Tag Archives: late night

Friday 30th August 2024 – I’VE GIVEN UP …

… all thoughts f being in bed at a reasonable time. In fact it’s another late night tonight and by the time that I’ll have finished these notes it will be long after midnight by the time I hit the hay

In fact it’s been a pretty rotten day all round today but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have days like this every now and again and I just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.

As you might expect, seeing as I’m complaining about late nights, it was a late night again last night. Everyone was out celebrating after TNS’s triumph in qualifying for a Group Stage and while I wasn’t out and I wasn’t celebrating I was certainly revelling in the enthusiasm.

To be honest, in the six games to come, all against quality opposition TNS are going to be “turned over something shocking” by some teams and we might be back to the 1990s and on the wrong end of some embarrassing score-lines, but at least, as May Boyce would have said, TNS can say "I was there".

And so I was there too in solidarity until far too late when I finally crept off to bed.

And once more, it was totally painless. Asleep in seconds and there I remained, with just the odd fit of awakening here and there which I can’t really remember.

When the alarm went off I hauled myself up out of bed and staggered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and then, by way of change, into the kitchen to do the washing up.

Something that I really hate is waking up to a bowl of dirty dishes. That really is my pet peeve but it couldn’t be helped after last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had another phantom awakening last night by a woman who was waving some kind of death star about. She was saying “those with an arm corps follow the star”. When I asked her what was happening she said that the passengers’ alarms had been forbidden in the airport so she was doing her best to wake everyone up who was due to travel. I asked “what if you had to travel some distance like to Luxembourg?”. Her reply was that they’d still be awoken so I dunno but it was like a proper Welsh border – scream, I suppose, for no intent or purpose whatsoever.

And that’s another pile of confused, garbled, meaningless nonsense as far as I can tell

I had my old blue Cortina estate. There was some really, really thick fog, so much so that it was practically impossible to see so I parked it up in Crewe Town Centre and began to walk home. I realised that I’d left one or two things in the car so I had to run back up the hill towards it. When I arrived back at it I had the idea that maybe I’d take out one or two of the spark plugs to make it very difficult for anyone to try to want to steal it. I took out a couple of the plugs but the screws that held the plugs in, I lost them and had to hunt around. Eventually I found them so that was that. I put the tools back in the tool box but I’d screwed the toolbox to the door outside and padlocked it but it wouldn’t stay closed – it kept on falling over so in the end I thought that I might as well take it home with me and bring it back next morning. For some reason or other I threw it into the back of the blue Cortina estate and then got in the car and went to turn the key to start it but suddenly realised that I’d taken out half of the spark plugs so I couldn’t go home in this vehicle anyway until I’d put them back.

During this dream I had a vague impression in the back of my mind of a Zephyr 6 mark III coming towards me out of the gloom and I don’t know why. Good cars they were, but they rotted away like hell. But there’s only one thing worse than being stuck in the fog, and that’s being stuck in the fog in Crewe. I did once know a woman who was stuck in the fog in Liverpool and wanted to drive home to Manchester, found a lorry from a yard near where she lived driving through the city so she followed it. After a couple of hours the lorry stopped and the driver alighted. “Are we in Manchester now then?” he asked. “Manchester?” asked the driver incredulously. “I’m bringing a load to Preston”.

The nurse came along a little later and sorted out my legs and then gave me today’s injection. He was in quite a chatty mood but didn’t have anything important to say. He was soon gone and I could press on and make breakfast and read some more of my book on THE ICKNIELD WAY

After breakfast I had a look at my order for LeClerc. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done any shopping so supplies are running low. It’s necessary to stock up.

And to my surprise, not only do they have olive oil, it’s on special offer too and so I stocked up. At a certain moment the cheap olive oil was not available on home delivery and I ended up having to buy the expensive stuff. And so with what I ordered today I have a year’s supply.

Soya milk too. At a push I can but that from in town but they have vanilla in theirs and it tastes disgusting. The “Natural” soya milk from LeClerc is much nicer so I have a stock of that now too.

So drastically over-ordering, I sent off my order and arranged for it to be delivered this afternoon.

There was plenty to do this afternoon but instead I was side-tracked. The cleaner came to do her thing and we had quite a chat

And then the hospital in Paris telephoned to see how I was and if I needed anything. There’s talk that they’ll be calling me in for a stay there at some time soon, but I’ve heard all that before

Regrettably, after that, I fell asleep, to be awoken by some frantic ringing at the doorbell. My supplies had arrived.

So having put everything away, I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning, peeling, dicing and blanching 2 kilos of carrots ready for the freezer

Tea was a rushed salad and chips with vegan nuggets because we had yet more football – Hwlffordd v y Drenewydd.

With the collapse of Connah’s Quay Nomads, second place this year is up for grabs and while Y Bala must fancy their chances, Y Drenewydd would be optimistic too and Hwlffordd would be a good outside bet as dark horses.

But this game was all one-way traffic and the score of 3-0 to Hwlffordd was in no way flattering. The central midfield pairing of Greg Walters and Corey Shepherd controlled this game from start to finish and the back three of Lee Jenkins, Kyle McCarthy and Maltese international Luke Tabone looked as solid as a rock. New Zealand international keeper Zak Jones had nothing whatever to do.

But if you want to see a visual definition of the word “sublime”, I’ll try over the next few days to find a video of Hwlffordd’s third goal. It was the most beautiful goal I have ever seen.

So that’s it. The washing-up can wait again. I’m going to bed.

But on the subject of washing up there was the old advert which I’m sure many of my readers will remember, of the kid asking "mummy mummy, why are your hands so nice and soft?"
In the old days it was "because I use Fairy Liquid" but today it would be "because we have an automatic dishwasher, you berk."
However, I always knew it as "because daddy does all the washing up, dear."

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Saturday 24th August 2024 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today and ended up doing three fifths of five eighths of … errrr … nothing.

Yes, it’s about time that I had a day off after everything that I’ve been doing just recently. And how much I enjoyed it too.

So much so that I actually sorted out a few squares of chocolate from the supply and treated myself. God alone knows what this would make my potassium count, but who cares?

After last night’s efforts and not going to bed and letting it all hang out after midnight, it’s nice to have a little treat like that. I certainly deserved it. Watching the football and writing my notes last night was exhausting work.

By the time that I’d done everything that I needed to do it was a long time after my preferred bedtime when I crawled under the sheets. And with just a handful of hours before the alarm it was just as well that I was asleep more-or-less instantly.

There was the odd bit of awakening during the night but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep under the covers.

So when the alarm went off I switched it off and made my way into the bathroom.

First task was to deal with this little sample that the nurse wanted. And in my befuddled state at 07:00 in the morning I was confused and wrote tomorrow’s date on the side of the container. That will confuse them down at the laboratory.

Then I had a good scrub up and washed my shorts. That’s my usual Saturday morning task, to make sure that they are clean for the forthcoming week. It’s a pain only having the one pair.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of show on the television about some folk musicians. They were all sitting together playing some music. One of them had his bass guitar and played a few bass runs for one song and they were really impressive so we stopped the programme at that point ad went back to begin to talk about this guys bass playing, which was something that we didn’t really know. He told us a little story, and told us about these bass runs. One of the other people there joined in so I said “I’ll go and fetch my bass and we can have three of us together playing it. Someone else there had a recorder so they joined in. One of the bassists with the recorder couldn’t get the recorder in tune as if there was something blocking one of the reeds. No matter how he blew he just had a strange noise out of his flute or recorder, whatever it was. In the end we had to stop the programme again while he had to dismantle his instrument. It was really interesting because I would have given everything to have been on that programme as a bassist instead of as a simple interviewer but it just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be my day to get me on there. Everyone seemed to be far more interested in the story that these people had to tell than any story that I could add into it. And quite right too. It was why they were there – to entertain and to tell their stories. I have plenty of other opportunities to tell mine.

That’s a story that has an all-too-familiar ring about it. I always seem to miss out on an opportunity as there will always be “another time” which as we all know, is something that never comes around

This was a dream in an Immigration Centre where a young guy was coming into Wales to play football for one of the teams. He’d lived in Wales before, for four years and had played as a Junior and as a full adult in various teams before being transferred out of the country playing abroad but was now coming back. At first the Immigration officials were very unsympathetic but he overheard a discussion between someone else and the Immigration about a large group of people, one of whom was an undesirable, but that person was arguing so hard to let him in that it was embarrassing. This was what galvanised the boy into thinking maybe he ought to persevere with this officer about trying to come into Wales because it seemed to be that his case was much more solid than this other person’s yet so much interest was being taken in it. That encouraged him to press on wit his application rather than give up as he might have done before.

There are more than a few stories about things like this in British football where because of the strict Immigration laws, imaginative solutions have to be applied to some footballers coming from outside the EU, such as loaning them to clubs in Belgium where the Immigration laws are much more relaxed, until they have enough “European” time.

There was a charge for misconduct brought about against one of the leading clubs in the league. They had produced something like a 20-point plan showing why another club was in breach of all kinds of various regulations. At the Court hearing the offended club stood up and made the argument that apart from the title, everything else in this document was based on pure speculation. At that point I stood up and accused their solicitor of gaslighting because I’d produced some evidence about a Court case that had taken place and will take place in the future. That was included in this document so I knew for a fact that those allegations were perfectly true so I was perfectly convinced that the solicitor for this football team was trying to gaslight the meeting so I stood up and made my objection known. This went down extremely unwell and managed to rob me of a position at the summit of the football league for three or four days

This has a ring of truth about it. I used to write for an on-line Sports magazine called, would you believe, “Shitesports”. This was almost 25 years ago when I ran a spoof news column about fictitious events in Welsh football, but the chairman of one of the biggest clubs in Wales took it seriously and made several remarks that were considered to be totally out-of-place in the factual World, based on some things that I’d written in my column.

Isabelle the nurse came round later and we had a chat as she took my blood sample and then sorted out my legs. She was impressed that I’d done what she asked and done it so quickly too. She’s not used to this.

And then all of the supplies are fully stocked up. That took her by surprise too.

After she left I made breakfast and had a very slow start to the day, reading an ancient book on ley lines and the like. The author is of the opinion that ancient roads and trackways honeycomb the country and any like drawn between two ancient monuments will pass through dozens of churches, ponds and other sighting marks.

His theories have been rubbished – someone saying that you could do the same this with telephone boxes for example, but on the other hand, aren’t telephone boxes usually sited at crossroads, at monuments and outside churches?

The author is probably wide of the mark when he suggests that every case of a straight line can be laid at the door of a Neolithic ley-man, but I bet that there’s more truth in his assumptions than his critics allow.

This afternoon I had to mooch around for a while and then make an important ‘phone call.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning that I’m on the verge of spending a lot of money on a project in the UK. Wheels are now in motion and staff has been engaged, and I had a very long chat with my “colleague” to receive his report and set out a plan of action.

One thing that I have learned is that specialist tasks call for specialist help and trying to do tasks like this yourself end up costing you much more money than you will save.

If you have access to professionals, then make use of these opportunities and don’t worry about the cost as they will save you money in the long run.

The costs of me travelling back and forth to the UK, even if I could, would be more than whatever I would have to pay a professional consultant to act on my behalf and deal with matters by Zoom.

But more of this anon.

By now it was tea-time and I’d had no food since breakfast so I was good and ready. I’d promised myself sausage, beans and chips and that was exactly what I had, and it was delicious.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one makes baked beans like the British, not even the “British Recipe” beans in Maritime Canada, and I’ll be devastated when my little stock here runs out.

So now I’m going to dictate some radio notes and then go to bed.

But the guy with whom I was talking was one of the ones with whom I spent that glorious “Summer of ’76” camped out at that old sand quarry near Congleton. Part of the bank had collapsed so there was like a beach that went down into the lagoon and that was where we all hung out.
One of the girls was swimming in the water and shouted to him "why don’t you come and swim with us?"
"I can’t come in like this" he said
"Like what?" she asked
"Like this" he replied, opening his dressing gown to reveal that he wasn’t wearing his swimming trunks underneath.
He was a big boy too and sunk her at a distance of 25 yards. But later that night, apparently she crept into his tent for a closer inspection

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Tuesday 20th August 2024 – I WAS GOING …

… to say that Day Seven of my Summer School passed uneventfully.

However, after my hot chocolate I came in here and sat down in my comfy chair ready to start work and the next thing that I knew was that it was 19:07. I’d been out like a light for well over an hour and hadn’t felt a thing.

One thing that can be said though and on which many of us are agreed is that we are cracking on at a hell of a pace.

The conclusion was reached that there are some people attending the regular courses who are maybe not as committed as the rest. Those who give up several weeks of their Summer and pay the money to attend the course are amongst the most committed and most enthusiastic and hence push things along that little bit quicker.

But it’s all at quite a cost. And I’m not talking about money either. I’m totally exhausted and there are another three days to go before I can have a week’s break.

It might possibly help matters if I manage to have an early night one of these days but last night was another one of these interminable evenings where I seem to have so much to do and not enough time to do it.

By the time that I’d finished whatever it was that I have to do, it’s long past my bedtime and I’m eating my way into the next day. This kind of thing is doing me no good at all.

So eventually I managed to stagger into bed once everything had been completed. I was soon under the covers and once more, I was out for the count. No need to even start my little bedtime mantra because I was away with the fairies almost straight away.

At some point in the middle of the night I awoke, but I’ve no idea what time it was. A strange, random fact is that since I’ve stopped wearing that new watch that I bought a couple of months ago I’ve not felt the urge to scratch my arms. That’s really quite strange. I think that I must be allergic to whatever the watch strap is made from.

So for that reason, I didn’t notice the time at all

Instead I turned over, tucked myself down under the quilt and went back to sleep until the alarm went off.

After I switched off the alarm I went into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. The Police in North Wales were investigating a big drugs ring in North Wales. One of the people whom they actually pulled in in this respect was someone who played for one of the bigger clubs but has recently been transferred. He was caught with a considerable amount of drugs that he was trying to move around the country and was imprisoned practically straight away. From there on the Police were working really hard to dismantle his ring and to catch who else was in it if they could. They were interviewing some man who seems to have been involved in it for three years. Interestingly they had come across a car with three women in it. It turned out that these three women were Russian and worked as interpreters so naturally the Police became interested in them to find out exactly what they were doing and why they were travelling, where they were going. They speculated that these women were officially listed as dead in the Russian people’s work so that they cold move around quietly without being controlled and use their skills to infiltrate organisations or societies, things like that, where they could be expected to extract certain information, submit it to Russia and move on to the next case. The Police felt that they were on the edge of breaking some kind of case in some kind of record numbers. This would be a huge feather in their cap for their Force.

As for the footballer, I could tell you much more about him but this isn’t the kind of event with which too many people would wish to have their identity associated, even if it were in a dream and bore no relation to reality. But it was certainly interesting. As for the three women, that was a well-known ploy back in the olden days for someone to acquire a birth certificate and hence a passport in the name of a person who had died. But after the STONEHOUSE AFFAIR that particular loophole was blocked which was a shame because I had … errr … plans…

Later on I was working in some office. There was an issue with regard to the electricity that we were using. The bills were coming out really complicatedly and expensive. When the Accounts girl complained to the Electricity Company she was accused of being nothing but a lousy American cheapskate. Being British, she was immediately offended. But that gave her the idea then that if she converted all of the temperatures and all of the figures in the office to Centigrade instead of Fahenheit the consumption of electricity would be a lot less and that would spike the guns of this company. As well as that, they had te habit of using one of our car-parking spaces. That privilege was immediately revoked. All the labels on our appliances were changed from Fahrenheit to Centigrade throughout the office. Several Americans didn’t understand it. I had to ring up the File Repository later on about the disposal of a file, the origin was someone called R. McHarrie, a young, tall, slender white girl with long light brown hair dressed in Office Manager-type of clothing.

Can you imagine anything worse than being described as a “lousy American cheapskate”? I know that if anyone were ever to think that I were American I’d be outraged. I’m not sure how changing the labels from Fahrenheit to Centigrade would reduce the electricity bills but the fact that “several Americans” wouldn’t “understand it” is something with which we would all agree. And I’m impressed that I could remember a name like R McHarrie when I’m asleep.

It’s Isabelle doing the nursing duties now for the next seven days, and I don’t mind her cheerful chatter quite so much. We “exchanged pleasantries” and she wants me to wash my puttees tonight. So yet more work to make me late going to bed.

After she left I had breakfast and then I had a few ‘phone calls to make.

The first was to the taxi company. There have been one or two extra trips added to the list just recently and I needed to make sure that they would come to pick me up. And that reminds me – I need to collect a taxi voucher for one of the trips. I mustn’t forget to ring up to request one from the doctor concerned

The second call was to that evil clinic where The Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie hangs out. They want me to go for another appointment on 10th September so I phoned them to say that I wouldn’t be going.
"I’ll find you another date" said the secretary
"It won’t do any good because I wouldn’t come" I replied
"But you have to come" she wailed. "It’s the post-operative review"
"I’m sorry" I said "but I’m not setting one single foot inside your “maudit établissement”" and I told her my tale of woe about the bill

She was totally astonished, as have been everyone else to whom I’ve recounted my little story. And having told it now to the surgeon’s secretary, it’ll spread like wildfire. Yes, the French have a saying – la vengeance, c’est un plât qui se mange mieux froid – “revenge is a dish that’s best eaten cold”. And I have the patience to play this out for as long as I think it necessary

There was no Welsh homework but nevertheless I went over a few things, and then I went to the lesson. We have now acquired a student from that well-known outpost of Welsh culture … errr … The Czech Republic. It’s becoming quite an interesting course.

In fact, the lockdown was the best thing that ever happened to the language. With the College that provides my courses, when the courses were face-to-face they had on average 100 students per year from North-East Wales. With lockdown and on-line courses, the first year they had 1038 students from all over the World.

During the pauses I was chipping away at these radio notes with the intention of finishing them off later but instead, at the end of the course I crashed out. And while I was out I was away on my travels. There was something going on about being in a house with a conservatory and to reach the hilly land behind the house the only way was to climb through the venting window in the roof of the conservatory. I had that down to a fine art, even as far as wearing my shoes inside an oversize pair of wellingtons when it snowed, which t did quite often. But the conservatory soon became too public with other people in there so climbing out of the roof window became more difficult and led to confusion about whose shoes were whose when it came to climbing out of the window

That was a complicated procedure but it did remind me of my family home in Davenport Avenue in Crewe which did in fact have a glass conservatory of the type in this dream. But at the back of our house instead of hills we had the Mornflake Oats factory and then the railway line to Shrewsbury.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by another slice of this delicious apple crumble. That was a lovely recipe that has produced a really good topping and I’ll have to make this again

Back in here I finished off the radio programme. I now have my two halves but tomorrow morning I’ll have to choose the final track and write the notes for it.

So having finished my notes I’m going to wash my puttees – or, at least, put them to soak – and then go to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. In the evening I have a medical appointment which ought to be fun. Would I have a neighbour in the next cubicle as the one that I had last time?
Once I overheard a discussion between the doctor and his patient. The patient was bemoaning his lack of … errr … success.
"What do you expect?" asked the doctor. "You’re eighty-three"
"My friend Joe is eighty-seven" he said "And he tells me that he makes love to his wife twice a day"
"So what?" asked the doctor. "If it bothers you, you could always tell him the same thing"
"Maybe I could" he replied. "but I don’t know his wife as well as all that."

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Monday 19th August 2024 – AND SO THAT’S …

… Day Six of my Summer School. Just four more to go before I can have a break, and catch up on the mountain of correcpondence that has built up over the last couple of weeks

There’s a week off to cover the August Bank Holiday week, and then there’s the final week of the three before the next year’s course gets under way.

The final week is actually to cover the year that I’ve just had. This two weeks is to catch up on the time that I spent in Canada and then in hospital a couple of years ago. However I seem to have miscalculated in that this is actually the second half of a continuing course and I really needed the first half.

Ahhh well … These little things are sent to try us, I suppose.

So last night it was another late night before I could drag myself out of my comfortable chair and into my stinking pit. This gap of several inches is like a yawning gap with all of the effort it takes for me to haul myself across.

But once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. My night-time mantra had scarcely begun before I was drifting away into the Land of Nod.

And there I stayed until the alarm went off – the correct alarm this time too. It was like awakening someone from the Dead when it finally range. Whatever had gone on during the night, I knew nothing whatever about it.

IN the bathroom I sorted myself out, washed and dressed, and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where ‘d been during the night

And to my dismay, there was nothing on it. That’s a real disappointment because, as I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … what goes on at night is the only excitement that I have these days.

So with no dictaphone to distract me, I uploaded this coming weekend’s radio programme to the office for them to fit into the live stream

When the nurse came he was his usual chatty self but he didn’t have all that much to say for himself. This shopping list though is growing and if we carry on like this we’ll need a lorry to bring it all home

But seriously, that’s the one thing that’s worrying me about moving. How’s it all going to work without a band of willing volunteers?

Like most things these days, it’s something just to ignore and hope that it all goes right on the night.

As I said earlier, the lesson passed quite well. We were doing the Genitive case today, “the bag of Sian” and all that. It’s quite complicated because in Welsh it’s all written in archaic form, there are contractions that don’t follow any rules and some other contractions have rules that just aren’t logical

But this is the problem with a language where its development and evolution was suppressed for over 70 years, from 1894 to 1967, and this was a time when a lot of linguistic evolution was taking place.

The French Community in Québec had similar issues but even so they had “la Hexagone” in Europe on which to fall back. Nevertheless, you’d still be surprised at the difference between Québecois French and thenFrancais de Paris. The Welsh had no similar benchmarks.

There were the usual pauses during the lesson, during which I made a start on editing the radio programme that remained from the batch that I’d dictated on Saturday. And by the tie I’d reached the end of the day I’d done about a third of it. I’m not doing too well with my editing right now. I need to put my foot down.

But I had several pauses, including one for my hot chocolate and slice of chocolate cake that still seems to be doing well in the fridge in its airtight container.

Tea tonight was, as usual, a stuffed pepper. And there’s piles of stuffing left for a taco roll and for a leftover curry on Wednesday.

This batch really is excellent and quite spicy. It’ll probably put hairs in places where I didn’t even realise that I had places.

So now I’m all tidied up, washed up and finished I can do what I need to do and then go to bed

But talking about Québec reminds me of the two guys living in Trois Rivières where there’s that great big sundial on the side of the church tower.
"What time is it?" asked one of the guys
"No idea" replied his friend
"Go and look at the Sundial then"
"Don’t be silly" replied the guy. "It’s dark outside"
"Well" said his friend. "Take a torch with you!"

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Sunday 18th August 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what happened this morning but I was up and about quite quickly once I heard the alarm, and switched it off promptly.

And later on after having washed and sorted myself out, sitting down at the computer in here, I noticed that the time was 07:54 – 6 minutes BEFORE the alarm is due to go off on a Sunday

Sure enough, at 08:00 the alarm went off So what was it that had awoken me so decisively earlier? The alarm is set for 07:00 on six days of the week and at 08:00 on a Sunday, and nothing has been changed in that respect for weeks if not months.

But it’s no use my saying that I don’ have a clue, because you lot have known that for quite some considerable time and don’t need me to repeat it.

But while we’re on the subject of repeating … "well, one of us is" – ed … that late night that I had on Friday, I repeated it again last night. Once more, the effects of having a mid-afternoon sleep meant that despite being exhausted, I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed.

After I’d finished my notes and done what I needed to do, I dictated another pile of radio notes. And now I’m not all that far away from being up-to-date – at least, in that respect.

Practically everything that has been written has been recorded except for one or two special projects on which I’m working. They’ll be receiving attention over the next week or so as I try my best to push on. I just hope that no-one else famous dies so that I won’t have anything else to distract me.

Eventually though I managed to find the energy to cross the Great Divide of several inches and fall into bed. And I’d hardly even started my little night-time mantra before falling asleep.

From what I remember about the night it was pretty calm and peaceful. I can’t recall being disturbed at all. That is, until I had that strange, phantom alarm call that awoke me like that.

It’s totally bewildering, this kind of thing. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve had these phantom alarm calls before but usually, sooner or later, I’ve recognised them for what they are.

This is the very first time that I’ve been so completely taken in by a phantom alarm. I’ll have to carefully check the time each morning before I leave the bed because I could have done with spending that extra half-hour or however long it was in bed.

Having had a good wash, I came back in here and had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing something with the local police, investigating a road accident. We were on our way to inspect a particular site and someone made a really witty remark to me about something or other which at first glance didn’t seem to tie in with anything but when we were there inspecting this site one of the boys walked past carrying a certain object that looked like a part of a sheet of metal. Someone announced what it was and its correct name was actually this posh name that someone had used for something else earlier in the chat so it became some kind of clever pun or witty joke and I wish that I could remember what it was because it disappeared out of my mind as soon as I picked up the dictaphone, this particular word

As it happens I can remember this dream really well and the word that was used was actually on the tip of my tongue but it disappeared the moment that I put my hand on the dictaphone.

This morning I actually upset the nurse. He breezed in asking me all kinds of silly, frivolous questions that I was in no mood whatever to answer and he soon got the message. That early start had really knocked me for six.

After he left, I had my breakfast, read my book for a while and then came in here to watch the football. This morning it was Clyde v Stirling Albion in the fourth tier of Scottish football.

Clyde had 99% of the play and spent most of the match camped in the Binos’ penalty area. However, there were just two breakaways as the Binos roared down the field into the Clyde half each time and they ended up with just two shots on goal.

Anyone care to predict the final score?

However many people there were inside New Douglas Park I really have no idea but I bet that every one of them left the ground shaking his head.

There has been quite a bit of editing done today.

The two “extra tracks” for two of the programmes had their notes edited and the programmes completed. The first one ended up one minute short and the second one was six seconds over.

None of that is any problem. Where it’s short, I just lengthen the gaps in the speech by pasting in some silence, and where it’s over, there’s always tons of superfluous text that can be edited out without losing any of the meaning.

Then there were the two much longer notes resulting to almost-complete programmes. One of those has been edited and the two halves of the programme assembled. The eleventh track has been chosen and edited and the text written. That will be dictated on Saturday night next week

Had I had the motivation I could have finished the other one but I had a little … errr … relax. This morning took far too much out of me

As well as that, I made some pizza dough today seeing as I’d run out. Two lumps are currently freezing and the third became the base for tonight’s pizza. And the dough was fantastic. It rose even better than the last batch did and that was quite impressive.

So having written my notes I’m off to bed now in the hope that there will be no confusion about the alarm. I don’t want another morning like this. I have my Welsh course next week and need my sleep.

But that dream about me helping the police. I should have been a policeman because I spent a lot of time helping Cheshire Constabulary with their enquiries
One of my friends was hobbling around Crewe Town Centre once when I caught up with him. I hadn’t seen him for a while
"Where have you been these last couple of weeks?" I asked him
"I’ve been helping the police with their enquiries" he said
"So why are you having trouble walking?"
"I’ve helped them so much" he said "that I’ve got two broken toes and truncheon marks all over the soles of my feet."

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Saturday 17th August 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely pudding for tea tonight.

There was half an oven left over after I’d prepared a loaf of bread for baking and so in a wild fit of enthusiasm (and where that came from, I have no idea) I made an apple crumble.

It’s been a long time since I’d baked one of those so I had to look up a recipe for how to make a crumble topping, and I’m glad that I found the one that I did because it was the best that I’d ever made.

Where this mad fit of enthusiasm came from I have no idea and I wish that I’d had it last night. For having crashed out at some point during the late afternoon, I wasn’t tired at al later on (exhausted, yes but tired, no) and it ended up being after … errr … 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed.

Yes, for the usual reasons – too exhausted too haul myself out of my comfortable chair etc – I just couldn’t make that couple of inches that lie between my chair and my comfortable bed. I really don’t know what’s happening to me.

Eventually though I could stagger across the gap between my chair and my bed and fall in underneath the covers.

One thing about it though was that I didn’t need much rocking. I was asleep quite quickly, and seeing how quickly I’ve been falling asleep that’s saying something too.

With it only being such a short night I was expecting it to have been an undisturbed sleep but that wasn’t the case. I was awoken by something a couple of times during whatever night there was and in that respect it was something of a miserable night.

Surprisingly, when the alarm went off I was awake quite quickly and made it into the bathroom without much difficulty. With it being Saturday I washed the shorts that I usually ear in bed. I did have a couple of pairs of these but for some reason I can only find one so I have to wash them as I go.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I wasn’t expecting there to be anything really so I was quite surprised. I was involved in some kind of women’s football match. Of the two teams of women it’s quite fair to say that some them were either drunk or on drugs because they weren’t at all in this world and maybe wishing that they were in the next but their behaviour was extremely bizarre and certainly weren’t taking an active part in the game at all so I began to take all of their names because I had a feeling that someone was trying something on for some reason and if there was going to be some kind of enquiry I wanted to make sure that I’d done everything that I possibly could to have organised this game and have given them the opportunity to play it without it being postponed for any reason whatever. But I suspected that it was going to be postponed simply because if I started to send players off one team would end up with less than the regulation minimum number on the field

That game actually sounds like one of these games involving Mexican girls. If you’ve ever seen a football game in the Mexican Women’s League you’ll understand exactly what I mean. The winners of a game in that League are not the team that scores the most goals, it’s the team with the most players still on the pitch after 90 minutes. Except for Jocelyn Montoya of course. She can come and dribble around my centre-circle any time she likes

There were some concerns about a girl at work so they made a few enquiries. She’d been off sick but when I’d been parked up in the middle of a lane near Shavington fast asleep, in the lane on the highway in the van fast asleep she walked past with a group of other people including some children. Then I saw her again the next day. I had to explain this to everyone and they asked me a lot of searching questions about these sightings. Then we all went to look at her house, a big detached house somewhere in the countryside near Crewe. There was a kind-of terrace of five of these big detached houses, each one completely different in style and joined together in a kind-of haphazard fashion. I didn’t know which one was hers so someone pointed it out to me. It was the biggest and best of these five. I thought that this doesn’t look right, the kind of house that she could have on her salary. How on earth can she afford a place like this?

Parked up fast asleep in a van in the middle of a lane near Shavington sounds about right to me. But I’m sure we’ve all known workmates who live in houses and have a lifestyle that is totally out of the kind of lifestyle you would expect, knowing their salary. Either they’ve had an inheritance, won the football pools or have something else going on about which no-one knows. Definitely not the taxman and probably not the police.

There was also something about a boy who ran off with a girl, her mother’s car and her mother’s credit card and the dream described their adventures.

There was more to it than this too but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you’re eating your tea right now.

This morning, the nurse, having ignored the dressing on my arm for the last few days decided to change it today, the day after I’d asked my cleaner to do it. I didn’t say anything but let him get on with it. If at last he’s showing willing, I don’t want to disrupt his flow. It seems that this enthusiasm is catching.

After he left I had breakfast and then set about making my loaf of bread, seeing as I’d had the last of the current loaf for toast this morning.

But talking of current loaf, does anyone have a recipe for currant bread? It’s years since I’ve had some currant bread and I ought to be thinking about making some of that some time.

While the dough was riding I was hunting down some recipes for making a crumble topping and having decided on a likely recipe, then after I’ve given the dough its second kneading I prepared the crumble topping. It’s basically

  • 2 measures oats
  • 2 measures flour
  • 2 measures brown sugar
  • 1 measure butter
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • cinnamon

and then rub it all together.

There were some sweet apples going to waste in the fruit bowl so I used those. You don’t need to add sugar to the diced apples with those, but some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, raisins and desiccated coconut went down well.

When the bread was baked I had lunch – salad sandwiches and you’ve no idea how delicious they taste with soft, fluffy bread straight out of the oven. They were absolutely delicious.

By now the lack of sleep had caught me up and for the next couple of hours I was out like a light. Far out too with not the slightest chance of coming back.

When I finally came back into the Land of the Living I spent a couple of hours tracking down the dates of a few more live concerts and then we had the football – Caernarfon v Hwlffordd.

Caernarfon surprised everyone by winning their first-round Europa League match in the close season, just as Hwlffordd had done the season before.

With all of the turmoil at Connah’s Quay with half the team leaving and the manager and club “parting company”, second place in the League is very much up for grabs and both clubs “have aspirations”.

The first half was a cagey affair with no real chances for either side but the game came to life midway through the second period when Hwlfford scored, only for Caernarfon to equalise straight from the kick-off.

The game was destined to peter out for draw had it not been for a mistake at the back that let in Hwlffordd’s forwards deep into injury time.

So surprisingly, Hwlffordd sit top of the table. Not that it will last, but it’s an encouraging sign.

Tea was one of my breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and vegan salad as usual. Followed by my delicious apple crumble.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and I hope that it turns out as well as the last batch because that really was epic.

Right now I’ll dictate some radio notes and then go to bed. Some of these will be edited tomorrow too and the rest during the week. We’ll see how we get on with everything else that I have to do

Stuff is piling up again but it can’t be helped. I really ought to be engaging a secretary

A secretary preferably of the type employed by a friend’s husband once a long time ago.
My friend rang up her husband at his work and his secretary answered.
"Mr whatever his name was?" asked the secretary "He’s just slipped out for the moment"
His wife made him change his secretary after that.

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Sunday 11th August 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my idea of going to bed at “a reasonable time” last night.

"The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy" as the famous Robbie Burns once said.

However, it wasn’t grief and pain that came my way, but blood. And buckets of it too. In the distance and time that it had taken me to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, I’d knocked my legs somehow and there was blood pumping just about everywhere

Even as I look, there’s a trail of drops of blood leading from my chair to where the big plasters are. And even one of those wasn’t enough to stop or even slow down the bleeding

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, this is what happens when you have all of these blood-thinning products. It’s becoming a rather regular feature, which is regrettable.

So instead of lying down on my nice comfortable bed, there I was, sitting on a chair with a collection of plasters and bandages on an impossible task waiting for the blood to congeal.

For an incident that took place at about 23:45, it was long after 01:00 when I finally went to bed.

Once in bed, I slept all the way through to the alarm going off at 08:00. I don’t think that I moved a single muscle all night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and that’s where the nurse caught me. He’d come early and I hadn’t had time to wash, never mind change my clothes (and I still haven’t)

He talked a little about his holiday but otherwise didn’t have too much to say for himself and was soon gone. I could sit down to breakfast and to read my book. We’re talking about the dismantling of the narrow-gauge railway that ran to Wallace in Montana, a event that took place in 1895. That railway didn’t last all that long.

Back in here afterwards I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’m not sure what I was doing last night but I was with a group of people. There was something going on about a medical issue. We were all being treated one-by-one for some kind of illness, taking it in turns to go to hospital. One of the girls went in quite carefree and happy and we all seemed to make a note “well she’s going to have a good time there in the hospital. They’ll love her”. There was a little old lady who went in. We had to go to her cottage to collect her things in order to send them to the hospital where she would be staying. I was actually at her house collecting her things together ready to go when the alarm went off.

It reminds me of my neighbour. Someone pretty soon will have to come to her apartment and collect her things if she really is going to live in a Home. I always think that for that to happen is a pretty sad state of affairs. From what I know about these Homes, it’s just a place where the elderly go and just wait to die. There’s no dignity or humanity in any of them.

There was football on the internet afterwards – Clyde v Stranraer in the Scottish Fourth Tier. And it was one of those games where Stranraer had 99% of the play, hit the woodwork and did absolutely everything except score, whereas Clyde just had one attack upfield and a lucky ricochet was enough for a sucker punch and send everyone in the crowd home shaking their heads.

Afterwards I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed.

The first lot I had to do again. Somehow I’d managed to miss the first ten seconds of my dictating and I’ve no idea how on earth I did that.

And then I had to re-edit and remix the eleventh track because for some reason it had become mixed up with a pile of dictated notes. I’ve no idea how I managed to do that, but it really was a mess.

As a result, I’d only finished the two “additional tracks” prior to lunch. And it was a very late lunch at that.

Back in here after lunch I sat down – and the next thing that I remember, it was 16:30. I’d been stark out for over two hours and hadn’t felt a thing. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone to sleep. But while I was crashed out I was having a whole series of really exciting dreams but as I awoke the hole lot simply evaporated and I remembered nothing. How sad is that?

For half an hour I bashed away at some more radio notes and then went into the kitchen to make my bread for the week. And in a fit of mad enthusiasm, while the dough was proofing, I made a chocolate cake

While the cake was settling down and the dough was rising I rolled out the pizza dough for tea tonight. I’d taken the last lot out of the freezer just after lunch and it had been defrosting all afternoon.

There was football on the internet. Llansawel’s first game for over 25 years in the Premier League, and against Penybont too.

LLansawel had kept the core of their promotion-winning team and, as we know, there’s an enormous gulf between the Premier League and the second tier. It was quite evident and the score, 2-0 to Penybont, surprised no-one.

However, it was really good to watch a proper footballing duel between Llansawel’s veteran centre-forward Luke Bowen and Penybont’s centre-half, Dan Jefferies. A proper aerial combat of the type that reminded me of watching football back in the 1960s and early 70s

So having seen everyone of importance in the league already after just the first game, it’s going to be a long, hard season for Aberystwyth, Llansawel and FFlint. Those clubs are going to need to find some quality from somewhere, and quickly too.

The dough for tonight’s pizza was perfection itself. It had risen beautifully and was really light. And as usual, the toppings (mushroom, onion and olives with cheese, tomato sauce and cherry tomatoes, was second to none.

The batch of dough that I made where I forgot to add the oil has turned out to be the best that I have ever cooked.

The bread is fine too and my chocolate, orange and coconut cake looks delicious and I can’t wait to try that as of tomorrow afternoon when it’s cooled properly.

So right now I’m off to bed. I have three weeks of Welsh Summer School starting tomorrow at 10:30. Time that I was going to bed.

But before I go, Clayton Green has signed for Penybont from relegated Pontypridd United. He was playing today but his wife wasn’t there to watch the game. She was in church down the road where the vicar noticed her.
He turned to his verger and asked "is that Fanny Green on the front pew over there?"
"No Vicar" replied the verger. "It’s just the way the sunlight comes through the stained-glass window"

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Saturday 10th August 2024 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… all that much better today than it was yesterday. There has been a slight improvement to be sure but almost anything would be an improvement over what surely must have been one of the worst days of my life.

It was another late night last night. and I’m not talking about midnight or anything respectably late but I’m talking about times like 02:00, that sort of thing.

Something awoke me at 05:45 and I’ve no idea what it was. At te time I was in the middle of some kind of panic attack thing about how I must catch a bus to somewhere, a long-distance coach. I have to be somewhere else by 08:00 to board this bus and I’ve no idea what time it is and when the alarm goes off will I have time to go – another one of these panic attacks. But whatever awoke me sounded so real that I actually left the bed to answer my phone, which hadn’t rung or even received a message, so I’ve absolutely no idea why I would have done that.

Having made sure that there was nothing going on that might have been of an importance I went back to bed.

These days I’ve had a few of these panic attacks while I’m asleep.. I wonder if some part of my body is telling me something and that I need to take heed. But I really can’t think where I have to be that involves any kind of travel that I would undertake in a long-distance bus. The only place where I would ever be likely to want to take one would be between Montréal and Florenceville in New Brunswick, but not even that bus runs any more.

Once I was back in bed there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE I staggered off into the bathroom to have a good scrub, wash my night-time shorts and change my clothes. I have to look my best for Isabelle’s last day before she goes off on a well-deserved break.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in a scrapyard somewhere and we had an old Class 20 or similar shunter. For some reason we had to go to a quarry. At the quarry was another one of the same type of machine. There was some issue involving the driver of that particular machine so as we were there one of our people drove it. There was a huge argument and he ended up escaping in this machine, not before he’s destroyed half of their infrastructure, driven over the top of a crane cutting the bodywork etc. The bailiffs or someone turned up at our place and wanted to take away our machine thinking that it was theirs but when they compared the registration numbers of our train with the registration numbers of the locomotive from the quarry they found out that it wasn’t the same so they couldn’t take it, so they left Then the guy turned up with this machine from a quarry so we ended up with two identical machines due to people losing their temper

Actually, I know someone who has a Class 20 diesel locomotive. He might even have more. He’s the neighbour of a former friend of mine and runs a company in Staffordshire hiring out locomotives to various railway companies and has a useful side-line ingoing round various locomotive breakers yards rescuing the more valuable spare parts. He started off with just one locomotive that he had bought to preserve but made a fortune hiring it out to the builders of the Channel Tunnel and, like Topsy, his business “just growed”.

Isabelle was in “chat” mode again today and she spent some time here. Having covered for her boss’s absence on holiday she’s now going off for ten days. He starts back tomorrow and their cycle of “one week on, one week off” begins again.

While I was having breakfast I was reading about the Maginnis Gulch Stampede, or Montana’s Phantom Gold Rush, an incident that was played to perfection in CARRY ON COWBOY

But for those of you who have expressed an interest, the book is called FOLLOWING OLD TRAILS, written by a newspaperman called Arthur L Stone.

Later on in the morning there were the highlights of last night’s game between Queen’s Park and Livingston, and then I joined that guy I mentioned the other day, Blair McNally, for a trip to the East end of Glasgow for Vale of Clyde v Port Glasgow Athletic, a proper amateur football match in about the eighth level of the Scottish Pyramid.

This afternoon I’ve been tracking down concert dates. And much to my surprise, because of all the ones that I’ve done this is the first, I came across one that took place on a date on which I will have a radio broadcast within the current cycle of programmes that I’m preparing.

So on 21st March next year we’ll be having a live concert from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1974. This afternoon I’ve mixed the music for the concert and I’ve written half of the notes. I could have written more but unfortunately I was away with the fairies for a while at some point.

While I was at it, I came across a few other interesting bits and pieces, and finally turned my hand to downloading a concert that had been sent to me by one of the musicians who took part, featuring the almost-last concert on which my hero Deke Leonard played.

It’s a real pity though because of how the dates fall, this one won’t be broadcast for several years yet.

Tea tonight was one of my favourite quorn steaks in breadcrumbs, with baked potato and vegan salad. And it was delicious as always. Something that I eat every week but why not if I enjoy it.

So now I’m going to dictate the next batch of radio notes and then I’m going to try to go to bed at something like a reasonable time.

But talking of “Carry On Cowboy” reminds me of the two bandits (one of whom was Sid James) talking to the Indian chief Big Heap (Charles Hawtrey)

Big Heap – "And this is my son, Little Heap"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "How"
Big Heap – "And this is my squaw. I bought her for two buffalo skins"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "Never mind how. Where?"

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Friday 9th August 2024 – I’M HAVING A …

… really bad day today

Or, in fact, I was having a really bad day yesterday because it’s now tomorrow as I’m typing all of this

It’s been one of those days where I’ve accomplished next-to-nothing, done nothing at all and whatever I have done just hasn’t gone according to plan.

It all went wrong on Thursday afternoon. As I mentioned, I fell asleep in the afternoon and was totally out of it for a couple of hours.

And so we had the inevitable result, which I now recognise after having had several months to work it out. Too physically exhausted to haul myself out of my comfortable chair but not tired enough to go to sleep.

And so here I sat for several hours trying to find the energy from somewhere to haul myself across the couple of feet between my chair and the bed. And it was long after 01:30 before I finally pulled myself together and pulled myself up by the bootstraps

That of course is all very well, but waking up at 05:30 was definitely not part of any plan, and neither was staying awake either but there I was, wide-awake but too physically exhausted to rise up from my stinking pit.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I made it reluctantly into the bathroom to have a wash and so on, and then came back in here.

To my surprise, and probably yours, there was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was with that old van from a couple of nights ago. I Had it back at our old house in Vine Tree Avenue. I took my tool box out ready to take away with me because my other car was parked in Edleston Road and needed picking up. The first thing that I needed to do was to check the keys. I had them but I didn’t actually have the keys for this old van. I thought that I must have left them in my coat on the inside. I went inside the van to fetch the coat and took out the keys from it and went to cross the two coats together as my battlefield cross but the big female lion objected and batted everything with her paw

As it happens, the van in my dreams I can see even now. It’s a light grey Austin A35 van and I certainly never ever had one of those when I was young. Probably the only vehicle that I didn’t own back in those days. I did have one of its big brothers, BILL BADGER, the Austin A60 or half-ton van that I mentioned yesterday. I paid £60:00 for that van, had it for several years, and had my money back several times thanks to the work that it did and the miles that we travelled, tucked in between the lorries on the motorway. No way was I going faster than about 50-55 mph with BMC’s single leading shoe drum brakes all round. Not even a hint of a disc brake.

When I was awoken by the alarm I was reliving an episode of DIRTY HARRY. Clint Eastwood had been detained in a roadside stop and made to sit on the pavement. While he was sitting there a policeman recognised him, came over and gave him a great big kick. Of course that inevitable started a riot and that was the point that I’d reached when the alarm went off. .

And so I must have gone back to sleep at some point. But it’s been a long time since there’s been a really good free-for-all down the High Street. We had a few in Chester in 1973-74 but that was about it.

The nurse was quite chatty today and had a lot to say for herself but I can’t remember much of it. She still thinks that I’m a wimp because I won’t take off this plaster on my arm but that’s how it is I’m afraid. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll have the panic attack to end all panic attacks when it comes to coupling me up.

After she left I had breakfast and read my book for a while, reading about the lynchings in the town of Hell’s Gate, Montana, how nine people out of the 12 who lived there "died without going through the intermediate stage of being ill" as the author so eloquently put it.

Back in here it took me an age to come round to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few senses I have these days. What shocked me out of my lethargic torpor was a message from my cleaner "mushrooms? I’m coming homs."

Blimey! It’s 12:30 already, I’ve done nothing and I’ll miss my slot for my LeClerc order. And now my cleaner is on her way home, if they don’t have what I want on delivery, it’s too late to buy it anywhere else now.

When my cleaner came round I was preparing my order from LeClerc so she added a few housekeeping items onto it and I sent it off.

The fridge had defrosted itself during the night so there was water all over the kitchen floor and donning waders and a lifejacket, my cleaner valiantly attacked the pool of water. And there I was thinking what a good job it was that we put down that lino on top of the wooden floor in the kitchen area.

This afternoon I’ve been hunting down another pile of concerts, comparing setlists and the like. And also tracking down missing tracks that were omitted from the published versions of live concerts.

The sad fact is that with almost every concert that I’ve encountered, the published version is often far shorter than the actual versions. What’s missing is sometimes much more interesting than what was included. For that reason you’ve probably never ever heard Joni Mitchell tell her audience that they were "behaving like a bunch of tourists" or Dennis Yeahy scream "brilliant!" in the middle of a Santana concert.

The shopping eventually turned up and I put most of it away, and then I came in here where I sat down and ran out of steam.

And here I’ve sat ever since then. I’ve had no food today since breakfast except a few crackers with my coffee and right now I’m beyond caring. And if I’m off my food you know that I’m not well.

But I’ll sort myself out and maybe find the energy from somewhere to go to bed. I dunno It’s been a strange day, a really long one, but although I’ve not crashed out at all, I’ve been too tired to do anything.

But if I can’t sleep tonight I’ll try counting sheep like that shepherd in Cumbria – "… five, six, seven, hello darling, nine …"
"Did you say ‘hello darling’ to sheep number eight?" asked a passing tourist
"Yes he did" replied the sheep. "He’s my fa-a-a-a-a ther"

0

Tuesday 6th August 2024 – ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO …

… I was wandering around Fredericton in New Brunswick when I came across a sign that said something like “on this spot in August 1894 nothing happened”.

And I remember another film that I once saw that included the line “in this village in 1853 a tree fell down, and the locals have talked about nothing else ever since”.

That’s exactly the kind of day that I’ve had today

It was another late night when I went to bed after everything that I had to do, and I was asleep even quicker than usual, which is one thing, I suppose.

But going to sleep earlier means that I awaken even earlier, which is a problem in itself but when it’s 02:15 that’s just ridiculous. Luckily I managed to go back to sleep again fairly quickly but not for long.

And that’s how it went on for the rest of the night. All in all it was quite a depressing way to try to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 it was a struggle to get to my feet. The room and the bed were spinning around much more rapidly than they usually do first thing in the morning.

They tell me that that’s due to low blood pressure, and I ought to be monitoring it. Regular readers of this rubbish will however recall that earlier in the year I did, and I have a notebook full of readings to prove it. But no-one ever told me what to do with the readings, and how to raise my blood pressure to an acceptable level and so it seemed like a waste of time

However once I was on my feet I staggered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and to have a shave – otherwise my face would qualify me to play bass for ZZ Top

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised by the amount of stuff on it. There was a big group of us who hung around together in the USA One was of course a nice girl. This girl and I became friendly, but not as friendly as I would have liked to be, which was a shame. She was being pursued by a guy who was a junior congressman but she wasn’t particularly sure why but she suspected that she might have made a good trophy wife and that was possibly maybe his interest in her. She wasn’t convinced that it was sincere and was just “politician’s bluff” and she tended to leave it. One day she, I, this politician and one or two of his friends were together. He engaged her in conversation and was busy chatting away with her. I could see that she was not enjoying the experience. I had a blackboard and some chalk so I was writing an account of what I was seeing, about this girl being chatted up by this junior congressman but she’s not happy in the least and he’s pushing things but wasting his time etc. While I was busy doing this I turned my back to them and carried on. The girl came to sit next to me and made one or two suggestions about the two of us going for lunch together, something like that. I was still writing this stuff about her and this congressman on the board then he turned up. He was most offended by what I was writing. He asked me if that was what I thought. I told him that it was so he asked if he was going to have some kind of grief from me. I told him that I didn’t understand what he means. It’s not my intention to resort to violence at any moment. What about anything else? He was pushing me then either to try to have some kind of response or try to goad me into making some kind of intemperate remark or doing some kind of intemperate reaction. I could see that unless I was very careful this whole situation was going to go South at a rather rapid rate of knots too quickly for me to be in any kind of control of it.

Here I go again, with a girl almost within my reach but not quite. And a situation rapidly escalating out of control through no fault of my own and there’s nothing that I can do about it. All of this has a very familiar ring.

Did I dictate the first half of this dream about this situation about people having to challenge about Health Insurance etc … "no you didn’t" – ed … but eventually the second part is that the get down and produce some videos showing escapers, getaways. I could see the one from my situation shown on this video so it looked as if the people concerned thought that they were getting away with it and evidently gave me a real incentive to fight even harder for justice. But as I say, although justice was eventually on my side, trying to have the Judge’s decision enforced was something far more complicated and is still awaiting implementation after all these years.

This sounds like a right load of gibberish but there’s an underlying truth in it, in that having Right, Justice and the Law on your side is all very well, but any decision that is made has to be enforced and the situation isn’t complete until enforcement is made. Any other interpretation of the situation is meaningless.

There had been some kind of museum display at a museum in Crewe. When we first arrived we couldn’t find out where we were going so we ended up going back home and borrowing a compass. Then we arrived again but the exhibit wasn’t going to be shown until the last hour so we all went back home again. At the end of the evening we all trooped off to the museum. The first thing that we did was to check the compass, how is it performing? Bang on! absolutely perfect! Once we had the museum hall in view we took a final check with the compass and sure enough it was exactly what we wanted. We walked into this building. As we approached the top of the steps someone began a conversation with one member of our party. He was telling us about Crewe Alexandra’s football match that afternoon. Their star defender had apparently scored an own goal, the second that he’s scored in as many weeks. He had a moan about it. One thing that I noticed was that this guy was blind so I turned to my friend and whispered to him “I suppose that his guide dog told him about the match” which did not go down very well but I thought that it was hilarious

So now I’m telling jokes – and good jokes too – in my sleep. I must admit that when I transcribed that little note I did have a good laugh. But it also underlines the fact that having a sense of humour is dying a death these days. Modern people won’t find it funny but I’m 50 years behind the times – a museum piece myself, if you like. I don’t belong in this modern World.

The nurse had a good moan at me this morning. I must have bled at some point because one of my trouser legs has a load of blood on the inside. She told me off and ordered me to wash them. It’s called “laying down the law” and I have to obey. She didn’t tell me what the “or else” meant.

After she left I had a leisurely breakfast, reading my book on walks around Montana in 1911 and 1912 and you’ll be surprised how interesting it is. The author was discussing the signing of the peace treaty with the native Americans 20-odd years before and had quite a lot to say on the procedure, especially about on how many of the obligations of the Government that were subsequently overlooked.

And then after a slow start to the morning I made a start on the next radio programme.

Actually, not the next one. I’d leapt a few dates because there are three or four weeks that are going to be really complicated. So today I decided to bite the bullet and attack one of them.

For that, I needed a pile of music that I didn’t have and so I’ve been tracking down obscure music from obscure groups, downloading it, converting it to an acceptable format, choosing selected tracks, remixing them and then pairing them off.

And then if that’s not enough, making a good start on writing the notes. I’ve not gone very far with that, and I could have done better had I not gone away with the fairies at one point. I’m actually impressed that I managed two whole days, Sunday and Monday, without crashing out at all after the events of Saturday.

My cleaner stuck her head in and gave me the cheese she’d bought for me at LeClerc. But it seems that the vegan cheese slices have disappeared off the shelves. So what’s going on here then?

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. It might be simple fare but it’s nice and tasty and that’s what counts.

So having written my notes I’ll wash my trousers to keep the nurse happy and then go to bed

But talking of museum pieces and the like, My friend Liz seems to think that it’s appropriate that I’ve bought an apartment in an Ancient Monument. "You’re actually something of an Ancient Monument yourself" she told me.
"You’re too kind, Liz" I told her ."What you really mean is that I’m an old ruin"

0

Sunday 4th August 2024 – ♫ PANCAKE TUESDAY …♫

♫ … Eric’s busy baking♫

But leaving aside the question of whether or not it is a Tuesday today, Eric has been a very busy boy in the kitchen this afternoon.

We now have another loaf all ready and baked so that we can start the week tomorrow with fresh bread for our toast, and we have a monster flapjack cut into 12 slices that will keep the blaidd from the drws, as they say in Caernarfon, for the next few weeks

When I made my lunchtime sandwiches yesterday I noticed that I didn’t have much bread left so I made a mental note to myself that some baking wold be involved in the proceedings at some point today.

And I was not wrong. When I looked last night, I reckoned that there might be enough for toast and maybe for a sandwich at lunchtime but that would be it.

So I sorted myself out and put my puttees to soak in a bowl of soapy hot water, where they still are after 24 hours. If that doesn’t clean them to the nurse’s satisfaction then nothing will.

When I’d done that I rolled up the other pair and put them ready for the morning.

Before going to bed I dictated a pile of notes for the radio programmes ready to edit. I didn’t do too many because I could feel myself flagging as I was dictating, and making too many silly mistakes.

Nevertheless, it was still after midnight and I was letting it all hang out. I had hoped to be in bed a long time before this

And it was a miserable night too. I’m glad that I didn’t have to wake up until 08:00 today.

But when the alarm went off I was already awake. I’d been awake for a while. Dog-tired as I was when I went to bed, I’d gone off to sleep quite quickly but I’d woken up far too early.

After having a wash and a clean-up I came in here to listen to the dictaphone. And I was amazed at all the stuff on there. No wonder it had been a miserable night. I was going to make a pizza but I had the horrible realisation that I hadn’t taken the pizza dough out of the freezer at Sunday lunchtime. Then I suddenly realised that it’s still Saturday night and I’m still in bed so I don’t need to quite make the pizza as yet so I turned over and tried to go back to sleep again.

That was one of these “panic attack’ dreams that I have every so often. You have to admit – it’s not everyone who can make a pizza while he’s in bed asleep.

Then there was something about it being someone’s birthday and that seemed to affect a couple of rock groups and their music but I’m not quite sure how and I seemed to have forgotten part of the dream that included that but it generated onwards towards birthdays and cooking, people putting birthday recipes and birthday ideas for meals altogether. I was going to comment on a couple which I’d sorted out because they could be so easily changed to vegan but while writing out the notes I seem to have lost the thread completely. I started writing basically gibberish and in the end pressed “send” and sent it because I couldn’t think of what else I needed to say and sending anything at this stage is better than sending nothing. It was a really confused and miserable night last night with all kinds of activity and things going on with which I didn’t really get to grips.

It seems that I wasn’t just writing gibberish last night. I was speaking it too

I was at school and we had some project to do, to talk about our teachers. I was working away in a corner and another girl came to sit close to me so we ended up chatting while we were working. I’d picked as my subject one of the teachers who was married to another one. His wife was a former accountant and accounts manager. We were fantasising why the male prof didn’t like the idea too much of working on the internet. We came to the conclusion that it was because his wife didn’t let him because she was too busy doing other things with it, and why he was so late handing work back to us was because she would go through it with a fine toothcomb and being a teacher herself and an accountant she would absolutely have to find some fault with it. We were fantasising things about this that went on for ages. None of it was very complimentary and none of it was stuff that I could write down but it was still interesting. One of the teachers then came over to us with a big pile of notes. She said to the girl “I have your results here from the previous project. Would you like me to read them to you?” so the girl said “yes”. The teacher said “some of them are very confidential”, looking at me. The girl said “that’s all OK. I don’t mind Eric knowing anything of things like that”. “Yes, but one or two of them concern Eric”. I replied “don’t worry about making any comments about me. You might have comments to say for the first time but a lot of other people will have said them before this, I promise you”. It went on like this. This was another one of these nice warm comfortable dreams that I have some times and don’t have enough of and that I wish could go on for ever and ever

Yes, this is much more like the kind of dream that I want to have. I’ve had a few dreams, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that focus on a girl and me at school back in our schooldays. And if only my schooldays had happened like this. All these girls hanging around me and I wish that I knew who they were and why they weren’t there when it mattered.

Later on I’m making my afternoon cocoa and I have it in the pan. I’m stirring away, talking about other things and thinking about loads of other things too while I’m doing it. I seem to be there for ages and ages and notice tat this chocolate now is starting to congeal. That can’t be right so I have a look and the gas has gone out in the little rechaud thing that I used for heating my chocolate and I’ve been standing there for the last I don’t know how long stirring it and it’s not made the slightest bit of difference. It’s just been going colder and colder and colder. Now I’m going to have to heat it up and wait for that to happen and it’s hot enough. I can see me being here with this all night.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that that’s happened, trying to cook a meal and the gas has been out for quite a while

I was in the European Union’s building in Brussels. It was time to go so I prepared to leave and picked up my briefcase, then picked up a long cane and began to push my briefcase along the floor in front of me. Quite a few people gave me some strange looks, some stranger than others including one woman who was extremely suspicious. When I reached the exit door at the interior of the building I picked it up and immediately went to open it. All the people dived for cover so I took out my laptop and packet of sandwiches. Before I had time to do anything again I was overwhelmed by security guards who insisted on demanding to know what I was doing. I told them to mind their own business and we had another stand-off in that … fell asleep here …

Yes, over the years I had a few good stand-offs with the Security guards. They were totally lacking in an understanding of what was happening in the modern World. The period in which we were living was changing rapidly and dramatically, far too quickly for them.

I was back giving a girl advice on buying a computer for her studies. She could have a grant to enable her to buy a computer but she needed to know the specifications and so on. I explained to her the maximum specifications that the Open University would allow under this grant but I also explained to her that firstly they didn’t check and secondly, as long as she didn’t tell them any different they weren’t going to know about what her computer was so we had a little discussion along those lines while she was having a look through the sales pages to see whether she could find anything suitable.

When I was living in Brussels I lost count of the number of computers I built and repaired. That was another field that was changing dramatically and rapidly and I was lucky enough to be there during that little window where we had SX, DX and Pentium architecture and I could cope with that. However I was left behind rather rapidly at that point.

Did I dictate the dream where we were all back in France again and there was something going on and someone had to submit some kind of written document … "no you didn’t" – ed … so one of our group took it upon herself to do it, and then asked if we needed any amendments before she sent it off. The problem was that this document was a complete mess and needed a total rewrite and revision before we could send it. I’m no journeyman so I could have cleared it up but … fell asleep here … which is a shame because this sounds as if it might have been interesting.

We had a new wheelchair for a friend of mine. I assembled it but couldn’t tighten it up because two of the straps that we needed to bring the whole thing into tension once there was a weight on it were not supplied with the kit and we had to fetch those extra. I explained to my friend that she’s going to be a bit flopping around on this. She was concerned about her blood test – if the blood test that she goes to takes for ever, how’s she going to cope? I explained to her that there was nothing wrong with the actual comfort of the machine, it’s just one or two pieces missing but she didn’t seem to understand. In the end I sat her in the machine and had things arranged as they normally would be. We were there for an hour or something then I set them up as they would be when we had the straps in there. Everything seemed to be much better so I asked her if she was comfortable but again she didn’t reply. Once I pressed her, she kept on going on about her blood test. I’ve no idea what was happening with her there but she was being extremely un-cooperative about this new wheelchair.

Phew! After that I’m exhausted. It’s no surprise that I was feeling pretty tired

In the middle of sorting this out the nurse came and dealt with my legs. She had rather more time than usual so we had a little chat which was nice

But as a result it was rather a late breakfast but the coffee was nevertheless really nice.

Back in here I watched Stranraer stroll to a 2-0 lead quite comfortably and then throw it away in the final stages of the game. They should have been out of sight and down the road a long time before the end of the game, and Peterhead only had two shots on goal during the whole match …

Then I’ve been radioing. The notes for two additional tracks have been edited and the radio programmes have been assembled. They are complete and ready to go. And then the first of the two longer ones is all edited and assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and remixed and the notes written ready for dictating.

Doing the final editing for the last one that I dictated is tomorrow’s task, if I choose to accept it

And then we had the baking. That was after my hot chocolate. I have a loaf, a flapjack and I also baked a pizza for tea and that really was delicious. Just as good as last weekend’s.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, I hope.

But did you note the phrase “another stand-off”. It wouldn’t be the first one. I remember a memo that came round saying “Fonctionnaires are reminded that they cannot bring their children into the office” and there I was, wandering around the building with Roxanne.
"Haven’t you read the memo about children in the office?" roared a a Security guard
"Ohh yes, I read it" I replied
"So why have you brought her in? She’s not allowed"
"But the memo talks about … ‘bringing your child …’"
"That’s right" he shouted
"But she’s not my child" I explained.

0

Wednesday 31st July 2024 – JOHN MAYALL HAS …

… died

Born in Macclesfield 90 years ago, down the road from where I used to live it’s doubtful if anyone has contributed more to the British blues scene than him.

Not that I’m a big blues fan, but ever since his first “proper” band in Manchester with long-time associate Hughie Flint (later of McGuinness Flint) on the drums, and his first incarnation of the Bluesbreakers on his arrival in London, with trainee Tax Inspector John McVie (later of Fleetwood Mac) on bass, just about anyone who is anyone on the blues circuit has played in one of his bands.

Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, Jack Bruce, Keef Hartley, a 15 year-old Andy Fraser, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jon Hiseman, etc, etc, it’s a veritable Who’s Who of names who made it in the music World who have at one time passed through The Bluesbreakers

Even though he was 90 years old, and probably thinking about slowing down, he’s someone who will be sorely missed.

Something else that was sorely missed was my 23:00 curfew. I was miles away from it in fact, and on the wrong side as well. Probably much closer to midnight when I crawled into my sack.

And although I was asleep quite quickly, I was awake quite early too – at, would you believe, 02:15.

So there I was, for hours, tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, without any success at all. All in all, it was quite a miserable night

When the alarm went off, it was a very weary me who raised one eye up from under the quilt. But despite everything I did manage to make it out of bed before the second alarm went off.

Feeling depressingly weary, I made it into the bathroom where a good rub down with a cold flannel did little to revive my flagging spirits

Eventually I managed to make it back in here where I had a listen to the dictaphone. And to my surprise there was something on it from the night. I’d been appointed as one of two sporting ambassadors for Caernarfon Town. It was my job to welcome TNS to the ground after TNS had beaten them in a heavy defeat the previous week. Of course there was a lot of change and a lot of issues about it but we still had to do an extremely professional job

Presumably this has something to do with the fact that both Caernarfon Town and TNS are entertaining foreign opposition this week. TNS had Ferencvaros of Hungary down there in Oswestry last night, and Caernarfon will be entertaining Legia Warzawa of Poland tomorrow (Thursday) evening.

The nurse caught me by surprise this morning. She rings on my doorbell from downstairs as she arrives in the building but then goes to see my neighbour first, giving me about ten minutes. But today, she was here in seconds.

When she came in she caught me watching a football match. "You were quick at whatsit’s" I said
"She’s not here" she replied.

It seems that my neighbour has been taken into hospital. They aren’t convinced that she has what it takes to live an autonomous life in view of all of the falls that she’s had and the fact that she’s lost confidence in herself.

She’s gone to be assessed for a place in a Home, so she told me when I texted her later to find out how she was. And that is probably as good a solution as you can expect for her.

The nurse changed the covering on my arm and then dealt with my legs. She wasn’t here long and left quite quickly, running rather later than usual. But we did make arrangements for Friday because I won’t be here that morning.

While I was eating breakfast I was reading a book about lost trails in Montana. Once again I was so engrossed, especially when I reached the chapter on a band of vigilantes that roamed the Territory righting wrongs and hanging outlaws that I was there for a long time poring over the pages.

Once again, very little of this stuff has made it onto Wikipedia and so its all likely to fall out of the pages of recorded history as the three-minute truncated attention span of the MTV Generation takes more and more control.

The rest of the day, when I’ve not been asleep, has been spent tracking down musicians who played with John Mayall and samples of their music. Mayall is the kind of person who deserves a radio programme in his honour and I’m sure that there will be enough material for me to assemble some sort of something to commemorate his services to music.

The cleaner came by for an hour or so too in a vain attempt to make the place look pretty. We had the accounts to settle too and I had to go to lie down in a darkened room afterwards.

Tea tonight was another slice of pie with potatoes, mixed veg and gravy. And the secret to warming up the pie is to put it in the air fryer. It’s simple really.

So now, nice and early, I’m going to go back to do some more on my John Mayall project

But John Mayall’s passing reminds me of that hellfire-and-damnation vicar who was preaching a sermon at the local church
"One day, everyone from this parish will die, and will be called to answer for their sins before the merciless God"
To which a man on the back rown burst out laughing.
"I don’t think that you heard me" thundered the vicar. "I said – ‘one day, everyone from this parish will die, and will be called to answer for their sins before the merciless God’"
"Oh I heard you, right enough" said the man, laughing even more
"So why are you laughing?" asked the vicar
"Well, I don’t come from this parish"

0

Tuesday 30th July 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely tea tonight.

With plenty of stuffing in the fridge left over from yesterday, ordinarily I’d be having a taco roll with rice tonight followed by a leftover curry tomorrow and something different on Thursday

However when I was reading back a couple of years in my blog I noticed a reference to pies, and it suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t had a really good pie for ages.

Add into the equation the fact that I need to bake some bread as I have now run out, so the oven will be on, but the bread will only take up half an oven. There’s half an oven going spare.

And so the answer is pretty obvious. I hope that I can remember how to bake a pie because it’s been years

It’s also been years since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. At least, that’s what it seems like. And last night was no different. It was another late night when I finally crawled into my stinking pit

And once again, I didn’t need much rocking before I was fast asleep, dead to the World.

And there I remained until all of … errr … 04:15. This is becoming a habit.

However, today I managed to go back to sleep, at least for a short while. But since then I’ve had an annoying itch in my right wrist that is driving me to distraction. It’s been going all day.

Add to that the persistent dull throb in the left wrist where I had the operation and all in all, I’m in something of a mess.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom where I sorted myself out for the day and washed the crepe bandages that had been soaking for the last 24 hours. They are now hung up to dry.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone from the night. Someone rang me up to talk about a friend’s illness and how it was going to affect me. They rang a couple of times and wanted to speak to me about this kind of thing, making sure that I was aware of what was happening and what was going on, which was a surprise when you are asleep like that sometimes. I’ve no idea why

Then Nerina and I were living in Gainsborough Road. We were working on the Industrial Estate there. It was time to go to work but only one of the alarms had worked, which was mine, so I took my pushbike and began to cycle to work. Nerina, realising that I was going to work, dashed out of bed, dashed to wash, dashed to put on her clean clothes then leaped onto her bike and chased after me. She passed me at the corner and cycled off into the distance. There were one or two other guys who were cycling with her. I was hoping that she would find a place where she’d no longer cycle and she’d have to walk. For me, I was quite happy to push on on the bike but Nerina was rather more difficult. She wanted really to lose any confrontation like lhat. She was one of these people who would only do it if if it was all marked out and mapped out etc. But on this particular run she ended up talking to a couple of other guys as she was cycling and it was an effort to keep up with them that she made this distance between the two of us and once again there was nothing that I could do to close this gap.

All of this sounds familiar too, but that’s all water that has long-since flown under the bridge.

My friend from Stoke on Trent joined the Open University and began to study but he lacked the self-discipline and was unable to make much progress. He didn’t have what it took to knuckle down like that on a six-year course. We had a few arguments about his studying but in the end I left him to do what he wanted to do rather than what he ought to be doing and it all went pear-shaped. But it was interesting listening to someone at the University talking about the OU’s Marketing. First of all, they obviously hit the students with all of the renewal business etc but eventually they hit the sleazy Newsgroups and sleazy chatrooms to invite their members along. Some of their members did quite well at studying too when you consider their background. There was certainly plenty of different people and plenty of different classes studying at the University and I was glad to have been there at a very interesting time when we had their own new chat system where we could actually see how things were evolving

So I’m now running marketing campaigns in my sleep. But had this taken place 25 years ago when I was at University there would have been plenty of sleazy Newsgroups to go at. Usenet was at its anarchic, chaotic height and there were all kinds of things going on in its hidden bowels and a Marketing campaign would have had plenty of room to manoeuvre. As for self-discipline, a lot of people totally underestimated the amount of self-discipline you needed to study at the Open University, with no tutors and lecturers sitting over you, and work, colleagues and family getting in the way. I had to revise my study plan considerably after the events of 2001 which meant that we were working practically permanent overtime. But our chat system, “First Class”, was excellent. Hats off to the designers of that. We had hours of endless fun and games

I was teasing one of the kids who belonged to one of the women. I asked her what she wanted for dessert, whether she wanted Christmas cake or Christmas pudding. She couldn’t make up her mind so I told her that seeing as the Christmas cake was mine if she chose pudding I’d give her a slice of Christmas cake too but she was dithering about, umming and ahhing, couldn’t make up her mind so I was quite busy teasing her while all of this was going on but she still hadn’t made up her mind.

Teasing kids is all good fun as long as you know where to draw the line, because there is a point where although the adults think that it’s hilarious, it’s no longer fun for the kids. You need to stop a long time before then. However, I wonder who the kid was. She wasn’t one of my three favourite young ladies, which is a shame.

It’s Isabelle today for the next week or two. She was her usual cheerful self but she couldn’t hang around as she had a blood test to do back at her office. She was in and out in 5 minutes doing my puttees, but she didn’t forget to give me my injection.

After she left, I had breakfast and then for about an hour afterwards I did something that I haven’t done for ages – nice and comfy on my breakfast chair, I read my book, BYWAYS IN BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY or, rather, finished it off. I had about 100 pages to go but I was so deeply engrossed that after I’d eaten my toast I just carried on until the end.

The book, published in 1912, explains the author’s theory that many churches are built on old pagan religious sites to a plan that is proto-pagan in origin. It’s a fascinating book, as are most of these ancient tomes stored on-line.

It’s amazing how much has been forgotten too, when you read the facts that are disclosed within its pages that never made it onto the internet and into Wikipedia. And with people now just doing their research on Wikipedia and going nowhere else, all these facts will be lost for ever.

When I’d finished my book I phoned up the hospital at Avranches to say that I won’t be going to this appointment at the private hospital. But the surgeon and his assistant are away until 18th August. Could I call back after then?

So tell me – what good is this emergency number that I was given.

And then there were the final radio notes to edit from the batch that I dictated on Saturday night.

These radio notes are important because it’s for a live concert. There’s a World-famous live album recorded 50-odd years ago but the entire recording of the whole concert has somehow found its way into my possession, so on the anniversary of its recording I’ll be doing my own live concert and you’ll hear the album as it was meant to be, not how the producers wanted it.

This was something else that so engrossed me that I forgot my lunch.

After my mid-afternoon hot chocolate I set about making the dough for the loaf for the next few days.

And while the dough was proofing I had to think about the pie. The traditional recipe is 1 part flour to one part margarine, but I seem to remember that vegan margarine is much more oleaginous so I just used 50% of the butter and that worked out really well.

There wasn’t quite enough filling but a small tin of lentils did the job perfectly. And with the pastry that was left over from my mix I made an apfel strudel.

The oven was nice and full so I put everything in to bake while I washed up and cleaned up.

A pan full of potatoes and veg with gravy was next on the agenda and that was all tipped onto a plate with a slice of the pie.

One thing that I vowed never to do, but I did it all the same, was to eat at my desk.

But TNS were playing Ferencvaros of Hungary in the second leg of a Champions League match.

Following a defeat in Budapest they had their backs against the wall but they held out for 43 minutes when a goal that was so far offside that even the player scoring it looked with amazement at the linesman who had kept his flag well down

And when TNS conceded a penalty with 30 minutes to go to fall even further behind, then that was it. But they battled on bravely and deep into stoppage time scored a consolation goal. But to be quite honest, the Ferencvaros players had long-since clocked off for the night.

It’s fair comment to say that having drawn the top seed at this stage in the competition, the draw for this round wasn’t very kind to TNS.

But TNS and its officials have aspirations of competing in the Group stages, and they’ll encounter plenty of teams as good as Ferencvaros and many seeded teams much better who will join the competition at a later stage. So heavy defeats will become the norm if things don’t change.

On that note I’m going to prepare myself for bed. It’s another late night but it can’t be helped.

But going back to the old days of Usenet, it reminded me of that slogan that just about summed up everything about it
"Usenet – where men are men….. and where women are men …..and where children are Law Enforcement Officers"
Who will ever forget that “14 year old girl” trying to entrap a “15 year old boy” and he eventually took the bait and agreed to meet the girl.
It was in fact an elaborate sting operation by one County in California posing as a girl in the hope of catching a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage boy. What they caught instead was the Cybercrime Unit of the neighbouring County posing as a teenage boy hoping to catch a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage girl

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Thursday 25th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision.

And for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one that you make where if it all goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

My decision is that I am not taking off my puttees until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed ready to climb in last thing at night.

Especially after last night where I was sitting in a pool of blood for ages trying to stop the flow that was pouring out of the hole in my leg. My blood is so thin with this Kardegic powder and this Binocrit injection that it pours out non-stop without even an attempt at slowing down.

The idea with thinning out my blood is to make it easier for my heart to lift it but like anything else, solving one problem created a bucket-load of others and we just go round and round in circles. Do I have a heart attack or do I bleed to death?

So there was I trying to slap on plasters and in the end it was one of the big ones that the nurse uses. Not that it stopped it very much, but it stopped it enough that I could crawl into bed.

Glad I was to be in there too, late as it might have been. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

At about 06:15 I awoke but ended up going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I was disorientated at 06:15 but that was nothing to how I felt at 07:00. It took me several minutes to gather my wits which, seeing how few wits I have these days, took longer than it ought to have done.

First thing was to inspect the damage. And the place was in rather a mess after last night, and so were my clothes and slippers. So after washing me, I washed everything else

Eventually I made it back in here and I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’d been on a shopping trip. On the way there in the car I was listening to a radio programme about mistreated children. They were talking about children who had been abandoned and placed in foster homes, how their parents had made all the wrong decisions, like their whole houses were furnished by IKEA, all this kind of thing. It had been bad money management that had put these families into difficulties. The conversation went on to talk about children who had no possessions and were never allowed to do anything. They thought “what kind of life did these children have to live? How awful it was”. They were busy discussing this. In the meantime I’d turned up at this shop in Crewe at the Market Precinct place. I hadn’t actually bought anything but I’d walked through and was going happily outside. It started to talk about people who had gone to the aid of these children even in adult life. I thought of Percy Penguin of course but I must have been totally distracted because just after leaving the shop I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought “God what have I done now?”. It was the manager of the shop, very apologetic, saying that I’d been charged £15:00 too much. I wasn’t sure how that was possible because I hadn’t been near a till and I’d not actually bought anything at all. However I was interested to see what his story was so I followed him back into the store and up to one of the cash points where I thought tha we’d be able to sort out any problem.

Once more, I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I’m not likely to be going round the Market Precinct Shopping Centre in Crewe any time soon, that’s for sure. I can’t really tie that in with anything else but as for the story about mistreated children, we all have our own tales to tell. I’m totally convinced that this idea of a happy home with happy parents and 2.4 children and 1.8 cars is nothing but a total myth and exists nowhere except in the minds of people who shoot margarine adverts for television.

The nurse was dismayed that I’d used one of “his” plasters on this bleeding. And he was even more dismayed to find that the leg started to bleed as soon as he ripped off the plaster so he had to use an extra one this morning. It’s not his day, is it?

But he managed to clean off the dried blood on my leg that I couldn’t reach. I really am in a right state, aren’t I?

After he left, I had breakfast with the last of the bread and then a leisurely start to the day. I wasn’t in any great hurry, which seems to be the story of my life right now.

Once I’d wound myself up, I paired off the music for the next radio programme and segued the pairs, and then carried on writing the notes. And by mid-afternoon I’d finished them all. That included stopping for lunch at some point in the proceedings.

With no bread left, I decided that I’d make some more this afternoon. But I’d also seen a strange recipe for making a kind-of chocolate bread, or maybe chocolate muffins with yeast. For want of anything better to do, I thought that I’d give it a try.

The bread was quite easy to make of course but this chocolate stuff was bizarre. It’s rather like an oil cake but with water and only a small amount of oil, and then with added yeast.

My home-made loaf of bread was perfection itself but these chocolate bun things are, well, interesting. It’ll be a few days before I tell you what they are like because they are planned as a replacement for my flapjacks, the supply of which is temporarily exhausted, so I won’t get to them until Monday or Tuesday.

But they certainly look as if they might be nice

Tea tonight was delicious. I need to make space in my freezer so I had some of my lasagne with steamed veg in a cheese sauce. My vegan lasagne definitely worked and I was impressed with that, almost as much as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

So that’s everything for today. I’m going to unwind my puttees and then go to bed. Tomorrow morning I must send an order to LeClerc. I don’t need much but it still needs to be sent

But talking about home-made bread, when Liz, Zero and a few others of us went to Chester Zoo all those years ago, we saw a loaf of bread in one of the cages.
And so we asked one of the keepers "why is that loaf there in that cage?"
"It’s quite Ok sir" he replied. "It’s bread in captivity"

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Wednesday 24th July 2024 – MY LITTLE COMMENT …

… yesterday about the “Evening Sentinel” awoke a few memories.

Going back 60 years, the bus that ran between leek and Hanley on the outbound journey used to drive without stopping, past hordes of potential passengers

There were regular complaints about this and on one occasion it was brought up in a meeting of the City Council.

Being questioned on the issue, the Councillor in charge of the City’s transport, Arthur Chollerton, replied "but if the bus stopped for the passengers it would disrupt the timetable!"

70 Years ago, you could imagine the kind of scathing comment that a remark like that would have attracted in a leading local newspaper with a wide circulation.

Eighteen months ago, they re-opened a new railway line in Devon. However, they only re-opened some of the previous railway stations, despite a considerable demand for hem all to be re-opened and even some new ones built.

Se despite the fact that there were passengers ready and waiting to be carried by the train, they were being left behind.

When asked why, the result that I received was that "we couldn’t fit those stations into the timetable"

It seems that the satire of the previous couple of generations is becoming the reality of the current one, and consequently I am waiting for the day that strange women living in ponds distributing swords becomes an acceptable way of choosing your leader.

Let’s face it, compared with a system that chose Johnson, Truss, May and Trump, it can’t be any worse.

But going back to trains in Devon not stopping, one day someone will tell the train-operating companies that if the trains didn’t stop at all for passengers and ran light between different termini they would have a much better chance of keeping to time.

And once they realise that, we’re all snookered.

But to give you a better example of how screwed-up railways in the UK are, there’s a railway station at the back of Coventry City’s football ground.

At the final whistle the platform is swamped with fans trying to catch a train back to town and the train is overwhelmed. The railway company’s response – “let’s not have the train stopping there after the game. The fans can go on the bus”

Of course, why should the railway company care about passengers? It makes its money from the subsidies off the taxpayer so it couldn’t care less whether there are passengers or not.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was another late night when I ended up going to bed long after 23:00. But nothing new there. It seems to be the current trend, to go to bed later and later.

But once more, once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking at all and once I was asleep I stayed asleep, right the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00. and it’s been a long time since that’s happened.

When the alarm went off I was being involved in the situation at Sparta Prague where they were having to be relegated for a certain reason. They’d just made a 0-0 draw with a Polish team in the European Cup but something had obviously gone wrong and I was in the middle of trying to sort it out and untangle it when the alarm went off.

Don’t ask me what I’d be doing with Sparta Prague because they haven’t come up in any conversation any time. As for “a Polish Team”, Caernarfon are to play against Legia Warzawa in the next round of the Europa League

So having had a good wash and transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as they were, I waited for the nurse to arrive.

When he turned up he saw to m legs and then attended to my arm. Even though it hurts and is quite tender, he didn’t have anything to say about its condition. So no news is good news as far as I’m concerned.

After he left I had my breakfast and then Liz came on line so we had a chat. And it was a Rosemaryesque chat too, that went on for one hour and twenty minutes. But it was different in that we actually had a lot to discuss. It wasn’t just an aimless, meandering chat.

So having sorted out a few things Liz wandered off for a coffee and I started work.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is to download and reformat a couple of concerts from a Canadian group called “Black Mountain” (thanks, Amber). They featured at a Hawkfest a while back and they recorded a live concert for German television

Despite everything, I’m trying to add to my repertoire of concerts and other live recordings, and I’m trying to encourage other artists to send me recordings of their concerts. It’s my aim to broadcast them on the radio on the anniversary of their taking place.

There’s still a lot of good music out there somewhere but it is difficult to find.

And then I’ve been choosing music for another radio programme and have even begun to write up the notes. Let’s crack on while I still can.

My cleaner came round today and we had a good chat. I’d actually finished my tac return so I gave it to her to post next time she’s at the Post Office. She also told me something about what is (or isn’t) happening downstairs and which confirms a suspicion that I’ve had for a while.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan, and the naan was perfection itself. I seem to have found the knack of making those now which is quite satisfying.

So now I’m off to bed, later than expected. I scratched my leg earlier and you wouldn’t believe the amount of blood that went everywhere. I’ve had to plaster myself up and wash the floor of the office round by where I sit.

My leg is still bleeding now, about an hour after it started. But with the blood being so thin what do you expect?

It does remind me of the time a short-tempered doctor and a nurse with only an imperfect grasp of English went to see the patient in the next bed to me who had come in from a road accident.
"The patient, nurse. How is he?"
"Him footballer at Crewe Alexandra" replied the nurse. "Him bleeding terrible"
"Never mind his qualifications" roared the doctor "How’s his condition?"

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