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Sunday 5th January 2025 – DID YOU ALL ..

… enjoy my radio programme this weekend? I hope that you all listened to it over the weekend. But if you missed it, shame on you, and you can hear it HERE and even dpwnload it it you like.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, today is the last day of my two weeks off work. Tomorrow the alarm goes on at 07:00 again and I start work, whenever the dialysis centre and my Welsh course (which restarts on Tuesday) let me.

So to celebrate, I intended to have a late night last night but I gave up the struggle round about midnight and crawled off to bed instead.

It was another hot, sweaty night after the Saturday dialysis session, as I have observed on several occasions. But I must have been asleep at some point because at 06:55 I was awoken by a phantom alarm call.

It was definitely a phantom call because I don’t have an alarm recorded at that time. Nevertheless, it certainly sounded like an alarm and I ended up sitting on the edge of the bed before realising that it was a false alarm, and once I’d realised that it was in fact a false alarm I went back to bed.

It goes without saying though that I couldn’t go back to sleep so at about 07:30 I gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

When the alarm went off I was at my desk working. I’d already had a really good wash and been into the kitchen to take my medicine so that I could have a good start to the day.

With time to spend, I had a listen to the dicaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was actually with a girl last night and I don’t know why because it was someone about whom I wouldn’t have thought anything in a million years. We were a couple. There had been something going on that had left everyone very dirty. It was an extremely messy day, something like that. At the end of it, I had to go somewhere so off I went. When I came back she was waiting. We ended up talking about our children although we didn’t have any at that particular moment. The plan was that we’d have two. She asked which one was going to be mine. I replied that it’s inevitable that it’s going to be a daddy’s girl, isn’t it? The assumption then is that she’s going to be a mummy’s boy. For some reason she quite liked the sound of all of that

“I was with a girl last night and I don’t know why”. … "Of course you do. Be your age!" – ed … But even though I might have known her in my dream, I don’t have a clue who she was now that I’m awake – if I really am awake right now. I keep on thinking that one day I’m going to awaken and it’s all, this last few years, been a rather unpleasant dream. But if I were to have had a daughter, my little princess would have been a daddy’s girl alright and been spoiled rotten.

And everyone very dirty? It sounds just like real life used to be, and I’m not talking about mud either. It just seems that a lot of smut has been wiped out of everyone’s mind these days compared to the good times that we had in the 60s and 70s

Did I dictate the dream about the children who used to go swimming with the whales in a swimming pool? … "no you didn’t" – ed … They launched some kind of fund-raising activity to raise funds and support the whales. It proved to be extremely successful so someone else organised a fund-raising activity. His aim was to provide food for the whales, to put something in their mouths, with the implication that they’d been doing this with these kids previously. For some reason that didn’t seem to be quite so popular as the previous one

That must relate to some news that we heard on the radio in the car about a big Marine holiday park closing down, and thousands of animals there are in danger. It’s all very well having these places closed down and I’m all in favour, but what becomes of the animals there? They can’t usually be released into the wild as they have no idea of how to fend for themselves.

And then finally Liz and I were back in the good old days of running “Radio Anglais”. It suddenly occurred to me one day that we hadn’t prepared a magazine for Radio Anglais for years. That was something that we used to do every couple of weeks religiously, to have something prepared and something organised. I wondered why it had suddenly fallen off the radar somehow. I had to have a sit and think about this – about how I was going to revitalise it and how I was going to restore it. We used to receive contributions from all of the other people working on the radio. What had happened that had stopped it? Should we go back and maybe restart it? Or is it a case of letting sleeping dogs lie? I remember being extremely perplexed and bewildered about this.

This dream was actually so real that I still can’t make up my mind even now that I’m awake whether it was ever something that we really did. It was actually quite disturbing that I found myself in such a state. It’s a long time since I’ve had such a vivid, realistic dream.

Isabelle the Nurse had a few more minutes to spare today and wasn’t in such a rush as usual. I suppose that with it being a Sunday the Laboratory is closed so there ae no blood tests. She spent her last week off working on her Carnaval float. It’ll be Carnaval Weekend sometime soon. She’s not telling me anything about the design of her float – it needs to be a big surprise for everyone.

After she left, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK Caesar is now back in Gaul suppressing rebellions and fading from our picture as other Roman Emperors discuss the problem of what to do with the Britons. The story is that now that Caesar has regulated things with them, they can import and export to Gaul and the port taxes for unloading and loading far exceed any tribute that might be demanded, so it’s best to leave things be for a while.

Our author has made several references to Strabo’s “Geographia”. Strabo was a Roman scholar who travelled extensively and over a period of about 30 years from 7BC to AD24 wrote a whole series of books about the places that he visited and also the places about which he had extracted information from other traveller. It goes without saying that a copy of all 17 of his books IS AVAILABLE ON-LINE so I downloaded them for future reference. The list of books to read is growing enormously right now.

After breakfast I made some bread – a loaf for the week to come and a bread roll for this lunchtime because there is plenty of soup in the fridge and it needs using.

So at lunchtime I had a bowl of leftover butternut squash and potato soup with a fresh bread roll straight out of the air fryer. Lunch doesn’t get much better than this. There are some leeks that need using so I imagine that I’ll be having soup next weekend too.

Once lunch was out of the way I had a relaxing afternoon, not doing very much at all. In fact, I was trying to design a 3D head from a couple of photograph. The head itself didn’t take too long but I still can’t produce an accurate nose and the more I try, the worse it becomes. I’ve already restarted three times because I’ve got myself into such a mess

At one point I switched it all off and went for a slice of Christmas Cake to raise my morale so that I could start again.

Tea tonight was a vegan pizza, and another good job that was. At lunchtime I’d taken the last helping of dough out of the freezer and once it had defrosted I gave it a good kneading and then rolled it out onto the pizza tray. This evening I almost forgot the olives on the pizza but luckily I remembered them on time

There’s no doubt though – I’m going to have to do something about my oven. This table-top oven is really not up to the job. When I finally do move downstairs I’ll certainly be having an enlarged kitchen complete with built-in oven and built-in microwave.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But that story about the Marine Park reminds me of the two rather large girls talking and having a drink in a bar in Bar Harbor, Maine. A local comes over to them and says "what a beautiful accent you have. I’ve not heard that before."
"Thank you" replied the girls
"Tell me" he continued. "are you two ladies from Ireland?"
"It’s ‘Wales’ actually" said one of them
"I’m terribly sorry" replied the man. "Are you two whales from Ireland then?"

Tuesday 31st December 2024 – BY THE TIME …

… that you lot read this, the old year will have gone out and it’ll be a new year. For many people it will be a new beginning too, but for many others it will be more of the same old routine.

25 years ago today we were eagerly awaiting the Millennium. I’d given an interview on Belgian TV (in Flemish, of course) a few days earlier and on New Year’s Eve I was sitting in a bar in a motel in a small town on an island off the coast of New Jersey.

We were partying, of course. I was wearing a hat to which I had tied a helium balloon. I’d tied the hat to me all the same with just enough string so that the hat, by virtue of the balloon, was floating an inch or so above my head and it looked really cool.

The Continental USA has five time zones and so we celebrated New Year for New York, then for Chicago, then for Denver, then for San Francisco, and finally for Anchorage.

Once we had celebrated New Year in Anchorage, we all trundled off to the all-night petrol station and convenience store down the road where we bought a big tub of ice cream and with a spoon each, we tucked in. Then a couple of us walked down to the beach and waited for the dawn to break and for all of the hope that we wanted it to bring.

But look at me now, 25 years later. Never mind crossing the Atlantic, I’m struggling to cross my bedroom and my best hope for the New Year is that they can somehow resolve the issue of this painful dialysis.

How the Mighty have fallen.

So if I have any advice for anyone in this coming year it is "if you feel like doing something, do it now, right now, before it’s too late. Because you become much more ill and infirm much quicker than you think."

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I stayed up last night, loitering around for my own pleasure reading a few web pages about this and that, although not about “the other” of course. That boat sailed a long time ago.

It was 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed and then I slept the Sleep of the Dead until the alarm awoke me. I hadn’t moved at all during the night.

When I awoke though I was in the middle of an exciting dream but the moment I went to reach for the dictaphone it all evaporated, every last drop of thought and that is really a tragedy. I only hope that it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA or Zero.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and sorted myself out, and then came back in here to wait for Isabelle the Nurse.

While I was waiting, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it from the night. I was in work again. It was one of the very last days of work before Christmas so we weren’t doing very much. We were sitting around, talking and playing some kind of game that went on round and round the building. after lunch, I was late back. There were already six or seven people in this group. Our boss was there, the big boss of the building. He told us that we may as well continue this game and he’d actually like to play it with us too, so he joined in. Just then, his ‘phone rang so he answered it. It was a woman, asking for permission to be in late tomorrow because her husband worked at Knorr and they were doing something at 09:00. He replied that that wasn’t a problem. Then what he said was that he had a whole host of adverts that he’d cut out of the papers and he was going to ring round and speak to everyone to find out who they were, what they were doing and whether we knew all about them. I had something of a thought myself because my ‘phone number was also in that lot. He made a start and I could see that he was coming closer to my number in this pile. I’d worked out what I was going to say, and that was that this was just simply a way that I could use as an aide-memoire to make sure that I’d filled in all my forms on time and sent them in, and that would be really all.

Whatever was going on in that dream, I can’t think of how it relates to anything that I might know, especially why Knorr should feature in it so prominently. But then nothing in my dreams ever makes sense – just like in real life, I suppose.

Later on, we’d been playing football in a 5-a side football tournament. We were waiting for our final matches to start. My brother told me that his match was in a couple of minutes. I said something like “so is my final match”. We went to our various respective areas of this field. I played my game and when I came back I couldn’t find my brother. I searched and searched but with no luck so in the end I went home. Being back home, first of all I was shouted at for being late and then shouted at for losing my brother but I told the story of the final games and I still don’t think that they believed me but they were becoming completely agitated. Just then we heard the front door downstairs open. We thought “is this him?” I looked out of the door and down the stairs. It was my old black cat. She sat at the bottom of the stairs miaowing for a couple of minutes. I kept on talking to her. In the end she ran up the wall and across into our room. I picked her up, stroked her and took her back into the room where my parents were. They seemed more relieved to see the cat than any news about my brother

This is what I call “unlikely”. There would be no chance whatever of my brother ever playing football. And being shouted at was nothing compared to what would have happened had I lost my brother somewhere.

It was interesting watching my old black cat climb up the wall but she is the only member of my family whom I would be pleased to see. Why the others keep on appearing so often is something that completely defeats me and I wish that they’d move out of my head and make room for some others to appear.

Isabelle was late today. First day back so I imagine that she had all of the blood tests and injections to do. But she was her usual chatty self and she complimented me on being the only person up here to have some kind of Christmas decoration visible to the public.

After she left I made breakfast, and that was when I discovered that I’d run out of bread and had forgotten to make any more yesterday evening. And so I had to have a quick breadmaking session first.

While I was waiting for the dough to rise I had breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing housing, coinage and religion but it is the “religion” bit that is the most interesting, and not for the more obvious reasons either.

It’s long-been a mystery to me why so many Welsh words seem to come from the Latin, even though the words describe some vital item that surely must have existed and had a name prior to the coming of the Romans. Anyway our author tells us, in an aside, that "Celtic religion, in so far as it was descended from the religion of the undivided Aryan stock, was fundamentally one with the religions of Italy and Greece ; and we might expect that it would resemble most closely the religion of the Italians, to whose tongue Celtic was most nearly akin."

There is a variety of early Italian languages, like Etruscan and Umbrian to name but two, that preceded the Latin language. And if the root of these words in common usage was derived from words in one of these early Italian languages that later influenced the Latin language, that would explain everything.

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The word for a snake in Welsh is neidr which sounds uncannily like “adder” and a river in Welsh is afon, pronounced “Avon”, so you can see that Modern English has been influenced by words from an ancient Celtic language. Why wouldn’t this work with any other languages?

After breakfast I carried on making the bread and by the time that I finished, I had the best loaf that I have ever made and I was really impressed with that. While it was baking I tidied up around the kitchen and regrettably, dropped and broke one of my best glass storage jars

Then I had to check the radio programme that I’ll be sending off later. And this is that mega-complicated one that took me weeks of thought and work to make. But listening to it, it really does work and there’s a pile of good stuff in it.

It features someone who was born in 1892 and probably never ever met a rock musician in his life but he’s an important personage in the story of rock music, and it’s well-worth a listen. So tune in to LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS on Friday or Saturday at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time, 15:00 Toronto time.

There was an unexpected visit today. The woman who is President of the Residents’ Committee and who helped me so much with the purchase of the apartment downstairs came to see how I was. She stayed for an hour or so too chatting away. And she was another one who admired my Christmas lights, so I had a moan to her about the lack of festive spirit shown by everyone else.

For lunch I tried one of my new flapjack slices and this batch is the best that I have ever made too. Pushing the mixture down tightly into the baking tray with a potato masher is definitely the way to go here.

My cleaner turned up today instead of tomorrow and helped me into the shower. And once more, it really was lovely. Only five months to go until I can move downstairs and have a real shower.

While I was showering she was cleaning so there’s a nice clean apartment and a nice clean me in nice clean clothes. How long all of that will last, I really don’t know.

Football was on next – Penybont v Cardiff Metropolitan, and once again at the vital moment Penybont threw away a two-goal lead. They went from 2-0 to 2-3 against TNS a few weeks ago and tonight, they went from 2-0 to 2-2. They have now been knocked off the top of the table.

A match played in a howling gale was always going to be a lottery but the Met, playing with the wind and a 6’4″ centre-forward in the second half managed the conditions much better and had Penybont under the cosh for most of the last 45 minutes.

If Penybont have any aspirations in challenging TNS at the top, they are going to have to look at the question of concentration much more closely. They can’t let matches slip out of their grasp like this.

Tea tonight was the last of the frozen wellingtons with a big pile of veg and gravy, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. But as for the veg, the roast potatoes and roast Butternut squash went down really well.

There are some leeks left so at the weekend, it may well be leek soup for lunch. There’s some butternut squash soup in the fridge for tomorrow.

So now I’m going to loiter around for a while before going to bed. Isabelle isn’t coming so I can lie in.
"I’ll give you a ring to see how you are tomorrow morning" she said instead
"No you won’t" I replied. "I’ll be in bed"
"I’ll leave it late then" she said. "About 11:30"
"No you won’t. I’ll still be in bed then!"

Anyway, just before I go, latest news from Bridgend in that Penybont FC’s dog walking service has collapsed.
"Why is that?" I asked my informant
"They have lost all of their contracts"
"What happened?"
"Apparently no-one is letting them take their dogs for a walk, seeing as how they are totally incapable of hanging on to a lead."

Sunday 29th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy yet again today, and in the kitchen is a pile of food, all busy cooling down.

However, it’s not without its downside. I have been on my feet since 10:30 this morning and I’m totally wasted. In both my knees I have a pain that I can’t describe and I’m in agony.

As well as all of that, when the Sunday alarm went off at 08:00 this morning I was already up and about, and that’s despite the very late night … "or early morning" – ed … that I’d had.

It was approaching 02:00 when I crawled into bed last night. After I’d finished writing my notes and doing my backing-up, I stayed up for quite some time looking for stuff on the internet and reading a few various website. I wasn’t in any hurry.

But once in bed I stayed in bed, fast asleep until something dramatic awoke me at 07:05. No idea what it was, but I do recall that I have awoken dramatically before at that time. There’s something in the area happening that’s disturbing me.

So having awoken at that unearthly time I gave up trying to sleep at about 07:40 and headed to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up.

Next port of call was the kitchen to take my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. I’m dictating into my hand again. I was down in Virlet last night at one of the big ruined houses on the land that I own. I was thinking of doing something on one of the plots there with one of the ruins so I went down to look. There were enough ruins there and enough plots of land so if necessary I could submit a planning application for each one and that way, see what happens and how things develop. Virlet in the dream was nothing like my place at all. It was like a place that we have visited before with a much more traditionally-rural area with fewer hedges, more-open fields and a kind-of metal fence with plenty of tracks criss-crossing the area. These ruins were behind my house but raised up slightly so that they overlooked it.

This is a place that we’ve visited before during the night. But a long time ago, I think. But for a fleeting minute it did remind me of the place where we squatted near Audlem that winter 1977/78. Or was it 1976/77? But in any case, going from living in a squat and in the back of a van, within two years I was living in a brand new two-bed semi in Winsford.

Later on, I was with my girlfriend last night. She was a small, dark-haired girl. We were wandering around somewhere near a hotel and we suddenly realised that my brother and his girlfriend were there. We decided to go along and pay them a visit. When we arrived, my brother was on the ‘phone. He’d advertised a couple of his things for sale and was talking to someone as if someone had rung up to enquire about one of them. Whilst he was speaking on the ‘phone I went to tickle him. That interrupted his flow and he was not impressed. His girlfriend was there, a tall willowy girl. My girlfriend went in the meantime to look at his books. She found a book that she didn’t like for various reasons and boohed at it. The two of us were on our way into town for a wander round, go for a meal, look at the shops. We mentioned it to my brother, and he and his girlfriend agreed to come. We left his hotel room and walked down the corridor. My girlfriend suddenly said “I’ve left my pen on your leather chair”. We agreed to come back for it later. When we reached the door (we were on about the fifth floor) we had to wait for the lift, or go down the steps. Of course I had to use the lift because I couldn’t walk very well. My girlfriend looked out of this door and just jumped all the way down to the ground floor. We thought that she was crazy. The other two dashed down the steps after her. What I did was to position myself on the edge of one of the stairs and push myself. After a couple of minutes I had enough momentum and could slide all the way down. There were all these football supporters on the steps and they all cleared off out of the way as I shot past. When I reached the bottom, some of them came over. They expressed their admiration of what I’d done. To me, it was no big deal. It was just a case of finding the correct position, but they were really impressed by me coming down all those flights of stairs by just sitting on the edge of a stair and sliding down. In the end the manager of one of the teams came over and told me that he would like to meet me in the boardroom on one occasion in the near future. I asked myself “what on earth have I started now?”.

This is obviously a dream because I cannot imagine any circumstance in real life that would make me want to visit my brother. And also I can’t imagine any circumstance in real life during which I would have a girlfriend either, but that’s another story.

Girlfriends going berserk wouldn’t be a surprise either – there were a couple of those, and “what on earth have I started now?” – there have been quite a few moments where I have said that to myself.

The nurse was late today – he’d had a lie-in. And we had the usual banal questions before he cleared off and I could bet on with things. I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing the Hallstatt community in Austria. This existed for about 800 years, from 1200BC to 400BC and is classed as one of the first of the modern civilisations, with a modern industrialised community.

It centres around an important salt mine and several settlements around there were continuously occupied over this period, and so it’s been possible for archaeologists to observe quite closely the transformation from the end of the Stone Age all the way through to the modern Iron Age.

It’s a fascinating subject, and I was lost for hours amongst the pages of various websites that I’d found where this civilisation was discussed.

Interestingly though, the site ended in disorder. We are told that "there was widespread disruption throughout the western Hallstatt zone" and that "many Hallstatt graves were robbed, probably at this time"

As to what happened round about that time,."the apparently largely peaceful and prosperous life of Hallstatt D culture was disrupted, perhaps even collapsed, right at the end of the period. There has been much speculation as to the causes of this, which remain uncertain. Large settlements such as Heuneburg and the Burgstallkogel were destroyed or abandoned, rich tumulus burials ended, and old ones were looted. There was probably a significant movement of population westwards"

There has also been a discussion about a Carthaginian named Himilco.

The story of the navigation of Pytheas around the British Isles and Iceland in about 325BC is well-known, but 200 years earlier, Himilco set sail from somewhere in modern Portugal to the British Isles to bring back the tin that could be found there, according to rumour.

And there’s no doubt that he succeeded too because his reports were found to be quite accurate. However he didn’t return because the journey completely frightened him. Instead, the tin from Cornwall was shipped across to France and came to the Mediterranean by land and river.

First task this morning was to make a bread roll. And then some soup using most of the butternut that is left. That was lunch, and I do have to say that butternut squash soup is delicious, especially with fresh bread warm from the air fryer. Even better, there’s some left over and that will do for New Year.

This afternoon I’ve been making chocolate, ginger, coconut and orange cake and another large helping of flapjack. It took ages but mixing the stuff in the food processor is definitely the way to go. That was a good purchase, even though it was expensive.

Some pizza dough from the freezer was defrosting through the afternoon too, and I made a really nice pizza for tea. My cooking is definitely improving, but I wish that I had a decent oven.

As for “licking the bowl”, what can I say? It was every kid’s ambition to do that whenever mummy was baking (except in our house of course) and I can understand why. This afternoon I enjoyed cleaning the cooking utensils by using my tongue and it’s surely the best part of the cooking.

So right now there’s plenty of flapjack for lunch and chocolate cake for dessert for the next couple of weeks.

Something interesting that I noticed was that my bit of ginger root has started to grow. I’ll have to find some soil in which to plant it, to see what happens

Right now though I’m going to finish my notes and then I have things to do, so it will be another late night.

But seeing as we’re talking about cooking… "well, one of us is" – ed … I remember one of my siblings ask my mother "mummy, mummy, may I lick the bowl?"
"No you can’t" replied our mother. "You flush it like everyone else"

Monday 23rd December 2024 – I HAVE DROPPED …

… my veggies all over the floor in the bathroom (where the freezer is) this evening.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another, isn’t it? I can’t ever seem to have a good day when something unexpected comes along to sink me without trace. I know that you lot think that it’s my own fault and I ought to be more careful, but you try carrying a saucepan of veggies when you have a crutch in each hand staggering along as best you can, with this stabbing pain going off in your heel every couple of minutes.

It’s not been one of my better days today unfortunately.

Yesterday ended rather better though. What with everything that I needed to do, as well as having a little relax after my hard day, I was quite late (after midnight, letting it all hang out in fact) going to bed. But once in bed, I went straight to sleep and didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off at 07:00.

At that point, there was a group of us, my father and there were many of his children. We were in the living room in Davenport Avenue, admiring his new sofa. It turned out that it wasn’t new at all but he’d actually painted it. He said that the reason why he’d painted it white was because that was the only colour that he had at the time. There was a problem with the record player. He had put on a CD and somehow it wasn’t playing correctly. I went to have a look at it and the metadata was all wrong for this Marillion track. I edited the metadata and the track began to play. I hadn’t really taken any notice of the fact that there was more music being played at the time. He wondered what on earth I’d done to try to start a second track off. I explained that I’d just edited the metadata and it played itself. There was plenty of room in the living room, which there wasn’t when we were kids. He asked me about a book. Someone had given me a book which was interesting or important and he asked me if I’d read it yet. I said “no, but that was the next book on the list for me to read”.

Now that’s what I call a nightmare if ever I were to have one. Me back in the family pile surrounded by various members thereof. And the chances of my father ever listening to or choosing to play a Marillion record would be considerably less than zero. As for the books though, the pile is growing daily and I think that even if I were to live to be 100, I still won’t have read them all. I’ve heard about people haunting a certain place and talking about their “old haunts” but I shall definitely be haunting somewhere where there are loads of books.

So I struggled rather unwillingly to my feet and crawled off into the bathroom to have a good wash ready for the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon, washing my undies for good measure, and also my trousers. I think that yesterday I ended up with more sugar on me than I did on my Christmas Cake.

In the kitchen I took my medicine and then put away all of my cooking from yesterday so that it’s out of reach from groping fingers. The other nurse starts his round tomorrow and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, he’s notorious for grabbing hold of my cooking.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. I was writing an essay on a certain painter for my school homework. The painter was mostly famous for having painted a certain group of religious people so I’d been tracking down these people, extracting little bits of their biography and checking to see whether the painter had included those particular scenes in his works. There were one or two that were represented so I went to write down something about one of the people and one of the works that had been done, but I couldn’t think of how to paraphrase a sentence. I was stuck in this paraphrase thing and it was very important for me to do it so as to avoid plagiarising the works of whoever it was who had written the original book. But it was terrible to be stuck like this and not be able to move forward in expressing myself.

That’s one of my recurring nightmares. With this new plagiarism software that Universities have, accusations of plagiarism are flying around like no tomorrow where people use phrases that just by the merest chance happen to be in some obscure book that no-one has read for 100 years. We had loads of arguments about this, especially when they tried to accuse a student of plagiarism by repeating a paragraph that had been used in another written document – which in fact he had written. There is no time limit on research, and facts unearthed in a previous project are just as valuable for repetition in subsequent research if they are still relevant.

But checking a biography is something that we learned at University. Whenever you are given a document, reading it is only the third thing that you do. Firstly, you check the author’s biography to find out on which side of the fence he is sitting, and then, more importantly, you find out who funded his research. Armed with those details, that’s when you read the document. The days when students would stay on at University as researchers doing a PhD or Masters are pretty much dead. Have you seen how much it costs to be a student doing research for 30 years? Nowadays, most research isn’t done in University labs but in labs owned by commercial interests who have their own business affairs at heart. The Government hasn’t realised that the imposition of University fees has killed off much of the country’s research.

So abandoning yet another good rant for the moment, Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance and sorted me out. We had quite a chat yet again because she wasn’t in such a rush this morning.

After she left, I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to be discussing the end of the Palaeolithic era and the arrival of the Neolithic era.

For someone so opinionated, he’s now stuck by the fact that he can’t work out if the British Isles were separated from the Continent by then or whether they were still connected. He’s identified that some species existing in the British Isles are extinct in the World, others have moved South, but many still remain. If some left, why did others remain while yet more species were being killed off? Why is there a distinct layer of earth between Palaeolithic remains and Neolithic remains? If it was a silt deposit from a great flood, why and how did it kill off some of those species, and how come the others survived?

It looks to me as if he’ll be completely tied up in knots before we go much farther.

The question though of why Palaeolithic tools and ways of life clung on longer in Britain than elsewhere may not necessarily be due to the separation of the British Isles from the Continent and the difficulty of Neolithic Man from arriving. It may well be that, quite simply, if a technology of whatever level is sufficient to provide for the needs of the people, why change? I’m still writing websites in HTML 5.0 and they work well enough. It’s only when something like a greater pressure from an increasing population comes along that new technology is considered.

Back in here I had things to do and once more, my cleaner took me by surprise when she turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches. And once she left I waited for my taxi.

We were three passengers in the car today – one going into Avranches centre and the third going out to somewhere in the back of beyond out towards Rennes. The new Social Security regulations are really biting, and I’m waiting for the first vulnerable person (like me, with no system of immunity) to catch some infectious disease.

Once again, I was last to be connected up and while the first pin that went in was totally, absolutely painless, the second one more than made up for it. But today’s nurse was Océane, and believe it or not, she held my hand while she was doing it. I’m not sure what she’s after, but I don’t have it any more, that’s for sure. Not that I’m complaining. Holding my hand is the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Obviously though, that stirred some jealousy somewhere because I ended up having a really long chat with – yes, you’ve guessed it – Emilie the Cute Consultant. And while she didn’t sit on the edge of my bed or discuss matters totally unrelated to my health, she exhibited a few of those timid, girlish mannerisms that we used to see when young girls were chatting to us back in the olden days.

She thinks that the trips to Paris are going to finish me off and I ought to think about trying to be transferred to Caen or Rennes. I felt like asking her at which one she works in her spare time, but I thought that that was pushing the boat out just a little too far at the moment.

But if I’m not careful, I’ll have Emilie the Cute Consultant and Océane scratching out each other’s eyes. And Alexia too – she came to look at the photos that I took of the polar bears that we encountered when I was out in the High Arctic.

We had a very long wait tonight for the taxi to bring us back. It was on its way back light from Rennes and the Social Security wanted it to pick us up as it went past. There’s an “acceptable” limit of 45 minutes delay under these new procedures and I wouldn’t like to say close to that it was, or on which side.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she watched as I struggled upstairs. I wasn’t on form tonight but even so, I managed the first flight and made it to the lift. I wish that they’d fix this stair rail so I can climb all the way up to my door.

With no bread, I made some dough and then cooked tea. A stuffed pepper again, and yet more veg rescued from the freezer to replace that lot that ended up in the bin, and followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. I’m not starting on the Christmas food until Christmas Day.

So tomorrow my cleaner is coming, so it will be shower day. I’ll be nice and clean ready for Christmas Day, although I don’t exactly know why.

But before I go to bed, something that I wrote just now reminds me of my friend Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz”), who unfortunately left us all in 2009. We both sat on the same University committees and so we were regularly in each other’s company on our travels around the UK from Newcastle upon Tyne to Edinburgh, Bristol and London, Milton Keynes and places in between.
She had to go in for a serious operation once, and her daughter Kathryn saw her writing out a list of names.
"Are these the people whom you want us to contact, mum" asked Kit "if anything happens?"
"Ohhh good Lord no!" retorted Liz. "If anything happens, this is a list of all the people whom I’m going to come back and haunt!"

Sunday 22nd December 2024 – I SOMETIMES WONDER …

… where I’d be now if I head my head switched on all the time, instead of just occasionally in the odd, rare flashing moments of inspiration.

But when it does happen, it reminds me of Kenneth Williams who once famously said "sometimes I’m taken aback by my own brilliance".

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a number of weeks now I’ve been having a really hard time in the kitchen, as standing on my feet for several hours is killing me completely.

So this morning, as Isabelle the nurse was oiling my legs and fitting my compression socks and I had my leg resting on the stool for the electronic drum kit, I suddenly thought “stool”.

For weeks now I’ve wanted one of these screw stools, where the seat is adjustable for height, so I could sit in the kitchen at the right height when I’m working and just swivel round to reach for what I needed. And there this morning, I thought “drum stool”.

Sure enough, when I had a look at my stool I found that the seat was adjustable for height. Not as much as I would like, but it made a real difference. For much of the day I’ve been working in the kitchen and being quite comfortable about it, because I’ve been sitting down and that makes quite a difference.

But returning to last night, after I’d finished my notes and everything that I had to do, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written last week and then went to bed. it was 23:40 which meant that although it was later than my ideal time of 23:00, the alarm was set for 08:00 so I was due for a decent, long sleep.

Or so I thought.

It might have been that I was asleep quite quickly, but it didn’t stay like that. It was another night of fitful sleep, tossing and turning and drenched in sweat like a few nights have been after the dialysis.. By 07:40 I decided to call it a day and when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about

Isabelle the nurse was early to day. There are no blood tests to perform as the laboratory is closed on Sundays. She did what we had to and we talked about the storm, the train cancellations and the cancellation of the Christmas parade.

The storm – yes. It’s a permanent fixture now. We have another one blowing like a hurricane. All trains along the coastal line between Caen, Granville and Rennes are cancelled and as I said just now, the Christmas parade is cancelled too.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY NEW BOOK.

We’re discussing Palaeolithic, Stone Age Britain at the moment and in particular, the religious element.

The author, Thomas Rice Holmes, is struck with the idea that the Ancient Briton worshipped his weapons and prayed to his God to bless them. However, I have another theory.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m a great believer in the existence of the sixth sense. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago we discussed how it was possible to stare at someone from a window, and after a while they would suddenly turn round and look up at you. Did anyone try it?

So what I’m thinking about this devotion or prayer is that it isn’t devotion or prayer at all. It’s ancient, prehistoric man concentrating hard on his weapon and transferring some of his mysticism and will to it so that when he would throw it, it would travel straight and true in accordance with its owner’s wishes.

Of course, that’s not so far removed from praying, but I think that it’s important to identify it correctly. But what do I know anyway?

There’s an interesting quote in the book that certainly struck a chord with me. He quotes an unknown author who once said "as I moved from place to place, I somehow seemed to know less and less, and I cannot say what would have been the result" That is something to which I can really relate.

But while we’re on the subject of Thomas Rice Holmes … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a look on the internet to see what was known about him. I mentioned the other day his love of polemic and light-hearted “frank exchanges of views”, and someone called Bill Thayer, a commentator on ancient texts, notes that amongst Rice Holmes and his contemporaries, there was "a flurry of argument and counter-argument"

It looks as if I’m going to be in for a bumpy ride.

After reading my book, I started work, armed with my revolving stool.

First thing was to make some dough. If I’m having soup at lunchtime, I’m having fresh bread so I want to make a bap. One thing about the air fryer is that you can cook small amounts of bread so 100 grams of flour made a lovely bread mix, which I left to fester.

And then, people, I marzipanned my Christmas cake. The marzipan rolled out nicely and with some of the jam that my friends in Macon gave me last time I was there, it stuck a treat to the Christmas cake. Then the cake went back into the fridge to cool down

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Someone came round to the house for a taxi. While he was waiting for a taxi to pull up, he began to nibble away at all my cheese on the kitchen worktop. After a couple of minutes I told him that if he doesn’t stop I’m going to charge him for it. He carried on nibbling so I had a look at the shopping list and said “right, that’s £1:60 for the cheese”. He replied “oh no, it’s £0:60”. I insisted on £1:60 and if he didn’t like it he could clear off. He cleared off, uttering all kinds of threats like dancing up and down on the vehicles, making a noise, slitting the tyres etc. I told him that anyone who does anything to any of my vehicles would need a very good doctor. Then he left. When I came back in the girl on the radio said “you’d better go to see your brother in law. His car’s on fire”. Just then a car pulled up. Two passengers, a very young girl and a woman alighted and so did my youngest sister’s husband. I had a look underneath it. It looked clean and tidy, and I couldn’t see anything. A asked “are you sure that this car has caught fire?”. He replied “the little girl is”. I replied “I can’t see anything at all under here that shows any sign of flames”.

The one thing that I miss since I’ve been on this vegan diet is the cheese. I used to love cheese and I could eat tons of it. But not any more, unfortunately. Vegan cheese is a very poor substitute. It’s just over 32 years – October 1992 in fact – since my pancreas gave out. And all the meat in my freezer that I had to give away that night when I came home from the doctor’s!

At the hospital they had given me four options –
1) – transplant. But the transplant was in its infancy and the success rate wasn’t assured.
2) – injections every day. But then I’d lose my professional driving licences
3) – die
4) – try to control it by diet, eliminating all animal fats

So while I went onto this extreme diet overnight, I thought that I may as well go the whole hog too so apart from that evening up on that mountain in Bulgaria with Percy Penguin and a host of other skiers lost in the fog in 1994, not a drop of alcohol has crossed my lips.

And it worked too. I lost 10kg almost immediately and in Brussels a couple of months later I started running again. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was still running up until just two or three years ago.

Later on, I had to go to see a psychiatrist or psychologist or someone or other so I took myself off to his premises. It turned out to be a shop somewhere in the Ardennes and he was the shopkeeper. He was busy serving people so I sat myself down in the corner, took up my laptop and began to work. After a while he finished serving his customers and came over. I put everything away. He asked “you aren’t working today are you?”. I explained that I was always working. He was astonished by that. He said “we aren’t all that enthusiastic about work here in the Ardennes”. I replied “I can see that, looking at some of these dusty shops that need a good clean”. He smiled and just then another customer came in and was waiting to be served. I told him that he had a customer. He replied “so what?”. I asked “aren’t you going to serve her?”. He grudgingly picked himself up and wandered off over there and I took out my laptop again anfd began to work.

Having done that, this dream restarted when he came back and sat down on the bench by me. I said “I hear that you have been having trouble to pee”. I wondered how he’d heard that. I hadn’t said anything to him about that up until that moment just then.

Anyone who wants to go to see a psychiatrist needs his head examined. Quite But here’s another dream into which I stepped back later. What can’t I do that whenever Zero, Castor or TOTGA come around? I can’t imagine wanting to do that with a psychiatrist. I must need my head examining.

And that reminds me – the trick cyclist from the hospital hasn’t been to see me for ages. Has she forgotten me too?

Finally, I was at school and had been into town for lunch. I’d ended up in a big shoe shop, toy shop, department store. The queues were enormous and I had to fight my way around. There were people queueing on the stairs and I had a great deal of difficulty trying to go down them. People were going down either side of these people queueing on the stairs, making things even more difficult. Eventually I could extract myself and head back to school. I heard a voice behind me say “oh there’s someone else late for school. Let’s run and see if we can beat him and he’ll be last”. I made it back to school first and the teacher was already in my classroom teaching so I slunk in and sat at my seat, late again. He was already talking to the kids about the “Dirty Harry”, or was it “The Godfather” films, asking how long this series continued. Someone said “fifteen years” but he replied that in fact it was thirty years, which surprised everyone. Then we began to discuss the plot for another film. I began to dream about Eastwood who had been on a mission somewhere and had met a lonely girl in a bar. He’d spent the evening with her and then gone his separate ways. Next morning he’d looked for her name in the ‘phone book, went to a florist’s and ordered some flowers and sent them to her. Then, as arranged, went round to see her in the afternoon. He had a gold-coloured sports car in which he took off from the side of the kerb on the wrong side of the road and had to weave in through the traffic to do a U-turn and then headed off. He reached the address where there were a few people wandering around. Some woman came up to him and said something about him being in his work clothes. He asked “how do you know?”. She replied “you’ve changed since you were here last night”. He asked the people what was going on. Someone said “it’s a woman”. he worked out that it was the woman whom he’d come to see. “She’d committed suicide last night just after you had gone”. It turned out that she had a gunshot wound in the neck from previously. When he’d given her a playful karate chop he’d missed that gunshot wound by millimetres. He was wondering what on earth had happened that had made her want to commit suicide because she was certainly the kind who was depressed, being lonely in a bar but he thought that his presence would have cheered her up a little

It’s been a long time since I’ve had an epic dream like that. It’s one of these major ones that keep on going and going and it’s a shame that there was no nice young female involved with me appearing in that dream, as there sometimes is. It’s interesting though that there’s a “dream within a dream”. We’ve had a few of those where we’ve managed to move up a level. Not quite the 25th level, about which Dennis Wheatley used to brag, but a step up all the same

And here I am, scriptwriting in the night too. Is there no end to my nocturnal talents?

Back in the kitchen, I made my broccoli stalk soup, remembering to put the little pasta elbows in today. My bread went up like a lift, the best that I’ve ever made, and the soup was totally delicious with a tub of soya yoghurt tipped into it. What a nice lunch that was!

Then it was mince pie time. I have two rolls of puff pastry but I only used one. That made the bases and tops for five pies which is a nice number over Christmas. And in my silicon pie mould, five pies used half a jar of mincemeat. At this rate there will be enough mincemeat in stock for five more years

Football was next, Stranraer against Stirling Albion, who had a friend of mine in goal. And I have never seen so many open goals missed by Stranraer or saved by David Gaston. Some phrase concerning stringed musical instruments and the nether regions of certain ruminant animals sprung to my mind as I watched Stranraer miss open goal after open goal.

They finally managed to score right at the end of the game, only for Stirling to roar upfield and score an equaliser with probably their only shot of the game.

There won’t be another game like that ever again.

Making dough was next. I’ve run out for the pizza and that’s a calamity so I made a 500 gram mix, put two lumps in the freezer and the third lump I used as tonight’s meal.

Next was icing the Christmas cake. And despite it being cold, the icing kept on sliding down the side and I had to keep on spreading it back up. But that icing knife that I bought from Noz is a great tool to have. It made the job much easier than it might have been

While I was assembling the pizza I had the oven on, baking the mince pies. Now they are done and they look delicious. My pizza was delicious too.

You might think that after all of that, with the pudding that’s in the freezer, I’m ready for Christmas. But that’s not so. While I was working this afternoon I kept on thinking, as I was talking to Rosemary (I managed that too) “thers’s something else that I’ve forgotten”.

And now I know what it is. I forgot the hash browns.

So that will be the job tomorrow before I go to the Dialysis Clinic.

As well as all of that and chatting to Rosemary, I’ve been working on some of the radio notes too, and I’m exhausted which is no surprise.

In a few minutes, I’ll be off to bed. And then it’ll start all over again tomorrow. It’s relentless

But while we’re on the subject of football, dreams and psychiatrists … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist (well, I actually went more than once, but that’s another story)
"Doctor doctor" I said "I’m having these terrible dreams. I’ve seen all these ants playing football in the Ants World Cup. We’ve had a round of thirty-two, then a round of sixteen, then a round of eight, then a round of four. It’s driving me out of my mind, doctor. Please help me"
"Well, never mind" said the doctor. "Take this prescription to the chemist, have it made up and take two of the tablets tonight. I promise you – you’ll sleep like a baby and you won’t have any dreams at all"
"Ohh – I can’t do that tonight doctor" I said
"Why not?"
"Well, they are playing in the final tonight and I don’t want to miss that!"

Sunday 15th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 08:00 this morning I was already up and about.

That’s the kind of thing that totally defeats the purpose of having a lie in. I mean – it wasn’t as if I was in bed early either. It was about 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed after dictating the radio notes, so with a later start on Sunday it meant 7:30 hours of sleep in principle, but I didn’t even have that

There wasn’t even much to dictate in the way of radio notes either. Just the notes for one programme so it shouldn’t have taken me that long but these days, prevarication seems to be the way forward. I keep meaning to see some professional about the problems that I have with prevarication but I might do that another side.

So once I was in bed, that was that until all of … errr … 07:15 when I awoke, and couldn’t go back to sleep. After a while I thought that there’s no point in wasting time lying here doing nothing when there is so much that I ought to be doing so I rose up and left the bed.

After having a good wash and scrub up I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but I didn’t get very far when the nurse came. He forgot to ring on the doorbell from downstairs so he took me somewhat by surprise.

We had “words” again this morning. His very first question was "did you sleep well?"

He knows full well that I don’t because he asks it almost every single day and I always tell him that being a very light sleeper I don’t ever sleep well, so I expressed my discontent with his question, to which he took umbrage.

After he left I had my medication and then made breakfast. Taking it over to the dining room table, I could sit and read ISAAC WELD’S BOOK which, regrettably, I have now finished. And I do have to say that his books would be certainly in my Top 10.

He’s now about to leave New York, and boards his ship "without a sigh, and without entertaining the slightest wish to revisit it."

While he was in Bethlehem he was lucky (if that’s correct) to be invited to visit the Women and Girls’ Home. He makes quite a few interesting observations including "Pink ribands are said to be worn as a badge by those who are inclined to marry; however, I observed that all the unmarried women wore them, not excepting those whose age and features seemed to have excluded them from every chance of becoming the votaries of Hymen" … "he means ‘Hypersons’" – ed …

He notes that Long Island is mainly inhabited by the Dutch (New York was a Dutch colony, “New Amsterdam” until the British took it in 1664) who "have inherited all the coldness, reserve, and covetousness of their ancestors".

He continues by saying that "If you do but ask any simple question relative to the neighbouring country, they will eye you with suspicion and evidently strive to disengage themselves from you; widely different from the Anglo-Americans, whose inquisitiveness in similar circumstances would lead them to a thousand impertinent and troublesome enquiries, in order to discover what your business was in that place, and how they could possibly take any advantage of it."

So having learned more from this one book than any thousand others, I’ve now begun to read the report of the investigation of a Gallo-Roman (not Roman) farm near Chartres. And it’s nothing like as interesting as Isaac Weld’s book, which is a shame. And it’s in French too, so there’s not much point in posting any interesting quotes.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone. We were on an island in the Western Pacific or was it the Eastern Pacific. The Japanese had suddenly declared war and there were all kinds of attacks taking place. We were on this island when the Japanese were beginning to take a foothold on it. The decision was taken to retreat onto an island off the shore of this island where we could be collected and then decide how best to act. We thought that a headlong flight out of the area would mean that we wouldn’t be back for many years. We had to put up some kind of defence. Gradually everyone began to retreat to this island where they were armed, given weapons etc. I was one of the last to leave. As I went downstairs there was one of the boys at the bottom of the stairs. He was telling me to go out of the stairs and to the left. However there was something going on to the right so I went out to the right. He absolutely had an explosion. When I came to the end of the path there was a boy playing on the beach, a small boy. I wondered about what he was doing. However this other boy came down after me and began to give me a huge lecture about not following his commands, everything like that. I told him that he’d better cheer up a little because I was quite able to go down this path and look at what was going on. I thought that he was behaving like the Japanese, just as he happened to say to me that he thought that I was. Having assured myself that it wasn’t a Japanese patrol that was landing, I went off in the other direction. I eventually ended up in the town from where the ferry over to the other island was sailing. There were all kinds of things happening here. I had to walk through the town and all the action. Then I heard one of my colleagues from work being called over the public address system about the lights on his car. I thought that this is the last thing about which anyone needs to worry at the moment, isn’t it? I gradually made my way down towards the docks where I could catch the ferry over to the island where we could all sit and have a think and start again.

Not that there’s much chance of the Japanese attacking these days. Any conflict in the Pacific Islands is likely to come in that area disputed by China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, which, I suppose, is the North Pacific. I’m not sure either why one of the boys from school, about whom I have hardly thought in the last 50-odd years, should suddenly appear.

Apart from that, retreating onto a small island is hardly a sound military strategy, unless we are hoping to be evacuated.

There was some thing during the night between someone of a family that was quite well-known, whether he was a military officer or something. While he was searching around in the old libraries he came across a Latin phrase. He thought that this phrase was something really wonderful so he wrote to the College of Heralds to see whether it had been registered as someone’s slogan. On finding that it hadn’t, he announced that he was going to adopt it for his family’s slogan henceforth. He’d have a think about finding some Coat of Arms or other that might be appropriate

It’s a little-known fact that my family has its own slogan nihil expectore in omnibus which means, roughly translated “wait for nothing at all”, although some wag suggested that it means “no spitting on the public transport”

And then a young girl just walked into my room and tucked something under my pillow. She said “that’s the volume for your dream to awaken you”. I looked at her, and couldn’t understand exactly what she meant by that, but she turned on her heel and walked out of the room and left me. I wondered if that was a sign that I was late, that I’d missed the alarm and needed to set the alarm louder to awaken me in te future but I really couldn’t understand that

It’s hardly surprising, is it? I can still in fact see her hand even now sliding something under my pillow so it was something along the same lines as the phantom alarms that we have. But there’s definitely nothing under the pillow.

After the dictaphone we had a footfest. I hadn’t realised that Stranraer had played a midweek game so I had two matches to watch.

The first was away in Edinburgh against Spartans, and Edinburgh seems to be a happy hunting ground for Stranraer because after beating Edinburgh City the other week, they beat Spartans 3-1

That was actually the best that I have ever seen Stranraer play, so it gave some hope for the weekend’s game, the return match against Edinburgh City but they couldn’t build on the success. Once more, they played well but so did Edinburgh City. Neither team managed to break the other down and it finished 0-0.

After lunch I started to edit the radio notes and by the time I finished work it was all complete, 11th track and all. So that’s another hour’s worth to add to the collection.

There were several interruptions, which was why it took so long. The first was for the hot chocolate of course, and then there was bread to make and bake.

The pizza too required attention. I’d taken the last of the frozen dough out of the freezer earlier in the day so I had to knead it, roll it and assemble it.

When the bread came out of the oven the pizza went in and I had another candidate for “best pizza ever”.

So now I’m off to bed ready for the morning, hoping that someone interesting will come to see me during the night.

But talking of Isaac Weld leaving New York … "well, one of us is" – ed … before he left he went into a branch of that chain of places that a British judge agreed “exploit children”, are “culpably responsible for animal cruelty”, “pay low wages” and “pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which their food (high in fat & salt etc) did not match”
And with his quarter-pounder he ordered a beer
"You can’t buy a beer in here" said the burger-flipper
"What?" he exclaimed. "You mean that you’re sober when you eat this mess?"

Tuesday 10th December 2024 – I THINK THAT …

… I must have an araignée au plafond, the way that things are turning out.

There I was, early this morning, thinking that I have sufficient supplies to postpone my next LeClerc delivery until the next weekend.

Then I realised that there would only be a handful of days from then until Christmas.

And then I was thinking “Jeezus H Goddam Bleeding Chri…..estttt” – I have Christmas Cake and Mince Pies to make and I haven’t even begun to think about the Christmas Cake yet, and there’s only two weeks to go!

Yes, I’ve not had my usual reminder, have I? And you know what my memory and my awareness is like!

And it was early this morning too, because when the alarm went off at 07:00, I was already up and about, sitting at my desk working.

Just for a change last night, I was in bed before 23:00. Only just, it has to be said, but even so it’s still worth noting. and I was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly.

Nothing whatever disturbed me and I slept right the way through until all of … errr … 05:20 when something outside awoke me. No idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep so round about 06:20 I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen for a drink and to take my medicine

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back driving taxis around Crewe again last night. It was a wet, rainy winter night and we were quite busy. I had two girls driving on the shift with me. I was running around quite well. I went to pick up a fare at one of the clubs. There was a meeting there just turning out and there were loads of people there. One couple were friends of mine and they asked me if I could sort them a taxi. I radioed into base and arranged for someone to go to pick them up. I carried on driving, and at one stage someone paid me £5:00 so I had that on top of the pile with a piece of paper over it. I carried on driving through the night and came back home again when the shift was finished. The two girls were in there cashing up. I noticed from the sheets that the passengers who had asked me to find them someone had not only been picked up by one of these girls but a return journey back home had taken place too. I thought that that was a pretty good trip. We were just sorting through a few things and it turned out that some young boy from the hospital had not been entered into the sheets. He’d started today and as a result someone was really late going for him and really late picking him up. It ended up with the police coming round to find out about what was going on. They had three particular complaints with which to deal about this. Of course I had to try to think about how this might have happened and what we were going to do about it for the future

These days I seem to be spending a lot of time driving taxis during the night. The last time I actually drove one for real was in 1989 but then in Brussels I spent until 2004 driving my boss around in a limousine. Early retirement at 50 was offered and as I couldn’t see myself driving a C15 around Brussels delivering the office mail (we were taken out of the front line at 50) I took what was on offer and headed off for pastures new. Even so, I still find it hard to understand why I seem to spend so much of my sleeping hours behind the wheel of a taxi.

Plenty of time before the nurse arrives so I spent it working on my Jersey page but I didn’t go very far because he was early today

There were the usual patronising remarks that really irritate me but he was soon gone and I could go to prepare my breakfast.

And to read ISAAC WELD’S BOOK too.

He’s continuing his stay with the First-Nation people and is pouring out his thoughtful observations, many of which have yet to come into the common consciousness of some people even today.

He tells us inter alia that "Le P. Charlevoix observes, that the Indians seem to him to possess many personal advantages over us; their senses, in particular, he thinks much finer than ours"

He also says that "the Indians have most retentive memories ; they will preserve to their deaths a recollection of any place they have once passed through; they never forget a face that they have attentively observed but for a few seconds ; at the end of many years they will repeat every sentence of the speeches that have been delivered by different individuals in a public assembly; and has any speech been made in the council house of the nation, particularly deserving of remembrance, it will be handed down with the utmost accuracy from one generation to another, though perfectly ignorant of the use of hieroglyphicks and letters"

On the subject of their memory and power of recall he tells us "A party of Indians that were passing on to some of the seaports on the Atlantic … were observed, ail on a sudden to quit the straight road by which they were proceeding, and without asking any questions to strike through the woods in a direct line to one of these graves, which lay at the distance of some miles from the road. Now very near a century must have passed over since the part of Virginia, in which this grave was situated had been inhabited by Indians; and these Indian travellers, who went to visit it by themselves, had, unquestionably, never been in that part of the country before; they must have found their way to it simply from the description of its situation that had been handed down to them by tradition."

This part of the book is probably the most interesting, not only because if talks so much about the lifestyle and behaviour of the First-Nation and Native American people, but also because he pulls no punches in his criticism of the Europeans who have corrupted the morals of the native people.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. Today, it was rather like the curate’s egg – “good and bad in parts”.

After lunch I decided that it was time for direct action.

First thing that I did was to make some dough for bread as I have now run out

Second, and most important thing, was to check the supplies for making my Christmas Cake.

Having decided that I have almost everything, I sorted out all of the dried fruit and put it in to soak. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the Bulk Barn in Fredericton two years ago I found some brandy essence and rum essence. It’s not available here as everyone uses the real stuff, so I loaded up and brought it back in my suitcase. I made a marinade with some of it, mixed with vanilla and orange essence and water, poured it over the fruit, mixed it in and it’s now in the fridge soaking.

Next Tuesday I’ll have to bake my cake. Last year I left my dried fruit marinating for a month, so I wonder if a week is going to be good enough

As for marzipan and icing sugar, I shall have to rely on my faithful cleaner at the shops next Tuesday morning. What a state to be in, hey?

My dough rose really well today, which was good news, and it cooked well in the air fryer. What I’m doing now is baking it just halfway and then turning it over for the other half. That seems to do the trick. All I need to do is to work out how to turn a cake over in mid-bake.

After the hot chocolate I came back in here and chose the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and segued it. Tomorrow I’ll write the notes for it, but I have a lot going on so I’ll see where I fetch up.

On the subject of my moaning about this stabbing pain, I’ve been summoned next Monday to the Imagerie Department of the hospital. No idea what they are going to X-Ray but I hope that it’s for this foot. It’s not unlikely that they may find something that is the cause of these mobility issues that I have. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Another thing that I have done is to address an e-mail to the agents of this building, about the defective handrail outside my door. After all, I don’t want to go head-over-heels down the stairs and me casser à la margoulette

Tea tonight was a lovely taco roll with rice and veg, followed by vegan ginger cake and soya dessert. Yet another simple but delicious meal. I definitely eat quite well around here.

So now I’m off to bed ready for a good start tomorrow, fighting fit and full of beans – I don’t think.

But while we’re on the subject of Native American memory and recall … "well, one of us is" – ed … Isaac Weld has first-hand experience of that.
At the start of his journey, he landed in Philadelphia where he was first informed of this ability, so he decided to put it to the test. He asked the first native American he met "what did you have for breakfast on the day that the Revolutionary War broke out 18 years ago?"
"Eggs" replied the Native American
So, suitably impressed, Weld set off on his marathon journey and for three years he travelled around the Continent of North America.
Back in Philadelphia three years later, he went to find his ship to go back to Ireland, and there standing on the quayside was a group of Native Americans.
Being friendly, Weld went up to them, raised his right hand in salute and said "how?" in greeting, like you do
One of the natives replied "scrambled"

Sunday 1st December 2024 – MY CAULIFLOWER STALK …

… and broccoli stalk soup at lunchtime was absolutely delicious. I made myself a bread roll to dip in it too, and baked in the air fryer, it was perfection too. All in all it was one of the best lunches that I have ever eaten.

It’s the period of winter veg at LeClerc and so with broccoli and cauliflower being sold at giveaway prices, it’s too good to turn down

In fact, it’s been a good day today. And it started last night when I actually made it into bed at 23:45. Not 23:00 I know, but with it being a Sunday, there’s a lie-in until 08:00.

But at 08:00 I was actually up and about, working away at my desk in here. Something had awoken me from at 06:00 while I was in one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve had for ages. I’ve no idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. And by the time that 06:45 came round I’d given up and left the bed.

After I’d washed I came back in here and checked the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. There was something to do with a rock group and the young girl who was in it. She was attacked at some point by some kind of unearthly being. I’ve no idea why that should be but it was certainly the case.

We had a rock group yesterday, if I remember correctly. And a few days ago, we had a girl attacked by some kind of extra-terrestrial being. We seem to be doing a lot of repeating these days.

Then there was a Secret Service operation going on in London to do with the Russian embassy. They had to find a certain vehicle, break into it and steal some papers but they didn’t know exactly how they were going to do this. They knew that it was in some kind of code so they took with them one of Britain’s leading Civil Service codebreaker people. He was a very scared, elderly gentleman who was most uncomfortable as they were roaming around London looking for this keyword or whatever. They were surprised while they were searching somewhere and this elderly gentleman ended up stabbing someone. Of course that made him really panic. They had to try to restrain him and keep him with them even though he was ready to run at any moment. When someone came round, the caretaker of this building to find out what the noise had been, this elderly gentleman said “oh, I hear my ‘phone ringing” and ran away as fast as he could. Of course there was no way that these two people could stop him. They ended up roaming around this certain area in London on their own. They were looking at this shop that had closed down, some kind of vegan restaurant or shop, looking at all the adverts plastered everywhere all over it. There were four adverts for something or other but there stuck in the corner of one of the adverts was something like “Ron’s Taxis 5150”. That immediately gave them a clue because this taxi sticker wasn’t on any of the other three posters. It had something to do with the vehicle 515 or 5150 so they set off to wander around thinking that the ‘phone sticker advertising this taxi service was to do with the vehicle. They hadn’t yet figured out that at some stage they were going to see a taxi vehicle with the registration number RON 515 or RON 5150 that I’d figured out but they were wandering around London, something like that, when the dream evaporated

Codebreaking now in my dreams? It’s certainly impressive. Is there no end to my nocturnal skills? As I have said before, … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had had in my life someone who was capable of harnessing all of these hidden talents that I must have buried deep within me.

The nurse was early yet again and he didn’t hang about long this time. That suited me fine and I could make my breakfast and carry on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s now In the city of Québec, having left Montréal, and he’s just as enamoured of the city as I was. He tells us that "I must not conclude this letter without making mention of the fcenery that is exhibited to the view, from various parts of the upper town of Quebec, which, for its grandeur, its beauty, and its diverfity, furpafles all that I have hitherto feen in America, or indeed in any other part of the globe." and I cannot disagree.

He’s really in his element here, in fact. He’s given me a fascinating description of Wolfe’s storming of the Heights of Abraham and an excellent lecture on how Montcalm should have organised his defence to prevent his army and the city being overrun.

He’s also given us a lecture on the manufacture of sugar from maple syrup and how he would do it on a large scale and on a commercial basis, even calculating how much profit he would make per acre.

In fact, he’s given so many lectures and seems to be an expert on so many things that, when he said a few days ago that "A rational and agreeable companion, to whom you might communicate the refult of your obfervations, and with whom you might interchange fentiments on all occafions, could not but be deemed a pleafing acquisition,’", I would have been the first to volunteer to go with him. The two of us would have been experts on just about everything, boring the pants off just about everyone else whom we met.

Much of my free time was spent editing the radio notes that I’d dictated last night. I now hove two more programmes to add to the pile but I still can’t afford to relax. I have a lot to do and a short time to do it.

Stranraer were at home from a team way down the pyramid in the Scottish Cup. Although they played well and had a great deal of possession, and even though they hit the woodwork on a couple of occasions, they only scored one goal. Their opponents, Broxburn, just had two shots on target so you can guess the final score without too much effort.

This really was the nadir of Stranraer’s season to date.

It took quite a while to make my broccoli stalk and cauliflower stalk soup at lunchtime. It involved

one large onion
two cloves of garlic
one medium-sized potato
a broccoli stalk
a cauliflower stalk
cumin
coriander
marjoram
chives
chervil
half a litre of the water that you saved from the blanching of the carrots, broccoli and cauliflower on Saturday
vegetable stock cube
soya cream
fresh ground black pepper

chop and fry the onion until soft
chop the broccoli stalk, cauliflower stalk, garlic and potatoes into very tiny pieces and add them to the onion
add the herbs and spices
fry them for about 10-15 minutes
add enough water to cover the vegetables
add the stock cube and let everything simmer for 15 minutes
when everything is mushy, whizz it all up, adding the soya cream as you do so
serve with fresh ground pepper and fresh bread roll

There was pizza dough to make later on, and also a cake. This week I chose a ginger cake seeing as I had some fresh ginger on hand, and together with some desiccated coconut, coconut oil and orange flavouring, it smells delicious

Tonight’s pizza was one of the best that I have ever made too, and that’s good news because one or two just recently seem to have gone off the boil somewhat.

All in all it seems to have been a very good day for baking and making. There’s plenty of food on hand now to keep me going for a while.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh homework to finish off and then I’m off to dialysis – more agony and pain. I suppose that I’d better hurry up and go to bed to prepare myself.

But before I go, General Wolfe, who led the British Army to victory on the Heights of Abraham, was killed on the battlefield just as the victory was won. And there used to be an obelisk making the spot.
When I was there once though, a helpful local, and a very vocal local yokel at that too, told me that members of the Québec Libre – the Québec Separationists – sent it back to the UK
"Surely it was far, far too big to go in the post" I said
"Indeed it was" said the helpful local "but you’ll be amazed at the velocity released by 100 kilos of dynamite."

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy this afternoon, and you’ve no idea how.

There has been a delivery from LeClerc and so I’ve been hard at work being quite domestic.

There was a good preparation for it too, because I was actually in bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, I have to admit, but even a minute is worth noting as it so rarely happens these days.

Once more, once I had fallen asleep I had the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t stir until 07:00.

When the alarm went off it took me a few minutes to gather my senses, which is a big surprise seeing how few there seem to be these days. But once the World had stopped spinning and I’d alighted, I staggered off into the bathroom.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night; if anywhere, because I didn’t remember a thing. However There was a story at some point during the night that a farmer’s daughter – not The Farmer’s Daughter whom we all know and love – had an encounter with a group of extra-terrestrial beings, an unpleasant encounter at that.

Later on there was a story about some man in Crewe who had to go to school as quite a schoolgirl. He had to enquire of his family where the school was. It turned out that it was right down at the far end of Earle Street. he spent a lot of time making himself ready but when it was time to go he looked nothing like a schoolgirl at all. He was like a man. He could see immediately that this was not going to work and so wondered how he could leave off going. He checked with the woman who was going to be his mother in this thing. She replied that she would continue to be here until 12:00 before going to work, so he couldn’t actually extricate himself from it in the morning. In the end he set off with his sister for the purposes of this story but he was really I suppose the daughter of the people with whom he was staying. As they set off they saw one or two other men with beards dressed in school uniform. The girl made some kind of comment that the guy couldn’t appreciate anything of this because he was realising more and more that this wasn’t going to work and how he wished that he could abandon it. Later on there was something about several men having their beards shaved off for reasons that I can’t remember because that part of the dream has unfortunately evaporated but there are definitely men in this who were having their beards shaved off.

It’s a shame that that dream evaporated because it would have been interesting to see where it would have led. It did actually have a connection in real life, if it could be called that, with a group of people who go around dressed up as all kinds of things, furry animals, cartoon characters and the like and go swarming at a certain place at a certain time. Hannah and I ran into them once in Brussels early one morning while they were off to swarm somewhere round by the Heysel Stadium.

The nurse came early today which was nice. He didn’t stay long either which was even nicer. Neither did he have much to say, although he encouraged me to continue with dialysis at any price.

Once he’d left I made breakfast and then carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s still going on … "and on, and on etc." – ed … about taverns, not just about the accommodation but now he’s added the quality of food available (or not, as the case may be) to his list of complaints. "Salted pork, boiled with turnip tops by way of greens, or fried bacon, or fried falted fifh, with warm fallad, drefTed with vinegar and the melted fat which remains in the fryingpan after dreffing the bacon, is the only food to be got at moft of the taverns in this country"

However, as he’s now on his way to Canada, and having encountered all of the difficulties, both natural and man-made, that it would be possible to encounter, he’s fetched up in Albany, the State capital of New York State, where he’s trying to hire a carriage. However, the two carriage hire companies are in collusion and holding him to ransom.

But it’s Independence Day in the USA and while this day "would, it might be expected have called forth more brilliant and more general rejoicings; but the downright phlegmatic people in this neighbourhood, intent upon making money, and enjoying the folid advantages of the revolution, are but little difpofed to wafte their time in what they confider idle demonftrations of joy"

However he saves his most poisonous vitriol for when he’s “entertained” by a prosperous farmer in the Lake Champlain valley and is shown around what he took to be a lush local farmhouse.

How he was disappointed by what he saw. Disappointed and more besides. "That people can live in fuch a manner, who have the necefTaries and conveniencies cf life within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really moft aftonifhing ! It is, however, to be accounted for, by that defire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to fuiTer numberlefs inconveniencies, when he can gain by fo doing ……. Money is his idol, and to procure it he gladly foregoes every felf-gratification."

He’s now only a couple of days away from the border with Québec and I’ll be interested to see what comparison he makes between the USA and Québec. I’ve driven around here a few times and the border seemed to be fairly seamless to me.

Back in here I had my order for LeClerc to finish off and set in motion to be delivered this afternoon, and then there was paperwork to tidy up and bills to pay. But at least I could pay them via the internet so I suppose it isn’t as difficult as it otherwise might be.

While I was at it, I tried to contact the hospital in Paris but each time that I tried, I had the answerphone in response and in the end I forgot to carry on.

There was however an incoming ‘phone call. It was the chiropodist. He’s had an unexpected vacancy this afternoon so could he come by here? Well, the sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s over, isn’t it?.

After (a late) lunch I tidied up the kitchen, which was just as well because the LeClerc delivery came early. So now I have tons of food, including a butternut squash that will make a nice change roasted and mashed as a vegetable with some potatoes.

There were carrots of course, but also broccoli and a cauliflower so there was quite a load of washing, dicing, blanching and freezing. It’s a good job that I’ve made plenty of space in my freezer with this defrosting exercise

In fact, there was quite a lot of stuff, either frozen or to be frozen, on my list that needed putting in the freezer so that kept me busy too.

The chiropodist came round and saw to my feet. He thinks that my feet need much more attention than they have had in the past, which was no attention at all. He’ll be back again in a few months time to check on them.

There was bread to make too, seeing as I’ve now run out. I managed to do all of that in between everything else that I had to do.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with some of those vegan nuggets and air-fried chips, followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert. I’m running low on chocolate cake so on Sunday I’ll make a ginger cake now that I have some fresh ginger. Now that I also have plenty of coconut oil, it should be exciting if I use some of that too.

Isaac Weld, our author, passed through New York on his way north up the Hudson Valley, and looking at some of the buildings, it reminded him of a conversation that he’d had in Dublin with an American who had come “home” for a visit.
Weld was showing him around the city and he pointed out on particular building as being the pride of the city because of its architecture.
"But it’s so tiny!" exclaimed the American. "Back home every city has many buildings ten times bigger than that§"
"I’m not surprised" said Weld. "After all, it is the lunatic asylum."

Wednesday 20th November 2024 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from the night just now.

But that’s not surprising because I didn’t go to sleep at all. It was what the French call a nuit blanche.

And if you think that going to bed at midnight or thereabouts is bad, then how about at 02:00 and I was still awake and not in bed?

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s a pretty miserable affair when I’m awake like this and can’t sleep but it’s just another one of those little things sent to try me, I suppose, and I have to make the best of it, such as it is.

So after finishing off my notes I was somewhat tired, but more physically tired than a sleep kind of tired. I couldn’t find the strength or the will to haul myself out of my chair and move the few inches or so into the bed. I just sat here and vegetated for all that time.

Eventually I managed to pull myself together and headed off to the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, thinking to myself that it wouldn’t have been so bad had I been able somehow to do some work in the time that I was still awake.

Once in bed I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep at all, and that was probably the most depressing part of the night. I began to reminisce about things that I should have done, or ought to have done, and that’s bound to bring me out in a depression.

And that’s how it went on for most of the night. I was too far wrapped up in the past to think about the present, and that’s definitely the wrong way to be doing things.

When the alarm went off I crawled reluctantly out of bed (and you’ve no idea just how reluctantly) and headed for the bathroom and a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone and, as I expected, found nothing. So instead I had a look at my shopping list ready to order things from LeClerc on Friday.

However it’s difficult to make up an order this week. I have a lot of things in stock so I don’t need much. In fact, I can live without everything for the next week or two (except the soft vegetables of course) so I made an executive decision and decided that I won’t sent off an order this week. What I do need, like the mushrooms, tomato and cucumber, I’ll ask my cleaner to fetch them.

And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed.

Isabelle the Nurse had news for me today. Firstly, they are moving the War Memorial while they renovate the town centre and secondly, snow is forecast for tomorrow. And I’m going to Avranches and the clinic in a taxi too.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with my book.

Hearne is now writing his summary. He writes about the people whom he meets, their lifestyles out in the peri-Arctic tundra and their habits, and it’s all extremely interesting. About his guide he says "I have met with few Christians who possessed more good moral qualities, or fewer bad ones" and "his scrupulous adherence to truth and honesty would have done honour to the most enlightened and devout Christian, while his benevolence and universal humanity to all the human race, according to his abilities and manner of life, could not exceeded by the most illustrious personage now on record"

If that’s the case, then having read about some of the antics of his guide and party on the way back from massacring the Inuit, it tells me so much about the behaviour and morals of England and the English at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

We’re also being treated to an account of the wildlife and vegetation that he encounters on his trip. And his discussion of the food that they ate on their journey has revolted my stomach. It makes my meals sound positively appetising. Hearne however claims that he quite enjoyed some of them and in that case he’s welcome to them.

And when he describes the contemporary meals that are on offer back in England in the 1770s, that’s enough to get me going too. They make my mother’s meals sound delicious.

After breakfast I came in here and assembled the radio programme. Despite the speech being longer this time for some reason or other, it all went together quite nicely and I ended up being thirteen seconds over the one hour allowed for the programme.

But that’s not a problem. I can just cut out some of the applause and move some of the sound-bytes up a little and then it will all fit. And in fact, it all fits quite nicely

After lunch I had things to do. A friend of mine was on-line so we had a chat. We have a project going on together that is becoming quite involved and so it was good to have a chat about it.

There were a few on-line orders to make too. I need to overhaul the freezer here because it’s iced up and the drawers have collapsed. I’ve found a supplier of the drawers in Rouen so I had to organise an on-line order. They’ll be here by the weekend, I hope, and with the hair dryer that I liberated with the help of my cleaner, it will be “all systems go” with the freezer.

While we’re on the subject of the cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed … she turned up to do her stuff this afternoon, part of which was helping me into the shower.

Well, watching, actually, because I managed to climb into the bathtub and sort myself out totally unaided, and isn’t that a change? It’s not all that long ago that I couldn’t even lift my leg up, never mind climb into the bathtub.

The shower was delicious too. I stayed in there for much longer than I should, giving myself a good hosing-down in nice hot water. And I enjoyed every minute of it too

So a nice clean me climbed out of the shower and tidied the bathroom to match the rest of the apartment, and then came back in here to choose the music for the next radio programme.

After the cleaner left I took some naan dough from the freezer and left it to defrost and then made some dough for the next supply of bread.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by chocolate cake and the last of the strawberry-flavoured soya dessert which is a shame because it was so nice

While I was having tea the bread was baking in the oven. And at 160°C for 15 minutes and then turn over for another 15 minutes at 160°G, we have the most perfect loaf that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. I need it too after last night. Dialysis tomorrow but I don’t know how I’m going to go there. All public transport tomorrow is cancelled due to the wave of bad weather that is expected to hit us tonight so I imagine that the taxis won’t be going either, but we shall see.

But before I go let me say something else about Hearne’s trip to the Coppermine River.
One night he and his guide, Matonabbee, were lying there looking at the stars in the sky
"Look at that shooting star, Matonabbee" said Hearne. "What does it signify?"
"It represents the spirit of one of our tribe on his way to join his ancestors in the sky"
"And the stars?" asked Hearne. "Do they represent our ancestors?"
"They do indeed" said Matonabbee. "They are happy with us so they have come out to dance with joy"
"And look at the Aurora Borealis" said Hearne. "And the moon. It’s all so wonderful. And here we are, staring up at it through the night. What does it all mean?"
"It means" said Matonabbee "that earlier this evening some thieving b@$t@rd stole our wigwam."

Saturday 16th November 2024 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if it’s not one thing, it’s another with this dialysis.

Today the machine wasn’t working correctly and the poor nurses were so fed up of running to it every five minutes when the alarm went off that in the end they went to see the doctor who told them that I may as well be thrown out. They can’t change the machine because each machine has to be configured specially for each patient and to reconfigure a machine that’s not in use takes far too long.

So at least I had an early return home today after all of this.

It’s about the only thing that was early today (apart from the taxi, about which we’ll talk in due course) and last night. It ended up being another late night but I’m now past caring about what time I go to bed. I’ll just go to bed when I feel like it and if necessary, sleep during the dialysis.

But when I finally did go to bed, I was asleep quickly enough and had another Sleep of the Dead all the way through. When the alarm went off, I was at a rock festival, part of the organisation. I’d just introduced Steve Marriott to the crowd. England had just played Germany in a football match in a European Cup competition and had won so there was a whole host of repartee from Marriott and from the audience like “well it’s only fair that we keep on playing them until they finally manage to win”, lots of things like that which were extremely interesting. But the microphone cord for Steve Marriot had become stuck somewhere and I had quite a job to free it off and pull enough cable through so that he could finally put it on its stand and begin to perform. There was also something else about a song – had a song ever been played, or something like that. It turned out that each time they’d go to play it on a concert, the concert would over-run so they would have to cut short their set in order to fit into the time scale and that one always seemed to be the song that would go. So there was some dispute or discussion about whether it had ever been played, and what would be the situation if some other group decided that they would like to play it. Would Steve Marriott still be obliged to consider it in his set or would he be obliged to drop it and pick another one?

What a bizarre dream. There’s a little something of just about everything in there and none of it makes any sense or has any significance.

Rising from the bed I staggered off into the kitchen to make some dough for some bread as I’m going to be running out today. It went together quite nicely too for a change just recently. I’ve not been too happy with my bread-making technique this last couple of weeks.

And then into the bathroom where I washed not only me but also some of my clothes. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have to keep on top of the laundry here as best as I can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. There was something going on in a small field. There were groups of us sitting around there watching it. For some particular reason we stood up and then we all settled down again. My youngest sister was there too, and that’s twice in the last few nights that she’s made an appearance so what’s happening here?

As well as that, there was more too, but you don’t want to know about that, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse came at a time more like his usual arrival, and for a change he refrained from making any comment that would irritate me. In fact he was quite pleasant and the closest that he has been to normal for quite some considerable time. He asked if I was going to watch the rugby later.

Me? Rugby? I come from North Wales.

After he left, I gave the dough its second kneading, made breakfast and carried on reading my book.

And poor Samuel Hearne. After the massacre of the Inuit at Bloody Falls that so affected and upset him, his account of his journey to the coastline of the Arctic Ocean bears no resemblance to that reported by Franklin in 1821 and Richardson in 1848.

In fact Richardson, in his own memoirs writes "it is not very probable that he could have induced the Indians, over whom he had little influence, to accompany him on his survey, after they had completed the massacre which was the object of their long and laborious journey ; nor, had he gone actually to the mouth of the river"

It would seem that Hearne, obviously totally dismayed at his own inability to convince his guides to press on to the coast and ashamed to admit it to his superiors of the Hudson’s Bay Company, wrote a description of how he imagined it to be in the belief that no other European would ever be able to follow in his footsteps.

But there is something in the book that I’m reading that has rung a very large bell with me, and quite surprisingly and unexpectedly too.

The copy of Hearne’s book that I’m reading is a version dated 1910 and contains editorial comments made by someone who at the time was associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The editor tell us "Since this Journal was written, the Northern Indians, by annually visiting their Southern friends, the Athapuscow Indians, have contracted the small-pox, which has carried off nine-tenths of them … but having been totally neglected for several years, they have now sunk into their original barbarism and extreme indigence ; and a war has ensued between the two tribes, for the sake of a few remnants of iron-work which was left among them ; and the Dog-ribbed Indians were so numerous, and so successful, as to destroy almost the whole race of the Copper Indians."

An Arctic explorer by the name of Vilhjalmar Stefansson is described by the Canadian historian Pierre Berton as"the most controversial of that singular breed of venturers who set out to unlock the secrets of the frozen World" – although how anyone can say that of Stefansson when there are people such as Cook and Peary in that group I really don’t know.

And Stefansson’s place is not due to any fraud or intrigue like the two more famous candidates for that title. He is notorious for the famous story of the “blond Eskimoes”.

In 1910 Stefansson was wandering about on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and came across a group of Inuit who had paler faces and some of whom had brownish hair. On his return to civilisation he foolishly told a newspaper reporter of what he had found, embellished with a few bells and whistles, and a few days later, blasted across the front page of the Seattle Times was "Explorer discovers lost tribe of whites"

The newspaper reporter admitted later that he had used his “ingenuity and imagination” to flesh out the story, but by then, the damage had been done.

Worse still, when Stefansson returned to the Arctic a few years later with a party of Scientists sponsored by the Canadian Government, no trace of those Inuit was ever found and he was denounced as a charlatan hungry for attention from the media.

But I reckon that the comment by the editor of Hearne’s book explains exactly why no trace of his Inuit would have been found.

The bread baked itself quite well in the air fryer while all of this was going on. And I’ve found the secret – which is to bake it for fifteen minutes, take the bread out and turn it over and the put it back in for another seven and a half. Then I have a lovely loaf that isn’t burnt.

Back in here, I had things to do and was so engrossed that I didn’t realise that my faithful cleaner had arrived to put my anaesthetic patches onto my arm.

The taxi came early too, and it was the new girl who doesn’t know her way around. I had to show her the way to the other passenger who sometimes comes with me and then we had a nice, pleasant drive down to Avranches.

We were early arriving so we had to wait, but if I’m going to be plugged into a machine for three and a half hours there’s always something that I can be doing to pass the time while I’m awaiting.

When I emerged everyone else had already gone in so I followed them into the ward where I was quickly plugged in.

No orange juice for me so, for the first time in I don’t know how many weeks, I had another one of those cataleptic fits that I used to have. I heard everything that went on but for an hour I was totally unable to do anything at all.

Once the coffee and orange juice came round to restore me to the Land of the Living, I revised my Welsh and then carried on reading Cartier’s account of his voyage as edited by Richard Hakluyt.

Cartier is intent upon visiting the First-Nation settlement of Hochelaga but the King, Donnacona, is intent on preventing him at all costs. Donnacona’s attitude and opinions have hardened quite considerably since Cartier kidnapped his sons the previous year.

Pretty soon the St Lawrence will ice up and Cartier will be obliged to stay there over the winter. It will be interesting to see the interaction between the First-Nation people and the Europeans when the latter find themselves at the mercy of the former in an inhospitable and unfamiliar land in some very unwelcome temperatures.

Remember that as yet, no European has any conception at all as to what a Montréal (because that’s where Hochelaga is) winter is really like. Montréal is situated at 45°N, roughly the same as Bordeaux and Turin and winters like in those two cities will be what Cartier and his men expect.

Meanwhile, all is not well with the dialysis machine. Every five minutes the alarm goes off and poor Julie the Cook has to run to see what’s the matter. She resets it and five minutes later it whistles again.

Eventually, she’s had enough, and who can blame her? She goes to see Emilie the Cute Consultant (who has been keeping her distance from me) who tells her to switch off the machine and send me home. We’ll try again on Monday.

The taxi arrives just as I leave the building and we have a very interesting and conversational drive home

My faithful cleaner is at her post as I arrive, and she’s astonished by my early return. And once more she watches as I stride out up the twenty-five steps to my apartment.

There’s football tonight. Rhydaman of the Second Tier, having already knocked out a Premier League club, Aberystwyth Town, in the previous round, are taking on Hwlffordd in the Welsh Cup. And they are at home too

There’s a huge gulf in class between the Second Tier and the Premier League, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … but what Rhydaman managed to do was to drag their opponents down to their level.

Hwlffordd are third in the table but on this showing, they are a long way short of any kind of serious quality that will enable them to challenge for honours. They took the lead halfway through the first half more by luck than any skill, but Rhydaman managed to equalise near the end.

Try as they might, Hwlffordd couldn’t find the killer touch

The game went down to penalties and it was a very dismal 10-9 win to Hwlffordd. And I for one am hoping that we’ll see much more quality from someone in the next round.

Tea was the last burger on a bap for now, with baked potato and salad followed by chocolate cake and strawberry soya dessert. Next week I’ll be back on the breaded quorn fillets as I’ve now run out of baps.

But my chocolate cake is really nice, especially with the bits of real chocolate whisked into it.

So I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed ready for the morning.

But I’m still having a smile at a story that one of the nurses told me this afternoon.
Normandy is of course a centre for apple-growing and cider production and many of the local farms combine the two. And the nurse told me the story of a local farmer who had fallen into his cider fermentation vat
"He was in there struggling for several hours before the fire brigade managed to pull him out"
"That’s terrible news" I exclaimed. "What took them so long to pull him out?"
"Apparently he wouldn’t let go of the side of the vat" she said.

Sunday 10th November 2024 – THIS PERISHING RADIO …

… programme is driving me crazy.

What I have to do is to edit the text that I dictated last night, chop it into segments and attach it to the relevant track, and then make a selection of tracks with their attached speech in order to make a runtime of an hour or maybe some seconds over that I can edit out.

Sound simple doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you something, and that is that it isn’t anything like.

Even a decent night’s sleep didn’t help matters much. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it’s a lie-in in the morning so I still had over eight hours sleep (in principle).

“In principle” of course because, as usual, I was awoken several times during the night by someone or something and I can see that being a problem when I’m living on the ground floor, if I ever do actually make it there.

Despite all of that, I was still fast asleep and dead to the World when the alarm went off at 08:00. At that moment we were discussing someone’s face – how they’d only had it for ten years and it’s always been the same. Something like that but I’d only just begun when the alarm went off.

And the significance of that, I have no idea whatever.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub-up and came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, but I hadn’t gone far before the nurse came to see me.

She’s obviously someone else who doesn’t love me because she was here and gone in a twinkling of an eye, not really wishing to chat. She says that she’s really busy tomorrow, which is no surprise because on Tuesday her oppo takes over.

Once she’d left I made breakfast and read my book. Having finished the editor’s preamble, we’re now reading the author’s preamble.

Interestingly, despite Samuel Hearne being alleged by many to have been the person who discovered on Marble Island the traces of the long-lost James Knight expedition, he makes it clear in his notes that a party of fishermen from his ship, in their "boats, when on the look-out for fish, had frequent occasion to row close to the island, by which means they discovered a new harbour near the East end of it, at the head of which they found guns, anchors, cables, bricks, a smith’s anvil, and many other articles"

Furthermore, despite the many theories that circulate about the mysterious disappearance of the crew, "while we were prosecuting the fishery, we saw several Esquimaux at this new harbour; and perceiving that one or two of them were greatly advanced in years, our curiosity was excited to ask them some questions concerning the above ship and sloop," and they were given an explanation that should remove any doubt about the likely end of the survivors of the shipwrecks.

Back in here I had some football to watch. There were the highlights of the other matches in the Welsh Premier League and then Stranraer away at league leaders East Fife.

Stranraer have only won once since August last year and have been looking well off the pace but to everyone’s surprise, including theirs, I bet, they actually ran out 2-1 winners and are now off the bottom. If they keep this up they might actually avoid the relegation playoffs this season.

Then there were the dictaphone notes to deal with. I had an old, white Ford Cortina MkII. I was in London somewhere. I had someone with me and we were trying to leave the city. We’d been all the way round the north and in the Midlands. There had been some talk about it being a Bank Holiday and how if someone was going to visit the local supermarket he’d better do it on the Friday because otherwise everything would be sold by the Saturday. I’d made it down to London and was trying to exit the city. I told the person with me to look out for Croydon and if we could follow the signs for Croydon we’ll be half-way there. So we kept tacking across the south hoping to pick up a road. We ended up in some residential area where I nearly knocked down some woman crossing the road after alighting from a bus. Suddenly this guy said “just stop for a minute”. He left the car. I thought “this isn’t the moment to be stopping. We’re in a rush and we have to leave”. I heard some water running, and then I was distracted by something. I suddenly realised that he was standing behind me. We both climbed back into the car and I set off again. I asked him what he had been doing. He replied that he had seen some washing-up. I answered that we had much more important things to be doing than washing-up. The washing-up could have waited for another moment if we want to leave this city without being caught.

Just recently during the night I’ve been spending a lot of time in a white Ford Cortina MkII. That’s quite strange, because the one that I owned was black. But I’ve no idea why anyone would want to leave a car in order to do the washing up.

The reference to shops being closed is possibly a reference of when I first came to live in Brussels. The 11th of November is a Bank Holiday in Belgium but an “optional” one where I was working so I was coming in to work anyway. I’d forgotten about the Bank Holiday and ended up in a panic because I had all my shopping to do and nowhere to do it. For tea that night I walked quite a long way looking for a fritkot

And never ever is Trevor going to bother anyone with that feeble attempt at the styrofoam that just trickled by as he tried to have his ticket read by the machine at the entrance to the Undergound.

That’s what I dictated, and I can’t think of any meaning at all that applies to it. I like the rhyme at the beginning though.

That was everything on the dictaphone but there’s also an impression going through my mind about discussing football managers – someone saying that they thought someone to be too old for the job, but someone else reminding them that some famous football manager is actually 106.

Anyway, I then started work on the first of the two radio notes that I dictated last night. And they weren’t straightforward to edit either. They took quite a while. And now I’ve ended up with thirteen segments that, with their music, total about one hour and thirty minutes.

So thirty minutes has to go, which is in principle no problem, but as yet there’s no combination of tracks and speech that makes about one hour, no matter how I try.

It goes without saying that I haven’t yet started the second one. Perhaps I should have done that one first.

After the hot chocolate I started the baking. First of all was a load of dough for a few pizze, one tonight and a couple more for the future.

Then, there was some dough for a small loaf, followed by what should have been a ginger cake but the ginger has gone the Way of the West so it was a rich chocolate cake instead. That’s the next pudding.

All of that took several hours and once more I was out on my feet again. I can’t do all of this standing up and I really ought to buy a stool for the kitchen. But when do I find five minutes to do any on-line shopping?

So the pizza is done and baked and eaten, and it really was lovely too. The bread looks nice and so does the chocolate cake. Mixing the cake mixture in the food processor is really a good idea.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for tomorrow and another painful session at the Dialysis Clinic.

But baking that chocolate cake reminds me of my friend near Macclesfield who was baking a cake. When the oven “pinged” she was speaking to someone on the ‘phone so she told her daughter, who was aged 11, to go to check to see if it was done
"How do I do that?" she asked
"You stick a knife into the centre" said her mother "and if it comes out clean, you know that it’s done"
So off she went – and didn’t come back until tem minutes later
"Well? Is it done?" asked her mother
"Ohh yes" she replied. "The knife came out clean"
"So what took you so long then?"
"Well, the knife came out so clean" said the daughter "that I put the rest of the dirty cutlery in there too".

Sunday 3rd November 2024 – I AM IN …

… agony right now. I’ve been on my feet for four hours between 16:30 and 20:30 and I don’t think that I have ever hurt so much so continually.

It was agony when I was standing still but when I tried to move, my legs were locked up and even moving them one centimetre sent a searing pain through all my joints

All in all, it’s been something of a depressing day, and it started out so well too.

Last night, although I missed my 23:00 bedtime yet again, I was still in bed before midnight which means that with my little lie-in to 08:00 I was going to have a good eight hours sleep.

In principle, that is. Although I was asleep quite quickly I awoke a few times and on one occasion I was actually planning to leave the bed. However I thought that an 02:15 start to the day was probably being over-optimistic.

Nevertheless, when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and sitting on the edge of the bed. I’d been awake for about 20 minutes and thought after about 15 minutes or so that I ought to have a go at breaking the 08:00 barrier. So there I was.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and then came in here to dress and begin to listen to the dictaphone.

Not that I made much progress though. The nurse came by early today and disturbed me. He didn’t stay long though. He seems to be working quicker and quicker these days, or maybe he doesn’t like me any more. Probably the latter.

After he left I made breakfast and then continued to read this thesis on the Lords of the Marches.

Written by an American whose contact with the UK seems to have been quite “limited”, it’s quite amusing.

We’re at the stage where he is shaking his head, completely puzzled and bewildered, as to why William the Conqueror hasn’t used the same tactics of devastation against the Welsh that he used in the “harrying of the North” where the Domesday Book records such lovely entries as “Earl Harold formerly held this. It had land for three ploughs, 16 serfs and 4 slaves. Today it is waste”.

For an American, that is quite understandable. His answer to the Welsh raids would have been what every other American would have done, gone ahead and invaded them, smote them mightily and made them sell Coca-Cola

To a European though, the answer is quite simple. Having (he thought) been unjustly deprived of his heritage, William went across the Channel to claim his inheritance. Wales was not at this stage part of England and so was not in his inheritance and he had no reason to go there.

Border raids were at that time a normal state of affairs everywhere and there was no reason for this to be any different, but try explaining that to an American whose only thought, despite what the Bible tells him, is vengeance.

There’s going to be a lot of mileage in this thesis.

Back in here I carried on with the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a town in the suburbs of Liège and wanted to go to the swimming baths. The nearest swimming baths were in the suburbs of Aachen so I prepared everything. It took me three or four goes to prepare everything – I’d set out from the house without my sac banane and everything in it, I set out without my towels and trunks etc but eventually I had everything together and I set out to walk. I found myself at Aachen railway station, a really busy junction, and I couldn’t remember which line it was as I wanted to go to the baths. Try as I might, I couldn’t identify it. The only thing that I was certain that I’d have to do was to take the train back to Liège and set out to walk as I usually did. That seemed like a whole waste of time to me. I was intrigued by the definition of this walk along the river through the forest to the swimming baths. It was called “The Nun’s Walk”. When I’d asked about the name I was told that it was a nun walking on the hot tar back to her convent was so hot that she took off her shoes and walked back through the river that follows the path. I thought that that was most unlikely to have been the case but that was the only explanation that I’d heard

If I can walk from Liège to Aachen just for a trip to the swimming baths, I’m doing really well. I’d have to get a move on because it’s quite a distance. But I remember the scenery and it reminds me of when I was IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO walking to Karlovy Vary. That’s something that makes me quite sad though. I won’t ever walk like that again and it upsets me.

Later on I was with my elder sister and her husband, which was a surprise (and wasn’t it just? I can’t think of too many people whom I’d be less willing to see). We had been discussing what had gone wrong with our family. We threw various suggestions around. My sister’s husband came up with the idea that one part of the family is now married off. They all had children so there were grandchildren and that’s really all that’s interesting for one person, isn’t it? I said “I couldn’t agree with you more on that”. We were in Aachen again (so I must have stepped back into the first dream). I’d arrived there on foot and had gone round the shops looking for the railway station back and ended up in a big hotel. I found myself in the basement. There was a concièrge there asking everyone who came past if they wanted to use the toilet. I didn’t answer but wandered away. That was when I met up with my family. I was asked if I wanted to go to have a look around the sales but despite everyone’s insistence I declined. My niece’s daughter said that she was going to eat her cornflakes with bath water. I said “bath water? How horrible”. She said yes, but one of her aunts did it. I replied “God! They must be out of their minds! Eating their cornflakes with bath water?”.

It doesn’t take much to work out exactly what was wrong with our family. The fact was that we weren’t a family, just a lot of strangers living under the same roof, with a philosophy of “every man for himself”. It’s no surprise that I have relationship issues after eighteen years of that.

And next, I watched Stranraer throw everything, the kitchen sink included, at Elgin City and still manage to come away from the Highlands with a 1-0 defeat. It was an object lesson in “it doesn’t matter how much possession you have and how many shots you have on goal if you can’t put one past the keeper”.

After that I had work to do. I’d dictated two of the three programmes in the pipeline, and sat down to edit the first dictation. And I was doing really well until the programme that I use crashed and I lost all that I had done.

That called for a break for lunch, a salad butty with the last of the air-fried bread followed by fruit. The bread was delicious and I resolved to try another air-fryer loaf.

Back in here I began again, and eventually ended up with a programme that was one hour and twenty-three minutes long. Some ruthless editing was called for and that took an age to sort out, but eventually I finished with exactly one hour of talk and music.

No time to do the second one though because it was hot chocolate time.

Having drunk that it was then baking time. First task was to make some dough for bread. I gave it a good kneading and then left it on one side.

The flapjack was next. The food processor was involved in that task and I actually found the mixing gear which I coupled up when I’d finished chopping up the nuts and banana chips.

With the mixing attachment it made the mix so much better. It took longer of course, but it was worth it. The finished result was much more like it was supposed to be.

So much so that I did the same with an oil cake. I decided on a spicy ginger cake and used the chopping attachment to chop up the ginger and the mixer attachment to mix up the rest of the ingredients – the dry ingredients first and add the wet ones next.

By now the bread was ready for its second kneading and I put it in one of my silicon air fryer liners, flattening it well down in case it rose up and touched the element again.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and it was now defrosted so I rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray, leaving it to rise up

The flapjack went into the oven and the cake into the air fryer while I assembled the pizza. The flapjack was lovely but the cake was a problem yet again. I can’t seem to make the air fryer work with cakes

The bread went in the air fryer next while I put the pizza in the oven. And they were both done to perfection. This idea of baking bread in the air fryer is looking like a success, Hans.

After the pizza I finished off the washing up. There was a mountain of it and I’d been doing it here and there while I was waiting for things to happen.

So now I’ve finished my notes and I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to look on the internet for a kitchen stool because I can’t go on like this.

Talking about the swimming baths … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the ones that they opened in Crewe in the town centre a couple of years ago. Over the entrance door was the sign "PSWIMMING BATHS"
And so I asked the caretaker "how come the place has been spelled like that?"
"Ohhh; it’s not like the old Municipal Swimming Baths here" he said. "In these baths the ‘P’ is silent."

Friday 1st November 2024 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days where nothing whatever of any note at all has taken place

Not even during the night either. So I was seriously thinking of not writing anything at all today. But then again I’d have you lot all champing at the bit wondering where I’d gone and what I was doing, so in the end I – well, I was going to say that I picked up my pen, but instead I’ll say that I sat down at the keyboard instead.

Last night after I finished my notes it was long after bedtime so I didn’t hang around at all. I went to the bathroom to sort myself out and then came in here, dressed for the night and went to bed

When the alarm went off I’d just finished eating a big bowl of ice cream and had gone back to work. I’d had to see some clients and talk to them, and then there was some talk that I might take over my old job again. I thought “I’ve not been doing that for six years. I wonder how it’s evolved over that particular period”. I did some more mental arithmetic about what had been going on and what had been accomplished but then the alarm went off.

It was as usual a struggle to leave the bed but I staggered into the kitchen to prepare the dough for some bread.

Hans has given me a few hints about making bread in the air fryer so I decided that I’d make a 250gramme mix and cook it in the air fryer in accordance with his instructions, to see what happened.

While It was festering I went into the bathroom and had a good scrub up ready for the day, and then came back in here to dress.

At the computer, I had a listen to the dictaphone but to my surprise, all that was on it was that which I’d mentioned just now.

That I found strange because I had a distinct impression that I’d gone off arranging a date with a girl during the night and we decided (or rather, she did) that we’d play squash.

Playing squash brings back a few memories. When I was living in my van I joined the local squash club and played there twice a week, simply so that I could have a shower. That all worked fine until one day I was drawn against a girl who turned out to be one of the “posh” elite girls from my grammar school. That didn’t go down very well.

As well as that, I have a very clear memory of waking up, wide awake, and deciding that if I were to leave the bed now I could make a head start on the day’s work. But when I looked at the time on the watch,, it was 02:05 so I went back to bed. But there’s nothing about any of that on the dictaphone.

When the nurse came, he refrained from making any inane remarks about the dough, asked me a few other silly questions and then once he’d sorted me out he left. He can’t have been here more than ten minutes.

After he left I looked at the dough. It had hardly risen, which was disappointing. Nevertheless I gave it a second kneading and left it on one side while I made breakfast.

Alfred Watkins’s book has now gone The Way of the West. Interestingly, while he talks about “lines” connecting all these points, he’s talking about imaginary lines drawn on a map connecting up all of these places, not actual tracks on the ground.

While he does make reference to these lines falling, in many places, along the lines of roads, paths, field boundaries and the like and hints at ancient highways connecting up many of them, he refrains from drawing the conclusion that there really were tracks connecting up all of these places in every case. The theory of the country being criss-crossed with Neolithic pathways came later, long after he was dead.

There is no doubt however that he was certainly on to something. I don’t think that he knew what it was, and I wish that I did.

Right now I’m reading a report about the excavations that took place at Beeston Castle. We’ll be into an interesting argument here because the author of the report is one of those people who promote the theory that the castle was less a symbol of defence and more an ostentatious symbol of power

While it’s perfectly true that a wealthy noble lord with a good, competent staff would want to have something rather opulent to represent his social position, you only have to look at the period 1067 – 1487 with the pacification of England, the war between Stephen and Matilda, the incursions of the Welsh and the Scots, the Wars of the Roses and all of the various uprisings and civil unrest to realise that anyone who could afford it and was at risk of being killed or captured for ransom wouldn’t live anywhere except behind some fortification guarded by his loyal retainers.

Back in here I had a very slow start to the day. It’s always the case when I’ve had dialysis. It takes a lot out of me and not even a full pot of string coffee could bring me round.

Eventually though I made a start and by the time that I’d finished I had not only sorted out the music, I’d converted and remixed it ready to broadcast, with one hour and twenty-eight minutes which, with the notes that I have already started to write, will have to be shoe-horned into a programme of one hour.

That will call for some serious editing.

While I was at it, I tried some editing of a different nature. One of the tracks was a mono recording so I copied it so that I had two tracks, cut out the bass from one and the treble from the other and then joined them to make a stereo track

It’s rather rough and ready but it works after a fashion.

There was a break for lunch and a break while my cleaner was here.

And I’m glad that she was here because she pointed out that the freezer door was open. By now it was all iced up so it was the devil’s own job to close it.

As for the ice, when this happens to her freezer she attacks it with a hair dryer. I don’t happen to have a hair dryer, mainly because I don’t have any hair to dry, but she has two hair dryers, one an old one that she liberated from somewhere. She offered it to several of her clients but no-one wants it, so it will be coming down here tomorrow, and staying for good too.

That’s quite a plan, because the freezer has needed defrosting for quite some time.

The plug for the freezer was hidden behind the washing machine so I’ve been moving furniture around, and I now have an extension lead plugged into the socket with the freezer plugged in there within easy reach.

The most important break though was a lot earlier than this. After breakfast, I’d put the bread in the air fryer, switched it on and left ot for 20 minutes.

And by God! What a loaf! Nice and soft and gone up like a lift. The best loaf that I have ever, ever made. It had risen so much that the loaf had come into contact with the heater element.

So there’s nothing wrong with my bread-making techniques. It’s my table-top oven that is the major issue, as I suspected. So when I make my next loaf I must flatten it out more than I did so that it won’t reach the top.

Either than or buy a bigger air fryer.

Tea tonight was vegan salad, air-fried chips and vegan nuggets followed by rice pudding. The bread in the air fryer might have been a success, but the rice pudding definitely wasn’t

It’s bed-time now, ready for fighting the Good Fight at the Dialysis Clinic in the afternoon. A good sleep will do me some good I hope.

But I do have to say that despite it being Halloween last night and the night when all evil walks abroad, I remained relatively undisturbed.
Not so one family in the town who, according to my cleaner, had a visitation from all of the ghoosties and ghoulies of the region
"All of the women were strung up by the ghoosties" said my cleaner
"What about the men?" I asked
"The men?" She said. "They were all strung up by the … errr … other phantoms"

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: home made bread

Sunday 5th January 2025 – DID YOU ALL ..

Tuesday 31st December 2024 – BY THE TIME …

Sunday 29th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Monday 23rd December 2024 – I HAVE DROPPED …

Sunday 22nd December 2024 – I SOMETIMES WONDER …

Sunday 15th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

Tuesday 10th December 2024 – I THINK THAT …

Sunday 1st December 2024 – MY CAULIFLOWER STALK …

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Wednesday 20th November 2024 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Saturday 16th November 2024 – AS I HAVE …

Sunday 10th November 2024 – THIS PERISHING RADIO …

Sunday 3rd November 2024 – I AM IN …

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Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

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