… an exciting wrestling match with a pile of cables.

First of all, you’ve no idea how many pipes and cables I have plugged into me. And then there’s all of the cables that are, have been or will be plugged into the computer.

So the nurse, having finished what she’s doing, passed me all of the cables but forgot the mains cable for the laptop.

From where I was sitting I couldn’t reach it and the nurse having put the brakes on my chair, presumably to stop me punting off out of here using my crutches to propel me, I couldn’t move to reach the cable.

Consequently I’ve just spent a pleasant 20 minutes trying to lasso it with the cable of the headphones. And I managed it too, hence this posting.

But that’s about the only excitement that I’ve had today.

Plenty of excitement last night though. As the nurse was putting me to bed she found my empty crisp packet and went berserk. Apparently that’s one of the worst things that I can have.

But they were delicious all the same. What do I care?

Percy Penguin once told me a story of an old woman in a place where she worked. The old woman had just received a box of chocolates and was stuffing them in one after the other
"You’ll make yourself ill eating them like that" said Percy Penguin
"I’m 98" said the old woman. "What do I care now?"
Kingsley Amis once said "No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare" and that’s how I feel right now. Pass me the crisps!

The nurse helped me into bed by making matters far more complicated than they ought to be, and I settled down for a very long night.

It was a totally turbulent night last night with the stabbing pain in the left sole of my foot for a change, and a dreadful pain somewhere else too.

What with the noise too, it didn’t seem as if I’d had more than half an hour’s sleep. By 05:30 I’d given up the struggle once again.

No orange juice this morning and no blood test either. Probably something to do with the diabetes test they gave me at 03:30 I suppose.

By 08:30 no-one had come by which was a good thing in some senses but bad in others, especially when they forgot to replace the … errr … receptacle in your chair

That was what I call an emergency but they didn’t. It took them 15 minutes to answer my call.

It took me nothing like 15 minutes to take advantage of it when it was finally installed. A good job that the rapid method that I wanted to use last night was actually a rapid method or it could have been embarrassing.

It took them ages too to deal with things like bed-baths. A doctor came by too to tell me their plans for tomorrow. So much for “going home on Monday”. This is going to take a while.

The good news is that when they weighed me I was 4kg less than yesterday. No wonder it’s a little easier to move about. But there’s still a long way to go before Bibendum is no more.

Mind you, if this rate keeps up, it’ll only be a couple of weeks before I’m gone completely

By the time that they’d finished with me I managed about 20 minutes of my Welsh lesson before lunch came round. And there was a little more food on my tray this time.

But in punishment for my misdemeanours with the crisps they “forgot” my afternoon coffee and put my backpack so far across the room that I couldn’t reach it and had to bribe the cleaner to pass it to me.

First thing to do this afternoon was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. To my surprise there were plenty.

I was in Beverley last night doing some investigation or something. We ended up in this museum a Museum of Childhood. Instead of following the signs we found some kind of tunnel. We crawled through the tunnel. Eventually it said “Exhibition to the right” but we turned left. We came to a grille-work that led out onto the street. Some woman had to come along to undo the grille-work from the outside to let me and the ten people in front of us out of there as well before we could go out.

It’s been absolutely years since I’ve been to Beverley with its buses with weird-shaped roofs to pass under Beverley Bar. We’d catch the train from Hull to Beverley, go to Old Nellie’s where she still served beer out of a jug, and then walk back to Hull after closing time, stopping at Arnott’s Bakery for a fresh fadge on the way.

The Olympic Flame had come to town. They’d surprised Eddie Waring with it. He’d been one of the celebrities who had been handed the flame and he’d had to run with it. In the end, he ended up in Port Stanley where there’s a street with an unpronounceable name. He ran the length of this street to the cheers of the crowd, the population of the town and some of the Army that was there while he was carrying the flame.

Port Stanley is one of the few places I’ve never visited so why should that feature in my dreams right now? But there’s always a place for Eddie “up and under” Waring.

Later on in Wembley Stadium there was a veterans’ football match. He came onto the field for two minutes or so as a right-back. They also had a celebrity goalkeeper for two minutes whose name I didn’t catch. In the end they won 3-0 and it was Caernarfon’s First XI that was basically a load of trialists who had gone out and won. There was a report on all these trialists some of whom were exceptionally good and some of whom were quite awful and some were in between. I can’t remember any of the names now but they did say that at least 15 clubs in the English Second Division would be disappointed if a certain particular player signed for Caernarfon instead of signing for one of them but their own team was excellent. They were 2-0 up and scored a third in extra time but I’m not sure how the game finished at the final whistle

In the close season last year one team played a friendly match and had “Trialist” in every position. I thought to myself “he’s going to be a busy player”. Seriously though, you’ll always see “Trialist” in many friendly matches in the close season. A lot of players are trying out to receive a contract and clubs don’t publish their names, thus no-one knows who is where and can’t be poached from under another team’s nose.

Later on still I was with Marianne. I’d been invited to an exposition of jewellery and things like that. Although it wasn’t my taste I thought that I’d go along. I was feeling really tired and exhausted from an overnight trip that I’d made back from the UK. In the end I couldn’t keep going so in the corner of the room they found a little kind-of shelter for me, a ten-kid of shelter thing and laid me down in there. I was dozing away half-asleep when I heard someone say in English “here’s some tell-tale signs” so I asked “tell-tale signs of what?”. They replied “all these bruises and everything on your feet and lower legs”. They began to chat to me. In the end a group of people began to sit in this shelter underneath this umbrella-type of shelter thing. I had to squidge up. A lively conversation sprung up. Then Marianne sat down on the outside of this shelter thing right next to me. She said “famous technician? Are you really famous?”. I replied “well, I’ve come here but if you want to know why I’m a famous technician you really need to ask the people who made the sign and put it here and see what they have to say about it

Marianne would have loved an exposition like this and we probably went to one or two. I took her to quite a few places but mostly concerned with religious observation. I always seemed to find religious girls and women, but I suspect that they only ever prayed when they knew that I was coming around.

But seriously, apart from a trip to Dover to pick up a lorry-load of slates in 2013 and to Aberdeen in 2019 to pick up THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR for our Transatlantic crossing to the Frozen North of Canada, I’ve not set foot in the UK since 2011. And even if I were well, nothing would change in that respect.

So apart from dealing with yet more correspondence and reading my book that’s about it. Tea was an improvement (but let’s face it, it could hardly be worse) and so having done everything that I need to do, I’m calling it a night.

But talking of nights … "well, one of us is" – ed … after what went on during the night I’m reminded of the guy in the Bois de la Cambre who hobbled over to the ice cream van and asked for an ice cream cornet
"Crushed nuts?" asked the vendor.
"No" replied the man. "I always walk like this."

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… or lack thereof, is driving me nuts.

Tonight’s tea was soup and lettuce followed by an apple purée. I even had to beg for bread because they didn’t bring me any.

The stage has been reached where I’m beginning to plan to apportion my food so as to save some for later if ever I’m given a surplus at one particular meal.

In all the old books about prisoners in prisoner-of-war and concentration camps you’ll read about prisoners doing just that, concealing food for later. I can’t believe that we’ve come back round to this. Plus ça change … And it’s only Monday.

We’re not quite at the stage of guard dogs going missing and turning up in the cooking pot but one or two of these nurses look quite tasty. However, that is another story.

But whoever thought that we’d be at these depths?

It was Sunday last night when I finally crawled into bed just after the sun set. For a while I had a listen to Brute Stringbean and then switched everything off and tried to go to sleep through the usual banging and clattering that there is in a hospital

Not much luck there though, as you might expect. And to make matters worse we had a phantom alarm at 03:30 – the alarm going off and someone asking to speak to The Who, one of the musicians but it wasn’t actually one of the musicians at all they wanted and I can’t remember at all the name of the person they said but at least they made out that it was someone from The Who even though it isn’t

Not that that makes any sense, but since when has anything that I’ve ever written, never mind a dream, made any sense?

Once again, I gave up the struggle at 05:30 and lay awake simmering. At 06:30 someone took a blood sample (my left arm is a mass of pinpricks and bruises right now) and gave me a glass of orange juice. No taste of lemon so they must have learnt their lesson from yesterday.

Breakfast came round eventually and then we went through the usual performance of bedbaths and stuff like that, and then I was stuck in my special chair in the window where I could watch the World go by on the Autoroute. Plenty of Plenty O’Toole’s dad’s lorries going past, I noticed.

There was another visitor today. Hans came to say goodbye as he has to head for home. It was lovely of Hans to come in to say goodbye. It was lovely of everyone and I hope that I’ll be able to see them again.

There was yet another visitor too. There’s another British guy here and he’d heard us talking yesterday. Seeing as he was leaving the hospital today he thought he’d come in for a chat. A very nice, interesting guy too.

A third visitor was my consultant. She gave me the news that my condition has stabilised – as in “not improved”.

Much as she is impressed that the rapid deterioration that caused the panic has now stopped, there is no date as yet as to when I’ll be going home. She wanted to know who was handling my case in Paris so I gave her the details.

She came back later to wish me a good evening as she was going home. What’s happening here?

Transcribing the dictaphone notes was next. To my surprise, there were some. They were experimenting with a new type of aircraft checking its take-off and landing abilities. Unfortunately it failed to come up to the mark. There were many people who flew as passengers in these planes who were injured in crashes or during tests including Dennis Wise, a South African footballer The sad part about it was that the counting was very casual so that when they counted the people off the plane afterwards they didn’t realise that they’d left someone behind, and they set fire to the fuselage to simulate an escape rescue. This was when they discovered the dead body of one of the passengers who hadn’t been counted correctly. This started a big scandal throughout the entire aeroplane industry. There were probably five or six attempts at a take-off and landing from various airports with this plane , all of which failed and people were injured or even killed.

And what provoked that, I really have no idea. It doesn’t relate to anything at all that I’ve been doing.

To occupy the time and to plan for any extended stay, I’ve been negotiating my mail-server around the hospital’s firewall and I can now access my e-mails. So I replied to some of the messages that I received, I can’t of course reply to some others (I prefer the innocence of LIONHEART and THE KICK INSIDE Grahame) because I’m still locked out of Gmail, and I’ll reply to the rest in due course.

So that reminds me – firstly, you’ll notice the “Amazon” links. I’m an “Amazon” associate so I receive a small commission on purchases made by people who click on the links. It costs you no extra but helps pay for my web hosting.

Secondly, there are plenty of new readers to these pages these days. Some have said “hello” but to the rest of you, don’t be shy. Click on the button on the bottom right of the page and send me a message to introduce yourself.

The rest of the day has been spent reading my book on Iron-Age fortresses. Where would I be without ARCHIVE.ORG?

On the subject of dreams and music though, I was mulling things over in my head, like you do … "like some people do" – ed … thinking about the Brother John Glacier from last night, and what came into my mind, as you might expect, was
"It’s been so many years now I still can’t forget
Love flew like an eagle in God’s wilderness
Shadows were falling oh my heart beat inside
We kissed on the bridge above the river of ice"
One day I really must fill in the posts for those missing three days in the High Arctic that changed my life for ever.

So the sun is about to disappear now, and so am I. But something else that I’m thinking about as I retire is food and Hans’ visit. And given the foregoing, it’s a good job that they didn’t allow the Hound of the Baskervilles to come in with him. Hans would have gone home on his own with a lovely fur rug to keep him warm.

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… this horrible anti-potassium stuff here too. The nice bubbly nurse has just this minute been by and dumped a ladle full of it into a glass and said “here, drink this”.

My potassium is quite high, that’s for sure, but I’m surprised that it’s taken them this long to find out. And at least, late in the evening, it’s not too bad if I fall asleep and have hallucinations.

In fact, if the truth is told, I could have done with some last night because I didn’t have much sleep at all. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m quite a light sleeper and the slightest noise awakens me. Ad I’m not sure what it was last night. It wasn’t the staff disturbing me, that’s for sure

By about 05:30 I gave up the struggle and that was that – and on a Sunday morning too. Who would have thought it?

At 06:30 I had another blood test and they gave me a curious orange drink that tasted of lemon

"What was that?" I asked
"A laxative" replied the nurse.

But don’t worry. I had my revenge. Ohhh yes! So much so that they sent the second laxative back to the store later.

So most of the day I’ve been reliving the past, listening to Bruce Springsteen, as well as writing out the dictaphone notes

I was trekking towards the North Pole with a party of people. At the end of the night I’d sit around the end of the bed of a woman who was travelling with us. When she dropped off to sleep, what would then happen without her knowledge was that two guys from another party would come across, borrow two chairs and the three of us would sit around the bed with her in it and talk about all kinds of different events and different things while she was asleep in the middle. I’d be at her head and the two guys would be sitting at her feet on some chairs that they’d borrowed from somewhere else.

Nothing as exciting as that ever happened to me when trekking towards the North Pole. We reached 700 miles from the North Pole, standing on the Greenland Ice Cap at the Brother John Glacier and then we were having a yoga session in a snowbank in a blizzard on Philpot’s Island off the coast of Ellesmere Island (and God knows what would have happened had a polar bear come to join in) but that was about it.

What I’d done later on was to go through the front door of someone’s house and up their stairs. I was talking to a couple of their kids and was about to climb out of the window on the roof when the householder spotted me and began to make an issue out of it. I explained that they were living on an old Roman trackway. This was a Roman established right-of-way and if they were to look at the Deeds of their house they’d find that the Deeds of their house accorded passage for people to do just as I was doing. Of course they didn’t believe it and began to make quite an issue out of it. Quite a crowd gathered. Then people realised that there were in fact some Roman remains in a field not too far away and there was some kind of old church or something that no-one knew what it was. They began to put two and two together and realised that in fact the Romans had been in this area and it was very likely that there was a road. Of course the householder was very disappointed by this and still refused to believe everything but more and more people began to believe it. I ended up with quite a crowd, giving them a lecture on the Romans. They all seemed to receive it quite enthusiastically although one person whom I knew came up to me to tell me that I was always finding good and unusual ways to drum up business.

There are several true stories of this kind of thing, careless drawing-up of deeds in the housing explosion of the 1920s and 30s and the “back to the land” movement of later years discovering that some had been built on ancient Rights of Way so we have hikers nonchalantly walking through people’s kitchens

By the way, anyone care to guess the subject of the book that I’m reading right now?

And me, drawing a crowd?

And then I was running my taxis. We were doing reasonably well but I had a lot of trouble retaining staff. People would come and leave quite rapidly and it continued. I had a hard core of regular staff and a lot of casual people. We were doing the paperwork, a couple of us. My mother had left outside a huge pile of papers that she’d been sorting so I had to go out and bring them in before the wind blew them away and before the neighbours began to complain about the untidiness. I was laughing and joking with one of my workers while I was doing it. There was one of the young girls there helping too. This worker with me asked the girl “are you happy here?” which I thought was something of a provocative statement. They had a long discussion. In the end I asked the worker what came of the discussion with the young girl. She said “people don’t like your attitude at the moment”. I replied “well, yes but don’t they now that I’m dying? Don’t they know that naturally my mind is elsewhere focused on other things, all that kind of thing when you’re dying? A lot of things are just quite simply left to find their own way”.

Staff always was the big issue. It was a very itinerant business with plenty of comings and goings, and for all kinds of reasons too.

But the nicest part of the day was the visit of Hans, Jackie and Alison. The girls were setting off on the start of their trek home so they came o say “goodbye”. Fancy coming all of this way and spending it as hospital visitors.

Anyway, as long as they don’t mind sleeping on my sofa they are welcome back any time. If Hans and the Hound of the Baskervilles can manage to sleep on it, so can anyone else.

And on the subject of the latter, my cleaner tells me that she’s fallen in love with him.

It’s a good job actually that they came by today because they bought food supplies. And I needed them too because tonight’s tea was soup and lettuce. I traded the vanilla yoghurt for some bread and the crisps that the Terrible Trio bought me disappeared as an after-meal snack

Anyway, right now, I’m off to bed as soon as my stomach stops rumbling. I’ve not moved from the chair by the window all day. Firstly, because of the gorgeous sun we’ve had and the beautiful sunset that I’m watching.

And secondly, because the chair serves another purpose. That will teach them to give me a laxative.

It’s probably the talk that I overheard yesterday that’s done it. They were saying something like "if he doesn’t produce soon we’ll have to give him a suppository"
A friend of mine was once given a suppository to take to help him cure his piles
"Did it work?" I asked him
"Not at all" he replied. "In fact, for all the good it did me, I may as well have shoved it up my *rs*"

That is probably what has scared the s*** out of me.

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… opening your eyes mid-doze and seeing three of your favourite people standing there right in front of you?

Yes, there was Hans, all the way from Munich, Jackie, all the way from Cologne, and Alison, all the way from Leuven, standing there in front of me as large as life.

This was the weekend when our little travel group is due to meet up, so of course it’s the weekend when I’m in hospital. I bet that they never dreamed that they’d come all this way to see the sights and all that they would do would be to see me in a hospital nightgown.

These are people whom I’ve known for years. Hans since we first sat next to each other at Grammar School on our first day there in 1965. Jackie was Secretary when I was President of the North European Students Association of our University, and Alison and I worked together at that crazy American company and found ourselves to be the only sane people there.

And here they were, as large as life. And how pleased I was to see them after the night that I’d had.

There won’t be any dictaphone notes because there wasn’t any sleep. The night was spent arguing and arguing properly too, with a couple of nurses who doubtless flew home on their broomsticks at the end of their shift in time to cast a few more spells and incantations and then go to bed before the sun comes up.

The new nursing team that came on at 06:30 was no more tractable, but at least they were nicer. One of the nurses fetched a specialist from over the road to help her but they couldn’t manage.

Eventually they fetched a surgeon and shortly despite the stabbing pain for 30 seconds I felt the greatest sense of relief that I have felt for quite some considerable time. If this keeps up, Bibendum will be no more and I’ll be able to climb into bed so much easier.

Food was as usual its rather depressing self. I missed breakfast with all of this nonsense going on. Lunch was mashed potato and grated carrot, and tea was vegetable soup and grated veg. Don’t be a vegan in a French hospital. You explain what a vegan is, and they then present you with a banana yoghurt made with milk.

So with no sleep at all last night, the day has been spent dozing off and being awakened by something. But I’ll trade all the sleep in the World for a visit from friends. It really was wonderful to see them.

The specialist from across the road came over for a chat too. I gave her my usual spiel about quality of life being more important to me than desperately clinging on in miserable conditions just for the sake of it but I’m not sure if it made any impression on her.

She raised a few eyebrows though when she said "I hope that we have a good night’s sleep tonight after last night"
"What the …" exclaimed a nurse
"N-n-n-no" stammered the specialist."Not together!"
And there I was, already moving over to one side of the bed.

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… recovering from a kind-of diabetic coma.

It’s amazing the things you learn. There I was, sitting in my hospital chair late this morning, and I must have dropped off … "to sleep, not off the chair" – ed … on one of my usual deep sleeps and the next thing that I knew was that three nurses had me on the bed tearing off my clothes.

“My lucky day” you might think, but they were busy trying to stuff jam sandwiches and orange juice down my throat and put a hospital gown onto me.

These sleeps that I’ve been having, or, at least, that one, have been diabetic comas (and they used that phrase to describe them, not me) caused by low blood sugar levels.

That’s no surprise because I never use sugar apart from in the odd bit of baking here and there. The sugar in the sugar container is replaced every year if it’s lucky, and the sugar lumps, I’m on my second box since I moved here in 2017

As for my brown sugar for cooking, I’ve just started the third lot of that.

Anyway, lest night I actually managed to go to bed at some kind of reasonable time and, strangely for a night before travelling, I actually fell asleep, at least for part of it.

When the alarm went off I was asleep, that’s for sure. I fell out of bed and did half of what was necessary, when I was interrupted by a series of text messages.

Basically, the Olympic Flame is doing a lap around the town today and they’d begun to close off the streets. The car that is to take me to Avranches is on its way or else it’ll either be stuck here or else it won’t be here at all.

So taken by surprise by this, I’ve left my apartment in quite a mess.

It was my favourite young driver – and two other passengers – who were in the car and we had a pleasant drive down to Avranches. There’s another part of the hospital opposite the main building. I didn’t know that but my driver did which was just as well because that’s where I’m going.

The driver leapt out of the car and fetched a wheelchair for me. That’s where we are now, people. Can you believe it? Even a taxi driver is worried.

A nurse went through all of the preparatory questioning and so on, and then I had to wait around for the specialist.

It only needed one look, and he made up his mind. “I’ll telephone them to see if there’s a bed spare”.

And there was too, but I had to wait around for quite a while before I could be picked up and taken across the road.

For some reason, and I dared not ask, the windows were wide open and it was blowing a gale through here. So we closed the window and we went through the induction process.

Then I settled into the comfy chair to type out the dictaphone notes, and that was when my troubles began – as if wrestling on a bed with three nurses would ordinarily be described as a trouble, but that shows just about where we are too.

Don’t ask me what happened after that because I don’t know. Something must have gone on somewhere somehow because the next thing that I remember was that is showed 09:50 on an analogue clock on the wall.

At first I had no idea what time or even what day it was but in the end I worked out that it was actually 21:50 the same day. What happened to the rest of the day?

All I’d had to eat all day was some cauliflorets and bread. I was starving but that’s too bad. And were I to tell you my current weight instead of my target weight of 75 kilos you’ll probably think that it’s a good thing.

But I was exhausted. In a wretched state and all I wanted to do was to curl up under the blanket and go to sleep. I dashed off a few words on the phone because I couldn’t reach the computer, and that was that.

The induction process reminds me of the induction process at one hospital in Belgium
"You are allowed one person of your choice to sleep in your room with you during your stay" said the nurse.
"Right ho!" I replied. "You don’t happen to know Kate Bush’s phone number, do you?"

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