Tag Archives: early night

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

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Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

… to mention yesterday that the 20th November was the tenth anniversary of being rushed to hospital when a blood test revealed that, instead of a red cells blood count of between 14 and 16, mine was 3.8 – a figure that is officially too low to support life.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d begun to feel ill a few weeks earlier while I was in Canada and the position had slowly deteriorated since then. Eventually, I’d reached a point where I could no longer keep going.

When I was transferred to the University Hospital at Leuven in April 2016, they told me quite bluntly that no-one had ever lived longer than eleven years with this illness, so either I’ll be setting some kind of World Record or these notes will shudder to a sudden halt at some point in the not-too-distant future. We shall have to see how things pan out.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, just for once, I finished with indecent haste everything that I needed to do. The notes were on line before 22:00 and I was in bed, would you believe, by 22:20. If only it could be like that every evening.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s a waste of time going to bed early, because all it seems to mean is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. I was all set to write those words again this morning when I awoke at 03:27 and was still awake at 04:10. I was giving some serious thought to leaving the bed at that moment but the next thing that I recall was the alarm going off at 06:29 as usual.

The foregoing notwithstanding, it was still quite a struggle to raise myself from the Dead and toddle off into the bathroom. Next stop was the kitchen where I made my hot ginger, honey and hot lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I’d been down in the Auvergne with a friend of mine. There was this big party taking place, so they doped me up with cough mixture etc so that I sounded healthy, and they dropped me off at this party. It went on for quite some time, and then it was time to head north. It was early in the morning, and I was thinking that if I have to drive through the towns and across country to join the motorway that brings me up here, I’d be running the risk of being found drink-driving, because I’m not used to drinking beer. I thought that if I nipped across to Combronde, which is ten kilometres away or something, I’d be on the other motorway. That way, I would be much better off in driving and heading north. So I began to set off, but for some reason, I found myself travelling with my friend again and his son. They had been somewhere and picked me up again. We were heading north. As we were going further north, suddenly the car shuddered to a halt and this boy, the son of my friend, suddenly screamed. It turned out that he had stubbed his toe somehow on the street outside and he’d hit a rock or something as we were going past. That had caused the car to shudder and stop, and that had caused him a most damaging pain to his foot.

Whatever was going on here, I really have no idea. Apart from one bottle of beer halfway down a mountain in Bulgaria in 1994 (it was the only refreshment available), I’ve not drunk any alcohol for decades. The rest of it is totally meaningless.

This started off being on a Native American reservation, guarding the tribes that had tried to break out to seek their freedom. However, I came across an old schoolfriend of mine while I was there and we began to chat about old times. I asked him what he was doing these days, and he replied that he was working for a radio station. So, of course, was I. We had a chat about what we were doing. He worked the late show, which was called something like “Good Evening”. He didn’t say exactly what he did, but he said that he had an album of music from the 1960s that had over sixty songs on it. That was what he played through his programme. I told him that I had a library of over fifteen thousand songs. He said that he remembered it from the olden days, but I replied that it had grown much bigger these days as I had been collecting discs and albums unashamedly over the last ever-so-many years. We carried on chatting like that for a while.

Native American reservations have been the subject of conversation for several weeks. The Navajo Reservation that I visited in Arizona in 2002 was the saddest, poorest place on Earth and I don’t blame anyone for wanting to break out. The natives were struggling to raise crops in an arid semi-desert environment while the luscious, irrigated green fields halfway up the hill at the back were part of an irrigated golf course. I once read a report that when a group of Native Americans surrendered their best hunting grounds in return for an annuity, the annuity consisted of two yards of calico per person and one blanket between six.

The friend was someone whom I knew at school and with whom I shared an apartment in Crewe for a while. The record mentioned in the dream would indeed probably represent his entire record collection, whereas mine is probably much more than fifteen thousand songs these days … "it’s actually twelve thousand six hundred that he has digitalised so far" – ed ….

It was finally my last couple of days at work and retirement was actually going ahead. I left the bed early and then spent about half an hour trying to decide what clothes to wear. In the end, I settled on a grey suit, a grey shirt and a kind-of orange-red tie, but it took so long to do it that I was running horribly late, and my sister told me that my niece had been banging on the bathroom door for ages, trying to make me hurry up. However, I hadn’t found half of what I needed. There were some things lying around that I’m sure my sister was going to take home with her when she leaves so I discreetly hid one or two of them so that there would at least be something behind. I then grabbed my bass speaker cabinet and ran off for the final train. I burst into work just on time, where they were busy laying out some food for my retirement party. I thought that it was tomorrow that I retired, not today. But they were laying out this food, and I took them by surprise. I found that my brother was sitting at the desk next to me. He was playing around with the electronic equipment that the usual woman who sat there had left behind, and making some remarks about how far behind in her work she was, and how much chaos it all was. I dumped my bass speaker down and then dashed off somewhere else to do something, but I can’t remember what it was.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that being on the point of retirement has been a reoccurring theme in these dreams for quite some considerable time, but last night I finally made it … "well, almost" – ed … My brother has appeared in a few dreams here and there but one of my sisters? Where did she come from?

The nurse was quite early again, which suits me. No blood pressure to take, so he was in and out in five minutes, which suited me even better. I could push on and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

While she was travelling towards Fort Phil Kearny, she tells us that she "had an experience with cactus that, in the expressive term of a later day, was the limit.". Now who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that? What with women having had experiences with cacti and Native Americans having intercourse with their ponies, there must never have been a dull moment on the frontier, to say the least.

But leaving that aside, when discussing mental health issues (which is an extremely rare thing for a layman to do in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century), she notes that "such a condition as insanity is unknown amongst squaws, and if insanity is sometimes attributed to the red man, it is due to the white man’s firewater. ".

Despite the interesting nature of much of her writing, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt in some places. She notes that "It was well known that there was gold to be found in all the creeks near us, and a few pannings in the nearest branch abundantly proved it; but not a soldier deserted the post, or shirked his duty in its pursuit." and continues with her eulogy in honour of the troops.

However, Margaret Carrington notes at least four soldiers who deserted the fort, and according to a report that I read elsewhere, there were about twenty-five in total. There was also a military prison at the fort that was quite full on a regular basis.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do, and then I finished the selection of the music for the next radio programme, edited, re-mixed, paired and segued it.

The taxi turned up for me somewhat later than programmed, so it was something of a rush to go to the Centre de Ré-education. And it was walking from the taxi to the building that I realised how much the chemotherapy had affected me. I really was ill.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d telephoned the Centre de Ré-education to complain about them over-taxing what remains of my strength. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it seems as if I have been talking to the walls. Today, I had three sessions, next Wednesday and Friday four, the following Wednesday four and the Friday after, FIVE.

That is taking the mickey and no mistake.

The first session with my physiotherapist was all about working on my ankle muscles. These are, of course, non-existent so we aren’t going to go far with all of this.

The second session was sitting in this pseudo-rowing machine, pushing weights with my feet.

There was a pause of half an hour here so I took the initiative, went onto the attack and stormed up to the offices of my doctor there and berated the secretary. She assured me that she had spoken to the doctor, but she would speak to the doctor again.

We shall see.

The third session was standing upright in this machine for half an hour, looking out of the window. And then it was home-time. And what a struggle that was. I was totally exhausted.

Back in here, I was helped into the apartment – my lovely, shining, clean apartment – by my faithful cleaner who had been hard at work in my absence. And I needed help too because I would never have managed it on my own.

Once inside, I crashed into a chair in the kitchen, and it took me an hour to summon up the energy to move into my office.

Once in the office, I crashed out completely and there I sat for about an hour and a half, totally out of it. When I awoke at 19:30, I was feeling so dreadful that I crawled into bed, fully-clothed, and called it a night.

But seeing as we have been talking about our author and her “experience with a cactus” … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told that there was a saloon at Fort Phil Kearny. One day, she went inside and asked the saloon keeper for a double-entendre.
"What happened?" I asked naively
"The saloon keeper gave her one."

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Thursday 23rd October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that happens is that I wake up correspondingly early next morning.

Mind you, the howling gale that sprung up at about 01:10 probably had something to do with that. I have, quite seriously, never heard winds quite like it.

It will be interesting to find out what wind speed was reached during the night, to see if it was anywhere near the record 209 kph that we had once. At the airfield, a speed of 87 kph was recorded but the airfield is quite secluded. It will be a different matter up here on the headland, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic storms.

While I was at dialysis, my cleaner sent me A VIDEO OF THE STORM. And it’s quite sheltered around that side of the bay.

Throughout the day, it’s gone from bad to worse, and this is one of the reasons – only one – why I’ve had such a lousy day today.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d had no tea. When I’d finished everything else, I dashed through my evening routine and, much to my delight, I was in bed by 21:20 and that made a lovely change.

Not that it would last, though. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 01:10 as the storm raged. And for the rest of the night, I drifted in and out of sleep.

Round about 05:20, I finally gave it up as a bad job and went to organise myself for the day, including doing the washing-up from yesterday.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a rock concert taking place with three groups in it. One of them was playing from 18:30 – 19:30, the second one from 19:30 onwards and the third was to come on later. At least, that was how I understood the situation to be. Someone asked me for some further information but I wasn’t able to give them any, except the proposed starting times for the first two groups because that was all the information that I had.

This reminds me of one of the rock concerts that I organised in Crewe in 1975 or thereabouts. Two local groups with the third one being a group from Chester in which a friend played. It was good fun, this one, but it wasn’t particularly successful and I didn’t organise many more after that.

We were given half an hour at school to write a story. It had to be a story about a holiday. I began to write a story about a young girl who had gone on holiday to Italy. She’d somehow ended up watching a beauty contest. She was all of the competitors and she saw the crowd cheering them. She was extremely envious and wished that she was up there with them. The situation carried on and eventually, she found herself in the arms of a young Italian boy. Just as she was starting to relax for perhaps her very first kiss, I dunno, there was this huge bellow of her name. She looked round and it was her mother. The boy ran away immediately and the mother gave this girl an enormous dressing-down and ordered her up to her room, so she ran off upstairs crying.

Now, this dream has a great deal of significance for someone whom I know. However, I’m not going to mention any further details in order to protect the anonymity of a certain young lady who will be familiar to regular readers of this rubbish.

A few of us were out there in these really high storms. Some kind of ball was being used for some purpose or other and it happened to fall to the ground in this wind just as one of the most feeble patients from dialysis was walking past. It hit her and she was rushed to hospital. A couple of days later we saw one of the taxi drivers, the guy who seems to be the senior driver. He expressed the opinion that if this ball was going to fall, it was bound to hit her more than anyone else just by simple Sod’s Law. Then he described in graphic detail the operation that had been taking place upon her. I had to leave the room again because I couldn’t stand to listen to it.

The lady concerned these days doesn’t walk to dialysis and hasn’t done for quite a while. But the part about the high winds is certainly apposite.

At some point or other I was out in the brown Cortina estate that I had for a while. I’d met some friends in the centre of Brussels. Before that, I’d been to see a psychiatrist. We had the interview in Brussels and she was asking me all kinds of questions. The answer in almost every case was “no”. She became frustrated and asked me if I was interested in pursuing this. I replied that I was, but she would have to ask me some meaningful questions if she wanted meaningful answers. In the end, I left and went to meet my friends. They told me to park up the car and come to join them. I parked up the car, but they wanted me to park in another car park next to it, which was a paying car park. I went in there, but as I was reversing into a car parking space, my foot slipped off the brake and the car rolled and hit an old Ford Escort. My friends came round to see what had happened. It had made something of a mess of the rear of my car but it was just the bumper that was bent on his. The guy came over and we agreed that I’d pay £20:00 for it, but I had a hell of a job searching through my wallet and all my papers for some money. They were becoming frustrated. In the end, I gave him this £20:00 to shut him up. We went for a walk, and we went past where I had a series of lock-up garages. We saw that two of them were open and were empty. I wondered what had happened to all my stuff and the cars that were in there. The third one had had its door broken but the stuff was still in there. I was wondering now what I was going to do about all of this because I couldn’t leave the door like this. And what about the stuff that had gone missing?

There’s a lot of relevant information in this one too, one way or another, although we can leave the trick cyclist out of the equation.

The nurse was early today, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. He told me that it was vicious out there, and I could well believe it from the noise of the howling wind. The soaking wet clothes just seemed to underline everything.

After he left, I had breakfast, not that I felt much like it, and then came back in here.

First task was to make an important ‘phone call, and that took quite some time. And for the rest of the morning, I was choosing music for another radio programme.

My cleaner blew in – quite literally – and applied my anaesthetic. She told me to summon her when the taxi came because I was going to need all the help that I could find.

She wasn’t wrong either. The howling gale was such that it needed the driver and my cleaner to hold on to me the moment that I stepped outside. It took over fifteen minutes to stagger the twenty metres to where the taxi was parked and there were times that the three of us didn’t really think that we could make it.

It was the most hair-raising fifteen minutes that I had had for quite some considerable time.

With picking up someone else along the way, I was hours late arriving at dialysis and as I was exiting the car, we had a torrential rainstorm and I was drenched.

Despite how I’d been watching my food and drink intake, I was well over the maximum limit and I’ve no idea at all why that should be. I’ve been very, very careful, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

As a result, they set up the machine leaving me with three hundred grams to take out “next time”.

The doctor came to see me, wrote a new medical prescription for me and gave me a prescription for a pedicure. Apparently I’m entitled to one every year.

After that, they left me alone – until the alarm on the machine began to go berserk.

Apparently, my blood had begun to clot so it was developing an airlock. There was nothing else to do but to cut the session short. So now I’m an enormous amount over the limit and the next few sessions are going to be gruelling.

Finishing early, I had to wait around for my driver. Luckily, it was one of my favourite taxi drivers, the one who took me to Rennes on Tuesday. We had a good chat as usual on the way home, talking about taxi operations and the like.

Back here, we managed to manoeuvre the car into the emergency space at the back of the building while my cleaner opened the fire escape. While the wind was even more ferocious at the back, there were only three metres to walk. Even so, it was still quite a struggle.

However, I’ll be in the taxi company’s bad books tomorrow. The wind tore the door out of my hand and slammed it against the front pillar with an almighty crash. I didn’t look to see if there was any damage, but I bet that they will when the car returns to the garage.

Tea was a leftover curry, and once more, I left a pile of food on my plate. I really don’t know from where this extra weight is coming, seeing as I’ve already cut down dramatically on the amount of food that I eat and I’m still throwing tons away.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now I’m off to bed. And I bet I won’t be able to sleep with all of this racket going on outside.

These winds are crazy. Since I moved here in 2017, I’m convinced that we are having more and stronger winds. There’s hardly a week that goes by without a very strong wind, and not a month without a hurricane.

But seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist about a problem that I had, where if anything was lying around, I would pick it up and disappear with it.
"I recognise your problem" he said. "You’re a kleptomaniac."
"Can you cure me?" I asked him.
"I’ll certainly try" he said.
"And if your cure doesn’t work?" I asked.
"In that case, could you pick up a new television for me?"

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Wednesday 22nd October 2025 – I HAVEN’T HAD …

… any tea tonight.

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone. After all, if I didn’t have my breakfast until 13:30 today, it’s hardly likely that I’m going to be hungry at teatime, given the way that things have been just recently.

That’s right. We had another really early start today – the taxi due to come for me at 06:45 or thereabouts this morning to take me to chemotherapy.

Consequently, I’d rushed through the usual evening procedure after tea last night and was in bed by about 22:35, which makes quite a nice change.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a waste of time going to bed early because what seems to happen is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. Like 03:55, for example.

Despite any amount of trying, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I lay there tossing and turning for about ninety minutes, but in the end, gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Not that there was much on there. There was something about being in the army last night. One of the officers was complaining about one of the Generals going on leave all the time for long periods. He called the General’s aide-de-camp in to discuss it with him. The aide-de-camp reminded him that Generals don’t have leave. They are sent on leave at the discretion of the leader of the army. There’s no official entitlement to it.

This is another one of those dreams that is completely meaningless, as far as I am concerned.

After a good wash, I waited for the nurse to turn up. He arrived bang on 06:30 as promised, and sorted out my legs and feet. He was still in a very good mood, which is very pleasant. Once he’d gone, I awaited the taxi, which arrived at 06:50.

This morning’s driver was the young chatty guy, so we had a very long and interesting chat all the way to Rennes, a chat that included commentary on several other drivers, especially the one who pulled out right in front of us on the autoroute at 130 kph and the other one who drove for about 50 km with only one rear light illuminated.

We were early arriving at Rennes, but even so, I had to wait until 09:00 or thereabouts to be plugged in.

Once more, I was devilishly tired but I didn’t manage to doze off today. I read a book until it was 10:10 and time to be unplugged.

The driver was waiting for me when I came out. It was another one of the more sociable drivers. He took me on a little sightseeing tour of Rennes on our way to another hospital to pick up a young girl for Avranches. It was another chatty drive on the way back.

It was about 12:30 when I arrived here, and my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment. I was slightly more sprightly today than yesterday.

After she left, the first thing that I did was to send off my shopping order. I have to eat, even if I don’t feel much like it.

Second thing was to make breakfast. Since tea last night, all that I’d had up to now was one very small mouthful of water and I had a thirst that you could photograph. And having eaten, I crashed out, hunched over the kitchen table, for over half an hour.

My cleaner came in to do her stuff, and I carried on with the radio programme that I’d started last week, choosing the music that I hope to be playing

When the shopping order came in, I put everything away and then washed, diced and blanched the carrots and the broccoli ready for freezing.

But now, even though it’s really early, I’m going to go to bed. Chemotherapy is exhausting and I’m really feeling it tonight. I’m glad that I’ve not had any food, otherwise that would keep me awake for hours trying to digest it. I’ll probably be awake early tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter all that much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the car with one tail light … "well, one of us has" – ed … at one point, we flagged it down to tell the driver, and he left his car to go to have a look.
"Blast it!" he shouted. "This is all that I need. It’s going to cost me a fortune, this is!"
"There’s no need to panic" said my driver. "It’s only a rear light."
"Never mind the bleeding light!" he stormed. "Where the hell has my flaming trailer gone?"

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Tuesday 21st October 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since an old car featured on these pages?

Coming back from Rennes this late afternoon, I encountered a Panhard 24 CT two-door coupé coming the other way

Being driven by someone else, I couldn’t stop to photograph it, and as it was approaching us at some kind of ridiculous combined speed, it would have been an interesting challenge to say the least, so I had to let it go. But as it’s been almost a year since our last old car, I thought it worthy of note.

What else that was also worthy of note was that despite the alarm being set for 06:00 this morning, I was still early leaving the bed.

Having rushed through the usual procedure of notes, statistics, back-up and bathroom last night, I managed to be in bed early last night – round about 22:50. And although I fell asleep quite early, it wasn’t for long. I had a very turbulent night last night.

It was 05:10 when I awoke definitively, and after trying for about half an hour, I left the bed and went to the bathroom.

On the basis that “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”, I didn’t have anything to eat or drink this morning. Not even my medication. It’s going to be a long day.

At 07:00, my taxi arrived, driven by my favourite taxi driver. We had a lovely chat all the way down to the hospital at Rennes.

There were a couple of diversions too. Firstly, we had to go back to my driver’s house to pick up her ‘phone that she had forgotten. Then there was someone else to pick up on a housing estate outside Avranches. This passenger offered to show us the short-cut to the motorway, but ended up losing us in the maze of roadworks.

What with one thing and another … "and once you’ve made a start, you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are" – ed … we were twenty minutes late arriving.

It was a young intern doctor who saw me today, and he put me through the mill. He asked me to stand on the weighing machine, which was much more difficult than it ought to have been, and I’m convinced that he arranged it in order to see just if I managed to climb on.

He wasn’t very happy when he had to ring up Avranches to ask about my blood test results, because I’d somehow brought an out-of-date set.

In the end, he said that I was well enough to proceed with chemotherapy, finishing by saying "it’s all not so bad". I replied that as far as I was concerned, everything was an absolute disaster. "It was just a figure of speech" he said, hurriedly, but I still wasn’t impressed.

They took me straight in to chemotherapy, and then they all had some kind of discussion about what treatment I was supposed to have. I was there cringing, because there’s only one treatment of the (many) that I can tolerate with any kind of comfort, and I hoped that they weren’t going to mess it up.

Eventually, about an hour and a half later than advertised, they connected me up. I fell almost immediately asleep, and that’s how most of the day went. Me falling asleep, they waking me up with questions, blood pressure tests etc. At one stage I began to shiver so they gave me a sheet in which to wrap myself.

“This is very significant” I thought. “I wonder if it means anything”. It was certainly enough to put the dampers on everything.

The meal for me was boiled potatoes and fruit. I think that the vegan burger last time was beginner’s luck. And although fruit is banned from my menu, according to the dieticians, the orange and the banana looked so appetising that I couldn’t resist.

They unplugged me at about 15:15 and my taxi was waiting. I had to send for a wheelchair because I was in no state to walk. They don’t allow you even five minutes there to recover before you’re on your way. It’s very industrial there.

Before I left, they gave me a summons to come back tomorrow for part II of the treatment – again at 08:30! So another 07:00 start!

There was someone else to drop off at Avranches, and I finally made it home at 17:00 exactly.

To my embarrassment, I couldn’t exit the car, I was that weak. And once I did manage to raise myself to my feet, it was a real struggle to reach my front door.

After a good hour or so’s recovery, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. During World War I, several captured merchant ships were renamed and handed out to British companies who had already lost ships at sea because of the war. One of these ships became the SS Rhosllanerchrugog or a similar kind of name. When people heard of the name and saw the name written on the back of the jackets of the sailors, they were astonished because they didn’t understand how there would possibly be a name that long for a merchant ship. But she took the name and she took the crew and she sailed quite happily for the rest of the war.

This relates to what I read a couple of weeks ago about merchant raiding ships, disguised German warships capturing merchant ships, siphoning off their oil for fuel, and then either sending the ship to Germany if it had a valuable cargo, or scuttling it if it was valueless.

Interestingly, I pronounced the first syllable of the ship’s name as “ros” which, although is the “official” way of pronouncing the word, I’ve always pronounced it as “hrowse”. That is how it’s pronounced in a small area south of Wrexham and north of Rhiwabon, including in the town of Rhosllanerchrugog itself.

Why I pronounce it like that, I’ve no idea because my grandmother comes from South Wales and lived, apparently, north of Wrexham. When she married, they moved east to near the English border so I’ve no connection at all with the area of Rhosllanerchrugog.

We were camping somewhere in the Canadian Mountains. I’d not long arrived, and I decided that I would go to buy a loaf of bread so that I could buy something to eat. I walked round to the nearest shop, but all that they had left were two sandwiches, but someone immediately bought those. It wasn’t a shop, it was a petrol station. I tried to look around for a shop but the only shop that they had didn’t have any bread. We saw a mobile home thing drive off the campsite and shoot off somewhere. We’d heard that he was looking for bread too so we decided to follow him. About twenty miles into the mountains, we came across another small shop and there were several people hanging around there. So we went and asked if they had any bread. While we were doing that, I wandered around and found some loaves on the shelf. I went to pick one up but the woman told me not to pick that up because it was out of date0 I had a look, and it was about twenty years out of date. The guy in charge of the shop said that he had some bread in the back but he’s trying to find the keys for the storeroom. We waited and waited, and he searched and searched. After a couple of hours, he said that he was unable to find them. So we began to search to help him, but we couldn’t even find the lights to the storeroom, never mind the keys. We were there, searching for hours. I had to nip to the bathroom so I disappeared. I came back ten minutes later and found everyone gone. The place was shuttered. It seemed that he had not been able to find it at all. There was some rumour that the shop back in town had had sixteen hundred loaves delivered so we climbed back into our vehicles to head back. But there was someone, an old man, sitting on a bench outside the shop, and after we’d gone, the proprietor came out. It turned out that the little old man was Louis Roblès, the footballer from Bala. Those two greeted each other like long-lost brothers.

There’s a small town – a village really – on the “Forgotten Coast” of Québec called Godbout where I WENT TO STAY FOR A WEEK when they let me out of hospital in 2016. To find bread around there quite often involved a 20 km drive, and more besides at times.

However, although I met the solicitor from my neighbouring village in the Auvergne … "it’s a small world" – ed … I didn’t meet Louis Roblès, who, incidentally, plays for Colwyn Bay this season.

There was also something about me trying on hats. I found a nice, fur-lined olive green hat that I tried on. That seemed to fit quite nicely and it was warm, so I decided to take it. As I was doing that, a friend from school, who lived in Shavington from school walked past. He was surprised to see me and said “hello”. I said “hello” back. Once I had this hat on, two American soldiers walked past. One of them said “you are breaking the law wearing that hat”. I asked him if we were in the USA. He replied “no” so I told him that he could quickly go away, using a rather vulgar, vernacular term.

This dream doesn’t relate to anything at all, as far as I’m aware. And I bet that the boy was surprised to see me too! Considering that I haven’t given him a moment’s thought since we left school, I was surprised to see him in a dream!

Nerina and I had been working in a foreign country. We were sitting on a couple of chairs waiting to go home. We were on a cliff, and there was a real storm raging. The sea was really choppy and we could see trawlers and ships in the sea, struggling to make any headway. Then the currency exchange window opened. I went to the window but no-one would serve me for ten or fifteen minutes. When they finally did, after I’d made some remark, I had all of this money, and it was all in small change. I asked this woman if she would change it. She made some kind of grimace, but said that she would. I hauled out all of these pennies and ha’pennies. Nerina and I had counted them but we weren’t convinced that it was right, so she weighed them and worked out the price. I found some more, but she moaned at that and said that she didn’t think that she was going to add them into the total and give us anything for them. I told her that we could always find another currency exchange place if she wasn’t happy but she moaned even more. She said “your friend who was here last time took me out for a meal”, to which I replied “I’m not interested in going for a meal. I’m interested in changing my money”. I had noticed that on the counter, they had some really competitive prices for gold coin collections. I was wondering whether I had enough money to buy some gold and bring it home with me. But while this had started, Nerina was not in a particularly good mood so I went over and gave her a kiss. Someone sitting next to Nerina made some kind of comment but I ignored it.

There would have been no chance whatever of enticing Nerina to come to work abroad. Her feet were rooted firmly in Crewe, as close as possible to her mother. We had many a discussion about “abroad” but I realised quite quickly that nothing was going to persuade her otherwise, despite how many good arguments I might have been able to use.

And maybe if I’d kissed Nerina rather more when she had been in a bad mood, things might indeed have been different. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t turn the clock back.

There was also something about changing my trousers into a pair of red trousers with a Welsh dragon on it, but they were about ten sizes too large for me. I had to draw the drawstrings really tight to keep them on.

This is completely strange too.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice. And I did manage to finish it all. That’s no surprise because that and the boiled potatoes are all that I’ve had to eat today. As for drinks, I’ve had 2×200ml disgusting drinks and two mouthsful of water, and that’s it.

So tomorrow, I’m off to chemotherapy again, so I’m off to bed, hoping to be in better shape than I am right now

But seeing as we have been talking about queueing for bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was in Poland in 1979, and saw all these people queueing for hours for bread, which didn’t arrive.
One man began to make a fuss, shouting and waving his arms and denouncing the Communists. Subsequently, an armed patrol pulled up and surrounded the protestors.
"Now look what you’ve done, you old fool!" said one of the others. "We’re all going to be shot now!"
"There’s nothing to worry about" replied the old man. "If we’ve run out of bread, I bet that they’ve run out of bullets too!"

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Monday 13th October 2025 – CHEMOTHERAPY IS …

… officially cancelled for tomorrow. Emilie the Cute Consultant seems to think that I’m far too ill to go and that chemotherapy will only make things worse.

Yes, lucky me! I’ve had Emilie the Cute Consultant soothing my fevered brow at dialysis this afternoon, and I reckon that I ought to be ill more often when she’s on duty.

But joking aside, after yesterday, I needed someone to take me in hand and sort me out. The day began awfully and as time advanced, it went from bad to worse. Those of you who saw the half-dozen notes that I posted last night will probably have gathered that I was in bed before 21:00, and it’s a long, long time since that has happened.

Once in bed, I was asleep straight away, which is no surprise. And I stayed asleep too until all of … errr … 00:30.

At that point, I was giving some light-hearted consideration to leaving the bed but in the end I decided against it, and spent several hours drifting in and out of sleep. Round about 05:30, I gave up trying and arose to my feet.

After the bathroom, I had another leisurely period of medication-taking, before coming back in here to restart writing my notes. But not for long, though. At about 07:00 I set the alarm for 08:05 and, something that I don’t recall doing for years, I went back to bed and slept for another hour or so. That’s the kind of state in which I found myself this morning.

Once the nurse had been and gone, I made breakfast and, once more, took my time while I ate it. I was in no real hurry, and I certainly wasn’t in any kind of mood to read my book.

Back in here afterwards, I finished off my notes from yesterday and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in the American Civil War this time (not the Revolutionary War). We were trying to track down the enemy, or the enemy was trying to track us down. I was suffering from fever and having to use my toilet frame to walk around. It was becoming extremely complicated. At one point, I knocked some things off the kitchen worktop, and with my improvised walkframe, I positioned one of the feet on top of two of the spice jars that I have. I thought that it was a good job that I noticed this before I put my weight on it otherwise they would have broken. But I still don’t know what I’m going to do about my health and how I was going to deal with the issue of the enemy, of them looking for us or us looking for him.

If I’m dreaming about a war in the USA, it makes a change not dreaming about the Revolutionary War. But then again, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I was in Eastern USA in 2005 for Rhys’s wedding, I VISITED SEVERAL SITES CONNECTED WITH THE CIVIL WAR.

Later on, there were three ships, the Ateb Harry, the Ateb something else and a third one. The Ateb Harry was coming back from the USA to Europe as a passenger liner, and was intercepted by the contraband patrol. The patrol found, underneath the coal, a pile of shells and ammunition. The captain tried to argue that it was for his own self-defence but they saw that it had been manufactured in Germany and was of a German calibre rater than an Imperial one so they decided that they would take the ship and intern it.

This relates to something else about which I’ve been reading recently – the British blockade of Germany in World War I. They set up plenty of barrages across the North Sea and intercepted as many of the vessels that they possibly could that were heading east, in an attempt to stop supplies reaching Germany. They were quite successful too and by the end of the war, there were shortages of every kind of imported goods over there.

At some point though, I had my Welsh lesson to do and I was parked in a car park. There was a lorry in front of me and its rear door was open. A policeman told me to close it so I closed it as best as I could and explained to the driver that there was only one of the two catches was working. He replied in a foreign accent “never mind” – to leave it with him and he’d sort it out. I went back to my van, which was a dark blue Sherpa long wheelbase towing an enclosed trailer that looked like the rear of a Sherpa. I climbed in, and could see on the laptop that my Welsh class had started. I took off all my excess clothes and found my sleeping bag. But my sleeping bag was inside-out so I had to turn it the other way, and then I could climb into the sleeping bag and begin to attend the lesson.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a Sherpa for a couple of years. It was quite nice when I bought it but it rotted quickly and ended up being unsafe. Furthermore, trying to find spare parts for it in Belgium was impossible in the end and it became a liability.

Next task was to finish off my Welsh homework and send it off, and the rest of the morning was spent revising.

At one point though, I could no longer stand the cold in here and so I switched on the heating for the first time. It’s not like me, and it shows just how ill I am right now.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had a long wait for the taxi. Not that I minded, because it was one of my favourite drivers. However, rather regrettably, I wasn’t in the mood for chatting.

Once again, we were late arriving, but for a change I was seen quite quickly. Because of my health, they put me into a private room and then spent half an hour examining me, including a Covid test (I was negative). I wasn’t too keen, but Emilie the Cute Consultant insisted on it being done, and I noticed that there seems to be no argument or discussion with her when she makes up her mind.

Having been wired up and plugged in, they left me alone pretty much. That was just as well because I slept through most of the session. All that I seem to be doing right now is sleeping.

At the end of the session, Emilie the Cute Consultant gave me another thorough going-over, and wanted me to spit into a container so that it can be analysed. She is of the opinion that I have a pulmonary infection. I can’t go to chemotherapy like that so she’s going to cancel it.

One thing that was nice though was that she patted my shoulder, and as I said earlier, I’m going to be ill again when she’s on duty if that’s the reward.

The poor taxi driver had to wait hours for me, and then we had to find a chemist’s that was open so that we could buy some medication that was prescribed. There was someone else to fetch too, so I ended up being the latest back here that I have ever been.

After my cleaner had sorted me out, I made tea. Burger with pasta and even though it was a small portion, some of it still ended up in the bin.

So I shall be at my Welsh lesson tomorrow then. In that case I’d better go to bed. It’s already later than I would like.

But seeing as we have been talking about spitting into a container … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember taking my niece to see my premises in Canada, situated as they are with one border of my land being the international border with the USA.
"Blimey!" she said. "You could spit into the USA from here!"
"I know" I replied. "Now ask me how I know."

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Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But then what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you are wide awake again at 01:30, you don’t really have time to go very far.

As you might expect, it was a horrible night last night – one of the worst that I have ever had. Having noted how much better I was feeling over the last couple of evenings, last night saw the collapse and I was back to where I had been earlier last week, struggling desperately (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to stay awake.

It was definitely one of those nights where I could have done with being in bed much earlier but as usual, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the time simply drifted away to nothing.

Once in bed though, I don’t even remember being awake for a minute. I was out like a light, only to be awoken a couple of hours later by a dreadful attack of cramp in my thighs, an awful cough and a powerful urge to vomit. These sensations kept on coming and going, making things most uncomfortable for me and the pain and inconvenience was such that I abandoned all hope of going back to sleep.

For the last couple of nights, I’d been awake quite early but had gone back to sleep again without very much effort. But I tried – oh, how I tried – this morning and nothing would seem to work … "he was very trying" – ed … . So round about 05:30 I gave up the ghost and left the bed.

After a good wash, I went for the medication, and it was a very leisurely medication too. I wasn’t in any rush at all this morning, what with feeling as ill as I was. In fact, it was quite a struggle to keep the medication down.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, I started my little footfest.

First match up was at the top of the JD Cymru League – TNS, who are leading, against Penybont who are second. It should have had all the air of being an exciting game, but quite frankly, Penybont were abysmal. The TNS attackers were going through the static Penybont defence like a knife through hot butter and the final score – 6-2 to TNS – didn’t do TNS any justice.

If Penybont are serious about mounting a challenge for the title, they are going to have to organise themselves much better and play much better than this.

In the middle of all of this, the nurse turned up. He sorted out my feet and then helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education gave me. But he didn’t really have much of an idea how to fit them, and neither did I, so after he left, I removed them.

After breakfast, which I really didn’t feel like eating, I came back in here to watch the highlights of the rest of the games, not that there was anything of interest to report.

All of this was followed by Stranraer v Queen of the South in the Scottish League Cup, and Stranraer ground out a very respectable draw against a team that is comfortably in mid-table in the league above.

What was interesting ABOUT THIS GAME was that we had another one of these exciting “let’s play it out from the back” moments that so entertain the crowd.

This afternoon, I’ve had a whole raft of exciting things to do, such as to sort out my tax affairs which are proving to be more complicated than I could ever imagine.

There was my Welsh homework to do too, and that’s almost finished. Half an hour on that tomorrow will see it ready to go off.

The printer needed a good overhaul too, as some of the stuff that I’ve been printing just recently isn’t as it is supposed to be. In the end, I changed a couple of ink cartridges and it seems to be working a little better, although the Magenta is still being troublesome.

And that reminds me – I need to order some more ink cartridges.

This afternoon was beautiful and sunny, so seeing as I didn’t have my shower last week and I shan’t be having one for a couple of weeks with all of these medical appointments, my faithful cleaner came down and helped me organise the shower. At least, now I smell nice and sweet for Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow, although how long it will last, I really have no idea.

There was bread to make, and pizza to make too. I really didn’t feel like doing anything, but it has to be done. I was in total agony while I was making it, but I forced myself to carry on, and in the end I managed to produce an excellent loaf and an excellent pizza.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me for a chat. She’s had her car serviced just recently and she didn’t understand a few things on the bill.

It wasn’t one of our usual chats though – my voice was giving out and in the end, I had to terminate the chat as I couldn’t keep on going.

Throughout the whole of the day, I could feel myself becoming worse and worse. By teatime, I was feeling totally dreadful. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as bad as I was feeling just then. In fact, halfway through my pizza, I just couldn’t go on any longer.

The pizza was abandoned on the table. And even though I hate waking up to dirty dishes all over the kitchen, so was the washing-up. I came back into the bedroom and simply climbed into bed, probably the best decision I had ever made.

But seeing as we have been talking about the difficulties in going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed …, apparently one of the best ways to fall asleep is to try counting sheep.
I asked one of my friends if this were true.
He replied "I’m not sure. I tried it the other night, starting off with one sheep. By the time that I had to leave the bed to go to work, I had ten thousand sheep, a huge farm in Australia and I was busy constructing a meat-packing factory"

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Sunday 28th September 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless going to bed and going to sleep early, because all it means is that you awaken correspondingly early too.

So, having dashed all the way through my notes and all of everything else that I needed to do, I crawled into bed just before 22:30 – some kind of record these days – thinking to myself how glad I was to be in bed at something like an early night, with the prospect of a nice lie-in until 07:59 awaiting me.

And there I was, after my nice, long sleep, wide awake at … errr … 04:11, trying desperately to go back to sleep and failing miserably.

Round about 05:00, I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed. And for the first time this year, I put on a dressing gown because it was definitely colder than I would like it to be.

Today, we have had a footfest. Well, actually yesterday, because yesterday evening there was a live televised match Y FFLINT V LLANSAWEL in the JD Cymru Premier League. However, as I had missed the first hour or so of the game, I had deliberately kept away from anywhere where the score might have been displayed, and waited until this morning so that I could see all of it non-stop.

There have been many, many more skilful matches than this that we have seen, but this match was by far and away the most exciting that I have seen for a long, long time. It ranged from end to end at 100 mph and the entertainment was a credit to the league.

Whether or not there are any football fans reading these pages, I really don’t know, but if you have a couple of hours to spare, have a look at the game. The link is a few lines higher up.

At the final whistle I went for a wash and then for the medication, and finally came back in here to listen to the dictaphone while I awaited the nurse. In the vicinity of where this second battle was taking place, some British troops had installed themselves on the high ground nearby so that they could shoot the battlefield and keep a fire of stready maleiks or mareiks or something onto the dug-in soldiers. They did this as best as they could and managed to advance almost two hundred metres, and were then sent to bomb the English positions so they gored over a late attempt to cross by Proncis Richards take of work, although she’d long-since retired and seeing if they couldn’t between them manage to push this guy Simpson out of the post that he’s occupying.

What happened to the first part of this? It sounds as if it might have been really interesting, even if it did descend into a pile of utter gibberish towards the end. And what is a stready maleiks or mareiks or whatever?

We were back in North America last night. The Americans had dug themselves in somewhere and the British were on the point of advancing towards them. The British notes were quite unclear about this but they must have set out, for bloodstains along the way indicated that they had had little battles and skirmishes. The Native Americans were interested in what was happening but were remaining neutral. The results of this advance were that the American positions fell to the British. But there was no account of the battle or anything ever prepared by anyone.

This dream and the previous one must relate to Colonel Carrington’s BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION that I have been reading recently, when the British tried without success between 1776 and 1783 to suppress the colonial revolution.

Nerina and I had been living apart. I’d come back to Crewe to find a whole pile of stuff, old furniture and things like that, put on my driveway around the back of the house. I asked Nerina if she knew of anyone who would come along and remove it – she knew people who had a van – but no-one heard at all. I never heard anything from her. I was walking around the town late at night, wondering what to do. There were crowds of people drifting around, and I remembered that there was a nightclub on the corner of Market Street and Victoria Street where I could make a ‘phone call. I passed through these crowds of people going home, but when I arrived at the nightclub, it was far too noisy and far too loud to make any kind of ‘phone call. As I walked in, I met a friend of mine carrying a double-bass. He was dressed in a red velvet jacket. We began to talk, and asked him how he was, what he was doing. I told him that I was living in France, which he knew. He said that it had been the talk of all the clubs after I left. We carried on chatting and he introduced me to his friends. We had a chat, and I asked them if they knew anyone. They replied that with the sheerest bad luck, they were supposed to be meeting someone that evening who had a van but he hasn’t turned up. I persuaded them that if they could think of anyone, to send them round to my house. I prepared to leave but they offered to give me a lift. Parked outside across the road were several coaches, some with foreign number plates. They had a van out there. When we arrived at the van, there was a pile of rubbish in the back of it. It was a pick-up. Someone set light to the rubbish, and the woman of this group thought that this was a dangerous thing and she wanted to unload it and let it burn off the back of the van. When the lorry behind moved, she began to think of how she was going to do it, but it was well-ablaze by now. Someone reminded her that every community was obliged by law to appoint a fire warden. She replied that she was the one for this community. Someone thought “wouldn’t it be a good idea to write spoof orders and spoof instructions for spoof fire wardens in spoof villages, and publish it in all of the local papers?”. She wasn’t too happy but everyone else thought that it was a good idea.

The guy in the dream is – or was – actually a drummer and used to play in a cabaret band whose van and equipment I drove around from gig to gig in 1974 and 1975 after I left my job in Chester. And another dream about things burning? It’s becoming a habit. It must have some significance somewhere.

And the “nightclub” in question is the former Burton’s menswear shop, on two floors, that is currently up for sale. Its corner situation would make it an ideal spot for a café, bar, and games venue and I’ve often pondered about what I could do with a place like that.

Finally, in the back of my van was a whole pile of furniture equipment moving stuff and a whole pile of things that had accumulated over the years. I wanted to dispose of it but no-one would come along and lend me a hand. The van’s controle technique had expired and I couldn’t drive it, so I came back from Europe after four years to try to organise something. I couldn’t even find the van so I began to hunt around. Nerina was with me but she was living somewhere else – she’d just popped by. In the end, we went upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and in the bedroom at the rear of the house, there was the van. I thought “what on earth was it doing in the bedroom? How did I bring it up here?”. It was buried in the hedge in the bedroom. I had a look around it, found the keys, unlocked the back door, and the whole of this furniture stuff was in there. One thing that I noticed was that the light came on, so I went round to the cab, put the key in and turned it, and it started. I thought “that’s not bad for four years being away”. I worked out that I must have brought it up into the bedroom by winching it up on a couple of planks, making a kind of ramp, so I need to find those planks and then I could winch it back down to the street again. Once it was down on the street again, then never mind the controle technique, never mind anything, I would nip out one night down a really dark road that I knew and just drop everything off because I was beyond now thinking of any kind of reasonable or logical way and with no controle technique on the van, I couldn’t go anywhere in daylight where there was a waste recycling centre open

Can you imagine it? Winching a van up to the first floor bedroom on a couple of planks, and losing it in the hedge inside the room. But it’s true that there are many things that I’m having to consider and having to think about winding up as my health deteriorates from day to day.

There are also many things that will have to be wound up by other people as there are simply not enough hours in the day to deal with them. It will be an extremely sad and emotional moment, but at least I won’t be around to witness it.

The nurse finally turned up at 09:45 this morning, ninety minutes or so late. He’d been to another client and had no answer at the door when he knocked. However, he could hear noises from inside so, not knowing what to expect, he called the emergency services. When they arrived, they broke down the door and found the client on the floor, where, apparently, he had fallen yesterday and was unable to stand up. The nurse had to reanimate him and then he … "the client, not the nurse" – ed … was rushed off to hospital.

That, by the way, is the reason why I’m here in Granville. In the Auvergne, one is totally isolated if anything goes wrong. An old English guy with whom I was very friendly had a fall down his stairs and lay there at the foot for five days in temperatures of minus 10°C until someone found him.

He was still alive, but he didn’t survive long. And that was the fate that awaited me if I were to have a health issue.

After breakfast and more of my book, I came back in here for part II of my footfest – Stranraer away at Dumbarton.

Stranraer are having a wretched season so far and up at The Rock in the driving rain, things weren’t looking much better. A penalty had put them in the lead, but Dumbarton had equalised shortly after. However, a wonder goal in stoppage time from James Dolan gave Stranraer their first win of the season.

During the week, Stranraer had played against the Motherwell junior team and those highlights were online too, so I watched that game. How nice it was to watch Stranraer amble on to a comfortable 3-0 win for once.

While I was at it, I picked up a few other matches from Saturday, and it made a nice morning’s relaxation.

After the disgusting drink break, I spent some time working on my Welsh and then went to make the dough for the pizza and for the loaf.

The pizza was perfection itself – absolutely wonderful – and having read the instructions closely and adhered to them, the bread turned out to be marvellous too and it even looks like a proper loaf.

So now, I’m off to bed, trying … "in vain" – ed … to catch up with my beauty sleep ready for dialysis tomorrow.

And seeing as we have been talking about difficulty sleeping … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not like the hill farmer in Cumbria being interrogated by someone from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
"And how many sheep do you have?"
"I’ve no idea" replied the farmer
"My goodness!" exclaimed the official. "Don’t you ever count them?"
"I try" replied the farmer "but I get just so far and then I fall asleep."

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Sunday 21st September 2025 – ONE OF MY …

… WEB PAGES is going berserk right now with hits, and the hit counter is rolling off the page through sheer weight of numbers.

The tiny little village of St Paul’s River, or Rivière St Paul, on the Forgotten Coast of Québec close to the border with Labrador has become famous overnight. It seems that a consortium of fourteen residents of that tiny place have won the latest round of Canada’s national lottery, a prize of no less than $50,000,00 or, as the Canadian national newspapers have to explain to their intellectually-challenged audience, about $3.4 million each.

When I say “the Forgotten Coast”, I really do mean the “Forgotten Coast”. Totally isolated from the rest of Québec, pretty much ignored by the Province and with its only road connection being east into Labrador. There is so little known or written about the place, and as I seem to be the only person on the whole of the planet who has ever researched and written about it, everyone seems to be coming to me and my web page for newsworthy snippets.

Not that I mind, of course. Everyone should be entitled to his five minutes of fame, especially me. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed.

But thinking about it – which I always do, of course – if I live for another year or so, I will have more than five minutes of fame. I was told right at the start of this illness that no-one had ever survived more than eleven years with it. I was diagnosed in November 2015 and in principle, based on the Law of Averages, I should have been pushing up the daisies, or “eating the dandelions by the roots” as they say around here, a long time ago.

In fact, when I was ejected from the hospital in Leuven after eighteen months and told to find somewhere civilised to live, I asked the professor if I should buy myself a nice little apartment somewhere.

"You won’t have your money’s worth from it" the professor told me brutally. But here we are.

Mind you, we won’t be here much longer if things carry on like last night.

Once more, I sprinted right the way through all of my chores and ended up nicely tucked up in bed by 22:30. And how I wish that I could do that every night.

The next bit isn’t so clever, though. And that is that at 02:30, I was wide-awake. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep so eventually, round about 04:15, I left the bed.

Yesterday evening, I’d missed the live Caernarfon v Penybont game so I found the link to the game and sat back to watch it.

It’s really difficult playing football in a tropical monsoon, especially when it’s accompanied by a hurricane, and I could tell after five minutes that most of the Caernarfon team was wishing that it was somewhere else than on a football field. They really did seem quite disinterested.

After about 75 minutes, they totally fell apart and Penybont were striding through the Cofis’ defence with monotonous regularity. They scored two quick goals and could easily have three or four more.

Caernarfon pulled one back late in the game when Adam Davies latched on to an underhit backpass, and even had the ball in the net a second time in stoppage time, only for it to be controversially ruled out for offside.

Seriously though, I was convinced that the referee was refereeing a totally different game to the one that we were all watching.

After the final whistle, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I had this desire to turn round in bed but try as I might, I just wasn’t able to move. I kept on trying to think how I could bring everything that I wanted down towards where I was, which was in bed with some trees that had been planted to celebrate some kind of victory growing all around me if I was unable to change my position. It wasn’t until I awoke at 02:11 that I was able to move into a different position.

Reading this back, I have no idea whether or not it was true because I have no recollection of any of this. I’ve certainly no idea why trees should be growing all round my bed, planted to celebrate a victory.

Isabelle the Nurse was next to interrupt my train of thought. She was grateful for the prescription that I had obtained for her, and so was I because, without it, she couldn’t give me my injections. We had a friendly chat as she dealt with my legs, and then she disappeared off on her rounds.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

We’re not discussing the American invasion of Québec which Colonel Carrington, our author, describes as strategically correct but with enough tactical and logistics shortcomings to short-circuit the entire procedure. And I do have to say that I agree with him in this respect.

It was a slow start to the day. I was a couple of hours in the living room doing not very much at all, and then I came back in here for a footfest of highlights, including Stranraer gaining only the second point of the season.

But what a flukey equaliser the Elgin City goal was. I reckon that Kane Hester will TRY THAT SHOT a thousand times over the next ten years and not put the ball anywhere near the goal, never mind in it.

After the usual disgusting drink break, I came in here and began to work on the next radio programme, being interrupted by my visitor for tomorrow asking me to confirm my address.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off and went to make a loaf of bread for next week and some pizza dough for this evening. I was however interrupted by Rosemary, who ‘phoned me to say that she was back home after her mega-adventures in Italy.

She told me quite a bit about her holiday, but it was only a short ‘phone call today, just one hour and five minutes. Not up to our usual standard at all.

While I was at it, seeing as I had some vegan pie filling in the freezer, I baked a vegan pie for my guests for tea tomorrow. They have to eat, after all. For Tuesday night, I might ask my faithful cleaner to find a small aubergine and then I can cook one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits.

Tonight’s pizza was totally delicious, another candidate for one of the best that I have ever made. And now, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow, I don’t think.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the football highlights … "well, one of us has" – ed … a footballer from one of the games was injured and carried off the field.
They took him to hospital and while he was sitting there in the Accident Department, the registrar came over to check him in.
"And why have you come to the Accident Department?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" he replied
"What do you mean?" she asked
"One of the other team kicked me on the knee" he explained. "But it wasn’t an accident. He did it on purpose."

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Saturday 20th September 2025 – I HAVE NO …

… idea about what is going on at the dialysis centre right now. After Thursday’s controversies, I seem to have been left in limbo. It’s not true to say that there was no doctor on duty today because I definitely caught a glimpse of Emilie the Cute Consultant at some point, but nevertheless, no-one seems to be interested in following up the examination that took place on Thursday.

It’s a shame, because it all seemed to be going so very well today. It actually started last night, even though I was feeling so ill. I’d dashed through my notes yet again and was, for once, actually in bed by 22:30, something that has not happened for quite some considerable time.

Even more rare than that, I slept right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29, and I can’t even begin to think when was the last time that that happened. Mind you, I was totally exhausted after the previous night when I don’t think that I slept at all.

It took, as usual these days, an age to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. I had a good wash and scrub up, and even washed my undies in the sink. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, from my days of living out of a suitcase, it’s very important that I keep on top of the washing.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in South Africa last night, in a column with the British Army that was attacking the Boers in World War I. The Boers had decided for self-administration, they were armed and had risen up. The British had sent several armies to confront them, but at first things went horribly for the British and they were pushed back after three major battles. Everyone in this dream wanted to rise up and go again on the attack but the Prince of Vietnam wanted to hold on until new weapons were available because they were on the verge of coming up with something that worked over a distance and the cannons were not as successful as they had hoped that they would be. They were effectively living with the girl’s mother.

The first part of that is easy to explain. Yesterday, I was reading about the opening battles of the Boer War in South Africa, the three major opening battles that left the British with a very bloody nose and the four “Creusot” Long Tom artillery pieces that the Boers acquired. Where the dream goes after that, with the Prince of Vietnam and the girl’s mother, I have absolutely no idea where this fits in with anything. But then again, that’s nothing new.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in, and once more, I’m in her bad books. I obtained the prescription for the injections that I am supposed to have after chemotherapy, but apparently I forgot to ask for the prescription for the visiting nurse to inject me with them. But what do I know about all of this?

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill that was in effect the first major battle of the American Revolution. The British in Boston attacked the Americans who were entrenched on Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, and although they won a major victory, albeit at terrific cost, the complete and utter lack of a strategic master plan left the British at a loss as to what to do next.

It was this type of indecision that in later battles eventually ended up with the British being expelled from what became the USA.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do and in the hour that remained, I attacked my Welsh homework. It’s almost finished now, so I’ll do the rest tomorrow and send it off so that I’ll have it back by Tuesday. Then I can crack on with the next one which will be due in a week or so’s time.

My faithful cleaner came down to sort out the anaesthetic on my arm, and then I had a rather long wait for the taxi to take me to dialysis.

We also had to pass by Champeaux to pick up another passenger, so the driver took me on a series of very interesting rural roads. Just outside Champeaux we drove past the ruins of the Léproserie Saint-Blaise– the old leper hospital from the Middle Ages.

We were late arriving at the dialysis centre and once more, I had to wait a while to be plugged in.

And herein lies the disappointment. They told me on Thursday that my dry weight had been over-estimated by 2kg, so I’ve been on a very thin diet and have drunk almost nothing at all to prepare myself for a massive drainage session today. Based on the previous dry weight, I had just 1.7kg to eliminate instead of the usual 2.8 or 2.9 so I was well-prepared.

However, to my astonishment, the doctor who attended to the session on Thursday hadn’t altered my dry weight to the new revised figure so instead of the machine running at the maximum 950g/hour as I was expecting, it was a very sedate stroll along at 480g/hour. It seems that I had been depriving myself for no good purpose, and that’s really annoying.

Just you wait until Monday when they tell me that I have to stay for four hours at the max!

That wasn’t all either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned these dizzy spells and hallucinations that I’d been having. Towards the end of the session, they started up again and the dizzy spell was by far the worst that I have had.

Mind you, I didn’t say anything to anyone. There isn’t much point. They would probably just offer me a Doliprane and cut the session short, and then I’d be in an even worse position than I am now.

When the session ended, I had an interminable wait until they came to unplug and compress me, and then I could leave, about an hour later than planned.

In contrast to the driver who took me to dialysis who hardly said a word throughout the entire journey, it was another one of the interesting, chatty drivers who brought me home. We talked a lot about, would you believe, women’s rugby but also about travelling.

There was a howling gale blowing here when I returned, so in view of that and my dizzy spells, my cleaner and my driver had to help me into the apartment. I was glad to sit down.

She had been to the chemist’s this afternoon and fetched the latest supply of medication, and there is more to come, especially the injections that I need.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan nuggets and a small salad, because I’m still not hungry at all. The good news though is that having sent an e-mail to the doctor in Paris about the injections, he had sent me the missing part of the prescription, so Isabelle the Nurse should be happy, I hope.

Me too, because I’m off to bed now, and I really do need my sleep. All of this is just so tiring. I don’t understand what is happening to me right now in this respect. Gone are the days when I could work for thirty-six hours and more, non-stop, with no problem at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about dizzy spells … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to someone at the dialysis centre a while back that I’d been having the odd dizzy spell now and again.
"That’s terrible" she said. "Do you have vertigo?"
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s a forty-five-minute drive to Granville."

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Wednesday 17th September 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a horrible afternoon today and I’m going to bed in a moment. Sleep is and always has been my remedy for all kinds of illnesses; aches and pains, so if this posting suddenly stops half-way through, you know what has happened.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ll pick up the threads some other time when I awaken, if I ever do, because the way things are right now, that’s not at all clear.

First of all, my apologies to Alison. Firstly, for missing her birthday yesterday, and secondly, for replying to a text message of hers at … gulp … 03:40 this morning and probably awakening her from her beauty sleep.

Yes, I was up and about at 03:40 this morning and if the truth were known, I could have been up and about a long, long time before that.

With not cooking a meal last night, eating my lunchtime sandwiches instead, I was well over an hour earlier than usual and I made good use of the time by dashing through the notes from yesterday, probably missing off a pile of important stuff that I’ll find that I need to consult in the future.

That’s one of the many purposes of this blog, by the way. I have a hopeless memory – a "brain of a duck, you know" as was once FAMOUSLY SAID ON FILM. Consequently, I have to make notes of what goes on so that I can recall them later. Nothing is more satisfying when contacting “authority” to be able to say things like "but in our conversation of 9th April 2016 you said …" and to be able to put the contemporary quote before their eyes.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I sprinted through my notes and everything else, and was in bed not long after 22:00, which these days is something of a record.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens next.

That’s right. There I was at 01:30, tossing and turning in my bed trying my very best to go back to sleep after a dramatic awakening, and failing dismally.

After a couple of hours, I gave it up as a totally bad job and arose from the Dead. And contrary to the expectations of other people, I did not have a wasted morning.

Apart from disturbing Alison’s sleep, there were two radio programmes which, as I mentioned the other day, needed some amendment to their text. And so I re-wrote the text and, in the absence of the howling gale, that seems to have died down now, re-dictated them (one of them twice because yet again, the first five seconds of one of the recordings had gone walkabout).

Once I was satisfied with what I had, I edited them and rebuilt the two programmes and now they are ready to go, sometime in March next year.

At that point, the alarm went off at 05:38 so I went and had a good wash and scrub up, then came back here to listen to the dictaphone. And I needn’t have bothered, because with just three or so hours of sleep, there hadn’t been much time to go anywhere during the night.

There were several other things to do, but in the end, at 06:30, I was interrupted by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse who came to sort out my legs. She was in a very lively mood this morning and so the news that I had later of an incident involving a patient whom she visits after me took me completely by surprise. Anyway, that’s another story – rather like the one that I told yesterday about the house of the Franklins in Spilsby.

No breakfast, and no medication this morning because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out at an inconvenient moment during the morning.

It was the young, chatty driver who brought me home yesterday who came for me this morning, bang on 07:00 as promised. He’d ‘phoned me a little earlier to confirm his arrival so I was ready and waiting by the door.

And that was where the first effects of yesterday’s chemotherapy hit me. It’s a very gentle, almost imperceptible slope up to the road, but I had an awful struggle going up it and I needed help. That was devastating news for me.

There was another passenger in the car with us, with an earlier appointment than mine at Rennes as I predicted, so we fought our way through the back lanes around Avranches station and the traffic queues on the rocade around Rennes to drop off our ladyfriend, and arrived at my building bang on 09:00.

Surprisingly, I was seen immediately, and by 09:15 I was coupled up and running.

It was only a short session this morning so I didn’t bother with the internet (although I found the free connection, which is good news). Instead, I read some of THE WAR IN THE AIR – the official history of the Royal Flying Corps.

It’s a fascinating book but, as you might expect, it’s full of the gung-ho jingoism that so characterised the inflated egos of the British upper classes at that moment. Reading things like "Flying Corps, when it took the field with the little British Expeditionary Force, was enabled to bear a part in saving the British army, and perhaps the civilization of free men, from the blind onrush of the German tide." makes me cringe.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the advantage of going to Rennes is that there are thirty or forty voyages to Rennes made by my taxi company every day. So when the secretary ‘phoned them to say that I was ready to leave, there was a car here in fifteen minutes with one passenger already on board and another to be picked up after me.

But it’s like being on a production line at Rennes. You’re in, you’re dealt with, and you’re straight out. No time for recovery or to calm down or anything. They had to fetch a wheelchair for me again as I was in no state to stand up, and I had to be helped into the car.

On the way home, I was feeling awful and as sleep is my usual remedy, I dozed off for half an hour.

We had the usual guided tour of half of Normandy, during which I visited a couple of places where I’d never been before and didn’t even know existed, and was back here by about 13:00, where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me into the apartment (and I needed help) where I sat down for an hour to recover.

Once I’d recovered slightly, I had a small bowl of porridge (all that I’ve eaten today – and if I’m off my food, then regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not at all well) and then went to bed where I slept for over three hours.

While I was asleep in the afternoon, I remember making something like a model lighthouse. It was made of plastic, like an Airfix model, with bits that we had to glue together and paint. It was rather complicated to do it, and we realised when we almost finished that it looked nothing like in the plan and we were doing it the wrong way round. Someone came to check on me while I was asleep in bed, and that jogged my memory so I went to have another go at making this lighthouse. I realised that in its natural position, it was pulled square but I had to tighten up the pillars, columns and safety bars which would draw it up into a hexagram – a circle, rather – and that was something that I hadn’t done at first so I set about having a go at doing that.

This evening, I’ve had a lively chat with my niece’s youngest daughter who tells me that she and her mother "are all booked in just down the road from you" so it looks as if this visit in November is really going to happen.

Alison and I had a little chat too, which was nice, and then Jackie came for a chat too. It’s been my lucky day today.

However, I really was feeling awful, and I’m not much better now so I’m off to bed in the hope that I’ll feel better in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the gung-ho jingoism of the British Empire … "well, one of us has" – ed … it has been rivalled, if not exceeded in modern times, by the manner and behaviour of many Americans.
In a small pub in a rural area in Wales, I once heard an American going on about "the miserable size of the Welsh hill farms. Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car, drive for three days, and still not reach the boundary on the other side of my land!"
"I know exactly how you feel" replied a Welsh hill farmer
"You do???" exclaimed the American, incredulously
"Ohh yes" replied the farmer. "I used to have a car like that too."

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Tuesday 16th September 2025 – SEVERAL PEOPLE SENT …

… me best wishes last night for the Chemotherapy session today, and I am really grateful for your thoughts. It all passed reasonably well (as you will soon find out) and I am now back home, ready to Fight The Good Fight again tomorrow.

In order to be ready for the trip out this morning, I’d set the alarm for 06:00 to make sure that I was awake in time to do everything. And to make sure that I’d have enough time for a decent sleep, I positively sprinted through the evening’s work at quite an indecent pace and was in bed by 22:40.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happened next. I awoke round about 01:40, again at about 03:20 and again at 04:45. This latter one was the last straw. I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards and so by 05:05 I was up and about.

After a good wash, I came back in here. No medication today, on the basis that what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey.

So I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see what had been going on during the night. Some young lad had a market stall selling fruit and vegetables. It was his first real attempt at doing anything like this. What he would do would be to go round three or four different fruit wholesalers, buy the cheapest product, but sell it on the local market at the price indicated by the most expensive wholesaler. It was quite a challenge because he knew very little about the business but he managed to attract a few crowds who came in. One pricing wasn’t very clear on his product, and there were a few occasions where people would knock things off the shelves into the baskets of fruit and then make some comment about the price that the fruit had now become, depending on the price of whatever article had fallen into it. He took it all with something of a smile, but he was going to have to learn very quickly if he wanted to make a success of it. There was more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

Despite the realism of this dream, I really have no idea at all to what it relates. I can’t recall a subject or a discussion that refers to anything like this.

And when I awoke, I was in the middle of a really exciting and interesting dream, but every last vestige of it simply evaporated and I was so disappointed. I would have been even more disappointed had it involved TOTGA, Zero or Castor.

So I had no breakfast, no drink, no nothing this morning. I made some cheese, lettuce and tomato sandwiches to take with me, Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and blew out with a promise to be back at 06:15 ready for my 07:00 start tomorrow, and then I waited for the taxi.

It wasn’t long a-coming either, but we had to go to pick up someone else in Granville before we could leave the town and head for Rennes.

Our driver knew a back way behind the railway station and past the airport in order to beat the roadworks in Avranches town centre and on the motorway, but she could do nothing about the closures on the ring road at Rennes that meant that we had to drive through the city centre to the hospital.

We eventually found our block and the driver found me a wheelchair (it really is miles to walk on foot). She pushed me to where I needed to be, where I had a lengthy discussion with the doctor who will be handling my case.

And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I learned much more in half an hour with him than I have done in all of the time that I spent with all of the other doctors who have seen me.

The hospital is quite modern, but the furniture isn’t, and the chair on which I had to sit was not the most comfortable that I have ever had. The nurses were brusque and efficient rather than friendly, and one of them threw a right paddy when I refused the “doliprane” painkiller when she went to couple me up. If I were to repeat on here what I heard her say under her breath, my website would be taken down.

It was exhausting too. I was supposed to be sitting in on the start of my Welsh class today but I only managed fifteen minutes before I crashed out completely.

To my surprise, there was something to eat for me – boiled potatoes and a spinach burger. I’ve had much better vegan food than this, but the hospital has full marks for trying. You can’t expect too much with “Tricatel” catering.

When the session was over, I had to telephone for my taxi to pick me up. And the advantage of coming to Rennes rather than going to Paris is that there are 30 or 40 trips to Rennes by my taxi company every day, and to my good luck, there was already one here at this hospital picking up another patient for near Sartilly. So even though it meant a scenic journey home, there was no waiting at all.

But I was wasted, and had to send for a wheelchair to move me. They had only unplugged me five minutes before the driver arrived, and I was in no state at all.

There was a third passenger to pick up elsewhere in the city but she lived just down the road in Jullouville so it was no big deal. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed, thanks to these new Securité Sociale regulations about sharing taxis.

My cleaner was waiting for me, and I needed her help to find my way back to my apartment. I still hadn’t fully recovered. However, sitting down for an hour or so helped somewhat and I began to feel a little better.

As I had had a cooked (of sorts) meal at lunchtime, I ate my sandwiches for tea. And as my travelling laptop is still in my day-bag, I began to read a book, LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN AND THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.

This is the biography of Sir John Franklin, “The Man Who Ate His Boots” (and a few other bizarre things too, but we won’t talk about the suspicious disappearances of some of his companions on one of his visits to the High Arctic) and who, in 1845, led a party of 129 to their doom in a vain quest for the North-West Passage.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I SET FOOT ON ONE OF THEIR WINTER CAMPS IN THE HIGH ARCTIC and visited the graves of three of the crew members who had died there.

And that reminds me – before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I must begin to upload my photos of that famous trip – all 3504 of them.

But why I’m commenting about the book is that, not half a dozen pages in, we come across one of those delightful paragraphs that has clearly escaped the attentions of the proofreaders. "In 1779 Willingham Franklin, the father of the subject of these memoirs, purchased the freehold of a small one-storied house, situated in the main street of Spilsby ….. his house, in which John Franklin was ushered into the world, is still in existence, but it is now the property of a coach-maker, who is, however, always ready and willing to show the little room upstairs in which, it is said, the distinguished Arctic Navigator was born."

We see plenty of errors like this during our travels, and there are probably more than just a few in whatever I write, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, the one in the paragraph above ranks amongst the best that we have seen so far.

But before we go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about comfortable chairs … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina once bought me a lovely office chair and encouraged me to try it out.
"It’s really comfortable" she said. "I had it made especially for you"
"Okay" I replied. "But just take your hand away from the electrical switch, will you?"

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Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… drama, I suppose that I had better take a calmer look at things. We can’t do with having that kind of emotion day after day.

So last night, in the middle of what can be best described as “a bilious attack”, I left the desk and fell into bed. It was all of 22:10 as well, and you don’t have a finish much earlier than that every day of the week.

Once in bed, I was out like a light. I really was exhausted, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that too.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I really thought about going back to sleep. However, one glance at the time persuaded me to stay in bed. It was 01:24 and, much as I like to be an early riser, that kind of thing is ridiculous.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep again because I remember awakening a couple of times during the night. However, at 06:26 exactly (my body clock is working really well these days) I awoke again, and at that point I decided to leave the bed, even though it’s Sunday and I’m entitled to stay in bed until 07:59 or thereabouts.

Saying that I would be leaving the bed is one thing. Actually leaving it for real is something completely different and it was a real struggle into the bathroom. I decided against having a wash as I really wasn’t in the mood, but everything else that I needed to do took quite some considerable time.

So did the medication this morning, and then I had the disagreeable task of doing last night’s washing up. One thing that I really detest is waking in the morning to find a heap of dirty crockery awaiting me but I really was in no kind of state last night.

After all of that, I was hardly back in here when the nurse arrived. He sorted out my legs, did his accounts and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is laying the ground … "groan" – ed … for a chapter on the Roman surveying of Middlesex. I’m really looking forward to that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we discussed Roman surveying or urban areas during one of my University modules, and I even built some Roman surveying equipment such as a GROMA.

Back in here later, there were the dictaphone notes to review. Back in the 18th Century there was a Native American raid on a village somewhere in North America. The residents succeeded in fighting off the invasion and killed several of the Native Americans. There was bound to be some kind of enquiry about it, and the settlers were concerned about what would actually come out in this, so the organised a collection of all of the arms that were in the possession of people. The aim was to try to find somewhere to hide them until the investigation was over. My plan was to put them in a coffin and bury it in the churchyard with the victims of the incident, then it could be dug up when the enquiry is over. However, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant about that idea.

Attacks by the Native Americans on settler communities on the frontier were commonplace in the 18th Century and there were terrible stories of atrocities – on both sides, it has to be said. But the burial of firearms in a coffin in the graveyard relates to an actual event in a village in north-east France just before the arrival of the Germans during their rapid advance of summer 1914.

Did I dictate the dream about me being with the old Ford Escort estate … "no you didn’t" – ed … My friend from Munich was there and he had borrowed it for a couple of days. He had taken my collection of small solar panels and installed them on the vehicle while he was borrowing it. When I went back to pick it up, he’d taken the panels off. I asked him how it went, and he replied that it was extremely good because he’s had a figure of 35 Kilowatts of electricity generated while he’d been borrowing the vehicle. I asked him where he’d installed them, and he pointed to the kind-of ladder rack on the back. He said that he had put them on there and they seemed to work fine. I had the panels and I had another attempt at installing them on there. It was complicated because the mounting blocks that I’d designed for it were fouling the nuts that held the ladder rack on. We had to be very careful about how we fitted everything. I thought in the end that rather than use a rubber sheet underneath the panels, I’d mount them on a sheet of wood or something that would be covered in the rubber sheet. That way, it would be much more solid and the mounting blocks would work better. We were there for quite a while, trying to fit these solar panels back on. He said that in the meantime, I’d lost two more of my volunteer drivers for this scheme. He said that Old man Sinclair was one. I said that I’d never really expected him to take part in it anyway. I said that I suspected that the other one would have been that little Jackie. he agreed that it was she who was the second, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed by those two because I didn’t think that it was likely that they’d take part.

It was the old Escort van that had the ladder rack, bot the estate that I had when I was with Laurence and Roxanne. And of course, the solar panels are on the roof of the Transit. But why Jimmy Clitheroe’s grandfather would be involved in this dream, and also “Little Jackie”, a girl whom I knew in Crewe in 1982/3, I really don’t know.

After that, I began the task of writing up last night’s notes and eventually, after quite a long while, I managed to post them on line, so you can all find out about my horrible day yesterday.

And so it was time for a footfest. There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League, and afterwards there were the highlights of Stirling Albion v Stranraer. Stranraer had about 90% of the play and had a hatful of shots at the Stirling goal, but failed to make any of them count. Stirling only had one meaningful shot on goal, so I shall leave you to decide what the final score might have been.

There were bread and pizza to make later on too. The bread is cooked magnificently, and the pizza was one of the best that I have ever made. My new oven is marvellous and I am almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

But right now, I’m going to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I really could do with a week off. But right now, all I want to do is to sleep. I might be feeling better but I’m still dog-tired.

But seeing as we have been talking about how ill I was last night … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that church in Neston where we went once for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
At the entrance to the church was a box marked "For The Sick" and next to it was a note – "This Box Is Restricted To Monetary Donations Only."

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Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve felt as ill as I have today?

And how long is it since I’ve been to bed well before 23:00 (21:56 was when last night’s notes were published) and slept right through until the alarm sounded at 06:29?

Yes, it has been a day of all kinds of records, some of them unwelcome, and I hope that things improve quite rapidly as I can’t go on like this.

Last night, though, I was in all kinds of states. I was feeling nauseous, my head was spinning round and I was absolutely flat-out tired. I dashed through my notes and staggered through my preparations for the night, and then fell into bed.

During the night, I remember nothing at all, and no-one was more surprised than me to still be asleep when the alarm went off. It’s been an age since that has happened. It took me a while to stagger to my feet too – for two pins I’d have gone back to bed – and even longer to go to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Once I was ready, which took a lot longer than it ought, I went into the kitchen to take my morning medication. I must try to return to my old routine now that everything is calming down. I’ve forgotten the medication more times than I care to remember just recently.

There was a task that remained uncompleted from when I was taken ill at dialysis yesterday. I was in the middle of splitting a music soundtrack, and I’d only completed “less than half” of it. There’s no time like the present so I had a good go at that to finish it off.

The nurse interrupted me with his visit, and I do have to say that since he’s come back from his holiday, he’s become quite likeable as he was when I first met him. He was disappointed that the Hound of the Baskervilles has left though.

Breakfast was next, and it was nice to have an unhurried, leisurely meal looking out of the window at the World as it walked by. Much as I liked the view from upstairs, outside here on the ground floor is much more animated.

Back in here, I can’t remember what I did next. It wasn’t to go through my usual routine of seeing what had gone on during the night and transcribing the dictaphone notes, that’s for sure. It was probably something to do with trying to find some of the things that I need that have been put into boxes, there to remain, probably forever.

There were a few people online with whom I wanted to chat, so that passed some time as well.

After lunch, I had a foot-fest. There had been a whole series of matches in the J D Cymru League yesterday and I had purposefully refrained from reading about them because the live match would have been when I was on my way home, so I wanted to watch it all in one go as if it were a live game.

So this afternoon I had Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint from yesterday afternoon. And having watched Llanelli throw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 to Llansawel the other day, this time it was the turn of Y Fflint to throw away a 2-goal lead, to go down 3-2.

For the first half, Connah’s Quay were awful and Y Fflint made it look easy. But at half-time, the Nomads made no fewer than four substitutions, the first time that I have ever seen so many changes at half-time by one club. It obviously worked, because they stormed away throughout the second half.

There were also all of the highlights of the other matches, including Colwyn Bay’s impressive 1-1 draw against perennial champions TNS. After four matches, Caernarfon are currently leading the table, and it’s been a very long time since that has happened.

What with one thing and another, I’d almost forgotten the dictaphone notes. They were next on the list and the massive “War And Peace” from the previous night is now online. I’ve no idea what must have been going on during the other night, but there are tons of stuff, and it’s well-worth a read.

Having done that, I could then turn my attention to last night’s notes. At some point during the night I dreamed that my cleaner came down with a whole load of stuff that had been sitting around and about the apartment, and threatened me under pain of dire retribution to start to move anything around. However, I was in bed at the time and certainly didn’t feel like getting up so I didn’t say anything. I just left her to go about doing it. But after a good half-hour or so, I had a look at the time. It was 02:26 so it must have been a dream that I had had, probably because I couldn’t see any changes to any of the piles in here. So now I have to try to go back to sleep and hope that I can manage it before all my staff desert it all for the goldfields.

Firstly, I can’t remember awakening at 02:26. And then we’ve had dreams within dreams before now, and I always find them to be an interesting phenomenon. Finally, the incident about the staff deserting for the goldfields reminds me of a VERY AMUSING INCIDENT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN LABRADOR. Who will ever forget "Gold Strike at Bear Creek"?

Later on, we’d moved into some new digs. I was sitting there, comfortably thinking that when we all go out on Tuesday, I would go and buy a motorbike for myself. That way, I could travel to and from work and everywhere I want to go much more easily. Of course, my brother thought that the idea was silly. He said that it would be two weeks before I fell off it, or something like that. However, I decided that that was what I would do. In the end, I ended up having a discussion with the landlady of where we were staying. She talked about different things, and I happened to mention that I might go back on the buses. She said that that was a huge jump up from driving a car. Did I think that I’d be safe? Did I think that I wouldn’t have any problems? Etc. I told her that I used to drive for Shearings, which lit up her eyes. She said “ohh, well you’ll probably remember me then”. Just as she was about to say why, the alarm went off.

Apart from my family sticking the oar in, imagine these days still being asleep when the alarm went off. Had I been awake, I would have missed this little voyage.

All through the day, I had been feeling nauseous, my head had been spinning and by the late afternoon, my vision had become blurred and I could hardly see what I was doing. I couldn’t find the force to stand up and I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, even though I’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

However, I forced myself into the kitchen, later than usual, and made a bowl of pasta and vegetables with one of the vegan burgers that I have. I didn’t feel like eating it but if I don’t make an effort, I’m going to be seriously ill one of these days … "as if you aren’t already" – ed …

Standing up afterwards, my head was spinning around and I could barely find the energy to stay standing upright, crutches or not.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, horribly late.

But seeing as we have been talking about the saloon in CARRY ON COWBOY … "well, one of us has" – ed … in the same saloon, the local preacher came in to preach to the cowboys about the evils of the demon drink.
"Would you like a whisky first?" asked the bartender.
"No evil liquor should ever touch my lips" roared the preacher. "I would rather spend the night in a brothel with a woman of ill-repute!"
At that, several cowboys dashed up to the bar and handed back their whiskies to the bartender.
"Why are you doing this?" asked the aforementioned.
"Well" replied the cowboys "we didn’t realise that we had a choice."

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Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

… another malaise – or “funny turn” – at dialysis this afternoon. And what a state I was in too. For a good while they had to switch off the machine.

It surely must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy, because I can’t think of what else it might be. After all, I had what for me would have been a good night’s sleep last night.

When I finished all of my notes etc last night, it was about 23:20 but as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep at my desk yet again and it was at about 23:50 when I tore myself away and went to the bathroom. When I finally crawled into bed, it was just slightly after midnight.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but I awoke at about 04:10. I was seriously toying with the idea of raising myself from the Dead at that point, but instead I went back to sleep and finally awoke at 06:20, just a few minutes before the alarm. Six or so hours’ sleep is quite good going these days.

The Hound of the Baskervilles and his master were already awake, and they went off for a walk while I tried my best to organise myself.

When they came back, we had a coffee and a good chat, and then my friend began to pack while I made myself some breakfast.

The nurse had been round earlier and, for a change, he was quite sociable. He gave me this new injection, which may well be a contributory factor to this malaise, and then he cleared off.

My guests left at about 10:00, and then I had plenty of things that needed doing. So much so that I forgot to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There are plenty on there, so you’ll need to look further down the page.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic cream, which we are trying instead of the patches. She did her best to organise me, but I was already not feeling too well so that was a waste of her effort unfortunately.

The car down to Avranches was full today, and it was driven by one of the chatty females who wants to take me to an axe-throwing session (we have some strange pastimes around here). I’m almost tempted to go, except that I can’t stand up straight these days.

At the dialysis clinic, I was stuck once more in a room on my own, where I was attended by one of the more … errr … “senior” members of the nursing fraternity. She had lived in London in the past, and wanted to practise her English.

There wasn’t very much water to remove today, mainly due to the fact that I’m not eating much these days, but I persuaded her to wind up the machine to take out more so that I have a head start for next time.

There were plenty of things to do, but after a couple of hours, I began to feel ill. My head began to spin, my eyes blurred over, I had a dreadful pain in my right shin and I began to sweat profusely.

They put me flat on my back with my legs in the air and put an ice pack on my head. That didn’t seem to calm me down, but I managed to doze off for an hour or so, which was probably the best thing to do

When it was time to go, I was left pretty much to my own devices. The good news though was that it was my favourite taxi driver who brought me home, and we had a good chat about her house-moving project next week.

My faithful cleaner and the neighbour had been helping me move were waiting for me. But by now I was wasted and couldn’t really function. They left me alone and eventually, I managed to make some food. However, you can tell that I’m ill because I left some of it, and it’s not like me to leave food on the plate, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually, I managed to catch up with the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I must have had a really mobile night. I was out in the street in a cul-de-sac somewhere and set up on a very low stage right at the end of it was a rock group whose singer played trumpet, saxophone, flute, a bassist, a couple of guitarists, a keyboard player and a drummer. They were doing all the songs that I knew. One of the songs was Hawkwind’s CHILDREN OF THE SUN. Their version of it was absolutely terrific, and the bass line was just how I would have played the bass line to that song too. We were all having a really good time watching them, and the musicians were dancing around. One of them, one of the guitarists, was dancing with the crowd and collided with me but I just smiled and let him carry on. It was a tremendous concert. At the end, they happened to mention that two of their musicians were taking the day off at the weekend for some reason or other and they were going to be rather short-handed for a gig on Saturday night. I wondered whether it was worthwhile my going over to introduce myself to see if they wanted a bassist for a couple of nights, looking for a change to go out and about and go back on the stage.

As it happens, I know where this cul-de-sac is. It’s just round the corner from where I lived in Gainsborough Road in Crewe. And I also know the track “Children of the Sun” and I would indeed play the bass line in a different way to Hawkwind. Also, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, once I settled here I began to relearn the bass guitar and six-string guitar. It was all flooding back to me and I was really enjoying myself and giving serious thought to going back on the road. I even bought a 200-watt bass combo amp. However, losing the mobility in my legs, not being able to stand up, and having this implant in my arm means that I won’t ever play the guitar again.

At another moment, I was down in Hampshire, on my way back to the cross-channel port ready to go home. However, I had someone else to see but I can’t remember who it was. Someone with whom I was talking happened to mention that they were looking forward to seeing me, and I remember replying that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them. It turned out that I had 400 miles to go in order to reach the ports so I had to leave quite quickly and there wouldn’t be much time to see anyone because 400 miles on French roads in a day is fine but 400 miles on UK roads could be problematic so there wouldn’t be a minute to spare to go to see anyone in my opinion. I didn’t know how I was going to fit this extra visit in.

400 miles from Hampshire to a Channel Port? The only port that might fit that description in any way at all is Rosyth, from where there used to be a ferry that sailed to Zeebrugge, although it’s been cancelled for years. Strangely, my friend and I were talking the other day about this ferry crossing.

Later on, I was out in a minibus last night with someone else. We were dropping off TV decoders at different places. At one place, right out in the countryside, we had to wait until someone came along with a car. It was a woman with a tiny, tiny daughter. She came to pick up the TV decoder and she began to tell us about this car park where we were waiting. I can remember it being a gravel place at the side of the road but these days, it had been modernised and made to look much nicer although I thought personally that it was a waste of money. This little daughter was running around somewhere very close to the side of the road. I thought that this was extremely dangerous and would cause a great many problems if she wasn’t careful. We were discussing this situation, the driver and me, saying that we’ll never have this job finished by 16:00 at the rate that things were going, so I was trying to think of a way to speed it up.

Later on, I was with a little girl who was my daughter. For some reason, I didn’t have a partner and the girl didn’t have a mother. We were going to a party so she was dressed in a little lilac party frock. We went in, and everyone looked at us. We eventually found a place to sit down. The two of us were chatting to each other. I could hear one or two whispers that people were thinking that maybe it’s wrong for a guy to have a daughter without having a partner there as well, but we didn’t really care all that much. Then my niece appeared. She asked me later if that place was going to be my local from now on, the place where we had that party. I told her that I’d been here before and I know what it’s like. I’ve had a few games of snooker here but it’s rather far out here from home so I don’t really know.

Something else that’s bizarre is the story of the lilac party dress. The nearest thing that I ever had to a daughter was Roxanne, whom I looked after for three years. When her mother and I separated, Roxanne had left some things in the apartment that we had. There were her communion dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and the clothes that she wore on the night of the wedding that she attended. There were also some other items and two extremely large dolls, one of which was almost as big as she was, and I can’t bring myself to give any of them away, sad creature that I am. When my faithful cleaner was sorting out my old suitcases, she came across the party dresses for the two dolls (you can’t go to a party all dressed up yourself and not take your dolls, dressed up too!) and one of them is a lilac party frock.

The story about being a man on his own with a daughter is probably something to do with the fact that I got on better with Roxanne than I did with her mother, and I was sadder about her having to leave than her mother leaving.

Then we moved on from there and I was with this young Italian girl. We were talking about all kinds of different things, having a really interesting chat. Then she took me off into a corner of this car park where we had been with the minibus earlier. There were half a dozen graves there. She pointed out one and said that it was her little brother, then she pointed out another and said that that was her mother. She said that she had had a lot of difficulty coping with the death of her mother because she was so young. I felt really sad for her and put my arm around her to console her, and we began to walk back to the town. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a really nice person, which I didn’t think very much, and she told me that I ought to moderate my language because it is rather coarse, and I ought to take more care of myself etc, my dress and so on, because she said that the two of us might actually make a very nice couple at some point, which pleased me immensely because I liked this girl. We carried on chatting until we came out of one of the back entries on Nantwich Road ready to go down Edleston Road into town. This was another one of these dreams that felt so comfortable and felt so relaxed. I haven’t had one of these dreams for months that had this calm, comfortable and relaxed feelings.

As I said in my dream, I’ve not had one of these dreams for ages. As for Italian people, I love them and all of their emotions. When I first met Nerina, I found it very difficult to come to terms with the emotional side that she presumably inherited from her mother, but having worked with a bunch of Italians in Brussels later on, I just wish that I had met Nerina ten or fifteen years later. But you can’t turn the clock back, no matter how hard you try.

It’s true too that I suppose that I don’t take enough care of myself and my personal appearance, and it’s true that some of my speech is … well … quite emotional. However, you can take the man out of Crewe but you can’t take Crewe out of the man.

So having struggled to do the washing up, I’m off to bed, even though it’s quite early. I can’t keep on going any more this evening, so I hope that I’ll feel better tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling out-of-sorts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time that I was at Balmoral talking to a serving wench, when suddenly she burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
"What’s the matter, girl?" asked the Queen. "Are you feeling hysterical?"
"Och no, Ma’am" replied the girl. "He’s feeling mine!"

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