Tag Archives: no food

Friday 9th August 2024 – I’M HAVING A …

… really bad day today

Or, in fact, I was having a really bad day yesterday because it’s now tomorrow as I’m typing all of this

It’s been one of those days where I’ve accomplished next-to-nothing, done nothing at all and whatever I have done just hasn’t gone according to plan.

It all went wrong on Thursday afternoon. As I mentioned, I fell asleep in the afternoon and was totally out of it for a couple of hours.

And so we had the inevitable result, which I now recognise after having had several months to work it out. Too physically exhausted to haul myself out of my comfortable chair but not tired enough to go to sleep.

And so here I sat for several hours trying to find the energy from somewhere to haul myself across the couple of feet between my chair and the bed. And it was long after 01:30 before I finally pulled myself together and pulled myself up by the bootstraps

That of course is all very well, but waking up at 05:30 was definitely not part of any plan, and neither was staying awake either but there I was, wide-awake but too physically exhausted to rise up from my stinking pit.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I made it reluctantly into the bathroom to have a wash and so on, and then came back in here.

To my surprise, and probably yours, there was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was with that old van from a couple of nights ago. I Had it back at our old house in Vine Tree Avenue. I took my tool box out ready to take away with me because my other car was parked in Edleston Road and needed picking up. The first thing that I needed to do was to check the keys. I had them but I didn’t actually have the keys for this old van. I thought that I must have left them in my coat on the inside. I went inside the van to fetch the coat and took out the keys from it and went to cross the two coats together as my battlefield cross but the big female lion objected and batted everything with her paw

As it happens, the van in my dreams I can see even now. It’s a light grey Austin A35 van and I certainly never ever had one of those when I was young. Probably the only vehicle that I didn’t own back in those days. I did have one of its big brothers, BILL BADGER, the Austin A60 or half-ton van that I mentioned yesterday. I paid £60:00 for that van, had it for several years, and had my money back several times thanks to the work that it did and the miles that we travelled, tucked in between the lorries on the motorway. No way was I going faster than about 50-55 mph with BMC’s single leading shoe drum brakes all round. Not even a hint of a disc brake.

When I was awoken by the alarm I was reliving an episode of DIRTY HARRY. Clint Eastwood had been detained in a roadside stop and made to sit on the pavement. While he was sitting there a policeman recognised him, came over and gave him a great big kick. Of course that inevitable started a riot and that was the point that I’d reached when the alarm went off. .

And so I must have gone back to sleep at some point. But it’s been a long time since there’s been a really good free-for-all down the High Street. We had a few in Chester in 1973-74 but that was about it.

The nurse was quite chatty today and had a lot to say for herself but I can’t remember much of it. She still thinks that I’m a wimp because I won’t take off this plaster on my arm but that’s how it is I’m afraid. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll have the panic attack to end all panic attacks when it comes to coupling me up.

After she left I had breakfast and read my book for a while, reading about the lynchings in the town of Hell’s Gate, Montana, how nine people out of the 12 who lived there "died without going through the intermediate stage of being ill" as the author so eloquently put it.

Back in here it took me an age to come round to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few senses I have these days. What shocked me out of my lethargic torpor was a message from my cleaner "mushrooms? I’m coming homs."

Blimey! It’s 12:30 already, I’ve done nothing and I’ll miss my slot for my LeClerc order. And now my cleaner is on her way home, if they don’t have what I want on delivery, it’s too late to buy it anywhere else now.

When my cleaner came round I was preparing my order from LeClerc so she added a few housekeeping items onto it and I sent it off.

The fridge had defrosted itself during the night so there was water all over the kitchen floor and donning waders and a lifejacket, my cleaner valiantly attacked the pool of water. And there I was thinking what a good job it was that we put down that lino on top of the wooden floor in the kitchen area.

This afternoon I’ve been hunting down another pile of concerts, comparing setlists and the like. And also tracking down missing tracks that were omitted from the published versions of live concerts.

The sad fact is that with almost every concert that I’ve encountered, the published version is often far shorter than the actual versions. What’s missing is sometimes much more interesting than what was included. For that reason you’ve probably never ever heard Joni Mitchell tell her audience that they were "behaving like a bunch of tourists" or Dennis Yeahy scream "brilliant!" in the middle of a Santana concert.

The shopping eventually turned up and I put most of it away, and then I came in here where I sat down and ran out of steam.

And here I’ve sat ever since then. I’ve had no food today since breakfast except a few crackers with my coffee and right now I’m beyond caring. And if I’m off my food you know that I’m not well.

But I’ll sort myself out and maybe find the energy from somewhere to go to bed. I dunno It’s been a strange day, a really long one, but although I’ve not crashed out at all, I’ve been too tired to do anything.

But if I can’t sleep tonight I’ll try counting sheep like that shepherd in Cumbria – "… five, six, seven, hello darling, nine …"
"Did you say ‘hello darling’ to sheep number eight?" asked a passing tourist
"Yes he did" replied the sheep. "He’s my fa-a-a-a-a ther"

Thursday 18th July 2024 – LAST NIGHT I FINISHED …

… my notes with "Which way did it go?"

So which way did the early night that I promised myself go last night?

It ended up being long after midnight with the cleaner and I mopping up blood yet again and I tell you that I’m thoroughly sick of all this.

When I took off my jacket while undressing there was a blood-soaked bulge on my arm where a plaster was supposed to be. Of course I’m not touching anything like that (I really am nesh) so in the end my loyal cleaner came down.

It’s really lucky that she’s here. She has all of the first-aid certificates and the like so she was able to clean everything up, inspect the arm, consider that there was no real damage and bandage it up again.

It took her long enough but she did a really professional job and bound it round with a long strip wrap to hold everything in place until the morning so that at least I wouldn’t bleed to death during the night.

After all of that I could go to bed.

But not to sleep. I wasn’t in the mood which was hardly any surprise. All in all, things were pretty miserable and there was nothing on the dictaphone of course. Zero didn’t come back to continue part II of our voyage which was a disappointment.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and a cursory inspection showed no signs of anything unusual or out-of-the-ordinary, no trails of blood anywhere so I had a good wash and came back in here to wait for the nurse.

When she came, she had a look at my arm. She changed the dressing, commented on the good job that my cleaner had made, and remarked that she thought that my wrist was swollen.

She did a check of my fingers to make sure that everything moved as it should but she still wasn’t satisfied. She urged me to contact the hospital as soon as she left.

Not quite as soon as she left though. I wasn’t going to do without my breakfast.

When I was sipping a mug of coffee afterwards I rang them up. Apparently the surgeon is only there on Tuesdays, but his secretary will tell him that I called with a problem. So I can’t see what use this “24-hour number” is to anyone.

Meanwhile, the nurse called me She’d had the same irrelevant response when she phoned them so she went to see my doctor who has his office in the same building where she is.

He’s away on holiday, of course he will be at a time like this, but he has a locum and she will come round at lunchtime.

Meanwhile, my cleaner came round. She’d brought back more supplies, and wanted to know how I was getting on so I gave her the good news.

This locum – the first thing that she did when she came round was to hold my hand and feel my pulse. And I’ll tell you – she can hold my hand and feel my pulse any time she likes.

She thinks that my wrist is running a temperature but she didn’t want to disturb any of the bandaging as there doesn’t seem to be a problem as far as that goes.

She made several ‘phone calls, gave me a couple of phone numbers that are more likely to produce a response than the one that failed so miserably, and told me that if all else fails I mustn’t hesitate to telephone the emergency services.

She then wrote out a prescription for yet more dressings, which my cleaner came down to fetch.

An hour or so after everyone had gone and come back, I had a ‘phone call.

The neurosurgeon’s secretary called me. "we’ve heard from your doctor" she said. "We’re all quite concerned here. Can you come tomorrow at 11:30 to see the neurosurgeon and have an echograph?"

So that’s the taxi booked for 10:45 then. I wonder at just what point the Social Services will become fed up of paying for me to go gallivanting across northern France at the taxpayer’s expense.

In between all of this I’ve been trying to prepare a radio programme. I’m chosen all of the music, paired it off and begun to write the notes.

Not that I’ve gone very far, and I could have done much more had it not been for a little wobble at one point. But with no sleep last night it’s hardly a surprise.

There’s been no food tonight either except a bag of crisps and some biscuits. I’ve been watching the football, and watching hearts break all over Europe

Caernarfon clung on to win through to the next round but Bala were cruelly denied progress by a very late goal in Estonia and Connah’s Quay in Wales by two very late goals, one right at the end of normal time to be pegged back and then a killer punch right at the end of extra time.

But the fact is that there’s a wealth of difference between teams in Europe and teams in the UK, in style of play and in temperament too.

British teams tend to ride their luck instead of relying on technique and fitness. There’s too much of the “it’ll be all right on the night” about them.

When I interviewed Granville’s manager a while back about fitness levels between full-time teams and part-time teams, I brought up the subject of part-time teams running out of steam.

He poo-pooed the idea, and then Granville conceded three very late goals after matching Olympique de Marseille toe-to-toe for 75 minutes.

After tonight’s results, I’m more-than-ever convinced that there’s something in what I said to him and one day I’ll produce some statistics.

But not tonight because I’m going to bed in the hope of a decent sleep and some pleasant dreams, preferably in the company of Zero if she comes back after the other night.

But on the subject of statistics, and vital statistics at that,; I remember a civil servant friend of mine who went to buy a new bra for his wife
"what size, sir?" asked the shop assistant
"Sixteen and a half" he said
"Sixteen and a half?" repeated the shop assistant, rather puzzled
"That’s right" said the customer "My bowler hat is size eight and a quarter …"

Wednesday 10th JUly 2024 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE!

Swimming around the apartment in a sea of blood last night, up first thing in the morning washing the floors. I’ll tell yuo something for nothing, and that is that I won’t be going on much longer like this. It’s simply not sustainable.

There I was last night, getting ready for bed, and it was late enough already, when in the bathroom I happened to catch my leg against some protruding object.

And that, dear reader, was that. The effects of the Kardegic and the Injection of the Last Resort mean that my blood is thinner than water, and it just erupted.

From the bathroom I had to go to the corner of the living room where all of the medical stuff is, clean the would with some sterile solution and gauze and then apply a plaster. And the time that it took to go from the one to the other, we were knee-deep in gore.

Well, maybe that’s something of an exaggeration, but nevertheless it was a horrible sight. I can’t even stand looking at blood at the best of times, never mind when it’s pumping out out my leg.

There was no point trying to clean up the apartment at that time of night. I’d just be moving wet blood around from one place to another, so I left it and went to bed, very very gingerly. I didn’t want the plaster coming off while I was in bed, with the mess that was likely to follow.

And so as you can imagine, I didn’t have much in the way of sleep last night. I was far too much on tenterhooks.

However I did at one point fall asleep, only to awaken at about 05:00 with an urgent need to go and walk the parapet.

But what was surprising about that was that when I awoke, I was singing Traffic’s JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE to myself for some reason or other.

It’s true that I’ve been playing a lot of “Traffic” just recently but even so THIS TRACK is much more appropriate right now.

Back in bed, I must have fallen asleep again because it was the alarm that awoke me when it rang at 07:00.

Falling out of bed, I switched off the alarm and headed for the bathroom, and once that was all organised and completed I fetched the mop and bucket.

And I’ll tell you another thing for nothing, and that is that it’s not easy trying to mop a floor when you can’t even stand up or walk about.

Nevertheless I did what I could as best as I could and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And apart from going for a walk on the parapet, I must have gone nowhere because the dictaphone drew a blank.

However, even though I didn’t dictate anything I have a very vague recollection of something about Llansawel playing their first game after promotion into the Cymru Premier League and being heavily, and embarrassingly, defeated.

The nurse came round to sort out my legs later and was most unimpressed with me using “his” plasters, even though they are supplied on prescription to me. He had the usual moan about it but cheered up when he saw the two boxes that my cleaner had brought back from town the other day.

He wanted to know how my shoulder was doing, so he ripped off the plaster that the cleaner had fitted to my shoulder to stop the bleeding the other night. "That’s healed quite well" he said

Five minutes after he left, the fountain from the shoulder started up again and we were back to where we were earlier this morning. So he’s another plaster short, my apartment is even cleaner and I’m totally fed up.

With all of this performance today I was late for my Welsh class and then I was totally and completely unprepared.

In fact, I’ve been totally and completely unprepared for the rest of the day. The cleaner thinks that I’m looking quite well, so I’ll have a pint of whatever she’s been drinking because I don’t feel it.

In fact, I haven’t even bothered to make any tea tonight. I’m just not in the mood at all.

There was football on the internet later, Gresford Athletic of the Second Division playing Llanrwst from the Third in a pre-season friendly. The match went pretty much as everyone expected, with Gresford running out 5-0 winners, but there were some excellent chances missed at either end.

But one thing is evident, and that it that the gulf between the Premier League and the Second level is enormous, and mybe LLansawel will be on the wrong end of a couple of embarrassing scorelines before the curtain comes down on next season

But right now I’m going to go to bed if I can without bleeding eveywhere. It’s quite important, because there is what is called the “bleeding time”. That’s the time that it takes for blood to clot once it starts to flow.
It’s important to know it when you’re operating on someone, for obvious reasons
Mine of course being so thin, it’s totally different from everyone else’s so while they were discussing my case and comparing notes the surgeon asked the nurse in attendance "what’s the bleeding time?"
"Quarter to ten, doctor" replied the nurse.

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

… from Paris, and in one piece too which makes a major change.

And I’ve learned a lot too, which also makes a change, but very little of it about what is going on, for the simple reason that I’m not convinced that the hospital knows all that much about things.

Not that that’s any surprise. It’s pretty difficult when you are dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure and everything has to be done by trial and error, crossing of fingers, and hoping that something somewhere will work a miracle.

Instead though, I’ve been shown a whole new way through Paris – a way that’s almost totally devoid of traffic – and Ill remember this for if, by any luck, a miracle happens and I can come here again under my own steam. However, I am not optimistic.

Just as last night I wasn’t optimistic about having a good night’s sleep. I never seem to manage one in normal circumstances and there’s even less chance when I have a journey the next day. It’s always the case and I’ve never worked out why.

Going to bed long after midnight doesn’t help matters much, but I’m at the stage where I’m past caring. As I said yesterday, whenever that was, I’ve long-since lost all track of time here.

Whatever the contretemps was last night when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still continuing so I thought that it was probably a better idea to keep well clear rather than sticking my oar into a controversial situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and I left them to it.

For a change I was asleep quite quickly but as usual kept on awakening which put me off my stroke.

There was the 06:15 blitz through the ward and even though I had my alarm set for 07:00 I was awakened unceremoniously at 06:25. Diabetes check below the limit but I was refused my supplementary orange juice. "Your breakfast will be here in a moment".

When I protested I was told to sod off. What a way to start the day!

However, she was right. Breakfast WAS served soon. Too soon in fact because the bread hadn’t arrived and I had to have biscottes.

The taxi driver came early and I wasn’t finished in the bathroom so he had to wait. But when I emerged I was shoved into a wheelchair and pushed off, clutching my crutches and the packed lunch that the nurse handed me.

There was “some issue” about my packed lunch. When it turned up it was ham and cheese sandwiches, absolutely ideal for a vegan I don’t think. And so for the first time ever in my life I have had bread sandwiches – two slices of bread with … a slice of bread in between.

The driver has run me around before. He’s a nice enough guy and a good driver but doesn’t have much to say for himself. Nether did I today so it was a fairly quiet drive and I slept for some of the way.

Astonishingly, we weren’t held up at all anywhere and sailed all the way through. A four-hour trip took just over three hours today.

Even more surprisingly, I was seen straight away by the specialist.

The lumbar puncture and the electric shock examinations from the other week when I was here as an in-patient don’t show any significant deterioration. But they don’t show any significant improvement either, which he found disappointing.

Consequently he’s going to change my chemotherapy tablet, the one that costs a King’s ransom for some other tablet.

There’s also the suspicion – only a suspicion, mind you – that there’s something else causing this creeping paralysis. He reckons that the amount of drugs pumped into me ought to have had a reaction. Consequently he wants to carry out a Biopsy of my nervous system. This will involve the stay of a few days in September.

Well, why not? What do I have to lose? Only my appetite with the food that’s on offer there.

But seriously, if I’m going to be poked and prodded around and used as a guinea-pig, I may as well make it worth my while and go the whole hog.

There was a blood sample that needed to be taken so I staggered off there where they had several goes at finding a vein and, on staggering out, staggered right into my driver who was passing down the corridor.

"Do you want time to eat your lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks" I replied, having seen what was in my food parcel "Let’s go straight back"

So having taken a different way home, at least as far as the suburbs of Paris, we were back here at 16:15 where the nursing staff, sincerely and unprompted, expressed their dismay at my lunch. "The hospital needs to make more of an effort". Someone fetched me an apple, for which I was grateful.

It’s been confirmed that I am going home tomorrow. "You could have gone home tonight but we didn’t want you to go home to a cold apartment and have the effort of cooking for yourself after the exertion of your trip to Paris" said Emilie the cute consultant who came to see me.

And you ought to be proud of me. I actually did refrain from offering her my front-door key and telling her warm up the place and put the supper on the stove.

But she did come to see me to find out how things went and she photographed the relevant info from Paris. She wished me luck on the next stage of my adventure with my health issues and by the time our conversation finished, I wasn’t really sure who was chatting up whom.

Yes, I’d quite happily massage her clavicles any time of the day or night, whether she asks or not.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been out entertaining our parents in the RAF station.. When they came back there were three bats entangled in the barbed wire. We tried to laugh it off but in reality what had happened was that a couple of Lancaster trainers had one into the barbed wire too. Two of our students were killed. We tried to laugh it off as some kind of nothing much or not very important but from where we were we gradually prepared ourselves for flying operations and gradually tried to keep in shape etc ready to leave and set off. But we had the funeral and then we had to check the barbed wire in the camp and the guards. The guard was shaken up but I dunno I suppose that was what happened.

That’s rather a garbled account of something that I can’t really understand. The barbed wire from last night seems to be there but I’ve no idea about the rest of it Funerals on Air Force bases were commonplace following crashes and the like when trainees were overwhelmed by the equipment and machines that they ere operating and people who witnesses these accidents went to extraordinary lengths and took extraordinary measures to put the images of what they had seen behind them..

While I was on a field exercise I came across a guy living in a hut in the mountains. He was living in deplorable circumstances but I’ve no idea why. I had him arrested and taken back to base. It turned out that he was in fact someone who had been conscripted years ago but had fled. His whole life had been living in this cabin and he had learned so much in his two years of isolation. He taught it all to us, even down to eating possum Without him, our Air Force careers would have been so much tougher because he taught us to survive, and to survive on next-to-nothing. When we were prisoners that was just how it was – survive on what you had and don’t think about anything else

That reminds me of when I lived down on the farm and at a meeting once I was chatting to two British guys who were discussing “this strange British guy who lives like a hermit up in the mountains and no-one ever sees” and it took me a full fifteen minutes to work out that they were talking about me. I’d fit the description in this dream quite happily except that I’d draw the line at eating possum of course. The “deplorable conditions” would fit nicely though.

So anyway, home tomorrow it is. At least, if I can climb the steps up to my apartment. I’m not optimistic because I’ve been practising and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

And that bit about “dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure” brought a wry smile to my face. It reminded me of the Summer School for one of my University modules back 20-odd years ago where a group of us on a Science awareness course managed to club our heads together in the laboratory and discovered a cure for which there was no known disease.

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… – or maybe you do, I dunno. I know very little of your personal habits – just how absolutely wonderful it is to be standing underneath a constant stream of hot water out of a shower outlet after all these months of being without.

Now that my emergency backpack has arrived, complete with wash kit, spare pair of undies and the like, I closed the door to my room, put something to stop the bathroom door being opened, and away I went underneath the little shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom.

Of course, it stopped my little student nurse from coming in to scrub my back and massage my clavicles, but it also stopped the retired Bulgarian female weightlifter from doing the same, and also stopped the nurse from coming in to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom

And I’ll tell you now that it was heaven.

While we’re on the subject of the massaging of clavicles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a visitor during the night.

Actually, I had several because it was quite a mobile night but the most important of them all was Zero. It’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but there she was last night and wasn’t it nice to see her?

All I need now is for TOTGA and Castor to come back to see me but I have a rather depressing feeling, at least about Castor. As for TOTGA, it’s not quite two years ago that … well, never mind.

So last night after I’d finished the notes and put them on line I had a pause and then attacked the notes for Monday, which are NOW ON LINE in a basic form. I’ll add the dictaphone notes in due course, whenever that might be.

It was after midnight when I went to bed and what with 05:00 diabetes checks and the like I was expecting a turbulent night.

And I was right too, but for totally unexpected reasons. As I mentioned, Zero came to see me. We’d been going to the local pub, a group of us of all ages of people. I’d made a few enquiries along the way and I’d worked out which was everyone’s favourite biscuit. There was a young girl, probably about 9 or 10 or so who loved chocolate, there was Zero who loved a certain type of biscuit etc so what I’d done ready for when we’d be going that Saturday was that I’d been to the pub on the way home from the shops and dropped off the biscuits. We rounded up everyone and prepared to go down to the pub at lunchtime. The first thing about which we talked was “a drink for the little one” – of course, she wasn’t that little. She wanted something or other. I asked her what she wanted to eat so she mentioned “biscuits”. I pulled out a pile from under the counter and had a chocolate in my other hand. I said “right, which biscuit do you want to swap for this chocolate?”. I wasn’t given any choice because the chocolate disappeared immediately. It was the same with Zero. She chose her favourite biscuit and had that as well as the other ones that were there and wolfed it down. I began to talk to her then after everyone else had had their biscuits. Zero and I began to have a really good chat. There was some paperwork involving her that needed doing so I thought that I may as well sit down there and do that while everyone is busy and maybe persuade Zero to come over and help me fill it all in.

Then another girl who has appeared once or twice in this rubbish previously puts in an appearance. It’s as we thought, with all this turmoil going on during a school dance or something we’d all been separated because we can’t behave ourselves. I’ve been put over one side and ended up dancing with this girl but I’m busy fighting her for a little more than she’s prepared to give me, like most teenage boys back in those days. There was something else going on with one of the other girls etc so in the end the teacher called a halt to the proceedings and dragged the lot of us, the entire group, down to see the headmaster and began to recount all of the problems that she was having with us and who’s been doing what wrong. Of course he picks on me and begins to give me a really good lecture as if it’s all my fault but it’s probably only some of it and everyone else was probably to blame for a lot.

And there’s nothing new in any of that either. Whatever was going on wherever it was always seemed to be my fault, even though it was nothing to do with me.

It reminded me of a tale of woe that a friend’s daughter in the USA once told me. She was 11 and had a 7 year old brother.
"Whenever I do anything wrong, my brother tells my mom on me and she yells at me" she said once. "But if he does anything wrong and I tell my mom on him, then she says it’s my fault for not watching him properly and yells at me"
That story has a very, very familiar ring as far as I’m concerned.

But there’s a funny story about a similar situation with the children of my friend Erika in Georgia. Her two kids were about 6 and 2 and the time.
"Mom!" shouted the 6 year old. "… (the two year old) … has a choking hazard in her mouth!"
So mom dashes to the rescue and removes the offending article
"Mom!" said the 6 year old in a tone of admonishment "I think you really MUST watch us better!"

Anyway we we were back in that dream again. The teacher was giving her report. One of the younger girls was up to some kind of mischief. That girl from just now was still there. It was obvious to the teacher that there was some kind of … errr … inappropriate behaviour (especially as she was a couple of years younger than me) between the girl and me that was beginning to get out of hand in the middle of one of the songs. There was a third thing happening so in the end she decided to call it all to a halt and drag us all before the headmaster who hopefully would lay down the law and even more hopefully we might all listen to what is being said and take note.

I have to admit that I admired the optimism of some of these new teachers who came to our school straight from University

It was as I said. I was messing around with this girl. There was someone else there messing around and Zero put in another appearance doing something – I think that it was she who was singing falsely at the end. Anyway we were all passing through a group of china and the Headmistress was annoyed in case we fell over and broke it all so she read The Riot Act to us all. Generally, it was the kind of place where we wished that we’d all gone home because we’d really all been getting out of hand just then and making the teacher’s life difficult.
(…And if I’ve been fooling around with another girl – no matter who it is – when Zero is there I ought to be ashamed of myself and go home in disgrace…)

But there was no sense of shame or guilt about any kind of interaction that took place between the teachers and the pupils. It was the Law of the Jungle, them or us even when it came to a group of a dozen boys bodily picking up a teacher’s car and wedging it between two brick walls. “That’ll teach her! Get out of that one!”

My own preference was a War of Nerves, but the less said about that the better in an open forum.

They awoke me for the blood test at 05:00 and also for the diabetes test, which I passed, and so I could go back to sleep.

But not for long because I soon had the morning chorus of people around doing all kinds of things and stopping me doing anything else for a while.

Breakfast then came, complete with jam, so I was left alone to transcribe the dictaphone notes for a while.

My faithful cleaner asked me if they had told me whether I could go so I told her “no news” and 30 seconds after I sent it, they came to tell me that they’d ordered my taxi for 15:00. That was when I hit the bathroom.

Doctor n°1 came to see me when I was packing and told me that I could go, seeing as my results had improved. So I told her goodbye and thanks, that I was sorry to leave and that I hoped that I’d see her again. She blushed again and I kid you not, she skipped – really skipped – out of the door as if she was about 7.

As usual, the taxi was late coming but the driver was someone who had taken me to Paris once so I knew him. We were back quite quickly and my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me up the stairs. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

Once inside I had a hot chocolate and apart from the banana-flavoured soya drink that I’m currently drinking, that’s it. I’ve not moved from my chair, not even to make any food. I just can’t.

Liz was on line so we had a good chat and now I’m off to bed in my nice clean bedroom – my cleaner has been busy while I’ve been away. It’s probably taken her all week to do what she’s done.

So after Zero’s dramatic reappearance last night, who’ll be coming to see me tonight? My money is of course where it usually is – on one of my family coming along uninvited.

It’s hard to believe though that Zero turned up a second time and I was …. errr …. busy elsewhere. I’m clearly losing my grip. But at least I noticed her. Just imagine if I hadn’t.

Still, I’m not alone there. A friend in the Army was once selected for camouflage training. He simply didn’t go and was later commended for his disguise and attention to detail. It fooled everyone apparently

Tuesday 16th April = I’M IN THE …

… cardiac unit of the regional hospital at Avranches while they try to work out why my blood results have gone so berserk just now.

To say that things are not unfolding as well as I would like is proving to be something of an understatement.

It goes without saying that last night I didn’t have much sleep. These hospital beds such as the one on which I was trying to sleep aren’t actually made for comfort and then of course the surroundings weren’t actually comfortable.

To my great surprise though there was something on the dictaphone so at some point I must have dropped off into the Land of Nod. At one point I was dreaming that I was thirsty so I opened my mouth and grabbed hold of a hose but it was the green house of the car and I think that that was where air came out. I felt so stupid not knowing that the green hose was not water at all but it was something else and I didn’t know it.

When the alarm went off (yes, an alarm. Bane of Britain strikes again!) I was a dispatcher for the US Air Force arranging their planes to go off on bombing missions against the Germans in their big Superfortresses … "actually B-17 Flying Fortresses" – ed … etc. It involved finding crews, preparing the crews for departure, putting them in their aeroplane, making sure that when they took off they knew where their meeting point was, over which beacon etc, generally keeping up with the thousands of changes that would take place during the course of the preparation of the mission

Of course they would actually be Flying Fortresses. It would be extremely rare to say the least to find a Superfortress flying on combat in the European theatre of operations. An expensive aeroplane such as that would have been a luxury when its advantages (super-long range and extremely high altitude) wouldn’t be reached anywhere where it would be required to deliver a bomb-load in Europe. Dollar for dollar, a Flying Fortress could drop many more bombs on Germany.

Of course, dispatching would be nothing new as far as I would be concerned. By air though would be a totally new medium but the principle would be pretty-much the same as by road.

However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and things developed as I expected. I’ve been here before, once in Verdun and once in Winnipeg and the results were the same.

Luckily, with having expected it, the necessary precautions had been taken and it wasn’t as embarrassing as it might otherwise have been.

Naturally, I refused any food for breakfast while things tried to settle (a forlorn hope) but at least they moved me to a more convenient location, a little side room off the emergency treatment area, where things could evolve in comparative peace.

Nevertheless a few people came to see me, including the duty doctor. She told me at first that they were planning to keep me under observation for 24 hours and then send me home, but when she saw what was going on, she went away for another think.

In the meantime my blood tests came back. Something in my blood that should be less than 100 and I’ve been living with figures in the 260-270 range for the last few years has suddenly shot up to 316 in the period since my last blood test.

Apparently those kinds of figures won’t usually support life and they are quite concerned. Consequently an ambulance pulled up and I was bundled on a stretcher and stuck in the back.

So here I am at Avranches, 30 kilometres down the road where there’s a regional hospital.

Strangely enough, this was where it all started in March last year when the neurologist sent me here for tests and they couldn’t find the problem – hence my visits to Paris.

The hospital is an old monastery by the looks of things at the front, but there’s a whole huge new extension built on the back and it’s really quite nice and modern. The rooms are small but it’s not as if I need much

So here I am, being cared for and cossetted by a group of nurses. Actually, for the most part they are quite brusque and business-like which differs from most of the nurses in Paris who are much more patient-orientated, but I suppose that they have much more work to do and can’t find the time to be as sociable

While I was asleep at some point during the afternoon there was a dream about a lorry driver who was saying something about how easy it was to set himself up in business. He had a tanker lorry but I remember him having an old “D”-registered ex-RAF tanker before that one. He had several trailers that ere quite substantial trailers and I was saying that he didn’t pick these up for peanuts, and by the looks of things were specially-made. It was quite obvious to me that yes, you can set yourself up in business but you need to have the kind of capital to ba able to do that kind of thing. That’s not just available to everyone at all

And that reminds me of someone I know who lives in the countryside a few miles south of Nantwich, who made a fortune simply by being willing to go crawling and climbing where other people dared not go

The food here is the usual hospital rubbish, I have to say, so it’s a good job that I’m not feeling in the mood to eat anything right no, which is just as well.

And so I’m going to try to sleep – a forlorn hope, I reckon. I’m feeling a little better, but not that much.

I’ve set the bed fairly high so it’s easier for me to get out and in without any help (something that will be quite important as the night develops) but they aren’t happy about it and keep on trying to lower it. I’m winning the fight at the moment but things will almost inevitably change as the night goes on.

It’s “visions of Bernard Bresslaw” in CARRY ON DOCTOR hobbling around with his leg in plaster
"What’s the matter with you?" asked Frankie Howerd
"Appendicitis" said Bresslaw
"So why the plaster on the leg?"
"I fell off the operating table"

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… French hospital that I can add to my ever-growing list. And remind me to cross it off my list of ones to revisit. Florence Nightingale was there and dropped her lamp on my toe.

But seriously, old and creaking though the hospital might have been, I couldn’t fault the service that I had yet again

“But I don’t want another one of these 06:30 starts again” said he, setting his alarm for 06;15 tomorrow. “I’m not as young as I was”.

Indeed I’m not. It took me over half an hour to wash and dress this morning which meant that I didn’t have time to make my sandwiches for the journey. Consequently I’ve been without food and drink all day until I returned home.

That’s actually not a bad idea either. It’s something along the principle of a long journey where “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out” at an inconvenient moment.

The taxi was late arriving so I had to ring up to chase them up. And when it arrived, what kind of state was I in to stagger to the car in my condition? This is really beyond a joke now.

But eventually we set off, with the driver telling me that she had no idea where the Hospital St Antoine was so she programmed it into her GPS.

She was … errr … past her prime, shall we say, and moaned and complained all the way to Paris about just about everything.

When we reached Paris we zigzagged up and down the streets as she kept on misreading her GPS, we almost speared another vehicle on a couple of occasions as she swerved dramatically across carriageways and nearly took out a couple of bollards as she did another handbrake turn at a missed junction.

A proper olde-worlde taxi driver she was, and I’ll tell you something for nothing, that I’d travel with her again. She made the journey quite interesting.

Finding the hospital was one thing. Finding the building that I had to visit was another. And then finding a parking space was something else quite difficult. In the end we negotiated with two ambulances and persuaded one of them to leave.

It was a desperate, agonising crawl on my crutches to the lift, to the reception and then to the waiting room. And my driver was helpfulness itself. Nothing was too much trouble for her and once she was away from the steering wheel she was actually quite a pleasant person.

We were 30 minutes late, not a problem because I telephoned them en route to say that we were “held up in traffic”. I suspected that something like this that happened.

There were quite a few people waiting but I jumped the queue and they saw to me straight away. Now I have a machine and its terminals stuck to me until tomorrow morning.

Yes, they want me to bring it back by 10:00 but they are of course joking. I’m not going back tomorrow. If it’s that important they should have given me a bed for the night.

Anyway I have the Holter Machine now, and I left the Technical Department here, the Haematology Department at Hospital Pitié Salpetrière and the taxi company fight it out between them if the hospital wants it back tomorrow.

Whatever the outcome was, the net result is that I have to be up and about to hand it to someone at my door at 06:30. And I suspect that it will be what my old boss when I was chauffeuring in Brussels would call a “Spanish 06:30”, meaning “any time they like”.

Having done all that, we set off for home. On the way back I had a message from the Hospital Pitié-Salpetrière – "Please stop taking medicament X and we’ll send you a prescription for medicament Y instead".

And I bet that After the blood test results on Wednesday There will be further changes.

We arrived back early, which was nice, and my helpful cleaner met us at the door to help me up the stairs. I’d be totally lost without her.

Once I’d settled down I made some hot chocolate and a nice baguette sandwich of lettuce, cheese and tomato which was excellent for a starving man.

And then back here I downloaded and printed the prescription for my long-suffering cleaner to take to the pharmacy tomorrow. She came down to collect it and we had a chat.

Then there was the dictaphone notes. Tons of them. I travelled miles during the night. I can’t remember much about this dream but it was one of those that rambled on. I was back at home with my family. One of my niece’s children was there. Everyone else was there. The girl was in a wheelchair because she’d had a problem and was going to the doctor’s very soon. They were going to give her a respray of her artificial suntan before she went. There were 2 other people disabled in that house and me too. I said to my mother “don’t you think that there’s something wrong somewhere with us that you have so many disabled people here all at once,”. She replied “yes you don’t usually have that many disabled people in a household do you?”.

Disabled people apart, there was a lot that was wrong about our family and household and disability wasn’t one of them.

There was then a dream about my youngest sister. A woman had decided to teach her to dance some kind dance. She held her backwards so that my sister couldn’t see what was behind her. They began this dance. There was a huge snake that lived in this room. When my youngest sister had her eyes closed and was dancing near that direction. Someone shouted “it’s OK baby. The snake (they used the snake’s name) has her jaws closed quite tight”. Obviously the inference being that this woman was going to lead my sister up towards the snake and the snake would devour her. My sister was immediately on the defensive and became much more nervous and tight in this woman’s arms than she had been before that person shouted out that comment.

And then my sister was there again later on. There was a digger there that slowly picked her up. She was dangling over different parts of the audience of the State Fair. Then she happened to fall or something fell from her hand. Instead of reaching for it this machine’s hand took her higher until she was in some kind of despairing reach of what she’d dropped. It slowly lowered her and she kept that position. The arm of the machine moved around. My sister actually soared up and went off in a very nice aeroplane. Someone standing by me tried his best but was carried away and the plane once it got going went more and more out to Haverfordwest. Before she left she gave me this little ball of dough and told me how to ply it and pull it apart … becomes very indistinct and tails off …

Not much of that latter dream makes sense but it was really difficult to decipher, especially as I began to taper off into nothingness. I wonder how it would have ended had I not done so.

Then I was back in a dream from a while ago, I think about some people investigating a murder. They were following up several clues, one of which was something that had fallen from a TGV. Anyway, a TGV was going full speed ahead when there was an enormous bang from underneath. They slowed right down and stopped. This stopped the whole TGV network. They looked underneath the line but couldn’t see anything so they walked slowly back along the track to see if they could see anything. They came to the TGV that was following them but was stopped. he said that just 20 metres back he had run over a dead cat. He was certain that it wasn’t there before when he was on the outbound trip. They began to look for this cat but couldn’t find it.

This dream moved on to someone having been killed. They’d picked up some evidence about a vehicle being seen somewhere. They made a few enquiries at an isolated farm in the vicinity. The farmer said that he knew absolutely nothing but it was the pace that his denial went that made them extremely suspicious They looked further around and came across another farmer who had a vehicle but something about this didn’t seem to fit anything. Eventually they found a third farmer who had had a Bedford CA van but had taken it to be scrapped. He was in the area at the time but had left the van unattended for a while and then gone back to it. He was sure that it had been moved. They were then convinced that they’d found the vehicle that was used so they went and bought the van and drove it back, deciding that rather than have it forensically tested they would try shock tactics and drive to the first farm in it. As soon as the farmer saw the van coming he ordered his men to open fire. A couple of them did but when he saw that it was quite pointless he put his gun to his head and shot three bullets through it, finishing himself off.

There was plenty more where that came from, but you don’t really want to read it especially if you are having supper or something.

My supper tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg – really delicious yet again. I don’t know why I complained about the taste yesterday. And with no sauce left I made my own with olive oil, wine vinegar and lemon juice with some garlic paste. Totally delicious.

And now, having already crashed out twice and an early start in the morning, I’m off to bed. Today has really exhausted me. But there’s my blood pressure, my medication and my on-line food order before I can go to sleep, not to mention my early start tomorrow.

It’s never-ending, isn’t it?

Saturday 14th October 2023 – BETTER LATE THAN …

… never. And it doesn’t get much later than this.

As I begin to type out these notes it’s 01:48 tomorrow – if you see what I mean. And there is no reason whatever for this lateness because, as far as work goes, I’ve done nothing at all. I didn’t even begin to type out the dictaphone notes until about 00:30, and I’ve not had any food this evening either.

The day started off as it meant to go on, with a desperate stagger out of bed in an attempt to beat the second alarm. I managed it too, but not by a lot.

After the medication I checked the mails and messages, to find that I’d been invited out for a coffee this afternoon so I’d better have a good wash and a shave etc

Later on, I finished off the soup that I’d opened yesterday. With no bread here today (except in the freezer) I had a go at baking some of this precooked bread in the air fryer.

It worked better than I expected, so when I bake the second one tomorrow I’ll turn down the heat a bit and cook if for a shorter time. But it opens up the door to all kinds of possibilities.

What I have been doing is to resolve a problem with the computer. It performed an upgrade during the night and from then on, I couldn’t log into a site that I use. I had to leap through all kinds of hoops to finally make it fire up properly

Something else I’ve been doing is to do a little research. One of my friends is selling a dual-screen IMac set-up. It’s an old piece of equipment but it seems to be fairly powerful – even with a 1TB SSD

They are reputed to be much better than a PC for working in graphics and one of the screens in the set-up is a whopping 27-inch and that looks interesting, so I’ve been going through the list of programs on it to see what it has and see whether, if I decide to buy it, it will do what I want.

It’s not as if I’m expecting much for my money, but I’m not paying much money for it. I’ve seen the list of known defects in these machines and there’s nothing on there that worries me.

Later on I went upstairs to chat with my neighbour and her daughter who is visiting. We were there for several hours chatting about all kinds of things.

One of the plans, for which I did some research later, was to find out about one of these chairlifts to go up the flight of steps to where the lift is. There are several disabled people in the building and we are all struggling to climb these 12 steps.

On the way up, I was detained by one of the other neighbours, and then a different neighbour detained me on the way down. I seem to be quite popular these days.

No tea tonight because I wasn’t hungry, but it’s not as if I had anything more important to do.

And later on I had the dictaphone notes. I was writing out some notes for some radio programmes last night. I’d come across a song going back to the late 60s recorded by a boy and girl couple. I added it onto the playlist and began to look for some information about them. I came across a whole series of photos taken quite quickly one after the other, one of which was the boy carrying the girl. The caption was something along the lines of “this is how to cherish your pet when it begins to rain”. It turned out that these photos were taken of 2 kids, one of whom was 15 and the other was celebrating her 14th birthday. They had sung together at school and gone on to make records. I couldn’t find out what had become of them, whether they’d married, broken apart or just drifted out of the scene. It was really strange because all the information that I could find about these people stopped at this birthday party

A little further on in the same dream I was doing my Welsh homework and answering a few questions but there were several that had me stumped. I read one of them out loud but I couldn’t think of the verb. The teacher turned to me and asked “do you think that (such a verb) is good to use in that place?”. I replied “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you” so he asked again but I still couldn’t hear. He probably said the sentence to me 4 or 5 times but I still couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, almost as if I was having some kind of blank spell of deafness while he was asking me the questions. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It was just a blurred kind of burble when he talked to me.

Then there was something back in the dream a third time about (something) beer and bowling makes a great afternoon out. I thought to myself that I should be doing quite well at this sport but it’s not the slightest bit of use whatsoever if you can’t hear anything that someone is saying to you.

We also had a competition between people. I don’t know what competition it was now but my name was pulled out of the hat to be paired with Hercule Poirot. I said “oh no! Not you again!” in a rather exasperated tone of voice

Then a large white cross appeared in the middle of a programme that was going on and I was recording, about your elderly ones being on TV etc. I was hoping that the person whom I was looking after had a great deal to say so I was interested in having her try to go on this programme but I wasn’t doing very well at all.

Finally, I was back in Crewe and had been working on Caliburn. There was a lot of work that needed doing and I’d done most of it. Some of the stuff was quite heavy and I needed some things. My father said that he’d be home at lunchtime and we’d finish it off in the afternoon. So roll round 17:00, 18:00 and I’d been standing there for 5 or 5 hours. There was no sign of him, which was nothing new. I was beginning to think about the wasted holiday. I’d just come over here to see everyone and all I’ve ended up doing is standing in this drive waiting. A few girls whom I knew came round. They were going out to drop some things off on some people. They asked me if I’d like to go so we piled into their car and set off. We stopped at one of the streets off Nantwich Road to drop off something at someone who had a poodle. The girls were making some remarks about these people and this poodle. We all ended up walking along Nantwich Road. I was miles away with my head in the clouds as usual. I noticed that these girls were crossing the road so I shouted and ran after them. They all laughed. We wandered along the road looking at the things in the shops. They seemed to be having a good time but I was still feeling extremely depressed about everything that I’d planned to do, everyone whom I’d hoped to see etc but there I was, just waiting around for things to happen, which seemed to be the usual state of affairs.

So now I’m off to bed to sleep until I wake up. And I’ll have a little think about this computer. The last time that I used an Apple was in 1992 so it will be fun to have a play around with this IMac for as long as it lasts. It won’t last all that long but then again neither will I.

Tuesday 18th July 2023 – TONIGHT’S FOOTBALL …

… was a little better than last week’s.

TNS were at home to BK Hacken from Sweden with a two-goal deficit that they needed to overcome.

However, the first half of the game was played just like the match last week with TNS defending on the edge of their own penalty area and letting the Swedes bring the ball to them and the half-time score of 1-0 to Hacken was probably fair enough.

Nevertheless, Craig Harrison must have put something in his team’s half-time cuppa and I wish I knew what it was because I wouldn’t mind some of it myself.

TNS came out for the second half and actually took the game to the Swedes and we had a couple of really long periods where the Swedes were under the cosh.

There was even some panic in the Swedish defence and TNS had a couple of really good chances that they could well have converted.

However, like most Welsh clubs, they ran out of steam and fitness and Hacken scored a second, rather flattering goal in injury time.

If only TNS had played like that for the rest of the two games, and if only they would work on their fitness. Just have a look at any team playing against another team several levels higher. They can usually give a good account for themselves but it’s always the start of each half and the final 15 minutes where it all goes to pieces.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I interviewed US Granville’s manager for the radio just before their match against Olympique Marseille. I asked him about the phenomenon but he didn’t think much of my thoughts.

And Granville were still 0-0 with 15 minutes to go and conceded 3 goals right at the end of the game to prove my point.

And to prove another point, I still managed to fall asleep at my desk this morning despite having done nothing at all during the day that involved any effort.

And for a change I had a decent night’s sleep, once I’d actually finally managed to drop off.

During the night I didn’t go far either. I was in the office and there was something like a party on but they were all visiting dignitaries, important people being invited. I’d mentioned it to a couple of my friends who said that they’d turn up. By 18:30 when this event was in full swing I was in there waiting for them but they didn’t arrive. I began to become dispirited about this. I went over to the window to look out to see what was going on. There was one of these great big American motorhomes parked up in the street at the side. Someone saw me looking out of the window and made some kind of remark. I said “I was miles away” at the time. They said “we thought that you were admiring that machine”. I said “my brother-in-law from Canada, he was here a few days ago. I showed it to him and told him that that’s what he wants to get for me next time I’m over in Canada”.

I was working for a local coach company driving school buses, that kind of thing. One set of school buses was continuing to run through the Summer for children who were at some kind of camp. I had to take a coach out early one morning to go to the camp. There was no-one on the road when I set out so I was driving much quicker than I would ordinarily have done. There was a car behind me so I just kept on driving at quite a quick speed in this old Ford. I almost came a cropper at a T-junction but luckily one of the roads that fed into it was closed so nothing was coming out of it. But I was really enjoying myself driving this coach quite quickly so early in the morning with nothing about on the roads at all. I was really disappointed when the alarm went off just as I was driving through a deserted village. I must have been flat out at the wheel.

It’s been almost 30 years since I last drove a coach and I must be missing it. My little drive around in an old Ford R114 was quite a happy, cheerful trip out and I was really sorry when the alarm awoke me.

After the mails and medication it took a while for me to sort myself out, especially as I fell asleep at one point, but the ‘phone awoke me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the nerve specialist in the town seems to have taken me under his wing right now.

In the town in an old hotel is a “Re-education Centre” where people go after they have had a long period of incapacity. Here they re-learn life skills such as walking, talking, all that kind of stuff in order to be let back to live independently in normal life.

They rang me this morning. “Doctor Gervais has sent us a note about you. We need some personal information from you in order to open a file for you”.

So it looks as if they are going to become involved too, and that will be quite useful if they take me in as an outpatient.

And then my neighbour contacted me. Her friends from Québec are over. Would I like to come round to meet them this evening?

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off the scanning of all of these medical receipts and then I started to make the claims out. So far, I’ve just finished my 6th page and I’m not even half-way through. I hope that my insurance will actually pay me back. I could even afford to buy myself a new microwave instead of the death-trap that I have right now.

There was no tea tonight. I’d been up to see my neighbour’s visitors and say “hello” and then I came back down here to watch the football.

Now all of that is done, I’m off to bed. Later than I would have liked but never mind. It can’t be helped. Tomorrow I’ll finish off the receipts and then do some work on the radio. I really need to organise myself so much better than I am right now.

Monday 19th December 2022 – APART FROM A …

… fruit bun thing at about 10:30 I’ve had nothing to eat all day until about 22:00 – and then it was a packet of crackers.

When it was teatime I was chatting to Liz on the internet but never mind, I can wait for half an hour. That’s what friends are for.

And the moment that we finished, Rosemary rang me (I’m convinced that she has a camera installed in this apartment, God help her!) and we had another one of our marathon ‘phone calls. By the time we finished, I was too tired to cook anything. I’ll be off to bed very shortly.

It’s actually been quite a busy day today, not the least activity of which was during the night. I was later going to bed than I had anticipated but even so I was awake a couple of times during the night and by 04:45 I’d given up completely.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I surprised myself by actually leaping out of bed (well, maybe not exactly but you understand what I mean) which considering just how difficult it has been just recently to raise myself from the dead at a normal time, is pretty astonishing.

After having had the medication and checked my mails and messages, I sat down to deal with the radio programme today.

No records were broken today – in fact, far from it. I had a break for about half an hour when I went for a shower as I’m having visitors later, and then the events that I mentioned towards the end of last week are starting to unwind and it won’t be long before my active involvement will be requested. I need to be prepared.

Once the radio programme was completed I actuallly fell asleep for a short while and then had to wait around for the doctor to arrive.

Trailing his student around with him, he came to examine me and to give me some advice about how things might unfold. e had quite a chat about a few other things too, more of which anon.

Later on, the Social Services department telephoned me. The woman to whom I spoke gave me a couple of phone numbers whom I need to contact so that I can have some assistance about the place. That’s a job for tomorrow as it was rather late in the afternoon.

A short while later, the physiotherapist came round. The doctor had contacted him too. He thinks that the problem lies in my thighs and hips and he gave me some exercises. He’ll be back in a week to see how I’m doing.

Once everyone had finished with me I could turn my attention to the dictaphone. There wasn’t an awful lot on there from last night. There was something about a block of flats where there was a place to sunbathe. Someone was pointing this out from quite a height, looking down onto it. We could see that a large glass carafe of water or something had fallen obviously from a great height and smashed to smithereens right in this place. If anyone had been sunbathing there they would have had the full weight of all of that right on their head.

Having spoken to Liz and Rosemary I’m now ready for bed. No Welsh lesson because we’re on holiday but if I remember, I’m going to do some revision.

What else I’m going to try to do is to catch the bus into town and try to find some frozen food to tide me over. It would have been a good day to take Caliburn out for a run with the temperatures having warmed up dramatically to 10°C today but there just wasn’t the time available and I’ll have to try that some other time.

Not right now though because I’m off to bed. Anyone would think that I’ve had an exhausting day but it’s just the way that things are going right now when I’m becoming tired out for no good reason. Let’s see how things unfold tomorrow.

Thursday 10th November 2022 – I’VE WRITTEN A …

… letter to the hospital staff that I will hand to a doctor at the next available opportunity.

Basically, it says that I withdraw any and all permissions for tubes, pipes, cameras and the like to be inserted into my body.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a total horror of pipes and tubes going into my body and always have done and I’ve mentioned this to everyone with whom I’ve come into contact at the hospital. They know that they can render me unconscious by whatever means they like and when they have done that they can do what they like.

But only if I’m unconscious.

10 or so days ago they took me down to the bowels of the hospital to shove a camera down my throat. First though they gave me a pill and I was unconscious for three hours.

Today I had to go back down there so a handy porter took me and my bed on our travels.

The doctor down there remembered me, remembered my pill but just to remind her, I gave her my little speech.

So she put me on the bed in there, sprayed something in my throat, slammed something between my teeth and then simply pushed the camera down my throat with no anaesthetic at all

It goes without saying that we had the usual panic attack and everything that went with it. And hence my letter.

Last night I was in bed quite early and slept the sleep of the dead until the alarm went off at 06:30 There was one occasion when I awoke to find someone poking and prodding me round about 04:00.

Nothing on the dictaphone from last night so it must have been a deep sleep.

Much of the morning was spent either sleeping or being shaken awake but nurses and doctors. One doctor was particularly interested in my legs and that’s always a good sign.

What I didn’t like was being told round about 09:30 that I could no longer eat anything until my camera examination. I wouldn’t normally have minded except that they didn’t come for me until 14:30.

That wasn’t quite so bad but then they kept me waiting for an age before they saw me. And this is where the problem lies, I reckon, They were running late and didn’t have the time or the space to keep me on one side for a few hours while I recovered..

So I missed my lunch but I was back just in time for tea. And if that really was hummus that I had, it was the strangest hummus that I have ever eaten.

Anyway, that was basically that today. The desperate disappointment of this bronchoscopy has ruined everything here and things won’t ever be the same again.

It was an appalling thing to do to me because they all know how I feel about things like this. They’ve all had fair warning over the past few years and it’s extremely regrettable that the doctor, who took so much care to deal with me the first time, totally ignored my wishes the second time.

And I’ll tell you something for nothing. It won’t ever happen again.

Saturday 9th July 2022 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… a couple of photos of the local kids taking the Leap of Death off the harbour wall into the sea, I’ll tell you about my day today, such as it was.

It started off as I mean to go on, by ignoring the alarms when they went off at 07:30, 07:45 and 08:00. In fact it was at 09:30 or thereabouts when I finally crawled into the Land of the Living. That’s much more like it.

And so after the medication I sat down and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. And if you are wondering why it took me all of the morning to deal with them, then read on. I haven’t crashed out yet today and that’s a surprise given the distance that I must have travelled during the night.

I’d been with someone shopping and we’d picked some stuff out and we had a tub of ice cream. We couldn’t carry that so we put it on the floor by the freezer and took the stuff over. We came back and I put that tub back in the freezer and picked one from right down at the bottom that would be nice and cold and hard because it was a hot day. Then we bumped into this girl called Marie or Maria. In real life she was someone whom I knew from Woolworth’s in Crewe in the 70s. We were chatting and then I said I’d take this ice cream over to where there was a desk. She gave some kind of vague indication. When I arrived there I realised that I didn’t know her family name so I was looking for some French-sounding family names because I was sure that her husband was French. In the end I found 2 desks with 2 people the same family name, a foreign-sounding name. There was a girl working at a desk nearby so I asked her which was Marie’s desk. She said “if you had been here yesterday …” “which I wasn’t”. “No, but if you had been here yesterday …” and was on the point of giving me some really long lecture.

The guy in this dream lives with his mother, not in a flat, and is dating Marie. They don’t live together because she had something weird in her separation agreement with her husband about having guys staying over so they are a couple. We were out somewhere in Scotland in the Central Belt with baked beans and sausage on toast talking but I can’t remember what we were talking about now. It’s all gone out of my head.

So while you admire a photo of Belle France doing a trip around the Bay, there was an unexploded mine that had drifted into a harbour where they were loading these ships with soldiers. I’d been detailed to take it to a disposal centre in my Cortina. A woman called Carol and I went to pick it up. We had to fight our way onto the quayside in this car. We eventually arrived at the end where we could hoist this mine up. In the meantime thousands of people were fighting to get into the Cortina to get away. We had to explain to them that if they got into the Cortina they would be travelling with an unexploded mine so they all left. We put this mine in the back of the car. A woman came over and asked if we’d seen a child’s coat. I said no, I hadn’t so she had a look in the back where we’d put this mine and there were two kids’ coats in there. She thought that one of them might have been the coat for which she was looking but could she order an extra coat from the stores just in case? I told Carol to make a note but she pulled a face. We had this mine safely aboard our car and had to turn round through these crowds of soldiers and leave for this mine disposal place

Somewhere in this I was at Marianne’s and she told me that I could make some tea. I switched on the oven and put a small mushroom pie in it. I had potatoes on the stove and some peas cooking in gravy. Later on she came to check and saw that I was doing OK so she went back to her book again and carried on working. She seemed to think that I was doing everything correctly and asked me if I wanted some Brussels sprouts. I replied “no” because she would overcook them terribly.

And while La Granvillaise and the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou do a lap around the Bay I was back with this little girl and her father … “which little girl and her father?” – ed … again. They’d been round an amusement park and looked at the gardens and now gone to look for their plants. He couldn’t find his radishes but his wife and daughter found their plants. In the end he found his radishes in the wrong place so he went to dig them up. Just then there was some kind of commotion and he and his daughter fled. They scrambled aboard a spaceship that was one of the exhibits at this park and set off down this waterway. After a few hours they stopped. The girl was really nervous. She didn’t want to stop as they could easily be caught if they stopped so when he lowered the machine down onto the water she pressed the lever and it took off again and they went somewhere else. Eventually they came to another place. When they landed there and went out for some fresh air there was another young girl watching them. They took this young girl and put her on the spaceship as well. There were now 3 of them fleeing from whatever authority it was that pursuing them over these radishes.

Then I was in my bedroom and there was another girl here (and I wish that I knew who she was). We were talking about going somewhere. She moved her suitcase over to the wardrobe ready to pack it and my suitcase still had those hot cross buns in it so I had to go and make some room in the freezer to store them in there. When I came back in here she had gone. That awoke me with a start and for the first minute or two I was looking around the bedroom trying to find her, it was somehow so realistic that I thought it was real.

That was absolutely weird

Later on, while this kayak rows past this strange buoy that has appeared just here in the bay, there was some kind of geography field trip. Half a dozen or so of us had gone to the site of some shale deposits and were searching through for all kinds of stuff. I lost interest after a while. I had these things and I had 3 foam-rubber cushions on which I’d been kneeling. I knew later on that afternoon that we were going to go home so I was simply piling them up in a corner ready to post them off but putting them so they looked tidy and I was just stirring stuff around to pass the time more than anything else. There was only really one person working, running out into the shale to pick up fossils etc. There was someone there with 3 vehicles, a black saloon, a red double-decker bus and a green double decker Bristol Lodekka bus. While I was walking around I suddenly had the thought that I’d never driven a service-bus double-decker so I went over to him but he didn’t stop. He kept on driving. I had to run round after him. I thought that this was pretty pointless. I was determined to have a go at this bus for about 5 minutes. It was like a farm track or something so it wasn’t going to be dangerous but the guy wouldn’t stop to talk to me. I had to run after him. I thought that this is going to be a pretty futile exercise, I could see this, but it was going to be my only chance to have a go behind the wheel of a bus like this.

I had some endives and a pile of Brussels sprouts that needed preparing, blanching and freezing. I prepared the endives but I didn’t like the look of the sprouts because they were all old and brown. Trying to find something nice in those would take me an age. There won’t be very much left to freeze if I do it properly so I was really not looking forward at all to doing that.

All of that and not a single TOTGA, Castor or Zero. I hope that they put in an appearance while I was away otherwise it’s going to be a pretty poor do. It’s been an age since I remember them coming to see me.

Once more, I’ve had no lunch. I’m trying my best to keep on top of my weight. There’s still plenty that I could do with losing to bring me down to what I consider to be my optimum weight. While I was in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019 I actually made it too and I kept it off for a while until I was obliged to stop running.

This afternoon I made a desultory start on the photos from June and my trip around Europe. There are plenty to go at and I didn’t feel like pushing myself too hard.

And in case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been out to the shops today.

Instead I went out for my usual walk around the headland.

The first thing that I did was to go over to the wall at the end of the headland and look down on the crowds on the beach.

And crowds there were too. Plenty of people taking advantage of the nice warm weather and beautiful sunshine, even if there wasn’t all that much beach for them to be on this afternoon. The tide is well in right now.

Quite a few people actually brave enough to take to the water too. They were all having a whale of a time this afternoon, and who can blame them?

There were plenty of people wandering around on the path up here on top of the cliffs too.

And that’s not all because we had one of the sparrowhawks too this afternoon. There’s a colony of rabbits down there in the cliffs and I imagine that the bird is on the lookout for a juvenile to take home for tea.

From what I’ve seen, I think that there are at least two of them working the cliffs around here. Usually there’s just one of them but I have seen two on a couple of occasions flying around there.

While I haven’t actually seen one of these here manage to catch something, I’ve seen plenty of them in the Auvergne when I lived in Virlet that were clutching some kind of rodent in their claws.

That wasn’t all of the aerial activity that was happening either.

As I wandered along the path I was overflown by our old friend the yellow autogyro.

It was heading towards the airfield when it overflew me but immediately afterwards did a rather dramatic U-turn and headed back down the coast towards Mont St Michel.

Apart from that we had a few full-size jets flying by overhead at 35,000 feet but I haven’t seen a light aeroplane for a while. With it being summer, I would have expected to have seen them out and about more-or-less permanently.

However, there were plenty of fishermen out this afternoon.

Every rock seemed to have its own fisherman today. There were seven just in my field of view here at the end of the headland, although only three made it into this photo.

And with all of the activity going on out at sea today, because there was much, much more than that which you have seen in the earlier photos, there was no-one at all sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban enjoying the spectacle.

Having taken several photos here and there of the various water craft I wandered off along the path on the other side of the headland.

The kids were there on the sea wall leaping off into the sea so I watched them for a while and took a few photos. Apart from that, there was nothing else going on in the harbour that we didn’t see yesterday.

What we did see yesterday were a couple of marquees that hed been erected down at the far end of the harbour.

There was some music going on from down there this afternoon and quite a crowd of people around there watching whatever was going on. They all seemed to ba having a good time.

Back here I had a strawberry smoothie and then true to form, bang on cue, Rosemary rang me. I’m sure that she’s hidden a camera in here somewhere.

We had a good chat about all kinds of things including her adventures with her Ukrainian guests at the local Prefecture when they went to register.

And little Miss Ukrainian is ill, so I heard. That’s really sad because I quite like her. I hope that she gets better soon.

Tea was a baked potato with veg and one of these breaded quorn fillets that I like so much. I’m running quite low on those now and that’s a shame. I don’t think that Noz will have any more of those.

So I’m going to have a relax before I go to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday so I’m having a good lie-in. It’s been several weeks since I’ve had a really good interrupted sleep and I am quite looking forward to it.

Thursday 12th May 2022 – HAVING HAD A FEW …

… extremely quiet days just recently, that all changed today. I’ve been rushed off my feet and haven’t stopped all day. I haven’t even had any time for tea.

There’s even some stuff on the dictaphone too but I haven’t had time to transcribe it yet.

It all went wrong earlier this morning when for some reason that I didn’t understand, the alarm went off at 06:15. I was actually up and about by the time that I realised and it didn’t take much for me to crawl back into bed.

When the alarm went off again at 07:30 I did manage to leave the bed something-like on time and after I’d had my medication I went to have a shower and clean myself up

Then I nipped out to go and see this sports therapist at Saint-Pair sur Mer.

My appointment was for 09:30 but he was running horribly late and it was gone 10:00 when he finally saw me. He asked me a few questions and poked and prodded me around, and it didn’t take him long to find out where the bone in my kneecap is broken.

There is a series of special injections that he is proposing for me so he gave me a prescription and an appointment to go back on 1st June.

This weekend I have a Welsh weekend school so I called at LIDL on the way home and stocked up with a big pile of stuff to see me through the next 10 days. It cost a fortune too. But I’ll still nip out for a few things late on Saturday that I couldn’t buy at LIDL.

By the time that I returned home it was almost lunchtime, never mind breakfast, but I had one of my fruit buns all the same with some coffee. And I was right. It really was delicious.

After lunch I was back out again. It was the turn of the physiotherapist to have the pleasure of my company.

First stop though was the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne where you can look down upon the fish processing plant.

It’s quite busy down there this afternoon. This is the moment when all the boats are coming in to unload and they are having to fight their way around L’Omerta who is still tied up to the quayside.

It shows you what a busy little port it is, with all of the boats down there and the people on top of the quayside helping to unload the catch into the fish processing plant. There will be cars and vans on the lower level underneath too, there to take away the load from some of the boats.

There was plenty of activity out in the bay too.

And not just trawlers coming into harbour either. One of the yachting schools was out there this afternoon with the pupils having a sail around the bay, with someone in a zodiac shepherding them around. And I haven’t forgotten that one of these days in the near future I’ll be out there with them.

There were plenty of pleasure craft too like the large yacht in the foreground that has just come out of the port de plaisance. And there were a couple of speedboats loitering around out there too.

That wasn’t all either.

While I was here I had a look over towards the chantier naval to see how they were getting on with L’Ecume II. They are still bashing away at her but as I watched, something else came around the corner into my field of view.

It’s the little freighter Chausiaise, on her way back from, presumably, a run out to the Ile de Chausey with a load of freight. Someone mentioned to me that if she’s out there with no return load, she’ll bring back a pile of shellfish for the fishermen over there.

From the corner here I walked on down the hill towards the town.

As I was on my way I noticed in the distance that there was a shrink-wrapped speedboat on the quayside and as I approached I could see that Normandy Warrior was in port.

At least, I think that it’s she, because the bridge is slightly different and her skipper has moored her differently than her sister Normany Trader is usually moored.

There were also crowds queueing up to board Marité too. It looks as if she’s going off out for an afternoon’s sailing around the bay. The first time this year that we will have seen her.

The walk through town was rather agonising today and I don’t know why. I’ve noticed for the last few days that I’ not moving around as well as I have been.

And the physiotherapist put me through my paces todays. This new one works me a lot harder than any of the others whom I’ve had so far. I think that she’s on a “kill or cure” mission.

On the way home I called at the pharmacy for the prescription that the sports doctor gave me. If I pick it up while I remember, it saves all kinds of unfortunate complications for later.

The walk back up the hill was a struggle today. I really am becoming worse and worse these days.

There were several occasions where I was obliged to stop, including at the viewpoint overlooking the inner harbour. And “Gone! And never called me ‘Mother’!”. Both Marité and Normandy Warrior have cleared off.

But the shrink-wrapped speedboat is still on the quayside. Normandy Warrior hasn’t taken that away this afternoon. And so it looks as if either she or her sister will be back in port quite quickly to do the necessary. They won’t be leaving that on the quayside for too long.

Something else that was wandering around in the harbour was the local lifeboat, Notre Dame de Cap Lihou.

Strange as it may seem, they have been using her to tow the dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie around the harbour while she’s been doing her dredging. So by the looks of things, she’s just knocked off for the day and it going home to have a rest.

In actual fact, not that I saw it, but apparently she was back out later. The dredging is finished so she towed the dredger over to the chantier naval where the portable boat lift could winch her out of the water.

A little further on along the path we finally caught up with Marité again.

It’s a shame that I only had the NIKON 1 J5 with me. That just has the standard lens and so distance photography is pretty useless and I can’t really pick out anything.

But at least, by the looks of things she’s having a good sail around, even if it is with her diesel engines and not with her sails. I don’t suppose that many people still have the skills for this kind of thing.

Instead of going into my building I went for a look out to see what was happening.

What I was hoping to see was Normandy Warrior disappearing off into the sunset but wherever she was, she was well out of range of any equipment that I had with me.

All that there were that I could see were a couple of local inshore boats with a couple of fishermen therein so I had to content myself with them.

In any case, there was quite a haze out at sea and even the Ile de Chausey was difficult to see in these conditions this afternoon.

But it was actually a nice day so it was no surprise to see a few people down there on the beach this afternoon.

They were enjoying themselves, especially the few people who were brave enough to go into the water.

Having photographed them I came in here and had a strawberry smoothie and (regrettably) crashed out completely for a good half hour or so. This physiotherapist works me really hard.

And then I had to get everything together for my Welsh conversation class this evening. That passed quickly and it could have been much, much worse. But I’ve ended up with no tea and I don’t care either because I’m tired and I’m going to bed.

Tomorrow there are no plans but something will come along to disturb me, I’m sure of that.

But anyway, that’s for another time. Let me finally post up the details of my little nocturnal voyages from last night now that i’ve transcribed them We were in Wales, Hans, Jackie, Alison and me. We had to go to somewhere which meant going south on the train and then heading east and then back north again in the direction towards Shrewsbury. That was basically what we did and that was how we set off to do whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing.

And then there was something happening at the bar in the Rue des Juifs as well. We’d all taken musical instruments there and set them up in the alcove as if we were going to have some kind of performance but that was as far as I went with that.

Saturday 18th September 2021 – JUST A FEW LINES …

… because I’m really not feeling like sitting down and writing War and Peace after the day that I’ve had.

As seems to be usual these days, I had a pretty disturbed night last night, not being able to sleep very much. It always seems to be the case when I have to arise early in the morning.

But arise early I did and I had plenty of time for my train. I was on the station at 06:15 in the freezing cold – winter is coming quicker than you might think

My train was the 06:33 to Brussels that arrived at about 07:05 so there was plenty of time for me to go to the supermarket and pick up a little something for lunch before my train left at 07:43.

Yes, half an hour later than usual, simply because my usual one had no seats left. But even though this train costs €30:00 more, I don’t have to change trains at Lille and stagger halfway across town.

We were 10 minutes late arriving in Paris Gare du Nord but there was still plenty of time to cross the city on the metro to Gare Montparnasse.

The train that was awaiting me was a two-trainset one of 16 carriages, and was pretty much empty. It looks as if they were just using one trainset pulling the second one as a positioning voyage. I’d slept for much of the way between Brussels and Paris, and repeated the exercise on the train between Paris and Granville.

In fact I was asleep when the train pulled into the railway station at Granville.

The walk downhill into town was quite easy but to be on the safe side I’d bought a can of go-juice at the Carrefour in the Rue Couraye.

The climb back up the hill in the Rue des Juifs was a nightmare as you might expect and I can’t go on much longer like this. It took me about four or five stops to make it up to the top, one of which was a nice long one while I drank the drink that I’d just brought.

Back here I sat in my chair and vegetated for quite a while. It’s good to be back home, as Barry Hay once famously said.

Later on I made a coffee and without moving from my chair I watched the football on the internet. TNS v Barry Town.

With the demise of Connah’s Quay Nomads and the strengthening of TNS over the summer, TNS are pretty unstoppable and this is how it proved to be.

Their 3-1 victory tonight was really a foregone conclusion but Barry’s defence was appalling. Their second goal came about because the Barry keeper didn’t dive to cut out a ball doing across inside his goal area at about knee-height.

For the third goal, Declan McManus was standing in an onside position on the goal line right in the centre of goal with not a defender anywhere near him for about 15 seconds before he was presented with a simple tap-in.

Round about 23:00 I finally summoned up the energy to leave my chair. I’ve had no tea tonight because I was too tired to make it and I’m just going to dash off a few notes before I go to bed. I’ll add the photos into the notes in due course when I’m feeling better.

Sunday 6th June 2021 – JUST IN CASE …

… you are wondering why it’s taken so long for this post to come on line, the fact is that I’ve had rather a busy day as you can see.

All of this here is the contents of the shelf unit that is in the kitchen area. That has been totally emptied later on in the afternoon and it isn’t going to go back on the shelves until it’s all had a really good sort-out and I’ve decided what is what. There has been so much confusion and so much has been misplaced and lost at the back of the unit.

Quite frankly, I never really realised that there was so much on there. The pile of stuff goes right around to the left in front of the sofa and has filled the living room area completely.

But this is the real reason why I’ve done this.

Ever since I’ve started cooking and baking seriously I’ve been dropping bits of dough and pastry all over the floor and with it being a nice wooden floor, I don’t want to spoil it and mark it with what I drop. Back at the end of last year when I was at Brico Cash I bought some linoleum and it was living in the back of Caliburn.

Today Liz and Terry came round and they asked if they could do anything while they were there. So we stripped out the kitchen completely and laid it on the floor. And with what was left, Terry cut it to make covers for the shelves.

You have to admit that it looks really good and I’m very pleased with all of this.

But with Liz and Terry coming round to visit me today, I had done something that I rarely, if ever, do on a Sunday and that was to set an alarm. But that was something of a wasted effort because at 05:20 this morning all of the church bells in the town started to ring – presumably celebrating the D-Day landings.

Although I went back to sleep it wasn’t for long and by 08:30 I was up and about having my medication.

There was a little bit of tidying up that I could carry on doing so that by the time that they arrived the place was looking something rather respectable, which makes a change.

We had a coffee and they sampled some of my fruit bread. Liz made a few suggestions as to how it can be improved. And so my next batch of fruit bread will hopefully be better – not that it is actually bad of course, but I’m always open to suggestions. In the past many people have made all kinds of suggestions, but most of them were physically impossible.

Later on we went out for a walk in the sun.

First thing that I noticed was that out there in the distance there was something moving behind the Ile de Chausey and so I took a photograph of it for later examination.

Back at the apartment later on, I cropped and enlarged the photograph to see what it might have been. It has all of the silhouette of one of the Channel Islands ferries that sail out of St Malo and so I went and had a look at today’s departures from the port of St Malo.

My photo is timed at 11:07 which is actually 12:07 right now and at 10:30 or thereabouts Commodore Goodwill, one of the two ferries that run out of St Malo and around the Channel Islands, set out from St Malo.

But what we had really come to see was what was going on at the bunker that I’d noticed yesterday. It cost €2:00 to go in so we had to have a scavenge around for a handful of cash so that we could go in.

And this was the star attraction in the bunker this year. A complete wartime medical kit belonging to a German doctor.

It seems that a couple of years ago an old woman left her home and was placed in an old people’s home. Her house began to be emptied and when they searched her cellar they discovered this complete kit down there, where it had been since 1944. It’s been donated to the people running the bunker as an exhibit for the proposed museum that they intend to set up here.

The other room of the bunker was empty because of water infiltration through the roof. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I was given a guided tour of the bunkers so I didn’t take any more photographs of it.

On the way back to the apartment we walked along they clifftop so we could watch the sea.

And while we were admiring the view and watching the people relaxing on board the little cabin cruiser down there, a large zodiac or some other kind of rapid boat roared past them. And I bet that the people in there wouldn’t be very popular when the wake of the zodiac hits the little cabin cruiser.

We went back to the apartment and Liz made a big salad out of all of the stuff that I had in the apartment, with my home-made bread and home-made hummus and it was delicious.

Once we’d digested our meal we attacked the kitchen. Terry reckoned that it would take 30 seconds to empty the shelves but his estimate was somewhat optimistic. It took much longer than that. And then I had to go and fetch the lino up from Caliburn.

By the time that we had finished it was quite late but nevertheless I took Liz and Terry down to La Rafale to treat them to a drink. I do have to say that they had earned it.

On the way back we were overflown by one of our regular aerial pals who we haven’t seen for quite a while.

It’s the yellow autogyro that we first saw several years ago AT THE CABANON VAUBAN when I was here with Hans. I’d seen it quite regularly at one time but for the last few months there hasn’t been a sight of it, despite all of the other aircraft that we’ve seen just recently.

Liz and Terry didn’t come back to the apartment. It was time for them to go home. I went with them to their car and sent them off on their way with my grateful thanks for all of their help.

After Liz and Terry had gone off home I went across the car park to look over the wall to see what was going on down on the beach.

Today there were crowds of people down there lounging around on the rocks. By the looks of things there were even a few people who had been in the water.

That’s hardly any surprise for when I awoke this morning and looked at the thermometer, the temperature outside was already 23°C. If that’s not enough to being out the crowds today then I really don’t know what is.

But there were crowds of people around everywhere today, not just on the beach either. The hordes were swarming around the car park and the paths as well.

And not just on dery land or out at sea either. The air was pretty busy too as we have already seen with the yellow autogyro.

And here, overflying me as I was watching to goings-on down on the beach is another one of the aeroplanes that fly around here. Its registration number is 35MA and she is definitely one that we’ve seen before, and on several occasions too.

It’s a shame that I don’t have access to the database where this number is referenced, and so unfortunately I can’t tell you vert much about it. One of these days I’ll have to go out to the airport to have a good look around and see if I can find more about this aeroplane and the other one, 55-OJ for which I can’t find any information either.

Now over the last few days I’ve been lamenting the fact that we haven’t been seeing any Birdmen of Alcatraz for quite a while.

And so not content with seeing crowds of people on the beach and low-flying aeroplanes, I’m overflown by one of the birdmen who take off from the field by the cemetery so that they don’t have far to go if they make a mistake.

But I left the birdman alone and went inside to see how things were looking. And it’s going to be a long job to sort out all of this mess. And as I was contemplating it, Rosemary rang me and we had a really good chat for half an hour before, emulating the old news reporters from the old News of the Screws I “made my excuses and left”.

According to the guys who had talked to us at the bunker, there was to be a fly-past of an American bomber between 18:30 and 18:45 this evening and I was determined not to miss it so I arranged to clear off outside to watch.

The first thing that I had noticed was a yacht sailing right out there in the Baie de Granville so I wandered over to have a better look and to take a photograph.

It’s not one of the big charter boats that we see sailing around here every so often, unfortunately. It’s quite a small yacht, presumably out of the pleasure harbour or even brought here on a trailer from elsewhere.

There are three or four people sitting down there so it’s probably a small family or a group of close friends out for a breath of wind on a pleasant afternoon. But I wasn’t going to hang around and watch them for I had things to do down at the end of the headland.

Another thing that I noticed out there in the Baie de Granville.

There was a strange little boat out here that I hadn’t seen before. There were four guys on board and while one of them was at the controls of the boat two of the others were busy fishing while the fourth guy was busy watching the proceeding. I wonder if he had any more luck that me in seeing one of the fishermen pull a fish out of the water.

But I left them to it and wandered off down to the end of the headland to find a good position to watch the American bomber fly past.

It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of an aeroplane approaching so I prepared the camera.

But it didn’t sound like a four-engined Pratt and Whitley to me, and as it came over the headland behind me, I saw that I was right. It’s F-BVMC, which is a Robin Apex DR-400/140 B that had just taken off from the airport here. She was on her way back to somewhere in the Paris area from where she had set off earlier.

And I can tell you that because I had a look at the radar when I eventually returned home. She disappeared off the radar somewhere to the south of Paris so I imagine that she must have come down to land somewhere in the vicinity. And how I wish that these aircraft would file flight plans.

Still no sign of the aeroplane but I was quite comfortable sitting on my nice, big and comfortable rock so I could have a good look around.

Underneath me a canoeist was paddling past in the water down there, heading towards the harbour at the end of the day. He had a good pair of oars with him down there, and we know all about that. When I mentioned to STRAWBERRY MOOSE when I was on board a boat that I needed a pair of oars, he completely misunderstood the situation and brought a couple of ladies, heavily made-up and wearing fishnet tights.

But I had to admire him being out there and shirtless in his canoe at this time of the evening. The evening was coming on and the weather was starting to cool down.

But suddenly, things started to liven up down there in the water. The harbour gates must have just opened because a load of traffic suddenly started to swarm out into the bay.

This was developing into an exciting scenario, because the smallest boat that we’d just seen with the four men in it was heading back to port. And a speedboat was speeding around out there too heading into port. The trawler had to do something of a dodging manoeuvre that brought him rather closer to the little boat than I thought was prudent.

For a while I watched them and their activities, but there was no collision and no “shipwreck and nobody drownding – in fact nothing to laugh at at all” which was rather disappointing.

This trawler was followed out of port by another trawler, the Thais Leo

And what caught my interest about this trawler was its registration number, which begins with SB. That indicates that it’s a boat that’s registered at the port of Saint Brieuc down the Brittany coast and so I was wondering what on earth it was doing here.

But by now it was about 19:15 and still no aeroplane so I went back up to the bunker to check the time of the aeroplane. But they had all packed up and gone home so I decided to do the same. I must have missed the aeroplane somehow.

Not long after I returned home there was a knock on my door. One of my neighbours who owns a red car who has parked next to Caliburn once or twice told me that she’d inspected her car closely and found no trace of any damage on it. We had a little chat and then she left.

Once she’d gone, I rang Rosemary back and we had a good chat that went on for about three hours, by which time it was far too late for me to think about food and even to think about writing my notes. I was totally exhausted after my long day so I went to bed and I’ll write up my notes in the morning.

EPIC HALL

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