Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Friday 5th May 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a slightly better day today. Towards the end of the afternoon I started to feel a little more like it and actually managed to do some work.

Not that I was expecting to of course, because we had another depressing night. I was rather later than intended going to bed, and then although I was asleep quite early on I awoke a couple of times. Once at 06:30 when I couldn’t go back to sleep so by the time that the alarm went off at 07:00 I was up and about already.

Well, sort-of. I wouldn’t have said that I was wide awake.

Something that I’ve done today that I haven’t done for quite some considerable time was to have some breakfast. Over the past year or so I’ve been cutting down considerably on what I’ve been eating as I’m not as mobile as I once was.

Desserts and breakfast were the two things that were struck off my list but this morning I’m not sure why but I went for a bowl of cornflakes.

That actually led to a late lunch of my fruit bun and fru it. It did me good to wait for a while before eating. I’ll get to my target weight yet.

This afternoon I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was with a couple of people last night. We were planning on going somewhere in Wales. I was going t drive and take these 2 other people with me, a man and wife, but the wife insisted that we went via Reading instead of via Chester. I said that that was stupid because it’s hundreds of miles out of our way. She explained that she knew the way via Reading. I said that I knew the way via Chester. I lived in Chester (which I did, between 1972 and 1974) and I travelled through Chester dozens of times. She was absolutely adamant. This led to the most surprising argument etc. She was really in a fury. In the end her husband said “look, let’s go with you. I’ll persuade her and talk to her”. In the end they agreed to go with me but she said “he’s not having anything when he arrives”. I thought that at this stage I couldn’t really be bothered. We set out. When we were in Chester fuelling up at a petrol station I asked “what time did I say that we’d be in Chester?”. Someone replied “09:35” so I asked “what time is it now?”. It was 09:36. I said “it just goes to show, doesn’t it?”. On the way back we came to a road junction on the Calveley Straight. I turned left and found myself going back to Chester. I thought “God, here we go. She’s going to go off”. Everyone else thought it quite funny. We had to find somewhere to do a U-turn. There was a house with a large drive up ahead but I was going too fast. I ended up on the lawn and it was wet and slippery. I said “for God’s sake don’t let the car stop now”. But we did stop and slid up to the edge of the lawn. We all had to exit the car and lift it up over the edge onto the driveway so that we could drive away again. We were then in a garage of some description, all having to tidy it up. It seemed that the more we tidied it the more rubbish we found. In the end we were just brushing stuff into bins and bags etc. I had one guy brush a whole load of nails and tacks into a big plastic bag.

There was something else later about a debate as to whose car we would go in. In the end we agreed to go in mine so we all piled into it. It was when we had to be fully clothed to be outside. I remember thinking how lucky we were to be mainly together. On the way home my partner’s husband had died so she wanted to go that way to see him. I explained how they made the shine on but she wasn’t in the least bit interested. I said “but you’ll be finding out soon about this once you qualify” but no-one paid much attention …. and at this point I fell asleep. I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating but at this point in this dream (which was actually in places a meaningless jumble of indistinct words) there was dead silence followed by me snoring.

Finally, I was in work last night in an office, and this is a recurring dream, isn’t it? For some reason I just wasn’t accomplishing anything – rather like my life at the moment as it happens. I couldn’t concentrate. In the end I gave it up as a bad job. It was coffee break so I went to the coffee room. There was some kind of party there with lots of food. It took me ages to get a coffee by which time most of the food had gone. I picked up something to eat and sat down. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I knew, the room was empty, everyone had gone and all of the food had been taken away. I had to redress myself quickly. I couldn’t find my clothes at first, then I couldn’t find how to switch off the TV. For some reason the remote control wasn’t working. In the end I left it and walked to the head of the stairs. I leapt over the handrail and dropped down onto the floor below. Then I couldn’t remember where my office was. I had a pnaic attack at that moment. I walked down the corridor and someone nearly ran me over with a trolley. A guy smiled at me so he obviously knew who I was. I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t remember who. I eventually found my way back to my office where the people weren’t really concentrating. They were singing at their desks etc. It was all extremely weird. I thought “I’m just not getting anything done at all. I can’t concentrate. I’ll have to sit down, put my head down and work, maybe work all the way through my lunch break to make up for the time that I’ve wasted so far this morning”.

The rest of the day was spent finishing off the notes that I started the other day for a forthcoming radio programme. There wasn’t much to do but finding the motivation was the big issue here. Anyway, that’s all done and dusted and I’ll dictate them late tomorrow night when it’s all quiet.

Tea tonight was a salad with chips and some of those miniature vegan sausage rolls, the latter two cooked in the air fryer. And there’s definitely something wrong with my palette because they didn’t taste as they normally do either.

And then we had the football. The first of two semi-finals that shall eventually decide who’ll accompany TNS, Connahs Quay Nomads and Penybont into Europe. After their mauling at the weekend Y Bala were hoping to gain some consolation and we had quite an exciting match against Y Drenewydd.

The latter were the better team but Bala never stopped running and pushed them all the way. The big difference was that a coupke of shots from Y Drenewydd that hit the woodwork found their way into the back of the Bala net, whereas a couple of shots hitting the Drenewydd woodwork went out for goal kicks.

4-2 to Drenewydd was the final score and although they deserve their win, the scoreline was rather flattering. The winners will go on to play the winners of Saturday’s match between Cardiff Metro and Haverfordwest.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I have one or two more things to do and then I’m off to bed. Shopping in the morning and I don’t need much as I’m off to Leuven on Wednesday. Here’s hoping that I feel better.

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Wednesday 3rd May 2023 – SOME STUPID PSEUDO-JOURNALIST …

… is telling me that the events that took place in Wrexham over the weekend are the most important things to have happened in Welsh football “for decades”.

So a club’s promotion from the fifth to the fourth tier of a foreign football league is more important than the country getting to the semi finals of the European Cup …checks notes … seven years ago, or getting to the World Cup just recently?

To be honest, I’m finding this hysteria and sycophanty to have reached the levels of total absurdity and insanity, and I’m totally astonished to see all these supposedly well-informed people blindly leaping aboard any old passing bandwagon. They have totally lost touch with reality.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s talk about more exciting things. Like the night that I had last night, for example.

It was another late night and yet another where I took ages to go off to sleep. And I awoke in the middle of events and took ages to go back to sleep again. But I must have done at some point because when the alarm went off, I was stark out and it was something of a battle to leave the bed.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages and so on, I set to work.

And I was at it for ages but it was all well worthwhile because I now have a biscuit tin full off rather overdone coffee, orange and almond biscuits.

Somewhat on the strong side unfortunately (note – put less coffee in next time) and rather overdone (must buy a new oven) but nevertheless, here we are. I tried a few with my afternoon hot chocolate and I’m still alive so I suppose they are OK.

As well as all of that I made a batch of dough for my naan bread and some more dough for the next round of pizzas. The naan dough didn’t rise at all but the pizza dough went up like a lift. I wonder why the difference. It’s the same flour.

And while I was at it I finished off that big bag of flour that I bought a while ago. A good job I bought another one the other week.

While the cleaner was here cleaning up, I carried on with the notes for the next radio programme and they are well over halfway through. I’ll finish them off over the next couple of days and dictate them through the night on Saturday when it’s quiet. With all of the baking done already I’ll have nothing to do on Sunday so I can edit and assemble the radio programme

After she left I had my hot chocolate and biscuits and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was a passenger on a double-decker bus last night going from South Wales up to the North going through all these little by-ways, country lanes and alongside canal towpaths, disrupting football matches etc. I ended up driving it at some point. It took 1 hour 20 minutes. There was a big campaign for 3 buses to go across Wales to link up bits of the country. They would all meet and interchange in the centre. Somewhere along the route I stopped and went to a chip shop. The people with me had written down an order, I think that it was for 2 chicken and chips or something and I was going to buy something else with chips. When I was finally served the guy told me “there’s something over there already cooked”. I said “I’ll tell you what I want and you can see what you can do”. But he took the paper from me which was an old order that had been printed out with the new order written in biro on the blank side. I thought to myself “this is going to end up in a right mess and confusion now he’s doing this”.

And later there was a game of football going on between 2 villages. I went along as a spectator. I was chatting to a couple of the guys on one team. They went 1-0 down almost straight away from the kick-off so I decided that I’d give them some coaching from the touchline. There was 1 lad who was really quick. I had him do a beautiful diagonal pass and run on for the return. He got in right behind the defence and hit the post. On another occasion he missed an open goal in pretty much the same fashion. 30 seconds later he scored one and 30 seconds later scored a second, all the time with me standing on the touchline telling him what to do. It looked quite straightforward and simple for me. Then I thought to myself “now we’re 2 minutes into the game, he’s hit the post, missed a sitter and scored twice. I’d better go to sit down and shut up before I’m accused of ruining the game.

It reminds me of a game that I saw years ago when Pionsat’s 3rd XI was playing somewhere. They had a young lad playing centre-forward who was completely out of his depth but trying very hard. When Pionsat won a penalty and the centre-back went to take it I shouted at the lad to follow it in. Sure enough he did, and sure enough, the keeper spilled it and he had a simple tap-in. No-one was more pleased than he was.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, and the naan bread wasn’t as good as the previous batch. That first batch must have been “beginner’s luck” but I’ll persevere. I’m sure that I’m on the right track somewhere and it’s just a case of fine-tuning everything until I arrive at where I want to be. We won’t be discouraged.

So I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have my appointment with the house agent about doing something about my new apartment and to see where I stand. In the meantime I’ll read up about Peter Rachman and see if I can find out a few tips. He was, of course, a stateless person and with me having no right to vote in any country in the World right now, we have more than just a few things in common.

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Tuesday 2nd May 2023 – TODAY WAS A …

… day that I really want to forget.

Not that there was all that much to forget because it was what I would call a very short day today.

Last night however was a lot longer. Bright sunlight streaming in through the windows, birds chirping around outside and kids on their way to school and I hadn’t gone to bed yet. 07:10 and I was still up and about.

That’ll teach me to have an unscheduled lie-in on a Monday morning.

It was some time later than that that I finally went off to bed, with the alarm set for 13:00 just in case I happened to fall asleep deeper than I was expecting.

However that was a waste of time because although I did end up going to sleep at some point it was only for a couple of hours. I was back awake again at 10:00 and at 12:00 I’d given up any thought whatever of going off to sleep. And that was that.

After what might have been a breakfast or was probably more like a lunch, I had a listen to the dictaphone. There was something going on while I was asleep certainly but when I awoke it completely evaporated and I couldn’t remember anything at all about it. I certainly knew that I’d been away somewhere.

Next step was to listen to the radio programme that I was to send off for broadcasting this coming weekend.

It was one that I’d prepared last September before going off on my voyage to eternity, one of the batch when something must have happened to the tone controls because there was just far too much bass on it and it sounded really muffled.

Having spent a while trying to edit it, I gave up and redid it. It sounds much better now.

There was an interruption when the physiotherapist called. He had a look at my right leg, checked on my exercises and then that was that. he wasn’t here long. But I wasn’t happy when he went into my bedroom to grab a pillow. I don’t like people wandering around in my apartment like that.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, all very nice and tasty. There’s not a lot left over for a curry tomorrow night so I might have to lengthen it out with a potato or something.

And while we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m having to have a bake-in. I’ve run out of my delicious chocolate biscuits, run out of naan bread, and I also used the last of the pizza bases on Sunday too.

Nice as my chocolate biscuits were, I’ll have to think of a new type of biscuit to make. I should have bought some fresh ginger at the weekend but there’s always some sort of stuff lying around that I can use as flavouring in a regular 4/8/10 mixture.

But the naan bread will be interesting. I shall have fun with another batch of those.

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Thursday 27th April 2023 – WE ARE HAVING …

… a disaster.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Alison and I have a favourite restaurant in Leuven where we usually end up in the middle of our walk around the town. She passed by there earlier this evening for a portion of the beautiful sweet potatoes, only to find that it’s closed down definitively.

We started to go there because another vegan restaurant that we used, “The Loving Hut”, closed down a few years ago. We’ll now have to look for somewhere else, always assuming that there IS somewhere else to go.

We shall have to make further enquiries.

Further enquiries too about my sleeping issues because it was yet another depressing night when I took an absolute age to go off to sleep.

And once more, I awoke in the middle of the night and spend a miserable couple of hours trying to go back to sleep. However at one point I must have dozed off because I sat bolt upright wide-awake (well, sort-of) at 06:59, a minute before the alarm went off, so I fell out of bed just for the sake of saying that I beat the alarm once again.

When I was checking my mails and messages I found out what had awoken me. It was the nurse sending me a message to say that he’d miscalculated and it’s tomorrow when he needs to come to take my blood sample.

Once I’d organised myself this morning and awoken properly I bashed out another radio programme from the stuff that I had lying around. I’m getting nicely ahead of myself now, but it will all go pear-shaped of course because someone whose virtues I’ll be extolling will drop dead just before the programme will be broadcast.

And that reminds me. Some of the more legendary figures of the rock world are reaching the kind of age when fate will overtake them. I suppose that when I have time I really ought to prepare a couple of programmes that relate to people like Bob Dylan and keep them on the back-burner “just in case”.

It was while I was on my way to la Haye-Pesnel in Caliburn yesterday that I thought of a really good idea for a programme in this respect. What provoked the was when Spirit came onto Caliburn’s playlist and played “All Along The Watchtower”.

This afternoon I had a ‘phone call. Would I like a lift to town?

It was raining outside quite heavily and although I did have things to do, I didn’t fancy walking down there in this so I grabbed a lift. A couple of my neighbours were going off to the shops.

They threw me out in the town centre and I went to the letting agency. That’s a good place to start, I reckon, with my quest to gain vacant possession of my new apartment. However, there was only a receptionist there. The agent was out on a mission.

She took my details and said that the agent will call me back. And, as you might imagine, I’m still waiting. I’m also still waiting for the return phone call from my visit to the property management company yesterday. I have a rather uneasy feeling that I’m going to end up with a bunch of je m’en foutists.

That’s a beautiful French expression. Je m’en fous is rather a vulgar French way of saying “I couldn’t care less” (I’m sure that you can think of an English equivalent, but this is a family website) and so a je m’en foutist is an employee who is only interested in collecting his salary and doing as little as possible to actually earn it.

It was 15:05 when I went in, and by 15:10 I was back out again. The rain had quietened down considerably so I decided to walk back. It didn’t take me long and I didn’t have to stop for breath too often. But one thing that I noticed was that trying to squeeze into the back of the neighbour’s car, my right leg wasn’t comfortable whatsoever – not one little bit.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in the middle of having a dream but I awoke (that was the time in the middle of the night). The dream evaporated completely and everything went except for a vision that I had about coffee in Malta or Cyprus that cost £3:00 per ounce. That’s all that I can remember about it.

Again this next one is another one of which I can only remember bits. I was at a talent contest last night. There was a couple of girls singing in Inuit. One was an older girl and the other was a younger girl. What happened now I forget, but later on someone else at this concert contacted me. They had a house to let in Greenland. They were quite fed up of the type of tenant they were having. They tended to be the younger, trendy type of person and they wanted someone more traditional. It turned out that they were writing the adverts in the newspaper in Inuktitut, the more modern style of Inuit language for people looking for lets. I suggested that she write the adverts in Sisu, the more traditional type of language, and that way it would be the more traditional type of person who would understand the advert and would make more of an effort to reply to rent it. She thought that that was a good idea. She turned over in bed and squashed me. She said “I’m hitting you, am I? It’s most uncomfortable lying here in bed with all these people” but this was the way of life up there and we just had to accept it. I walked out to Caliburn. He was up on a jack for some reason. I noticed that one of his rear tyres had a bald patch. That was strange. It had only done 8000 kms, these tyres. Most of the tyres were in really good condition but just this one bald patch. It started to worry me for it meant that there was something wrong somewhere with Caliburn’s suspension or brakes. I needed to try to sort it out but there was this expensive tyre that had just gone to waste.

After that I made some hot chocolate and had a few of my delicious chocolate biscuits – and then I rather regrettably fell asleep for a while.

As for tea tonight, I couldn’t think of what to have. In the end I settled for steamed vegetables with falafel in a vegan cheese sauce.

That was really delicious yet again, but I have to say that this other type of vegan cheese is nothing like as tasty as the vegan Cheshire Cheese. Even though the Cheshire Cheese is much more expensive, I think that I’ll be sticking with that in future.

Tomorrow the nurse is coming to take my blood sample, and then I don’t have anything planned for several days, except the football over the weekend of course. I’ll have to start to plan for my trip to Leuven though because that’s important. It seems that all kinds of things are unravelling right now.

And who knows? I might even have someone return one of my phone calls about the visits that I’ve made. If that happens, there won’t be any notes tomorrow night. I’ll have passed out from the shock.

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Tuesday 25th April 2023 – MY CHOCOLATE BISCUITS …

… are absolutely delicious. I’m well impressed with how they have turned out.

It’s a simple biscuit recipe of sugar, butter and flour in a ratio of 4:8:10. And then I ground up some almonds in a whizzer, added some vanilla and some of that concentrated orange essence and off we went.

And when it was all mixed together I added in a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and mixed it in. And then I rolled it out and cut it into small squares.

When they were baked, there was one that was distorted so I tasted it and I really do think that I’ve hit the jackpot with that. I’m tempted, when I have time, to make some chocolate-flavoured buttercream and make some bourbon-like sandwich biscuits. They should be extraordinary.

But that’s for maybe tomorrow. I’m more interested at the moment about what happened today.

As usual it started off pretty badly. Once again I took ages to go off to sleep. And I was wide awake again at 03:30. However I did manage to go back to sleep at one point because the alarm awoke me at 07:00.

It was a struggle to leave the bed but I managed to beat the second alarm, and after the medication, mails and messages I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

Once again there weren’t all that many of us there but nevertheless it passed off quite well and I was surprised about how much of the comprehension exercise I managed to complete. I actually had all of the questions correct but there was one where I’d guessed the answer from what I heard.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a baking session.

There wasn’t just the biscuits but also a pile of fruit buns. I’d run out of fruit bread this morning so I need to stock up. And they came out quite nicely too. I’ll definitely make some more of those. Some have gone into the bread tin and the rest have gone into the freezer where they can be pulled out as and when required.

While I was waiting for everything to bake or cook or to rise up I tidied out the food shelves in the kitchen to make sure that I knew what I had. Some stuff found its way into the bin. It was stuff that I’d bought from NOZ and I was surprised that the sell-by date was in 2020. It wouldn’t have been so bad had they been in tins but they were in fact in glass bottles.

A pile of stuff found its way into the bins outside too. The bag with the glass and plastic was overflowing so a little walk around outside would do me good.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. Not very much though. I’d joined the Army last night. I was obviously not cut out for the basic training. We’d all started, checked in and found out where we were sleeping. Next morning we had all the stupid army routine then we all had to assemble to go off on a bus somewhere. The sergeant in charge was reminding us to do this and do that but of course we hadn’t done it because we didn’t know and no-one had said. He said “turn your room keys in now because you should have all your possessions with you”. Most of the platoon had left their coats in their room so he was haranguing everyone. We all had to go back. I said “I’m sorry sarge” but at least I had a smile from him which I suppose was something or other.

With the time that was left I was editing down the final batch of notes that I have recorded for one of the radio programmes. It’s not finished yet of course because I wasn’t as focused as I might have been. Things are going to start to become complicated from now on because I’m now reaching the stage where I’ll be changing the format and content of my programmes.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll, and there’s enough stuffing left over to go into a nice curry tomorrow, with naan bread and yoghurt.

And while we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m off to sign for my new apartment tomorrow morning. It’ll be a while before I move in because I have to give the tenant three months notice to leave and then I want to have the bathroom and the kitchen done.

So whatever, I’m going to have my work cut out once it all goes through.

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Monday 24th April 2023 – THAT WAS DIFFICULT!

With nothing much better to do today, I decided that I’d do this radio programme about the 14th July.

It wasn’t easy because I had all of the music, including the very, very last track already in my mind so I had to make sure that the speech fitted all of the gaps in between the music. I know that with the way that I speak, 300 characters of text is the equivalent of 17 seconds of speech so I can make sure that I’m always somewhere in the right kind of area, but that doesn’t take into account the fact that song lengths are often not as published and there’s quite often a silence at the beginning or end. And so it can quite often be rather hit-and-miss, especially if my maths aren’t up to much.

So no-one was more surprised than me to find myself almost a minute short of where I needed to be.

Luckily, when I’d been preparing the programme I’d made a reserve selection of appropriate songs of various lengths and so with a little judicious editing I managed to fit in Lindisfarne’s “Bring Down The Government” with some explanatory text.

It still wasn’t right though and I ended up having to re-dictate a couple of speeches and then do yet more editing. What with one thing and another (and once you get started you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was 21:00 when I finally finished.

It was some real good fortune that I actually felt like doing it too because I had another wretched night. I was in bed reasonably early but once again it took me an age to go off to sleep. I awoke again at 04:15 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I watched the dawn slowly rise but I must have gone back to sleep at some point because when the alarm went off at 07:00 it was a real shock to the system.

With the nurse coming today to give me my injection I had to have a shower otherwise he wouldn’t have come in through the door. So of course he has to come quite early today while I’m still soaking myself. That was rather embarrassing.

And he has to come back on Thursday to take a blood sample, so later on this week I’ll be doing another dartboard impression. At this rate I’ll be more comfortable sleeping on a bed of nails but I bet that someone would tell me to fakir off.

Next task that interrupted me was the dictaphone, to see where I’d been last night. Nothing like what I’d been up to on previous nights but then again it wasn’t as if I’d had much sleep. I was out with Steve Winwood last night for some strange reason. There was talk of forming a group but nothing ever came of it. We went to an Indian restaurant somewhere, one that I’d been told was good. As I didn’t know how to go to it, it was in a completely different town, we had to go all around the houses. We arrived and they began to serve us. It was a very strict place. Everything was very formal. We ordered our starters and he went to go to the bathroom. Someone on another table obviously recognised him and asked him what numbers he was going to perform with his new band. He mentioned a few songs and then walked off. I could hear him talking to someone in the distance but I couldn’t see him, going on about the restaurant and how he didn’t expect such a posh, formal place etc. One of the things that I asked him was that I read somewhere that the very first chord he ever played on a guitar was Dflat. I asked him why. He said that it sounded good. I asked if it was the opening chord maybe to a song. he made a very non-commital reply to that which I thought was bizarre.

Later on a group of us was walking up a mountain pass. At the side of the road there were 4 or 5 cars that were parked. Then there was a very sharp bend. Round this bend coming towards us was a cattle wagon, a big heavy thing that was fully-loaded. he took the bend really wide because of his length and almost knocked the wall down into the valley then drove straight into the back of one of these vehicles. he didn’t stop. He kept on trying to push this vehicle forward into all the others to push them to give him more room to turn. Someone shouted “camera” so I took out my camera and began to take a couple of photos. It was only then that he stopped and got out to inspect the damage. By now he’s transformed into a yellow school bus. 3 people came with a huge bag and had to clamber onto the roof at the back of the coach in order to put the bag on the roof rack. Another girl appeared. She went round to the front and said to the driver something like “I was on this bus yesterday and I think that I might have left something on board”. This was probably the most surreal thing that I’d ever witnessed

And then, in between everything else, I dealt with the radio programme.

Tea was a delicious stuffed pepper. And what I did was to turn down the air fryer 20° and to cook it twice as long as I did last week. That cooked it to perfection.

Plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and for a leftover curry on Wednesday. That’s what i’m looking forward to more than anything because, of course, I have a naan bread awaiting me. I’m really impressed with the naan breads that I made and I’ll make another batch of them.

What I’ll have to do though is to remember that the dough expands considerably so instead of making the batch into three lumps, I’ll have to make it into four or even five.

But never mind – it’s still delicious.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh lesson so I need to be on form, and then on Wednesday I go to sign the purchase agreement for my new apartment.

And then the fun will begin.

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Sunday 23rd April 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… horrible day today.

With it being Sunday it’s supposed to be a day of rest during which I can lie in bed for as long as I want.

Certainly much longer than 09:30, but by that time this morning I had given up trying to go back to sleep. I’d awoken about an hour earlier and was just lying there tossing and turning to no good purpose.

So after the medication and checking my mails and messages I didn’t do very much at all for a while. Being up and about is one thing but actually being active is something else completely.

Once I’d finally joined the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a cat, a ginger cat last night. As I was going somewhere I took the cat with me in its carrier. We boarded the ship, I parked the car and took the carrier with me ready to go into the lounge. That meant climbing up a row of steps to the top deck so I threw the carrier up to the top so that I could pull myself up with both hands but the wind caught it and blew it over the side. That was the last that I saw of it, carrier and all. The cat was gone. A couple of minutes later there was a similar situation but this time with the laptop. I was doing almost exactly the same thing and that went over the side too

There were also 2 old women living together. I don’t know why but it was night-time and I was sleeping there. We heard a strange kind of noise so we listened. We couldn’t work out what it was so we ignored it. About half an hour later we heard the noise again. We came to the conclusion that it was one of these old women. We awoke the other one and had her go into her sister’s room to find out what was happening. From there the dream jumped to me at the doctor’s, arguing with him to try to have him come out. He was being extremely unco-operative. In the end we persuaded him to come to this girl’s house. We jumped again and it was in a court. It could have been a coroner’s court. Whoever was presiding asked the doctor the question “if he had reacted 10 minutes earlier would the deceased had still been alive?”. He had to admit “yes, she would have been”.

We were also out on the taxis last night. I was at my little workshop. I had someone with me and we had to leave so I went to get into a MkIII Cortina estate that was there. I put the key in and turned it but there were no lights on the dashboard. I said “God! Don’t tell me that the battery is flat. We’ll be stuck here for ever with everyone being busy”. Just then the ‘phone rang. It was Margaret. She asked “is there no dashboard light on the MkIV a problem?”. Whoever was with me explained to her that if there’s no battery or alternator connected you won’t have a light anyway but there’s no reason why the car won’t start. She tried it and it started so she went off to do her jobs. We hung up the ‘phone, I turned the key and the MkIII estate fired up and we set off.

And then I was with my friends from the Wirral. We were going to look at some houses that were damaged by fire or something and just left. We decided to go to have a look at them. There was another old woman living there who had a rather depressing kitchen and people had offered to help her improve it. She kept on turning them down and wasn’t very nice about it either. We came to these houses. The husband was in his Land Rover. Just then as we were on our way to go around the block to look at the back someone in a taxi that had been dressed up as a Carnival float reversed it out of a side street into the road and he just drove straight into the rear of it. This was his 4th accident in 2 weeks that I knew that he had been involved in but he wasn’t bothered in the slightest. I would have despaired if there had been so many for me. What he needed to have done was to have stopped and he could have avoided it. We managed to see one of the houses that had been fire-damaged. He was going on about how £12,000 to repair it was probably an exaggeration. He thought that it could be done for half. I couldn’t understand why the thought that because it may not have needed £12,000 but it wasn’t going to be far off to put this place right. It was simply not going to be saving thousands.

Later I was working in an office with John Cale, but which John Cale I don’t know. John Cale of Velvet Underground or John Cale the mate of Eric Clapton? We were working for an insurance company. Every now and again when the pressure of work became too much, we’d stop. He’d bring in some coffee and I’d bring in some biscuits and we’d have a little 10-minute coffee break. Anyone passing by at that moment could come in for a coffee and chat. management didn’t like it. They felt that we were wasting time. We explained that a morale-building exercise like this was doing us good. The funny thing about it was that this particular dream I dreamt in Welsh, so seeing as Velvet Underground’s John Cale was born in Garnant, it may well have been him.

I had exactly the same dream about an hour later. This time it was still John Cale but which one again? It was again in Welsh. I remember the ugly call and walked out when my grandfather became ill. I said that we’re invited for coffee and biscuits. They replied some kind of sarcastic comment that I didn’t have the time to mess around while they were paying me

I ended up on a holiday. We were coming back and had to unpack. That was the awkward bit because Caliburn was so full of stuff that in the end I had to reverse him out of the garage into the street and start to unload that way. I was talking to Jimmy Page. The subject of “Stairway To Heaven” came up. We ended up having a jam – me on bass and him on guitar. We had a lead guitar solo right at the very end of “Stairway” that went on for probably 20 minutes. It was the most incredible thing that I’ve ever heard. Strangely enough Jimmy Page said that he didn’t like it all that much but I thought that it was magnificent. When I awoke I wished that I could remember how it went because I really enjoyed playing that. However, it wasn’t “Stairway to Heaven” because when I awoke I was playing another Led Zeppelin song going round in my head but I forgot which one it was straight away.

Some of the rest of the day has been spent completing another radio programme. I’m now well ahead of where I want to be. I try to be about 6 months, or 25 programmes, ahead of where I am at the moment but tomorrow I’ll be sending off programme 176 and today I was completing programme 208.

That’s a good plan because if I end up stuck in hospital again like I did last autumn or if I go off on another long voyage, or if the worst ever comes to the worst then I’ll be covered for quite a while.

It’s all quite surprising really because I didn’t expect to be still going after all this time. I remember the hospital telling me back in 2017 when I talked about leaving Leuven and finding another place to live that I’d be wasting my time and money buying an apartment. That didn’t age well, did it?

The rest of the afternoon was spent flat-out on a chair. There can’t have been too much sleep during the night with all of that travelling around that I did and my early start in the morning so it’s not any surprise. It’s still quite dismal though. I wish that I could have a decent sleep at some point, with a few of my favourite visitors coming to see me.

And that reminds me. The final track that I chose for the radio programme that I prepared today was AIRPORT by my old partner in crime from my days stamping around Manchester in the mid-70s.
“Already it’s too late, you’re through the boarding-gate
And walking on the tarmac.
Already you are free, already you’ve left me
And cannot bear to look back, can you?”
And she didn’t look back either. How long is it now since Castor has put in an appearance during one of my nocturnal voyages?

Tea tonight was another pizza of course, and once again it really was an excellent pizza with putting the tomatoes on last and using that expensive grated vegan Cheshire Cheese.

So now I’m off to bed. With having prepared a couple of radio programmes this last week I don’t need to do any work for the radio tomorrow so I’m leaving the alarm set for 07:00 instead of 06:00 and I’ll have a little extra sleep, if I can.

The nurse is coming tomorrow morning to give me my injection so I’d better have a shower at some point early in the morning before he arrives. And I’ll have to tell him about the blood test that I need to have later in the week so he can come round and do the necessary.

So, see you in the morning.

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Saturday 22nd April 2023 – I HAVE SEEN …

… some of the best, most exciting football over the last week or so that I have seen for the whole of my life. And I’ve seen plenty of matches in the past.

When you desperately need to win in order to have any chance at all of avoiding relegation and you go 1-0 down after 60 seconds to A GOAL LIKE THIS then you know that you are right up against it.

But then YOU EQUALISE only to find that you GO BEHIND AGAIN just a few minutes later.

And the game drifts on into the second half and you are 2-1 down, only for the MOST EXTRAORDINARY THING to happen. I’m surprised that the crossbar was still intact after Sam Litchfield’s header.

So deep into stoppage time with just seconds left to play. You couldn’t write A FINISH LIKE THIS because no-one would believe it. What a way to avoid relegation!

As I said the other day, I’ve really found out what it means to be gripping the edge of your seat tightly as events have unfolded.

But you have to feel sorry for Y Fflint. They have played some good football at times and I liked what I saw but silly errors at the back have been their undoing all season. And they just couldn’t get the ball forward often enough to Simmonds and Akpa-Akpro to counter the mistakes in defence.

While we’re talking about mistakes … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m not sure what mistakes I made this morning but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was sitting at my desk drinking coffee and dictating radio notes.

In fact I’d been awake since 04:20 and I gave up going back to sleep an hour later, and that was that.

Making the most of the peace and quiet at that time of the morning I dictated no fewer than three sets of radio notes and they are all loaded up. And in between everything else that happened I made a complete radio programme. That means that I can have a day off on Monday.

A lot of things did actually happen today. At 09:15 I nipped out into town on my crutches and ended up at the Carrefour supermarket in the town centre. I bought some mushrooms and they also had a net of those small-sized peppers, 2 for €0:99 that I like for making my stuffed peppers.

Even though there’s a pepper still in the freezer I bought a net of peppers because at LeClerc these days they only seem to have giant ones and I’m not an American.

The walk back up the hill was tiring and it took a while to make it home. But a strong coffee and some cheese on toast done in the air fryer soon revived me.

Next stop was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There were several bits and pieces last night as if they came out of a Harry Potter film. One part was a group of kids in a room shouting abuse at another group of kids walking past. Across the road was a religious group from a local church who thought that the abuse was directed at them. They complained to the headmaster so there was an identity parade to identify the culprits. Everyone was wearing false glasses and moustaches etc to try to hide from this Christian group

Later on one of the adults burst into one of the kids’ dormitories saying something like “just come here a moment to do this” waking everyone up and was met with a torrent of abuse including from me for I was fast asleep. It awoke me with a start too.

Later still one of the cleaning staff stole Harry Potter’s ring and that was complicated.

By the way, can you guess which film I’m watching at the moment while I eat my evening meal?

After the football I finished off the radio programme but that took much longer than it ought to have done because the early start to the day caught up with me during the late afternoon, as I thought that it might.

Tea tonight was a really delicious burger on a bun with chips from the air fryer and a lovely salad. As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my diet these days is showing a vast improvement.

And while we’re on the subject of burgers … “well, one of us is” – ed … when I was at Aldi they had some cheap hamburger presses for sale so I bought one. For only €2:99 they do three sizes and that’s fine by me because I’m collecting a few recipes these days for things like not only burgers but hash browns and so on. A hamburger press doing different sizes is just what I want.

And while I remember, in the cookery sale at Noz yesterday they had some ready-ground nut power so I bought 300 grammes of it. Nutburgers will now be back on the menu in early course. I have some gram flour in a jar somewhere and I’d buy more oats if I only would remember.

But all that’s for another time. I’ve just finished another marathon phone call to Rosemary and despite my sleep this afternoon I’m pretty tired so I’m off to bed.

Nothing to do tomorrow as I have some biscuits and some fruit bread left and there’s some pizza dough in the freezer too. But I’m sure that I can find plenty of things to do to keep me out of mischief. I’m too old for that kind of nonsense these days.

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Wednesday 19th April 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

… tonight was even better than before. Adding some of that soya yoghurt that I bought instead of the soya cream has certainly made a difference.

And so has mopping up the curry sauce with a home-made garlic naan. That’s the final touch to what was a really excellent meal and I am well-pleased with that.

In fact, just as I am pleased with my night last night. Although I went to bed rather later than planned and took an age to go off to sleep I remember absolutely nothing whatever of the night.

It was 06:50 when I awoke spontaneously so I didn’t hang about. I was out of bed quite quickly.

After the medication and a good scrub Caliburn and I hit the road for the hospital. Once again, I was in and out fairly rapidly although there was a different crew of medical personnel there today who didn’t seem to be quite as rapid as the lot who were there earlier in the week.

Nevertheless, at about 11:30 or so they heaved me out after my perfusion and I was back here by 12:15.

A couple of my neighbours were outside so we had a good chat – it seems that I’m quite popular now that I’m to join the ranks of the owner-occupiers – and then I came in.

But coming up the stairs I was surprised to find that,, at least for the first 7 or 8 of them, I could come up the stairs without leaning on the handrail or heaving myself up with the crutches. Only one step at a time leading with the left leg, not alternately leading with each foot in turn, but this is real progress.

It has to be said that I couldn’t do it with all of the stairs but even one of them, never mind seven or eight, is a vast improvement on what went before.

After my lunch I had a look – or rather, a listen – to the dictaphone. And to my surprise there was some stuff on there that I can’t remember at all. I was with a girl last night who reminded me very much of a girl whom I knew quite well at one time. We were living together in a small apartment. There was a guy who had come round to see us for something. She was standing on top of a ladder working away at something up on the ceiling. She was flirting a little with this guy. I pretended not to take a great deal of notice. I thought that I wouldn’t let it pass by unremarked. They were talking about things. I was standing underneath the ladder looking up. I said “the best view in the apartment is from where I’m standing at the moment” and things like that. Eventually she came down. I grabbed hold of her and gave her a great big hug saying “I’m glad that you’re down and not up there”. She replied “yes, I could see that you were a little worried”. “Yes” I answered “but I didn’t stop you did I?”. “No” she replied “but you made it quite clear that you weren’t happy”. “Yes, but I didn’t stop you all the same”.

Yes let’s imagine that she had 3 Father Christmas impersonators sitting on our front lawn instead of one so she was upset and threw a stone at her but it missed, hit a rock, bounced back and hit her instead. She ended up in hospital. How would you feel if that happened to you? And if you wonder what that’s all about, so do I for I don’t have a clue. I can’t believe that I dictated it and I’ve no idea what it’s supposed to mean.

Later on I was in my beige Cortina driving around mid-western USA. It was becoming dark and I was looking for a place to stay. I came across a place that was advertising cabins to rent so I thought that I’d go there. It was a right run-down place like something out of a Steinbeck novel. I went into a barn and there was everything there, a couple of old coaches, all sorts of stuff. I started to chat to the proprietor telling him what I want. We talked a little about what I’d been doing etc. He pointed up into the loft “there’s a bed up there. You come into the house, walk up the stairs and there’s a gangway across into the loft. You can sleep up there”. “How much do I owe you for that?”. “Nothing” he replied. “Don’t be silly” I said. He answered “you can stay here for nothing”. I wasn’t going to turn that down even though it was rather primitive. We had a chat and went outside. By this time I was driving a coach, an ancient Plaxton thing from the early 60s. He noticed the signwriting on the back and asked where I had the coach signwritten. I said that it was on the coach when I bought it. Then I went back over to the Cortina (which was strange), opened the boot and found the boot keys on the floor. I wondered how they got there. I started to go through the boot to sort out the stuff that I’d need for the night to take with me up to the bed in the loft of this barn.

The rest of the day has been spent pairing off the music that I started yesterday and then researching some stuff about what happened on 12th January in the history of rock music and then writing notes about it. Interestingly, that’s the date of release of led Zeppelin’s 1st album and also the date of the last album by Deep Purple II – at least, until that line-up reformed in the 1980s.

Tea I have already mentioned, and it was rather rushed because there was football on the internet – the replay of Y Fflint v Caernarfon that was abandoned in contentious circumstances a short while ago.

Once more, despite it being two basement teams, it was an excellent advert for Welsh football with both teams desperate for points and throwing everything including the kitchen sink at each other. No dramatic goals from any goalkeeper this evening but nevertheless watching Y Fflint’s former Burnley keeper Harry Allen make a decisive tackle against 2 Caernarfon attackers in the centre circle while the rest of his team was in the Caernarfon penalty area was exciting to say the least.

Caernarfon just about scraped home with a winning goal in the 85th minute and they are now safe from relegation. But Y Fflint need to do better than Aberystwyth on Saturday in order to keep themselves up.

So on that note I’m off to bed. Day 4 of the hospital tomorrow and my appointment with the neurologist. I wonder what she’ll have to tell me.

And I wonder when this stuff that I’m taking will start to work.

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Sunday 16th April 2023 – MY PIZZA TONIGHT …

… was easily, by a country mile, the best that I have ever made.

A couple of weeks ago I found some grated vegan Cheshire Cheese in LeClerc and even though it was expensive, I bought some to try because being
“Cheshire Born, Cheshire Bred
Strong in th’arm and wick in the yed”
well, almost, anyway, I had to show some loyalty.

And I’m really glad that I did because it was wicked. There was an after-taste there that I’ve never had with some of these more insipid vegan cheeses and I’ll be buying more of that. COPULATUM EXPENSIUM, as we Pompeiians say.

Not only that, I’d bought some cherry tomatoes during the week when I’d been in town, because they were on special offer. So instead of the usual tomatoes I grabbed a big handful of those and cut them in half. I put them cut side upwards on top of the cheese and that worked in spades too.

It seems to me that I’ve finally got the hang of this pizza lark, after all these years.

It also seems that I finally got the hang of sleeping last night because although I wasn’t in bed all that early (or all that late, as it happens) I was wide-awake at 09:00 and up and about at 10:00. That’s much more reasonable for a Sunday.

After the medication I had a very slow start to the day, just listening to music and not doing very much in particular.

There was a nice lunch of cheese on toast, porridge and strong coffee, and then I actually did some work.

First thing that I did was to track down two LPs that will be celebrating their birthday at some point in the future, select a headline track from each one and write some notes about the albums, the musicians and the songs ready for a radio programme.

Next thing was to prepare a new sheet in my music database for birthdays, anniversaries and the like. I’ve been making little notes over the years and I need to bring it all together.

With no pizza bases on hand I made another batch and then came back in here to write out the dictaphone notes from last night. And I must have travelled miles during the night too. I’d met a rock group somewhere playing rock music in a club. The lead musician was someone who used to be famous a few years ago but the others not so much. They were quite good so I decided that if ever I caught up with them again I’d have them do a live concert for my radio programmes. Sure enough, at another club in Manchester I came across them. I went over to talk. The lead musician knew me from somewhere he said so we had quite a chat. They gave me their details and a card so I went to give them one of my business cards. It took me ages to search through my wallet to find one. When I did, it was the wrong card. Although I could find some more cards, they weren’t the right ones either. It took me ages. all the time I was trying to talk to these people and impress them about how serious I was and I couldn’t find a business card in my wallet. In the end I took one of them but of course it was the wrong one. That was a waste of time. With trying to find these cards at the same time as talking everything that I was saying was coming out wrong. It was very disappointing that I couldn’t find this card and couldn’t make the words come out correctly.

That’s really the story of my life, isn’t it? I seem to be exceptionally good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

And then I was with a girl (and I wish that I can remember who she was). She needed to fetch some money so we got into her car to drive to the town centre where there were several banks and building societies. She was so busy concentrating that she drove straight through a red light. I had to shout at her to bring her to her senses. We came to a square where there were several banks and building societies so she parked the car and left me. She went into what looked like an Estate Agent to ask if she could withdraw money. They sent her to go to a building society agency office that was next door on the corner. There were quite a few (do I mean “there was quite a queue”?) there but she went and stood in it all the same. I was thinking to myself that I hope that she can remember her card number etc

Next, I was at a small tourist attraction in the USA. I’d gone for a coffee. It was only a small coffee bar and there was just this old man of about 80 serving. He was running messages as well. He wasn’t very good so the queue was miles long out of the door. When it was finally my turn I asked “coffee black no sugar please”. He looked at me and asked “what?” so I repeated it. He asked “what?” again so I replied a third time. He said “I don’t understand you”. I asked “what’s difficult about ‘coffee black no sugar’?”. He replied “maybe it’s the way that you’re speaking but I don’t understand you at all”. This went on and on and all the people in this queue joined in saying that they couldn’t understand what I was asking for either”. By this time I was extremely annoyed. I was not going to leave the queue until either I had my coffee or the police came to take me away. I decided to dig in my heels and ask for “coffee black no sugar” and let him sort out the problem himself if he couldn’t understand it.

Later on I stepped back into this dream. It was a question now of lunch. I went to help myself to some salad but had a load of dirty looks and snide comments. Later on someone explained to me that the food for the passengers was at the back of the bus and I was helping myself to food from the driver’s buffet. Of course no-one had explained to me beforehand. When I was sitting down I was watching a film. It was in British English subtitled into American English for Americans because there was quite a lot being said in there that was very much English slang which Americans wouldn’t understand at all. It occurred to me that maybe this was the problem. I was speaking in British English when I was ordering my coffee and they were just not understanding the language. I thought to myself that this entire situation was just totally bizarre.

At another moment I needed some space in my drive for the weekend so I had to move a few cars out. One of the vehicles was a little Honda Acty van type of thing with a Luton body. I had to think of a place to put it. It was belonging to the same former friend from the other night but I was looking after it because we were going to sell it. There was a car parts office down the road that was closed over the weekend so I thought that I’d put the Acty on there, do what I had to do and go back on the Sunday night to collect it and bring it back before the place opened. Sunday, I wasn’t in any particular rush and at the end of the day I went down there to pick it up. But it had been jacked up on bricks and someone had stolen the wheels. I was horrified because first of all it wasn’t my van. I was only looking after it for someone else. Where would I find some wheels now to put on it to move it back to my place before the shop opens on Monday? How was I going to explain to the owner what had happened to it? He was relying on the money from it for some purpose or other of his.

He’s the same guy who has some kind of connection with Zero. This time, the dream ran through to its logical (well, logical to anyone who is fast asleep) conclusion but she didn’t manage to put in an appearance. I do however remember an extreme feeling of anxiety at the end of this, but whether this is to do with what happened to the van while it was under my control or because Zero didn’t put in an appearance I really don’t know.

Finally, my friend’s father had a conviction against him for failing to control his temper on one occasion. Part of this was a medical examination where it was found that he had an abnormal Body Mass Index. Not that he was over-weight but there was another problem so they decided that they’d control it. For some unknown reason things didn’t work out and he ended up dying. We’d been to the funeral. On the way back we waited at the side of the road for a lift from someone. That disreputable character Billington from Crewe came past in a taxi with a pile of people. He and that Cooke and Mrs Cooke came over and started to talk to us. They said “we have a taxi waiting over there. Why don’t you come home with us?”. Not that we wanted to but in the end we were persuaded. When we reached the taxi it was full of kids. The driver put his foot down and said “you’ll have far too many people in this taxi. I won’t be able to drive it”. We replied “fair enough. We won’t get on board. That’s no problem” but the Cookes and Billington said that they’s alight and walk with us and send the kids on in the taxi. This caused some confusion amongst the kids because they weren’t the brightest sparks. The last thing I wanted to do was to end up with them and all their kids at a time like this. But they got out of a taxi, made sure that the kids all got back on and sent the driver off on his way.

Those people were customers of mine back in the old days 40 years ago with my taxi bu siness and the stories about them were legendary. However they aren’t really the stories that you will want to hear. Crewe was quite a strange town with a lot of strange people living there and I often felt quite at home. We lived there from 1970 to 1972 when I cleared off to Chester and I moved back from 1981 until 1992 when I cleared off to the real world.

The rest of the day has been spent in some kind of desultory fashion writing some more radio notes. I’ve not done many and I’m not really all that concerned. I’ve already done next week’s radio programme so what I’ve done today has been a bonus.

So after my delicious pizza I’m now off to bed. An early start, a shower and then off to hospital. And who knows what that will bring?

There was a time, and quite recently too, when I was thinking that “it can’t be any worse than this” but I’m pleased with my progress with this physiotherapist even if, as a person, I don’t really like him. He’s good at his job. And so with this improvement, I hope that they don’t mess it up.

On the other hand, they could of course make things better and wouldn’t that be nice? We can but hope. I’d love to get back my mobility.

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Friday 14th April 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… delicious evening meal tonight.

While I was going through the freezer the other day I came across some small kidney bean burgers that have been there since the Dawn Of Time.

Two of them, there were, but there are none left now because as part of my programme to go through and slowly empty the freezer, they went into the air fryer with the diced potatoes and were eaten alongside a nice salad.

It won’t be long now before I can get back to baking pies again. A nice vegan pie like I used to make, when I had room in the freezer, would be lovely for tea for a few nights in the near future. We’re getting there.

Something else that I had that I’ve also had before was a bad night when I struggled to go to sleep and then awoke and some kind of silly hour of the morning.

Not another 04:45 start, but I was certainly out of bed well before the alarm at 07:30.

And that reminds me. Next week I have to set the alarm for 07:00 for my week at the hospital, so I’m reckoning that I’ll leave it set at that instead of 07:30, but compromise by not having an early start on a Monday.

The reason why I had such an early start was that I could dictate the radio notes in peace and quiet before the traffic started up and the kids passed by on their way to school, but I seem to be managing right now by doing it very late on a Saturday night.

After the medication I had a nice shower, sorted out some clothes and then did a little tidying up ready for the physiotherapist. He had my lying on the floor with my back on a rolling pin and I had to roll up and down. The idea is to ease off some of the tense and tight nerves in my back.

Surprisingly, I was able to stand up after lying on my back on the floor, and if that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

He’s very pleased with how things are going, and I have to say that so am I. I hope that it keeps up. I’m regularly doing all the exercises that he’s programmed for me and the stuff that I’ve bought, like the weights and the elastic straps, are doing me a lot of good.

After he left (and he was here for ages) I went through the paperwork, downloaded and printed off what I need for the hospital. There’s a French Government site for health services and everyone has a folder there, so I uploaded some details there too while I was at it.

Having done that, I made a start on a radio programme, the notes for which I dictated the other day. It was a slow laborious process because I was side-tracked here and there along the way, but in the end it’s completed. That’s good news because it’s the one that I should have been doing on Monday but, of course, I’m not here.

Having said that, I’ve not been all here for quite a while, have I?

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. We’d been to Glasgow to try to find a festival that was taking place where some friend of my father was playing with his group. We eventually tracked it down in Paisley (but it wasn’t in Paisley really). I had a good look round. There were 3 different companies of stewards there, Pye itself in dark blue clothing, another company and a 3rd in a kind of black and white tartan. We made a few notes and then came home. Later on my father asked me to move this boy’s father. He wanted to speak to him but he was busy. I rang and eventually got through. Father by this time was in the middle of a heated argument so I continued making some small talk but didn’t really say much. The subject of this festival came up. The father passed the telephone to his son and we had a lengthy chat about the events at this festival, who was there who we saw, what clothing everyone was wearing etc

At one point I was in Oak Street in Crewe. There was something about some boy who had died. Someone had thrown a wreath into the brook that runs at the back there. I’d been working on something – I’m not quite sure what it was. My father was with someone else. When we finished I wanted to go into the barn to fetch something but they were standing in the way. I had to ask them to move. Then I couldn’t get into the barn because of all the stuff that was there. I wanted to go in there to do some tidying up but it would be really difficult to get what I wanted from the barn with that much stuff in it.

The family is back again and has been, here and there, over the last couple of days. But it would be nice if one of my preferred companions would show a leg here and there every now and again.

Tea was, as I said, quite delicious again. I really am eating well right now which is excellent news. But don’t worry about the kidney bean burger supply being exhausted because someone posted a recipe today for falafel burgers that I am determined to try one of these days. And if the recipe works for chick peas, no reason why it won’t work for kidney beans.

Tomorrow I’m shopping, and I’ve created quite a little list. Supplies are slowly winding down again and I ought to be thinking about stocking up. While it’s nice (and sometimes necessary, as December last year proved when I couldn’t go shopping for five weeks) to have a stock of food on hand, it’s also nice to recycle through it. I seem to have let things drag a little with the freezer.

So another early night again. Let’s hope that I can make the most of it.

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Tuesday 11th April 2023 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… yet another morning when I was up and about before the alarm went off. Things are certainly full of surprise these days.

After I’d had my medication the first thing that I needed to do was to think about what I was going to have for breakfast seeing as I had run out of fruit buns

Consequently I made a small loaf of bread and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I added a handful or two of raisins. Cooked for 30 minutes in the air fryer, it made a lovely loaf of raisin bread and I’m going to make more of this. I might even go berserk and add some sugar to the next one.

But anyway it was a lovely surprise for breakfast, toasted with vegan butter and wolfed down with a mug of hot coffee. I just wish though that my bread would rise better than it’s doing.

Next thing while all of that was going on was to redo this radio programme that hadn’t come out correctly when I’d prepared it. And I’m not sure why but using exactly the same music and the same speech, it ended up 19 seconds short. However a little bit of minupulation and a lot of time managed to fill it out.

After lunch there was plenty to do. Firstly I had to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of horse race taking place last night. It was won by a little girl who was given a horse’s name. There were several others in the field but she was the only human in there, although there were two children who were a little older who had also taken part in the race that was over something like 4 furlongs. The other 2 tired quite quickly and she romped home to win. There was another similar race but that took place beforehand and I can’t remember what happened about that.

And then I had an animal, either a cat or a dog, I can’t remember now. It was extremely well-behaved. Someone sent me some kind of miniature cake saw or something. When I had this tray of cakes I unfortunately dropped them on the floor. Of course I couldn’t really eat them after that but the animal whatever it was came in, saw it and started tucking into all the food on the floor. I thought that that was right seeing as it was the animal who had won all of this anyway. It deserves it.

I was also around Granville last night in the red Cortina estate. Who should I bump into but one of the regular readers of this rubbish who was quite happily wandering around. We had a chat for a while and then I headed home. I don’t understand why I didn’t invite him back to the apartment for a coffee or something. I drove home but on the way back in the rue Paul Poirier I ended up on foot again walking home. I was being chased by a young Indian squaw who was waving a tomahawk at me. In the end she said “I’m sorry but you can’t sleep with me”. I asked “why not” and she replied “I would have a baby out of wedlock and what then? I’d have to help my mother with the washing up” I asked what was wrong with that and she replied “I don’t eat breakfast in the morning”.

And I’m still trying to work that last one out.

Secondly, now that I’m feeling a little more athletic these days and more optimistic that when I’ve been to the hospital I’ll be in a better state of health to go out and about for my afternoon walks, I need to think about photography again.

The NIKON D500 alas is no more and while the NIKON D3000 still works, it was only ever meant to be a stop-gap camera. Consequently I resurrected the NIKON D5000.

There’s an issue with that in that the power doesn’t seem to be going from the battery into the circuit board so I’ve set steps in motion to have an estimate to have it serviced or overhauled, if it’s going to be cost-effective.

The idea of having a new camera is appealing but I’ve heard a rumour that Nikon is going to make “a major announcement” shortly and everyone is hanging on to hear the news.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent choosing music for my radio programmes for the future. I’ve not written the text as yet because that will all depend on when the programmes will be broadcast, because I’m working on a cunning plan right now for how my programmes will run in the future. High time that I had a little change around.

However I shall still be dictating some stuff and storing it up for use at another time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg and, as usual, it was very nice. And tomorrow I’ll be having another bake-in as I try to figure out the best way to make naan bread for my vegan curry tomorrow night.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to bed as I’m having to go to the doctor tomorrow for some more medication and to sort out a few other things in town. I suppose that I’d better have a shower before I set off – I will have to look my best for the little walk out.

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Monday 10th April 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

… the idea of having something of a little lie-in this morning.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:40 I’d been awake for a couple of hours and been up and about for quite a while. It’s not as if last night was an early night either. If anything, it was maybe a little later than a normal night might have been.

No question of having a good sleep either. As usual I was tossing and turning around for quite some time.

Anyway, after the medication I checked the mails and messages and then carried on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. It was a desultory, slow stroll through the work that needed doing rather than one of these hard-working and super-concentrated efforts and so it took quite a long while to complete.

The nurse came round to see me as well to give me my injection. He wasn’t here long, but I gave him one of the biscuits that I made yesterday. If he’s still alive on Thursday to come and give me my blood test, I’ll know that they are good.

No more hot cross buns now unfortunately. I used the last of those this morning and it was really sad because even though they didn’t look very nice, they tasted exactly as a hot cross bun should taste and that’s the important thing. I’ll make some more like that.

After my lunchtime fruit I went upstairs to my neighbour’s apartment, having been invited. And I went without my crutches to see how I’d do. It was a little unsteady but I made it up there and back down again and that’s the kind of thing that would fill me with a little optimism. After all, it was two floors up.

It was important that I went, because it was the President of the Residents’ Committee who had invited me, and she was the one who very kindly put me “in the know” when the owner of the apartment downstairs was talking about selling up. That was a very big favour that she did me and I shall be forever grateful.

The plan was that I would be there for just an hour or so to show the flag, but I ended up being there for over three hours. But it was worth it because I learnt quite a lot that I shall need to know when the ink is finally dry on the purchase agreement.

Back here I made some hot chocolate and had a handful of biscuits and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a girl last night. It might have been a certain girl who was in my class at school. We wanted to go somewhere but her mother said that she’d arranged for two seats at the local cinema. We set off but when we arrived it was absolutely crowded. One of the assistants found us and said “yes, we have 2 seats. I’ll show you where they are but we’re so busy that you can’t even stay for the entire performance. There’s a lot of people coming later on and you’ll have to go”. He took us into the auditorium. There was a lot of confusion about our seats because the tickets weren’t clear at all. We worked out eventually where we should be but there was a row of suitcases and some people sitting in it. We had to shuffle them out of the way. They were being quite difficult about it. The only one who seemed to be quite normal, as I said to my girlfriend, was a young boy. With all of this disturbance and with us sittign down we ended up being on board an aeroplane. I’m not quite sure how. As the film hadn’t started yet I said that I’d better take advantage of this and nip to the gentlemen’s rest room. We were sitting right behind the pilot’s seat so I pushed it forward and opened the door so that I could hop out of the door by the pilot’s seat. For some reason all the signs etc were written in Dutch so I began to wonder exactly where I was.

Somehow the subject of apprenticeships came up at another moment. I went off to do an apprenticeship. It was the first day and at lunch so I had to go to have my lunch somewhere. There was a room with 3 other guys sitting in it. I thought that I’d go there. I only had my left shoe on, not the right one, and I was limping. I went up to the door, knocked and went it. The 3 of them looked at me so I introduced myself. I said that I’m the new apprentice and not to worry that I only had one shoe. The other was in the machines somewhere. It made them laugh. I sat down and started to sort out my sandwiches.

Finally, there was an exciting, riveting dream but when I went to dictate it I found that I couldn’t remember a thing at all about it, not a thing. I was really disappointed because this was something that had been so exciting while I was asleep. That’s what I call a really dismal, depressing situation.

And, regrettably, I crashed out for a short while as well. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with rice. It was quite nice too and the stuffing was pretty good too. Plenty left as well for a taco roll tomorrow and the rest to go into a curry on Wednesday. And I remembered to buy the vegan yoghurt as well at the weekend so I can make some naan breads for the curry.

That should be interesting. After all, I have plenty of garlic butter in the fridge that will go quite nicely with the naan breads.

Tomorrow I have a radio programme to repair. It’s one I did ages ago but having a good listen to it, the quality of the speech is awful so I’ve decided to redo it. I’m not sure why it all went so wrong that it sounded so bad.

But that’s tomorrow because right now I’m going to bed. Not that I’m particularly tired but a good sleep when I can is always welcome. I might even feel better tomorrow if I can keep it up.

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Friday 7th April 2023 – A CALAMITY!

Yes, we have had a calamity here today.

Last night after tea I took out some of the hot cross buns from the freezer and left them to thaw out.

This morning when I looked at them, they were all dry and crumbly and there were traces of a green mould. And so they, and all of the others in the freezer have gone into the bin. What a waste and I was so looking forward to eating them too.

That’s really beyond disappointing because the freezer has been jam-packed with stuff, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to such an extent that I’ve been turning away some really good offers. Had they not been in there, I could have done so much more.

Still, no use crying over spilt milk.

And no need to ask what I was going to do now. The internet is our friend in these circumstances and within about 5 minutes I’d found a recipe for vegan hot cross buns. And, apart from some dried mixed peel, I had all of the ingredients, even some orange concentrate

They even had a dinky little cross on top. I don’t have an icing piping bag but a plastic bag with the corner cut off made an acceptable substitute

They weren’t a particular success because I couldn’t make the dough rise, and while it was proofing it cracked (probably too dry). But toasted with some nice hot butter they tasted just like hot cross buns should, and it’s the taste that matters after all.

But when one has a calamity, the pendulum usually swings the other way at some point, but never as quickly for me as it did this afternoon. And in less than three weeks time I shall be back on the property-owning ladder because I’m signing for my new place on the 26th of April at 09:30 in the forenoon.

So with three months required to give the tenant notice to leave and then some time to install a shower and a decent kitchen, I might even be in there before the end of the summer. And I can’t say that I’ll be sorry.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I rented this apartment when I first came here 6 years ago so that I would have a base to look round and find somewhere in the neighbourhood that I liked. But I love this building, its situation and my neighbours so much that I had no desire to leave, so I stayed on as a tenant until something came available to buy at a price that I could afford

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that I was bemoaning the fact that I wouldn’t be able to have a lie-in this morning because even though it’s a Bank Holiday, I had the physiotherapist coming round.

But I needn’t have wasted my time complaining because when the alarm went off this morning at 07:30, I was already up and about.

In fact, I’d been awake since not long after 06:00 and I could have left the bed at any moment after that because trying to go back to sleep was a waste of time. But eventually I lifted myself up and out and set about today’s tasks.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages, I went to have a shower and get myself all nicely cleaned up

The physiotherapist had me running through my paces with the stuff that i’d bought last weekend. He thinks that I have bought stuff that is too powerful for me and that’s rather depressing news. Not because he thinks that I’ve wasted my money because he thinks that I can no longer mutt the custard, as Doctor Spooner would have said.

As kenneth Williams once famously said when the starring roles that he used to receive begn to run out “what you’re offering doesn’t stretch me. I’m used to enormous parts”. And that’s the same with me. I should be pushing myself onwards and upwards, not slowly sinking downwards. Neil Young once said “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” and that’s my philosophy too.

Back here after he had gone, that was when I noticed the catastrophe that was the hot cross buns. And so the rest of the morning was spent making half a dozen of those to keep me going over Easter.

In between while the dough was doing its stuff I was changing the bedding so that I’ll have a nice, clean comfortable bed to sleep in tonight, the first time for a while, and also having a very long chat that went on throughout the day on and off with Liz.

This afternoon I finished off the French Revolution stuff and I’m now well advanced on my space exploration theme, although bearing in mind the different time zones it’s likely that I’ll have to settle for the 20th July as being the date recognised as that of the first landing on the moon which won’t come round on a Friday for several years.

There have also been chats with Alison on the internet and Rosemary on the phone and also with a neighbour who invited me round for a coffee on Monday. I have been in demand today.

In between all of this I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This first bit was another dream where I’d forgotten most of it. There was some kind of celebration to take place for D-Day that involved travelling on an aeroplane. We were going to fly over all these places that figured prominently in the early days of the battle on the anniversary of these events. I boarded the aeroplane but unbeknown to me one of my rabbits had boarded too. I didn’t find out until we were in the air. I had to scavenge round for something to keep them in. When we landed and were at people’s houses I had to find someone who had a cage that I could borrow so that I could put a rabbit in that so it would be much safer to carry. But there was much, much more to it than this but I just can’t remember it.

And then I was in an office. Someone wanted to make his room less affected by direct sunlight. he asked my advice whether he should paint one of his windows over in black. I suggested that he did it white in a nice stripy arrangement. He wondered what I meant by that. I explained that you take a wide brush and just go across from left to right and right to left but only one way. Do all the brushstrokes the same way. He went off so I had a quick look in later on. It looked quite nice what he’d done. Then I had to go to see the boss. I couldn’t think of a good excuse to go to see him. I went in and thought for a minute. I said “I’m thinking of applying for a holiday”. He asked why so I told him that I had a Cortina that I wanted to take out the engine and gearbox to put a different engine and gearbox in. That would involve a little work. It was aon old MkIII Cortina estate that needed much more work than that but that was what I said to him. We had a little chat about it and I left without agreeing anything conclusive. Then I found myself trying to work out someone’s income tax. Some guy’s wife was a teacher somewhere in the Three Bridges Council area. And when I was dictating these notes I realised that i’d been working it out wrongly in my sleep. I was taking away his wife’s income from his instead of adding it on. I can’t understand why I did that.

Tea tonight was a salad and some of those veggie balls from out of the freezer. I was intending to have chips with it but my bag of potatoes is mostly full of potatoes that are too small so I chopped them into small squares to make little baby roast potatoes.

To prepare them, I mixed them with some oil and herbs in a pyrex bowl and then tipped them into that little metal colander that I’d bought the other week. The holes in the colander let the hot air percolate through much better and cooked them to perfection.

It was a really nice tea and I’ll do the same with the potatoes tomorrow with my breaded quorn fillets

So in a moment I’ll be off to bed. It’s early but I’m going shopping tomorrow. In principle I feel as if I ought to be going without my crutches but that’s being rather optimistic. I’ll take one with me, I reckon, to see how I do.

One thing that I want to buy is a soya yoghurt. I found a recipe for making naam bread while I was wandering around and I wonder what that would be like done in the air fryer to eat with my leftover curry.

Another thing that I can but is some more frozen food now that there’s some space in the freezer. What a calamity that was about those hot cross buns, but every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.

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Thursday 6th April 2023 – MY CURRIED FRIED RICE …

… was delicious tonight.

The other day I mentioned that due to the success of my Chinese fried rice with soy sauce, I’d try some curried fried rice one of these nights. And as I was rummaging around in the fridge I came across some outdated millet burgers that were rather bland but obviously needed eating.

And so having cooked my rice and veg, I fried it in some vegan margarine and olive oil with cumin and coriander. And that reminds me – when I go back to Leuven on the 11th of May I need to stock up on spices like that because I can’t buy them around here

Well, I can, but have you seen the price? Amazon has fennel at €8:50 for 250 grammes and I can buy it at the Asian warehouse in Leuven at €1:29 for 150 grammes. Fenugreek seeds are at €5:00 per 100 grammes and exactly the same packet will cost me €1:49.

Better news than the prices of spices on Amazon was the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. Last night was still something quite depressing but when I awoke quite dramatically at 07:15 this morning I thought that I’d push myself onwards and upwards.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I carried on with writing the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday and now they are finished.

Next stop was to go outside to Caliburn to look for the strong black tape, but no luck there. I don’t know where that has gone.

But the good news from that point of view is that I can come back up the stairs without holding on to the hand rail. There’s not sufficient force in my right leg to push myself up the steps with it but the left leg seems to be working. I had the crutches with me of course but I didn’t really need them and it was the quickest that I’ve been up and down the stairs for quite a while.

Despite the lack of strong sticky tape I took out the two freezer drawers that needed repair and just superglued them, hoping that the glue will hold them together. I had a good sort through and found a couple of interesting things that will need eating quite soon. I might even make a start on Saturday seeing as there are a couple of those small breaded quornburgers that I bought a while ago.

But I managed to make some room in there, not the least reason being that I took out three of the stock of hot cross buns ready to defrost and eat over the Easter period. What would Easter be without hot cross buns?

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast (I found half a baguette in the freezer) I transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were plenty. There was a rock concert on somewhere or other. I’d invited one of my little friends to go with me. It was a Thursday night. At first she wasn’t very keen but we went anyway. We really enjoyed the concert, a Southern Rock band so of course I really enjoyed it. What was interesting was that for their lead guitar solos, they flashed the music up on the projector so that everyone could see it. It didn’t occur to me until much later in the concert that “why don’t you take a photo of it and go home and learn to play it?”. Then they announced that there would be a pause. Everyone was quite exhausted. I looked at my watch – it was 02:15. I asked her “have you seen the time?”. She was doing some kind of work for a coach or bus company for school holidays. She wasn’t really all that interested. Everyone was feeling tired so everyone including us lay down on the floor and went to sleep. I had a disturbed sleep tossing around there because what was going through my mind was first of all what would her parents say when they go into her room to awaken her in a couple of hours and she’s not there but with me, and what’s she going to say her work etc. I could see a whole mass of trouble ahead with this. She wasn’t bothered about it by the looks of things so I wasn’t either any more than that. Anyway she awoke after about half an hour and I gently probed her to see how she was feeling, whether she should go home now or whatever like that but she didn’t seem to want to bring the matter into discussion. She was just quite happy being there. I thought “well, it’s not for me to say anything is it really if that’s what she wants”.

She was a lovely girl. While she was at school she worked in the library at Nantwich on a Saturday and she’d go through the new records that the library would purchase, and smuggle out the ones that she knew would interest me so that I could tape them, and then she’d smuggle them back in the next Saturday and repeat the cycle.

Her parents hated me though and I think that they were glad when we split up.

What went wrong was Christmas 1976. I was flat broke, living in a squat and in an effort to liven up our Christmas we spent the last of our money buying card and glitter and the like to make some nice Christmas cards.

Audlem was a funny village. It really was a village of two halves, one half being the farm labourers and the other half being the rich, dazzling suburbanites. We went around the latter with our cards. “Ohh how nice and thoughtful. Do come in. have a mince pie. Have a glass of sherry”. We were wasted by the end of the evening and her parents took a very dim view of it all.

A few years later I was driving a coach for Salopia and stopped in Whitchurch to go to the bank. Guess who was serving behind the counter?

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long enough for a chat but the at the next opportunity I went back. However she wasn’t there.

Instead I buttonholed another cashier and asked about her. At first no-one remembered her but then someone said that she was in fact a new recruit who was there in that branch simply to gain some experience, and no-one knew where she had gone from there.

And that was that then.

Later on I stepped back into that dream. I was with her again driving around somewhere. We went past the house of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I had 2 headlights for the car there. as the headlights on this one were fading and pretty bad I thought that I’d go and pick up these. I parked at the side of the road. She said that she’d stay in the car which was probably a good thing as I didn’t want any confrontation and secondly I wanted someone to look after the car. The pavement wasn’t wide enough to be completely clear of the road. There was a garage across the road where we’d just been. I thought that we’d park at the back of the garage and fix these headlights but there was very little space. Next to it was a public car park. I thought that we’d go on the public car park, aprk there, fetch the headlights and change them over on there. It’s a pay one but at this time of night no-one will bother too much. When we pulled on there every single space was a disabled persons space. There were quite a few people lounging around on the lawns there. The saw me drive slowly around and asked me what was happening. I said “apparently I’m not disabled enough to park here”. They replied jokingly “step out of your car and we can arrange that”. I drove around. There were even holes being dug for graves here on the lawn and I still couldn’t find a place to park the car

Anyway, it really was nice to be among charming company again for an evening. It’s a shame that I can’t do it more often, and in my waking hours too.

The rest of the day has been spent working on a cunning plan. The 14th of July is a Bank Holiday to celebrate the Fall of the Bastille, and it’s also a Friday.

Consequently, I’ve been working on a special radio programme. The Beatles have called for a Revolution to overthrow Curved Air’s Marie Antoinette. So as Alvin Lee and Ten Years After Want To Change The World, Hawkwind’s Urban Guerillas are going to the Bastille with Simple Minds to Kick It In.

With a little effort I can run this thing on for an hour, if you get the picture.

Ironically, the following Friday is the anniversary of the Moon Landings and that’s when Elton John’s Rocket Man is going on board the Hooter’s Satellite with Guns and Roses’s Rocket Queen for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars from where, with REM’s Man In The Moon, they can Look Into The Sun with Jethro Tull to see Hawkwind’s Children of The Sun. I’m sure Steve Hillside-Village and Khan can write a Space Shanty about that.

Now what other interesting dates are there that fall on a Friday? We had an Armistice Day special last year.

Yes, I’m hoping to be much more imaginative and inventive for my radio programmes in the future instead of playing music haphazardly. I didn’t put too much thought into them at first because to be honest I never expected to be still here. But I seem to be fighting back right now.

Tea was, as I mentioned, quite delicious and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. No lie-in for me despite it being a Bank Holiday because the physiotherapist is coming round. What with the nurse to inject me on Monday morning, it’s going to be a pretty miserable Easter break for me.

Thank Heaven I have my hot cross buns.

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