Tag Archives: cleaner

Friday 13th February 2026 – DID YOU KICK …

… any black cats today? Or break any mirrors? Or walk underneath any ladders? Today was, of course, one of those days when you don’t need to do any of that to bring bad luck upon yourself.

Take my faithful cleaner, for example. She walked out of the building this afternoon at 14:30 only to be drenched in a torrential downpour that began ten seconds later.

My bad luck today … "so far – the night is still young" – ed … has been with this perishing fibre optic cable installation, but more of this anon. Let’s start with last night.

And last night was bad enough. I forget how many times I fell asleep trying to write my notes and doing everything else that I needed to do before going to bed. As a result, what should have been a reasonable time for going to bed turned into a rather late one, much to my regret.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly and that’s all that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. And what a time I had trying to haul myself out of bed. It’s definitely becoming more difficult as each day goes on.

Anyway, I was eventually in the bathroom having a good scrub and a change of clothes too because I’m going to run the washing machine later.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and had my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at a woman’s house. She had a son in his twenties who was one of these manic depressive types. This woman and I were talking, and she pulled out from underneath her pillow a box which had a collection of gold coins. She called her son up and he came, and she showed him this box. She asked “what do you think of these?”. He looked at them and he was completely disinterested, and in the end, he went away. His mother said “I told him this morning that I was going to have someone round to knock a few nails into the foot of your bed but he’s obviously not made the connection and he doesn’t know what these are” so we carried on talking. A while later on, the son came back in. He told us a story that he’d met a famous actress. It was while he was canoeing on a lake with a friend. The wind rose up, and these two girls in this canoe were feeling very uneasy and wanted to be helped, so he and his friend helped them. He’d been on a date with this woman once or twice but this affair was in the throes of petering out because he wasn’t willing to take things any further. His mother tried to encourage him but it didn’t really work and he couldn’t seem to generate a spark of enthusiasm. Later still, we were in her room again and her son was there. He was a guitarist, quite well-known with a recording contract who’d opened one of these fundraising events for charity along with a few other big names. Again, he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic but he suddenly realised what this box contained and he’d come back up to talk about it again and to talk about the money that he has that he hardly ever spends. His mother gave him a huge box of chocolates but instead of eating it, he just took a few and said that he didn’t want the rest so the woman ate a few and gave me one or two too. We were then going to tidy up around her bedroom so I pulled a pile of paperwork down from a shelf on the top. It was all her university coursework with exams, assignments and everything. I noticed that a few were in different names so I asked her about them. She replied that her mother was a typist and her mother had intended to type all of them out so that they were neat and proper but unfortunately, her mother hadn’t survived.

In the past, I actually knew a guy like that, but there would have been no chance of him dating a famous actress, and neither would he have been a guitarist. And any romance of his would have petered out sooner rather than later.

The pile of university paperwork is extremely familiar from the past, and the gold coins are presumably something from the various excavations described in the books that I’ve been reading.

A few of us had in the past been talking about buying an island. While I was chatting to someone on the internet, it turned out that he owned an island off the coast of Newfoundland and was interested in selling it. I found out some more about the island and said that I wanted to talk to my solicitors, to which he agreed. However, I realised that I was in no health whatsoever to do that kind of project, but I would still have a share in it, simply as a foothold if I were able to recover, which would be nice. So I started to tidy up everything away and found some things that I’d bought from the shops, a loaf of bread, some carrots, things like that, and began to reorganise everything. I’d realised that I’d paid over the odds for carrots because there was a flood on the market and the price was coming down, but everyone is keeping the price high for the moment. I also sent a letter to my friend in Newport telling him about this island and expecting a few comments coming back. I’d finally sorted out everything that I needed, and then I had to change. I had some scruffy clothes lying around and also some much more tidy, casual wear that I could wear while I was getting dirty rather than my best clothes. I put that on and then had a look at the map to see where I would have to go to drop off some of these things, but the map wasn’t very clear and there was a printer’s error down the centre of the page that confused everything so I had to look very closely to find out where all of this was going to go. Then I could go out to the van ready to load it up, put some petrol in and do these deliveries.

Buying an island is actually something that several of us have been considering. It would have been a good plan fifteen or twenty years ago, but not today, unfortunately.

The story about the carrots seems to relate to a news item that I read the other day about potatoes. It’s been such a bumper year for potatoes that Europe is awash in them and prices have tumbled dramatically.

There’s also an ongoing project involving my friend from Newport too.

Did I mention that a group of us had decided to go to Edinburgh for a wander around? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … I’d been doing something with my Welsh, like cutting and pasting a few exercises which in part talked about Edinburgh. Then someone decided that we’d go. We all met up, and I had a big picture under my arm. It was something that I’d seen in a shop that I thought would be really nice in my apartment so I was carrying that around. Everyone was interested in the fact that it was quite heavy and we’d probably planned a whole day out, and this was going to be something of an obstacle but we carried on and we were walking around a couple of shops, looking at different things when the alarm went off. There was something in the middle of this dream about meeting up with cars and because there were so many of us, we’d have to use two cars but we could park them up at the top end of the city somewhere

Edinburgh was a city that I used to visit often with Shearings. Shearings had an arrangement with National Express Coaches in the past and occasionally ran a duplicate service overnight from Manchester to Edinburgh via Motherwell, Glasgow, Airdrie and Falkirk, with the return the following afternoon. If I didn’t have anything better to do, I would volunteer for it and I went up there quite a lot. It was a lovely run through the night.

It beats me, though, where the cars and the picture fit in with this, but the shop reminds me of the dream a couple of weeks ago … "22nd January" – ed … about being in Montreal.

The nurse was early today. He had a lot of work to do, so he said, so he couldn’t hang around. That suited me fine, because I had things to do too. For a start, I went and made breakfast and began to read my new book.

It’s called MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples. It related to further archaeological excavations that were carried out at Maiden Castle, to re-examine and develop the work by Mortimer Wheeler.

They aren’t just excavating the hill fort but are also casting their net much wider into the surrounding farmland and chalk downs.

And after reading the first few pages, I regretted having criticised Wheeler’s rambling preamble because it has nothing on the preamble in this book.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve commented in the past … "and on many occasions too" – ed … about the criticism that Wheeler received about his claims of battles and war cemeteries taking place at Maiden Castle, with people denying that there are traces of battle up there.

However, one of the comments in Sharp’s book is that, examining the sites of arrowheads discovered up on the chalk downs, "the distribution of arrowheads in the present survey can be seen to cluster around Maiden Castle", which you might expect if the place had come under heavy attack.

One interesting fact about this distribution that, surprisingly, he seems to have missed is that there’s another concentration of arrowheads around a ford over a river down in the valley. He seems to think that this was the site of a settlement and they may have been lost by the inhabitants over a period of several centuries.

However, it also seems to be possible that any attacking army coming from the north would try to cross the river wherever there was a ford and any group of defenders would do their best to stop them crossing. Hence the concentration or arrowheads.

That was something that I would have loved to pursue but I was interrupted, and before I’d finished my breakfast too. The man from the fibre optic turned up to have a go at installing the cable. And just like the first one, he was confounded, and at exactly the same point too.

The person at the estate agency who manages the building had given me her ‘phone number to ring if there is a problem, so we rang it. And as you might expect, there was no reply. Consequently, I telephoned the President of the residents’ committee and let her speak to the technician.

This question of fibre optics isn’t my problem. It’s a problem relating to the infrastructure of the building and that’s a problem for the residents’ committee and the estate agency to resolve. And it’s a problem that has been known for years, apparently, and no-one has lifted a finger to resolve it in all this time.

Over this past couple of weeks, I’ve wasted enough of my time, enough of the technicians’ time and enough of my internet supplier’s time. It’s long past the time that the people who have stood for election and the people who are being paid to manage it should have taken it in charge so they had better make a start before I become completely fed up.

This is the kind of thing that I’ve seen happen so many times before, and I know exactly how it’s going to end up because it all follows the same pattern. This time, however, I’m too ill to take on the running of the show myself, as I have done in similar circumstances in the past, but I’m not too ill to deliver a few hefty kicks into the nether regions of a few people and propel them into action one way or another.

So still seething after yet another good rant, I came back in here once everyone had gone, and begun to work on the next radio programme. And by the time I was ready to knock off, I’d finished it – at least, to the point where I’d written all of the notes. The next time that I have an early start, I’ll dictate them.

There were a couple of interruptions to my day, though. Firstly, I filled the washing machine with all of the clothes that were lying about, and set the machine off to wash them. Secondly, my cleaner came along to do her stuff and she brought with me another neighbour who wanted to know how things went. And had I still had a spleen, I would have vented it at that moment, but I managed to restrain myself.

Once the neighbour had gone, my cleaner hang out the washing. That’s another job that I can no longer do unfortunately.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and baked beans with cheese and black pepper. It was the tin of French baked beans that I’d bought last week, and I do have to say that they aren’t a patch on British baked beans. They use these large beans that I tried but didn’t like.

The only answer then is that if no-one is going to come over from the UK in the near future to visit me, I shall have to bite the bullet and buy some online.

But that’s something about which to worry another time because I’m going to bed ready for tomorrow; And for once, I’ve already finished all of the work that I needed to do so I can have a weekend catching up on the arrears.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Friday the 13th and good and bad luck … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a club that I visited once, many years ago, and there was a bingo game going on.
The caller was on the stage calling out the numbers
"clickety-click, sixty-six"
"two fat ladies, eighty-eight"
"the Brighton line, fifty-nine"
"unlucky for some …"
"HOUSE!" shouted a voice from the assembled multitudes.
"House called on ‘unlucky for some, number twelve’" said the caller
"What do you mean?" roared the voice. "’Unlucky for some’ is number thirteen! Twelve’s not unlucky!"
"It is for you, madam."

Thursday 12th February 2026 – IT WAS HARD …

… today at dialysis. For some reason, there was more liquid to drain off than usual and as a result, I suffered quite a lot, particularly towards the end.

Mind you, things have been building up to this for a while now. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve not been feeling too well just recently, and while the last couple of days might have been better, it doesn’t take much to knock me back to the start again.

Last night, for example, I was on course for an early night and I actually worked quite hard to achieve it, but even so, it was just after 23:00 before my notes went online, and with everything else, it was after 23:30 when I finally went to bed. And it shouldn’t have been like that at all.

And despite the howling gale and torrential rainstorm that was going on outside, I managed to go to sleep quite quickly and I don’t believe that I moved a muscle until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Having been woken up by BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE, it was another struggle to leave the bed and head off into the bathroom for a good wash and a shave. Mind you, I’ve given up all hope of any of the doctors coming to see me, but you have to go through the motions all the same.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at work and it turned out that they were starting up a new group of people for something or other. The guy who was in charge decided that the person who was earmarked to do the job at first wouldn’t be able to cope so he nominated me to do it. I had to go to the office in Chester, and when I complained, they said “never mind. You’ll still be home in half an hour, won’t you?” which, of course, is nonsense. In the end, I arrived at Chester, relieved the guy who was doing this job and went into the office. There were two people there in bed, as if they were hospital patients. One of them was chatty enough and told me everything but the other one said nothing. I had to ask him directly if he was an Oxford United supporter. Then I made some remark about wondering how his treatment went. The girl who was my assistant asked him outright, but he didn’t reply to that either. I thought that I could see this being a really interesting and riveting group of which to be in charge.

So here I am, back at work again despite having been close to the retirement age in a considerable number of dreams. But I did work in Chester for two years between 1972 and 1974. I loved the city and would have been happy to return.

The hospital situation needs no explanation, but what’s all this about Oxford United?

The nurse was early again and he didn’t stay long at all. He had his big medical bag with him today so I suspect that he’s off on quite a few additional travels today.

It meant that I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

In fact, read all of it because it’s now finished. The final pages show a huge series of photographs that clearly show the hurried nature of the burials in the War Cemetery, and also a series of photos that show the massive nature of the work that he and his colleagues had carried out.

What they have done is phenomenal, and you would never ever believe the scale of the work that they undertook.

Back in here later, I had an important letter to write and then for the rest of the morning, I began to prepare for the next radio programme. I even managed to choose half of the music too. This is something else that I hope that I will finish tomorrow because I really need to have a weekend off.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to await the taxi. The driver was early again today, but seeing as we had to go to Sartilly to pick up someone else, we weren’t all that early arriving.

My sooty food was put into the premises at about 13:50, but I had to wait until 14:25 before I was all plugged in and running. And after that, apart from the nurse asking me if I was OK and also the coffee coming round, I was left to my own devices.

As I said earlier, there was more liquid to be removed this time, so they wound up the machine a little. And by the time that I’d finished, the pain had come back in my foot, and as well as that, I was so exhausted that I crashed out for half an hour.

The taxi was waiting for me so we had a good drive back, listening to a podcast of THE HOBBIT

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I said, I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

My cleaner helped me into the building and after she left, I warmed up the leftover soup from yesterday.

However, I couldn’t eat it all tonight, and another pile of food ended up in the bin. I was doing quite well with meals until then. It looks as if I’m having a relapse.

But anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the hobbit … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling a friend of mine that I’d given up reading Tolkien’s books just before going to bed.
"Why was that?" she asked. "Was it becoming too much of a bad hobbit?"
"Well" I replied, "it was certainly hobbit-forming".

Wednesday 11th February 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… I had quite a productive day today, although you would never have thought so.

It didn’t take as long as it might have done to finish off everything, and I was in bed by about 22:45. However, despite the rumoured efficacy of this cough medicine that I’m taking just before going to bed, it took an age for me to actually go off to sleep.

And then, when I did, I awoke on several occasions, mainly due to the stabbing pain in my foot, and at one stage was even thinking about leaving the bed, but I soon dismissed that silly idea from my head.

When the alarm went off, I was fast asleep, and regrettably, I went back to sleep again, only to be awoken by the repeater alarm four minutes later. That’s something of a disaster, isn’t it?

It took an age to leave the bed too and I ended up running quite late this morning in consequence.

The first port of call was the bathroom, and then there was the kitchen to make my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink and to take my medication. And with all of this stuff for the cough, there’s quite a pile of it.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone and found, to my surprise, that there was something on there from when I crashed out yesterday afternoon. So that’s now transcribed and in place.

And then there was the rest of it.

The second hillfort and its manager from Bangor have been found guilty of murdering someone in the city. It’s a hillfort that hasn’t been discovered for all that long, and as yet, it hasn’t really been searched or examined by anyone. As I say, there’s much more than this but I can’t remember it now, unfortunately.

No prizes for guessing from where this discussion about hillforts has come. And Bangor relates to a few visits I made there almost fifty years ago now. But I would have loved to know how it would have ended.

I was at work when one of the chauffeurs, a Danish guy or a Swedish guy, came over to me to ask me if I’d go to look at his car, so I did. When we crawled underneath, I could see that there was an exhaust pipe or silencer that had been cut into by a wire stay that holds part of the body rigid, and it needed replacing. He had a replacement so we agreed that we’d go to do it. He threw his tools into the back of the car and he went to ask one of the security guys where we could go. He told us that if we went down one of the exits near to where his office was, we’d come out in the countryside somewhere. We went that way and found ourselves in some kind of park. The view of our office was impressive, and I remember sitting there one night before I started the job after I’d been offered it, looking at the lighting and everything. We found a place to park, and I crawled underneath. I was convinced that the silencer was in the wrong place but I couldn’t see how else it would go. I asked for a screwdriver to dismantle it but they didn’t have one in their box except a big, awkward, clumsy one. At that moment, I’d wished that I’d brought my tools with me. I told him that I thought that this silencer was in the wrong place but he replied that when it had been somewhere else, I’d criticised the installers for not doing the job correctly, something that I couldn’t remember, but the silencer, in its current place, had been cut into by the wire stay. The screw that retained it needed tightening up because it was loose and the silencer was flopping around, but apart from that, I couldn’t see how I was going to make things any better with the way that they were with the way that the silencer had been installed.

If I had a penny for every car under which I’d crawled in the past, I’d be typing these notes from the deck of a yacht in the Bahamas with floozies throwing grapes into my mouth.

But the silencer being wrongly installed does have a parallel – a “professional” installed a new exhaust on a car that my brother owned, and ever since then the handbrake didn’t work. When I looked underneath it, I saw that this “professional” had fitted the exhaust in the wrong place and it was blocking the handbrake cable.

There was also something about a press announcement about Mark Carney having concluded a trade agreement with Sweden, the third agreement with a first-rate European Union country.

Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, is now Canada’s prime minister and he actually has been on a few trade missions around the World with the aim of finding a new market for all of the products that the USA buys.

The nurse turned up, in a hurry again so he didn’t stay long. When he’d gone, I could read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

We’ve finished pottery and have gone onto bones. And if his autopsies are correct (and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be), many of the deceased in the “War Cemetery” do show signs of battle injury and hasty burial. One woman looks as if she’s had her hands tied behind her back and been executed.

There’s more talk about climate change too. He says that "The presence of Arianta arbustorum is important. During the damp period of the Early Bronze Age this species was common on the chalk hills of the south. With the incoming of drier conditions in the Middle Bronze Age this species became less common".

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that I should have sent off on Monday and sent it off today instead. And then I turned my attention to the current radio programme.

In the end, I found all of the music that I needed. It’s all now reformatted, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even written all of the notes for it, except of course for the joining track.

There was an interruption for the guy who was coming to install the fibre-optic cable, except that he didn’t come.

Apparently, he told his head office that I was out, although I was glued to the window at the relevant time period. So I complained. And one thing that the technician doesn’t know is that his vehicle has a tracker installed in it, so when he returns to the office, he will have to explain why his van was parked up at the port outside a crèpe restaurant for one hour and thirty-eight minutes.

When I’d finished the radio notes, I had one or two rather urgent things to do, and then I went back into the kitchen to make some bread rolls and my leek, potato and mushroom soup.

It was totally delicious and there’s enough soup and bread rolls left over for tomorrow’s tea too.

Not right now, though, because I’m off to bed, ready to fight the good fight tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Bank of England … "well, one of us has" – ed … there used to be a Bank of Crewe many years ago.
One day, a forger from Crewe went in and asked "can you change this eighteen-pound note, please? "
"Certainly" replied the cashier. "What would you like? Two nines or three sixes?"

Tuesday 10th February 2026 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible afternoon today. And it was going quite well at first, too.

However, the scene was well and truly set last night because, once more, with not too much food preparation needed, I whizzed through everything quite rapidly, and I was in bed by 22:00, feeling much better than I might have been.

But with having been in bed early, and with it having been a dialysis day, I shall let you lot imagine how the night went. I shan’t bore you by repeating it.

So there I was, at 02:00, tossing and turning, trying to go back to sleep for hours and being totally unsuccessful for quite some considerable time. At one stage, I was even toying seriously with the idea of leaving the bed.

Eventually, though, I must have gone off to sleep because I awoke again. And then back to sleep, to be awoken by the alarm.

It was even more of a struggle than usual to leave the bed this morning but I eventually managed to struggle into the bathroom. But by the time that I’d made it into the kitchen, I was running later than I would have liked.

First this was to make the hot lemon, ginger and honey drink, and the second thing was to take my medication.

While I was at dialysis yesterday, the doctor examined my chest and said that I ought to go back onto the antibiotics because the cough is coming back. So having some left over from last time, I took a couple.

And do you know what? About five minutes later, I began to cough and sneeze, and the streaming nose was back. You couldn’t make up a story like that.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of dream about some archaeologist or someone talking about a hoard of pottery that they had discovered somewhere. The guy was coming out with a story that it was obviously a gift by someone to someone else whom he loved back in the eleventh century BC. For that reason, it was quite a unique and exciting find. But there was more to it than this and I can’t remember it now.

No prizes for guessing to what this dream relates. But the idea of giving gifts to lovers back in the eleventh century BC is certainly a novel idea and seems to have come from out of nowhere.

I had a girlfriend who lived in Audlem and she rang me up saying that she’d like me to go round. So round I went in the van and arrived at her house. For some unknown reason, I knocked on the fence instead of the front door. I’ve no idea why. She came rushing to the door with a great big smile on her face, really pleased to see me. I’m not used to being greeted like this by anyone particularly but at that point I awoke so I don’t know what happened

As it happens, I had a couple of girlfriends who lived in Audlem, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear. As for the girl in the dream, though, she was a girl whom I met in Brussels who moved to Croydon and then to Swindon. We saw each other once or twice but then she decided that she wanted marriage and a family.

But it’s true – no one is usually as pleased to see me as that girl was last night during the dream.

There was also something about me going away, so I was packing food into the back of the van but I could never get it to how I wanted it to be so I kept on taking it out and putting it back in a different way, but that just seemed to make it worse and worse. In the meantime, while I was doing this, someone shouted something about a black car, saying that it was being wrapped up etc, but someone was climbing into it to drive it away. It turned out that it was a taxi and this guy jumped into it to drive it away. A policeman was there, who tried to stop him but the guy leaped back out again with a huge piece of wood and attacked the policeman, then jumped back into the car and drove off

This is another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all.

The nurse turned up after his week away, and he was rather impatient today. I imagine that he has a lot of patients waiting for him back at his office.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

We finally managed to finish pottery, and we’re now on metal objects, such as rings, brooches and weapons.

Considering that many of his critics claim that there’s no evidence to support his claim that there ever was heavy fighting at Maiden Castle, the collection of arrowheads and spearheads clustered around the entrance to the fort is impressive

But surprisingly, he identifies a brooch and some matching pottery of a type that was common in Dorset and Somerset during the period 400 BC – 250 BC and notes that a sample of an identical type of brooch and pottery was found at a vitrified fort from the same period at Dunagoil on the Isle of Bute in Scotland guarding a seaway. And Dunagoil means, in yr Hen Ogledd, “fort of the foreigners”.

So I wonder what the connection might have been.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. It was another lesson that passed very well due to all of the preparation that I did. And I wish that I could be able to remember it all because it gets on my nerves that I can never ever remember anything half an hour later. I really do have a memory problem.

My cleaner turned up after the lesson and shooed me into the shower where I had a good wash and a change of clothes, and I feel so much better now.

Or, at least I did, because not long after I started to choose the music for the next radio programme (and that’s becoming more and more complicated as the music becomes more and more obscure), I felt the wave of fatigue arrive.

By about 16:00 I was slumped over the desk, flat out asleep, and by about 16:45, I was in bed, fully clothed, even down to the slippers. I just couldn’t carry on.

While I was asleep, Id been off on a ramble, as I found out next morning. And no-one was more surprised than me.

I had an E-type Jaguar, a hardtop. A group of us had gone to some kind of bar in the countryside. I remember running over the pebbles to this bar with no shoes on and it was killing my feet. We stayed there for a while, and then it was about 23:40 so we decided that we’d go into a club. A group of us, we all set out and left the pub and again, I had to run over these pebbles in my bare feet. I reached the car, and one of the doors was open and the toolbox was at the side of the car. There was only one wheel on the car. Then I remembered that my brother had been messing about with it before we went into the bar. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t put anything back nor why he’d taken the wheels off. I had to find the jack and jack up one side of the car, which was not quite so easy because the jack wouldn’t balance correctly – it was one of these peg jacks on a leg. Eventually, I could raise the car off the ground and one of the guys coming behind me slammed the wheel on quick. I could drop the car down on that side then. He asked if I needed wheel nuts, but I had some, but as I was trying to set these wheel nuts going, one of them wouldn’t start. It took me ages to fiddle around with this wheelnut to try to make it start, but it still wouldn’t start

Not that I’m ever likely to own an E-type or go into a bar. But running over pebbles is probably some reference to the pain that I have in my right foot.

As for my brother, you can bet that somewhere along the line, someone from my family would turn up.

It was about 19:45 when I awoke, and had it not been for the fact that the ‘phone rang at that moment, I would probably still be asleep even now. Instead, though, I headed off into the kitchen for tea. Pasta, vegan burger and ratatouille followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And for some reason, I didn’t enjoy it as much as usual.

But right now, if the stabbing pain in my foot allows me, I’m off to bed. I’ve had some of the cough mixture that I’ve been prescribed and apparently you aren’t allowed to drive while taking it because it sends you to …

… zzzzzzzzzzz.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the strange after-effects of the antibiotics this morning … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I once went to Prestatyn years ago.
"Come to Prestatyn" said the adverts. "It’s good for the rheumatism."
"And was it?" asked my friend.
"Absolutely" I replied. "I’d only been there a couple of hours before I caught it too".

Monday 9th February 2026 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… little excitement, things are back to normal now, or, at least, as normal as they can be. Mind you, I’m not ruling out crashing out once more before I finish today’s notes.

As to what happened yesterday, I really don’t know. I was actually feeling quite perky but then, all of a sudden, this dramatic wave of fatigue came out of nowhere and swamped me completely. Three times, I’d gone off with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … and I simply couldn’t carry on.

At that moment, bed was the best place to be, and so off I went.

It didn’t take long for me to go off to sleep, but I’m sure that you are aware of what happened next. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … and I’ll leave you lot to fill in the rest of the sentence.

So there I was, at 04:00, wondering what to do next. I tried to go off to sleep but to no avail, and at 05:30 I was up and about.

Off I staggered into the bathroom and from there into the kitchen, even though it was so early, where I made my hot drink and took my medicine.

Back in here, determined not to waste the morning, I dictated the outstanding notes that had built up over the last week or so for a couple or three radio programmes.

Well, almost, anyway. As I was dictating the third and last set, the ZOOM H8 stopped recording, and I hadn’t noticed until I’d finished dictating.

Consequently, I re-dictated the notes and once more, it stopped without me noticing until I’d finished this lot.

Subsequent enquiry revealed that the memory was full. I needed to upload the contents of the memory onto one of the backup discs, and do you have any idea how long it takes to upload 64 GB of data?

While it was being busy, I made a start on finishing off last night’s notes, and now they are online for you to peruse.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me in mid-flight and I had to wander off to have my feet and legs receive her tender ministrations. It’s her last day today for a week so she was quite happy.

In fact, she’s off for eight days because she and her friends have a float at Carnaval and they will be parading on Tuesday.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

He’s still discussing pottery, and not just pottery discovered at Maiden Castle but all over Europe. While it’s nice to have the scene well and truly set, it can be overdone and we can drown in a wealth of unnecessary detail.

Once breakfast was over, I came back in here and finished off my notes and then transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was a Jewish family summoned into the town from out in the countryside. They didn’t really know why but they were obliged to come all the same. One family set out to arrive but the eldest son had to stay somewhere along the road with one of their vehicles that had developed a flat tyre but the rest of the family arrived. The father, who was a little suspicious of the sons noticed some kind of army convoy around in the city and as it set off, he decided to follow it to see where it went. But somewhere in the middle of this, there was something about being in a library where there were all these books on different medicines. It was interesting to note that of all of the different recipes, there was only one company that made its recipes completely open to the public. They were for the three medications that I used to take regularly back in the past so I took the recipes and went to have a read of them. Then this family decided to go out and they had to leave a glass of water behind, so what they did was to drop a couple of drops of ink into it and it went a horrible light brown colour, so they left it. When they returned to the apartment later, they couldn’t find their butler. They had to search for him. Suddenly, they found him sitting on the sofa disguised as a pile of old rags. They asked him for an explanation, and he said that seeing as they hadn’t invited him to go out with them earlier, he took a couple of hours off to go to the local museum but the museum was closed so he came home and dressed up in the hope of giving everyone a really good surprise and a good laugh.

As to where this came from, I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything that I’ve been discussing, except, of course, the three medications.

When I’d finished that, I had a few things to do and then I prepared for my Welsh course tomorrow. It does no harm to try to forge ahead while I still can.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic on my arm, and after she left, I waited for the taxi.

And I didn’t have to wait long either. He was ten minutes early and he already had one passenger on board. We stopped off at Sartilly to pick up another passenger who travels with me sometimes, and we arrived at dialysis a good twenty minutes early.

Now here’s a thing. Even twenty minutes early, I was last to arrive in the room but another woman, having arrived before me, was still applying an ice pack in preparation, so she let me go first. It’s very rare that that happens, and I appreciated it a great deal.

The doctor came to see me too. He wanted to discuss my cough which, having gone away while I was on antibiotics, is now back again. After some kind of chat, he prescribed yet another course of antibiotics and a couple of other medicaments. After that, they left me pretty much alone.

Having been connected early, I was unplugged early too and the taxi was waiting for me, so I was actually home early. But with the howling gale and driving rain, I was dropped off at the fire escape round the back.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside and after she left I had a few other things to do, and then I went and warmed up my half-pizza, which was followed by fruitcake and soya dessert.

Right now, though, I know that it’s early but I’m off to bed. A good sleep will do me good with my Welsh course tomorrow, but whether or not I actually have a good sleep remains to be seen. Still, if I’m up early, I can always finish off the dictation.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Carnival… "well, one of us has" – ed … one year, they were giving helicopter rides at €10:00 per person.
The pilot was an ex-Air Force pilot and he told the passengers "if you manage ten minutes without screaming, I’ll give you €100:00."
He puts on a show to end all shows and all of the passengers were screaming, except for one little old man who was totally silent.
When they landed, he gave the man €100:00 and said "that was astonishing. You’re the first person whom I’ve ever taken who managed not to scream. How did you do it?"
"It was actually really difficult" replied the man. "I was going to say something when my wife fell out, but €100:00, it’s €100:00."

Thursday 5th February 2026 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was actually feeling hungry this afternoon. So much so that I had a decent meal for tea tonight and still felt as if I could eat some more.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, but I’ll be interested to see if this return of my appetite keeps on going. We’ll probably find out at teatime tomorrow evening when sausage, chips and baked beans with cheese will be on the menu.

There wasn’t a hint of this last night. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but last night’s tea was just a handful of crackers with cheese spread followed by a few biscuits. I wasn’t in the mood at all.

Nevertheless, I was still hours late going to bed. It was round about 23:30 when I finally crawled underneath the covers. And there I lay without moving until about … errr … 02:05. After that, it was a very fitful night, lying awake, dozing off, dropping off to sleep, waking up again. At one point, I was convinced that the alarm had gone off and made ready to leave the bed, but it was only 04:20.

When the alarm finally did go off, I was actually awake, although you wouldn’t have thought so. It was another long, desperate struggle to rise to my feet and head off into the bathroom. A good wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the previous day. And now, they are online and raring to go. I didn’t have much time to do those from last night because Isabelle the Nurse appeared. She sorted out my legs and feet and then headed off on her rounds.

Mind you, she did confirm a piece of news that I’d heard at the cardiologist’s yesterday, and that is that my cardiologist will be heading off to pastures new fairly shortly. That will mean that there’s no cardiologist between Caen and Rennes unless someone takes over his office.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE . And at page seventy-nine, we finally reach the end of this meandering, rambling preamble. He’s now starting to examine the different layers in the ditches and the pits on the site to try to identify the times of the different periods of occupation.

Back in here, I finished off transcribing last night’s dictaphone notes.

During a dream last night, my aunt had been murdered by her husband. He’d been taken away and his children practically left on their own. There was some issue about the food that the children were eating. They had been eating practically anything without any organisation and were having all kinds of illnesses because of the diet and not eating the necessary products, minerals, vitamins etc. My eldest sister said something that she couldn’t understand why the kids didn’t eat more healthy food etc. I told her that she’s a girl, she’s done cookery and home economics, things like that, and the chances are that my aunt’s children haven’t done anything like that at all. From there, the discussion turned round to some kind of film where there had been some young girls who had been responsible for providing meals etc. There was a girl starring in this film, but they did a flashback to some time in the past where the girl playing that rôle was her sister. This ended up with the kids cooking some chips, adding a little salt to one portion, and in the next room, they added rather a lot more salt to the portion that they made in there. The funny thing is that I awoke at that moment and thought that the chips were real because I could smell them. I was going to look for them as soon as I awoke and probably eat them.

My aunt (my father’s sister) committed suicide thirty-odd years ago and her husband, from whom she was divorced, died of cancer, leaving the whole tribe of cousins orphaned, some of them still quite young. And it’s true that, coming from a rural agricultural background, they didn’t have the same opportunities that we had. Although I never did see eye-to-eye with my parents and was glad to leave home and never go back, I won’t ever deny that my mother fought for us to have a decent education, and we could all read and write long before we started school.

But those chips – I can still smell them now even though it was in a dream, and they did smell delicious.

We were in Colditz prison and two prisoners had made an attempt to escape, but they had been intercepted. One of them had been captured but the other two had put up a fight and were both injured. Somehow, the one who had been captured managed to break free and he ran. He managed to pick up this other prisoner and they both jumped down, holding on, shot down this chute and disappeared. There was a huge hue and cry about all of this. Several other prisoners took the opportunity to go to ground, that is, hiding within the prison so that the prison officers would think that they’d escaped. From there, they could work on tunnels and things without being missed during roll calls. They managed to barricade themselves into an old assembly hall. From there, they were living and organising things to do that needed doing that the others couldn’t do. It came fairly close to the time for them to escape, but they had been discovered by one of the prison officers. He’d taken two of the prisoners to his commandant who told him to take them to the General overseeing the region, so he took them on the train. The General overseeing the region was extremely unhappy with this prison officer because of the fact that these prisoners had been missing for ages. He prepared a document ordering him to be transferred from the prison service to the Eastern Front, which broke the heart of this officer when he was talking to the prisoners of everything that he’d planned to do. The prisoners quite simply took the order which the General hadn’t stamped – he’d signed it but not stamped – and said that only the prisoners knew about this document now, and there’s no reason why the General should want to know anything further about it. The prisoners would basically keep quiet about the document if the officer would. They went back to the prison, and the officers went to hide in this ice rink again – this hall place again – and the officer went back to his work. Now, the prisoners had a hold over this officer with this document. It became time, almost time to leave. One of the prisoners said that he wasn’t going to bother watering his plants because he wouldn’t be back. I decided that I’d water all mine, so I took the bucket. But one of my friends from Canada was there, and he insisted on having the bucket first to water some of his. After a big argument, I let him take it. Then he brought it back and I had a race against time then to fill the bucket with water, run to my plants and water them, come back and keep on going. The tap wasn’t very fast, but someone showed me a faster one. I was running back and to, watering my plants.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE WENT TO COLDITZ CASTLE back in May 2015 and had a good wander around.

It is actually true that in several prison camps in World War II, some prisoners would “go to ground” within the prison, and for a variety of reasons too. Firstly, the Germans would spend thousands of fruitless man-hours searching the surrounding countryside and that would keep soldiers away from the battle zones.

Secondly, they could spend their time digging tunnels and forging documents without the risk of being interrupted for a snap roll-call or barracks search.

The usual procedure was to look for two prisoners who looked alike. One would “go to ground”, and then they would swap over occasionally to allow the grounded one to have some fresh air and sunlight.

There were also many, many cases of the prison officers and the prisoners collaborating with each other against the Army High Command and the Gestapo.

The part about plants is interesting. It reminds me of the late 1970s when everyone had a house that, inside, looked like a Vietnamese rainforest with all the tropical plants. And where did my Canadian friend come from?

We were in London last night. It wasn’t the London modern but the London of two thousand years ago AD. The Romans had captured the leader of the British Army and he was crying on the British Army to restrain, but they were determined to go ahead to rescue him. They built about four platforms about a mile inland from the river to which they could shoot over the walls. They had their batter away through the stand-up album period but at the end they were still trying to persuade this guy to come down from his turret. In the end they launched a whole barrage of sweet presents at the prisoner and forced him to come down, where he was captured … fell asleep here …

This, of course, is pretty meaningless and it’s no surprise that I fell asleep in the middle of it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating. So when I say that “I fell asleep”, what I mean is that there’s a silence and then you can hear my deep breathing.

The rest of the morning was spent writing the radio notes that I should have done yesterday, and they are now almost finished.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then we had a good chat for a while.

The taxi was early today and the driver was Speedy Gonzales. It was a wild ride down to Champeaux to pick up my fellow passenger and we arrived at the dialysis centre half an hour early.

And this is where it all went wrong.

Today, I was in a room with eight beds, manned … "PERSONned" – ed … by just one trained nurse and two new starters. Consequently, everything went at a snail’s pace. The new starter who eventually dealt with me missed her aim with the second and they had to fetch the electrograph to check and to identify the correct location. So she had to take the needle out and reinsert a fresh one elsewhere in my forearm.

Not that I’m complaining, though. I ended up being surrounded by a bunch of my favourite nurses and one of them couldn’t resist a stroke of my shoulder. If that’s the reward for the new starter missing her aim, she can miss her aim every session and I won’t say a word.

After that, they left me pretty much alone to fill out my shopping list. But the doctor on duty clearly doesn’t love me any more. She came into the room, saw most of the people, but didn’t come to see me. And when she wanted something, she sent a nurse on an errand to ask me instead of coming herself

When they finally unplugged me and threw me out, the taxi driver was waiting. And although he didn’t say a single word to me and the other passenger all the way home, he drove just like the one who had brought me and we were home in no time.

My faithful cleaner helped me indoors through the rainstorm and we continued our chat from lunchtime. In the end, we had quite a laugh as she told me a story that I couldn’t possibly repeat on these pages without causing offence

After she left, I made tea. My friend in Munich told me the other day about a vegetable curry with mashed potatoes that he had made for tea, and so I decided to make one. Sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, peas, broccoli out of the freezer in a home-made curry sauce with soya yoghurt, and plenty of bulghour and quinoa for protein, all with potatoes mashed in vegan butter and soya milk. It was delicious, and I could eat it again.

It was followed by the last of those apricots with mango sorbet, and I could eat that again too.

So having finished my notes, I’ll be off to bed as soon as THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN finishes.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about causing offence … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of someone in Crewe who was in Court charged with causing criminal damage to someone’s garden.
"First offence?" asked the judge.
"Oh no" replied the prosecuting counsel. "First he did a gate and then a greenhouse. A fence was third."

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 – THEY SAY THAT …

… wiser counsel comes overnight. And that’s certainly true in my case, especially last night. And that’s because I had plenty of time to consider it.

Going to bed at about 22:00 is all very well, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a pretty pointless exercise if you wake up at … errr … 01:05.

Last night though, I really was ill. Not in a medical sense, I suppose (even though I am, of course), but my morale had dropped through the floor and it was carrying on sinking. There’s only one place to be when that happens, so I dashed through my notes at an incredible rate of knots, finished off everything else as quickly as possible and then headed for the hills.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, because I really was wasted. However, as I said just now, I didn’t stay asleep for long.

So there I was, tossing and turning for hours, trying to find a comfortable position without much success, but I must have eventually fallen asleep because some company or other sent me a text message at 04:25 and that awoke me.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go back to sleep and there I was when the alarm went off.

As usual, it took an age to summon up the courage and the strength to go to the bathroom, and then I came in here. No medication this morning.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I had some Welsh homework outstanding, and the tutor came to see me – a male tutor, this particular one. I explained that I’d had that many medical appointments recently that it was difficult for me to find the time to do several things that I wanted to do, including the Welsh homework. But I was surprised that he was hardly sympathetic at all. He said “you seem to be putting much less effort into your course just recently”, to which I replied that I was putting most of my effort into my medical issues and it can’t really be helped. He told me that he’d give me until Monday and that would be the final cut-off for the homework period. I had to sort out all of my paperwork after he’d left. I took some bread and cheese and things and went to sit in my van with the paperwork out, but I just couldn’t concentrate at all, time was dragging on and I hadn’t even begun to make any progress. Some of my friends were back in the building and wondered where the butter had gone. No-one knew exactly where it was so I said that I had it. They came over and brought me a little note or something to get well, which was nice of them, but I was just sitting there and couldn’t really function and was doing absolutely nothing whatsoever towards this homework.

This is the story of my life, isn’t it? Being paralysed with inaction when I should be doing things. I can go for weeks like this and then have a sudden burst of energy during which I not only catch up with everything but actually soar ahead.

Round about 07:45, I decided that I’d better go into the kitchen to wait for Isabelle the Nurse who should arrive at any moment. Instead, though, it was the taxi driver who had come early, so I had to quickly put on my shoes and stuff my socks into my pocket.

Halfway across the courtyard we met Isabelle the Nurse. She was on time, but with the taxi being early, she was confounded. And so we ended up with the undignified spectacle of me sitting in the car, feet outstretched outside in the cold and rain with Isabelle the Nurse oiling my bare feet and sorting out my socks while the taxi driver, a passenger that she had picked up earlier and a whole crowd of people waiting for the 08:10 bus looked on with interest and amazement.

You can’t say that I don’t live an interesting life.

So Part One of today’s adventures began, with a trip down to Avranches. We dropped off the other passenger at the clinic and then my driver took me to the hospital. She found a wheelchair for me, and then we played “hunt the doctor” until we finally found her.

This doctor, I think she’s wonderful. She’s a tiny woman of “a certain age”, and while she’s examining your arm and your dialysis implant, she’s complaining all the time about the standard of work that the surgeon did and a lot more besides. Just like my favourite taxi driver, she puts a lot of ambience and atmosphere into her work and I think that it’s great. Today, though, she was rather restrained and I was somewhat disappointed.

It was the same driver who brought me home, although there was someone else to drop off along the way. The driver had to help me into the apartment because my faithful cleaner was with one of her other clients this morning.

Back in here, I grabbed a quick bowl of porridge and a mug of coffee and then headed off for my Welsh lesson, arriving rather later than I intended.

One thing about the lesson, though, was that it went really, really well and I was quite impressed. Spending a couple of hours over the weekend reading through the notes and checking the vocabulary seems to be paying dividends with my course, although I wish that I could remember it afterwards. That’s the problem with having a Teflon brain – nothing sticks to it at all.

So Part One of my day was at Avranches. Part Two was my Welsh course. Part Three was my shower. My faithful cleaner turned up and organised the bathroom for me so that I could have a nice, hot soak. And I needed it too. And I felt much better afterwards, that’s for sure. I wish that I could shower more often, but I’m not allowed to do it unsupervised.

However, all this might change. The handles and restraining bars to be installed in the shower arrived a couple of weeks ago and with them, I’m much more independent. My cleaner and I decided that on Friday, we’ll go round the apartment to make a list of things that need doing, and then I’ll contact the carpenter to see if he’s available.

If anyone else who has visited the apartment can think of anything that I ought to have done, don’t hesitate to let me know because this will be the only chance to do it.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … shower, I suddenly realised that I’d been trying to walk out of the bathroom without my crutches. If only …

Part Four of my day came later. That was at about 16:30 when my favourite taxi driver came to pick me up for an appointment with the heart specialist down in the town. That was quite a hike to his office too but I managed it, just about.

He was running behind time too, so I had to wait for quite a while, all the time standing up because, with no armrests on his chairs in the waiting room, I can’t stand up afterwards. And that’s an interesting fact – since I’ve become disabled, I’m seeing the World in a totally different light than I ever did before.

Eventually, he saw me and gave me a good going-over. And apparently, there’s an improvement since the last time that he examined me. Everyone is worried, and I’ve been having these tests since the announcement that the chemotherapy has failed. It’s nice to have some good news for a change, even though it doesn’t explain why I’m so out of breath these days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with a lower red blood count than usual, my heart is having to work correspondingly faster to pump enough oxygen around my body. Even so, there’s no circulation in my feet (hence the daily visits of the nurse, to massage them and rub oil in) and at times, there’s a loss of circulation in my fingers. But as long as the heart can keep up with the pressure, I can keep on going (in that respect, but maybe not in others).

When the taxi dropped me off, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and sorted me out.

In between all of that, I’d been working on the next radio programme. I’d managed to collect all of the music that I need, reformat, remix and re-edit it, pair it off and segue it ready for me to write the notes tomorrow. I’m trying to break the back of at least two every week so that I can build up a pile in advance for when the inevitable happens. I intend to live on, long after I’ve begun to push up the daisies.

For the very first time since I don’t know when, I managed a full meal today. It’s probably due to all of the exercise that I’d had with all of these medical appointments, running here, there and everywhere. I had the leftover Chinese food, from when I tried unsuccessfully to make those spring rolls, in a stir-fry with noodles. And it was delicious too, if rather salty (but then again, everything that I eat tastes of salt since the chemotherapy).

My neighbour, when she came to visit the other day, had brought me some fruit – they might have been apricots – so I had a few with some of that vegan sorbet that I’d ordered for Christmas. And that was quite lovely too. So much so that I’m seriously contemplating ordering a few tins of fruit for pudding in the future, especially as I now have some custard powder.

Back in here, I started to write up my notes, but the effort was far too much for me after everything that I’d done today, the early start, the two medical visits, the shower etc. I fell asleep twice before I’d even finished the first paragraph and even then what I’d written was a load of gibberish anyway … "so what’s new?" – ed … so I called it a night and crawled into bed. I can finish it off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the heart specialist … "well, one of us has" – ed … while he was running his machine over my chest, I asked him "have you found my heart, doctor?"
"Oh yes" he replied. "It’s still there."
"Thank heavens for that!" I said, relieved. "I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet."

Monday 2nd February 2026 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… tough afternoon today, and being at dialysis hasn’t helped one little bit.

What also probably didn’t help was that, once again, I remained stuck to my chair last night for ages and couldn’t sort myself out and go to bed. As a result, it was yet another late night, long after 23:30, and being as tired as I am right now, it’s all becoming far too complicated for me.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and I remember nothing whatever until the alarm went off at 06:29 as usual.

It took an age to sort myself out and head to the bathroom but after a good wash and shave, I could head into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, including the last of this course of five days of antibiotics.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was driving my taxi last night. I’d just started to be self-employed so I was looking for as much work as possible to set myself off. A message came through on the radio to tell me that there were two people to pick up in Crewe to take somewhere at 06:30. But the following morning was a Sunday, so would I be able to do it? Even though I wasn’t particularly keen, the idea that there was a job like that to do made me feel that I would be able to do it. While I was speaking on the radio, a car pulled up alongside. It was the postwoman and she gave me a parcel. I hadn’t been expecting a parcel but I took it anyway. What I’d been doing while I’d been waiting for things to happen was that I was trying to make some tea. I’d been washing a load of really dirty vegetables and I now had four clean carrots, so I was going to make some kind of stew. I had dirty water, vegetable peelings and diced vegetables all over the place, and someone gave me a parcel, the postwoman. I put it down on a worktop where it became all wet, and then opened it. There were four solar-powered racing cars in there, each with its own track, and it was nothing that I knew anything of. However, I remember my mother talking about something like this so I called her up on the radio and asked her. She said that it was indeed something that she had been waiting for and could I bring it round some time? I wondered when it would be best to bring it round because she usually had piles of grandchildren hanging around and I imagined that she didn’t want her grandchildren to know about this parcel arriving.

Apart from the fact that I’m back driving a taxi again, there’s quite a lot of mileage in this dream. For example, my friend in Munich and I were talking yesterday about solar power and also about curried vegetables, and in Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE, part of the preamble that I mentioned the other day was a discussion about the cursus — the weird Neolithic structures that resemble something like an ancient racecourse.

And as usual, my family puts in an appearance.

The nurse breezed in quite early today, and he was soon gone, leaving me to make my breakfast and read some more of my book.

Mortimer Wheeler is reaching an interesting stage in his opening discussion. He notes that in the beginning, there were some reasonably substantial defences around Maiden Castle, but after a period that he estimates to be about fifty years, the defences are allowed to decay, although the site is still occupied. This seems to suggest that once the inhabitants were settled in, they were living at peace.

However, all of a sudden, there’s a hasty reconstruction of the defences, as if the situation has changed and warfare has broken out somewhere in the vicinity. And from then on, the defences are improved and improved with some massive, impressive defensive walls and ditches, enough to stifle any invader’s attack. And there are whole hoards of sling-stones discovered, tens and tens of thousands, cached at important points along the defences as if the defenders were prepared for a massive siege and attack.

After breakfast, I came in here again. There were a few things to do and then I revised my Welsh, seeing as I’m going to be out early tomorrow morning.

Rosemary sent me a message or two today to ask me a couple of questions. I forgot to mention yesterday that she had also ‘phoned me for a “quick chat” which, while not one of our usual length, was only supposed to be “just a quick question”.

My cleaner turned up to sort out my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. The driver was early today because there were two other people to pick up, one in Granville and the other one in Donville-les-Bains.

The driver dropped me off first, and for a change, I was quite early. However, it counted for nothing because with a trainee nurse and no fewer that two trainee nursing assistants, I had to wait forty minutes before I was plugged in.

It was while I was waiting that I felt my morale disintegrating. And after a couple of hours of dialysis, I had another one of these fits that I have where I cease to function and just sit there, staring into space. This time, though, I closed my eyes and hoped to doze off, but that didn’t happen.

But you can tell that things aren’t going my way. We had a “satisfaction survey” to complete and when I read mine back after I’d filled it in, I noticed that what I had written was full of doom and gloom and pessimism. Still, I suppose that this is normal these days. The spark seems to have gone out, and gone for good too.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I finished. It was the young, chatty guy and at least, he cheers me up when he’s driving. It was pouring down with rain and blowing a gale … "yet again" – ed … so he dropped me off at the back of the building where my faithful cleaner was waiting to open the fire escape so that I could come in that way. It’s much less of a distance to walk.

After my cleaner had sorted me out, I warmed up the half-pizza that was left over from yesterday and ate that. And now, early as it may be, I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough for today.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Rosemary … "well, one of us has" – ed … she ended our little chat by saying "you are a real treasure".
And I quite agree with her. The way that I’m feeling right now, I really ought to be buried on a desert island somewhere.

Friday 30th January 2026 – JUST BECAUSE I …

… awoke this morning at 02:10 doesn’t mean that I was in bed early last night. I would have liked to have been, and I might even have been too, had I not fallen asleep on my chair during the evening. However, it was nearer 23:00 than anything else when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it looks as if dialysis is the catalyst for these early awakenings. It always seems to be following a dialysis session that I only have a very short sleep.

So last night, after lying awake for well over an hour (I was watching the clock), I must have gone back to sleep at some point because the alarm awoke me at 06:29.

As seems to be the case these days, it took an age to sort myself out and crawl out from underneath the covers. In fact, I was giving serious thought to abandoning these 06:29 starts and setting the alarm for 07:15, today and for the future, but I still harbour faint hopes of being able to pick up my old lifestyle at some point.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up and then went for my hot drink and medication. And I do like my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

I’d received some kind of offensive e-mail from some kind of organisation so I was determined to sit down and reply. I’d been thinking for quite a while how to do it but eventually, I had some kind of idea formulated in my head. There was a young child, who was a cousin, who was in the house with us at the time so I sent her on a little errand to fetch a book, to fetch some paper and to fetch something else, and I said that she could help me write a reply. We sat down at the table, but for some reason, she was at the far end and I was at the other. There was a huge tablecloth on the table and as I tried to write, the pattern on the tablecloth was preventing me from writing on the paper so in the end, I had to roll it back. I began to write, and made three or four attempts but I couldn’t find the correct kind of words. All the time, this girl was sitting at the far end of the table. In the end, she asked if she could come and sit up near me. I said that she could, so she came up and climbed up onto the lorry that was parked next to me, opened the door and sat on the back of one of the front seats so that she was level with me at the table. Then I sat down to write out this reply. Even then, I couldn’t seem to express exactly what I wanted to say. I could see myself sitting there for hours trying to formulate some kind of response with what I had going around in my head previously for ages.

In fact, I have actually had such an e-mail, and I’ve been planning for some of yesterday evening and much of the day in order to make a suitable response. Why my cousins should appear, though, I don’t know. That’s twice in a week or so, and I haven’t really paid them much attention in the thirty or forty years before that.

As for the lorry, that was an extremely surreal situation. And I can see it now. It was either a Thames Trader or a Bedford S-series and was painted olive green.

But there was also something else about another one of my cousins who had left school. I enquired whether she had found a job yet. The response was “well, she doesn’t come from a very well-motivated family, does she?”. But I reminded whoever it was speaking that a couple of her elder brothers had actually gone on in life and started their own business so they were certainly well-motivated, and so were one or two others, so I didn’t really think that it was fair to pick on the younger ones like that.

And that’s perfectly true too. Two of my cousins, having left school with no job and no prospects, joined the Army and served under fire in Northern Ireland. On demobilisation, they went to work for a roofing contractor in Nantwich, and within a couple of years, they had their own roofing business. My niece came across a third who had been in a similar situation after leaving school. However, when she met her twenty-odd years later, she was running her own contract cleaning company. So even if their family environment had been non-motivational, they certainly weren’t.

But as I said, where do my cousins (my father’s sister’s children) come into all of this?

The nurse blew in quite early today to see to my feet, and he didn’t hang around at all, which suited me. I could crack on and make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

We’re now quite close to the end, going through the appendices. We’ve finished plants, animals and humans, and we’re now on coins. And once more, I must confess to having had a laugh at James Curle’s tale of cataclysm at the end of the occupation, as I mentioned yesterday.

He talks about the abandonment of the fort and in particular, "the bodies of unburied men". According to the anthropologist to whom he sent all of the human bones that he found, they related to just ten individuals, most of whom were in pits or ditches. Of those that were identified, two were children, three were women and four were men, and only one showed any signs of battle damage. That’s not, of course, to say that the others did not die a violent death – just that the parts of the skeletons recovered show no evidence of it.

The passage on sheep is interesting too. The bones recovered seem to relate quite closely, if not exactly, to the Soay sheep, the feral sheep on the island of Soay in the Outer Hebrides. As long as there have been written records – over a thousand years – there is no evidence of anyone having introduced a different breed of sheep to cross with the feral sheep there, so they would seem to be truly Neolithic sheep.

We’ve now started coins, which is interesting. And this is how a lot of dating of sites can be done. For example, if you find a coin dated 120 AD underneath a Roman road, you know that the road can’t be any earlier than that date. And successive coins (and pottery, of course) in successive layers can further help in dating.

After breakfast I came back here, and the first thing that I did was regrettably to doze off until about 11:00. I really was tired.

And then I had to chase up the comptes rendu of the aborted fibre-optic installation so that I can go and sit on the building’s management committee and make them pay attention to what’s going on.

Next task was to track down some music for the next radio programme, and if this lot isn’t going to be an obscure collection of songs, I don’t know what is. It took hours to track down everything that I needed, reformat, remix and edit it, pair it and segue it.

There were the usual interruptions too. My cleaner came in to do her stuff and she brought me a new pair of slippers, seeing as my old ones had died a death. We went for a stroll down the corridor to see what was going on in the technical zone too.

Then Rosemary rang. "Do you have a minute or two?" And so, one hour and twenty-two minutes later …

There was even time to write some of the notes for this programme, and with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, I shall finish it tomorrow.

Tea tonight was vegan sausage, baked beans and chips. Proper beans too, not ones that I made. The sauce on those that I made was quite good but it was the beans that were wrong. I’ll buy a tin of French baked beans with my next order to see what they are like, and if they aren’t up to much, I shall have to bite the bullet and buy a tray of real beans online, unless any of my British friends are passing a supermarket on their way here sometime.

There’s one thing about this meal, and that is that it seems to be the only food that I enjoy these days. And as it’s packed with protein and fibre, especially when I drop a handful of vegan cheese into it, it’s quite a healthy food.

So on that point, I shall clear off to bed ready for a good start tomorrow (I hope).

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sheep on the island of Soay … "well, one of us has" – ed … they are in fact a protected species, classed as “endangered” by UNESCO.
And as with most endangered species, they have to be counted every year. However, quite rarely for an endangered species, there has NEVER been a recorded tally of their numbers in the UNESCO yearbook.
One day, at a European Union meeting, I met a representative from UNESCO, and I asked him about it.
"Well, we do send people there" he said "but they don’t come back and we have to go to look for them"
"And do you find them?"
"Ohh yes, they are always there, but the task is never completed"
"Why’s that?" I ask
"Well, they only ever get as far as ‘sixteen’ or so, and then they always fall asleep."

Thursday 29th January 2026 – I SHAN’T BE …

… sorry to crawl into bed tonight. I’ve no idea what’s going on but yet again, I’m thoroughly exhausted and it’s still quite early.

It might be something to do with the late night that I had last night. Having fallen asleep in the chair while I was typing out my notes, I ended up in bed round about 23:45 and that’s much later than I would have liked.

As well as that, it took a while to go off to sleep too and although I was fast asleep when the alarm went off this morning, it wasn’t actually much of a sleep.

It took an age to haul myself out of bed this morning and stagger off into the bathroom where, as well as the usual good scrub up, I had a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me this afternoon.

After the medication and the hot drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at the top of a really, really steep hill. There had been a gale warning of winds and I decided that I’d head down in my car into the valley. But I thought that I’d roll it down and see how quickly I would arrive at the bottom. While I was doing that, there was a gale warning from the UK coming through on the radio. It was calling all owners of light boats to head in to shore and to keep out of certain rivers. It was even listing the registration numbers of some. But halfway down, I saw a speedboat coming up the hill at an incredible rate of knots. I stopped to watch it, and it looked to me as if it was completely out of control. It came to a halt, and there was a guy slumped to the side of it in overalls. It looked as if his head had split open and there was blood everywhere. He was moaning. My cleaner, she asked him what was the matter and he mentioned the name of some waterfall, pointed to it in the distance and muttered something. She said to me that it sounds as if he’s had a collission with another motor boat at the waterfalls and that he’d come down. I asked her to repeat the name of the waterfall but I didn’t understand it. Anyway, I dialled 15 for the emergency ambulance. When they asked me where the incident had taken place, I asked my cleaner again to give me the name, but I still didn’t really understand it. But somewhere along the line in this dream, I’d been going through a box. There were all piles of old car radios and speakers and things in it. I managed to make two of the radios work again and when I went to pull out another one, it was actually playing all by itself. I showed it to whoever I was with – it might have been Percy Penguin – but she didn’t seem to be in the least bit interested. There was some kind of design on it as if it was the front end of a car with two pop-up headlights that were popped up, and a kind of pop-up clock on the top of the bonnet by the windscreen, but instead of facing into the windscreen, it was facing out. I was trying to identify which car this was when it drove off and disappeared round the bend.

That dream sounds as if it might have been extremely interesting. However, I’m not convinced about all of the blood that there must have been, given how I feel when someone begins to talk about blood and gore.

However, I have been on the top of this hill before during a dream, and on more than one occasion too.

As well as that, there are quite a few old car radios and speakers around in the barn on the farm. Whoever inherits or cleans out the farm after I’ve gone can make quite a few bob selling them on the retro market to owners of old, classic cars. And that’s one thing that worries me – that someone with no idea of what there is down there on the farm will just tip it all into a skip and send it down to the déchetterie, throwing away a fortune.

The nurse turned up as usual and moaned at me for wearing the same face mask for a couple of days. He thinks that I ought to wear a different one every time someone new comes to the building. That’s all very well, but just how am I supposed to be able to go out and buy a supply?

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

The book is drawing to a close now. There are just the appendices to read, the reports of the objects that he sent away for specialist examination.

His conclusion, though, is fascinating. Apart from the five or so different stages of rebuilding, he’s identified three separate phases of occupation. The first came to an end round about 90 AD or so, when there seems to have been a dramatic withdrawal to the south. The second period was round about 138-140 AD when Lollius Urbicus passed by on his way north to what became the Antonine Wall until, according to builders’ marks on some of the stones, round about 158 AD. The third period was a rather hurried reoccupation sometime later and which ended in a cataclysm round about 180 AD.

As James Curle puts it, "a tale of buildings thrown down; of altars concealed, thrown into ditches or into pits, above the bodies of unburied men ; of confusion, defeat, abandonment ; of a day in which the long column of the garrison wound slowly southward across the spurs of the Eildons, leaving their hearths deserted and their fires extinct."

But who says that archaeologists have no sense of humour? Towards the end of the book, he can’t resist a sly dig at one of his contemporaries by quoting a speech that the latter had made when discussing jewellery, clearly without thinking. "That these chains were in use among the Celtic peoples during the first two centuries before and after our era."

Back in here, there were things to do and then I attacked the radio programme on which I’d been working. It didn’t take long to finish either, and I spent the rest of the morning in the unlikely pursuit of tidying my bedroom.

My cleaner was late arriving to apply my anaesthetic, but she didn’t hang around for very long. That left me some time to make a start on tidying up the kitchen, but the early arrival of the taxi caught me in flagrante delicto, and I had to clear off.

On the way to Avranches we had to stop at Champeau to pick up someone else and even so, we arrived at dialysis earlier than usual. It goes without saying that there was an issue with one of the patients and what with a new starter nurse learning the ropes, I was no earlier being plugged in.

Once the machine was off on its travels, I was left pretty much alone. The new nurse asked me a few times if I was OK but apart from that, no-one came to see me.

And with a new starter, it took me quite a while to be disconnected while she ran through her procedures. And with havin gto drop someone off at Genets on the way back, I was late returning too.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and after she left, I made tea. A taco roll with kidney beans accompanied by pasta and veg. And it goes without saying that a lot of it ended up in the bin. I couldn’t face it all.

Now I’m off to bed, hoping for a good sleep. I really do deserve one at some point. But having just fallen asleep for fifteen minutes, I’m really at my wits’ end about this.

But seeing as we have been talking about the new nurse at dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I arrived, she was busy chasing a patient down the corridor, brandishing a pair of scissors.
"No, no!" cried the supervisor. "I said ‘remove his spectacles’".

Wednesday 28th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… one of my very rare culinary disasters this evening, and a pile of food ended up in the bin, much to my regret.

Still, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make any mistakes. I simply learn a lot of lessons, and some of those lessons can be expensive.

However, it is a symbol or an emblem or something of just how my day has gone today. It’s not been very good at all.

Last night was, however, quite interesting. By the time that I’d finished my notes and done everything that needed doing, I still wasn’t at all tired. So instead of going to bed, I dictated ALL OF the radio notes that were written but outstanding.

That was one job very well done, although it will probably need a lot of editing because I can only keep on going coherently … "!!!!" – ed … for so long.

Eventually, I did manage to make it into bed, something like round about 01:00, and I did actually manage to fall asleep.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still asleep, and it really was a battle to leave the bed. In fact, I was in two minds whether to reset the alarm for 08:00 and go back to sleep, but that’s not getting the baby bathed, is it?

Eventually, rather later than usual, I staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went for my hot drink and medication. And Bane of Britain strikes again! The antibiotics that Emilie the Cute Consultant has prescribed for me and for which I’ve been waiting for so long are exactly the same as she prescribed for me last time and I had half a box left from then.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

I’d been let out of hospital and ended up in Rope Lane opposite The Vine or a little further into Shavington from there. I was sitting down, working on the computer, doing things. It was taking me ages, but I was enjoying it, so I carried on. When I’d finished, I suddenly thought to myself “why is it that I have so much trouble standing up from some places, yet when I’m sitting at the edge of a pavement, I can stand up comparatively easily?” So I tried it again because I had to move – I’d finished what I was doing. I found that although it was very ungainly and very unsteady, I could actually rise to my feet and use my crutches to hold myself. I thought that this was totally strange because a pavement is only three or four inches high, and I can’t rise up off a chair that’s, I dunno, twenty inches high. I was staggering around on my feet with my crutches, trying to find my equilibrium, when a huge lorry, a tanker, roared past me while I was in the middle of the road. I had no idea that he was coming until I heard his engine noise a second or two before. It was dark and he had absolutely no lights on, so I certainly wouldn’t have been able to see him. I set off to walk, leaving my things behind, into the centre of Shavington because there was something that I had to do. There were all these people, standing by their gates in the dark like ghosts. It turned out that there had been a general order to release everyone from hospital, so they were all waiting for their family members to arrive. But it was extremely eerie, the way that they were standing there like that. I must have done what I intended to do because I found myself back at a pub somewhere. This is where I was living for the moment. I remember thinking that the first thing that I need to do is to buy some credits, although I didn’t say what credits they would be. I remember thinking how lucky I was to have a place here because it was most convenient for me for this and for that. As I went in, I couldn’t decide whether I had all of my things with me or not, whether I’d gone back to where I’d left them to pick them up or not. I just simply couldn’t remember.

If only I could stand up straight from sitting down at the kerb. These days, I have to be almost vertical before I can stand up at all.

But this dream looks as if it carried on from the previous night, with me leaving my things behind as I went off to do something else. And another anxiety attack at the end to round it off.

Being in Shavington is a common theme these days, but the wraith-like people waiting at their gates is something different. It really was eerie.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort me out. Today, he behaved himself, which suited me much better. He also didn’t stay long, which suited me even more. I could make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

James Curle is today talking about ornaments and jewellery. Not that it holds much interest for me, but I waded on just the same. It’s interesting though, to note that he refers Celtic art to Roman Art in this respect

Back in here, there were things to do, which unfortunately didn’t include watching last night’s game between Stranraer and Clyde because it had been postponed. It did, however, involve telephoning the taxi company about a trip out on Tuesday next week. Two, in fact, but they knew all about one of them already.

Once I was up-to-date, I attacked the next radio programme. I managed, not without a great deal of difficulty, to find all of the music that I wanted. It’s now all reformatted, remixed, edited, paired and segued, and most of the notes have been written.

In fact, I could easily have finished it all, but there were several interruptions.

My faithful cleaner came in twice. Firstly, to bring in the next month’s supply of disgusting drinks, and secondly, for me to try on a new pair of slippers, as the pair that I’m wearing is falling apart. The slippers that she brought are, regrettably, too small, so I shall have to persevere with those that I have for now.

She did, however, bring me the post, which included a letter from the Province of New Brunswick in Canada.

Every year, there’s a Government exercise that makes an official revaluation of property in Canada. Generally speaking, it’s usually in the region of a handful of per cent, but in 2025, the increase has been a whopping, massive TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT.

Over the last year, property prices in Canada, especially those close to the border… "and there’s nowhere closer to the border than your place" – ed …, have gone through the roof as millions of Americans are fleeing across the border into Canada, seeking asylum.

And that reminds me – any of my friends living in Great Satan who wish to flee north of the border are more than welcome to install themselves in my place while they sort themselves out.

A third interruption was much more disappointing. Once more, I crashed out without realising that I’d gone, and I remember nothing whatever. And by the time that I awoke, I’d been out for over an hour.

It looks as if I’m heading back to the old, dark days before dialysis, something that I was promised would be solved by having dialysis. That was wishful thinking.

But while I was asleep, I’d been on my travels again.

This afternoon, I was in charge of some kind of hostel somewhere. There were all kinds of different people in there. While I was doing some work in my room, I heard someone shout at the top of their voice to someone else that he was “nothing but a dead-beat rock star”. I knew who the victim of that shout was but I went to find out who it was who had shouted it. In the end, someone gave me a name and I knew who her friends were, so I went to track them down and asked them if “such and such a person” was there. They said that she wasn’t so I told her that I had heard a comment that had been made, and as soon as that girl appeared, they were to present her to me. On the way back, I saw the victim come in. He was with a group of other people. As he approached his room and the other people left, I asked him if he could spare a minute. I went into his room with him and he had some kind of minder with him. I told him that I’d heard this outrageous remark and I was ashamed of it. I wanted to apologise on behalf of whatever the institution was, and that I’d taken steps to identify and speak to the culprit concerned. At that point, he broke down in tears and told me that he’d had a really bad time, and that there was only one album, an album called THE CUTTER AND THE CLAN by Clannad that had actually saved him from something serious. I replied that I understood exactly how he felt because there were several albums that did exactly the same thing for me. But it really was an appalling comment to make and I really was offended and quite angry by it.

“The Cutter and The Clan” is actually by Runrig, not Clannad. But in a dream, it can be by anyone at all and it makes no difference.

There are actually several albums that can change my mood in the drop of a hat. But usually they plunge me into a deep depression. It’s a very rare album that can lift me out.

And as if I’m ever likely to be in charge of anything …

And then we had our culinary disaster.

A few weeks ago, I’d read about making spring rolls, so I’d bought all of the ingredients, even down to the brick pastry.

The filling of beansprouts, macedoine veg, onions, mushrooms and chickpeas with ginger, garlic and soy sauce was straightforward, but when it came to rolling it up in the pastry, the pastry just fell apart. It wouldn’t seal either, so the filling began to fall out after a couple of minutes.

It was such a disaster that in the end, most of it ended in the bin, and I made do with rice, veg and a ladleful of the mix. It was nice, even if it did give me severe indigestion.

But now, having already fallen asleep typing my notes, I’m off to bed, later than usual, of course, ready for dialysis … "I don’t think" – ed … tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about culinary disasters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling a friend about my very first culinary disaster years ago.
"I started off with a pan of boiling water and a load of diced vegetables.
I put the vegetables into the water and then threw in a hyena.
That was followed by an OXO cube, and finally, I jumped into the pot."
"How did it go?" she asked
"Not very well" I replied. "In fact, everyone said that I had made a laughing stock of myself."

Tuesday 27th January 2026 – AFTER THIS EVENING’S …

… little crisis that some of you may have caught and others of you may have missed, I’m trying my best to resume normal service right now.

In all honesty, this afternoon and this evening have not been very good at all.

The downhill spiral probably started last night. Early in the evening I was feeling reasonably OK but things rapidly fell apart, and I was in bed immediately after I’d finished my notes, leaving plenty of things undone that I ought to have done.

There was no problem going to sleep either, even if it was only 21:40, and … "for a change" – ed … I’m not going to come out with any nonsense about “as I have said before …” because you are probably as bored reading it as I am of writing it. But anyway, at 02:43 …..

So there I lay, tossing and turning, thinking that even in my ambition to make an early start, this is still far too early, so I turned over and tried to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off, I was talking to my aunt in London. I’d been staying at my youngest sister’s, and I’d had one of those fits that I used to have years ago when I’d just switch off, lose all energy, lose all motivation, and have to go to bed. I remember my bedroom at my sister’s being in a really disgusting state, but in the morning, I set out and ended up back home. I remembered nothing whatever after that except that I vaguely heard someone coming into my bedroom, trying to shake me awake but not being able to do so, then going back downstairs again. When I awoke, my room was in an even worse state. I couldn’t find my clothes, I couldn’t find anything, there was that much rubbish and dirty, sweaty stuff all over everywhere. I dressed and went downstairs, and my aunt was there. I apologised. I said “I must have given you a dreadful fright”. She replied “I wondered what on earth was happening”. The first thing that I did was to go to see my youngest sister who was here, and apologise to her for how things were. Then I went back to talk to my aunt again. She told me that she was now living in an old people’s home in Brent and asked me to smell her arm. I smelt this perfumed hand cream and said “owww, we don’t get that for less than twenty guineas per ounce, do we?” in a very affected posh London accent. She then laughed. She was telling me about other people whom she’d met when she lived in the Barbican who had now died, and I must have misheard something because when I said “yes”, she looked at me and said “so you don’t speak English then?”. She also made some kind of remark about my clothes. But I noticed something, that the whole living room had totally changed round. Nothing was in its correct position, everything was completely different. She said that she’d seen a poster on the wall saying to ring someone. She’d ‘phoned that person when she saw the poster and that person had asked if she knew where my niece’s husband’s skis were, which, of course, she didn’t. But neither did I. It was more-or-less at that moment that the alarm went off.

The significance of this will become apparent in due course, but anyway, I’m not likely to be staying at the houses of any of my sisters. My aunt, though, was a different matter. For some reason, which I shan’t explain here, she was very fond of my eldest sister and me. When each of us was a teenager, she invited us down (at different times) to London for a six-week summer holiday. For me, it meant being armed with a bus rover ticket, an A-Z map and a pile of sandwiches, and I roamed aimlessly and endlessly all over the metropolis visiting all of the places about which I’d read, for I was a voracious reader when I was a kid.

Long after that, I’d still go down to see her, but it all stopped dramatically after a certain incident at a certain funeral, an incident that I thought was of the worst possible taste and which still leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth.

As for the devastatingly untidy rooms, that needs no further explanation.

Although I was feeling better, I had to struggle to leave the bed and even more of a struggle to stand up. I didn’t have the force to raise myself to my feet. But eventually I managed to head for the bathroom, stopping on the way to take some more bread out of the freezer, as I had forgotten last night.

After a rather cursory wash and scrub up, I headed into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication and then back in here to see if there was anything on the dictaphone.

I’d been staying the night at my eldest sister’s. When it came to morning, I came to pick up my things ready to leave. I had a few other clothes with me and one or two other things, a pillow, a quilt cover, bits and pieces of food. But I couldn’t find the coffee that I’d brought. Eventually, I found the coffee container in the washing-up, so we must have used it. That was all still wet and dirty and hadn’t been washed so I didn’t want to take it as it was. I’d have to come back for that. My sister gave me some biscuits and a few other things and I was loaded up like a packhorse. I really had trouble trying to carry these so I went outside and stood on the corner on the steps of the bank to put everything down to think of what I would do. In the meantime, a bank employee came up behind me, closed the door and locked it because it was lunchtime. Then an American friend and his wife came past. They were talking about an incident that had taken place where they had found this beautiful lake, but it turned out that they were right on a mortar range and all these explosions began to go off around them. I asked them if it was at Garrison in Colorado but they replied “no, it was somewhere in Florida”. I tried to continue to talk to them but they just disappeared. So with all of these things that I had, and there was some shopping to do on the way home for some coffee and I needed some ink for my computer printer, I thought that I’d never carry all of this so I left half of my things on the steps of the bank and walked off. I noticed that at the top of the Rue Couraye, one whole side of it had been demolished and they had begun to build something else with it all fenced off. I’d gone a couple of minutes when I thought “if I go on like this, I’m not going to be able to find my things when I go back. Someone is bound to have moved them”. I had to turn round and head back towards the bank. Somehow, I had to work out a way of how I was going to carry all of this at the same time and also go to do this shopping on the way home.

Seeing as we have just been talking about my eldest sister … "well, one of us has" – ed … why have my sisters suddenly started appearing during the night? What’s happening here?

But this is a strange dream in the sense that if I were heading home from the town, I wouldn’t be going up the Rue Couraye at all but in completely the opposite direction. Any demolition there wouldn’t surprise me, though. Our mayor has his delusions of grandeur about turning this town into a paradise for tourists, at the ratepayers’ expense, of course.

An anxiety attack at the end of a dream is nothing new either. We have dozens of these.

There was another dream too, but it is far too overly-political and I am doing my best, in these horrendous times, to keep politics off these pages.

The nurse came in to see me and to sort me out. His cheerful mood is keeping on going, although there were one or two things that shocked me and I was glad that he left. I hope that he will learn some good manners and behave himself tomorrow.

After he left, I made breakfast. Porridge, coffee and toast made with lovely fresh bread. And I could read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

James Curle is talking about horse harnesses now, which is not really my cup of tea. However, I … "as usual" – ed … was led up a side-alley where I ended up for quite a while, totally intrigued by the story of the Ring of Silvianus, said by some … "and hotly disputed by others" – ed … to have been the inspiration of the One Ring of TOLKEIN.

Back in here, I revised some more of my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And I do have to say that this was one of the best lessons that I have had. I did really well and I enjoyed it. If only they were all as good as this…

After the lesson, I tidied up a little in the kitchen and then in here after the mess that the technician had made the other day.

When my cleaner turned up to do her stuff, she shooed me into the bathroom for a shower while she changed the bedding so that I have nice, clean bedding today, and then she carried on with her stuff. We had a nice little chat afterwards for fifteen minutes and then she went on her way.

There were a few things left over from last night that needed finishing, and it was round about this point that my batteries began seriously to run down. I remember seeing 17:10 on the clock and thinking that I’d better stand up and go for my disgusting drink, but the next thing that I remember was it being 18:45 and I was slumped over the desk, head in the crook of my elbows.

What was I saying earlier about “those fits that I used to have years ago when I’d just switch off, lose all energy and lose all motivation, and have to go to bed”?

So indeed I climbed into my nice, clean bed, trembling as if there was an electric current running through me. And that was that.

At about 21:05, I awoke and by 21:45 I was sitting at my desk again. Surprisingly … "or maybe not" – ed … I was feeling hungry. It was far too late to think about making a meal, so I had a couple of slices of my emergency flapjacks.

Equally surprisingly … "or maybe not" – ed …there was something on the dictaphone from that couple of hours.

There was a European Union meeting taking place, with loads on international bodies present. I was in charge of part of the organisation so I was sitting right near the front with a couple of other people of my grade. Every now and again, I had to stand up and sort out some kind of problem, then come back to sit with my grade again. At one point, there was a huge disruption over on the far side so I went over to see what it was. It was someone from another multinational body having a huge row with a group of people. I made some enquiries about what the matter was but this guy then turned on me. He said that he was extremely disappointed because it seemed that he had been denied access to some part of the building or some part of the meeting. I explained something along the lines of “well, if he had been denied access, it’s not really my problem. I’m just here for the general organisation”. He flew into an absolute rage. In the end, I just turned my back on him and in the best Roger Daltrey fashion, I said “why don’t you just f-f-f-fly away?” and walked off. I went to sit back down again, but this time I sat in a different place which was right in the front on the corner of one of the aisles. There was then some kind of musical concert. I’d noticed that there were several groups of children from all over Eastern Europe present, and they all had musical instruments. One of the groups came forward – they were all in these East European peasant clothes, boys and girls, and the girls had a kind of fringe of gold tinsel or something which, just before they began to play, they pulled over their heads. I turned to the girl sitting next to me and said “I could think of plenty of people around here who ought to wear a mask like that”. After they played, I expected the next group to be called forward to play but instead, there was some kind of prize-giving. It was for the best instrument in this orchestra. The first one was awarded to a girl and the second instrument, it was a boy’s turn. The boy’s name was called, but another boy was extremely angry about this. He thought that he should have it and complained that there was some kind of feud against him. This was extremely embarrassing for this meeting to hear this high-pitched discussion/argument going on. As the presenter was finishing this particular presentation, he then began to introduce a couple of very small children to the crowd. Then he introduced another young girl who was walking past. I began to think that this is going out of hand now. If he’s supposed to be presenting prizes for these instruments, he should get on with it. If there are other groups waiting, he should let them get onto the stage and do their bit rather than him trying to monopolise the whole evening. I wondered if I should be intervening at this point.

This reminds me of when I worked for this bizarre American company in Brussels and we had a big international meeting to organise. And I distinctly remember at least one attendee being most offended by something, to the extent that he stormed out. Roger Daltrey said, of course, “why don’t you all f-f-f-fade way?” but nevertheless, I’m pleased that I came that close in a dream.

As for the kids, I’ve no idea where they fit in, although I do recall a certain incident at Primary School … And when I was on my peregrinations around Eastern Europe in the past, I saw plenty of kids in local peasants’ dress and I always thought that, no matter who they were, they all wore it very well.

So having written my notes and finished off what needs doing, I’m off to bed where, if I’m lucky, I may even be able to sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my family … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s totally untrue to say that I’m estranged from them.
In fact, I told my friend that I’d sent them a lovely parcel for Christmas.
"Did they enjoy it?" she asked.
"Unfortunately not" I replied. "The Bomb Squad managed to defuse it before they could open it."

Monday 26th January 2026 – AS I SUSPECTED …

… when they weighed me at dialysis this afternoon and calculated the figure against the dry weight figure the last time that they calculated it, there were just 19 grammes to remove today.

Telling them that I’ve eaten next-to-nothing this last week or so cuts absolutely no ice with them. Their calculations must be correct, and that’s all that counts. It’s a far cry from the days when they were taking out 2,500 grammes three times per week.

Last night, though, as I said, I did manage to eat something, even if it was only half a small pizza. And I still managed later to end up being late finishing off everything. Nothing that I seem to do makes any difference.

So it was not far short of 23:00 when I went to bed, and once again, it seemed to take forever to go off to sleep.

Even then, I remember it being something of a turbulent night, not being able to settle down. However, I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed this morning but, with so much to do, I left the bed … "eventually" – ed … and headed off into the bathroom. And I do have to say that I was feeling rather better than I had just recently.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my hot drink and medication, and then came back in here to see where I’d been during the night.

On a eu un deuxième .. – what am I doing, talking in French? We had a second lockdown and everyone was confined to home again. The first couple of days, it didn’t bother me at all and I had plenty of things to keep me occupied. But after a while, I began to feel that I had cabin fever, so I thought that I’d take advantage of the calm by going out for a walk. So I left my house, which was a little terraced house in a pedestrian area and began to walk towards the village square. The first thing that I noticed was a hairdresser’s, with the bust of a woman in a window, with some long, flowing hair on it and a sign “with sadness after 109 years”. However, the hair didn’t resemble at all anything of any woman of that kind of age and even in the 1960s when this style had been the rage, that woman would still have been well over forty and that didn’t look right at all to me. There was another terraced house with a white stucco front and no window, with newspaper cuttings on the front. While I was reading these newspaper cuttings, a couple more people came past so I ended up following them, only to be sidetracked again by some more press cuttings pasted on the end wall of a house as we turned the corner. Having turned this corner, I walked about another hundred yards and found myself in the village square. Across in the corner was a building that I recognised. Although it looked like the village hall, it was in fact the local supermarket. People were queueing to go in, with several people loitering in the vicinity, looking as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether to join the queue or not. I was debating whether to join the queue, to go into the supermarket just for a walk around and maybe pick up a packet of biscuits just for some comfort food when suddenly an enormous dogfight broke out between two big dogs. Neither of the owners of these two dogs could seem to control it. In the meantime, there was a radio broadcast about some event that had taken place. It was on the Saturday in September, a week before the cup final involving Seraing. But there would be no cup final taking place in September – the new season should be well under way so I wondered just what this news broadcast on the radio was all about.

This reminds me of the first lockdown. I had a medical appointment that morning so had to go out, and I’ve never seen the town so deserted. I was half-expecting a tumbleweed to roll out of an alley. And do you remember having to queue to be allowed into a shop?

But leaving aside the question of a cup final in September, there would be no chance of Seraing competing in it. It’s one of the professional football clubs in Liège, although its fortunes have been such that it’s played in the amateur leagues on several occasions just recently. As for Seraing itself, it’s the home of the old Cockerill-Sambre steel mill, and it’s probably the grimiest, dirtiest industrial place that I have ever known

We were coming back from the Auvergne towards Brussels and we ended up going round the bypass of some small town or village in the middle of Burgundy. I pointed out one or two buildings to my companion as we were going past, and I was surprised that I hadn’t driven through the centre, because the centre was extremely old and decayed but was really mysterious and weird at the same time. It was a town that I really loved. At some point, a group of us, who were together by now, stopped and being accompanied by one or two other people, walked through the town and came to some kind of bar or café. My companion made as if to go into the bar so I opened the door for her. However, she stood there at the door and glared at me with some kind of really evil look in her face so I made a laughing remark that “some people don’t like having the door open for them these days”. The guy who was with us gave my companion €2:00 and asked him to buy her a can of pop. She went in, still glaring at me, ordered two small bottles of some kind of alcoholic spirit and another drink. As soon as she had these bottles, the ripped the tops off and drank them both at the same time, followed quite quickly by this glass of beer or whatever it was. I had to remind her about the can of pop, which she eventually bought, and we made our way back. I carried on walking and ended up in the town centre of this really large city. I was on my own and that began to suit me much better because I’d seen a side of my companion that I didn’t wish to see. I began to walk, but then I had some kind of epileptic fit and was bouncing around on all fours on a patch of grass at the side of a pavement. One or two people came over to see that I was OK. One of them was this companion, and she made some kind of crazy remark about taking the wrong acid, but all that I wanted to do was to be there and calm down and let this fit pass, then gradually be able to get up and carry on with my walk. I was in no mood for company at that moment.

We’ve been to this small town or village before, in a previous dream quite some time ago. It’s not actually a real town, although when I was asleep, I was convinced that it was. “It was a town that I really loved”, probably because I’m “extremely old and decayed” too.

And what was going on with my companion was really strange and unnerving, especially when I had this epileptic fit.

I was back somewhere around the centre of France last night. I was in another small town. When I parked the car, I had a walk around the town to find out where the strongest radio signal was. It turned out to be right outside this doctor’s surgery place so I went in there to sit down, thinking that this would be a good place to wait in case anyone wants me on the radio. There were a couple of other people in there. The doctor came out and instead of inviting them into his room, he began to give them a medical examination right in front of me. I thought that this was totally wrong. He tried to make me move so that this patient could lie down where my chair was so I told him that there was another chair over there that he could use. He took this woman over to this other chair. All the time that I was sitting there with this mug of coffee and a young girl came in. She was looking for a place to sit so I asked her to sit next to me, and we began to chat. At that moment, my brother came in and he began to make some really sarcastic comments about me and what I was doing and why I was chatting to this girl. In the end, I just stood up, picked up my mug of hot coffee and threw some of it into his face. Everyone stopped and looked, including my brother, but I just sat down and carried on talking. After a while he came over and apologised but I took absolutely no notice whatsoever and carried on with what I was doing. Then, this girl and I decided that we’d go for a walk together. I found out then that the reason why she’d come into the doctor’s surgery was also because of the strongest radio signal. We went for this walk and it went just around this particular area where the radio signal was. But shortly later, we found ourselves out of the town, sitting down in a lay-by. We were having something of a picnic. My brother came up again and dropped some kind of map on the table. He said that the next day, he was going on a tour around the power stations of Yorkshire, and mentioned one or two. I pretended to be interested, but I wasn’t really, and carried on talking to this girl. After a while, we decided that we’d both get on my motorbike and head back into town and make plans to do something extremely similar the next day

So not only do I Get the Girl last night, I manage to put the family in its place too. That’s a rare event for a dream and I wish that I could do it more often.

The bit about the medical examination in the public waiting room of the doctor’s surgery is interesting, and I would love to know the significance of it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on her last day before her week’s break. She took my temperature, and it’s now down to normal. She wasn’t impressed when I told her that I hadn’t taken the doliprane, but I stuck to my guns all the same.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

It’s not just pottery where the developments have been quite surprising. Talking about wheelwrights for example, he tells us that "at the bottom of Pit LXX, which, from its pottery, had evidently belonged to the later period, lay the remains of a large wheel. It had been, on the whole, coarser and heavier than the wheels found in Pit XXIII,"

It really is surprising, this. Two possible explanations may be that the potters and wheelwrights had so much work that they were obliged to recruit less-trained assistants or, chillingly, some kind of cataclysm in the Western Empire had seen the wiping out of the skilled craftsmen, leaving their untrained assistants behind.

There are probably a dozen other explanations too.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review before I sent it off, and then my Welsh homework followed it into the “out” box.

Finally, I could revise my Welsh but here wasn’t much time.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, followed by a neighbour who was also having a lot of trouble trying to have a fibre-optic connection installed.

There wasn’t much I could do for him, and after my cleaner left, I awaited the taxi.

It was early for once, but it made no difference as we had other people to pick up and drop off, so we were still pretty much at the same time as usual.

Here, I had my discussion about the weight. They were pretty much unmoved by my pleading, although in the end I managed to have it increased to 300 grammes – not a lot but nevertheless …

They left me pretty much alone today, although Emilie the Cute Consultant came to give me a prescription for these antibiotics – the original, presumably, being lost.

The taxi was waiting for me when I finished and, after dropping off someone in Sartilly, we came home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment. After she left, I warmed up the other half-pizza and ate it, even if I didn’t feel like it. And now, I’m off to bed. I’m absolutely exhausted and I’ve fallen asleep twice already

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pleading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked a friend why my pleading never seemed to work.
"Let’s face it" he said. "You’re such a miserable pleader."

Friday 23rd January 2026 – EVEN AS I TYPE …

… these notes, I really ought to be making tea. But the truth is that I have a churning stomach right now and running through a list of possible menus that I might eat, there isn’t one that appeals to me. All it seems to do is to make my stomach churn over even more.

As well as that, although I’m feeling somewhat better than I did this time last night, I’m still feeling a lot worse than I ought to be, so the aim is to do what I have to do as soon as I am able to do it and then head off to bed again, in the hope that yet another good sleep will do me some good.

Not like yesterday, which, despite my early, really early night, didn’t go according to plan.

As I mentioned yesterday, despite going to bed at 19:25 or thereabouts, I was awake again four hours later. And although I said that “I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep”, I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and showing no sign of dropping off.

At some point though, I must have gone back off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm, and it took me completely by surprise. And I must admit that I have never felt less like leaving the bed as I did this morning. It took me an age to rise up to my feet and head off to the bathroom. As a result, I was running really late for everything else.

In the bathroom, I changed my clothes, having been in the same clothes without a change for forty-eight hours and I washed my undies. I like to keep on top of my clothes like that, having spent years living out of a suitcase. And then, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the Soviet Union last night in my van. There had been some kind of concert supposed to take place, so I was in this village or small town down in the south of the Soviet Union on my way to Asia and I bumped into these two American girls who were also going to this concert. We went into this room and there were probably thirty or forty people standing around. So we sat down and waited for something to happen. We were expecting this music concert and then perhaps a discussion about what came out in the songs, that kind of thing. But I fell asleep, and when I awoke about ten minutes later, everyone else was asleep too except these two American girls. They were looking at their watch and one of them said “well, we may as well go. There’s a bus back to the USA in an hour. In the end, the three of us left, with all these other people asleep. Outside, there was plenty of snow, and we walked, and where the bus was due to be picked up was at this car park and there were two white MkIII Ford Zephyrs there with the word LEI written on the badge instead of “Ford Zephyr”. The girls went to stand there, and in the end, I invited them to come with me to Asia, but they were reluctant. They asked me if I’d ever been there before. I replied “no, but I have travelling in the blood”. I said that I’d been a taxi driver, coach driver, chauffeur and I’ve travelled the Northern Hemisphere all on my own in the past, and my father was a lorry driver so it’s all in the blood. But they were very reluctant, so in the end I left them and climbed over the roof of one of these Ford Zephyrs to head back to the van. I heard one of them say to the other one “it’s a shame that he’s such an untidy person” so I was thinking that maybe if I’d been more tidy, they might have come. I walked over to where I’d parked the van but couldn’t see it. This looked nothing like where I remembered having parked it. I thought that I must be in the wrong place so I tried to retrace my steps and ended up miles out of town trying to find the van. Where I was, all the snow had melted and it was an urban scene with trees in the distance. I wandered through all of these buildings, trying to find my way out to see if the van was behind them, but I couldn’t find my way out of these buildings. I was wandering around for ages. In the end, I found myself on a train. I was standing by a window, looking out to see if I could see the van somewhere, but I heard a commotion behind me. It was a teacher with a bunch of maybe ten girls. She’d gone to find the ticket controller. It seemed that some English-speaking people were sitting in these girls’ seats and she had to make them move. She spoke to them in English, so I spoke to her about the van. She said that she couldn’t help me. I need to see the police. I replied that the van hasn’t been stolen – I just can’t find it and in any case, I can’t speak Russian. I tried to speak some Russian from what I remembered but made a mess of it and she really wasn’t able to help me at all.

What a strange dream that was! For a start, I did learn to speak Russian, although I’ve forgotten most of it now. That started off when I was working for Shearings and I’d heard that they were trying to win a contract with an American travel agency to transport American tourists behind the Iron Curtain to “visit their roots”. It sounded probably the most fascinating coach-driving work ever, so I found a local Russian exile who taught me over a period of six months. When the company announced that they were looking for drivers to go behind the Iron Curtain, I naturally volunteered.
"Why should we select you ahead of everyone else?"
"Well, actually, I can speak some Russian"
It was the most fantastic work that I have ever done, and I enjoyed every moment of it, even if it did mean a relentless diet of wiener schnitzel.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dream, I could easily imagine myself at one time driving through the Soviet Union to Asia, somewhere like pre-revolutionary Iran, but the political climate east of Poland and Romania these days would put anyone off. And wandering around aimlessly looking for my van because I’d forgotten where it was parked is just like me, especially these days.

As for the white Ford Zephyrs, I couldn’t ever imagine them being in the Soviet Union, whether under a different maker’s name or not. They are much more likely to have been ZIL 111G vehicles, although if you were to see one of those, you would know that you are in trouble, because they were only ever given to members of the Politburo.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise this morning. Fitted with a mask, she stormed into the apartment and attended to my legs. She had a go at measuring my temperature with my thermometer and it’s still quite high. However, she doesn’t think much of my thermometer and she’ll bring her own tomorrow.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still discussing pottery, and now, we’ve moved on to how we are able to identify the different potters. There’s a fascinating list of potters’ marks and some equally fascinationg comments such as "this little fragment is an example of pottery classified by Dragendorff as ‘Dragendorff 37’, and there is a sample of this ware in a museum in (some obscure town in) Bulgaria."

Back in here, I had a variety of things to do, not having attended to my affairs as I should for the last forty-eight hours, and then I had last night’s notes to write.

They are now online, and then I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working.

In the meantime, I was having a good chat with Liz, who was giving me loads of motherly advice about how to find natural remedies to deal with my current health issues, and later on a brief exchange of messages with Rosemary.

There was football too. On Tuesday night Stranraer had played Queen’s Park of the second tier in the Scottish Cup on a swamp in a monsoon and had beaten the Spiders 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw during one hundred and twenty minutes.

In theory, they now have a match at Ibrox against Glasgow Rangers, but the behind-the-scenes and off-the-field controversy after the game will need to be resolved first before it’s confirmed.

But that’s about everything, really. I suppose that there’s much more about which to write, such as my faithful cleaner coming down to do her stuff, but instead, I’m going to bed. And good riddance to me. I really don’t know how to cope with this latest illness. It’s getting on my wick and it’s high time that something happens before I go berserk.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Soviet Union … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a man in the Red Square holding up a pice of paper.
I asked a local – a very vocal local yokel – what he was doing, and he replied "protesting, of course."
"But what about?" I asked.
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Why would he need to put that on his sign? Everyone knows what’s wrong! ".
Two minutes later, a police van pulls up and they drag him inside.
"So what’s he done now?"
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Everyone knows what he did!".

Thursday 22nd January 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

And for a change, I’m not going to start with “As I have said before …” because you are probably just as fed up of reading it as I am of typing it and as I am of it happening.

But I really was quite ill yesterday. As I mentioned, it was some time shortly after 20:00 (and had I not fallen asleep in the chair after I’d finished my notes, it might well have been not so long after 20:00 too) when I climbed into bed, fully clothed, threw the bedding over me and went straight to sleep.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 02:30.

After that, I lay there, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible and, if possible, go back to sleep but, I thought, without much success. However, it certainly wasn’t four hours later when the alarm went off at 06:29, so at some point, I must have dozed off to sleep for a couple of hours without realising it.

It took quite a while, much longer than it ought, to extricate myself from underneath the covers, and then I staggered into the bathroom. At least, I was feeling a little better than I was last night.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the USA last night and had ended up in a motel where I was waiting for my friends to arrive. The receptionist was a rather simple boy who couldn’t speak very well and I had a great deal of difficulty understanding him. There was an old black-and-white film on the television about a group of people, men and women, who were escaping from somewhere. One or two of them were caught and were rescued. The film was probably from the early 1930s and it was an interesting one so I was trying to watch it but this boy kept on interrupting me. He mentioned something and I said “well, that’s pretty small beer really” to which he said “yes, we have nine of those”. Then he had to open the door for the stairs up to the rooms to let a dog out but the dog came down, looked around, and went back upstairs again so he closed it. At some point, I’d left the motel and ended up in Montreal. I went to look at this huge basilica that was built of brick and was going to photograph it but I couldn’t find a place to park the car. Everywhere was “no parking” and there were one or two police patrols so I thought that I would have to come back and do this on foot again, but I couldn’t think when I’d be able to. I drove a little out of town to try to find a place to see if I could have a good view with a telephoto lens but I noticed that time was running on so I had to abandon that idea too. Then I was walking back to the railway station. The streets were crowded and I was trying to watch this film as I was walking but the film kept on freezing and when it began to move again, it had actually finished. It was really disappointing for me that I’d missed the end. But outside one of the big stores in Montreal was a guy with a barrow with all kinds of things on it from the store such as pencils, paper, writing pads, sweets and everything. As I walked past, I thought that maybe I’d buy a bag of sweets or something to take with me on the train. I thought that I had five minutes so I nipped into the store. It was something like Woolworth’s or British Home Stores. Despite a good search, I couldn’t find where all of the sweets were and I began to feel rather disappointed that I’d have nothing to take with me on the train.

There’s a story about a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I stayed in 2002, that relates to this, but the World isn’t ready to hear it and I doubt if it ever will be. As for the basilica, the big brick-built basilica is actually the Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur at Koekelberg on the northern edge of Brussels and although the view of it and its situation that I had in this dream is nothing like its actual situation, it’s very similar to its situation in a dream that I had a few months ago.

I’d been to Manchester with my niece’s eldest daughter. We’d been roaming around the different TV studios. We’d seen several performances being recorded and we’d even seen a football match taking place in one of the studios there between Llanelli and Y Barri. On the way back, we bumped into one of my father’s friends from Winsford who asked us if we’d had a good time, what we’d done and where we’d been. I noticed that gradually he was separating my niece’s daughter from me and having a very intimate chat with her at the other end of the street. I wondered what was happening between the two of them and what was going on.

This is a kind of situation that I could easily imagine, had it been a different girl (not a daughter of my niece) and a different friend of my father. But the indoor football match is “interesting”, to say the least. There are very few full-size indoor stadia in the World, and certainly none in the JD Cymru League.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual to sort out my legs. She was her usual chatty self but didn’t stay long. I could then go on to make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still telling us about pottery – it seems that there’s a long way to go in this. And I’ve learned two interesting facts about Roman pottery –
Firstly, pottery from the earlier period of the occupation at Trimontium (up to, say, 120 AD) is of better quality than the later period (from, say, 140 AD until 180 AD). That’s unusual. You’d expect it to be the reverse.
Secondly, even in 1909, the examination and cataloguing of Roman pottery had reached such an intense degree that even without the potter’s stamp on his wares, they were able in many cases to identify the potter, his workshop and even the period during which he was working.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. But I had noticed that my health was starting to slip back again and my cough, which had calmed down for a moment, had now returned with a vengeance.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for the taxi to take me to dialysis, all the time feeling weaker and weaker.

It was actually quite a struggle to walk to the car and even more of a struggle at the other end to walk to my bed. By now, I was freezing cold and eventually, they were obliged to bring me a blanket.

That made very little difference, so they took my temperature – thirty-seven point seven degrees. The nurse telephoned the doctor, who told her to check it again in an hour.

After an hour, during which I became even worse, she checked the temperature again. This time, it was thirty-eight point four degrees. She telephoned the doctor again and Emilie the Cute Consultant came a-running.

She performed various examinations (including a Covid test, which was negative) and took several samples and said that she’d let me have the results tomorrow and that she’d send any prescription necessary directly to my chemist.

When the taxi came for me, I could barely walk out to it. It was a most undignified stagger. However, I made sure that the driver wore a face mask because I don’t want to infect her with whatever I’ve caught. When I sent my message to my cleaner giving her an idea of when I’d be back, I told her to wear a face mask too.

While I was at it, I sent a message to Isabelle the Nurse to tell her to wear a mask when she calls tomorrow. I don’t want her to spread my viruses around her patients.

When I arrived back here, it was 19:20, and by 19:25, I was in bed, fully-clothed yet again. There was just time to take off my shoes, but no time (or desire) to make any food. Once in bed, my cleaner threw the quilt over me and went on her way, and I went straight to sleep.

Round about 23:30, I awoke, and thought that it might be a good idea if I were to post an entry to say that at least, I’m still alive. Alison must have read it quite quickly because we ended up having a little chat about our health problems. She has a few of her own right now. We’re all growing old and it’s sad.

After that, I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep.

But before I doze off again, seeing as we have been talking about face masks … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone why it was that doctors and nurses always wear face masks around the hospital.
"Is it to prevent the spread of infection?" they asked.
"Oh no" I replied. "It’s that if ever they make a mistake or do something wrong, you can’t identify them and bring them into Court."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: cleaner

Friday 13th February 2026 – DID YOU KICK …

Thursday 12th February 2026 – IT WAS HARD …

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