Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 1st February 2026 – SUNDAY IS OFFICIALLY …

… a Day Of Rest, but you would never have thought so after today. I’ve been a busy boy.

Not so much last night, though. Running late as usual and falling asleep for half an hour in the chair while thinking about going to bed, it turned out to be a night much later than I would have liked, and certainly later than some have been just recently.

Eventually, though, I managed to make it into bed and asleep, where I stayed, flat out, until about 07:30. I don’t think that I moved at all during the night.

One glance at the clock made me wonder whether I ought to think about leaving the bed, but I soon dismissed this silly idea from my head, turned over, and went back to sleep.

The nurse woke me round about 08:30 to sort out my legs and, regrettably, I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. Round about 09:00, I hauled myself out of bed and cleared off into the bathroom.

Breakfast today was porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants, which were cooked to perfection. But I was thinking about the process that I use to make them, and I’m going to try something a little different next time to see if it makes a difference.

While I was eating, I was reading Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE.

He includes in his notes probably the longest preamble that I have ever read, and it contains little or no information about what he’s trying to do – it talks merely about the background and the naming of the site. And after the twenty-five pages or so, he reaches the conclusion that the information in his preamble is “not conclusive”.

We haven’t gone very far into the book either before we reach a discussion of climate change, with differing opinions as to whether climate change really exists or not.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall our discussions in the past about William Munn. He was one of the very first people to suggest, in his book “Location of Helluland, Markland & Vinland from the Icelandic Sagas” (long since out of print, but I have a few copies if anyone wants to buy one) that he wrote in 1914, that global warming was a real phenomenon.

He was roundly ridiculed by his peers at the time, most of whom have gone on since to have had omelette sur le visage as they say around here.

But one thing about Mortimer Wheeler is that he agrees with me on the question of civilisation. I’ve long contended that civilisation began as far back as Neolithic times when people were obliged to abandon their isolated hunter-gatherer lifestyle due to pressure of population growth and, instead, settle down, adopt sedentary agriculture and, most importantly, learn to cooperate in order to improve everyone’s quality of life.

Wheeler tells us that a "fortified city was not built in a day; its building involved a disciplined concentration of effort, and its existence was a perpetual symbol of coordinating authority. It implied a specialized and stratified society in which, presumably, the aristocratic traditions of the Celtic tribal structure found expression and at the same time acquired a stability not altogether native to them. It marked the true beginning of citizenship as a substantive element in the development of civilization in Britain."

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d had to go from Morecambe to Shavington village centre for something, but while I was at work, it was another one of these things where I can retire at any moment I want because I’m well over retirement age and if people don’t like what I’m doing, I’ll just leave. I was trying to write a report about a Government investment in an organisation that had control of all of the Hackney carriages in one certain town. They’d had an investment of £1,000,000 or something and then another investment of £300,000, but that was nothing like the amount of debt that they had and they’d carried on trading all the same. It was my duty to make a report to decide whether we should carry on making further investments in this or whether we should pull the plug on it. I was sitting there writing my report and my brother was watching me. One thing though was that my handwriting was dreadful. As I was dictating it, I was writing by hand. It looked nothing like what I was saying and nothing like what was going down on paper. In the end, I wrote down everything that we’d done, I wrote down what had happened, and I was on the point of writing down all of the consequences if we were to pull the plug on it, saying things such as “one whole town would be without Hackney carriages for a while until the council sorted itself out. This was the reason why the councils prefer to issue Hackney plates to individual drivers rather than large companies”. Then we had to go somewhere, but first of all, I had to leave the building for something. I went down in the lift and when I was coming back, it was 10:20 and there was a man banging on the doors trying to enter the building for some reason but I’ve no idea why. I went into the staff entrance and to the lift, and it was something like ninety floors up, my office. I was there with another girl and we were discussing this guy all the way up. Then my brother and I had to leave to go to do something in Shavington so we set out to walk, but we ended up in Nantwich. In Nantwich, I had a fall and I couldn’t pick myself up again at first. It took a great deal of effort to climb back to my feet. I suggested buying something to take back to the office but my brother thought that it was a silly idea. No-one else did that so in the end, I didn’t. Then he said “we have what we need. Let’s go”. It was a bag of spark plugs. I asked “you did buy the correct ones for the Ford, did you?”. He said “yes” so we were discussing the Luton-bodied Ford Transit that I have, and the plugs were probably for that. I came to the decision when I was walking back that I was going to collect all of my cars, all that kind of thing and put them all in one yard and all of the Cortinas except the 2000E saloon and estate, I’d dismantle. I thought of all the lock-up garages that I had with all different Ford Cortinas, spares and body panels etc. I thought that that was going to be some real hard work to move everything over into just one place.

Not that I’d ever be doing anything with my brother of course, but here we go again, working when long past retirement age. That used to be a recurring theme in my dreams at one time and it looks like it’s coming back again. The ninety floors or so of lift reminds me of a building in Manchester in 1974-75. It wasn’t ninety floors up, but it was pretty close.

My handwriting is quite awful too, due mainly to a severed tendon from when I put my right hand through a plate-glass window in 1974.

As for the 2000Es, there are indeed a saloon and an estate. The estate is in the barn on the farm and is worth a fortune, being one of the very few 2000E estates still in existence. The saloon is in the warehouse in Montaigut and while it has a 1600cc engine and manual gearbox that I fitted in 1991, the matching engine (with failed big ends) and auto gearbox is there too. With the matching numbers on the engine and gearbox to go with the car, that’s worth a fortune too but I bet that someone with no idea of the value will come along and heap the lot into a skip. That’s my biggest worry.

And just for emphasis, I did once have several lock-up garages scattered around Crewe with all different Cortinas and bits thereof stored within. And spark plugs for overhead cam Fords are different from the more regular spark plugs. They are “F” series rather than the more common “N” series

There was also something about building a pushbike from a whole pile of bits while we were listening to the news about something but I can’t remember anything more about this. It evaporated as soon as I touched the dictaphone.

My second push-bike was actually one that I built up from bits that I’d accumulated here and there. I had it for years too.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of last night’s matches in the Welsh Cup. And believe it or not, this is A GAME BETWEEN A THIRD DIVISION SIDE (BANGOR CITY IN BLUE) AND A SECOND DIVISION SIDE (CAERAU TRELAI IN RED AND BLACK) in front of a crowd of almost two thousand, nine hundred people.

As promised, here are THE HIGHLIGHTS of last night’s game between Colwyn Bay and Caernarfon, but HERE IS THE WHOLE GAME if you’d rather watch that, and you won’t be disappointed.

There was also Stranraer away at Stirling Albion, and although the unbeaten run goes on, it was yet another draw. I’m not sure how many that is now.

After a disgusting drink break, I finished the notes for the radio programme that I should have finished yeserday and then began to research the next one. That involved tracking down loads of obscure music but to my surprise, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to find everything that I wanted. It’s not very often that I can say that.

When I’d sorted out the radio, I went to make my bread and pizza while I was having an online chat with my friend in Munich. However, I was interrupted when the President of the residents’ committee for the building came to see me to discuss this fibre issue.

She didn’t really understand the issue at first, so I had to take her into the technical cupboard to show her what was going on, and then explain to her the issues. After some considerable time, I reckon that she finally understood the issues.

However, what annoyed me more than anything was that it seems that this problem about the telephone cable trunking being obstructed is something that has been known for ages, and I’ve had to go through all of this just to prove it.

But on a happier note, the bread was easily the best that I have ever made. The pizza not so much, because while the bread rose up like a lift, the pizza base didn’t, and it was too crunchy for my liking. But you can’t win a coconut every time, can you?

On that note, I’m off to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow, and to see what nonsense we come up with there. With a bit of luck, I might have a good night’s sleep, although I doubt it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my bad handwriting … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once wanted to enter an international competition for bad handwriting, so I sent off my entry form.
A few days later, I had a reply. "I’m so sorry, but you are illegible."

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Saturday 31st January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really nice, leisurely day today, where I have done hardly anything at all, not even all of the things that I was supposed to do. And it feels quite good for a change to be able to say that.

Things began to quieten down last night, in fact. I could (and should) have finished everything quite early and had an early night but, as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep on my chair while trying to sort out everything.

Altogether, I was away with the fairies … "although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … for a good half an hour all told, and that had me running considerably behind.

Once in bed though, there I stayed until 06:29 when the alarm went off. It was a very quiet night, although I remember turning over in bed once or twice. However, it was nothing of any importance.

As usual, it took a while to sort myself out and head for the bathroom. But once I’d finished in there and had a good scrub up, I put the previous bedding and a few of the clothes in the washing machine and set it off while I went and had my hot drink and medication.

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

I was in the army last night, or joining the army, being interviewed or something. We had to go out on a huge patrol later that afternoon, so we all had to make sure that we were fit. We were all told to wear skin camouflage, so I put a couple of black lines underneath my eyes and thought that that would do for now. I sorted out my camera because this sounded as if it was going to be interesting, and one or two other things. I was in the room preparing everything when the captain came in. He told us again about this parade. I asked “are we supposed to wear uniform”? He looked at me with a big, hard look. “Of course you are” he said. If you don’t have a shirt, you can take one from the neighbouring regiment. I hadn’t yet been issued with a shirt, so I’d have to go to borrow one. One of the interesting things about this was that one of the soldiers in our platoon was fitted with a recording device. The idea was that we’d be marching with some allied nations, and the captain had an interest in knowing how they performed, how they marched and what they were up to during this particular patrol.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there would be no chance whatever of me serving in the army. If ever I were called up to the Services, I would be in the Merchant Navy or some other similar occupation.

But this thing about “are we supposed to wear uniform” – it does have a parallel somewhere going back six or so years ago, and the idea of fitting a recording device to a soldier is certainly new.

The nurse didn’t stay long this morning. he was in and out quite quickly, leaving me on my own to make breakfast and finish off reading A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

The final part was the coin examinations, and it’s thanks to this that we are able to date at least part of the timeline of the fort. He puts the initial evacuation of the fort at some time round about 90 AD or maybe a few years after, due to the fact that in the first layer of debris, there are two coins dated 85 AD and 86 AD and their condition is “as mint”, implying that they haven’t been in circulation for long.

The next book is Mortimer Wheeler’s report on the excavations of MAIDEN CASTLE in Dorset in the 1930s.

Wheeler was the leader of the next generation of archaeologists who came after James Curle, and although he’s highly thought of, many of his conclusions are said to not withstand the passage of time. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we’ve already, not so long ago, questioned some of these revisionist opinions that seem to be doing the rounds right now.

The washing machine had finished by now so I sorted everything out and hung it up. And you’ve no idea how much energy it took out of me just to do that, even when I was sitting down.

After that, I came back in here and carried on writing the notes for the next radio programme. I should have finished them too, but I took my time and had a good wander around cyberspace, with the result that there’s still a little left to do tomorrow.

While I was at it, I had a little chat with Alison on the internet. It’s a nice day in Tervuren, so she’d gone for a walk in the park.

Later on, there was football. The Welsh Cup quarter finals and we were treated to Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay. This was another excellent match, a credit to the league, and roared from end to end with no side seeming to have the advantage of play.

However, the final scoreline was flattering and certainly didn’t reflect the balance of play by any means. I shan’t spoil the party and tell you the score because tomorrow, I’ll post the link to the highlights and you can see for yourself.

The crowd was another huge crowd of almost thirteen hundred people, but if you think that that’s a lot, the game between third-division Bangor City and second-division Caerau Ely attracted almost TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED people, and that’s up there with the biggest crowds that I can remember. It’s bigger than several crowds in League One and League Two in England and is higher than the average gates of several clubs in League Two.

When the game was over, I went into the kitchen and had a few crackers with vegan cheese, and then I prepared the croissants ready for tomorrow.

Right now though, I’m going to bed in the hope of having a good lie-in tomorrow. But we shall see whether it happens or not. There’s usually something that comes along to confound me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the crowds at Bangor City … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s true to say that firstly, there’s not much else to do in Bangor, and secondly, the fans there are so partisan that they turn up in their hundreds at Bangor City Stadium just to watch the grass grow, and they’ll have a thousand watching a training session.
That’s not like the training sessions at Crewe Alexandra, where the team was once so down on its luck that the manager at the time, Jimmy Melia, announced that they would have a training session on the car park where the players would practise dribbling the ball around some traffic cones.
Later that evening, the editor of the “Crewe Chronicle” rang up the club to ask how the new training session went.
"Terrible" said the spokesman. "The traffic cones beat us 2-0."

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Friday 30th January 2026 – JUST BECAUSE I …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 28th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then we had our culinary disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 26th January 2026 – AS I SUSPECTED …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are probably a dozen other explanations too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 25th January 2026 – IN CONTRAST TO …

… the last few weeks, or even months, I didn’t go to sleep at all quickly last night. Actually, had it not been for the fact that there were several dreams recorded on the dictaphone, I would have said that I didn’t go to sleep at all last night

Actually, going to bed last night wasn’t as early as I would have liked it to be. For a start, it took an age, as you might expect, to finish writing WAR AND PEACE, which, with over three thousand words, is one of the longest entries ever.

That kept me going quite late, and by the time that I finished everything else that needed doing, it was about 22:30 when I finally made it into bed.

As I said just now, I didn’t go to sleep straight away, as has been the situation in the past. Doped up with “Vick” and “Fisherman’s Friends” I lay there for ages trying to go to sleep, but without success.

When the immersion heater clicked out at 06:38, I definitely heard it, and then I lay there, trying once more to go to sleep, until Isabelle the Nurse blew in.

She found me in bed, and she took my temperature. Thirty-eight point four degrees. So the fever is still raging. She gave me another lecture about taking the wrong antibiotic and then insisted that I take a “Doliprane”.

However, I refused. This country is afloat on Doliprane.

“I have a headache” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a fever” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a pain in my foot” – “take a doliprane”.

“I’m going for chemotherapy” – “take a doliprane”.

“It’s cold outside” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a Welsh exam tomorrow” – “take a doliprane”.

“Y Bala were beaten on Friday night by y Fflint” – “take a doliprane”.

Nothing will convince me that doliprane is anything other than a placebo.

After she left, it took me an age to rise up and head to the bathroom. When I finally made it into the kitchen, it was 10:00. That was a nice way to start a day.

What was even nicer was breakfast. Porridge, plenty of piping-hot coffee and my last two homemade croissants. I must make some more next weekend.

While I was eating, I was also reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

This book is totally fascinating, and I’m learning all kinds of interesting things that I didn’t know previously, and that’s surely the aim of reading it.

James Curle is discussing glass today, and one thing that I didn’t know, but which I do know is that "the window glass which was found throughout the fort, and in the Baths, varied in colour from green to a pale blue. As usual, one side was invariably dulled".

So it’s not clear glass at all. But then, recycled glass today doesn’t come out clear either, due mainly to the impurities and the mix of colours that go into the smelter. Maybe it was the same in Ancient Rome.

Back in here, I had a footfest, watching the highlights of Penybont v Caernarfon and TNS v Y Barri.

Online later came THE HIGHLIGHTS OF LAST NIGHT’S GAME, Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads. They are well-worth watching but unfortunately, they can’t reproduce the tension and the drama. The FULL MATCH IS HERE and believe me, you won’t be disappointed.

There was also Stranraer away at second-placed East Kilbride. And this incredible undefeated run goes on and on, with Stranraer running out 0-2 victors. They are really riding along on a crest of a wave right now. Their next game is at home against third-placed Clyde and if they win, only goal difference will be keeping them away from that coveted playoff spot.

Eventually, I decided that maybe I ought to take a listen to the dictaphone. And sure enough, there were three entries – at 02:15, 03:06 and 04:15. So there we go. I must have had at least two hours sleep, even if I didn’t think so.

There was something about a new plan to link various hard drives together to make systems bigger and work better. It involves a certain form of attachment and something that was quite complicated to do, so there were rules and regulations about it. But there was something going round last night that you don’t need to do certain things in order to make it work. Secondly, that older hard drives could still be linked together, and thirdly, if you open up a piece of paper with the sterile equipment inside and you lose or drop something, it makes no difference – you can still go ahead and carry out the task. Furthermore, if you approach it in a happy frame of mind, you are likely to have much more success than if you approach it with a grimace on your face. Someone was round at my place trying to link my devices together and I was extremely interested to see how they did it because it didn’t seem all that complicated at all to me.

There’s nothing new in this idea. Even back in the 1990s we were piggybacking SCSI drives, using patched cables. I had one on my desk for a while in the chauffeurs’ office in Brussels.

The second part of it relates to the nurse at dialysis who, having opened a sterile kit and put on the gloves, had to take them off to attend to a patient and then open another complete sterile kit just for a pair of gloves.

I met up with my friends and their family again. We were in Belgium again, chatting about my plans for the future. I explained that I’d recently bought a new apartment so they were very interested in it. They asked me if I was going to let it, or what was the plan? I said that I was going to move into it and sell the place where I was living now, because although the place where I was living now was small and convenient for the centre, this place is bigger, cleaner, more in the open air, it’s on the north side of the city that I like, it’s near the airport and it was offered to me at a really good price. I asked if they would like to go to see it, so my friend said that she would so we climbed into my car and set off to drive. But we drove for miles outside the city – it was a really long expedition. We ended up down some kind of country lane, but there was nothing going on there so we turned round. I headed back driving but at one point there was an extremely sharp left-hand bend. I wasn’t concentrating and missed the bend, going straight on through the hedge. I put the car into reverse and went to reverse back out the way that I’d gone in, but there were two vehicles heading my way so I thought that I’d wait until they’d gone. One was an old type of pickup with a tower on it like a carnival float. I noticed that there was a wing missing off this pickup and a few other pieces, but it went and parked on wasteland opposite this bend. The other was one of these mini-pickups that were popular thirty years ago, these Japanese ones. This one was a British registered “T” registered, and it had trees growing out of it. It had obviously not been used for years. That disappeared up a side lane. We ended up back in another town and we were talking about my new apartment. I explained that it was two-bedroomed but I didn’t have all my furniture from where I used to live up until Virlet. It was all at the farm in Virlet. I only had the stuff that I’d bought since I left Virlet. If she had another bed and a mattress that she wasn’t using, I’d install them in my place, and I’d have a bedroom ready for when she and other people came to visit. We were walking through this town and we came to some kind of barrier, like a huge canvas screen that was blocking the entrance to a gate of the city walls. We tried to find a way round it. I went to one side and she went round to the other. I couldn’t leave from my side but she managed to from her, so I went to her side but somehow in between, the gate had become open again so I could walk through there. Then she asked me about parking. Was there an attributed parking space? I replied “certainly. That was an essential”. She answered “well, make very sure about it because we have two parking spaces attributed at our place but even so, we had a £25:00 fine for not parking in accordance with the rules”.

This second apartment is one that has appeared in a dream on a previous occasion several months ago. It’s a three-roomed apartment en enfilade, that is in a line from front to back, and it’s situated in a street (that doesn’t exist) across the Boulevard Reyers on the border between Schaerbeek and Evere.

The gate here in this dream reminds me of the drawbridge here in the walls in the medieval city up here. And driving through a hedge reminds me of once when I actually did just that, having skidded on a patch of black ice on a bad bend. And then, I simply turned round and drove back out the way that I came in.

As for the ancient vehicles, Isabelle the Nurse and her friends have a carnival float that they are entering in this year’s Carnaval in a couple of weeks’ time.

There was an interview about the new Roman alarm system imposed for waking up in the morning. The presenter was asking some kind of Roman officer how it was working. He thought that he was happy in general but it does create its own problems because the finger-swipe with the time to stop the alarm has been personalised so that only the person who set the alarm can switch it off, which is not very convenient if he’s been posted to a different camp or a different site within the legion.

This would be interesting indeed, Roman soldiers swiping their alarms. I wonder what James Curle would have said.

After that, I crashed out for half an hour, and then spent a few hours on my Welsh homework and now, that’s all finished and ready to go once I’ve checked it again.

This led me up to pizza time. I have plenty of bread in the freezer so I decided not to make any more until I’ve emptied the freezer somewhat, however I reckoned that I ought to make a pizza at least, and try to eat at least some of it tonight even if I don’t feel like eating any of it.

Surprisingly, I did manage to eat about half of it and it was actually quite nice. The other half will do for when I next feel hungry, whenever that might be. But it’s hard, really, to believe that six months ago, I’d make a Sunday night pizza with 167 grammes of flour, whereas now, I’m struggling to eat half a pizza, made with 50 grammes with 50 grammes left for another day.

That’s a problem for another time, though, because, rather later than I would like, I’m going to bed to try for a decent sleep before dialysis. Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed tomorrow and she’d some into the bedroom to sort me out. But I could easily see myself doing just that and working on nothing at all when I have so much to do.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Roman soldiers and swiping alarms … "well, one of us has" – ed … it wouldn’t really be an anachronism to have finger-swipe alarms in Ancient Rome.
After all, they had cars in Biblical times. And if you don’t believe me, read Acts 2:1 where it says "and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one Accord in one place."
They also had motor vehicles in Tolkein’s Middle Earth too. And if you don’t believe that, Tolkein tells us quite clearly that "Legolas and Gimli were to ride again together in the company of Aragorn and Gandalf, who went in the van with the Dúnedain and the sons of Elrond"

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Saturday 24th January 2026 – AND ONCE MORE …

… I’m off to bed without any food.

It’s not only that I don’t feel like any, or even that my stomach is churning around so much that I’ll be ill if I eat something, I also have to shake off this miserable feeling of tiredness, wretchedness and ill health.

As you can probably guess, I had another bad night last night, followed by another really bad day today, probably one of the worst days that I’ve had since I fell ill over ten years ago.

Last night, I finished off by saying that I was going to bed early. It was round about 21:30 when I finally finished everything that needed doing, and it wasn’t much longer after then that I managed to climb into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep either but I awoke with the stabbing pain in my foot and a really bad fit of coughing. I’m not sure what time it might have been, but I tried for what seemed like an age to go back to sleep. When I finally looked at the time, it was 03:43, so it must have been about 02:30 at the latest when I awoke.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep because I awoke later and lay there wondering what time it was. I had my answer about five minutes later when the alarm went off, so it must have been about 06:20 when I awoke, something like that.

Once more, it was a real effort to leave the bed. I had a spinning head, nausea and heaven alone knows what but I made an effort to crawl into the bathroom for a good wash and to sort myself out.

The hot drink and medication were next, and even though I didn’t feel like taking them, I forced myself.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and I really was surprised at how far I’d been.

There was some kind of rock festival going on in France and it was raided by the police. I was in my bed when they came. They began to ask me questions, to which I replied quite well so they asked me if I would mind being the interpreter for many of the interviewees. I didn’t really see that I had much of a choice, but one thing was certain was that I wasn’t going to leave my bed because I was quite comfortable there and everything that I wanted, including the alarm, was at arm’s length so I didn’t really have to move at all.

Could you imagine this? Me in bed at a rock festival? But it wouldn’t be by any means the first time that I’ve been asked to act as an interpreter by the local administration

I was driving my taxi last night. I was in Sandbach. It was a hot day, no-one was moving and it had been very quiet so I thought that I’d have a wander back towards Crewe. In the end, after much deliberation, I was parked up in Edleston Road, or one of the streets near Edleston Road. I hadn’t noticed that the rear end of my vehicle was blocking the street but there was no traffic about at all. Suddenly, a young boy came up and asked “are you the office manager?”. I asked why, and he replied “the director of Cumberland School wants to speak to you”. I’d heard this once before, but I hadn’t taken it seriously, seeing as it was a Sunday, so I decided that seeing as I was doing nothing better, I’d go. For some reason, I parked the car and walked up Edleston Road towards Nantwich Road and was planning to walk along Nantwich Road to Cumberland School. But then I thought “I couldn’t remember where Cumberland School was, and how I wished that schools would just have the name of the street, like ‘Bedford Street Primary’ or something like that rather than these fancy names”. I thought that by the time I found it, I’d probably want to buy an ice cream or something to cool me down, and it would have been cheaper to have gone in the car in the first place. But I bumped into a couple of people whom I knew. One of them was my Greek friend, so we decided to walk together. And these three or four people of us set out to walk. We were having this argument about shopping in Preston, about how the shops were better in Preston than they were around here, and should we look in this new shop that was being opened to see if it’s any good? I replied that seeing as it’s just opening here now, it’s probably been open for twenty years in Preston. I described one of my visits to Preston, where I’d gone into town, parked in a multi-storey car park on the edge, walked out, gone to one of these catalogue shops, bought everything that I needed for everyone at Christmas and come straight home again. This discussion carried on for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I looked around and thought “we’re in Stoke-on-Trent here. We’ve walked from Crewe to Stoke-on-Trent. Where on earth did we go wrong on this route?”. In the end, my Greek friend and I said goodbye to everyone and went over to the bus stop. On the corner of one of the streets where we were standing was a huge collection of bus stops. Then I couldn’t remember the number of the bus that went from Stoke back to Crewe. In the old days, it used to be the 20 and then it changed to the 320, but I couldn’t think at all. I left my Greek friend standing against the wall and went over to a couple of the buses. There was a group of drivers standing around the buses, and someone from the bus company looking very official with a crash helmet, so I imagined that he was collecting the money, so he must be someone important. I asked him if he could tell me which bus went to Crewe but he said “no” and walked off. The other bus drivers weren’t particularly helpful either so I went over and had a look myself at the stops. I saw the 320 on there so I imagined that this was probably it, but there probably wasn’t going to be another bus for nearly an hour. There was also a bus 550, and that number rang a bell with me for some reason but I couldn’t think why. By then, my Greek friend was sitting on a wall so I helped her down and gave her a kiss. That surprised her, but she responded. So we were standing there and she said “I hope that this isn’t a trick to lure me out of my home and keep me out for ages”. I had to reassure her that I was as disappointed as everyone else, as I was supposed to have had this meeting and it should have taken place a long time ago but I’d ended up in Stoke-on-Trent too and I was only supposed to walk half a mile. I couldn’t explain any of this but it was certainly no plan.

First of all, there’s no Cumberland School in Crewe that I know of. And if there were, it would be at the other end of town near the Cumberland Bridge or the Cumberland Sports Arena rather than off Nantwich Road somewhere.

Secondly, my Greek friend was a strange girl. She started at the European Union at the same time that I did. There was quite a group of us who began at the same time, and we used to organise social events and that kind of thing between us. It was only natural that after a while, we began to pair off and I spent a lot of time with this girl. However, although she encouraged me to spend the time with her, there would always be a moment where she would have a mini-panic attack and withdraw into her shell, and I could never penetrate her barrier. Strangely, a few years later when I met Laurence, she made much more of an effort to be friendly, but when Laurence and I separated three years later, she immediately withdrew back into her shell

Funnily enough, she asked me once to drive her to the airport when she was flying back to Greece. I helped her carry her suitcase inside and said goodbye to her at the barrier.
"Make sure that you eat properly and look after yourself" she said.
A woman in the queue behind her said "that’s right, we’ve got to give our husbands their orders"
And I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a big, beaming smile on anyone’s face, either before or since.

And thirdly, although catalogue-shop shopping was a thing that I did at Christmas in the past, I have never ever been shopping in Preston in my life.

We’d gone to Chester for the day, a big group of us, and it began to rain. It continued to rain in one of the most incredible torrential downpours that I have ever seen. After a while, the rain stopped and we could start to walk. I went for a walk around and met several people from our trip, and we talked about the weather. At that moment, the level of the water in the town began to rise. It looked as if the river had overflowed from outside in the country and was beginning to flood everywhere. I made a few comments that were pretty much ridiculed by everyone else, and then I decided that I’d go for a walk to see exactly how badly the place was flooded. I went and found the little shortcut alley that I used to take from work up to the town centre. That seemed to be OK, but I walked on a little further and there was a steep road down on the right. Where the railway bridge was, it was deep in water and there was a torrent of water circulating up against the support of the railway bridge, making a huge splashing noise each time. I decided that I’d walk down that way to see how bad it was. Luckily, the pavement was quite high there, so even though the road was flooded, it wasn’t actually too deep if I kept to the pavement. I carried on walking through it. Then I began to think that I hope that this current doesn’t knock me over because I can’t stand up again and there’s no-one else about. Perhaps I ought to have come down here on my crutches.

Even now, I can still see where I was during this dream. I was at first in the city centre, and later, I was along the ring road on the southwest side of the city centre. And if the River Dee had flooded all of that, then the World really did have a problem.

And once more, going for a walk without my crutches, knowing full well that I should have them with me. It’s wishful thinking, this walking.

Isabelle the Nurse came in, face mask and all, and gave me a serious lecture about these antibiotics. With still no prescription from Emilie the Cute Consultant arriving at the chemist’s, I’ve been taking the ones from last time. She warned me against it because I don’t know if it’s the same type that has been prescribed, and I don’t know if it’s the same dose.

She checked my temperature too. Thirty-seven point four degrees. Yes, she thinks that I’m ill.

After she left, I could make breakfast. I didn’t feel like anything, but I’m going to be really ill if I don’t eat something. So I ate it, albeit with a churning stomach, and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still giving us his Roman pottery lecture, and once again, as I mentioned the other day, he tells us that "when we pass from the early vessels to those of later date the most striking characteristic appears to be that the ware employed is generally rather poorer in quality."

That’s not what you would expect at all.

After I’d finished, I came back in here. It was 09:55 and by 10:00 I was back in bed, not only fully-clothed but with my slippers on too, as I discovered later. I just couldn’t keep going.

It was, would you believe, 13:00 when I awoke. And a good forty-five minutes before I was back at my desk. It took me that long to leave the bed.

And would you believe? There was yet more stuff on the dictaphone from that three hours.

I found myself in a prison. I was sharing a room with another person, and there was also the Egyptian doctor whom I knew in there. He was there more as a doctor than an inmate and the room and the situation was more like a hospital than a prison. I’d bought my computer in with me. It was a new computer and I was coming to terms with it, but I was busy trying to do some work while he was busy trying to pack up and prepare everything for his holidays, the doctor. I went to change, and ended up with my fleece under one of my big fleeces. It made me feel extremely warm and it was constraining me around the chest, and I couldn’t think why at first. Then I began to settle down. I noticed that all over the room, someone had put these little hand-made stickers of an orange background with a face and two eyes wide open. So I wondered what was happening here. Then I noticed that while I’d been away, someone had closed my laptop. I wasn’t sure if that had shut it down, whether it would reopen if I were to open it. I moved it around on the bed to give myself a little space. The doctor then said something like “it’s strange really that there are only the two of us here who have some kind of information technology tool. I replied that when I had my taxi in the 80s, we had an Apple II computer and I had my first PC in 1993, so I always had some kind of information technology with me when I’m travelling around somewhere.

This is another one of those dreams that totally beats me. It seems to relate to nothing at all, except that I’m surprised that I could actually remember, during a dream, all about my computer-owning history

Did I dictate the dream about some friends of mine and me and me down in the Auvergne? We had a house together. We’d been somewhere and come back, but there was someone parked in our drive so we had to move these people out so we could put our cars in. I had a Ford Cortina in there that I was repairing. It was up on a jack, an electric jack with a hand-held button with one of these long curly cables to operate it. I could set it en route, either up or down, but I hadn’t worked out how to stop it. It was either all the way up or all the way down. This was not what I wanted it to do and it was becoming extremely frustrating. One of my friends was then talking about putting a lock up and I wondered what he meant. I imagined two subterranean tubes that you could buy that you could pull out and lock to stop people parking in your parking space, but I didn’t think that that was what he meant. At that moment from down the road, a car was coming. It was coming really fast on this dirt track and there was dust everywhere. It roared past and we both said that if it keeps on going like that, there will be an accident. But the car in our driveway, it was a dark red MPV with a trailer and had Ukrainian plates. It came out of our drive in reverse at such a rapid rate of knots that it had disappeared around the bend before we’d even managed to do that without coming to grief.

Having a Ford Cortina up on a jack would be nothing new, but an electric jack? Certainly. Those two red vehicles would be interesting, especially the Ukrainian one and trailer disappearing at a rapid rate of knots in reverse gear.

When I was feeling like it, I did some work on the next radio programme, but it was a slow, painful work that took about ten times longer than it ought.

Eventually, I knocked off to watch the football. Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads. In front of the biggest crowd for a league game for many, many a year, we had a game that everyone would have enjoyed. It was another candidate for the best game that I have ever seen.

It pulsed along from end to end and the dramatic ending couldn’t ever be bettered in fiction. No-one would believe it if you were to write a story like that.

There were quite a few kids in the crowd too and despite it being January, freezing cold, wet and windy, you wouldn’t believe the queue at the ice-cream van. Nothing ever changes with kids, I suppose.

So that’s it. I’ve had enough, and I’m off to bed, cold, hungry and fed up but I don’t care.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greeks and Greece … "well, one of us has" – ed … back in Ancient Greece, a distinguished old gentleman took his hlamis to the akestës for repair.
"Who are you?" asked the akestës, preparing to chisel out the tablet.
"Who am I?" asked the customer. "I’m one of Athens’s foremost playwrights"
"Euripides?"
"No. The wife caught them on a nail as she was taking them out to dry."

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Friday 23rd January 2026 – EVEN AS I TYPE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday 22nd January 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 21st January 2026 – RIGHT NOW, PEOPLE …

… even though it’s ridiculously early, I’ve abandoned and gone to bed. And without any food too.

The fact is that I am definitely ill. It’s twenty-three degrees here in my bedroom, according to the thermometer, yet I’m here in a fleece fully buttoned up and a thick dressing gown over the top, and I’m shivering like a jelly on a plate when a lorry goes past the house.

It’s difficult to understand what’s happening with me right now. Last night, having a tea already prepared, I was finished quite quickly. It didn’t take too long to do what needed to be done afterwards, and I was in bed just before 22:30.

And in contrast to the previous night, I slept right the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29. I was dead to the World at that moment, so far out of it that I didn’t move, not then, and neither when the reminder went off at 06:33.

It was closer to 07:00 when I finally stirred and staggered off into the bathroom. And then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but, as I expected, there was nothing on it. It must have been a really deep sleep. So instead, I did some work on the computer.

Isabelle the Nurse put in an appearance, and in “chat” mode, she sorted out my legs. After she left, I began to prepare breakfast but I didn’t manage to go very far because the technician came to install the fibre optic.

And that was a total waste of time and money (one hundred and nine euros) because after two hours, he left without installing anything. Despite what the management company for the building has told us, the building is far from ready for the installation.

The aim, he tells me, is to disconnect the two ends of the telephone cable, attach the fibre-optic cable to one end and pull it through the conduit from the other end. And then fasten up the cable.

He pulled on the cable, and it moved about two inches before jamming up solid.

In my apartment, the telephone cable goes up to the ceiling, but in the cupboard under the stairs where all of the technical equipment is, it goes down into the floor. So somewhere, it climbs back up to the ceiling. He climbed into the false ceiling in the WC, but the cable is definitely stuck and won’t move. It’s attached to a junction box somewhere and he couldn’t find it.

It might be behind a wall, or in the ceiling, or under the floor of another apartment, which will, according to him, involve a massive reconstruction job with much inconvenience to everyone, but without a wiring diagram for the electricity and the telephone cable, it’s pointless even trying to make a start. And so, after two hours, he left.

What I did next was to write a report and send it to the management company and also to members of the House committee, and expressing my dismay. I received a reply from the President of the House committee telling me “C’est un retour sur des questions très pratiques et concrètes évoquées très antérieurement” – "This is a return to very practical and concrete questions mentioned very previously."

So, in other words I’ve paid one hundred and nine euros of my own money to tell them something that they already know and have known for quite a while. That has enraged me even more and I haven’t replied, for fear of using what can only be described as “unparliamentary language”.

However, generous person that I am, I printed out my note and posted it on the entrance door of the building. There’s been no reply or communication from the management company, which is shameful to say the least. The company should be notifying the other residents as quickly as possible and I don’t want anyone else paying one hundred and nine euros to further underline the knowledge that has been going around the House committee for months.

After that, I could finally go to make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle has moved on from weapons and is now discussing pottery. There were two European experts who have made a really good study of Roman pottery. They have dated the examples by looking for finds in camps, forts and towns where the period of existence was known, i.e., nothing in Pompeii can be later than 79 AD, that kind of thing.

From there, by examining the contents of different wells and ditches, the pieces of pottery present can give a date range of when the well or ditch was first used and when it was finally abandoned. And this explains how he is able to date the different periods of reconstruction of the site.

Interestingly, though, while hot on the chase of a subsidiary subject, I came across the following quote by Tacitus while discussing the Roman forays north of Hadrian’s Wall – "Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."

Now, who does that remind you of today?

My cleaner put in an appearance to ask me how I found the fibre optic. I explained the shambolic nature of the visit and let her read my mail to the management company so that she’s aware of the issues.

Back in here, I began to edit the third lot of radio notes that I dictated the other morning. And I managed to complete it too and assemble the radio programme, so that’s ready to go at some point in the future.

At that point, I began to write the notes for the next programme but instead, I crashed out. And properly out too. I remember nothing whatsoever. I must have been out for at least an hour.

However, I had been away on my travels.

While I was asleep this afternoon, I was having to edit an audio track. It was quite a long one and it needed cutting into various lengths, so I laid it on the floor. It took up a lot of room down the school corridor, and when I enlarged it to double size, it became almost unmanageable. However, even at double size, it was still too small to see where to cut. I had to guess where I had to cut it, but with the width of the nib of my biro being drawn down the side of my green ruler, the line was so thick that I would end up cutting it just about anywhere with no accuracy at all. It was clearly totally unsatisfactory. However, while I was working on it, I heard two people talking in American accents. One was saying that they’d managed to install extra security behind the line. But then, I awoke.

Now that’s a novel way of editing a radio programme, and it’s clearly a preoccupation, with me trying to record as many programmes as possible so that I’m well in advance before I shuffle off this mortal coil. The American voices are clearly a reflection of what’s going on in the World right now.

But having awoken, with the stabbing pain in my foot, wracked with pain, with a nose running like a tap, feeling totally miserable, shivering and freezing and generally feeling unwell, even though it’s only about 20:00, I’m off to bed with no tea because, quite frankly, I can’t face any.

Let’s see how I feel tomorrow. Maybe a good night’s sleep will do me good, but it’s doubtful whether I’ll even wake up in the morning. I feel like death.

But seeing as we have been talking about Roman pottery … "well, one of us has" – ed … James Curle was asked to identify something that came out of one of the pits.
"What is it, Mr Curle?" asked an apprentice.
"It’s a Roman urn" he replied.
"What’s a Roman urn?" asked the apprentice.
"Oh, about ten sesterces per week."

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Tuesday 20th January 2026 – AS I HAVE …

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

So last night, having had a quick, ready-made tea and with nothing much to say for myself … "makes a change" – ed … I was able to finish everything off at some kind of respectable time, like 21:55, and I was in bed about twenty minutes later.

Not only that, I was fast asleep quite quickly too despite the wracking cough and the stabbing pain in my foot, and there I lay until all of … errr … 02:30. And that, dear reader, was that.

Well, not exactly, to be honest. I did manage to fall asleep again round about 04:30 but only for about 30 minutes. I lay there for another half-hour trying my best to go back to sleep, but in the end, I abandoned the idea and left the bed.

Taking full advantage of the early start, I dictated the radio notes for no fewer than three radio programmes that were in the pipeline. I’d even managed to edit one of them by the time the alarm sounded.

When the alarm sounded, I headed off into the bathroom for a superficial wash (because I’ll be showering later) and then wandered off for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find that, despite the short night, I had actually managed to go travelling.

For some reason, there were a few of us being handcuffed. First of all, when they went to try to handcuff me, they dropped the handcuffs and fell about twenty feet down onto the ground. It took them quite some recovery time in order to rescue them. Then, when they had rescued them and they had to start again, it still wasn’t actually working correctly at all and I had a feeling that my whole upper body was totally twisted round and I had no idea what was going on when this was happening

As Europe prepares for imminent war, this dream is not as far-fetched as it may seem. As well as that, I’ve been deliberately steering clear of commenting on the state of current events because there is much more going to be going on in the very near future, but it’s interesting to recap on something that I WROTE IN MAY 2005 that is likely to come to pass in the very near future.

This was about a tribe of Africans, somewhere in Africa in years gone by who had invented a process of heating water. They had managed to make flexible copper pipe and had succeeded in coiling it around the chimney of a cast-iron stove. They poured cold water in at one end that went down a pipe and swirled around the coil that was around the chimney. When the chimney was lit, it heated the water and the water came out the other side and it was quite hot. This was the kind of thing that took the earliest European explorers completely by surprise.

This was actually a project of mine for down on the farm when I finally had my big stove installed on the ground floor. However, we never managed to make it that far. But it would be interesting indeed if some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Africans had developed flexible copper piping.

I had plenty of things to do in the garden so I went outside and began to make a start. I was gradually organising everything and there were all these people heading past. They all seemed to be on their way to the local school, the children and adults. They were chatting and one of them was talking about the swimming baths, and they might need a bath cap to go into the swimming pool. They were trying to arrange between themselves where to pick one up and who would lend one to them. There were a couple of little girls going past, picking wild flowers as they went. Then I had to go for a walk to somewhere else so I set off. It was up some kind of hill and there was that much water, even though it was a nice day, that the road was like a river. It was very difficult to find a dry spot in order to go to where I wanted to go. My appointment was at 17:30 but I’d set out at 17:00, but I’d seen this motorcycle for sale, a big five-litre two-wheeled thing, and I was so impressed with it that I thought that I would come back to have a ride on it and maybe even to buy it. But one thing that I’d been noticing throughout this dream was that I wasn’t on my crutches at all and was walking quite normally. When someone asked me about it, I said that I had days when I could walk around like this and other days when I needed crutches. But it’s rather embarrassing when I go back to school when I’m on crutches because I’m called all kinds of names by the other kids.

My house at Gainsborough Road was at a junction of roads that led to four different schools so there were always kids and parents going past. The motorbike was interesting too – five litres on two wheels! But how many times is this now that I’ve been walking without my crutches during the night?

Isabelle the Nurse came by this morning to start her round. She was dressed as a leopard today, furry jacket and spotted slacks. We had a brief chat and then she pushed off, leaving me to my breakfast and A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

Today, we’ve moved on beyond armour and are discussing weapons. James Curle has identified some of the swords as being of Celtic origin and believes that this indicates that a cohort of native mercenaries was recruited to swell the numbers in the garrison.

On the other hand, it could equally mean that it was Celtic warriors from Galloway who actually attacked the fort and drove out the Romans, causing them to flee to Hadrian’s Wall in round about 120 AD.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for my lesson. It was another one that passed quite well, due to the amount of preparation that I’d done. I wish that I could persevere and do this all the time.

When my faithful cleaner appeared, she shooed me into the bathroom for a shower, so I’m a nice, clean boy now. And then I had to pack up and wrap the computer that I’m sending back to my online retailer, mainly because it was so late arriving.

Once my cleaner had left, I attacked the next radio programme whose notes I’d dictated earlier. That’s now finished and ready to go, and there was even time to make a start on the next one.

Tea was the last of the leek, potato and mushroom soup, which I had with some bread out of the freezer. It was followed by Christmas cake, which still seems to be going strong. Not much left now, and then I can go back to the jam roly-poly and the spotted dick.

But right now, I’m off to bed again, hoping for a better night tonight, although I doubt it very much with this cough, this pain in my foot and now my nose that’s streaming like a tap again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about kids going to school … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once heard a story about someone who refused to go.
When his mother asked him why, he replied "I don’t want to go to school. All the kids hate me, all the teachers hate me, all the dinner ladies hate me, the gardener and the secretary hate me, and even Norah the Nit-Nurse hates me. In fact, everyone hates me<"
"Look dear" said his mother, soothingly. "You have to go to school"
"Give me one good reason why."
"Well, dear, You ARE the Headmaster."

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Monday 19th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

It was rather late again when I went to bed last night, and I was asleep quite quickly, but I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 06:29. I must have been dead to the World all through the night.

But I wish that I could focus my energy on actually doing things that I need to do and doing them without interruption so that I can push on and have an early night one of these days. The only early nights that I have had just recently have been when I’ve been too tired to carry on, leaving me with a mountain of work to do the following morning.

Last night, I managed to finish everything, but it was still almost 23:30 when I crawled into bed and went to sleep.

The alarm took me completely by surprise, so much so that I threw off the quilt without having my customary couple of minutes to slowly come round. That’s not like me at all. Nevertheless, it took me a good couple of minutes to summon up the energy to actually stand up.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon and then went off for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, with no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I caught up with a little housekeeping in the bedroom until the nurse arrived.

He was early again, but he didn’t hang around too long, leaving me to make my breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle seems to have finished the excavations of the pits and wells, and now he’s sorting out into groups what he has found.

At the moment, we’re discussing armour, and it’s extremely interesting how he’s managed to identify the different parts, such as the scales for scale armour and the chainmail. He’s giving quite a comprehensive talk on how it all fits together and how it’s worn, and the book is probably worth reading just for that.

Back in here, there was the radio programme for this week to review before I sent it off, and the quality of the audio was abysmal. In the end, I had to remix it completely, and that took quite a lot of time that I could well have used for something else, particularly when, with my first remixing and editing, I closed the file without saving it, so I had to do it again.

With the time that was left this morning, I revised my Welsh ready for tomorrow. Having missed a week of the course, I’ve no idea where we are so I’m hoping for the best.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi, becoming increasingly more frustrated as my new internet box, promised by 13:00 at the latest today, failed to arrive.

It eventually turned up at 12:46, which was cutting it fine.

However, the taxi was fifteen minutes late, and we had another wild ride around the back of beyond in Normandy to pick up two further passengers. I’m certainly seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed since I’ve been ill.

We were late arriving at dialysis (again) and, as usual, I was the last to be connected. Once everything was under way, I asked the nurse if I could see the doctor as the prescription for my medication had now expired. However, no doctor showed his or her face in my room, so I was left pretty much alone, coping with, once more, the pain in my foot and severe, non-stop bouts of coughing.

Eventually, they unplugged me, and I had to wait around for the taxi again. Consequently, I was late home yet again.

My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I made tea – or, rather, warmed up the half-pizza left over from yesterday.

Right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for another good sleep ready for my Welsh class tomorrow. A good sleep will do me good, as will a successful lesson.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about wearing apparel … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the Scotsman who was interviewed on the street by a news reporter.
"Is anything worn under the kilt?" she asked.
"Och, no, lassie. It’s all in purrrrfect worrrrking order."

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Sunday 18th January 2026 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… way to start a Sunday. A slow, gentle awakening and a gradual sliding out of bed into the daylight – at 10:00 this morning. I really should do it more often.

Especially if I can manage to be in bed before 23:30 the night before.

Last night, though, I didn’t quite manage it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied while I was trying to finish off everything, and in the end, it was about 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it was something of a disturbed night and I awoke on several occasions. Mind you, I was fast asleep when the nurse breezed into the bedroom to deal with my legs. I actually took no notice so he did what he thought was necessary and then breezed out again. He can’t have been here longer than two minutes.

It hadn’t really disturbed me, and I was soon asleep again, right up to my rather gentle awakening at 10:00.

My clothes were in here from last night so, for a change, I didn’t bother with the bathroom. I dressed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Porridge and piping-hot coffee, and a couple of my homemade croissants warmed in the microwave. What a lovely breakfast that was too!

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

Today, James Curle has been emptying the various wells and pits around the fort and camp. So far, he’s examined no fewer than one hundred and seven, and that’s an enormous number.

Some of them are empty of relics, some have a few, some have more, but some are astonishing.

Take Pit I for example – "Near the surface a fragment of an inscribed table. At § feet, a piece of twisted silver wire, part of a penannular brooch, two bronze rings, and twelve links of a small bronze chain. At 8 feet, a human skeleton, near it a bronze penannular brooch, as well as two pieces of bronze, perhaps part of a second brooch. At 12 feet, an altar dedicated to Jupiter, and below it a ‘first brass’ coin of Hadrian. From 14 feet downwards, bones of animals; the skulls of oxen (Bos Longifrons), and of horses were-frequent ; also soles of shoes, fragments of leather garments, and deer horns. At 18 feet, fragments of stone moulding, pieces of amphorae, and small bits of undecorated Terra Sigillata; also two pieces of deer horn fitted together like a rude pick. At 21 feet, an iron bar. At 22 feet, a human skull complete and part of another skull near it, remains of scale armour of brass, also the necks of five large amphorae, and the bottom of a cup of Terra Sigillata (Type Drag. 33), with the stamp PROBVS-F. At 25 feet, the upper stone of a quern, an iron knife with a bone handle, an iron knife, a linch pin , a bar of iron, a sickle, portions of an iron corselet mounted with brass; the staves and bottom of an oak bucket, 7 inches high, 8 inches in diameter; the iron rim of a large bucket; a large block of sandstone having a rudely-sculptured figure of a boar on one side; a small fragment of stone, with a figure of a boar in relief; five arrowheads of iron; pieces of chain armour; the iron umbo of a ‘shield and fragments of brass, perhaps belonging to its decoration; a brass coin of Vespasian or Titus; a stirrup-like holdfast of iron; a fragment of wall plaster, necks and sides of several amphorae"

That’s just one example of a well-filled pit.

He makes the point that it seems to be the earliest pits that have all of the relics. That would fit in with the idea that the abandonment of the fort was a panic-stricken flight and whatever couldn’t be carried away was cast into the pits and quickly filled in, in the hope that it could be recovered at a later date. However, with the passage of twenty years before the return of the Roman Army to the area, the generation that had hidden it was gone and the whereabouts of the caches forgotten.

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

My friend from Wellington was around last night. He’d come to see how I was and to see how my house move was going. He was having a look and he saw that I had a toolbox. He asked me about the toolbox – it was a dark green cantilever thing. I said that I’d picked it up for a couple of quid with one or two tools in it and I’d gradually been expanding it. I now had about three or four of these toolboxes with different tools in them and more complete toolkits etc. He seemed to be quite interested in it. In the end, he asked me what we were going to do so I replied that we would rearrange the living room and sort out the furniture in there. We decided to go in, and we were looking at the big, black wall unit with mirror doors. I was thinking of putting it across the door to protect everything from the draught but pulling it about four feet forward so that people could slalom around it in comparative ease

The cantilever toolbox that I have here is a light green, but there are several others back on the farm. There isn’t a dark green one though. And my friend from Newport (not Wellington) did come over here to help me design the plans for the new apartment. The large black wall unit with mirror doors didn’t fit in with the plans and that was taken away by the charity shop people. When it was upstairs though, it was across the doorway but pulled a few feet forward. It protected me from draughts when I was sitting at the table.

Did I miss the end of that dream about my friend from Wellington? We went into the other room to rearrange the furniture. We thought that with the black and white shelf unit which was much too close to the porte, it would have been interesting in bringing the certifed form ending and the final reel over to my new address and sharing oil one night. But for some reason, it became very complicated … fell asleep here

This quickly degenerated into a pile of whatever, didn’t it?

When the nurse came, I was somewhere in the Alps. I’d been there before, years ago, and I had plenty of photos, including photos of the boats that were on the lake right up in the mountains. There was even an imitation Spanish galleon on this lake. Don’t ask me how it arrived there. There were several pleasure cruisers. I remember talking to one of the guys in a rowing boat who was just sitting there, lying on his back enjoying the freezing cold weather as his boat followed the current through this lake. This inspired my German friend to go there once he’d seen all of my photos so we’d arranged to meet one day. But he’d met someone the previous day who had some kind of horse-drawn contraption. He became friends with him, and asked him if he could borrow this horse and cart, or whatever it is, and go off camping for the night. We made some kind of strange remark about leaving a holiday in order to go on another holiday, a holiday within a holiday or something. He eventually turned up, and all that he had was a metal chair. He had to try to make himself comfortable on this metal chair during the night but it had casters on it. He was afraid that during the night, if he moved, it would begin to roll and he would be over the edge of the cliff so he was looking for things to try to chock the wheels to make sure that it wouldn’t move while he was asleep.

As for this, I’ve no idea to what it refers, although I have vague recollections of being somewhere similar in a dream several weeks ago. It wasn’t as detailed or as complicated as this, though.

There was also something about being on board a ship. I was the captain of it. It was a cruise ship, that sort of thing. I’d been receiving secret messages by the time the ship went into port, it would go slowly along the docks until it reached its berth and someone would walk alongside the dock and tell me these messages. But when it came to berthing down, the cabin for the captain was also the cabin for the First Officer so we had to share. So I grabbed the bunk on the ground floor for mine and I thought that I’d let the First Officer climb up the ladder to the one on top. It turned out that the First Officer was a woman. I thought that this was going to be rather complicated but neither of us really cared and we both went to bed. We had a little chat about this and that. But while I was trying to fall asleep, I was rummaging through the lockers at the side of the bed. There were all kinds of things in there. There was a huge homemade battery clamp, there were other kinds of bits and pieces in there, but I was going through it, trying to take an inventory while I was waiting to fall asleep.

The First Officer, I can see her now. She was the driver who brought me home on Thursday from dialysis, although why she should pop up here, I don’t know. Walking along the shore at the side of a ship reminds me of being AT THE WELLAND CANAL IN 2010 where I did just that. The rest is about my preoccupation with the untidy state of this apartment, I imagine.

After that, there was football. Greenock Morton were away to Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup yesterday, and I have to say that I have never in my life seen such an inept, incompetent display from a professional club.

Giant-killing acts in cup matches occur so frequently that it’s hardly ever worth mentioning them, but when a full-time professional club in the second tier of Scottish football comes up against part-timers in the third tier and loses, it’s not really headlines, but to lose 4-0? It’s an embarrassment. Morton were really lucky to get nil, that’s for sure.

The rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme. It took an age to find all of the songs that I wanted, and then they needed to be reformatted, remixed, edited, paired and segued. By the time that I knocked off, it had all been done. It just remains now to write the notes, which I shall do during the week.

There was time to make the pizza base for tea – not a loaf, though, because there’s plenty of bread in the freezer that needs using. And for a few minutes, I reviewed my Welsh for Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, and there’s a half left over for tomorrow night. Right now, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Welland Canal … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Welland Canal was built to by-pass Niagara Falls.
While I was there, I went into Niagara where I heard a story about a couple, a 95-year-old man and a 94-year-old woman, who were there on their honeymoon.
"Did they have a good time?" I asked
"Not really" was the reply. "They spent the whole two weeks trying to get out of the car."

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