Gal” just like he used to do on the radio when we were kids. I thought to myself “God! It’s not me he’s talking about, is it?”.

Yes, that’s my alarm call in the morning. I used to have David Bowie and WAKE UP LITTLE SLEEPY-HEAD but I’d sleep through that. No danger of anyone sleeping through Billy Cotton – not even my neighbours.

So having discovered that that was actually a dream, I fell out of bed and went for the blood pressure machine. A mere 17.8/12.7 this morning, compared to 17.6/10.1 last night. Obviously Billy Cotton gives me quite a jolt in the morning.

Mind you, having said that, I took last night’s blood pressure before I had the printer issues. I wonder what it would have been like afterwards.

In the kitchen, I had the medication – the last of this SODIUM POLYSTYRENE SULPHIDE and it really does say “polystyrene” on the label.

Last night I sent a mail to the hospital to say that if they wanted me to continue to use it they would have to send a repeat prescription, but they haven’t so it looks for the moment as if that’s it.

So it will be interesting to see if that’s the drug that’s causing me all these problems, or whether it’s one of the other new ones.

But on the other hand, thanks to my poor cleaner, there’s another new medication to start taking tomorrow, so that’s bound to stir up the deck a little.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night, because there was more than just Zero and a rude awakening. There was another long dream that seemed to go on for ever about me playing bass in a band. We were supporting Hawkwind. A little later on I’d had my illness and Hawkwind held a benefit concert for me. Things were slowly deteriorating and I’d been called back to the hospital again. They were to review all of my medication and change some of it. That didn’t bother me because it’s not the first time. When I went back in there was a football match on TV. I was back in at a certain time but they were running hours late so I had to amuse myself during this particular time. On the TV was a football match between Crewe Alexandra against someone. It was a match that I really wanted to see. Crewe played really well and in the end won 3-1. It was extremely important because it kept their place alive in the promotion. Then it was one of these films in black and white, cowboys from the 1930s and 40s with John Wayne, but first a film that actually went back further than that to the date of American independence about them being in forts and travelling from one fort to the next. I really can’t remember much more than this about this dream but it went on for ever.

We also has the European Union launching a space rocket. We were involved in the final preparations for its departure. There was no actual countdown as such which surprised us completely because everyone would like to know how long they have to do various jobs. We were working away and occasionally a voice would announce “20 minutes to blast-off” or something but there was no clock, no person giving the time and we had no idea what was happening. In the end we had everything ready and were waiting for the astronauts. Of course one of them had to use the bathroom, didn’t he? That was when the timing became critical. he really had to rush and even the person who said “10 seconds to blast-off” made some kind of remark. In the end he must have been back because ignition took place on time and the rocket left.

On the subject of rockets, the British had a space rocket at one time and it was called “The Civil Servant”. When asked why it was given the name, a Government spokesman replied "it costs the country a fortune, it won’t work and we can’t fire it"

Somewhere along the line there was a young girl who somehow managed to fall into a lake. There were two of us walking through the park talking and we dived in, rescued her and put her back on land. We just carried on walking and didn’t think anything of it. A week or so later Nerina was talking about a colleague of hers who worked at the Council who had been fired because he’d been messing up all the street names. For example, Edleston Road in Crewe he’d now changed to Market Street but Market Street was somewhere else in the town. It was all starting to become crazy. In the end he was fired. Nerina told me a story about how he was painting the yellow lines marking the edge of pavements in the wrong place. On one occasion he’d put them so wrong at a lake that a girl had fallen in and two men had rescued her. I told her that that was us, me and the other person. She was totally surprised about that. She had no idea that I’d dived into the water to save someone.

This reminds me of a time when Nerina saved me from drowning when I once fell into a lake. When her friends asked her how, she replied "Simple. I took my foot off his head".

There was much more to what went on during the night, by the way, but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your meal right now

After my nice strong black coffee and slice of bread pudding I attacked the Isle of Wight Festival 1968.

Much to my surprise, not only did I manage to track down tons of obscure material by many of the obscure bands that was there, I even found, embedded in a documentary, an elusive 40-second piece of music, the only known recording of the only known concert appearance by a group the basis of which went on to be “Queen”.

You’ve no idea how difficult that was to tease out of its setting, not being helped by being interrupted by my cleaner who brought me another lot of medication.

There was nothing whatever by the group that opened the Festival, an obscure isle of Wight band that didn’t last long and disappeared without trace long before portable home taping. However I found the name of the band’s guitarist and even found a short guitar piece that he played as an advert for a local pub on the island. So that’s in the mix too.

And then I found a major issue. Even though the Festival was officially advertised for the Saturday and Sunday, there were two bands that played on the Friday night to the assembled campers there so I can’t really say that the Festival started on the Saturday morning.

That means that what I’ve done so far will have to wait for another … gulp … five years.

So instead I began to prepare another programme for the missing date. I’ve chosen all of the music for it and even paired some of it off. I would have done even more except that, once more, I was out like a light with no warning whatsoever at about 17:00 and didn’t come round until 18:48 – and then I was in no fit state to do anything for a while.

Tea tonight was different. I have tons of tinned food around the place that I bought when I first moved in here as a kind of emergency reserve if I can’t manage to go out due to illness. It’s now becoming rather well out-of-date so tonight I made myself pasta with a tinned kind-of complement to a dish of couscous and meat.

Of course it wasn’t that simple. I friend some onion and garlic with herbs and spices and then added the couscous vegetables with some tomato sauce before I tipped it into the saucepan with the pasta.

There are chickpeas in the mix so there is some protein going in.

As I use up the tinned stuff I’ll be replacing it with more modern in-date food, but the stuff that I bought from Noz is irreplaceable of course so I don’t know what I’ll do about that.

So with no printer to worry about tonight (as yet – the night is young) and still over an hour to bedtime I’m going to have a bash on the guitar.

Over the last day or two I’ve been having fun with Tom Petty’s version of the Byrds’ version of Bob Dylan’s YOU AIN’T GOIN’ NOWHERE. I thought that the title was somehow appropriate given my state of health these days

“Strap yourself to a tree with roots” as the song goes, but I can’t even go outside to find a blasted oak, never mind a flaming beech.

But leaving that aside, the arrival of country musician Gram Parsons to the Byrds could have been a total disaster and could have completely ruined the band but instead they produced ONE OF THE FINEST ALBUMS OF 1968, which says a lot considering how many fine albums there were that year.

It brings back many happy memories for me singing IN SOUTH CAROLINA THERE ARE MANY TALL PINES as I was driving down through the tall pines of South Carolina in 2005 on my way to Rhys’s wedding.

"But now when I’m lonesome, I always pretend
That I’m getting the feel of hickory wind"

And wouldn’t it be nice to have the feel of hickory wind right now? But if I play my cards right I might not be lonely. Having had Zero through the door last night, whose turn is it tonight?

Knowing my luck, I can guess. It won’t be TOTGA or Castor. But as they used to say, you have to take things as you find them and make the best of it. "In the morning counsels are best, and night changes many thoughts" as Théoden said.

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Wednesday 31st January 2024 – AS I SAID …

… yesterday … "and on many other occasions too" – ed … it’s the yoghurt – especially the soya yoghurt – that makes all the difference between a good curry and a really good curry.

So thanks to my long-suffering cleaner who raided the shops yesterday I had an absolutely wonderful leftover curry for tea tonight

The naan bread was cooked to perfection too so I had a wonderful meal and I just wish that there had been more of it

But in case you are thinking of going to emulate it (you should have done that beforehand but not while the train is standing in the station) you don’t actually cook the yoghurt. Just add it in right near the end of the cooking and stir it well in.

And then with a bit of luck you’ll have a curry that’s as good as mine.

Wouldn’t it be nice though if I could have a sleep as good as that though?

What might help would be if I actually went to bed at the proper time instead of being waylaid and distracted by other events. Going to bed after midnight and letting it all hang out when I have to be up at 07:00 is not doing me much good at all.

Especially as I have my nocturnal rambles with which to deal.

It didn’t tale long to start a-rambling last night. A mere 20 minutes from going to bed in fact. I’d just come back after being away for ages so I was looking for a job. Someone said that there was a job going in their department, in the accounts department of a big company. They gave me the details of how to go. When I arrived I found that they were also recruiting for a musician or someone with musical abilities. I happened to notice the person for that so I spoke to him about it. Then I went and this person brought out the application forms for me but said that the woman who was interviewing was actually free at the moment and would I like to go in? I went in and went upstairs and there she was, busy showing a couple of people around, one girl whom I knew and a couple of youngish girls. They were apparently taking an exam and so was going to invigilate while she was working. She had to have these young girls settled. She mentioned something about there being an extra place so I mentioned my friend the musician. It was an interesting situation but somehow I didn’t manage to speak to her. She was far too busy doing this kind of thing.

Later on I found myself at the hospital being treated for one of my regular visits. I had to go to another hospital so they had to help me down all the stairs into the basement where the vehicles pulled up where I could climb into another vehicle that would take me off to the second hospital. I was struggling down the stairs. She was asking questions about my blood pressure, my medicaments etc, all this kind of thing. I answered honestly that occasionally I had a great deal of problems to go downstairs etc so she asked me would it not be better to go to either Caen or Rennes for my treatment instead of coming to Paris. I replied that certainly going to Caen or Rennes would be a lot less stressful for me. Looking at my blood pressure figures I could do with a lot less stress in my life.

And that’s certainly true too. The figures for last night and this morning were 18.1/10.7 and 17.7/10.7. It’s not me having a heart attack though, it’s the hospital

But seriously, when I go back for my report on 14th February I can see that being offered to me, a change of hospital. And I’ll probably accept it too. It must be costing the Social Security a fortune to send me to Paris and sooner or later they’ll become fed up of paying.

Later still, there I was in hospital going through my e-mails and I’d been swamped with stuff from the hospital. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because someone else in the ward was complaining about it too. In the end one of the people caring for the ward turned round to the person in charge and asked “is it OK if she who is responsible for deleting all these messages?”. “Yes,” he replied. “That’s OK” with the obvious inference that the Moderator of whatever group this messages came from at this moment was a woman. That was probably something extremely surprising given the nature of the forum. Anyway he announced that other people could delete these messages if they really liked so everyone else got on with the job

So no nice young ladies of any description last night to sooth my fevered brow. If that’s not a real disappointment I don’t know what is

So when the alarm went off this morning I fell out of bed and took my blood pressure, and then went off to the bathroom to wash my shorts.

Since I had to call my cleaner to my bedside the other night I’ve taken to wearing something in bed just in case it happens again. I don’t want to give her a heart attack now, do I?

Then it was off to the kitchen for my morning cocktail of medication and that ghastly anti-potassium stuff.

The nurse came round a little later. It was Isabelle today and at least I was awake when she called – not like last week with Yoan where I was dead to the World.

She was telling me that this year there are 42 official floats for Carnaval, and probably twice that number of unofficial ones.

Granville is, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, home to one of Europe’s largest carnivals. It’s certainly the biggest in France and it’s taking place next weekend.

It’s all quite satirical and takes the mickey out of all kinds of officialdom. My nurse’s float is complaining about all of the concreting that’s taking place in the green spaces of the town and they’ll all be dressed as elves apparently.

So she took a blood sample – painlessly and with no effort – injected me with another Injection of Last Resort and then cleared off.

Once she’d gone I came in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes.

Having finished that I stopped for coffee and bread pudding, and then started work.

And by the time that I’d finished I’d chosen all of the music for my Hawkfest, paired it off and written the notes. I’ve also a good idea what the missing track will be and I’ve written well over half of the speech for that.

It’s quite handy knowing how long everything will be. I’ve worked out that the way that I dictate, 300 characters of text is equal to 17 seconds of speech so that gives me a rough idea of how things are going.

Mind you, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we have had some spectacular failures in the past, mainly because I’m rubbish at maths

Now that the Centre de Re-education is finished, my cleaner came round today and began to shovel out the … errr … rubbish. This place was in a real mess.

It’s not that I’ve deliberately let it end up like it was but I don’t have any option because I can’t physically do things myself. I really am a wreck these days, you wouldn’t believe. All the people who saw me over the summer and early autumn will be horrified to see me now.

Tea tonight was, as I said, a leftover curry and it really was one of these absolutely delicious ones. It needed to be lengthened because there wasn’t enough but a couple of tiny potatoes did the trick there

So having crashed out once tonight typing out my notes (yes, only once for all day too! I must be improving!) I’ll clear off to bed, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll start chasing up stuff for the first Isle of Wight festival. That took place in 1968 and was nothing at all as big as what happened in subsequent years.

There were plenty of obscure bands that played there and they have taken some tracking down. Tracking down their music will be harder still.

But I’m not going to do it now. I’m going to bed. And with my day planned for me with this Isle of Wight business, who will come along and interrupt me?

The hospital has already rung me twice. Could I change Medicament X for Medicament Y if we send you a prescription.

That was before they had the blood test results too, so once they see them and absorb the contents I can expect further phone calls and e-mails, and my long-suffering cleaner will be wearing a path on the pavement down to the Chemist’s.

How long is it going to last? That’s the question. The prescription says “6 months” but I bet that it’ll be renewed after that too.

But I don’t understand it. They rush me to hospital and give me a blood transfusion, and then spend the next 6 months taking it all back out again. It doesn’t seem logical to me.

But at least there’s a nurse who comes to the apartment to do it. When I lived in the UK there was no such thing as that and you had to stagger down to the local hospital yourself.

On one occasion I couldn’t make it there so they told me "don’t worry. If you can’t make it to the hospital today we’ll send our vampire round tonight and he’ll take a sample"

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Tuesday 30th January 2024 – JUST FOR A …

… change, my Welsh lesson passed really well today and for some reason that I don’t understand, it even rekindled some enthusiasm in me.

We weren’t all that many in class today but we all worked well together and covered a lot of ground. And with all of the hospital visits and ill-health over the last 15 months I’m still miles behind, but I’ve not quite dropped off the edge yet.

It’s quite surprising really because I had another late night last night. I didn’t go to bed until late.

After I’d had the medication I came back in here and had a play around on the guitar. I was overwhelmed for some reason by yet another wave of nostalgia and ended up trying to pick out the chords of A-Ha’s I CALL YOUR NAME

When I was shuttling between Brussels and the farm, 700 kilometres through the night through Charleroi, Charleville-Mézieres; Chalons sur Marne, Troyes, Auxerre, Nevers and Moulins, stopping just for fuel and to fill up my thermal coffee mug from my flask at Auxerre, I probably had just two albums going round on the cassette.

The N77, N151 and D977 roads wind through the Monts de la Bourgogne like a serpent but if you caught the rhythm of the road you could go flat-out (in the days before speed cameras) in old LDVs and Ford Escorts and new Ford Transits and provided that the tyres were good, you’d make every bend perfectly

No-one about at all at 03:00, 04:00 or 05:00 so I’d have the hammer down and for some reason there would always seem to be the same two albums that came round on the cassette at some point during that leg of the journey – STAY ON THESE ROADS, which was somehow quite appropriate considering the speed at which I’d be travelling, and SCOUNDREL DAYS.

Not what you might expect at first glance to be ever on my playlist but their first album full of pop songs that made their name took even them by surprise. However with Mike Sturgis, later of Wishbone Ash and Asia on drums, their next two or three albums had a much more rocky sound and if you haven’t heard them, they are worth a listen.

But where was I? Yes, on my way through the mountains to Nevers with A-Ha on the tape deck in the van, and not knowing why this sudden wave of nostalgia had overwhelmed me

Anyway, so late to bed, it was a very weary me who crawled out from underneath the covers when the alarm went off.

Despite the nice relaxing night, blood pressure was through the roof again. Last night we had 18.5/10.4 and this morning a mere 17.6/11.8. What was this about 14.0/9.0?

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, if any of my favourite young ladies had come with me.

But no such luck. I was a folk guitarist last night on the acoustic guitar belting out numbers that related to the river than ran right the way through Middle Earth. They were all pounding acoustic numbers with occasionally someone playing acoustic guitar in the background. I can remember some of them and one reminded me very much of a Steve Harley song and I’ll tell you the name in a minute … "ONLY YOU" – ed … They were all about the river than ran through Middle Earth and they all took place along its banks in different places. It was a very relaxing even if it was rather noisy – sound and situation.

Back in that dream again later and I dreamed that I was in Middle Earth walking along the river and began to play the acoustic guitar. I played it loudly and pounded it out. In the end I had about 8 or 9 numbers that would turn into an LP so I made an LP of it. One or two of these numbers were really imprinted deeply in my mind and I can still hear them now. Yes, I actually fell asleep and dreamed that I was out there doing it and it was great

The guitar obsession I can understand but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I seem to have an obsession right now with Middle Earth and I don’t know why that is.

But not to worry. "In the end it’s only a passing thing" as Sam said to Frodo in … errr … "quite" – ed …

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, did I dictate the one about me being in a rock band etc? I’m sure that I did … "no you didn’t" – ed … That dream went on and on until we were all in France when the French Government announced that fines for Parking Tickets etc was increasing from €12:00 to €20:00. It caused a complete scandal around everywhere and there were all kinds of meetings called. I should have been going on board a ship – a big 2000,000 tonner – but instead I was called to my company’s offices and told to report back to Granville later. Before I left, I was there when they were loading this container ship and it had a list fore and aft of 40°. I thought that this was going to cause a real problem because the ship wasn’t designed for this kind of stress. If it hits a storm in the Atlantic it would have a great deal of problems with the hull at 40° to the horizontal but no-one listened to me

But talk about a 200,000 tonne ship here in the harbour at Granville. You won’t have anything much more than 2,000 tonnes coming through the harbour gates here, which is a pity.

Having dealt with all of that I prepared for my Welsh class and then settled down to enjoy it.

Actually I had a cunning plan. With my Welsh class I usually take a pot of coffee, a mug and my breakfast but these days I can’t carry it. I can only just about manage with me.

But my coffee pot is actually a thermos jug (I made sure of that) so I made my coffee, put the pot, the mug and my slice of bread-and-butter pudding on the trolley that I use for moving my washing about and pushed the trolley into the bedroom

And it worked perfectly too. I was impressed.

However, next time I’ll put a tray on it.

After the lesson I had a few things to do, like tidying up. So I promptly dropped the box of couscous from last night all over the floor.

It took about 20 minutes to sort out the vacuum cleaner, and then the pipe was blocked, and then the container was full. It was almost never ending, trying to vacuum that lot up. A simple five-minute job took nearly an hour.

My cleaner came around too. She’d been shopping and had bought some stuff for me, including the soya yoghurt. So my leftover curries will now go from being delicious to being absolutely delicious.

It was round about now that I crashed out again – and for about an hour too. Dead to the World I was as well and when I finally awoke, it took an age for the room to stop spinning.

And once I’d pulled myself together I finished sorting out the music for my Hawkfest. Thanks to Adrian Shaw, who was bassist with Hawkwind for a while and to the Estate of Nik Turner, the much-missed saxophonist and flute player who later had his own Hawkwind tribute band, “Sonic Attack” who played at several Hawkfests, I now have plenty of music from which to choose

So that’s tomorrow’s job – pairing off the music and writing the notes.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing from yesterday. The idea of using couscous really worked and I might do that again as long as I don’t throw it all over the floor.

But right now, later than usual, I’m off to bed and sweet dreams, I hope. But my three young ladies seem to have deserted me. The last visit was from Castor on 13th January.

Doesn’t time fly? They say that time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like an over-ripe banana.

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