Tag Archives: blood test

Monday 4th April 2016 – I WAS UP …

… quite early this morning and on the road almost straight away. I wanted to be at the hospital early and it’s a good job that I was because there were traffic queues and road works all over the place.

Once I’d found a good spec for Caliburn (there’s an outside car park that I needed to locate as the main car park has a 2-metre height limit), I went off on a route march to sign myself in. And that reminded me of the queue for registering a vehicle at Riom – I was ticket 259 and they were dealing with n°208.

But with 10 registration desks open (not like at Riom where there is just one) I was all done and dusted within 10 minutes and even had time to go to the café for breakfast. That worked out to be somewhat expensive for some bread and jam, but it would have been a lot cheaper had I realised that what I took to be orange juice was actually freshly-pressed mango.

I found the day hospital, and it’s nothing like Montlucon in that there were probably 100 people there. But I was pretty quickly whisked into a side ward and had a drain fitted. From there, I was shunted off into another room to wait for my blood.

But it’s not like Montlucon in another respect either. I hadn’t been in there long before someone from the Welfare Department came to see me. And never mind the interminable wrangle that we had at Montlucon (and is still going on) about payment – she was brandishing photocopies of my Insurers’ registration form and we filled it in on the spot. They are of course much more used to my situation here and are fully prepared.

We also discussed the situation about my accommodation for when I’m released. She went off and came back 20 minutes later with the news that I have been booked for two weeks into the “family guest-rooms” at the old hospital in the city centre. That’s pretty quick, I have to say. And it’s pretty good news too. All of which is compounded by the fact that the parking here at the hospital (€4:00 per day for inmates) is capped at €12 per week for long-term visitors, and they expect me to be undergoing treatment for … gulp … six months. And so this two-week “stay of execution” gives me time to think of a “Plan B”.

But treatment here wasn’t as straightforward as it might have been. They needed to do all kinds of tests and so on that hadn’t been carried out at Montlucon apparently, and by the time that they had finished everything and the blood had finally arrived, it was 15:30. For food, it was jam butties because, having caught them à la depourvu, there was nothing arranged for me, but at least there was a free coffee machine just around the corner.

By the time that my transfusions were over, it was 19:30 – far too late for chemotherapy and far too late for me to go anywhere else, and so they have found a bed here for me until Wednesday, and chemotherapy will start tomorrow morning. But I’ve missed the evening meal tonight because of all of this, and so I had … errr … jam butties for tea. However, I went down to Caliburn for my things, and profited by stuffing the suitcase full of goodies.

But damn and blast my neighbour. I’m having to share a room and of course, he snores. It’s been a long time since I’ve been still awake at 01:00. This is going to be a very long night.

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Thursday 31st March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… when I might learn something about my state of health and whether the Hospital at Leuven will do something about it.

But before I can think about that, I have other fish to fry. Hans is coming back from Zeebrugge this morning and we’ve agreed to meet up at the Motorway serviced just down the road from here for breakfast.

I was up early and off out to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn about 3 miles to the service station where I waited.

And waited.

And then I had a phone call – “just pulling into the Services now – it was Tienen, wasn’t it?” as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I was at Heverlee and so a quick thrash down the motorway brought me to Tienen and breakfast.

We had a good chat for a few hours and then I had to return to Alison’s, for she was intending to run me into the hospital, which was very nice of her and something that I appreciated a great deal.

First port of call was for a blood test. And sure enough, my blood count has gone quite down. It was 9.1 the last time I was here, but now it’s down to 7.8. That’s set a few alarm bells ringing at the hospital, make no mistake.

The doctor who saw me asked me quite a few questions and gave me a good examination, and then summoned her Professor – the kind of thing that always makes me feel better. But the news that I received deflated me rather rapidly. It seems that the Hospital here at Leuven thinks that I have a different type of lymphoma than that diagnosed by Montlucon. They didn’t understand the need for the removal of the spleen and, in agreement with the opinion of the District Nurses who have been visiting me at Liz and Terry’s, they don’t understand why I need to have these anti-coagulant injections and think that they might be doing more harm than good. The first week or so, yes. But today it’s long-beyond the bounds of necessity and I can stop immediately.

As for treatment, they propose a course of Chemotherapy. There are two types of this – a standard type that is the most common and which is recommended in 99% of cases. There is another type – about 10 times more expensive (and so it’s not reimbursed by the Belgian authorities) and 10 times more effective. And this is what they propose for me – a course of treatment that might last for as long as 6 months and they intend to start it on Monday morning. Furthermore, it has been reimbursed by my Medical Insurance in the past in other cases, and someone from the Social Services department of the hospital will be coming to see me on Monday to “help me” make the application for this treatment. Yes, not backwards at coming forwards, here at Leuven.

They aren’t sure how this is going to pan out though. I’ll be treated as an out-patient but I need to spend a few days recovering from each session. I’ve told them that I’ve nowhere to go to stay (I can’t keep on relying on other people’s generosity) so they told me that there is some guest accommodation at the hospital. The Social Services department will help me here too, to see if I qualify for a place.

And so here we are. I had my operation on 27th January and since then, nothing much has happened at Montlucon with regard to my illness. Here at Leuven, they have a decision within 9 days and propose a course of treatment starting in 4 days time.

It’s very easy to say, with hindsight, that it was the wrong decision to allow Montlucon to go ahead with the removal of the spleen, but there was a good chance that it might have worked and I was worried about any further delay. Had I known that the treatment would begin less than two weeks after my first visit, maybe I might have thought differently. And then again, Leuven has had access to all of the tests and analyses carried out by Montlucon which aided quite considerably the speed of the diagnosis. How long would I have had to have waited for all of this?

We went shopping afterwards to a Charity Shop rather on the style of a Canadian Value Village. Loads of interesting furniture, including a lovely coffee table that, when cleaned and polished, would look lovely in my little house. But all of this is a long way away.

Anyway, I’m off for the weekend. I’ll find a river somewhere and lodge myself in there for a few days to relax. I need it.

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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… that I have my defining interview at the Universiteit Ziekenhuis Leuven – the University Hospital of Leuven.

And so this morning I was up fairly early, bumping into Alison on the way downstairs.

I’d been back on my travels during the night too. Back to the UK in fact. There I was, rushing to catch a train at what was supposed to be Stafford railway station and my brother was there with me and he was holding me back by trying to have a discussion with me, talking to me about all kinds of stuff and I was rushing to catch this train and I wished that he would shut up and let me get on with it. Next to get in my way was a plant seller going on about how we all ought to buy plants and how everyone in the USA ought to learn gardening and all of this kind of thing and I wished that he would shut up too. There was then some American with a small wicker basket full of growing plants and a British guy was there with an almost-identical basket of plants that he had bought somewhere for just 3p more. And as I rushed for the train, a train was pulling in so I burst into the station and towards the stairs but then I realised that I didn’t have a ticket so I had to run off to buy one for Crewe. And then I ran down the stairs to the platform where the train was standing – a train of old-stock maroon coaches. The guard was leaning out of the window of a first-class carriage saying that it was full in there and then he stepped down from the train to a group of his colleagues led by a young female platform manager. I asked if this train was going to Crewe to which they replied that it was going to Birmingham which is of course in the opposite direction. But there was another train pulling in behind and the guard suggested that this might be the one. I asked the female manager if this was the London train (even more in the opposite direction to Crewe) and she came out with a sarcastic comment. I told her to stop making these witty remarks designed to do nothing but bring a smile tothe face of her sycophants and answer my question. And there I was, wanting to go on to Crewe and no-one would tell me which train I wanted to go to Crewe.

Alison had taken a day off work to look after me, which was very nice of her, so after breakfast we went into the centre of Leuven for a look around and a coffee. It’s been years since I’d been there and I couldn’t remember the place all that much, but Alison knew of a café where they served decent coffee so that did us fine for the morning, just chatting and watching the world go by.

At lunchtime, seeing as we were in Belgium, there’s only one place to be and sure enough, we soon found a fritkot. That would do us fine and it goes without saying that the chips were beautiful.

As for the hospital, it’s absolutely HUGE, and I do mean that. So much so that you could fit the hospital in Montlucon into the foyer and instead of having a trolley park like they do in a supermarket, they have wheelchair parks where you can borrow a wheelchair.

I had to be registered, which took ages, but at least everything was properly explained to me, not like Montlucon. They even gave me a brochure and I had a choice of language – Flemish, French and English.

“Follow the blue line” said the receptionist once she had finished with me, and about two hours and three miles later we arrived at another reception desk. My documents had arrived by internal intranet quicker than I had arrived on foot so I was told to take a seat in the waiting area. This was the corridor facing a row of doors which were the consulting rooms – 15 in all, which is a massive improvement on Montlucon.

I was summoned into n°13, which I found rather ominous, and I presented my papers. Not all of them, I have to say, because I was selective in what I let them see. Anything that might have prejudged the issue, I selectively held back as I don’t want the results from Montlucon to influence their minds. They can see all of the scans and all of the reports and all of the examinations, but nothing that suggests a diagnosis. I want them at Leuven to make their own diagnosis.

But I did let them see a letter which I personally think is quite infamous and which has annoyed me greatly. It’s a letter from the surgeon to my own doctor saying “the operation is a success and there are no after-effects to consider. Mr Hall can slowly pick up his former life bit by bit, the only constraints being the effects of his severe anaemia”.

That’s right – the only thing that is holding me back is my severe anaemia, and that’s what I went into the hospital for in the first place, and there’s no mention of them now looking for a cure for it. It’s as if they have abandoned hope of dealing with it, and that has upset me enormously. Hence my visit to Leuven.

As expected, the doctor picked up immediately on this, and was also totally confused about my 3.8 blood count. “Do they measure the blood on a different scale in France?”. But when I reassured her, she too was horrified by my problem.

After a good hour there of tests and examinations and questions (and a blood test) she excused herself, saying “I’ll have to go and have a word with my professor”. And that filled me full of optimism. You wouldn’t get this in Montlucon. And when she came back, we had a discussion and a debate, and the result is exactly the result that I wanted. I could have been detained for two or three days there, which I didn’t really want. I could have been told to go home, and come back in three weeks (or maybe not at all) qhich I am, quite frankly, not up to. But instead, they took all my papers away to read and told me to come back on 31st March at 15:30. That’s exactly what I wanted and it means that I can have a nice relaxing week by the seaside.

Alison and I then came home via the scenic route and after another lengthy chat – that took us up to about 22:30, I went off to my attic and to bed.

So why, I hear you ask, have I chosen Leuven for a second opinion?

There are a variety of reasons and I’ll do my best to explain them.

The first of which is that France, like many countries in the world (including the UK and the USA, before anyone says anything) is very chauvinistic. If I were to ask my doctor to recommend someone for a second opinion, he would probably send me to someone whom he knew in a neighbouring hospital. That’s no good, because he would only have had the same training and experience as my doctor.

The hospital at Leuven is huge, as I have said. It’s a teaching hospital – a University Hospital – so it’s constantly at the forefront of the latest news and development in medical treatment. It will(I hope) know everything about new discoveries and techniques long before the news filters down to a small rural hospital in France.

Alison was treated successfully for a very serious illness, as were a couple of other people whom she knows, and I’ve heard good things about it from my time in Brussels.

Furthermore, my experience is that the Belgians are much more cosmopolitan than most people in the world. They have no false chauvinistic national pride as such and so it’s much more likely to be the place that, if they can’t help me with my problem, a doctor would say “well, I heard about this illness being treated successfully in Los Angeles or Vladivostok”, without a hint of misplaced national pride. And with my medical insurance, I can travel the world looking for treatment.

Of course, having said that, I bet that it won’t work out at all like that. But it’s clear that Montlucon isn’t working and I’m going nowhere there. I have this medical insurance that entitles me to treatment anywhere and so I may as well make use of it. I’d be silly not to. And here in Leuven, I can speak the language after a fashion (and after a week here, I’ll speak it better too and I love the Flemish language) so all in all, it’s the ideal place for me to take my first step on the road to what is likely to be a very long and interesting journey.

And, of course, I’m amongst friends too and that’s very important. I may not have many friends but quantity is not important, it’s quality and I have some of the best friends that anyone could wish for, as events since November have proved.

Where would I be without you?

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Monday 14th March 2016 – WELL THAT’S ME TOTALLY P155ED OFF!

I had my blood test at the hospital this morning, and the blood count has gone down yet again to 8.1. And that’s despite having a blood transfusion the other day. The operation that I had to go through 6 or 7 weeks ago has clearly done no good whatever and I might just as well have saved myself the agony.

The thing that gets me though is that no-one in the hospital seems to care. Here they are, messing about with allergy tests for a different medication to deal with the immunity issues following the removal of the spleen, and on Friday I’m in hospital for a scan on my lung to see where this blood clot (the one in my lung that I picked up in hospital) has got to.

But as to my underlying illness and the causes of it, and any potential solution – not a word!

What made me even more depressed about all of this is that while I was sitting in the allergy clinic with all of these patches and injections and so on, I was editing all of the photos that I took in Montreal and sorting out all of the notes that relate thereto. And then I got to thinking about just how much I enjoyed the city and how much I felt at home there. And then I reached a conclusion.

And that is that seeing as how no-one cares, then I don’t either. if nothing definite comes out of my visit to Leuven next week and they can’t sort something out, then I’m on the next plane to Montreal. I’ll find a quiet room in a house somewhere around the Cote des Neiges, which really is my favourite part of Montreal, and let nature take its course.

I can’t go on like this. it’s nothing short of purgatory for me to have to go through all of what I’m going through and for no good purpose either. I may as well not be here and be somewhere else instead, whether in this world, the New World or even the next world.

What didn’t help matters very much was that I had another one of those comfortable, reassuring dreams where everything went according to plan, our hero got the girl and we both walked off together into the sunset and all of that – something that never ever happened to me in real life and how I wished that it had.

I was back playing in my rock group from the 1970s again and we were totally unrehearsed – we hadn’t played together for years and we were featuring in a venue somewhere. This was downstairs in a basement somewhere, rather like Enoch’s in Crewe used to be, and we weren’t even sure what numbers we were going to play, never mind how we were going to play them. This went on and we didn’t have all that much idea about what we were going to do. We spent so much time discussing and debating it that we weren’t actually getting anything done. There were quite a few of our friends there, including one particular girl whom I fancied and who I was trying to impress, who were coming to see us and so we HAD to be organised. Came the afternoon of the gig and we decided that we would have a rehearsal. I headed off towards the rehearsal room, carrying my bass guitar and there was some girl, whom I had seen vaguely back in the past but I hadn’t particularly noticed very much, came over to me and asked me if my guitar was a Gibson SG. I told her to count the strings, which she did, and agreed that there were just four of them. And so I told her that it was in fact a Gibson EB3. We started to talk about bass guitars and musical instruments, and she said that she had a mandolin with four strings on it. Of course – a mandolin – that brings back Lindisfarne and “Road to Kingdom Come” and “No Time to Lose”, all of that kind of thing. We ended up having quite a chat about this kind of thing, and she said that she could actually play some Lindisfarne music on the mandolin. It’s always been my ambition to play in a folk-rock group like Lindisfarne so I egged her on to go and fetch her mandolin,which she did and we had a brief jam session. After that, we wandered off together hand in hand. As I said earlier, this was another one of these comfortable situations and I wish that I could remember who she was, or even what she looked like – rather different from the Girl from Worleston the other night whose face is still vividly fixed in my mind. Anyway, off we went, hand in hand and there were a few people loitering in the vicinity who noticed the pair of us together like that and gave a little smile to each other. We walked to a rocky wall where there were a few seating areas set into it at various levels – just flat, grassy areas. I invited her to sit down with me but she said that she had other things to do and didn’t have the time. I continued to encourage her to sit down, she continued to be doubtful and it was at this moment that I woke up rather dramatically and shattered the illusion, much to my dismay.
After the usual crawl down the corridor I ended up at the football – Nantwich Town in fact. And while Nantwich Town might have a new ground, down on Kingsley Fields, this match wasn’t being played there. And neither was it being played on their old ground at Jackson Avenue either, but in the street in London Road right more-or-less outside Churche’s Mansions. I was watching the game, with about 4 or 5 others (huge crowds they have in Nantwich), a couple of girls and a couple of kids, having a kick-around with the balls.There was a really strong, swirling wind blowing that was creating havoc and on one occasion, much to my surprise, I actually caught the match ball one-handed, swerving around in the wind as it went out of play and that was really impressive. For the rest of it, the conditions were really difficult and catching the ball, even a simple catch, was really difficult if not impossible. We were actually watching this at the back of a river and the house rear yards backed right onto it. One small boy was climbing over the back wall and the wooden fence on top and lost his footing, sliding straight down into the river and emerging all covered in green slime. That certainly looked unhealthy! All of these houses had basements that were well below the level of the water but were somehow really dry. I wouldn’t have liked to have lived down in there, although there were people quite happily doing so. There were two teenage girls watching this football match and they lived in one of the houses. At half-time they went back to their house where the mother was cleaning the room of one of these girls, and one of the girsl asked the other what she would like for breakfast. The other replied that she would like one round of cheese on toast with half a packet of crisps and a coffee. I said “breakfast? It’s getting on for 10:30 and most of us had eaten breakfast long before this match kicked off”. But anyway, the first girl dragged a big metal wood-stove out from a corner into the middle of her little basement room ready to fill it and light it to make the toast and put the kettle on. They asked me what I would like to which I replied that I’d had my breakfast a long time ago, but I’ll have a cup of coffee with them. They next asked me what coffee I wanted and what mug I wanted and I thought that they weren’t half making life complicated when all that I wanted was a simple cup of coffee.

But anyway, enough of this. I was up early enough, breakfasted and on the road by 07:40. And what a beautiful morning it was too. I was in Montlucon at the hospital by 08:30 and in the comfy chair by the power point at 08:40 too.

I had the blood test, as I mentioned, and then had the drain fitted, and then injected and patched with all kinds of things. My companion from the other day was there too and we had quite a chat. And while I might have won the “mine’s bigger than yours” competition by having the largest lump on my arm, I felt really sorry for her with all of the tests that she was going through and the mess that they had made of her arm. In consolation, I let her have my mid-morning cake to cheer her up.

We had quite a few moments of humour too, including when one of the others asked if she could leave the room to use the bathroom.
“You’re supposed to raise your hand” I retorted.
“Just like school” said someone else.
At least, despite everything else, there’s a good feeling of cameraderie there in that clinic and the nurse is a really good sport too, which is good.

But the bad side of this is that I’ve had a few adverse reactions so I need to come in again. I explained my situation, all of my hospital appointments and my visit to Belgium and as a result, exceptionally, they can fit me in provisionally at 09:00 on Thursday.

I mentioned that at this rate I ought to be looking for an apartment here in the vicinity of the hospital and asked the young girl here with me whether she had a spare bed in her room. She said she did, but her mother wouldn’t like it. I asked “who cares about your mother?” which made everyone smile, but didn’t have the desired effect.

Not that I expected it to either, but there you go.

As for the blood test though, it’s on the limit of the blood transfusion level, but that’s not good enough for me. I’m off to Leuven next week – 800-odd kilometres by road – and I need to be on my best form for the journey. So what I’ve done is to change my little one-hour appointment back at the allergy clinic from tomorrow to Wednesday at 09:00 seeing as how there was a space, and then went up to the day-hospital and persuaded them to take me in straight afterwards for a blood transfusion. That way, then at least I’ll be in something-like reasonable health to undertake the journey. Coming back won’t be too much of a problem as I don’t have a time-limit for that so if I’m tiring out, I can take a good rest and carry on later.

But as I also said earlier, I’m thoroughly depressed by the way that all of this is panning out. I’m thoroughly hating the past, hating the present and hating the future too.

To cheer myself up, I went to Carrefour and the Flunch to have a plate of chips and vegetables but that was a waste of time as they were stone-cold. Liz had given me a little shopping list that involved going to Grande Frais and the Carrefour so I bought the necessary and looked for something else to cheer me up but there wan’t anything there that took my fancy. That’s always the case when you’re in the middle of a black depression – nothing will pull you out of the pit.

Back home – for only an hour as Liz wanted the shopping by 16:00 – I still couldn’t find my copy of Paint Shop Pro or anything else that I needed. But there was a little issue that the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater was off the temperature scale. I had to drain off 5 litres of the water and put 5 litres of cold water into it. I’ve also plugged the fridge into the main circuit so that it’ll now be working 24 hours per day. I’ll have to do something because with no-one there drawing any current, there’s tons of surplus electricity and it’s all dumped into the hot water.

Yes, 41 amps of surplus energy was being generated when I arrived and the cables to the immersion heater element were stone-cold – a far cry from 6 months ago when they overheated at half of that and I had to rewire everything. All of this, the temperature in the water and the amps that the cables are currently … "ohh! Very good!" – ed … handling just goes to show how much current was being lost by the rubbishy cables that I had been using. Decent cables, even half the diameter, properly crimped and soldered, is definitely the way to go and I wish that my soldering techniques would improve.

However, if things continue like this, my soldering techniques won’t be an issue.

I stopped for diesel on the way back and also to the pharmacie at Pionsat for the next lot of anti-biotic prescriptions (which wouldn’t have been necessary except for this spenectomie, and what a waste … "you’ve done that already" – ed … and then back to Liz and Terry’s.

After tea, which was a stir-fry with the stuff that I had bought earlier, I said “sod it!” and went to bed. I’ve had enough disappointments for one day. I’d already crashed out for half an hour on the sofa and it was beyond me to keep on going – not when I wasn’t in the mood to go on fighting.

Tomorrow is another day. Let’s see how we get on with that. Not any better, I bet.

I’ll leave you all to sit and read this rubbish – all 2322 words of it.

And serve you all right too!

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Tuesday 8th March 2016 – FIRST EXCITING THING …

… to happen today was that my web-host’s server went down. And was down for about three hours in total and so you were all denied the pleasure of reading about my ramblings in the early part of the afternoon.

But that wasn’t what upset me the most about it. What did annoy me was that I had been actually using part of the blog from October, and when it all went down, my work came to a shuddering halt. As I mentioned the other day, the next part of the magnum opus which is the collating of the photos that I took in Canada last year with the relevant notes that I made on the dictaphone – that’s also coupled with the entries that I made on my blog so I needed to cut and paste the relevant sections out of there to correspond with whatever I dictated on the dictaphone. And of course, with the blog being down, that I could not do, and so that was that.

Second exciting thing was that the nurse remembered to come this morning. And as a result, I had my blood test. I’ve had the results too, which show that my blood count has now gone back up to 9.0. “Good news” you might be thinking, but it should be tempered with the fact that I’ve had a blood transfusion with two pochettes of blood in between this one and the last one. It’s going to be much more interesting to see what happens at the blood test next week and see where we have got to.

Third exciting thing was that Nerina came along to visit me again during the night, which certainly makes a change from members of my family. Regardless of anything that might (or might not) have happened in the early 90s, I would prefer her company any day to three or four of the others whom I’ve met recently while I’ve been out and about in the middle of the night.

But it was not she who made her appearance during the early part of the evening, but some others with whom I can well live without. I can’t remember what was happening here now with this first bit but I had nine somethings – was it nine stitches? Nine rows of stitches? But they had to be taken out and while this was going on I was surrounded by a load of people whom I knew – some of whom worked in the OUSA offices. But I do remember in my dream passing out long before we reached the end of what was going on there.
But after the trip down the corridor, the next part was a lot more coherent even if I couldn’t remember the beginning of it. I’d been out for a drive with Nerina, each of us in our own car. Both of them were markIII Cortinas – mine being a lovely pale-green late-model one but Nerina’s was an old 2.0 bronze-coloured one. But I was ill and having difficulty driving mine, having been told not to go too far in it, but that wasn’t likely to stop me. After a while, we came to a petrol station and I was feeling really uncomfortable by this time. Nerina suggested that we swap cars as hers was fitted with power-steering and so it would be easier for me to drive. And so we swapped. The fuel gauge in Nerina’s car wasn’t working so I reckoned that I had better fill it up to make sure that I had enough fuel to make it back home again. I told the girl in charge of the petrol pumps to “fill ‘er up”. But after a few seconds, the counter on the petrol pumps stopped working so she tried with the next one, and the same thing happened. And so on, and on. But anyway, it seemed that Nerina’s car was almost empty so I was filling it right to the top – as much as would go in it. Not that that annoyed me – what was annoying me was that the fuel read-outs on the pumps weren’t working. As you probably know, ever since I started with my taxis in 1979 I’ve always kept fuel records for the vehicles that I’ve used, and I still do so even today with Caliburn. I was telling the girl at the fuel pumps about this and she replied “don’t worry, sir, it’ll all be okay. We’ll work it out somehow”. I was wondering just how she was going to do this with all of this confusion about changing from pump to pump, how much fuel had gone into Nerina’s car and how much it was going to cost me. And then how was she going to prepare a receipt for me with all of the details that I needed to keep up with my records as I usually do. The delay was now starting to get on Nerina’s nerves, and she mentioned that I had only invited her out for half an hour and now I had her doing all of this (and it wouldn’t have been the first time that I had heard this complaint either). And I hadn’t even checked the water in the car yet.

But then downstairs, wait for the nurse, work on the web pages as much as I could, coffee and vegan banana muffins for break, baked beans on toast for lunch and home-made vegan lasagne for tea. I’ve told you before, … "and you’ll tell us again" – ed … if I ever recover from this illness that I have and am fit enough to go back home, I shall immediately find something else that might be wrong with me.

Much as I love my little house and miss it very much, I shall miss Liz’s home cooking even more.

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Wednesday 2nd March 2016 – I’M BACK …

… from the hospital, thanks to Liz who brought me home after she knocked off work. And thanks again to Liz who also took me there too.

That meant a crawl out of bed at some ridiculous time like 07:30 and a rushed breakfast, and then off on the road.

And I was pretty exhausted too, for last night I was on my travels again. And things about my house are clearly preying on my mind because I was somewhere out there. I’m not quite sure where all of this started but I remember it from walking down a footpath (which isn’t there) at the back of my house (which wasn’t my house) through the woods (which aren’t there) and out into a field around the back where this path took a sharp right-hand turn due to a very high bank being in the way. I’d lived here for years but this was the first time that I’d really paid much interest in this bank and I was astonished when a passenger train rattled its way along it. Five minutes later, a swarm of people came along the path and caught me in the middle of a reverie. It turned out that there was a railway station here in Virlet – the train had stopped there and discharged these people. I’d had no idea whatever that there was a railway station here, especially one so convenient for my house. All of the time I’d been getting the train to the nearest rail junction and then catching the bus, and this was all quite inconvenient.This railway station in Virlet opened up all kinds of new opportunities.
From here I ended up in a pub somewhere in Nantwich – I had an idea that it was something like the Millfields (which has featured before on my travels). Someone was having problems with the indicators on his car – a late-model Nissan 180B I think – and so I had volunteered to fix them. I wasn’t making much progress and so I was tempted just to stick them back any old how but twisting the front flasher around, it started to work correctly and so I was quite happy. All of these manoeuvres had led me to get into a position where my head was stuck though the serving hatch and so the barman asked me what I wanted. I replied that I wanted nothing at the moment, so I could see the landlord making a face and a gesture or two to the barman to hurry up and get rid of me. I ended up though having to bend down to screw this front indicator light into the leg of this person (yes, it’s all logical, this, isn’t it?) but he told me that where I was screwing it, it wasn’t there before. I could see that – in fact I could see on his leg exactly where it used to be because there were little scabs there over the wounds that the screws had made – and I told him that it was going to be very painful if I were to screw it back exactly where it was. But he insisted and told me to go ahead – and so I did.

We arrived in Montlucon about 10 minutes late but seeing as they weren’t ready for me (the blood didn’t arrive until 10:40) it made no difference whatever.

The nurse putting my drain in was astonished. “Mr Hall” she said. “You really do have some thick skin”
“Well, what do you expect?” I asked. “I used to be married”.

And then I sat around and waited, read a book, did some work on the computer, downloaded a pile more films, all of that kind of thing, and chatted to a couple of friends on the internet. And I had lunch too – a plate of lentils and diced carrots, a vegetable pâté, a fruit purée and an orange. Much to my surprise, they even remembered to bring me a coffee.

It was all done by 14:30 and I was ready to be discharged. That meant sitting in a draughty hospital foyer but much to my surprise they allowed me to stay up there in the warmth. That was a good move because I button-holed my doctor up there and told him that I wasn’t satisfied with my progress and the follow-up that I was (or wasn’t) having. He was quite insistent that everything was normal – the fact that I was having blood tests and the transfusion showed that there was a follow-up.

But I asked him about the loss of blood – whether it was normal for me to lose so much blood so rapidly. He told me that things wouldn’t settle down for a couple of months, but he was lost for words when I replied that at the rate that I’m losing blood, I would be lucky to still be here in a couple of weeks, never mind months.

And he was also lost for words when I told him that I still had my stitches in – some 5 weeks or so after the operation. But he told me that that’s not his department – I need to see the surgeon (and so I tried to, and she was out of course).

However, I told him that I had been summoned to attend a meeting with the Conseil Général of my insurance company and made up a good story of why that should be so, and so he’s arranged for me to have a copy of my file the next time that I’m there. What I really want it for is of course to take to Leuven with me when I go.

Liz came for me after she finished work and now I’m back here, having had more pie, green beans and new potatoes for tea.

And it was just as gorgeous as yesterday. I really am so lucky staying here with Liz and Terry who are doing such an excellent job of looking after me. As I have said before, I shall be really sorry to leave.

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Monday 29th February 2016 – LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS AND HIDE THE SILVER!

Especially if you live in Leuven, in Belgium. Because I’ll be off on my travels in early course and Leuven is the destination.

I was on the phone for quite some time this morning, firstly to the hospital at Montlucon clarifying all of the appointments that are organised for the next couple of weeks. And once we had done that, I spent the rest of the morning on the phone to the UZ Leuven in Belgium. I told them a brief story of my medical history, how I was satisfied with neither my treatment nor my progress and, quite surprisingly, the doctor with whom I spoke totally agreed with me. I ought to be doing better than this.

The upshot of this is that he’s agreed to see me in Leuven on 22 March at 14:00. And so I’m going.

What’s even nicer is that my friend Alison who lives a short drive away from Leuven has very kindly offered to put me up for a couple of days while I’m there and let me borrow one of her three cats. I think that that’s a really nice and generous gesture on her part and makes me feel so much better. Terry however clearly reckons that she doesn’t know me all that well.

And not before time too because I had the blood test this morning and the results were ready by teatime.

And it’s grim reading. What started out at 10.4 when I was in hospital and went down to 9.8 and then to 9.0 has now dropped dramatically through the floor to a dismal figure of just 8.0 – that’s a loss of over 12% in a week. And that’s after everything that I’ve been through and all that I’ve suffered over these last couple of months. Nothing has improved, I’ve picked up a pulmonary embolism and I’ve suffered pain like I never knew existed.

And all, apparently, for nothing.

And the thing that galls me the most is that my loss of blood is dramatic to say the least, and there’s not been a peep out of the hospital. I would have thought that this is all becoming urgent, not to mention crucial, and the people at the hospital haven’t shown even the slightest hint of interest at all.

In other news, I’ve had a reply back to my e-mail the other day. They’ve asked for my phone number so they can call me for a chat. Right after I made “other arrangements” for a second opinion. But of course this phone call is probably to tell me that I’ve been sacked or some such. I wouldn’t be surprised.

So having got all of that off my chest, what else has been happening?

We had another night of being careful how we left the bed due to bits of me being all over the floor. Twice in two nights, this.
But back in the arms of Morpheus and I was back off to a lock-up garage somewhere that I didn’t know and in there was some kind of small two-door estate car, dark blue, resembling a late 1960s Toyota or a FIAT 128. I was looking at this along with another person who had some kind of mechanical aspirations. The vehicle had been bought by my brother at an auction for £400, which was a lot of money to pay for such a vehicle, never mind its poor condition, and the person I was with expressed his surprise that my brother hadn’t tried to beat down the vendor to a more realistic price. Anyway, I couldn’t hang about. I was off up to Stoke on Trent, somewhere round about the Waterloo Road (which it wasn’t, but never mind) in a big van that I had at the time. I ended up down a side street in a maze of terraced houses being shown a room that was to let in a terraced house that was being used as a lodging-house. A girl that I knew – someone from my old days in Stoke on Trent – was running the place and so I asked her about it. She said that it was formerly a vet’s office but when it came onto the market it was too good to miss and so she converted it into rooms, with she and her family living in a tiny room right at the top. We went outside, there was a lovely (if that’s the word) view of the street lights and the urban area in the dark of the North-Western Potteries, all of the lights twinkling in what was a very late and clear evening. They say that the best time to see the Potteries is during the hours of darkness during a power cut and the local newspaper once famously described the old railway line that passed through here as “10 miles of the world’s worst scenery”.
But scenery notwithstanding, I’ve now moved on to Brussels (so there really isn’t all that much difference) living in an apartment that was part of a house conversion – what they call a trois pièces en enfilade. It’s not a very pretty apartment but anyway we start off with me not being there. I’m with Nerina up on the huge concrete windswept plateau on the high-rise council estate not too far from the Heysel Stadium and we’re looking over the parapet to some mid-rise (about 10-storey, I dunno) concrete-and-glass tower blocks. There are about dour of them, with a square footprint and they have some kind of reputation of being quite comfortable and pleasant places to live. Nerina was saying that we should have gone to live in a place like that and while I didn’t disagree for a minute, I did say (and quite rightly so) that a place such as that is way outside our budget. But we ended up back at our apartment (or maybe it was mine and she was only visiting) and we started to tidy up the place. There had been a new television delivered and I was idly flicking through the channels when I suddenly found a Morecambe and Wise film – and one which wasn’t part of the Morecambe and Wise trilogy either. And so I sat down to watch it while Nerina sat down at the other end of the apartment to do some painting. At a certain moment she asked me to pass her a bottle of paint of a red colour and so I walked over there to hand it to her, but it was the wrong bottle that I gave her.
Before she had time to say anything about this, the alarm went off and that was that. And despite a reasonable night’s sleep I was thoroughly exhausted. It was all that I could do to stagger downstairs.

At least I didn’t have to wait too long for the nurse to come to take my blood test.

Once everything had been sorted out and we’d had lunch (I had the very last of the curry with some bread) I cracked on with the dictaphone notes and now, there remain just 26 soundfiles to transcribe and we’ll be done. And I can’t wait to finish them off because there’s a lot of other work that has now built up and I need to deal with that too.

For tea we had pasta and sauce and garlic bread, and I’m really going to miss all of this when I go to Leuven – if I ever get there because I went out for a walk just now with Liz and I couldn’t even make 50 metres up the hill outside.

I have therefore cancelled my little trip out on Wednesday to collect Caliburn as I’ll be in no state at all to drive him.

All of this is starting to look very ominous indeed and I am dismayed.

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Tuesday 23rd February 2016 – AND WASN’T THAT A WASTE OF TIME?

I finally had my blood count results back today. And the total has dropped from 9.8 to 9.0 – that’s not far short of 10% – in a week. And not only that – some of the things that needed to go up have indeed gone up, but some other things that needed to go up – including the most important things like the haemoglobin – have gone down. According to the infirmière who comes twice a day to inject me with the anti-coagulant, this means that it’s not just a simple case of dilution of the blood but that there’s something much more serious going on somewhere.

This means that it’s time to put Plan B into … errr … operation. Tomorrow, I’m going to see about having a chat with the Médecin Général of my Health Insurance company to see what he thinks about me having a second opinion somewhere with a specialist.

But as you can tell, I am not amused by all of this.

I didn’t manage to make it to Worleston last night by the way. I ended up being sidetracked elsewhere. I started out on the borders of Shropshire, Cheshire and Wales, my old stamping ground from many years ago. I was heading back north towards Crewe, I suppose, and I had the wife of a friend in the car with me. She was complaining about her husband, how he was all untidy and disorganised and how she wished he was like another one of the people that we knew. I cautioned her about that, because in my experience the tidiness and organisation of our other friend was nothing but superficial and just underneath the surface was a kind of chaos worse than ever you could imagine.
So back at my place in France where I brought a coach home – an old Ford R1114 with a Plaxton Supreme body. I drove it down the lane as far as my concrete parking place (which is most unlikely) and managed to turn it round at the bottom and park it facing uphill (which is impossible). I had a few things to do there and then went off for a walk, which took me right out to the southern edge of Stoke on Trent, somewhere round about Blurton or Trentham. Here in the middle of the road was a football match taking place – one team in green and the other in white. It wasn’t a suitable place to play a football match because the road had quite a steep slope, the top of which was defended by the green team. Stanley Matthews was playing on the green team and word had gone out that if his team won, he would be made man of the match, so right at the end of the game the green team had a shot on goal. The white goalkeeper, none other than Lev Yashin, stood there watching the ball, making no effort to save it. When I asked him about it, he replied that Matthews deserved the reward. And so I headed back home, reckoning that it would take me about an hour to walk from here (yes, quite!) and I ended up heading through the centre of Stoke-on-Trent. I was passing by the bus station at Hanley (I go a strange way home, don’t I?) just as a former work colleague was arriving. he told me that my absence was missed because the boss wanted to see me and a pile of other people (who he named). It turned out that the people who he named were those who were top of the list to receive a promotion and so I was wondering whether this meant that I was in a line to receive a promotion too. This was certainly some quite exciting news and I regretted that I hadn’t been there at the time.
The next part of my voyage was even more interesting, because I was actually a nun! (And before anyone ever says anything, my brother really was a nun, although not very many people know this. Every time he was up before the bench, the magistrate used to ask him his occupation and he always replied “nun”). I was going for an interview for a religious post and having a really good chat with the interviewers. They showed me a kind of green plastic key with holes in it at strategic places and asked me if I knew who it was who made the most profit from this. Of course, I had no idea and so they told me that it was eBay. That surprised me, but they replied “when you are using this to do something like buying 30,000 ice creams, by far the greatest percentage of the money is taken by eBay”. I was astounded by the figure of 30,000 and it clearly showed. “Didn’t you realise that as part of your duties you would be taking 30,000 children out for walks?” I replied that I hadn’t given it any thought at all and that if this were part of the duties of the post I wouldn’t hesitate in carrying it out. It was the way that the matter had been presented that had caught me off-balance. But it turned out that the question of the green key related to a form of payment, rather like some kind of credit card. It was inserted into a slot, something similar to an old punch-card data input system, to confirm a payment made on credit.

But going back to the previous night, I was here on my own all morning (it might not sound relevant, but you’ll see how it all develops) as Terry went off to do some work and so, in a mad fit of nostalgia, I played some music that I had on the laptop, and played it pretty loud too. One of the tracks (if that’s the correct word to use) was the “Simple Minds” live concert that I mixed for Radio Anglais
 a while ago, and I do have to say that it’s probably the best live concert that I’ve ever mixed. The music is probably the best too, and it features the track “Someone Somewhere in Summertime”. And as I was listening to it, I picked up on the words
“Somewhere there is some place, that one million eyes can’t see”
“And somewhere there is someone, who can see what I can see”
And while I’ve found the place, what I haven’t found in all of my life is someone who can see what I can see. If I had to name the biggest disappointment of all of my life, that would be it, and maybe the vision (because it was more than a simple dream) of the Girl From Worleston the other night is something subconsciously to do with that. As you all know, I’m a great believer in the subconscious, instinct, second sight and all of that.
Anyway, have a listen to Someone, Somewhere in Summertime.

In other news, I’ve not done too much with my dictaphone notes because I’ve been rather sidetracked, dealing with issues arising from the very controversial historian Dr Alwyn Ruddock.

She was (because she died in 2005) a well-known and respected historian who did a great deal of research into the Italian banking families of the 15th and 16th Centuries and during her research, she came across some so-far undiscovered information concerning John Cabot. According to her press release into the Academic World, this information would radically change our perception of the discovery of North America in the 15th Century.

She signed a contract with the Exeter University Press to publish a book, and began to undertake some serious research into her subject. She was sent information from a couple of other historians who had uncovered hitherto-unknown documents and who felt that she was best-placed to use the material, but she dismissed most of that in a rather offhand way.

The upshot of all of this is that she never published her book and when she died, hordes of scholars were eager to peruse her notes to see if they could bring her research to a conclusion and to bring into the public domain her rather startling discoveries. Unfortunately, they were all confounded as in her will, she had left instructions that all of her research notes, photographs etc was to be destroyed unread. And indeed, her executors had shredded 87 sacks of documents and all of the clues to her discoveries were lost.

I’ve never ever met a scholar who has wilfully destroyed his or her research notes. Most scholars have an assistant who will carry on the work if the unforeseen should occur, or else they bequeath their papers to a University so that another researcher could pick them up. And that’s how research should be carried on – as a community project. And if you find that all of your work is ultimately incorrect, then scholars should be sufficiently detached from their subject to contradict themselves, as I have seen several scholars do.

But now all of this work is lost and the poor researcher who discovered some documents in the British Library in 1987 and which were kicked into touch by Dr Ruddock now has to creep back up a dark alley to rescue them and start again, after a delay of almost 30 years.

And we are still no nearer to finding out what it was about Cabot’s voyages to North America that, according to Dr Ruddock, would change our perception of the discovery of North America.

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Monday 22nd February 2016 – I CRASHED OUT …

… for a couple of hours this afternoon. And I’ve absolutely no idea why. It’s not as if I’ve been up to very much, is it, just sitting here waiting for Godot or whatever.

Mind you, I have had a day that’s been hectic in certain respects. For a start, in this urge to clean out the dictaphone and bring this up to date, I’ve not only finished the notes for the voyage to Canada in 2015 (which I think that I might have finished off yesterday) I’ve also dealt with the trip to central France in August last year, the one to Germany and the Czech Republic in June, and I’ve cracked on pretty well with the trip to Canada in 2014, the notes of which were lost when the previous laptop crashed.

You can see that it’s been a pretty hectic day all in all, at least from that point of view.

Having a blood test thins morning didn’t help matters either. That takes it out of me too, in more ways than one. Quite frankly, I don’t see the point of them giving me all of this blood if they are simply going to take it out bit by bit.

But it was during the night that, as usual, everything happened. and I do have to say that it’s rather sad right now that I have to have any excitement in my life by vicarious means.

We started off last night on the most amazing nostalgia trip. Memory Land had nothing on this. It was back in my school days and I’d started to go to school in a really scruffy, oily pair of green shorts (I actually had a pair of these too) and and equally scruffy light grey tee-shirt. It all makes a change from the school uniform that we had to wear back in those days. After school, we set off home and it was raining. I had an old, short kind of raincoat thing that I was wearing to keep the rain off. A group of us decided for some reason or other to go home a different way and we ended up wherever we were intending to be a good five minutes before the others arrived. We didn’t know this at the time but it soon became clear. There was a rather large stationary Ford Pinto engine there that performed some task or other at the place where we were, and I was having a look at it. I noticed that some of the spark plug leads had been caught up underneath it and trapped. This told me that the other kids hadn’t arrived yet otherwise they would have noticed it and sorted out the leads. Another thing that I noticed was that the cam belt adjuster had become slackened off and the belt was twisted. Someone had evidently tried to turn over the motor and that had upset the valve timing as the belt was sliding around over the top pulley on the end of the camshaft on the cylinder head. I needed my tools to adjust it and set it correctly but before I could go to fetch them, the other kids turned up. I told them not to touch the engine under any circumstances until I’d adjusted it (ohh! The nostalgic delights of changing cam belts on Ford Pinto engines! If I ever had a quid for every one of those I’d done in the 70s and 80s I would be dictating this to a couple of floozies sitting on my knee in the Caribbean somewhere). While I was adjusting and setting the cam belt and the valve timing, a couple of girls from the “latecomers” came over for a chat. One of them was very, very young (not even in school uniform – she was blond-haired, wearing a blue and white checked summer dress with a very pale blue blouse) and I had a little chat with her. The other girl then came over to join in. She was probably in year 3 or 4 of the Grammar School where I went, and I would be in year 6 or 7 (7 was the final year at out school). She lived in Worleston, so she said, and had shoulder-length dark red (almost brown) hair and a lovely smile, and I’m sure that I know who she is but I just can’t think who. We had a chat that started off just being something general and then slowly developed into something more personal. She asked me what “A” levels I was doing and so I told her that I was studying Geography, History and English (I actually studied Geography, History and Economics, as well as both parts of the “General Paper” which was an option). She told me that she was very interested in journalism because that was what her father did. She collected photographs and autographs, and started going through her collection of photographs with me. There were many photographs of lifeguards at the beach and also older ones of old Victorian women, so we started to make a few jokes that today would be considered in rather poor taste (not that that ever would bother me of course – I can’t remember now who it was who said it but I’m a fervent subscriber to the comment that “nothing is ever in bad taste if it is funny”) such as “I bet that she’s felt the cold hand of death on her shoulder by now”. We ended up having quite a laugh about this.
The bizarre thing about this – or maybe it isn’t so bizarre – is that while I was on this little voyage, I was feeling quite warm and comfortable. Chatting to this girl was very pleasant and it made me realise that during my school days -and later on – what I had missed out on was a nice comfortable companion with whom I could relax like this. None of my girlfriends at school would ever have fitted into this little scenario, and much as I liked Nerina, it’s fair to say that we weren’t ever “accomplices” in this sense. I’ve been noticing that we do occasionally have little nostalgic nights like this and I was all for turning the clock back 45 years and going off to track down this girl with the dark red hair. It’s not as if Worleston is a big place, after all and with a farmer who is a journalist, they aren’t likely to be part of the dispersed farming community out there. The “Royal Oak” would be the place to start, or maybe the church, where the Reverend Lillicrap (and I am not making this up) used to hold sway.
After the usual semi-somnambulistic stroll down the corridor, I was back at school again. This time though, it wasn’t anything like as pleasant. I’d been charged with an offence that was rather disreputable and as a result I’d withdrawn from my usual social circle (not that I ever had much of one) and was living in my car on a cliff-top somewhere. I would merely change into my school uniform to go to school and then change back into civvies as soon as I could afterwards. I only kept in some kind of social contact with one friend (someone with whom I am still in touch these days), and that was because I could rely on him and he believed in my innocence. As a result, any indiscretion that I might (or might not) have committed had not reached the ears of anyone else and I was defending the court case entirely on my own. But this all was about to change when he told me that his wife (and he mentioned her name – and she is in fact his sister in real life) had somehow heard about the events, and forbidden him to keep in touch with me. I asked him if he intended to take any notice, to which he replied that he had to. He admitted that, although no-one else knew this, she controlled him quite closely, even weighing him every day to make sure that he wasn’t eating any sweets or anything else to which he wasn’t entitled. I found this all hard to believe and when I saw her bright yellow vehicle right across the headland, heading slowly towards where I was parked up, I waved at her and that caused a major eruption amongst all people concerned.

So after all of that, it was back into the land of the living. And I had to make my own bed and open my own curtains because we were having visitors today and Liz had a day of teaching. Perhaps it was that which wore me out so much.

But counting through the boxes of injections, there is about half of them left. I wish that they would hurry up and get it over with.

And I’d like to have my blood test results too. They STILL haven’t come. And I want to go off for an early night and a decent sleep. It’s a long way to Worleston in the dark.

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Tuesday 16th February 2016 – OHH NOO!!

As if I don’t already have enough to worry about, they seem to have discovered that it appears that I have a pulmonary embolism. No wonder that I’ve not been feeling up to all that much just recently.

That’s right – I went out to Montlucon today, thanks to Terry who drove me, and the hospital for a check-up. Rather like the young girl who came back home after a trip around Eastern Europe and told her mother that she was pregnant.
“How do you know?” asked mother. “Have you had a check-up?”
“No, mother” replied the girl “It was a Bulgarian”.

Anyway, here we are. I have to go back to hospital on Thursday for yet more tests. This is going to be a never-ending cycle and I can see it ending up like this as a rather permanent arrangement.

If that’s not enough to be going on with, they’ve decided that they ought to change my anti-coagulant for another brand. That’s right – just five days after I’ve spent €447 in buying a month’s supply. Of course, I’ll be reimbursed by my insurance but that’s hardly the point if I have to stand it out in the first place anyway. And so I told them flat that I’ll change – once this supply is exhausted (and when I’ll be exhausted too, I shouldn’t be surprised).

There’s news about the blood tests too. From now on I only need give the samples once per week. That might sound like good news but it isn’t necessarily, and for two good reasons. Firstly, I’m having the twice-daily visits of the nurse anyway, so I’m not really going to benefit by anything very much. And secondly, it says on the prescription that I’ll be needing them for the next FOUR MONTHS! That takes me up to the summer and I wouldn’t be surprised if things go beyond that too.

in case you haven’t already gathered, I’m sick up to the eyeballs of all of this. I think that we all knew that it wouldn’t be too long before I wished that I had my spleen back so that I could vent it. I shall just have to borrow someone else’s.

Still, on the positive side, it was nice to be out and about today. First time that I’ve been out for over a week – since I came back from hospital in fact. It was freezing cold, minus 1°C as it happens, and I felt every single degree of it. But at least I could get to the Amaranthe and buy a load of vegan cheese and some oats so that at least I’d have things to eat. But once more, I felt every bump in the road and I was so glad to sit down on the sofa back here.

I’d had a very leisurely morning though, which is just as well because I’d had a hectic night. Difficulties sleeping however, but now that I know the reason why, it’s no surprise. But once I’d gone to sleep, I was gone – and I do mean “gone”.

First port of call was at a football match in Scotland – a non-league game and one of the teams playing was pushing hard for the non-league championship so that it could be promoted to divisional football there. However, there was a TV programme broadcasting about how this would be unlikely to happen because several of the players at the club were friends with players at the club that risked being relegated. One of these non-league players even gave lifts to the star performer of his own team, to take him to matches. The TV programme was alleging that all of this co-operation would come to a shuddering halt in order to preserve the league club’s status, and that the non-league club would deliberately try to avoid winning the remaining matches. This then drifted on to a report about Aldershot football club. This club, as we know, went bankrupt years ago and was reformed, and fought its way back to Football League status. The new club had built a new stadium (which, of course, it hasn’t) and the TV programme was focusing on all the the problems that the club was having there – the drug abuse, vagrancy and delinquency of the area, all kinds of things going on on the car park affecting the club. It seemed that the club was bitterly regretting building this ground in the area where they did and how they were hoping that fate would be kind to them and enable them to move to a new ground in more salubrious surroundings.
Our next voyage concerned a visit to a man who had a collection of chimpanzees and monkeys. He had a cage, where he kept his chimpanzees and monkeys, fitted up as a room with all kinds of different signs, cut-outs and objects in it and he was training these monkeys to recognise all of these objects and behave accordingly. One of these signs was like a wooden notice-board that swung out from the wall rather like a door might do, but would fold back 180 degrees. It made a horrible squeaking noise when it swung open, and one of his monkeys could imitate the noise perfectly and this was quite an astonishing feat.
We haven’t finished yet either. I found myself in an office at a place where I used to work (it wasn’t the same office but the people were quite a mix of former colleagues from different places) and I was making myself a cup of tea. I’d run out of tea bags and so I “borrowed” one from someone else and while I was doing so, someone made a remark that I’d better hurry up or else a black man would be doing my work. A third person, overhearing, and being evidently surprised that I had not commented on the remark, asked me what the previous person had said. I repeated the remark, except substituting “grand-child” for black person, which took the wind out of her sales. She was clearly expecting some kind of racist observation.
From here we went on to North America and an outdoor event like a fair or some such. As we arrived, a stream of runners were returning from a race.It was about 14:30 and, apparently, the day always started at 08:30 with a marathon race and as we were arriving it would be when the main stream of runners would be returning, and this was what I was telling my companion. One of the runners was the President of the USA and as he was sitting on the floor recovering, two young boys came to interview him. However, we were all interrupted by my alarm clock going off.

Yes, I’m doing quite well again with these nocturnal rambles, aren’t I? it’s hardly surprising that I’m totally worn out with all of this travelling. I need to save my strength if I now have to cope with a pulmonary embolism on top of everything else.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m thoroughly fed up, but at least the food is second-to-none here at Liz and Terry’s, and no-one can ask for any more than that.

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Monday 15th February 2016 – WHAT A NIGHT!

Last night was definitely, to coin a well-worn football phrase, a night of two halves. I was in bed early watching one of the series of films of the “Three Mesquiteers”, a series that was heavily parodied in The Three Amigos! but afterwards, I just couldn’t doze off to sleep. I was awake for hours. By the time 01:30 came round, I was in agony too. I told you a day or so ago that I was really feeling uncomfortable in my stomach, and the feeling had developed right through the night until it was unbearable.

In the end, I staggered off down the corridor to the porcelain horse and this is where it all starts to become vulgar, because if … errr … flatulence had been a recognised sport, I would have comfortably won an Olympic Gold Medal.

Strangely (or maybe not), I felt so much better afterwards and even managed a decent sleep, of which I remember almost nothing at all. But I do recall some kind of preoccupation that the nursing staff at the hospital had with all of this. A couple of times per day they would ask me if I had … errr … made any gas recently. Clearly, in the nature of post-operative care, that kind of thing is quite important, and after last night’s effort I can now understand why.

This was like something out of “Kez”, which is quite surprising because that is a film that I have never ever seen, so how would I know? I can’t remember too much now about what was actually happening but what I do remember was that I was having an aerial view of what was going on, actually as if I had been the kestrel that was flying above the scene. It was all rather disorientating.

We had the nurse this morning, and my blood count has gone down again – to just 9.8. I’m hugely disappointed by that but then again, if it’s too early to be glad about the positive news from Thursday’s test, then it’s too early to be sad about today’s. I have to bear in mind that if someone had offered me 9.8 as a permanent figure after my operation, I would have been glad to take it, given some of the dire results beforehand. Don’t forget that I haven’t had any “extra” blood for well over a week.

We also had a heavy snowfall too. The temperature has been teetering around freezing point for most of the day so it was really only like slushy rain, I suppose, and while it looked as if it was so impressive, it melted away almost as soon as it landed. It will be interesting to see what happens overnight – I have to go back to hospital tomorrow.

The snowfall didn’t stop a visitor arriving. To save Liz the trouble of going out, one of her pupils came here and had a two-hour lesson. It was interesting for me to overhear what was being discussed as I’d never previously really sat in on a lesson.

For tea I had a beautiful bean pasta-bake with grated cheese. Gorgeous, it was. What was even nicer was the vegan ice-cream. That’s still just a little short on shop-quality as far as the smoothness goes (which is no surprise seeing that we aren’t set up here for an industrial operation) but as far as the taste goes, it was excellent and Liz can be proud of herself. It’s the third batch that she has made, all of which have been through trial-and-error, and each time there’s a major improvement.

I shall be really sorry when I have to go home.

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Thursday 11th February 2016 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… since coming out of my morphine-induced semi-coma about 10 days ago, I haven’t been on a nocturnal ramble during the night. Or, at least, if I did, I know absolutely nothing at all about it.

I had an early night and watched a film on the laptp, one of the ones that I downloaded from http://www.archive.org while I was in hospital, chatted briefly to a friend on the internet, and the next thing that I knew, it was 06:15. A stroll down the corridor to the porcelain horse, and then the next thing that I noticed after that was the raucous cacophony of my alarm clock telling me that it was 07:45. I remember absolutely nothing else at all.

The nurse finally turned up at 08:40 for the blood test, and then I could have breakfast. And then, I’ve done precisely nothing at all. And I don’t care either. I’ve spent most of the day either relaxing or dozing. And that’s my lot.

As for the blood test though, there’s some good news. Most of the things that should be expected to go up have indeed gone up, and most of the things that should be expected to go down have indeed gone down. My blood count is a massive, astonishing 10.4 and it’s never ever been that high. Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and I’d want to see 20 blood tests with that kind of figure before I pass judgement, but it is an encouraging sign.

To celebrate, I made myself a pizza for tea. The process was slow and agonising but the end result was well-worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I’m off for an early night, hoping that I can have yet another really good sleep. I deserve more than a couple after all of my exertions and I’m hoping that they’ll come soon enough.

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Wednesday 10th February 2016 – IT SNOWED TODAY

Great big flakes, the size of dinner plates too! That’s what we had for about half an hour here round about 15:00 or so. It didn’t stick, unfortunately, otherwise it would have been something really impressive, but at least winter is back. That’s bad news for all of the plants that are growing, because one thing that I noticed on my way back from Montlucon the other day is that we have the blossom on the trees. This weather will have put paid to all of that.

We had another visitor too. Liz and Terry have a friend who lives out the other side of Les Ancizes and she passed by this afternoon to say hello. It’s nice to have company every now and again.

Apart from that, I’ve not done too much. I still have pains in my chest and in my side and it’s uncomfortable to sit for too long. Typing is difficult too as the constant movement of my arms and fingers is putting a strain on the muscles that have been injured.

And I’ve also been having to recover from my night-time voyages too. I’m still racking up the miles here and there as I travel about the world, and last night was no different. We started off with some kind of disturbance involving a group of kids going on a rampage in an underground car park, and I was eager to get away from all of this. I hopped into my car, a late-model Series III Hillman Minx, and headed off out of the exit. As I arrived at the end of the exit ramp I noticed that all of these kids were there, blockading the way out, so I did a smart u-turn and went back down again. These kids immediately drew the attention of a passing police car to me and so they all decided to set up an ambush for me. My car was actually quite conspicuous, because it had one of these exaggerated spoilers fitted to the boot – the type of aerodynamic spoiler that was fitted to the very first of the aerodynamic Formula One racing cars. I came out again at a different exit across the road, but was spotted so I had to go back down again. The third time that I tried to leave, it was at a different exit right across at the opposite end of the car park. It was at the top of a bank, at the far end of a surface-level car park which was totally empty so that you had a really good view of the surrounding area. And there was snow and slush just about everywhere. The entrance and exit to this surface car park were controlled by traffic lights which stopped the traffic on the main road. These worked sequentially so it was quite easy to work out the rhythm. This was important as I would only have one opportunity to make good my escape without being blocked in by the police and everyone else. I timed my run down the bank very, very carefully just so that I arrived there just as the lights turned to green which stopped all of the traffic on the main road, and I could squeeze my way out and nip off. By now, my car had transformed itself into an old PB Cresta … "it was actually a PA Cresta" – ed … and I was driving through this snow and slush and black ice and ended up in Tunstall (nothing like Tunstall of course). At the top end of the town was a roundabout with three roads feeding in, and it didn’t matter which road I took, it always brought me back to this roundabout again. On one occasion approaching this roundabout, a cyclist was following me and as driving a car in this kind of weather in Tunstall only meant for slow progress, I was exchanging conversation with this cyclist every time we caught up with each other. At one particular moment we came to a part, just before this roundabout, where the road narrowed. There was a church encroaching into the carriageway. Someone in a BMC 1300 was coming the other way and ended up on my side of the road, blocking the highway. I had a race to see if I could reach this part of the road before he completely blocked it off but we both arrived at the same time. In the end I had to swerve around him on the wrong side of the road and on the wrong side of these bollards to pass him and return to my side of the road. And then, of course, I ended up yet again back at this roundabout.
From here I went off on a sprawling, amazing ramble. I was involved in an incident with a girl but I can’t remember now who she was and what was going on. I liked this girl quite a lot and I’d spent some time trying to establish some kind of rapport with her. It ended up that she had to leave, and this meant going across this bailey bridge or pontoon bridge that was full of Chinese refugees fleeing some kind of attack. All of these people were struggling across this bridge that had been hastily thrown together and she was in a small car of some description, stuck in the middle of this bridge. Someone had given her a crystal ball and so while she was waiting for the crowd to advance, she was admiring this crystal ball. As the crowd began to advance, she slipped this crystal ball into the back pocket of her dress and started her car. At that moment, the crystal ball exploded, for it was really a booby-trapped bomb. From where I was standing, on the bank of the river I could see this pillar of dark brown smoke going up into the air from about where her car was situated. I went home to change my clothes. I’d been scratching myself and I’d scratched the heads off a couple of scabs on my legs and there were a few trails of blood running down my legs. I was intending to write a letter to this girl and I was writing her address on my knees for some reason or other. At this moment, Nerina put in an appearance. She’d been out since yesterday and was only just coming back. I commented upon her arrival, saying that it was quite a coincidence as I’d only been back long enough to write this address on my knees. Nerina replied that lunch would be ready soon, so I explained to her that I had to go out and deliver this letter, so hold up lunch until I came back. I wouldn’t be long. But as I was writing this letter I noticed that they started to lay the table downstairs. And then the food appeared, and of course that wasn’t in my plans at all. But then I noticed that all of my breakfast things were still on a tray in the corner of my room so I needed to take all of them downstairs. I still hadn’t finished this letter and I was becoming more and more annoyed by all of this. Having asked for lunch to be delayed, I was expecting someone to take notice of what I was saying.

Anyway, life is going to be like this for a good few weeks, I reckon. I’m just going to take it easy, not do too much and slowly recover. I have the nurse starting back tomorrow for my blood tests (and how I hope that the situation will at least have stabilised and that I don’t have to have any more transfusions) and so I’m going for an early night. The days of lying in look as if they are well and truly over for the foreseeable future.

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Tuesday 26th January 2016 – I WAS RIGHT!

I had an absolutely dreadful night last night. They finally connected up the blood at 00:45 and then I tried my best to go to sleep. I know that I had dropped off but it felt as if I was awakened almost immediately. They said about an hour – but I was unconvinced – but anyway, they needed to connect up the second pochette.

So off to sleep again. And an hour later, we went through the pantomime yet again.

And then we had the blood pressure test

And then the blood sample

And so it went on throughout the night. Just as I was settling down, I was awoken yet again.

I came round when the breakfast was served and I even managed to scrounge a second cup of coffee, such as it is, for which I am always grateful. They even brought me some things to have a shower, and I found a razor and some clean undies at the bottom of my bag. But the shower was interesting – with the drain and the tube in my arm, I couldn’t take my nightgown off so I was involved in some interesting contortions, but at least I’m all clean.

We had a moment’s excitement too. Two young student nurses came to change my bedding. And when they had finished, they asked “do you need us for anything else?” Being in hospital clearly has its compensations – but I’ll be expelled yet again before much longer. I’ve never seen girls go as red as they did when I replied that that was the best offer that I’ve had in 35 years.

A short while later, someone brought round something for me to drink. It was absolutely disgusting. Upon making enquiries I was told that my potassium count was too high and this drink was to bring it down. Personally, I think that it was a punishment for teasing the students.

The chief nurse came around later. Apparently my blood count is now 7.6 and that’s not high enough. They plan to keep me in and give me some more pochettes. I’m totally opposed to that idea as you know. I have things to do and I can’t do them while I’m still in hospital. I explained that I would be coming in tomorrow morning for good and a blood transfusion is already planned anyway. It’s pointless. And in any case, the blood sample was taken ar about 06:00 and it’s now 11:20. Had they decided at 06:00 that they would be giving me a third pochette, I could have had it already and been long-gone from here.

And so she went off to talk to the surgeon.

20 minutes later, she was back. And we had another delightful conversation.
Chief Nurse – “the surgeon says that you can go home now and come back in tomorrow as planned”
Our Hero – “good. I’ll get dressed then”
CN – “but we are rather concerned”
OH – “what is that?”
CN – “your blood count has only gone up to 7.6”
OH – “and what’s the problem with that?”
CN – “I understand that you came in your car. We don’t think that you are capable of driving home safely”
OH – “but it was 6.4 last night”
CN – “so I’ve been told – but I don’t see how that’s relevant”
OH – “well, it’s like this. If you don’t think that I’m safe enough to drive home with a blood count of 7.6, how come you thought that I was safe enough to drive here with a blood count of 6.4?”
At that, I was allowed to drive home by myself.

They took the drain out, spilling onto the floor most of the blood that they had given me, and I was off. Just as far as the café by the crossroads on the edge of town where I stopped for a good strong coffee and baguette and to gather my wits.

I spent the afternoon round at my place doing a few major tasks and sorting out a few objects that I needed, as well as generally relaxing. Then Terry came to pick me up – Caliburn is staying at my house while my future is being sorted out.

We finished off the vegan curry and then I finished off the vegan ice cream. No point in wasting it, so they better hadn’t ring up now to cancel my appointment. Final job was to write the two letters that needed doing and now that’s it. Whatever else isn’t done will now have to stay undone until I come back.

If I ever do.

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Sunday 24th January 2016 – YAWWNNNNNN

Yes, I had a very bad night last night. 02:00 and I was still awake despite being in bed for 21:00. I just couldn’t drop off to sleep.

And when I did manage to go to sleep, I was awake again at 03:45 for the usual trip down the corridor. And that’s all that I remember until the alarm went off at 07:45.

it is all that I remember too. I have no recollection whatever of what I did and where I went between 03:45 and 07:45. And as for the period between first going to sleep and 03:45 there is only a certain amount of gibberish on the dictaphone about hospitals and operations and flying body parts – nothing that is suitable for a family audience at meal times, and so you are spared all of that.

After breakfast, and my last-but-one injection, I sat down and wrote one of the three letters that I need to write. It took me right up and beyond lunchtime and it goes on for ages and ages, but it was the most important one by far and it is all done and finished. As for the other two, I’ll be doing one on Monday and one on Tuesday and there are very good reasons for doing them then.

This afternoon I’ve done nothing, which is hardly a surprise as I’m supposed to be taking it easy. yet another day when I’ve not set a foot outside the door. But at least I didn’t have to bother about the nurse coming round – that’s all done and finished now for the evenings. Just one more injection left and that’s for Monday morning when they take the blood sample.

And now, I’m off for an early night. I need to catch up with my beauty sleep. And yes, before you say anything, I really do need a lot.

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