Tag Archives: www.youtube.com

Sunday 8th February 2025 – WHEN I DON’T …

… have to go to dialysis, I can have some good days. And today was one of these, in many repsects.

Dictating the notes for the three radio programmes wasn’t so good though. There were loads of errors that I made and I don’t know why. I just couldn’t seem to get it together and once I slipped out of the rhythm I was gone completely. Some of the parts were dictated three times and there will be a lot of editing in the morning.

But one good thing about it was that it wasn’t all that long after midnight that I finished so with the lie-in until 08:00 in the morning I stand a good chance of having a decent sleep.

And I did too. After having sorted myself out ready for bed, once underneath the covers there I stayed, and I didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off at 08:00.

What a struggle it was to tear myself out of my bed this morning. But I made it and just about finished washing and dressing as Isabelle the Nurse came in.

She told me that there isn’t a real problem about having eaten before the blood test and whether it might be 24 or 72 hours before the hospital visit instead of the prescribed 48. I’ll speak to the dialysis centre people on Monday and see what they have to day.

Seeing as it was Sunday she had plenty of time on her hands so she showed me some photos and videos of her skiing trip, just to make me jealous.

After she left I had my medication, made my breakfast and then went to read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve now moved out of the hills and onto the plains and circular forts. These are, as their name implies, areas with circular defences down on the lowland and being mainly small, it implies that the area was occupied by some kind of closely-related agricultural period.

The difficulty with these is that, being a universal design, they could date from any era at all, even the modern age. But even if they are modern, they more likely have an ancient history, being erected on the site of a previous version of the camp.

If ever you drive up the A6 or M6 to Carlisle, up in Cumbria you’ll see farmhouses in the middle of fields closely surrounded by barns and other buildings, in a circular formation, and I’ve often wondered as I drove past whether they are modern equivalents of the circular camp. Being in an isolated spot near the border with Scotland, it’s almost inevitable that they were going to be targets for any Scottish raider crossing the border and bent on plunder.

One thing though – I’m not sure who his audience is by the style of his writing. I’m not uneducated (at least, I don’t think so) but even I am having trouble with some of his sentence phrasing and the meaning of some deep, hidden archaeological name.

Back in here we had a footfest. All of the JD Cymru League from Saturday including the Cymru North grudge match between Airbus UK Broughton and Colwyn Bay, a real top-of-the-table clash with probably the biggest crowd that has ever been at the Airfield.

That was followed by Clyde v Stranraer and our regular commentator Lawrence Nelson missed the game. He must have known what was coming because I have never ever in my life seen a team play so badly.

The score finished 2-0 to Clyde, and Stranraer were lucky to get nil. Clyde weren’t much better. They missed so many sitters that I gave up counting after seven. Had Clyde been any good it could have been an embarrassing scoreline.

This is a match that no fan of either team will want to see again but if you are feeling brave, THEN THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE HERE, complete with the Keystone Cops defending.

For lunch I had a lovely cheese salad butty. That bread that I made the other day really is exceptionally good and with vegan cheese, lettuce, tomato and salad dressing, it’s really good.

Back in here this afternoon I’ve been radioing.

The notes for the final track of programme 251024 have been edited and incorporated into the two halves of the rest of the programme. The music for the final track had been edited into the stream and so that programme is now ready to go.

The notes for programme 251107 were then edited and my little “discussion phrase” has been edited in. As it’s a concert these notes go onto the front of the music, which I had assembled during the week.

It ended up over-running by 36 seconds but that’s no problem to edit out. That’s now complete and ready to go to

Finally, the notes for 251114 need editing. That’s a full programme of 10 tracks (and one to come later) and I’d almost finished when Rosemary rang.

“Can you spare a minute?” she asked, and so 46 minutes later …. . Yes, only 46 minutes. We’re losing our touch.

There had been a few other interruptions too. There was my 16:15 mid-afternoon pause and after that I had a few things to do.

First was to make some pizza dough. That was absolutely excellent and it rose up like a train. Once it had proofed I divided it into three balls – two into the freezer and a third ready to use

Next was some date bread. I’d bought a pile of dates for Christmas and hadn’t even opened them so I must use them soon. I found a date bread recipe that is quite similar to an oil cake, so seeing as I can make one of those, then why not?

I then rolled out the lump of dough on the table and put it in the pizza tray ready for later.

After I’d finished with Rosemary I dashed into the kitchen to check the date bread and it was perfect. I’ll tell you all tomorrow how it tastes. And I assembled quickly the pizza and bunged it in the oven.

30 minutes later I had the best pizza that I have ever made. Really and honestly. If I could make them as good as this every time I wouldn’t be bothered by anyone or anything.

But seeing as we have been talking about rhythms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once asked "what name is given to people who practise the rhythm method of birth control?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "What name is given to people who practise the rhythm method of birth control?"
"We call them ‘parents’."

Thursday 6th February 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I have had today!

Or, more importantly, what a horrible afternoon. Everything that could conceivably go wrong this afternoon has gone wrong. It seems that I’m destined to have this albatross hung well-and-truly around my neck like the Ancient Mariner.

"Ah! well a-day!"

Last night, as I expected, I was horribly late going to bed. I’m surprised that I kept on going as long as I did though because I was absolutely exhausted. And again I’m not sure why either because it wasn’t as if I’d done that much.

Once in bed though, just like Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" – “here I am and here I stay”. No danger whatever of me moving under any circumstances.

And there I did stay too. When the alarm went off I was still in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep. And no-one had it any more difficult than me to leave my bed before the second alarm. I know that I’ve had a few struggles in the past but this one beats all of them.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, forgetting to have a shave for a moment, and then went into the kitchen to sort out the medication for the morning, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back into the bathroom to remember to have a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon, and then back into here to sort out the details of any voyages last night. I was at a school somewhere. One of the teachers was at the entrance to the school chatting to a few people. He had a green sports car like a 1930s Bentley only smaller. I happened to glance at the registration number. It was WEE and then three numbers (or maybe the other way round). Whatever it was, if read in a certain way it made something quite indecent. It was obviously not the original number of the car so I was first of all surprised that the Department of Transport would allow such a registration number to be issued and secondly, surprised that a schoolteacher would buy it and fit it on his vehicle.

It really was surprising too to see this registration number, and I wish that I could remember now what it was. But I know exactly where it took place – in between the canteen and the steps up to the front of my old Grammar School. I can still see it now.

The nurse came round and I asked him about this prescription whether it should be done before breakfast before I have anything to eat. "Don’t worry about that" he replied. "They’ll do it anyway".

What I’ll do is to ask Isabelle the Nurse and see what she thinks about the affair.

After he left I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve finished promontory forts and are now tackling contour forts, those that encompass a hill, with defences all round. These are really difficult to date as their position, commanding a wide expanse of countryside, means that they may well have been used by many different waves of civilisation.

Before leaving the promontory forts though, he makes an interesting observation. While they may be good at keeping invaders out, they aren’t much good at keeping cattle in, and many of them have no interior fencing of any kind.

His supposition is that people don’t abandon their possessions lightly, so if they were designed for defenders, the defenders must have been in desperate straights to have to take flight there leaving all their beasts behind.

The alternative suggestion that he puts forward is that they were built as strongholds by invaders who had yet not had the opportunity to recruit any cattle, and the speed at which a promontory fort could be built when compared to a contour fort, is certainly suggestive.

Back in here again I carried on writing the notes for this radio programme, and they are almost finished. Half an hour tomorrow will see them done and then I can push on with the next lot.

It wasn’t my cleaner who interrupted me today either. I noticed (for once) that time was rolling on so I went into the dining area and began to prepare things for leaving.

My cleaner was running late today so we were in something of a rush. But she was soon off out to her next client, and I wait here to wait for my taxi.

And wait. And wait.

At 13:00 I rang them up to find out where they were and it seems that they have cancelled (I hope) the Wednesday taxi that shouldn’t be coming but forgotten to reinstate the Thursday one. So they’ll arrange for someone to fetch me.

The car that turned up (20 minutes later) was one from St Hilaire du Harcoët on its way back from the Centre de Re-education, with three passengers already inside. So it was a rather cramped car that made its way down to Avranches. But needs must.

It goes without saying that my anaesthetic patches had long-since lost their efficacity by the time that I was finally seen and I’m sure that everyone in the street down the hill knew about it, because I certainly did. I’ve had some painful issues, but not quite as painful as this one this afternoon.

Once I was settled into my bed, plugged in and wired up, I had the crash-out to end all crash-outs. Well into the bad old days of last summer. I’m not sure why that should be either, unless it’s something to do with the fact that I’m in a bed, semi-recumbent.

But it was terrible. During the whole session I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all, I was so tired. Even so, I performed the major back-up that I wanted to and the travelling laptop is now as up-to-date as it can me. That’ll last for about a week, I reckon, before it will fall by the wayside once more.

But that did remind me – there’s still the laptop that I bought IN NORTH DAKOTA to update too. I haven’t used that since I fitted the 1TD SSD into it and it could do with some updating. Still, that’s one more task to add to the list of things that won’t ever be done.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in. I could see that the girls were edgy about things, wishing to leave in a hurry and I can’t say that I blame them. I was by far and away the last patient in there tonight. And I was glad to be out of there too.

It was this senior driver who was waiting for me tonight but he wasn’t in a talkative mood again this evening. I don’t know what I have done to him to upset him.

Mind you, in some ways I was glad because I wasn’t in any real mood to converse. Tired, exhausted and in pain, I’d had enough for the day.

The climb up here was difficult tonight and I only just about managed it, but there was no time to relax because I had bread to make.

After making and kneading the dough I made tea while it was proofing. It was another “Mr Carmichael” moment when SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. I was way past caring by this point. At least my loaf of bread is the best that I have ever made, and I mean that too.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m shattered and I can’t keep on going like this. One day my luck will have to turn, and I hope that I will still have time to enjoy it.

But going back to the story about promontory forts, a group of Belgae natives were holed up inside a promontory fort as several hundred people were advancing on them
The captain of the fortress couldn’t make out at the distance who they were so he asked his lookout "are they friends or foes?"
"Friends, I reckon" said the sentinel
"You must have wonderful eyesight" said the captain. "How can you tell?"
"Well" replied the sentinel "they are all laughing and joking together and look as if they are engaged upon a common purpose"

Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… is magnificent.

In the oven, it rose up like a lift – the first cake to ever do that in all the time since I’ve started baking.

It’s a basic oil cake but instead of it being all-vegetable oil I substituted some coconut oil in place of about half of it, slowly melted in the microwave. In the cake itself are two eating apples, minced up with my big whizzer and also some desiccated coconut and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.

It’s now in the fridge, cut up into sixteen slices and ready to eat as of tomorrow night with the soya dessert because the chocolate cake is now all finished.

But talking of the beautiful cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve had a really good day today, which is a surprise considering how much moaning I’ve done just recently. But there’s a reason for that – I had a visitor during the night.

But more of that … "anon" – ed …

First of all, in yet more surprising news, I was actually in bed early. Not before 23:00 I hasten to add, but by 23:40 and that’s quite an early time for me these days.

But once in bed I remember nothing at all until the alarm went off. I was really soundly and comfortably asleep.

Once more, it was a struggle to rise to my feet but, beating the second alarm (only just), I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen afterwards to take my medicine, all of it (except the Vitamin D supplement) this morning, and then back into here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night.

And look at this! There was a football club that had recently undergone a change of manager. It was the first game under the new manager last night. The commentators were talking and were saying that this is a very important match for this manager to win because with him being new he will have set his stall out and the club that he was managing, which was Peterborough United was a big club with many fans who all used to go to the ground on one occasion but attendances had dwindled. I had a look at the attendances and found that they were in the nine thousands, which I thought for a town like Peterborough with a team like theirs is actually pretty good going in any case. If he could bring it up to eleven or twelve thousand that would be exceptional. This apparently was not an unrealistic dream and the commentators were fully behind him as he sorted out his team and would take advantage of his new position and take them to win the game. Somewhere amongst all of this, Moonchild was there. I distinctly remember speaking to her although I didn’t say very much of any interest but she was certainly there last night looking at the situation and looking at me on this commentary team talking about Peterborough United.

Yes, Moonchild came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER … PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN, WAITING FOR A SMILE FROM A SUN CHILD and put in an appearance, How lovely to see her. It may not be a satisfactory appearance, her being on the fringe of a dream, but she was there none-the-less. I shall have to work much harder and try to entice her further towards centre-stage.

However, what’s all this about Peterborough United? That’s a team that has absolutely no significance in anything that I have ever done, so I’ve no idea why the club should figure during a night-time voyage. But then again, if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have seen Moonchild.

Later on, there was a group of disabled people, me included, that were being examined for reassessment etc. Just as it was about to be my turn and everyone was going for a coffee or something like that, it was the end of the day and everything was quietening down, my alarm began to sound. everyone looked at me and said “Eric! How could you!” in an air of bitter disappointment. It wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I realised that it actually was my alarm going off.

That was somehow prophetic, wasn’t it? But I’ve had plenty of dreams where the subject matter has fused into something that was actually happening simultaneously in real life.

Isabelle the Nurse and I had something of a chat. She’s off to the ski slopes on Saturday but unfortunately there is no room in her suitcase for me. I really need a holiday right now but that’s impossible.

If they had told me last summer that I wouldn’t have ever gone far again for the rest of my life, I’d have booked a cruise or something, or gone to a special home or resort where I could relax and stretch out. I enjoyed the voyage on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR and I’d happily do it again. At least I fulfilled a few of my lifetime ambitions, such as crossing the Atlantic by sea and then sailing the North West Passage.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

At long last, I’ve finished it, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. He’s spent page after page after page in complicated calculations, such as on which date did Caesar sail, only to tell us that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve come to the conclusion that he has plenty of knowledge (which is impressive) and I’ve enjoyed sharing in it but how he loves to flaunt it, quite often unnecessarily. And how he loves to insult his contemporaries who don’t have the same knowledge as he does, and don’t have the time to find it.

Here’s hoping that my next book, whatever it is, is less confrontational than this one was. It was really hard going.

Back in here I had bills to pay. Once more, the standing order that pays my taxe foncière – my local authority rates, has failed and I’ve no idea why. But anyway, these days we can pay on-line so once I’d found my wallet, off I go.

There was also the Property Tax on my place in Canada to organise.

Buying that place in Canada was a shrewd move. There are no identity cards in Canada so evidence of habitation is served by the possession of a Property Tax assessment. And armed with my Property Tax Assessment I could open a bank account, buy a mobile ‘phone, buy a pick-up, take out car insurance and a thousand and one other things.

Once I’d sorted myself out it was almost lunchtime but I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme.

Lunch was a slice of flapjack and some fruit which was nice, especially the flapjack. Mixing the ingredients in the big mixer is definitely the way forward. That mixer was a shrewd investment too.

Back in here I had to resort the music as I had mistaken one musician, but eventually all of the stuff was chosen, remixed, edited, converted, paired and segued.

At this point, the cleaner came along to do her stuff. And that included helping me into the shower.

First though, I have to hand-wash some clothes and then throw them into the bath where they will be rinsed. And then I climb in. It’s still quite a laugh that the company who came here to “help” me wanted €300-odd for a machine to help me that didn’t work, and my cleaner and I rigged up a system with one chair and two wooden boxes, cost €0.00.

After she left I began to write the notes for the music but it was soon Christmas Cake time. Just one more helping of Christmas Cake, which will be on Friday, and then it will be back to the hummus and crackers again

When my little break was over I made my cake. And as I said, it’s wonderful. It took even longer to bake than previous cakes but it’s risen really well, and really equally too. I’ll start eating that tomorrow with my soya dessert and if it tastes as nice as the crumbs that I ate, it really will be nice.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, but there wasn’t much left over so a handful of lentils went into it. No naan either because I forgot to take some dough out of the freezer at lunchtime. Still, it really was nice all the same.

So right now I’m off to bed ready to finish off my music notes in the morning, and then continue this downloading..

But seeing as we have been talking about Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … Canada is lovely, the people are lovely (especially my family in New Brunswick and Ottawa as well as Castor of course) and I could have quite happily emigrated there.

However, I fell into that gap – over 55 means no work permit and you can’t be an aged dependant until you are 65. I was 57 when I applied, and when I was 65 I was too ill to go.

But someone told me a lovely story about Canadians. It went "how do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time? "
"Go on" I replied. "I’ll buy it. How do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time?"
"Simple" replied my interlocutor. "You ask them."

Monday 27th January 2025 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… my impression of Mr Carmichael today and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN tonight. I have had a fraught, exhausting day and I’m too tired to move. And seeing that that’s my normal state of affairs these days when there isn’t any nonsense, this one is going to be good.

Last night was another typical night in this new order of things where I was in no rush to go to bed. The days when I used to be so stressed out about meeting a deadline are over and I’m now much more relaxed about it.

And so I loitered around doing not very much of anything for a while before I finally lost whatever enthusiasm I might have had, and crawled off into bed.

And there I lay, fast asleep until the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 when definitely the worse for wear, I crawled out into the light.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and shave, and even applied the deodorant in case Emilie the Cute Consultant were to come to see me, and then did some hand-washing of clothes again. Not that they needed it, I suppose, but I have to keep on pushing forward.

Into the kitchen for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was away somewhere on some kind of trip from work on a business training course. When I arrived at the hotel and put my things in my room I went for a walk around. In the basement there was a shop and they had about twenty racks with LPs on, “Best of…. and B-sides”, the title of the whole range of albums that were on sale. They were on sale at¨£2:49 each. I began to have a rummage through and found an album that had the cover of IN SEARCH OF SPACE by Hawkwind, but when I looked at it, it was an album by Country Joe McDonald and the Fish. Then I found an album by one of these new wave bands like “Frankie Goes To Hollywood” or something. The further I dug, I found a couple of albums by Curved Air. I thought to myself that I’m going to be in Paradise here. I’m going to spend my night now searching through all these shelves and I bet that I can go away with a couple of hundred Pounds-worth of LPs to take with me on the way home. Then I began to think about CDs. I don’t use albums any more, I have CDs and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my album collection was digitalised several years ago. So yet again, I was caught in this huge mesh of indecision.

How many times have we been here? If it’s not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory or the family putting le baton dans la roue or a collection of Cortinas without MoTs scattered around the town it’s the indecision that is a thread that’s running through my dreams. And I was so intrigued by this idea of the cover of “In Search Of Space” that I actually checked. I can still see the album cover that was in my dreams and sure enough, it IS the cover of “In Search Of Space” and if that’s not an impressive thing to happen in a dream, I don’t know what is.

The nurse turned up and we had yet another animated discussion. He hadn’t told me yesterday that it’s his last day for this month today, so today he needs my health card for the details. I don’t have it at the moment because my faithful cleaner has it for when she goes to the chemist’s later. "No problem" he said. "I’ll go and knock on her door. In which apartment does she live?"

Ohh no you won’t, my friend. Not at 08:30 in the morning and not when it’s nothing to do with you. If you had told me that you needed it today it would have been here. You’ll have to make some other arrangement. My cleaner is entitled to her comfort and privacy.

So after he left, I made breakfast and read MY BOOK

And here we go again. On page 681 where there is a dispute between the narrative of Caesar and that of Seneca and someone prefers the latter, which disagrees with his own point of view, he asks is if we really "are to prefer the authority of Seneca to that of the general who fought the battle"

On page 648 however, when he notes another disagreement between two narratives and he prefers the one that contradicts Caesar, he asks if one of his colleagues had "forgotten the discrepant statements that were made by officers who had watches in their pockets as to the hour at which this or that episode occurred in the campaign of Waterloo?". Caesar’s "estimate may have been right : but also it may have been wrong ; and anyhow it is folly to stake the whole argument upon its accuracy."

Despite his criticism of his colleagues, he’s also doing his fair share of cherry-picking of facts and ideas, but I bet that his colleagues and contemporaries were much nicer about it that he was.

After breakfast I came in here to do the second part of my Welsh homework. We had to write n essay about one of our relatives who fought in a war.

So do I write about my cousin who was in the Army in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s or my mother who was in the Royal Air Force in World War II who told us when we were small that she flew Spitfires but I bet that she peeled the spuds in the cookhouse, or my Great-Grandfather who having retired once from the army at 45, dyed his white hair black, lied about his age (and not just by a couple of years either) and went to France with the Canadian Army?

Instead, I decided to do something rather different and talk about a cousin of my maternal Grandmother who was sentenced to be SHOT AT DAWN for refusing to pick up a rifle.

Yes, we have ’em all in our family.

When I’d finished my magnum opus I began the mega-backup of my travelling laptop but as usual, I ran out of time. My cleaner came along to interrupt me and to fit my patches. And she had brought with her the first big load of medication.

After she’d performed her task and left, I began another project of mine which involved trying to bring some order into chaos in the kitchen. Of course, Nietzsche is quite famous for saying that "out of chaos comes order" but he had never ever been to visit anywhere where I was living.

Not that I actually made it very far with my plans because the taxi arrived. And this time I checked to see if there was anyone on the back seat of the car before I committed another indiscretion. And lucky that I looked too.

Still we had an interesting chat all the way down to Avranches.

Today is the first day of my four-hour sessions. They wanted to remove 4.2 kilos of water from my body, and that’s a far cry from the 2.7 that they wanted to remove on the first day. I’m definitely not doing so well.

And when it’s painful for three and a half hours, can you imagine how painful it is for four hours?

There was a visitor too today. Someone from the Re-education Department who wanted to see how much I knew, and talked to me as if I was two years old or some doddery, senile old fart (and you can shut up too!)

So with the pain in my arm, seething from this blasted visit, totally fed up, having been ignored by the duty doctor who passed my bed three times without even glancing in my direction, and with no coffee anywhere in sight, it was rather unfortunate that just at that moment a nurse brought round a “customer satisfaction” survey form to fill in.

Four hours under the dialysis is long enough. It’s exhausting, tiring, painful and shattering. But it’s not all over yet. After having waited ten minutes for the taxi, we then had to go right across Avranches to the Clinic to pick up someone else, to come back right past where we started and then head out to Granville.

It was 19:30 when I returned here, totally exhausted and fed up, but I made it up the stairs and then up to here. There was bread to make next, so you’ll understand why I gave it all up and made supper out of a tin, just like Mr Carmichael had to.

Right now though, I’ve had enough. I really have. The events of today have dragged me back down into the pit from which I had just climbed out. I said to my cleaner that in all honesty, I can’t take too many of these four-hour sessions. I’m wiped out after the first one. What am I going to be like in a couple of weeks? There’s no end to it either.

But these patronising, condescending people really get on my wick. It reminds me of the time (well, one of the times actually, but that’s another story) when I saw the trick cyclist.
She showed me a photo of a splodge with green edges. "What’s this?" she asked.
"It’s image number six of the Rorschach Test" I replied
"And this?"
"Image number two of the Rorschach Test"
"And this?"
"Ohhhh" I replied. That’s a horrible, evil mass of flesh that sucks the blood out of every living soul and brings gloom and despondency in its wake."
"The picture is over here" he said. "You’re looking at a photo of my wife there"
"Was I correct?"
"Pretty much".

There’s a RORSCHACH TEST on line that you can have fun with it. I answered it seriously and carefully, and the result is that I’m "SOUND AND WELL-BALANCED", which just goes to prove, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that these trick cyclists don’t have a clue what they are talking about.

Saturday 25th January 2025 – HERE WE GO THEN.

"Mr Hall. As of Monday you’ll be required to attend dialysis for four hours each session".

That’s all that I needed to know, thank you very much. So from watching people come and go for two and a half hours, mine that was originally thought to be three hours and became three and a half before we’d really got going, it has quite quickly become four.

As I said to the driver who brought me home tonight, "I may as well move my bed and computer in there permanently".

Things seem to be going from bad to worse around here.

At least I have my dreams to which to look forward, I suppose. And after the sudden, dramatic appearance of Moonchild the other night I was planning on going to bed full of optimism. But like the old woman with her cock linnet,
"I dillied and dallied, dallied and I dillied
Lost me way and don’t know where to roam"

Trying to summon up the energy to go to bed and I still haven’t unwound from the drive is something that I just wasn’t able to do. Back in the old days when I drove my taxi and still had a few hours to spare, to unwind I’d go running in the evening around the housing estate in Winsford where I lived, but all of that went pear-shaped when I moved back to Crewe in early 1982.

It was round about 01:30 when I finally made it into bed. I was toying with the idea of switching off the alarm and having a long lie-in but I have too much that I want or need to do. And in any case, what if the nurse does decide to turn up? So I set the alarm back to 07:00 etc.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past I had some very restless nights. And so they might be surprised to hear that I don’t recall moving at all during the night. I was dead to the World.

When the alarm sounded I staggered to my feet and went off to look for some clothes so that I could have a good wash and scrub up in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there. After all, I wouldn’t expect to find my cute little Romanian doctoress anywhere in the vicinity.

And despite having had a clothes-washing session last weekend, the amount of dirty clothes is increasing rapidly. I need to do something about that. But in the meantime I hand-washed the undies and so on as usual.

In the kitchen I sorted out my medication and made sure that I took my anti-cancer stuff seeing as it wasn’t available in the hospital so I’ve missed a couple of days of that.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There was a group of very young children with a woman who was probably a teacher. I was there. They were having to sort out some shoes for one of them but when they arrived in Nantwich everywhere was closed so they went for a walk around. The woman talked to them about the different things that they could be doing. Collecting wild flowers was one of them but someone piped up that it was against the law to pick a wild flower these days. They were walking around, and she said that they could go into a meadow and pick the wild flowers but anyway she’ll talk to them about the wild flowers. I said “it’s probably better that she went and took the kids to the shoe shop now”. She asked why that was. I replied “if you’re going to tell them a lot and then go to the shoe shop and come out again they’ll forget all about it and you’ll have to start again. The shoe shops are now open so you may as well go there, buy the shoes, and then with the kids you can start from a more convenient point rather than halfway through the thing and they’ve forgotten all of the beginning”.

As to what’s happening here, I have no idea. I know that hunting for shoes for us as kids was a very taxing operation as my mother dragged us around from one shop to the next looking for a pair of shoes at the cheapest possible price. But then again, feeding all of us must have cost a fortune and every penny counted. As for the issue of kids and concentration, people don’t realise how easily a kid can be distracted, not even some teachers. It’s a real task to keep them focused.

And then there was something happening about football, Wales and a certain goalkeeper. They were translating some document from English into Welsh but there were some words in the vocabulary that they didn’t quite understand that concerned this particular goalkeeper. Again this was one where the alarm went off right in the middle of everything and totally destroyed my concentration and I’ve forgotten most of this.

Now I’m wondering about this dream. The news was announced yesterday that Y Drenewydd, who have had a string of disappointing goalkeepers after parting with David Jones, have signed the Philippines International goalkeeper. He’s been without a club, apparently, since the end of their season and if the story that I’ve heard is correct, he needs to find a club and play regular football to keep his place in the International side. But how come he’s ended up in mid-Wales I really don’t know. But he’ll be quite at home in a league where there’s the New Zealand International keeper and Internationals from such giants of World football as The Comoros and Guinea-Bissau and many other countries too. In fact, at the last count there are 23 International players playing in the JD Cymru League and that took me by surprise too.

It goes without saying that having made a special effort, the nurse didn’t turn up so round about 09:00 I gave up and went for breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

A few days ago I promised to stop posting extracts from his book because I’m sure that I’m as fed up as you are of his abusive manner of writing. But I couldn’t pass over a quote on page 637 where he tells us that one author, "Having obtained, as he tells us, ‘ more accurate information,’ … accordingly transferred Caesar’s landing- place to Hythe … Thus the ‘ explanation ’ which he discovered with such pride collapses".

There really is no place for such catty, abusive remarks like that in what is supposed to be a serious academic work, especially when he is guilty of exactly the same issue.

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d started the other day and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I finished them all off ready for dictation tonight when it all goes quiet.

My cleaner crept in quietly just as I was finishing off and caught me in flagrante delicto yet again. She put on my patches and while we were waiting for the taxi we sorted out the medication and made an up-to-date inventory. Nothing had changed à propos the medication that I need to take so we can go ahead and make an order.

Once again I was on my own in the taxi and the driver and I had a good chat all the way down to the Clinic. We had to stop to pick up someone who lives half a mile from the Centre but that’s OK.

While I was waiting to be seen I saw the guy who usually comes with me. He is indeed on a stretcher and he doesn’t look at all well.

There weren’t many of us there today so I was quickly plugged in and settled down to watch Caernarfon v TNS which was played on Friday night. Only I wasn’t. The game had been postponed due to “storm damage at the Awful Stadium”. I had visions of the grandstand having collapsed but further enquiries revealed that a floodlight head had become unsafe.

Luckily the television lorries had picked up the news and had ground to a halt in … Y Drenewydd. By pure coincidence the home team, second from bottom, were at home to Llansawel, fourth from bottom and so they hastily rigged up something for us to watch

Despite the lowly positions of the teams, we were treated to probably the best football match that I have seen in years. And I really mean that too. I won’t spoil the game by giving you a run-down. Instead you can watch the highlights HERE or the full game HERE if you are feeling enthusiastc. It really is worth it.

After my nurse unplugged me had to wait 10 minutes for a car but it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a good chat on the way home in the rain.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and supervised as she watched me up the stairs. It was a little more energetic than one or two have been just recently when I’ve been feeling quite tired

Back in here I made some naan dough and then had the leftover curry that I should have had in midweek. All my meal plans are up the spout what with this trip to Paris. I need to reorganise, I reckon, and regroup

But the curry was delicious and the garlic naan bread was the best that I have ever made. It would have been even nicer had I remembered to put the garlic in, but you can’t have everything.

So that’s it for tonight. I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m editing and then I have to think of a work plan. I can’t let twelve hours go by at the Dialysis Centre without doing anything. But it’s hard to do very much with just one hand and the other hand clamped by the side of your body, as I discovered when I tried to do a screen print this afternoon.

But on the way to the football on Friday night a group of supporters on the way to Parc Latham in Y Drenewydd were overtaken by a funeral cortège, and one of the supporters took off his hat and bowed
"What a nice gesture" said a friend
"Well, it’s true that we did have 25 happy years together" said the other "but the club wouldn’t postpone the kick-off until after the interment was over."

Friday 24th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting at my desk in the comfort and safety of my own apartment (well, someone else’s but I live in it) after without any doubt the quickest drive home that I have ever had.

It was an ambulance that brought me home, and there are a couple of advantages of being in an ambulance in Paris. Those two advantages are blue and they flash. Hence we didn’t have too much trouble fighting our way through the rush-hour traffic.

One of the big advantages of having thrown in my lot with the biggest taxi, VSL and ambulance company in Normandy is that they have vehicles everywhere. So when the hospital administration ‘phones them to say that I’m ready to go home, it’s not “okay, I have too find a driver first and then it’ll be a four-hour wait while he drives there”, it’s “we have an ambulance in Paris already, dropping off someone at another hospital, so when they are free, we’ll send it round”.

And so they finished with me at 16:40 and by 17:40 we were just about on our way home

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Last night after I had finished my notes it was late – very late. But never mind. I went to bed, put my headphones back on and listened to some more good music for hours and hours.

Eventually I fell asleep, awoke again and switched off the computer, and then went back to sleep.

But it was a horrible night. It was as if my left shin had caught fire and eventually I had to give up and I called for the nurse. She smothered it in cold cream and that seemed to ease the pain for a while, and eventually I went back to sleep.

At 07:00 I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I decided nevertheless to stay in bed and tease the nurses again, but it was a different crew today. They were nice and cheerful too, and that really makes a difference.

It was breakfast in bed yet again but I restrained myself from asking if the young student nurse would feed me with grapes.

After breakfast I went and had a good scrub up in the bathroom. I asked for a chair for the bathroom so that I could have a shower and eventually it turned up, just after I’d given up waiting and dressed. Never mind – I’ll have a shower later.

Back in the bedroom I transcribed the dictaphone notes. It’s a surprise that there actually were some, the way that the night had gone. And look at this! Moonchild came to see me last night. She came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER to see me in a folk music group. We were playing at Dungeness at the extreme south-east of Kent. I was playing some instrument or other. She wanted to come along and see what happened and see what went on and so of course I agreed to take her. Although she was in this dream she was very much in the background and it wasn’t really about her at all, more about this group I suppose.

But I’m still shaking my head in bewilderment about what’s going on here. Not that I’m complaining of course – in fact regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Moonchild has been rapidly promoted into the top tier of favourite nocturnal invitees along with Castor, Zero and TOTGA, and hasn’t worked anything like as hard as the others to be there, but I don’t understand why her dramatic appearance should have taken place at all. At the actual moments in real life when Moonchild was present, they was of no significance whatsoever. The folk festival is of some significance and so is the idea of taking her somewhere, but her fading into the background is, shall we say, disappointing at the very least.

And not playing bass? This probably relates to a decision that I made a day or so ago, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been to Dungeness ON A COUPLE OF OCCASIONS, including the famous occasion when I had to repair a Spitfire, and I bet that you think that I am joking too.

Later on we were talking about – there was a girl from work. Another one with long, blond hair. I’d been chatting to her for quite a while and it seemed that she had been becoming much more attached to me than perhaps she ought, not that I was objecting but she had a boyfriend. There was some talk about work, going away on a mission somewhere. Of course she was going, and I was going too. Our conversation developed into something quite intimate and it was suggested that this was one way that our employers could save the cost of one room. We were going home from work and ended up walking around Frank Bott Avenue, Underwood Lane area of Crewe. As we walked up towards West Street and the old railway works we began to discuss how close we were going to be. It was quite obvious that both of us had plans. The talk came round to how nervous people are the first time that they take each other to bed, how things never worked out as they were planned to do etc. So she just stopped, looked at me and said “does your weekly budget run to the cost of renting a room in a hotel for a night where we could go?”. I was stunned by this, but of course I replied “if it didn’t, I would make it”. At that point we walked hand-in-hand down West Street. We came past a hotel and we noticed that the side door was open. We walked in through the side door, walked upstairs, found an empty room and went in. A couple of weeks later, still before this trip, we were organising a party at work and were having fancy dress clothes etc. Of the costumes, there was only one left when I went into the changing room. It was something that I don’t suppose was particularly appropriate and it was small but I had to put it on. She was sitting on the top shelf of a cupboard laughing and joking. I asked her if I could change my clothes in there because there was nowhere else. She wondered why I had asked her and no-one else. I explained that I thought that she was part of the organising committee like me, although with an undertone that implied that she was probably much more friendly with me than anyone else there. She was with her boyfriend at the time, laughing and joking. In the end she climbed down from her shelf and went off. I climbed into her shelf and began to change. Then I was thinking that has what happened just now changed anything that might otherwise have happened at the place where were going away. Have I once more managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory?

Getting the Girl? How often does that happen in a dream? It can’t have been more than a handful of times during the 26 or so years that I’ve been undertaking this project. Where are the members of my family who usually come along and stick le baton dans la roue at the crucial moment? They always used to do that in real life and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, they do it quite often in my dreams too. But I’m impressed that I can remember phrases like to “rip defeat from the jaws of victory” in my sleep although, of course, “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” as I did right at the end here in this dream is also par for the course.

I was having a really long, complicated dream when all of a sudden at 07:00 exactly I awoke and sat bolt-upright and the whole thing disappeared except for right at the end when I was sitting at a table about to give a presentation. One of the women sitting at a table sideways on to me also on the stage asked if she could close the curtain so that she could be hidden from view. I told her that that would be fine provided that I could use the plug at her feet to plug in one of the machines that I needed for my presentation. Then I was thinking that perhaps I ought to make some kind of flying lead so that I could plug that into the floor at my feet and plug in a couple of appliances to that.

In the past I’ve given several presentations, like the one on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when I talked about the changing shape of maps in the High Arctic due to the melt of the Polar ice-cap and the one in France when I gave a lecture on my drive around THE TRANS-LABRADOR HIGHWAY but they’ve usually passed off with the same amount of polite and genteel passive disinterest

One task that I had set myself, TO PROVE MYSELF WORTHY was to deal with the outstanding correspondence, of which there was more than enough.

So no-one should be waiting for a reply from me now because I hope that I’m up-to-date. If you still haven’t had a reply to anything that you have sent to me, then drop me a reminder. And if you haven’t written to me but want to drop me a line, there’s a “contact me” button down at the bottom-right of your screen. I love to interact with my audience

My nice cute Romanian doctoress came to see me and reminded me of the biopsy, which will take place at abut midday. So no time to take a shower.

Lunch came on time, and considering that I had signed a form to say that I was a vegan, lunch today was fish –
IT’S FISH EVERY FRIDAY
IT’S FISH TWO FEET WIDE
IT COVERS UP YOUR PLATE
AND HANGS OVER THE SIDE

Round about 13:00, waiting for the biopsy, I began another project which was to track down *.pdf copies of some of the books that I downloaded years ago when this Gutenberg/Google project wasn’t as organised and it was all in *.txt format.

Some of them haven’t as yet been converted but others have so I was downloading those that I could find. It’s important to have the *.pdf copies if they are available because the *.txt copies didn’t, obviously, include the maps and illustrations.

Round about 14:00 my cute little Romanian doctoress came to tell me that the biopsy will be at 15:00 as the person who performs it is busy. So no time for a shower right now.

It was 16:00 when she finally put in an appearance, with my cute little Romanian doctoress trailing along behind. She wanted a slice of a saliva gland from my lip so first she gave me a local anaesthetic.

The actual sectioning of the gland was totally painless thanks to the injection, and they were very happy with what they had taken. They wandered off, leaving me lying on the bed waiting for someone to come back and sort me out.

Eventually my cute little Romanian doctoress came back with a huge pile of paperwork, and told me that I was free to go. They won’t have the results now until Monday and there’s no sense my staying there. The senior doctor in charge of my case will call me back for a discussion in due course.

Thinking that “at last I can have my shower because there will be four hours before the taxi arrives” she told me that they’d be here in half an hour. So no time for a shower.

Most of my stuff was already packed so I put the rest away ready for when my driver turned up. Only it was two of them. What had I done to deserve an ambulance?

This was when they told me about the person whom they were bringing. No shower then, but at least I’ll be home at some respectable time.

And so I was too. We dashed through the rush-hour traffic and then sped down the motorway. I have an app. on my ‘phone that can follow a route and it displays the speed at which we were travelling. Down the motorway in the pouring rain at 139kph will put hairs on anyone’s chest.

When we arrived and I told them that I was impressed with the speed, the driver apologised and said "I couldn’t go as fast as usual because of the conditions". I’ll travel with him next time in the sunny daylight them and compare notes.

Getting in and out of the ambulance is fun though. To climb in, I have to sit on the floor, swivel my legs in, press them up against the bulkhead and use the force of my arms and shoulders to lever myself up into the seat in the back. Exiting the vehicle is the reverse of the procedure

Back in here my cleaner helped me unpack and here I am, ready to fight another day. I’ll have the results of everything in a few days and then we’ll know where we are going with all of this.

But the story behind this ambulance is that someone called the Emergency Service.
He said "send an ambulance to 6 rue Monseigneur Aethelbaldric Essioriaeth. My wife has been taken seriously ill"
"Certainly sir" said the operator. "How do you spell the street name?"
"Wait a minute" said the caller. And then there was silence
"Are you still there?" asked the operator
And a heavy-breathing voice replied "Yes I am"
"Where have you been?" asked the operator
"I couldn’t spell the street name" said the caller "so I dragged her around the corner and she’s now on the pavement in the Rue Haute."

Wednesday 21st January 2025 – THIS TIME TOMORROW …

… I shall be having my fevered brow soothed by a bevy of nubile nurses while I’m tucked up in my comfortable bed in The Land of Grey and Pink – I mean, the Hospital Pitié-Sampetrière in Paris.

Actually, I probably won’t be, but there’s no harm in wishful thinking, is there? As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s only my imagination and my dreams that are keeping me going.

To tell the truth, I will almost certainly be in a bed in a hospital in Paris, assuming that we don’t have a calamity along the route. But as for the rest of it, who knows? And who really cares? As long as I have my imagination I can continue my desperate struggle against reality.

And the desperate struggle against fatigue too, because I have to be up and about at 06:00 in the morning. I have dialysis tomorrow before I leave for Paris, so that means a taxi at 07:45 and a session on the bed in the dialysis centre starting at 08:30.

At 07:30 this morning though I was still struggling to come to terms with being on my feet. When the alarm had gone off at 07:00 I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus and it was a real struggle to rise to my feet. However I made it into the bathroom just in time before the next alarm call went off.

There had been a lot of perspiration during the night so I needed a good wash. Emilie the Cute Consultant told me that the perspiration was usual, but if it carries on, I shall need a water bed. Then I can sail into the bathroom. Or paddle my own canoe. Or be up the creek without a paddle. I dunno.

After the medication I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My brother had a MkIV Cortina. He’d had an accident in it and damaged one wing. He came to see me to see if I had another MkIV wing. At that moment I had about three MkIV Cortinas, a pale blue one that I was using as my run-around which was something of a wreck. It had no MoT or insurance. Then there were two others, one of which was a reasonably good car and the third one that I was planning to rebuild. He came round to ask if I had one so I replied that I hadn’t. Everything that I had was spoken for. Nerina said “why don’t you give him the one off the blue one? You’ll be scrapping that soon and it’ll save you the time in dismantling it if he were to take that”. I replied “that’s the car that I’m using to drive around at the moment. I can’t give him that”. We had quite a big discussion about t which became quite heated. In the meantime my brother was wandering around in the garage and came across a wing for a MkIII Cortina. he said “I’m going to break your hearts now” he said “and I’m going to take this”. I said “come here” and went into my workshop. Scrabbling around on the worktop I found the washers and bolts that had been used to hold it on. I was scrabbling around and ended up with about ten at that particular moment. He said “that’s OK, I’ll take those”. I sorted out some washers for him but he didn’t seem to want very many. I thought that a MkIII wing on a MkIV would invite lots of comment but he didn’t seem to care. But there was a question that he’d asked me about “was Ford bringing out a new car to replace the Granada?”. I replied that I’d not heard anything. There had been no executive meeting so no-one seems to know as yet.

In theory of course, a MkIII wing will fit a MkIV Cortina because they have the same chassis and A-post arrangement but as I said, it’ll look rather strange.

But I was, and still am, a big fan of the Cortina MkIII, IV and V. Practically the same car from 1970-1982 with all the mechanical parts interchangeable, they did me proud when I had my taxis. Not only did I have the cars, I’d pick up MoT failures, dismantle them for spares, sometimes repair them and until I had my health collapse after my big car accident, I was always ahead of the game.

There are still several Cortinas lying around. There’s an almost-immaculate MkV estate keeping a MkIII 2000E Cortina and a Citroen “traction avant” company in the warehouse in Montaigut, a “rare as hens-teeth and worth a fortune” MkIII 2000E estate in the barn on the farm, and an old rotten MkV saloon down the field that was going to be cut up for spares but it’s lost in the undergrowth now.

All the same though, that dream was disappointing. Nerina was there, as of course she is entitled to be, but once more we were arguing. We spent so much time arguing in real life – if only we’d stepped back, breathed, and began to talk to each other, things would have been so different. And my brother was there once again. How disappointing is that? Why can’t I summon up any one of the Fearsome Foursome to come to me during the night?

As for the Ford Granada, that relates to something that is running in a thread through my mind somewhere right now, relating to nothing in particular. But no MoT or insurance on a Cortina is a thread that’s been running through my dreams for ages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

The nurse was early today. It’s His Nibs starting his seven days. He’s not impressed with my early start tomorrow (neither am I as it happens) and told me to keep my socks on during the night. That’s not a sound policy – not at all.

After he left, I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

As I suspected, I’m right about him working up to a crescendo. With no sense of embarrassment or responsibility he’s laying in to all kinds of people. Not even the Astronomer Royal is exempt from his scorn. It really is quite shameful and how his publishers accepted it I really don’t know.

Back in here I revised for my Welsh class and then went for the lesson. Once more, it seemed to pass off quite well. However, that was then, when everything was fresh in my mind. Give me half an hour and it will all have evaporated from my teflon brain.

After lunch I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with this radio programme that I’ve been trying to finish since Sunday. Now it’s all done as far as I can, the 11th track is chosen and notes written ready to dictate on Saturday night when it’s quiet.

The next trick will be to finish the one that I started at the end of last week and have it ready for dictation on Saturday night too. I need to snap out of this depression and lethargy and push on.

And that’s the first time that I’ve said that since dialysis started.

While we’re on the subject of the radio … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the radio programme for this weekend to review and send off, so I listened to it to make sure that it was OK.

It’s just as well that I do this because I’ve been caught out before by people dying in between the recording of the programme and its transmission. And not that I’m bragging, but this programme was recorded in May 2023.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Delicious as usual.

But then I had more food to make. The food in the hospital is dreadful, I’ll be arriving late, there’s never any food that I can make. So I’m in the process of making some bread and I’ve cooked a lentil and potato mix that’s in a plastic container that they can bung in the microwave when I arrive. I have to be prepared.

Right now though, I need to be prepared for bed if I’m going to be up at 06:00. I don’t fancy that in the least, but I can always sleep while dialysis is going on.

But in our Welsh class today we were discussing War poets. And one thing that most of us had in common was that we all had had to study War poets for our ‘O’ Level English Literature exam, and without exception, it destroyed any love of poetry that we might have had.

We all agreed that it was so depressing and so miserable, but it seemed to us that the examiners were working to their own very private agenda. It wasn’t until I discovered the works of AE Housman that I began to develop a love of poetry, but I never ever want to hear another War poet again as long as I live, if I live that long.

On the other hand, I can listen to this all night and next day too – one of Housman’s poems SET TO MUSIC

Another thing that we were discussing was the early television programmes. And I remember when the BBC, in an economy drive, was selling them off to independent producers.
At one meeting the Director asked the Sales Department for the accounts.
He asked them "What did we get for ‘Larry the Lamb’?"
"According to our accounts" said the accountant "we got four shillings per pound"
"And the guy in the historical records" said the Director. "What did he get for ‘Muffin the Mule’?"
"Eighteen months, I think" replied the accountant.

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

… and thirty minutes of sheer, unadulterated agony this afternoon as once more, one of the nurses managed to find the “sensitive spot” in whatever it was that they did in that hospital in the summer.

Whatever else happens in this hospital, I can’t go on like this. I’m sure that dialysis isn’t supposed to be this painful.

At least I can console myself that I’m not suffering as much as the guy who usually comes with me on a Thursday and Saturday. I asked why we hadn’t seen him for a few days and was told "he comes in an ambulance now. He’s had a bad fall"

The only fall in which I’m interested right now is to fall from my chair into bed as I’m exhausted.

It was another late night last night. Just as I was going to bed, a “Traffic” concert came round on the playlist and that’s another “must” to stay up and listen to, especially when there’s an 11-minute version of SOMETIMES I FEEL SO UNINSPIRED and almost 10 minutes of DEAR MR FANTASY.

Anyway, once we returned to normality I crawled off to bed, with the words of Steve Winwood echoing around my head –
"sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
Hunger and pain is all I see
I don’t know who’s losing
And I don’t care who’s winning
Hardships and trouble are following me".
My head is definitely spinning, I can certainly feel pain and while I’m not suffering any hardship – those days are long gone – I’m definitely being followed by a heap of trouble right now. What is worse is that it’s all of my own making too.

Those troubles kept me awake once more and it seemed like an age before I finally drifted off to sleep.

When the alarm went off this morning. I was away on my travels, with a shower that I had to repair so the first thing was to drain the tank. I profited from that by having myself a nice hot shower. I disconnected the shower hose so the pump was on the wall in the bathroom so I took off the pump from the wall and lowered it down a little. This forced the water out of the pump which then drained into the bath. I put the shower pump down, about halfway down the wall so that it was about halfway down to the level – so the water in the tank was halfway down, and put the pump there so that it was drained off the top half. I was sitting there contemplating what to do next when the alarm went off. I was really disappointed because I was enjoying that.

So don’t tell me that all of my nocturnal skills, about which I have so boasted in the past, have deserted me during this crisis through which I’m going right now. It’s the one thing on which I could rely in the past and with the right kind of support, I could have made millions from the skills that I never knew that I had

It was a desperate struggle to rise to my feet and go into the bathroom before the next alarm went off but I just about made it. And then a desperate discovery – that I’ve run out of clean sweaters. Nothing else for it but to put last week’s back on. I have just about enough of other clothes to have a good change but I really am going to have to overhaul my wardrobe. What am I going to do with all my Arctic clothing for a start?

Having washed and shaved, I put the bedding from last week into the washing machine with a selection of other dirty clothing and let the machine do its stuff. Then I wandered off for my medication, remembering to take my “sunlight” Vitamin D.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what else has been going on during the night. There was something about an extremely valuable – well, not valuable but a historic plate that was of great significance between me and some young lady and I don’t know who she was. I had to keep it safe so I hid it under my coat but as I moved, I broke it. A V-shaped piece fell out of it. I was thinking “how am I now going to repair this so that it will be the correct type of plate and that no-one will notice that it’s damaged.

In fact, I really didn’t know who she was. She didn’t resemble anyone whom I might know at all

There was also something about people who were working in Crewe Works. They had to cycle a certain way around the Queen’s Park and would reach a point where someone was waiting. When they reached that point they would have to turn round and cycle back towards the Works. They couldn’t take a short cut by turning around earlier but they all had to go to where this particular guy was standing in the middle of the road.

“Queen’s Park”, or, at least, the road around the back of it by the Golf Club, and “Crewe Works” – that is, the Railway Works – are playing something of a role in what’s going on right now in my mind so it’s inevitable, I suppose, that they should put in an appearance at some point. No sign of Moonchild though. She didn’t come dancing through the shallows of the river into my dreams last night

But what’s sad about this is that I can remember when half of the town was covered in the various branches of the Railway Works and when every boy in the town was destined to become an apprentice in either “The Works” or “Royce’s”. The town was flooded out with bicycles at chucking-out time, and how much like a ghost town it was during “Works Week” – all that was missing were the tumbleweeds. Nowadays Crewe is a ghost town all the time, but for different reasons. There is nothing whatever left of its railway heritage and even the big multi-storey “Rail House” is empty and threatened with demolition

Isabelle was in and out in a new world-record time today. She doesn’t seem to be so keen on stopping and chatting as she used to. Perhaps word about me is filtering around the town

After she went, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

For a change, I’m not going to post any selected comments because firstly, I don’t know enough about the subjects that he’s discussing – it’s all conjecture unsupported by any evidence anyway, and secondly, because his invective and abuse has become tiresome to read and even more tiresome to repeat. I shan’t be sorry to finish this book and start the next one.

Back in here I carried on with the radio notes and they still aren’t finished. Once more I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner who surprised me by her arrival when I wasn’t expecting her. She fitted my anaesthetic patches and we didn’t have long to wait for the taxi to come for me.

Just me in the car today with the driver. Apparently the other passenger who usually accompanies my on a Saturday has had a bad fall and goes to dialysis in an ambulance now.

Everything was running horribly late at the Centre today and it took hours to plug everyone in. That can’t be why it hurt so much because the first pin went in much less painlessly. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it at all.

As usual, once the pump started up I crashed out and I was away for quite a while. So much so that my coffee that had been brought to me while I was asleep was stone-cold.

Before crashing out though, I was hallucinating again as I did the other day. This time there was something about me being on board a Spanish Galleon but I didn’t stroke it this time to see if it was real..

That miserable doctor was on duty today and he managed a brief “hello” as he passed by my bed. And that was my lot. I must be thankful for that, I suppose

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in and how I wish that it wasn’t. The same driver who brought me was waiting to take me back and we had a guided tour of his Head Office at Marcey les Grèves on the way home. I’m convinced that he is in some way charged with the running of the place in some capacity.

Anyway, he’s confirmed that I’ll be picked up in principle at 07:45 on Wednesday for my trip to dialysis followed by my taxi to Paris at lunchtime afterwards.

It’s freezing outside tonight, literally freezing, at 0°C so I was glad to be in the warmth indoors even if climbing up these stairs doesn’t seem to have become any easier just recently.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potatoes and salad, which was nice as usual, especially when followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt.

So now i have to dictate what I wrote earlier in the week and then finish off the lot that’s half-way done sometime. I need to go back too and review the couple of weeks that are missing and have another think about what I’m going to do. I can’t leave it until the last moment to come up with a plan.

So I’ll do that and then go to bed – to make the most of my little lie-in

But in the radio programme notes that I was writing, I was writing something about Caravan’s album A BLIND DOG AT ST DUNSTAN’S
St Dunstan’s was a Charity in London created to care for Blind People and is famously known for its hotel in Brighton which was praised for its "magnificent views over the Downs and out to Sea" – the sense of irony being totally lost on the writers.
But the title of the album relates to a story that one day a little boy saw a male dog mount a female dog.
"What’s that big dog doing, daddy?" asked the little boy
"Well," stuttered daddy nervously, "the dog at the bottom is blind, and the one on top is helping him, pushing him along to St Dunstan’s."

Tuesday 14th January 2025 – I AM TYPING …

… these notes during a pause in the football.

It’s hardly surprising that there’s a pause either because, as the score is proving, trying to play a game of football as banks of fog come rolling from the Dee estuary across the stadium at Cae Castell is producing some extremely unpredictable, and for Y Bala who are defending the river end, some extremely unfortunate moments.

After an hour of playing hide and seek the players have gone off the field in the hope that the fog will roll away. But even if it does, there is no guarantee that it won’t roll back.

It’s ironic that it’s happening to Y Bala. The final round of the first half of the season should have been played weeks ago but their pitch has been alternately under snow, ice and water on so many occasions that after several postponements that led to the postponement of the final round of matches, the game against Caernarfon that we watched on Saturday, was played at a neutral venue, Llandudno’s all-weather stadium

All the final round games were postponed until tonight, but now Y Bala’s vital match against Cei Connah is swathed in fog and all the players are in the dressing room waiting. There’s no guarantee that they will be back out either.

So while I’m waiting for things to happen, after finishing my notes last night I stayed up to listen to yet another concert (I’ve forgotten who it was) and then at about 00:30 I gave it up as a bad job and crawled into my bed. I can’t keep going as I used to.

Once in bed it took a while to go to sleep and there I stayed until about 06:35 when I awoke, once more drenched in sweat. There’s definitely something going on with this dialysis that I don’t understand.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that I went back to sleep again. I was certainly asleep when BILLY COTTON awoke me from the Dead.

Being awake was one thing. Leaving the bed was quite another thing completely. Mind you, I did (just about) beat the second alarm. And then I staggered off to the bedroom

After the bathroom it was the kitchen for the medication. And while I remembered the stuff that I can only take on a non-dialysis day, I forgot my blood-thinning medication. I’m definitely losing my touch, and probably my mind as well.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night I was stacking things inside the van. It was already quite loaded. There was me and there was another person, a girl, helping me. We had some long, thin wooden boxes probably about two metres long, to put in the back. We were carrying them one by one. Someone suggested that we’d advance much quicker if we were to take two or three at a time between the two of us. We tried it with a couple but it was much wore awkward. Positioning them in the van was a problem because the girl with me always wanted to carry them on her left-hand side which meant that she was having to fight with the back door to put them in when she arrived. That was becoming rather difficult. We stacked them inside quite high. There was already a lot of things in there so we thought that we’d better find some way of strapping these in against the side of the wall or the other things that are already in there, strapping them up against them against the side of the wall that way so that they didn’t fall over because if they were to fall they would be quite something of a problem inside and the whole inside was something of a mess.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. She was small and lively, but not anyone whom I recognised immediately. However, stacking stuff into vans was the occupation of a lifetime once upon a time and regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few photos of how I used to travel around Europe in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse is on duty for the next seven days. She is much more cheerful and was telling me about the float that she and her friends are building for Carnaval. She’s not telling me what it is though – it’s to be a surprise and won’t be unveiled until the day of the parade.

It’s now been announced that the football match has been postponed, which has now completely upset the timetable for the rest of the season. And I can press on, hours later than I was hoping.

So after Isabelle left I made my breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK

His polemic by now is raging out of control and he condemns one of his colleagues in a manner that is quite unfitting in a published work, saying that "he blunders in a way which makes me hesitate to accept his statements about archaeological details that I have not myself studied" – a pretty outrageous remark for any academic to make, especially about a colleague.

He goes on to ask "How then would the professor and the doctor explain the fact that in the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds there was a reaction in favour of inhumation, seeing that Canon Greenwell 8 found in them 301 interments of unburnt and only 78 of burnt bones ?"

Christianity has been around for 2,000 years, but there are still plenty of Jews about. Protestantism has been around for almost 600 years, but there are still plenty of Catholics about. And going back to the “Dark Ages” of early Medieval times, there are many recorded instances of Christian Princesses being married to heathen Kings.

History shows us that several religions can live perfectly well side-by-side, and there’s no reason to suppose that things were different in Neolithic times. It’s quite possible to have two religions and two forms of dealing with dead bodies living in co-existence.

Back in here I revised for my Welsh lesson and hen went to class. We had, for the first time since I don’t know when, a full house of students and the class moved along smartly. I was once more quite satisfied with my progress, although my lack of memory is greatly hindering my vocabulary.

After the lesson it was lunch and a slice of flapjack with fruit, and then a very long and involved video chat with a friend in the UK who is carrying out a special project for me. We ended up discussing his holiday to Canada and, to my surprise, he liked everything that I didn’t and vice versa.

It was a Rosemaryesque conversation that lasted over an hour and it was very pleasant. It’s the only way that I get to see my friends these days and I do miss them all. Anyone else who wants a video chat some time, let me know.

Christmas cake break, very late, was next along with that disgusting protein drink, and then I started to work on the next radio programme. All of the songs are chosen, re-mixed, paired and segued and I’ve even begun to write the notes. That’s a job to be finished tomorrow I hope, in and around the shower I suppose, because it’s shower day tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a very rushed taco roll with rice followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert. Rushed because there was football on the internet. But I did remember to organise the lentils as well as some split peas that I found.

It’s the last match of the first half of the season as I mentioned earlier, the round having been postponed because of the issues with the pitch and the weather at Y Bala which has seen the Caernarfon game postponed three, or is it four times?

That match was played at Llandudno on Saturday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and so the final round, having been postponed while that game was still unplayed, took place tonight.

Both Cei Connah and Y Bala needed to win in order to qualify for the European playoff section of the league, and it was the Nomads who took advantage of the conditions. The first goal was an audacious lob from near the halfway line when a gust of wind lifted the fog briefly and enabled a Nomad to see the Bala keeper off his line.

They scored two more goals while Bala offered nothing whatever at all. It was all one-way traffic. But the match being called off saved Y Bala’s bacon. Some of tonight’s results mean that Cei Connah can’t possibly qualify, but Bala could if they have a good win. So if the match is replayed on Thursday, it might favour Bala.

But before I leave the story of the football match, there was a new recruit to the commentary team this evening.

Please excuse the poor quality but it’s a screenshot taken in the fog and so nothing will ever come out correctly. However it goes to show that gate-crashers can get in anywhere.

That is, except my bed (unless it’s Castor, TOTGA or Zero of course, and maybe Jenny Agutter and Kate Bush) because I’m going to climb into it in a moment, alongside STRAWBERRY MOOSE who keeps me company as much as he possibly can.

Tomorrow I’m radioing again and showering and pie-baking too. Maybe even bread-making. I’m certainly keeping myself busy.

Today, our Welsh class was discussing war. We were being asked about our family in wartime so I told them the story of my great grandfather who, after having long-since retired after his service in India and South Africa, dyed his white hair black, lied about his age and joined the Canadian Army in 1914, and also of my mother who served in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

I didn’t mention my distant great-great-cousin or whatever relation he was who was SENTENCED TO DEATH because, being a devout Quaker, he refusing to fight

One woman, the teacher from Nantwich, told the story of her father who was an Army dentist in Syria and the Western Desert in World War II.
One day he had to examine a group of volunteers to see if they were fit to join the Army and fight. One of them he was obliged to reject because his teeth were rotten.
"Blimey!" exclaimed the unlucky volunteer. "I know that we were expected to kill the enemy, but I didn’t know that we had to eat them afterwards."

Monday 13th January 2025 – I AM HORRIFIED …

… by how much *.html coding that I have forgotten.

It was almost 30 years ago that I wrote my first web page and after a couple of years of practice I was even teaching *.html 4.0 until new technology evolved faster than I could absorb it.

Nevertheless I soldiered on, upgrading to *.html 5.0, and both of my websites and the thousands of pages therein are entirely written by hand, with the only templates in there being those that I designed and wrote myself.

The design of the sites was last changed in 2007 and not since, because there isn’t much point. *.html 5.0 has long-since reached the peak of its development and still works fine. All that I have done is to introduce elements of Javascript as I have gone along, once I’ve mastered parts of it.

But today, I was on the point of adding in a couple of new features and do you know, I couldn’t even remember how I’d actually designed my site. Despite making the coding abundantly clear, with plenty of notes, I still had to pick the coding of a page apart to give me some idea of what I did.

And then I ran aground over a simple piece of Javascript.

But it’s slowly coming together and here on my blog, on the right-hand side, you’ll notice a “buy me a coffee” button. Something that has also happened today is that I’ve had the bill for my web-hosting and domain name registration so I’ll be passing around the begging-bowl. Renting my own piece of cyberspace is not cheap.

Something that didn’t happen last night was going to bed early. It was, as usual these days, much later than usual. It might, and indeed ought, to have been a little earlier but just as I was on the point of going to bed, a “Curved Air” concert came onto the playlist.

The first piece of music that I ever played in public was the piano riff to BACK STREET LOVE and Sonia Shaw can come and sing to me any time she likes, so the song, and the group, have a special place in my memory.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep and although it was something of a mobile night, I don’t really remember anything much at all, and I was certainly asleep when the alarm went off.

Once I’d hauled myself to my feet I staggered off into the bathroom and sorted myself out, including having a shave just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon at the Dialysis Centre, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was taxiing last night on a motorbike. I picked up someone at the station in some town or other to take to the University. He sat on the back and we set off. When we came to the first bend, which was a turning on the right at some traffic lights, the lights were against us so we had to stop. When they changed to green I’d forgotten how to turn corners on a motorbike and I had a panic attack. In the end I managed basically to manoeuvre us around which was all an inconvenience but all my knowledge of riding a motorbike had been shot to pieces. I was on the wrong side of the road, the bike wasn’t sounding very nice. In the end the guy tapped me on the shoulder and said “if you just pull up here and drop me off, I’ll walk the rest of the way”. The Fare was £1:40 but he gave me £2:00, asked for the change from £1:60 and wanted a receipt that said “Fare £1:40, damages £0:15” and I’ve no idea why. I felt really embarrassed that the motorbike was showing me up today. It really really was a shame.

In Paris and many big cities there are motorcycle taxis that are available to hire. It’s much quicker for them to filter in and out of the traffic. In North America it’s illegal for a motorcycle to filter down through the traffic, which rather defeats the point of any motorcycle taxi, or any commuter motorcycle if it comes to that. And bearing that in mind, it’s amazing just how many quite common and normal things you aren’t allowed to do in “The Land Of The Free”.

But suddenly realising that you’ve forgotten how to ride a motor bike is not an ideal situation in which to be when one is halfway down the road. But at least it wasn’t a road in Crewe. I can still see the image of the road and it was down a hill at some traffic lights and a right turning underneath a railway bridge, something similar (but not identical) to coming down Wood Street towards King Street in Longton.

Thinking about it all though, long afterwards, this sudden panic attack about forgetting how to ride a motor bike is something similar to forgetting all about how I built my website, isn’t it? Bizarre, hey?

The nurse came round for his last day for a week. He was soon in and gone which was fine because I could push on and make my breakfast.

So armed with porridge, toast and coffee, I attacked MY BOOK.

We’re having a splendid argument about the name of the Isle of Man … "Isle of PERSON" – ed … today. Our author notes that Pliny called it Monapia and Caesar called it Mona and so the argument that is currently raging is whether it was the Brythons or the Goidels or the Belgae who so named it.

However, the “local” Welsh name for the Isle of Anglesey is Mona, and what both places have in common is that they are islands. Could it be, maybe, that Mona is simply an old word in an extinct language for “Island”?

He doesn’t seem to consider that possibility at all. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the word afon pronounced “avon” is Welsh for “river” so one could easily imagine a Roman or a Saxon or a Norseman asking a local “what’s the name of that place?” and the person replying in his own language “it’s the River”. And so we have the “River Avon” in several places in England.

Could the same thing not have happened when Caesar asked a local “what’s the name of that island?”. “Ohh, it’s just the island” he might have replied in his own language. Maybe I’m barking up a gum tree too, but I’m surprised that in all the 805 pages of his work, our author never even considers the possibility for a single moment despite everything else that he considers.

Back in here I attacked this website amendment that I wanted to do – a task that shouldn’t have taken me more than ten minutes. But when my cleaner came along two hours later to fit my patches, I was still far from finished. I have something that works in principle, but it’s not how I want it.

The taxi was late again, and once more it had these other two women in it. There’s no doubt that these new Social Security regulations are making everyone tighten their grip. No more squadrons of taxis streaming along the road between Avranches and Granville, and I can’t say that I’m surprised. In any case, we didn’t have a taxi today but the little Ford wheelchair carrier. And if I were back taxiing again, that’s what I would have now.

Being late at the clinic meant that everyone else was plugged in so I didn’t have to wait. The first pin was quite painless but the second, although not painless, was much easier and much less painless than Saturday. Mind you, as the anaesthetic wore off, then I knew all about it.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me today. She asked if I needed anything, and I thought that it was a shame that I was in a public ward and not in a private room. She did bring me a prescription from the dietician for more of this awful drink. I suppose that I’ll just have to keep on going and learn to like it.

But a strange thing today – I was off having more of those hallucinations that I used to have all those months ago. And during one of them I felt as if I was stroking a cat. The “fur” felt so realistic too. I’ve no idea what that was about.

Once I was unplugged I had to wait for a few minutes for my car. But that was OK because it was the chatty blonde girl – the one with the long straight hair – who brought me home and I like travelling with her.

But it was freezing when we arrived back here and my poor cleaner was frozen to the marrow waiting for me. She watched as I climbed up the stairs, and now another part of the handrail is coming loose. It won’t be long before I’ll be stuck in this apartment for good.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing from the pepper left over for a couple more meals. And then I’ll hopefully have my vegan pies ready by then, if I remember tomorrow to soak the lentils overnight.

So Welsh lesson tomorrow. And I’m not in the mood. However I suppose that I’ll have to do my best.

But while we’re on the subject of motor bikes and hospitals … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of the nurses today told me about a woman who had been rushed to hospital as an emergency.
Her husband had been riding a motor cycle and the police stopped him a few miles down the road.
"Excuse me, m’sieur" said the Gendarme. "Your wife fell of the pillion a couple of miles back"
"Thank heavens for that" said the man
"Thank heavens?" asked the Gendarme with a puzzled air
"Yes" replied the man. "I thought that for the last few minutes I’d suddenly gone deaf"

Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

… like pretty hard work.

The piece of music, all 65 minutes of it, is not the original. It’s been hacked around quite a lot and the joins in between the pieces are awful. Consequently today, I’ve been tracking down the original sound recording.

And now that I have it, I can see exactly why it’s been hacked about as it has. It’s for a very good reason. Consequently I’ve decided to run with the hacked-about version and see if I can improve the joints, but it’s not easy. Not at all.

Actually, it was easier that that to go to bed before 23:00 last night. And how long is it since that has happened? I’d finished quite early everything that I needed to do and once I’d backed up the computer I went and sorted myself out ready for an early night.

Once in bed, it was totally painless. I was out like a light and remember nothing whatever until just about a couple of minutes before the alarm went off, and I’m not sure why.

Nevertheless I didn’t move until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good piece of scrubbing.

After that it was into the kitchen to take my medicine, including the powder that I’m supposed to take when it’s not Dialysis Day. Honestly, I’m so confused with all of this medication, when I’m supposed to take it and why.

After that I came back to listen to the dictaphone to find out what was on it. And to my dismay, there was nothing at all thereupon. However there was a lot of this medieval, early medieval, Roman kind of stuff going on last night all through my head. There was so much of it that it wasn’t possible to collate any of it. I just kept on going from one thing to another without a pause.

There was also something about another civilisation, a rabbit and a cat flap. And whatever all of that meant I really have no idea.

The nurse was early today. He clearly had no blood tests or injections to carry out. We had something of a chat this morning and then he cleared off, leaving me to it. I could then go to rescue my bread that I had kept away from his evil cutches and then prepare breakfast.

There was MY BOOK. to read too. And our hero is stuck, trying to read the enigma of the extinct Iberian People. They had a language all of their own that is yet to be deciphered. He’s trying to link it to the Basque language and while there are similarities, there aren’t enough to draw the conclusion that one is linked to the other.

He’s busy trying to probe the theory that the Basque people came from the Middle East via North Africa and the Straits of Gibraltar rather than the established route via Turkey. There’s some mileage in this but he has then to explain why the Celtic people were pushed West into Galicia rather than North, back into France from whence they came.

Nothing that he has found – the barrow culture, the burial customs, the size of the skulls and so on add up, but it’s not stopped him carrying on his aggressive criticism down into a level of personal attack and ad hominem.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then attacked the radio editing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not an easy programme to edit. Huge lumps have been cut out – and for good reason too, as I discovered when I finally found the master tape

Consequently it’s been a very, very slow process of trying to reassemble it into some kind of spontaneous, simultaneous concert without the missing bits (that are missing for a reason). Some of it went together really well, but other parts are not so good.

There is one thing though, and that is that I’ve managed to write the notes for it. However, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to make them longer so as to fit some of the large gaps that I’m sure that I’ll be having to make in the music before long

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch of course, with my slice of nice flapjack, and then my cleaner came by to do her stuff, so for a few hours I had a nice, clean apartment.

There was Christmas cake break too with some of that disgusting protein drink, but the final interruption was the LeClerc delivery. I’d reviewed my order this morning, added a few things, taken away a couple, and then sent it off. So there I was, at 17:00, with a room full of food.

Some of it needed to go into the freezer straight away, some needed preparing before I could freeze it, some needed going in the fridge and then there was a head of broccoli and 2kg of carrots to wash, prepare, blanch and freeze.

There’s now a broccoli stalk and about a litre and a half of carrot and broccoli water ready to make some soup, but I’d forgotten about the leeks that I have left over. So it’s leek soup this coming Sunday followed by broccoli stalk soup the following weekend.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with chips and falafel followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And we’ll keep on eating that until it’s all gone and then we’ll make some more, seeing as LeClerc delivered some more cocoa powder.

But I really need to be more adventurous in my baking. That apple cake that I made a few months ago, for example, that worked quite well. But what else can I make that’s simple but different?

On Sunday I’m going to make some Vegan pies wit that flaky pastry that’s left. I’ll make a base of lentils, tofu and oats, maybe some potato and I’ll have to think of what else I can put in there

However, I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. It seems that the more sleep that I have, the more I want.

In the meantime, seeing as we’ve been talking about ancient, dead languages … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Earl of Carnarvon discovered some writing that he didn’t understand on the wall of the inside of the Great Pyramid.
So after he died, he fund the ghost of Jean-François Champollion, the French hieroglyphics expert, who told him to tell him precisely what he saw.
"Certainly" said Carnarvon. "It’s ‘sacred maiden’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘triangle’ ‘crocodile’ ‘rising sun’ ‘sacred maiden’"
So Champollion goes away to work out his translation, by reference to the Rosetta Stone.
Twenty years later Champollion contacted the Earl of Carnarvon to say that he had succeeded in translating it.
"What does it say?" asked Carnarvon eagerly
"It’s Tutankhamun leaving a note to his architect" he explains. "The first part asks if the architect can explain to him the difference between the door to the lavatory and the flap on the letter box"
"What did he say?" asked Carnarvon
"He said that he couldn’t right at this moment"
"So what did Tutankhamun reply?" asked Carnarvon
"He told him that he’d better find someone else to post his Pools coupon"

Thursday 9th January 2025 – IN A STARTLING …

… new development, putting the pins for the dialysis machine into my arm was totally painless. I’ve no idea what went wrong or went right, but here we are.

Mind you, that was at first. When the anaesthetic began to ease off I knew all about it. And so if it proves anything at all, it proves that this anaesthetic does actually work. And that’s good news too because I was beginning to have my doubts.

As for going to bed before 23:00, it’s not a question of having my doubts but more one of an absolute certainty that I’m never going to make it into bed by then.

A concert from the Marshall Tucker Band stopped me dead in my tracks last night, and it’s not just the Southern Rock music, but Southern Rock played sometimes on a flute, and in that, the Marshall Tucker Band is unique. But of course, what helps are the songs. Good old country-rock songs played with an energy that you don’t find in many places, and with Toy Caldwell on guitar.

If you’ve never heard them live, have a listen to BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN SKIES. "CAROLINA’S WHERE I’M AT, AND I’LL ALWAYS LAY MY HAT …". And I wish that I was at Carolina right now, for not the least of reasons that I can catch up with Rhys. It’s years since we last saw each other.

Anyway, have a listen to SEARCHIN’ FOR A RAINBOW. I can listen to Southern Rock music all night.

After the Marshall Tucker Band I went to bed, and there I stayed until about 06:55. I say “about” because I didn’t know the time. I’d just awoken and was musing on the idea of showing a leg but instead the alarm beat me to it.

After a trip to the bathroom for a wash and shave I went into the kitchen to take my medication, remembering to forget the anti-potassium powder that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams that goes on for ever. It concerned a group of people, probably in their 30s. There was one woman quite in love with one of these guys but somehow or other they never quite hit it off. They had some kind of business together, this entire group did, and it involved cars. One Monday morning they went to check the cars and they found that her car had travelled 7,300km that weekend. They checked the tacograph and found that the tachograph had been removed. They checked the time, and it had been removed at something like 04:00 so they were trying to figure out exactly where the car had gone. They worked out that Vietnam was halfway of the distance so the car could have gone to Vietnam and back. There was certainly someone whom this woman knew in Vietnam so they were busily trying to work out how to approach this when they had another incident that required them to send another car to Vietnam. They thought that they would send this girl to see if she could repeat this journey. This Vietnam journey was more complicated because the woman to be picked up might not want to come. A couple of hours later they saw the woman and without saying anything about the tachograph they explained this new job to her. She understood it and seemed to be happy to go. They said that this woman must get into the car at all costs. “You should be prepared for difficulties but you shouldn’t hit her too hard”. This woman’s eyes opened and exclaimed “too hard?!?”. They explained again that “it’s because she has to climb into the car at all costs and you shouldn’t feel squeamish about having to persuade her. You have to do exactly what’s necessary to make her get into the car no matter how unpleasant it might possibly be to you”.

If someone can drive from Europe to Vietnam and back in a weekend they deserve a medal. And in any case, Vietnam is a darn sight more than half of 7,300kms away. However, that dream really was a vivid one and for some reason or other it’s stuck in my mind. I can’t see what relevance it has to anything that’s been going on around here.

The nurse was late coming today. He was armed with his blood-testing kit so that means that not all of his patients have given up on him and are waiting for Isabelle the Nurse. Apart from that though, he didn’t stay long and was soon gone. I could get on and make my breakfast.

MY BOOK is grinding along slowly. The author has spent this morning pooh-poohing the theories of several other writers on this theme, who probably at the same time were expending their energies pooh-poohing his theories.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a reviewer who said that his book was "a flurry of argument and counter-argument" and I can certainly see what he meant.

Back in here afterwards I spent some time tracking down some music for the next radio programme. That’s all remixed and re-edited now but it needs to be cropped down as it’s likely to overflow my one-hour slot. Once I’ve done that tomorrow morning I can write the text, and then dictate everything on Saturday night.

Once again, I was caught unawares by the cleaner who came without my realising what time it was. She fitted my patches and then I had to wait for the taxi to arrive.

It was a new driver today so he was late, and wasn’t sure where I lived. Then I had to show him where our other passenger lived. Once we were all together we had a good drive down to Avranches.

With late starting, I was late arriving but as everyone else was early they were already plugged in so I didn’t have long to wait.

The dietician came to see me this afternoon, and someone brought me the details of an appointment that they have made for me with the heart specialist – in June. They believe in keeping up to date with everything. But that date is after I will have regained possession of my apartment downstairs. Look how quickly time is approaching.

But apart from that, they left me pretty much alone and I spent the time preparing an order for LeClerc which I’ll send off in the morning.

The girl who compressed my arm after the dialysis was over had volunteered because she wanted to talk to me about air fryers. And we had quite an animated and lively chat.

Being late starting meant that I was late finishing, but that was good news in a way because the driver who brought me home was a lovely young girl, complete with long brown hair, whom I hadn’t seen before. She was a very lively character and insisted that we speak English so that she could practise.

She has a love of travelling but hasn’t been far yet and is afraid of flying. However she has a burning desire to visit Canada, and I resisted the temptation to say that I’d carry her in my arms all the way there. Had I been 40 years younger and in good health, I wouldn’t have needed asking twice.

Back here my faithful cleaner watched as I made my way upstairs. And once I’d settled down I made some dough for bread

For tea tonight, I was doing my “Mr Carmichael” impressions and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. I couldn’t think of anything else to do tonight – I wasn’t in the mood

So right now I have things to do and then I’ll go to bed. The bread has finished baking so that’s one less thing about which to worry I suppose.

But this talk about carrying the girl across the Atlantic in my arms reminds me of when I stumbled upon that woman at that lighthouse in Labrador.
She looked at me, looked at the car, a Chrysler PT Cruiser, looked at me and asked "have you driven from Baie Comeau in THAT?!?" – bearing in mind that the road from Baie Comeau to the Labrador coast was 1800kms of the worst-ever roads in the World.
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s not the car on roads like this, it’s the driver who makes the difference. And for my next visit to Canada, I’ll be crossing the Atlantic on a motor bike."

Monday 6th January 2025 – BACK AT WORK …

… as of today, and more of the same old stuff that characterised last year – namely that I wasn’t able to do anything because the medical issues interfered with my progress.

What interfered with my progress last night though was that a good concert appeared on the playlist just as I was thinking of going to bed. Shame as it is to admit it, I can’t remember which one it was now, but last night I enjoyed it to such an extent that I stayed up to listen to it, consequently it was quite late when I went to bed last night – again!

We somehow managed to survive the night without any phantom alarm calls upsetting our rhythm, although I do recall being awake once or twice at some point. However, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus

It was quite an effort to haul myself out of bed in order to beat the second alarm but I went nevertheless fairly rapidly (for me, anyway) into the bathroom to sort myself out.

As well as Yours Truly, there were some clothes to wash and a shave to have just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me. I even applied some deodorant after the events of Saturday in the taxi when no-one spoke to me. You can’t ever be sure.

Into the kitchen next to take my medication, and it’s nice to do that – in fact it’s nice to re-adopt my old habits – without having to rush around at all. I’m fed up of always being in some kind of panic.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night. It was something like the end of the month and there was an inventory of surgical interventions so everyone had to meet at the centre of the place where they had been hospitalised in the past and declare their reason for going. I was there waiting to be called when I heard a couple of girls say “there he is. Let’s take him and we can deal with him”. They came straight for me. I wondered whether they were the two twins whom we’d met on that island a few months back. These girls certainly meant business so I had to try to hide. After a while they worked out where I was and they stood outside saying things like “if you really are serious about waiting for the things that come you should go to Route Départementale n°9” – something like that, but itemising these lists, capitalising them and deals with them accordingly to make them all work as much as possible.

Returning to your place of business or place of origin sounds rather Biblical to me. But what twins did I meet on which island a few months ago? I have no recollection of any of that. But I hope that those twins bore a very close resemblance to THE FAMOUS TWINS OF AUSTIN POWERS. And if they did, I’m sorry, really sorry that I can’t remember them. And as for Route Départemental n°9, if there is one, it’s nowhere near anywhere where i have ever lived or travelled, but the RD 2009 is the road from Riom to Vichy which I have driven on many occasions.

I wondered why I awoke again quite dramatically and had this horrible feeling that no alarm had been set for Monday and I was going to miss my taxi that was going to take me to Dun Laoghaire and then Dundalk. I have no idea what I was going to do now. I just went to make sure that the lettuce was OK. I put some lettuce in the icebox so that it will keep and will be crisp when it comes round to deal with it and I should be able to place them on a map with no particular problem

If I did awaken dramatically, I have no recollection at all of it, and I’ve no idea why I might be going from Dun Laoghaire to Dundalk. However, it was a project of mine, long-abandoned, to profit from the collapse of the ferry network to the UK after Brexit and the positive flooding of the seas from Cherbourg, Caen and St Malo direct to the Republic of Ireland by catching a ferry direct to the Republic and, armed with a rucksack, a bus pass and a train ticket, to go to explore the island.

It was interesting nevertheless to see in the newspapers the whole raft of different redundant ferries being given berthing trials on those three French ports and in the Irish ports in the run-up to Brexit. This was to see which ones would be suitable for the Irish companies to buy so that they could run them direct without having to pass through a British port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we even had one given a try-out in the port down here.

However – “icebox”? I’m dreaming in American – or maybe Canadian – now. Probably a reminder of happy times staying with my relatives, either with my niece in New Brunswick or my cousin in Ottawa. And that reminds me – I have a Fender bass and combo amp over there somewhere that I must repatriate.

Then there was a dream about orcs moving all around the countryside causing all kinds of chaos so I had a look at my arm to check on what the nurse had done and stayed done but I found that my little kitchen place and rest room had been wiped out by the rest room and checking, or the moist of the checking that what they had now was a really big car park (…fell asleep here …)

It’s no surprise that this dream, based on LORD OF THE RINGS that I’m currently watching disintegrated into a pile of nonsense. But for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, I don’t actually fall asleep because I’m already asleep when I’m dictating. What happens is that my dictation tails off into silence and then you’ll hear a snore. And I’m sorry for doubting you, Percy Penguin.

Did I dictate that dream … "no you didn’t" – ed … about me being in Gresty on my way back home and going to bed and there was some kind of discussion somewhere about someone’s homework? In the end I decided that I was going to help that person, whoever it was, to do that homework because there was something in there that interested me. So next morning I was in bed and someone came up to see me and asked about something. I replied “the reason why I’m still here was because I’m hoping to give you a hand with the homework” so whoever it was who came to see me asked “would you like a cup of tea?” to which I replied “yes” so they wandered off presumably to make the tea

Helping someone with their homework? What help would I be? And tea would be no use for me either. However, note once more that I’m “back in the family”. I wish that they would leave me alone.

There was no-one here to fit my anaesthetic patches so, regrettably, I had to do it myself. And that was the most disagreeable task that I have done for a while. I couldn’t look at my arm at all. I had to close my eyes, tear off the plasters that they had fitted on Saturday and put these patches on with my eyes closed and hope that I had found the correct place.

The taxi was on time for me. It was the young chatty guy and he already had a lady in the back, so the three of us had a lovely, lively ride down to Avranches. And it would have been even livelier had the driver of a car at a roundabout not switched his indicator off at the very last minute just as we were about to pull out.

So they took me to the clinic and dropped me off where I discovered that I’d forgotten to bring all my paperwork with me. It didn’t take them long to call me in but the process lasted for an age. We had an interesting chat though while it was all going on.

Back outside, I had to wait and wait for the taxi to come. he had another person with him and we had to pick up a third too. They were going to Granville but I was being hurled out at the Dialysis Clinic as they drove past.

It was 13:00 when I was finally plugged in and that’s long after the anaesthetic patches have ceased to have any effect. You don’t need me to tell you how the plugging in went.

The good news is that Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me and we had a chat for a while. I even gave her a demonstration of how to access a password-protected file on a website – not that I would ever do such a thing in real life, perish the thought and all that. But what a wonderful course T223 was.

She asked me if there was anything else I wanted. I could of course think of a few things, but that wasn’t the moment to mention them, I reckon. Not when one is plugged into a medical machine.

Some other good news was that I struck gold again today. I was looking for something on the internet concerning the Norse voyagers and came across a whole pile of literature that I had missed. Most of it is available on MY FAVOURITE SITE but some is only available to Academic researchers and my Academic connections have long-since lapsed.

As I said yesterday, this pile of stuff that I have to read is growing longer.

The taxi that was to bring me home kept me waiting for a while before it turned up, with the result that I was only about 45 minutes ahead of where I would usually be. And that’s after spending almost a whole day out. It hardly seemed worth it.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. There is plenty of stuffing left over which is good because many regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they have suggested that I want stuffing, and now I have plenty.

So bedtime ready for my Welsh course that restarts tomorrow, not that I’m looking forward to it at all. But I have to keep up.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the story of the Fertility Clinic. Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned the story about a woman who went to the Clinic because her husband had lost interest in her.
"Here" said the doctor. "Take these pills. Slip one in his coffee and he’ll soon be back to his teenage years "
A week or two later he saw the woman walking down the street. "How did you get on?" he asked
"I slipped one into his coffee" she said "and it was wonderful. The sparkle came back into his eyes, he threw me across the table, tore off my clothes, tore off his, and gave me a really good seeing-to just like he did years ago"
"That’s wonderful" said the doctor. "But are there any side-effects?"
"I don’t know if it’s a side-effect" she replied "but they won’t let us go back into that café."

Thursday 26th December 2024 – MY CHRISTMAS PUDDING …

… is just as excellent and tasty as last year.

For pudding tonight I tried a helping with some nice custard and it really was delicious. This lot will be all gone at the end of this holiday season and I’ll have to make some more for next year if I’m still here, and I hope that if I do, it will be just as tasty as that which will have gone before.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Last night, it was quite late by the time that I’d finished my notes and done my backing-up, but I didn’t go straight to bed. It’s the holiday season so I stayed up and listened to some of my live concerts from the past.

One of them that came round was a Lindisfarne concert, the one at Newcastle upon Tyne City Hall in either 1977 or 1978. It’s the best time to listen to Lindisfarne, Christmas-time, especially with one of their Newcastle ones.

And they have some very happy memories for me. There was a big Lindisfarne fan club, of which I was a member, at school and I went to see the group in 1971. That was the famous concert where most of the group were locked out, leaving the harmonica player alone on stage playing his 10-minute harmonica solo for 25 minutes, and where I led my rather young girlfriend astray, much to the anger of her parents.

OH WHAT IT IS TO BE YOUNG, hey?

So somewhere round about 02:00 I called it a night and staggered off to bed, and there I stayed, sound asleep until about 07:40.

Yes, 07:40. I’d decided that as it was a Bank Holiday I’d set the “Sunday” alarm, which goes off at 08:00. However something rather dramatic awoke me. Once more, I’ve no idea what it was but I was awake, bolt-upright, with no possibility of going back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about, having a good wash and a good shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. Then back in here to listen to the dictaphone and await the arrival of the nurse. There was a group of natives wandering around somewhere. I happened to join them as part of their trip was taking me past one of the sites that I wanted to visit. I noticed that for breakfast every morning two guys there ate nothing but breakfast so I asked the chief what was the story behind this. He replied that whatever it was (…fell asleep here …) anyway the special meal that they had was taco rolls. They made the taco themselves by heating oil in a pan and dropping a few spoonfuls of this liquid in it. The heat caused the liquid to solidify into the taco and was really quite nice and was going to save me all of £20:00 on the delivery

So I’m now writing cooking recipes in my dreams. But that recipe is pretty much like a Breton crèpe recipe or even how bread would be baked out on the trail in the Nineteenth Century in North America and elsewhere, and probably even today in certain places. And if it’s going to save me twenty quid with every LeClerc delivery, then I’ll certainly be trying it.

The nurse didn’t stay long today. He was in and out and that was that. Then I could make breakfast and continue to read MY BOOK.

We’re now wandering around Dartmoor, where "like the people who dwelt on the Yorkshire Wolds, the inhabitants were poor and backward ; for the extreme scarcity of spindle- whorls and the abundance of the flint scrapers used for leather-dressing that lay scattered in their abodes seem to show that they were commonly clad in skins"

One thing that the upland areas of the British Isles, like Dartmoor and the Yorkshire Wolds, had in common and in abundance, was wildlife. Down in the fertile valleys and lowland plains, the pressure of population would have meant that most of the wild animals would either have been driven off or hunted. There would still be plenty up in the hills, so there would be plenty to skin and catch, and no need to make clothing out of cloth

This way of thinking can be seen in places like Canada. Stone and then brick have long-since been used in the construction of houses in most Western countries but they are still built in wood in rural Canada because there is just so much of it so close by.

After breakfast I came back in here for a relax for a couple of hours and then had to go to prepare myself for departure.

It’s a good job that we were ready early tonight because the taxi, booked for 12:30, turned up at 12:08. The driver has to go up the coast to pick up someone else and seeing as he was already in Granville, he thought that he may as well come here first.

Not that I’m complaining. These new Social Security rules means that I’m having loads of guided tours of all different parts of Normandy, seeing the sights and so on. It’s getting me out of the house and, as regular readers of this rubbish have remarked, I ought to get out more often.

Having picked up our passenger we had a belt all the way down the express road south and then off towards Avranches, where we arrived early.

Just for a change, I was one of the first to be plugged in and although the first pin was totally painless, the second one killed me. I have never had such a painful experience in the Dialysis Centre as this one, and I can still feel it even now.

There were no interruptions today, which was just as well. After I’d had my usual doze, I watched the football – Caernarfon v TNS.

Caernarfon were doing really well at one stage, with the score at 2-2, but two killer goals in just a couple of minutes killed off the tie and TNS even scored a fifth later in the game.

TNS’s play was much more technical and competent, but Caernarfon’s tactics of the long ball over the top for Louis Lloyd, their lightning-fast winger to chase, had TNS’s rather pedestrian defence in a few difficulties here and there.

After they disconnected me I went to look for my taxi and it was already outside so, for a change, I was home really early after all of that. The driver who brought me home was the young, chatty lad and we had an interesting conversation all the way home.

Coming back up the stairs was easier tonight than it has ever been in recent times, and I was soon back in here where I watched the highlights of the rest of today’s games. And today’s results, with Llansawel’s dramatic victory against Cardiff Met, means that Y Drenewydd have been sucked into the relegation dogfight.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by a delicious Christmas pudding and custard (I still have a small amount of custard powder left)

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to hang around for a while before going to bed and have sweet dreams of Castor, Zero and TOTGA.

But talking about that dream of making taco rolls and home-made field bread … "well, one of us is" – ed … the recipe is actually in the Boy Scout cookbook
The Scouts were introduced by Lord Baden Powell when the British Army was blockaded by a group of recalcitrant Dutch farmers in Mafeking in South Africa. He became a War hero and later went on to write a book to encourage young boys to take up the outdoor life.
One day, someone went into a bookshop in London and asked "may I have a copy of Lord Baden Powell’s autobiography, please?"
"He never wrote an autobiography" said the sales assistant. "He only ever wrote one book. It’s called ‘Scouting for Boys’"
"Isn’t that his autobiography then?"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: www.youtube.com

Sunday 8th February 2025 – WHEN I DON’T …

Thursday 6th February 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

Monday 27th January 2025 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

Saturday 25th January 2025 – HERE WE GO THEN.

Friday 24th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

Wednesday 21st January 2025 – THIS TIME TOMORROW …

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

Tuesday 14th January 2025 – I AM TYPING …

Monday 13th January 2025 – I AM HORRIFIED …

Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

Thursday 9th January 2025 – IN A STARTLING …

Monday 6th January 2025 – BACK AT WORK …

Thursday 26th December 2024 – MY CHRISTMAS PUDDING …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring