Tag Archives: rosemary

Saturday 2nd December 2023 – I AWOKE THIS …

… morning at 05:30, even after all of my exertions last night. And I was feeling so awake that by 05:40 I was seriously thinking about leaving the stinking pit.

But I’m glad I didn’t.

Some time later I must have fallen asleep again. And I’m glad that I did because during that little period I had a visitor. Zero came to visit me.

In fact her presence so startled me that I awoke bolt upright. And this time I actually did leave the bed before the alarm went off. Not my much, it has to be said, but any period of time is worth noting.

First port of call was to take my medication. And that was especially important seeing as how I’d abstained yesterday.

Second port of call was to check the temperature. When I lived in the Auvergne the temperature was just one of the several dozen records that I took twice a day so I could make graphs that would hopefully show a correlation between the different types of weather and the different types of energy that was being produced and consumed but I don’t do anything at all like that here.

What was important today was the fact that even though we’re so close to the sea, everything was iced up outside.

And sure enough, at 07:00 this morning the temperature was minus 3.5°C. That’s the lowest temperature that I’ve seen here, but it’s still a far cry from how things were in the Auvergne. Rosemary rang up for a chat later on (as you will find out in due course) and she told me that the temperature in the Combrailles had dropped to minus 7°C and as things had warmed up in the morning they’d had a fall of snow.

But as for my temperature (well, the temperature outside actually) it was enough to put me off going out.

After yesterday’s exertions I was really exhausted but I wondered whether I should force myself to go out but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if I fall over I can’t pick myself up again and staggering about on the ice in sub-zero temperatures is a recipe for disaster.

Instead, I came in here and finished off my order for LeClerc. I was going to send it off on Monday but instead I added in everything that I would otherwise buy at the Carrefour and it was on its way even before I’d had my morning coffee.

There were no tomatoes on delivery today but my cleaner usually goes to the market in town on Saturday morning so I sent her a message and she duly obliged.

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, more importantly, who had come with me. I’d been collecting up tools, the kind that you’d find on market stalls in the northern UK. I’d been making a collection of all kinds of stuff. Then I’d been going through it and deciding what I wanted to keep and what I didn’t, and maybe I would advertise the rest for sale or something like that, maybe even visit a market stall to try to sell them or even try to have a market stall myself so much of last night was spent going through this collection of tools and making decisions. There were things like hammers and drifts, taps and dies, files etc that I would have loved to have had at another moment.

And in a certain region of India a man was having an extreme amount of difficulty trying to buy many items that would be considered to be normal, average everyday use in the rest of the World. At a certain moment he won £721 in a lottery for deprived areas so used his winnings to place an internet order to buy stuff on line that he could have sent to him. He went on one of these reality TV programmes to talk about his winnings and his order. Some visiting dignitary from his Province’s Government climbed onto the stage without invitation and immediately began to denounce everything that he’d ordered that had not yet been delivered, claiming that it was all Chinese warmongering equipment, even things like barbecue grills, and had no place in an ordinary decent home in his Province. he was picking up these things and throwing them about on the stage, coming out with all kinds of rhetoric. I tried to calm him down but he wasn’t going to have anything about this so in the end I reluctantly decided that the only way to deal with this matter is to have a huge confrontation with him on the TV and embarrass him by his lack of knowledge and obvious prejudice.

Later on there was a couple of domineering parents who had 4 teenage children. One day they decided that they would assassinate some kind of Russian emigré noblewoman. He knew where this noble emigré woman went to relax so the arranged to be present with rifles. As the woman was leaning against a wall smoking, the father gave a signal and everyone levelled their rifles across the room at this woman relaxing in the doorway. At the very last moment she saw them and swayed to one side as they fired. Instead of being killed outright one hit her in the cheek, another hit her in the shoulder and the other 4 missed. In a fit of anger she stormed over to this table where these 6 people were sitting and tore an absolute strip off the father and demanded that he give her a glass of gin. He was astonished that she was still moving and insisting on a glass of gin, which he poured for her. First he took a mouthful himself before giving it to her. One of this children piped up “just look at that! Now you can see what it is that we as kids have had to suffer for all our lives. He can’t even give someone a drink without having to take a drink of it himself. You’ve just met him for 10 minutes and he’s treated you like this but this is how he’s treated us all out lives”.

This was when I awoke at 05:30 and as I said just now, when I went back to sleep Zero put in an appearance. I was at school and it was the middle of summer. There were loads of kids milling around. I’d been working on a few of the radio programmes. One of the guys who ran the radio asked me if I’d put together a pile of programmes that had been broadcast previously which were my favourites. I had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to find the ones. I was looking for some certain live concerts but every time I opened a folder it was the wrong one. Eventually I put 4 or 5 together onto a memory stick and walked out of my classroom ready to go downstairs. I was wearing a shirt with no sleeves that was completely open, a tie that was actually around my neck and not around the collar of the shirt and a pair of shorts which I never ever wear. You could see the skin imperfections on my legs and you could also a great big scar running down the inside of my right arm. As I walked down the steps there were all these girls sitting down there. One or two made a remark about my sartorial elegance. I explained that if they thought that I would wear full school uniform on the hottest day of the year they are totally mistaken. One of the girls talking to me had a very white pasty face and hair as if she’d been covered in flour. There was another one, a much younger girl, who was flirting around with me as she was talking so naturally I was flirting around with her too as I was replying. Then I set off and ended up in Market Street in Crewe in the period before they demolished it all. Zero came in at some point as I was going through the directories looking for these particular files. Whether she was helping me or whether she was actually involved in one of the programmes I can’t remember now but she was certainly there as I was searching through these directories looking for the specific files.

But what is going on here? I’m flirting around with another girl while Zero is in the immediate vicinity? I really must be losing my touch these days!

By this time the shopping – including my bigarreaux confits – had arrived and I was in time to watch the delivery guy go head over heels on the stairs up to my apartment. No bones broken so he was lucky. Slabs of solid granite are really hard when you fall on them.

Before I’d sent off the order I checked the promotions to see what was on special offer, and they had broccoli heads at 99 cents so I’d ordered one.

It was more stalk than florets so after I’d trimmed it and blanched the florets ready for freezing, I decided to have a broccoli stalk soup for lunch.

  • Cut up an onion and fry it in oil in the base of a heavy saucepan
  • Add in your herbs. I used
    • chervil
    • tarragon
    • coriander
  • add in a sliced lump of garlic
  • dice your broccoli stalk finely and add it in
  • dice a potato ditto
  • fry it all up nicely for a few minutes
  • add back enough of the water in which you blanched the broccoli florets
  • Simmer it until everything in there is extremely soft, and then add in some cream. I used soya yoghurt as I have plenty that needs eating quickly
  • whizz it up with your magic wand
  • eat it with some of the crusty bread that you remembered to add onto your order with LeClerc

Fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) a few waves of sleep I carried on writing the notes for Canada 2022. I’m still wandering around the vieux port – I had no idea that I’d taken so many photos there.

Rosemary rang me up too (as I said just now) to find out how things went yesterday so I told her the bad news. She tells me that in the Spring next year she’ll come to visit if her operation passes ok.

If she does, I hope that she remembers to bring with her my big bass combo amp that’s sitting in her shed. That’s the one that I found in a pawn shop around the corner from Sandra’s in Ottawa in 2019.

And while we’re on the subject, sometime in the future I’ll be expecting another parcel delivery from Canada. In the back of Strider were a Fender bass and combo amp that travelled around North America with me. Now that Strider is, apparently, no more, it’ll be in the way at my niece’s house and I need to bring it here.

Apparently my talk about Christmas cake earlier in the week inspired Rosemary and she checked in her cupboard where she found that she had all of the important ingredients for a Christmas Cake.

She’s had all of her fruit soaking since then but now she can’t find her baking tin. And at least I can smile because although I moved to the Auvergne in 2006 and still haven’t unpacked yet, Rosemary moved to France more than 30 years ago and she is far from being unpacked even yet.

Anyway we agreed that cooking and baking is a fine hobby to have if your mobility is restricted. You don’t need to move around much and you can really enjoy the fruits of your labours – in the literal sense of the word.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap, which I can enjoy now that I’ve found that I can order on-line the special burgers that I like. With a baked potato and salad it was delicious.

So tomorrow I have a lot to do. Before I go to bed I’ll be dictating the radio notes that I prepared the other day (if I get pull my head round in the right direction) so that I can prepare a programme tomorrow.

Then there’s the Christmas Cake and Pudding that need baking too.

Finally too, I have biscuits to bake. I had a couple of store-bought packets lying around but while the first packet was fine, the odour that came from the second one that I opened today convinced me that I didn’t need to taste them.

There’s some freh ginger lying around, some almonds and a few other bits and pieces so that looks as if it will make a really nice biscuit mix. It’s a good job that the vegan butter was on special offer today and I took full advantage by buying an extra packet.

So before I go to bed I’ll have a play about on the guitar and work my way through some more of my playlist. I might have a good run through RECOVERING THE SATELLITES

"We only stay in orbit
For a moment of time
And then you’re everybody’s satellite
I wish that you were mine"

Now who does that remind me of?

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Sunday 26th November 2023 – NOW THAT WAS …

… much more like how a Sunday morning ought to be. I can’t remember a single thing about it.

Well, that’s not actually correct, because from about 00:00 until about 02:30 I remember quite a lot of it. But once I crawled quietly into bed, that was that.

In fact, it wasn’t until about 12:15 that I actually saw the light of day and crawled out of my stinking pit towards my medication. And as a result I didn’t have all that much time to transcribe the dictaphone notes before my porridge, cheese on toast and strong coffee.

That’s exactly how to start the day, in my opinion.

While I eat my meals at the table I’m either watching a film or reading a book. Films are usually in the evening and books usually during the day. And right now I’m reading THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK by Alfred Watkins, written in 1925.

He’s the author who developed the theory of ley lines and while some of what he wrote is discredited by many, a lot of it still holds good today and much of the criticism levelled at his work is erroneous.

But what caught my eye was a paragraph about vegetation, in which he comments that a change in climate may have accounted for a change in vegetation. For 100 years ago, that was a novel idea.

The first trace in print that I have been able to find that suggested the possibility of climate change was in Munn’s WINELAND VOYAGES : LOCATION OF HELLULAND, MARKLAND, AND VINLAND, written in 1914, and how Munn was roundly, and in some cases, viciously vilified by his contemporaries, some of whom, like Nansen ought to have known better.

And how many people have ended up subsequently with omelette sur le visage, as they say around here.

So back in here I carried on with the dictaphone notes. Mountains and mountains of them. I was still at school. It was coming up close to my A Levels. I’d been making all kinds of plans for things that I’d wanted to do. We had a young girl from India staying with us on an exchange visit. She was also at school. One day a coach pulled up at school and we all piled on. She was quite mystified. The coach set off but when it turned onto the motorway she began to panic. She said that school buses aren’t allowed on motorways in India. Anyway, everyone persuaded her and she finally began to understand that there was a play taking place somewhere nearby that was part of our A Level syllabus so we were going to see it, as we did at school on several occasions for different things. Gradually the discussion became rather more complicated than that. I suddenly began to understand that what was going on was that they were going to drop me off at the hospital or somewhere like that because my medical results and reports had come through. The hospital wanted to follow it up so everyone was taking advantage of this play idea by saying and doing nothing to me, just presenting me with a fait accompli when we arrived at the hospital. This was why the girl was quite worried – she’d actually heard the part about dropping me off at the hospital before she’d actually heard about going to the play.

And then I was back in this dream about that hospital – actually in the hospital. They were discussing physiotherapy arrangements. Someone said that there was an article available for me that I’d find quite useful. When they turned up I expected them to have brought the article with them but the person just came on his own and asked me to go with him to fetch it. That was pretty-much impossible because I didn’t have anything with me to help, like crutches etc. It turned out that there was nothing marked on their records for any patient at all who had mobility issues. I tried to convince him that maybe this was something that the hospital had to change because I couldn’t go anywhere to pick up whatever it was that he was offering to give me.

At another point I was down in south-west London staying with a couple. I noticed that the girl had a strange fancy for a certain type of car, a 3-wheeled vehicle but was one that I’d never seen before. She had one in which she drove around and occasionally another would turn up as she found it, and there was one parked down at the end of her street. One night as I was going to bed I heard some kind of commotion but I ignored it. Next morning when I awoke all the 3-wheelers had gone. There was a dark blue Ford Cortina MkIII down at the end of the street. The first thing that I heard someone say to her was “when did you have your new car?”. She replied “17:00 yesterday evening” and she chatted away about her new car. Then she began to talk about the one parked up down the end of the road. That apparently had a new chassis so she was planning to keep hold of it for a while and maybe use it at a later date. She was annoyed because she thought that she was going to go to church but apparently her boyfriend had other plans so we began to discuss these particular vehicles amongst ourselves.

While I was asleep I met up with those 4 gipsy girls who have appeared in my meanderings before. I’d first come across them somewhere else and when we were wandering around a fairground they seemed to be loitering around a few pill-sellers. My friend and I went along and tried to usher the girls away from temptation and try to organise them into going home. In the end the two elder girls began to hang around with my friend and me. The one that I particularly liked, I took her on a little exploration of the area and was pointing out one or two other things and items to her while we were walking around.

And that intrigued me. I scrolled back through several years of notes (I didn’t go back as far as the beginning of this project in 1999 by the way) to find an earlier reference to these 4 girls because it was evident that I must have known them from somewhere – but I couldn’t find a previous mention of them.

But interestingly, it wouldn’t have been the first time that I had discreetly steered a group of young people away from a situation that was on the verge of becoming unpleasant, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that one of the aforementioned had attached herself to me as a result either

Finally there was a football match taking place in the office between 2 teams. One of the players was very badly injured, a huge lump taken out of his back. When I looked, his shirt was a mass of blood. I suggested that I take him off to the Health Centre, have them have a look at it and decide what to do. I took the guy but I couldn’t remember where the Health Centre was. I went to the local switchboard on the floor where we were and asked to be put through to the Health Centre. Instead, she picked up an external directory and began to thumb through it trying to find the number. After about 2 minutes and I suddenly realised what she was doing I ripped it out of her hands and stuck what I thought was the Internal directory into her hands. It turned out to be another volume of the external one. In the end I ripped that out of her hands too and was busy having this major argument with her while this boy was bleeding to death at my feet. And I suddenly awoke.

You really don’t want to know any more about what went on during the night. Not while you’re eating your tea anyway.

A couple of people have been speaking to me on the internet during the day. Rosemary and I had had a chat (that I’d forgotten to mention) the other day that was interrupted so she called me back today and we carried on from where we left off.

Catherine spoke to me too. She was a lecturer at University who lives in Southern Germany but I know her through her mother with whom I served on various University committees. When her parents retired they went to live in Southern Germany too and as they live only couple of hours from Munich I usually pop in when I’m passing by.

Catherine was wondering how I was doing, and also wanted to tell me that her father was not doing too well, which is a shame. I hope that he recovers soon.

As well as that I made a big batch of naan bread dough, but I seem to have miscalculated. Instead of 8 balls of 100 grams, I made 10 balls of 80 grams.

Rosemary advised me to put my festering fruit in the fridge to stop it fermenting so I had to track down some containers with lids. I know where the containers are, of course, but reaching them, the way things are, is something else.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programme. I don’t know what happened but dictating the notes last night was appalling. I made an absolute pig’s ear of it all and it ended up as quite a mess. Consequently it took me an age to untangle everything this afternoon.

However, it’s now all done, assembled and up and running ready for broadcast on … errr … 12th July 2024

Tonight’s pizza was excellent again and now that I’m fed, I’m going to be watered and then I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I should in theory start the next radio programme but that’s going on hold for a while. It’s going to be quite complicated and will require a lot of research because 19th July is quite a significant day in the history of rock music, as far as I’m concerned. Instead, I’ll prepare the one after.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed.

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Thursday 23rd November 2023 – HAVING SAID …

… the other day that I was thinking about getting up before the alarm went off, I actually managed to make it out of bed this morning before the alarm went off.

A few months ago I went through a phase of early rising, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but just recently it’s been just a distant memory.

Mind you, at one point I didn’t think that I’d ever go to sleep, never mind awaken. For several hours starting shortly after going to be I was wracked by attacks of cramp, one after another after another.

But something must have awoken me this morning and I’ve no idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. So I spend 15 or 20 minutes doing some exercises in bed with the elastic strap with which I sleep, wrapped round my ankles, and then I raised myself from the dead.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. And considering that it was a short night, it was quite a lively one. There were some huge problems about confrontations between the Government, the University and the Students’ Association. The Students Union magazine that was sent round for that month had dozens and dozens of cases in it where students claimed that they had been provoked by the Government or University into a whole variety of things. As members of the Executive Committee we had to sit and examine these cases. I was on my way to a meeting, walking through a street where all these ragged children were playing around telling each other jokes etc. When they were running around they were leaving their shoes all over the place. I had a couple of particular pairs of shoes that I’d encountered and had been playing football with them up and down the street as I was walking. One of the kids noticed and began to chase after me, making a few remarks. I was distracted because there was another instance taking place right before my eyes of the goings-on between the Government, the University and one of the students. I was in a hurry to go along and actually witness it first-hand so I couldn’t stop and sort out this boy’s shoes for him.

strawberry moose bill rammell open university Eric Hall photo April 2002And that brought back a few memories from the time that the Minister of Education was invited by the University to address the student body, and being forewarned by one of our “moles on various committees” we laid an ambush with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and the Minister fled. Such was Strawberry Moose’s fame in those days.

But of course, Strawberry Moose had the final say, as you might expect.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bedroom I was going off by road to the far north of Canada. We set off in a big double-decker express coach. I had my huge suitcase with STRAWBERRY MOOSE in it. I handed it to the driver, boarded and found a seat. There were a few other people sitting near me and we had a chat every now and again but I spent a lot of time dozing off. We eventually pulled into a service area with a restaurant etc where we had to alight because this was where our different buses came in to take us further on our way. I alighted from the back along with these other people whom I’d met. The driver began to take the cases out of the coach. We were checking times with each other and discussing our plans etc. One of the girls with us asked where the restaurant was. I said “it’s behind you” … "ohh no it isn’t" – ed … so she turned round. Of course by this time the bus had gone so you could actually see the service area. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have my case and the bus has gone. It’s dark and I could hardly see anything on this motorway service area. I certainly can’t remember my case being taken off the bus and now he’s disappeared.

And later I was with a girl who might have been Roxanne. She wanted to know if she could borrow my big Bosch hammer drill to drill a hole through a piece of wood. We had a look at the wood and saw how thick it was. We ended up having to tape a couple of drill bits together. I put them in the drill and was busy giving her a lesson on how to drill wood and how to drill deep lengths etc.

Nerina and I had had some friends round at one point – another couple. We were chatting away and it was becoming quite late. I said something to Nerina about going to bed. It caught her unawares and she sked me exactly what I meant. I explained that I was having to go to the bathroom so if she was planning on going to bed at some point in the near future I’d switch on her electric blanket for her so that her bed would be nice and warm. I switched it on and the evening carried on. I wandered off to do something. later on I went upstairs and she was there in bed with the bedclothes thrown back. I asked if the bed was warm enough. She replied that it was too warm. I asked why she hadn’t switched off the electric blanket but she didn’t say very much. We ended up having a lengthy discussion about Christmas and birthday presents.

Later on there were 3 of us. We were having a virtual tour on the internet of Yeovil, getting into a virtual car and on one of these map sites having a street view out of the town. We decided that it looked fairly sophisticated so we found another way back into the city. I went a strange way because I said that it’s one way of seeing what’s in people’s gardens. We came across a nouse where behind a tarpaulin were dozens and dozens of police motorbikes all with white fairings. They were a model that I hadn’t seen before so I imagined that they had been imported from somewhere obscure and were slowly being prepared for sale. This visual programme was incredible. We ended up on the very top of a hill really high up looking over this really beautiful valley with a river and viaduct in the distance etc. We climbed out of the car to look and the car just accelerated away on its own down the hill. I could feel the wind whistling through my hair as Nerina, this other guy, another couple of people and I stood there watching it. All 5 of us seemed to go at the same time. The woman of this other couple completely forgot who she was with and took my hand as we walked away which of course had everyone bursting out into laughter.

The last time that I was in Yeovil was with Sue from Swindon. I moved her from Brussels when I had my Luton Transit and we saw each other a few times after that if I happened to be in the UK. We celebrated the Solstice together at Avebury one year but like most things involving the UK it petered out.

Thinking about it, I was in the UK for half a day in 2013 to pick up a lorry-load of slates to deliver to the South of France and Rosemary and I went in Aberdeen in 2019 to pick up THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR instead of flying to Greenland to meet it there, and they are the only times that I’ve been in the UK since 2011. And, to be quite honest, I’ve no intention of ever returning.

Having finished the dictaphone notes I carried on with the radio programme and that’s now finished and up and running, ready for broadcast on … errr … 5th July next year.

In between all of that, I had my coffee and bread-and-butter pudding and phoned the garage to talk about Caliburn and his controle technique. He actually has a vacancy and he’ll send someone round “shortly” to pick him up. And Caliburn will soon be 17 too.

The lift engineer who came to chat with me was a woman – not that that’s a surprise in itself these days – but I wouldn’t go doing any lift engineering in the clothes that she was wearing. And she was wearing enough perfume to pole-axe a bactrian camel. It reminded me of the story about the guy spreading white powder outside his front gate and his neighbout asked him why.
"It’s to keep Polar Bears off my cabbages" he replied.
"But there are no Polar bears within 5,000 miles of this place"
"Powerful stuff, isn’t it?"

This afternoon I’ve been sorting out more of my Canada 2022 photos and I’m now about to board my train in Moncton ready to travel back to Montréal. And what a journey that was.

As well as that I’ve been going through one of the backup drives checking duplicates and disposing of yet more.

Tea tonight was steamed veg and veggie balls in vegan cheese sauce, delicious as usual. Tomorrow’s tea with have to be sausage and beans, not salad, as I’m not going shopping in the morning. At some point the garage might come by for Caliburn and I’ll probably be out at the shops or something so I’ll stay at home and wait, which will mean that he won’t come.

But I’ve plenty of other things that will keep me out of mischief. At some point I’m even going to soak my fruit ready for Christmas baking and that’s the kind of thing that will be exciting.

My first ever Christmas cake a couple of years ago, coached on the internet by Hannah from Batley, was a resounding success but I put that down to beginner’s luck. And in any case Hannah is no longer in our Welsh group so I’ll be on my own for this one.

But I learnt a lot last time. Here’s hoping that I can remember it.

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Sunday 12th November 2023 – AND THERE I WAS …

… planning on a nice relaxing day today with very little, if anything, to do. But as usual, all kinds of events come along to confound me.

What didn’t help was that it wasn’t until 11:42 this morning that I first noticed what time it was. And that is far from being the same as saying what time it was that I actually arose from the dead.

And if things start badly, things can only be worse. You should see the amount of stuff on the dictaphone from during the night. I must have travelled miles and that probably explains why I was so exhausted yet again once I arose.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails I sat down and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

All of them.

There had been a storm or fire or both or something in the big house in which we lived altogether and it had been badly damaged. There was a lot of repair work needed to be done to it. At the moment it was a question of trying to secure the premises against anything worse happening. We were basically divided into shifts and rotas about how to look after the property. I had to stand there on patrol at one point to keep away any onlookers or anyone who might be there for some kind of nefarious purposes. There was a lot of paperwork that had burnt and was blowing around. While I was standing there looking at it a few more bits fell from the ceiling to the ground. I was supposed at this point to go on patrol around the area to see who was about but I had a lot of difficulty walking and I’d be of no use if I had to confront anyone so I decided to let other people do that. When I walked round the corner there on the field even though it was raining were a few of my housemates playing cricket. One of them shouted “go and put the kettle on, Eric” but of course it was going to be extremely difficult because of the fire and the damage and because of my difficulties. In the end he left the cricket field and wandered off somewhere as if he was going to do it.

At some point there was a question of another young girl of woman being involved in this. When we finally met her we found that she was just as handicapped as I am so obviously she couldn’t stand her patrol looking after the building and patrolling the area for a couple of days. We felt that we should have known about her handicap beforehand otherwise we could have made certain allowances for her but now things are under way and already happening it’s rather too late now for that.

It was the custom of the hospital to send several patients dressed up as Father Christmas, his helpers and his reindeer to go and collect money for charitable purposes. This year though they decided that instead of making a sleigh they would do it with a motorbike and sidecar. They asked me if I would like to go but I couldn’t really get in and out of the sidecar very easily so that would seem to rule that out. Then they were having a lot of difficulty trying to think of someone else. I thought to myself that if I’d known that I was expected to do this sort of thing along with everyone else I’d have thought twice about coming here.

And that was another dream that I actually dictated in French.

Then there was someone in our group with a name something like Awotni but when we had a list of members we couldn’t see anyone who corresponded to that. I made some kind of light-hearted remark about Polish family names which was immediately greeted with distaste by some members of the group. Then I remembered thinking that maybe if this person had been treated for a long time he shouldn’t be in our group anyway or maybe the group isn’t the correct place for them to be because this group that I’m in is about everyone being able to do every different thing.

There was also a girl put into our group who didn’t seem to be capable of doing very much. We didn’t think much of that idea because we were all trying to be as equal as possible and doing as many tasks as we could. We didn’t really want anyone who didn’t have the courage to follow it all through. This person seemed to be treating it just as a way of relaxing than a matter of life and death like the rest of us thought that it was. We didn’t appreciate that kind of levity at these serious moments.

“I wish that you’d store your accessories and introduce them into the discussions as appropriate” we said to someone who seemed to be much more able to move about than the rest of us but who didn’t seem to work as hard. We considered that due to the health that everyone put in we ought to be doing so much more and there should be so much more solidarity amongst the patients.

Zero put in an appearance last night. Her father was talking about a Christmas dinner that he’d made and how she’d sat down from the start and eaten absolutely everything put in front of her, all the way through to the Christmas pudding. He was ever so impressed that she’d managed to take all of it. It was the way that he said it that made me think of some kind of double-entendre and to my complete surprise, in the middle of this dream I had an immense fit of jealousy.

It actually reminded me of the girl who went into a pub and asked for a double-entendre so the barman gave her one.

But it was a real surprise, as I could tell from how I dictated it. But at least after talking about Christmas food yesterday, it’s made me focus on what I need to do for Christmas. So Liz – I shall be relying on you to tell me when to start to make my cake to make sure that I don’t leave it too late.

And I’ll make sure that it’s squirrelled away so that Zero can’t find it. As Liz will tell you, I don’t “do” sharing when it comes to cake. However, if Zero (or TOTGA, or Castor) were here, I might be persuaded to make an exception.

My friends from the Wirral came to see me last night. We were talking about all the old times etc. In the end we had to go out to do something. And the wife had a pushchair with one of her kids in it. While I was eating my meal I’d seen a photo and I was trying for ages to place this photo. It suddenly occurred to me that it was the old petrol station in Hungerford Road (of course there never was a petrol station there). I eventually worked out where this photo was and decided that we had to go. There was a big problem about 2 of my cars that needed moving around, some kind of question about them having no tax, no MoT, all Cortima MkIIIs. I needed to move them from where they were stored. We had a huge debate about which one we should move first and which should be moved second. I wasn’t even sure to where I was going to move them. In the end my friend asked me about driving – how come the Senator was the only big vehicle that I had these days. I replied “actually I can’t drive any more anyway so there’s no point having a car. If I am able to drive in the near future it won’t be in professional transport so I won’t need a big car”. We then went back to discussing in which order we were going to move these 2 MkIII Cortinas.

And that’s a recurring dream, isn’t it? Having cars scattered all over the place with no tax or MoT which need to be moved around.

I was in Crewe again last night and had gone to a petrol station. I bumped into a guy … "Lee Jenkins" – ed … whom I knew who played centre-half for Haverfordwest. We began to talk about vehicles and how he’d bought a MkIII Cortina once and when he’d come to sell it he had over £1000 for it. I pointed to mine and said “do you mean like this?”. I was in my gold MkIII estate, the one in the barn in Virlet. His eyes lit up and he said “wow! It’s great!” and went to have a really good look around it. He asked if he could take it for a drive but I had to decline. He said “you’re probably afraid that I’d never bring it back!”. I replied “something like that”. I told him all about the vehicle, one owner from new, guaranteed genuine mileage etc, We had quite a lengthy chat about it.

And “wow” he may well say. Cortina MkIII 2000E models were pretty rare on the ground when they were new and current, but in my atelier in Montaigut is a 2000E saloon and the gold MkIII estate in my barn in Virlet is a 2000E estate of which there are known to be no more than half a dozen still in existence and which is worth a King’s ransom.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was at work in Belgium. I’d gone out for a coffee break, to stand outside. While I was out there a girl came up and began to attack me, trying to push me into the lake. After I’d fought her off I went into the security hut. The guy there made me a coffee. We had a little chat about how crazy some people are in this building. I had to go to fetch something from my car. On the way back I met a Post Office girl trying to talk to a cat. It turned out that cats received telegrams. You had to give the telegram to the correct cat, not just to any cat. They were trying to train the cats to accept the telegrams which I thought was the strangest thing that I’d ever seen. I walked back down to the front door of the building, pressed the button for the sliding doors to open but nothing happened. I could hear people on the inside but no matter how I pressed the button I couldn’t make the sliding doors open so that I could go in. I thought “this is good, isn’t it? I’m locked outside the building now”.

What with stopping for lunch, it took me until about 15:00 to transcribe all of that – and it might have been done quicker had I not … errr … gone off with the fairies for a while.

Then I went to make my fruit bread. I took my time making the dough and it actually turned out quite well.

After I’d finished my lunch I’d taken the last of the pizza dough out of the freezer (so I’ll have to make some more next weekend) and it had been defrosting.

Just as I was going to deal with it Rosemary rang me for a chat and we had another one of our marathon sessions. She’s rather worried because she has a major operation shortly (which I why she couldn’t have come with me to Michigan) and she wants someone to either reassure her or to talk her out of it.

She talked about her operation at great length and in great detail, despite me telling her on several occasions not to. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly how I feel about operations and surgery.

But it’s not likely that I’m going to talk anyone out of surgery. No matter how ill even the thought of it makes me feel, I’m a firm believer in the principle of Macbeth and the murder of Duncan “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly”.

It’s much more painful to spend all of this time worrying and postponing it rather than to have it done quickly.

When they operated on my kidneys they didn’t even tell me. They just took me, bed and all, down into the basement, stuck a mask over my face and said “here – smell this!”. And that was the last that I knew about it.

As a result everything was running really late. But the fruit bread is, for once, cooked to perfection and the pizza was pretty good too.

So I’ll wander off and have a good sleep. For a change, there’s nothing happening tomorrow so I can push on with a few things without any interruptions.

Well, such is the theory. We all know how it works in practice.

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Friday 3rd November 2023 – SO MUCH FOR THAT …

… idea about having a good night’s sleep.

It might have been only 23:00 when I went to bed but at 03:30 I was still wide awake with no sign whatever of ever going to sleep.

However I must have done at some point but I was awake again before the alarm went off even if I wasn’t actually up and about.

Once the alarm went off I made it to my feet and went off for my medication. And then back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. I’d been away somewhere for several weeks, it might have been the hospital, and I’d parked Caliburn in a shed on a piece of waste land at the back of a pile of terraced houses. I went there to pick him up. There were cars all over the place, being worked on or being dismantled etc. Going into the shed Caliburn, who was now an LT Volkswagen, had had one of his air vents bodily ripped out so there was a hole in the front panel. I opened the doo and there were engines, cowlings, covers and shrouds everywhere. I fought my way in. A guy came running over. He asked if I could give him a jump start. I started the van and rolled forward and it was to his father’s wheelchair. We had to put the leads from the van to the wheelchair in order to make it start

There had been something earlier. I’d gone on a long-distance journey with someone. Everyone else had gone at the end of whatever this meeting was. The only way out for me was to climb over the fence. That was extremely complicated and I ended up having to do practically a forward roll over the fence to go out again. I’d brought someone with me. We were talking about the accounts and he said “I’ll let you off some of the accounts in view of the fact that you drove”. I thought that the reason why we took so long was because we had to go back once or twice for things that he’d forgotten. That really bumped up the mileage. He’s not doing me any favours at all by knocking a couple of things off. I should be sending him a bill for all the extra mileage.

This “Peace Train” thing (whatever that might have been) was about Joan Baez and her guitar being hung from some kind of monorail track and being driven around as if she was a train on the monorail while she was playing the guitar and singing that particular song.

A kitten was wedged underneath the foot of the table and stuck up against the glass surface which was why it was looking so peculiar. I actually dreamt that bit in French and began to dictate it in French.

Finally I was coming back from work somewhere and I’d stopped in a town to have a coffee. I had a wheelbarrow with a few bricks and things like that in it which I no longer needed so I just abandoned it in the street and went in. The coffee bar was packed and there wasn’t room anywhere but the proprietor encouraged the patrons to move up a little. It made a space for me next to a girl. I sat there with my coffee and we had quite a chat before she disappeared. Then I had to leave. I was in a wheelchair by this time, doing down the steps in it when I noticed her outside. She asked if she could give me some help but I told her that I’d be able to manage. We were sorting through a few things of hers, LPs and CDs etc because there was a market on in the town where there was a stall for 2nd-hand CDs etc. I noticed in her glove compartment things like books about camping, scouting and so on. I thought that she was one of these strange “jolly hockey sticks” types of girls who never seem to grow up.

Later on I staggered out onto the bus and went to St Nicolas for my shopping. There wasn’t much that I needed but it was nice to be out and about and to have my coffee while I waited for the bus home.

Once more it was a struggle up the stairs and I really can’t go on like this much longer. But back in here I made myself some soup – and then I crashed out for half an hour.

In a couple of weeks’ time it’s the birthday of one of my neighbours and she was having some of her family around so I went up to say hello and to give her a box of chocolates that I’d bought her.

But as usual, I didn’t stay long. I’m not really the sociable type, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and after an hour or so I came back down here to crash out yet again.

What I’ve been doing this afternoon is to hack some sound-files about, tidy up some of the music directories (yes, directories – I’m still working in DOS 5.0 in my head) and reviewing some pages in my blog. There are quite a few that need updating with things missed off that I never had the time to do at the time, and I want to catch up with that.

As well as that, I’ve been chatting on the internet. Liz is helping me choose a couple of new domestic appliances, Rosemary and I talked about the storm and then Hans in Munich has found some real Bavarian gingerbread spice mix and would I like some?

Actually, today I finished the last of the honey and oat biscuits that I made and some gingerbread biscuits would be nice but the spices won’t be here by then. I fancy making some chocolate ones this weekend. The last batch of chocolate ones that I made were really good. Add some orange and some coconut flavouring and they’ll be really nice.

Tea tonight was chips cooked in the air fryer and salad with one of those strange burgers that I bought a while ago, and it was actually quite nice.

But that’s got me thinking. I’ll have to send my spies out to look at the pavements at one of the bus stops at Yquelon. There’s a bus stop that’s not too far away from Noz and I’m wondering if I ought to have a go at going there on the bus some time to see if I could survive the journey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve hit the jackpot on several occasion at Noz with the end-of-range stuff that they have, and I wonder if I ought to think about going again.

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Saturday 28th October 2023 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, there wasn’t anything on the dictaphone from the night and that’s not something that happens every day. I must have had one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve ever had.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until after 04:00. I was quite wound up and stressed out after my travels yesterday.

What I used to do in the old days when I drove taxis was that when I would finally return home I’d go out for a good run to tire myself out

That wasn’t anything that I could do after I married because I never had the time to unwind but when I moved to Brussels and was chauffering, I would go out running again. And I must admit that I was sleeping better after I started running yet again after I moved here.

Of course, all of that is well in the past now.

As I expected, the phone never stopped pinging during the early morning but I tried my best to ignore it. Nevertheless I abandoned all hope and staggered to my feet at 11:40.

Today, I’ve been quite busy. For a start, I’ve had to back up the main computer with all of the amended files that accumulated on the portable computer while I was away at Ice Station Zebra. And there were several hundred of those. It took ages.

There were several discussions on the phone and the internet too. Rosemary rang me and we had another one of our marathon chats. Liz and one or two other people sent me messages but the most surprising, and one of the most welcome, was a chat that I had with someone with whom I usually only have interaction during the night when I’m asleep.

We had football too – TNS v Y Bala. And as you might expect, it was more a case of “when” rather than “what”. The fact that Y Bala held out for 35 minutes before conceding was something surprising.

TNS scored a second too but Y Bala held out until the final whistle. And that was a much better effort than the last time that we saw TNS play Y Bala, when the latter team folded up so dramatically in the final few minutes last summer.

Sure enough, TNS are on their usual relentless stride to the championship with no real opposition from anyone.

Many people think that it must be pretty boring with TNS winning everything every year since the money came into the club, and whether or not that might be the case, the fact is that the race to catch up has improved the quality of the matches and the quality of the players dramatically.

In recent years we’ve had 4 full Welsh internationals, several under-21 internationals, a Zimbabwe international and internationals from Malta, New Zealand and one of the Caribbean nations plus many more besides. There was nothing whatever like that 10 years ago.

Tea tonight, later than usual, was chips (potato and sweet potato) with salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like so much.

So bedtime now, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll go on a wander about again during the night. I missed my night-time voyage.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and then maybe I’ll have to start work again. I’ll have to do that some time.

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Wednesday 25th October 2023 – I’VE HAD SOME …

… good news today, and some bad news.

The good news is that the Social Services have agreed to pay for my transport. That’s a great weight off my mind for sure.

The bad news is that it seems from the blood test results recently that not only is my red blood count dropping rapidly now that I’m no longer taking the Aranesp, but that the count of my platelets is dropping rapidly too.

12 months ago it was at about 275 units. Today it’s 115. The critical limit is 100 units.

The doctor from Belgium came to see me and to give me the bad news. In her opinion the carcinogenic protein is now attacking the platelets. It’s obviously not satisfied with attacking my red blood cells, heart, kidneys and nervous system

She’s no haematologist but at least, being from Brussels she can read Flemish so she’s much more of an idea as to what is going on at Leuven without me having to do my best to interpret, so tomorrow she’s going to see the haematologist to “have a chat” about me.

Whatever that means, we’ll soon find out.

This morning I was awoken by a nurse who came to take a blood sample – at 05:20. That was the last thing that I wanted. But to my surprise she did it first go. And that’s just as well because my arms are covered in Sticking plaster.

After that I couldn’t go back to sleep so in the end I gave it up. Mind you, I still had breakfast in bed. The food here is somewhat … errr … indifferent but two bread rolls, a pile of jam and a big bowl of hot black coffee is a good way to start the day.

First thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was involved in some kind of project with the radio and the programmes. The Social Services etc wondered why they were played when they did. Someone explained that that was when they had a good audience. The plan was that after my death they intended to continue to broadcast the programmes just to keep things going over and to prolong the radio station;

Later on Nerina and I had an appointment with a local bank manager at 12:00. We set off on foot and on our way round we picked up a few bits and pieces of shopping and carried on to the bank’s office. When we arrived we rang the bell but no-one answered the door so we rang again. Eventually someone came and wanted to know what we were doing; We explained that we had an appointment so we were ushered in and kept to one side. A few minutes later someone came back and said “yes, you can go upstairs. Go into that room there, slide the ladder up and you can climb up to the next floor. We went in there and there was one of the strangest arrangements that I’ve ever seen. There was indeed a ladder there and four steps hanging down from the ceiling. The ladder was extensible and you would push it up to join up with these steps. It was narrow, rickety and looked completely unsafe to me. I held it steady while Nerina tried to climb but she couldn’t get up. I knew full well that I wasn’t going to get up. After several tries Nerina decided that she couldn’t go up there. I agreed with her because this was the biggest Health and Safety violation that I’ve ever seen. We went back to where this secretary person was. She was busy typing. We explained that we couldn’t go up the ladder. She sighed and went off to try to find someone else again. We had a good look round and found several interesting papers about different things that had been prepared in duplicate or in multiple copies. There were piles of these documents lying around. One was about a certain man whom I knew from North America who had died. He was said to have been the biggest promoter of Rugby League in the UK and of summer sport. It bewildered me why this stuff was here. Eventually a man came back with a couple of items that he must have taken from our shopping bag. He asked us if we recognised these items. We explained that we’d bought them on the way to the bank. He asked which shops we’d gone to to buy them. We explained and that obviously satisfied him because then he invited us into the office and up some proper stairs onto a landing where there was a corridor that led outside but without a roof and then up another set of stairs in another building until we finally reached his office.

Finally I was in my yellow Cortina last night driving through Shavington. I suddenly realised that I had the wrong numberplate on the front of the car. I’d bought the correct numberplate to fit on but I hadn’t done it at that moment so I pulled up at the side of the road, lifted up the car so the automatic jack clicked in and then went to fetch the numberplate out of the back. But then I noticed that screwed to the rear was a numberplate from New Zealand0… "South Africa actually" – ed … and I suddenly realised that I’d had this car registered in New Zealand so the front numberplate that I was going to fit on wouldn’t be any good. I’d have to have another one made. I went round to the front and a postman pulled up on one of these little Mobylettes, had a good look tat what I was doing and then rode off into his drive. I then picked up the front of the car and dropped it off the jack onto the ground and it just rolled off on its own, backwards across the road, did a spectacular spin round and shot off down the pavement. People just stood there looking at it and no-one made an effort to stop it. It ran into the back of someone’s car. I had to go round and apologise, and explain everything. They all found it hard to believe but that was certainly the case of what happened. I had to apologise for the accident.

With no tests or examinations scheduled today I planned on having a shower – and I don’t ‘arf need it.

However each time I prepared myself to go, someone came to delay or interrupt me. It wasn’t until 15:45 that I staggered into the shower.

Luckily, here it’s a walk-in wet room so I was quite at my ease and I really enjoyed myself. It made such a change to actually be in a shower.

While I was at it, I made a few phone calls. Firstly to tell the taxi company that my transport has been approved and secondly to book the vehicles to take me to the sessions at the Centre de Re-Education.

And then I had to telephone the ergotherapist to cancel our appointment next Thursday afternoon. He thinks that there’ an ergotherapist at the Centre de Re-Education and maybe they could help me. If not, I should recontact him for another appointment.

In between everything I’ve been attacking the radio programmes. I’ve chosen the music for another three of them. I’m trying to make the best use possible of my time while I’m here to give me a running start.

It also seems that I’ve been in great demand today. Rosemary rang me up and we had another one of our mega-discussions. And then I’ve had discussions on the internet with half a dozen people, or maybe even more. I lost count at a certain moment.

So now that I’ve had my tea and written my notes I’m off to bed. I’d like to have a running start with that too if they are going to wake me up at 05:20 for another blood test.

But what will be the outcome of this meeting tomorrow? One or two people have told me that I should be looking at it with trepidation but actually I’m not. I’m under no illusions whatsoever about the inevitable outcome of this illness and I’m fully prepared for it.

However it shows signs of optimism. They have found something, and they are intending to do something about it. You can’t wish for any more than that.

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Friday 20th october 2023 – I’M ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED …

… that some people have been put on this earth for no other reason than to cause as much inconvenience, chaos and disruption to people’s lives as they possibly can.

This saga about these documents that I have to send off for my hospital visit is rumbling on and on and on.

When I returned from the shops this morning I found an e-mail that had been sent to me with a request for a whole pile of documents. It ended up being a pile of 19 documents that they wanted, several of which had already been sent.

Having collected the ones that I had and scanned in the rest I sent them off, only to receive a reply asking for more and more.

And so it went on during the day until 16:47, 13 minutes before the Assurance Office closed, asking me
1) why am I going to the hospital? What are they planning on doing to me
and
2) why am I going to a hospital so far away.

And so I replied
1) "On page 5 of document 2 it clearly states ‘we propose a further stay in hospital to supplement the investigation ….’" (and then a whole list of tests that they propose).
and
2) "If your doctors would be so kind as to look at page 2 of document 2 they will see that I have ALREADY been to a local hospital who were unable to identify the problem and the condition has since deteriorated. Therefore there needs to be a further investigation in depth"

By the time that my reply was ready the Assurance Office had closed – which means that they won’t now reply with a decision until after I’ve left – and so, being in a totally foul mood, I added a few other bells and whistles to my letter and finished it off with a "if there is anything else by which I can waste even more of my time by repeating to you information that is already in your possession, please don’t hesitate to let me know".

Many years ago, I was totally and utterly stressed out and would lose my temper at the slightest provocation. You’ve no idea what used to go through my mind back in those horrible days and it took an enormous effort to get a grip of things.

Living in splendid isolation in the mountains of Central France miles away from all kinds of interaction with people worked wonders and although things would occasionally crop up, I’d just fly to Canada, hire a car and go and sit in the wilderness and the peri-arctic tundra until sanity returned.

Back in 2019 I was walking along the old Emigrant Trail through South Pass in the Rockies, thinking just how peaceful and calm things are around here, and how I ought to spend more time in places like this. But unfortunately, these days, I can no longer run away and hide

Meanwhile, back at the ra … errr … apartment …

Last night was a slightly better night. There was still plenty going on but I managed to ignore a lot of it.

It was still a struggle to raise myself from the dead, and after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I had a listen to the dictaphone. I’d talked to a few people about how I was going to change the kitchen round in my house. One of my friends began to talk to me about the kitchen that I had, what it was like etc so I explained. I explained that I’d probably be wanting to dispose of it completely, even down to the pipes etc. he said that he would like to have it. I said that that was fine by me. He asked if he could come to pick it up the next day. I burst out laughing and said “I haven’t even organised anything yet or ordered anything, let alone had it delivered etc”. He replied “your niece’s daughter is going to be rather upset because she’s planning on taking a day off tomorrow and coming to help me do it”.

And later I was going through the collection of solo poses for my 3D characters, picking out the individual poses and making some kind of giant collage with them all superimposed. I’d done three and was on the way to finishing off a fourth when someone came to the door. They asked me what I was doing so I explained. They thought that it was a pretty pointless task because I wouldn’t have the benefit from doing it. I’d be long gone before this project was particularly finished

Finally I’d been out drinking (so that was obviously a dream) with a couple of people from Crewe and we were on our way home. We called at a pub on the way back and outside the pub next door was a guy whom we all knew. We had a chat with him. I asked my two companions what was happening this weekend. They didn’t really come out with much. I needed to use the bathroom so I went to find it. It was in a terrible mess with toilet paper everywhere etc. I tidied it up as best as I could. I found that the door wouldn’t close. There was no bolt so in the end I teased a nail out of the wall and slipped it in where the bolt should be. That managed to close it. The next step was to sit down but the toilet seat fell off. In the end I thought that I’d abandon it as a bad job and just go home.

Deciding last week to go to the shops at St Nicolas was a really good decision. The bus whisked me off and dropped me off on the raised kerb, and then I had a slow wander around the Carrefour just picking up one or two things that I need quite quickly, like tomatoes, lettuce and mushrooms.

With plenty of time before the bus came back for me I had a nice hot coffee and then sat and watched the world go by.

As I said before, I think that I’m moving a little easier after the exercise so I can’t wait for this rehabilitation course, that should have started last week, to begin.

After my bread and soup we had this totally shambolic afternoon of dealing with all of this paperwork and fielding probably about a dozen phone calls for one reason or another.

The only one that was really welcome was Rosemary, and we had a good chat for a while.

Last night I’d dictated the notes for one of the radio programmes but when I listened to them I decided that they weren’t up to much so I re-dictated them. They are no edited and in the process of being assembled.

If I’m lucky, I might finish it tonight and even dictate the notes for the next programme in the list.

Tea was a baked potato, salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like so much.

So when I’ve finished what I need to do, I’ll go to bed. I have my blood test tomorrow and then I crack on with the notes that I’ll dictate in a minute.

Many years ago, “Bomber” Harris used to greet members of the Air Ministry whenever he met them with “and what have you done to impede the War effort today?”. I had so much to do, some of which was quite important, but I’ve not done any of it, what with one thing and another.

So who’s going to come along and impede my efforts tomorrow?

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Tuesday 10th October 2023 – I WISH THAT I …

… hadn’t bitten the bullet and sent off that mega-food order this afternoon.

No sooner had I pressed “send”, received the acknowledgement and watched the money go out of my account when along came an e-mail

“Dear Mr Hall. You are requested to come to the hospital for 11:00 on Monday 23rd October. Please set aside one week”.

And so that, dear reader, is that.

As it happens, it was nice to have some good news for a change. After all, I had quite a dreadful night.

It was rather later than I would have liked to have gone to bed but an ache in my foot made it difficult to sleep. The pain slowly spread up the leg until by about 02:00 my entire lower right leg felt as if it was on fire.

Consequently I spent most of the rest of the night rubbing mint-tinted cold cream into my leg in the hope that the sensation would die down.

At some point I must have gone to sleep because there was something on the dictaphone from the night. I was with my friend from the Wirral and someone else last night. I don’t know what we were doing at the start but we’d ended up at Middlewich and gone to see my father’s factory. We went in through the back door of course and worked our way round through the garage. My father was working at a vice. I asked him if he’d seen (someone). He replied “yes, he’s upstairs” so we went up the stairs onto the gallery while whoever it was was doing what he had come here to do. My father came up a few minutes later. He had a razor and a few other things. It looked as if he was going to shave someone. Then I realised that someone was going into hospital for an operation that afternoon so I imagined that the shaving is due to that so he was there with the razor. He turned to me and asked “are you ready?. I asked “ready for what?”. He replied “you’re donating the tubes, aren’t you?”. I answered “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t want to be involved or anything. If you want to take something out of my body just hit me with a piece of wood and do it while I’m unconscious, and don’t say anything. I don’t want to know about the procedure or anything else that happens”.

Not very much but I was surprised that there was anything at all on there.

When the alarm went off I went and had my medication and then checked my mails and messages. Having then transcribed the dictaphone notes I sat down to revise my welsh but regrettably fell asleep at the computer.

Armed with my coffee and fruit bun, I joined the lesson and to my surprise it seemed to pass quite well. However, my brain is still all churned up with rubbish and nothing seems to stick.

After the lesson I went through the shopping list to update it and have several goes at sending it. Some of the stuff that I wanted wasn’t in stock, and then the order fell below the minimum £50:00 limit so I had to track down some more supplies that I might need.

My weekly shopping bill for food usually runs out at about €35:00 and I was buying for a fortnight, so I was bewildered as to why I couldn’t reach €50:00 with ease.

What I should have done, I suppose, is to have asked one or two of the other housebound people in the building if they needed anything that I could have ordered for them.

And then I had the e-mail from the hospital. They want me to have a blood test before I go, so I had to ring the nurse to arrange for him to come round on the Saturday before I go to do the necessary.

But even though I’m looking forward to the stay in the hospital and the likelihood of having some kind of treatment that might possibly help me, I’m not looking forward to the journey. In fact, I have the feeling that the strain of the travelling is wiping out all of the benefits of whatever treatment I might be having, and more besides.

Next task was to ring up the people who handle the Autonomy issues. I spoke to them almost a fortnight ago and they promised to send me a form, but it’s never been received. I rang them back to hustle them along and they agreed to send me another one.

Let’s hope that this one arrives.

Rosemary rang me too and we had a really good chat about all kinds of things, but it wasn’t one of our usual marathon chats because the doorbell rang – the delivery guy with my food. Some of it was frozen and there was a lot of chilled food so it all needed to be put away as quickly as possible.

So right now, not only is there not even one cubic millimetre of space in the freezer, there’s not even one cubic millimetre of space in the fridge either. At least I won’t be going hungry for several weeks, even if I don’t go out again.

While I was doing all kinds of stuff with the food, Rosemary had texted me back. She has one of these small Land Rovers so I’d asked her to raise the seat to its highest position and then measure the height of the seat from the ground. The answer was “60 centimetres”.

My chair here is 50 centimetres off the ground and it’s something of a struggle to rise to my feet. If I’m to buy a different car, it needs to have a seat more than 50 cms off the ground to make it easier for me to stand up so I need to have a few measurements lined up.

What’s annoying is that Strider’s seat is exactly the right height for this kind of thing. It was so easy to get in and out of him. I suppose that in theory I could have him shipped over here but he’s as old as Caliburn and salt on the roads in Maritime Canada haven’t been kind to him.

As well as that, his engine is an old-generation V6 “Cologne” engine of 4.0 litre and drinks petrol like there’s no tomorrow.

With what time remained (and there was some, after all of that) I edited the notes for another radio programme and that’s now ready to be assembled and completed, but not tonight. I’m exhausted.

As I had my wraps delivered I could have a taco roll for tea, with some of the leftover stuffing. There’s a little left so I’ll make a curry tomorrow. But now that I have some soya yoghurt I can make some naan bread to have with it. I’m not quite sure where I’ll put the leftover dough rolls but I’ll worry about that tomorrow, I suppose.

So now I’m off to bed now that I’ve finished my notes. I’m hoping for a much better night tonight and tomorrow I’ll have to put away the rest of the food. There isn’t any room right now to put anything.

But give me a week or so and there might be some space somewhere – and then I’ll be off to the hospital. I hope that they will be able to do something that might improve my situation and I can go back to have something like a better quality of life.

Mind you, I do have to admit, I can’t complain too much. At least I seem to be doing OK for food right now.

0

Monday 2nd October 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

… believe this, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but at 04:20 this morning I was actually up and about.

And as it happens, I could have been up and about before that too because I spent a good 30 minutes trying to go back to sleep before I finally gave it up as a bad job.

By the time the first alarm went off I had finished one of the radio programmes on which I’d been working and had almost finished the second.

However, it’s not all roses. My condition is deteriorating by the minute and this morning I couldn’t even manage to climb into the bath to take a shower. It took me all of my force and guile to make it into the bath and then I had a difficult task of trying to stay upright while I showered.

The nurse came round and although he didn’t give me my Aranesp (I’ve had a mail from the hospital telling me to pause the injections) we had something of a chat about a few other things.

After he’d left I had a few things to do – the first of which was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Mobility and Inclusion Department of the département.

They have now confirmed that I am entitled to a disabled person’s card and also a disabled parking permit. They want a photo of me for the card but the easiest way to do this is to create a personal account on the French Government’s “personal space” website.

On there, you can upload a photo of yourself and then it can be cross-referenced to any other Government site. You need a special code in order to set it up and they had sent it to me. It’s a rather complicated procedure but it works because eventually I had an acknowledgement.

Halfway through doing that, I crashed out and that’s no surprise. My 04:20 start was killing.

Once I’d recovered I had a coffee and a fruit bun, and then chose the music for the next radio programme.

Rosemary rang up for a chat so I made use of the opportunity to configure the new webcam that I’d bought the other day on-line. Not that she wants to see me of course, but I was more interested in the built-in microphone. That works an absolute treat, apparently, so I can now do on-line calls from the big computer in here.

As well as that, I’ve been chatting to several of my friends on-line. There’s something going on at the radio so I’ve been deep in conversation with them making a few plans and doing some work ready for an appointment next Monday.

Something else that I’ve been doing is thinking about motability scooters. However I want a motability scooter with Attitude so I’ve been thinking about some of these three-wheeled scooter things with the two close-coupled wheels at the front.

Several of my friends are still involved with motor bikes so I’ve been seeking advice.

There was the dictaphone to deal with too. I was in something like a Paul Temple adventure as Temple himself, investigating a kidnapping or murder that was taking place in Granville at the back of the market down there towards the car park. I went down there to look and was able to hop on and off the bus but everything else came to satisfy me. At one moment a guy whom I knew came over for a chat but he said that he wasn’t Temple. There were several other people who looked as if they were either doing something or waiting for them to be clear of what they were doing but we weren’t able to identify them at that moment

Later on I took the bus and went to the St Nicolas quartier of the town. When I alighted I saw Christophe there. We had a big chat about my health condition. Unfortunately I can’t remember very much of what this chat was like. Later on a girl and I were in an office working. She had to go through a rung binder and write down certain details about the information that was on cards in there. I was busy doing something else that was much more exciting. The phone rang which meant that she had to do something different. She turned to me and told me that I had to carry on her job. I understood that I was senior to her- it’s not really for her to tell me what to do . She asked if that was OK so I replied “no. I’d much rather do the job that I’d been doing”. She said “I’ve done half of it for you”. My argument was “it was your job. Doing your job means that I’m not doing mine”.

Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about going to the quartier St Nicolas. The bus that I take into town drops me off at the bus stop by the port but for the return journey, there’s no raised kerb so I really struggle to climb back into the bus and it’s not going to be any easier as time goes on.

However, at the St Nicolas bus stop, there’s a little shopping precinct with a small Carrefour, a Post Office and a Pharmacy. I’m wondering if the kerb is going to be any better there.

There is a downside to this, in that I’ll only have 15 minutes to do my shopping before the bus comes back so I’m going to be struggling for time. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Meanwhile, back in my dreams, I was round at the house of a former friend of mine showing him a new stuffed animal that I’d had – some kind of green furry rabbit. He had all of his dogs there. There was a cat there that was my particular favourite but I didn’t get on with any of the dogs. This cat was quite friendly with me. At some point there wa sa party about to take place so they’d cleaned up the house. I was absolutely tired by this and had to go to lie down. I went upstairs to the room where I usually crashed out but they’d folded the sofa up now so it was the sofa and not a bed. I just lay down on it any old how with a blanket over me and it was all the dogs that came to join me on the bed, not my favourite cat.

For about half an hour or so I transcribed a few notes from the arrears of last autumn. It should have been much more but I rather regrettably crashed out again.

Tea tonight was another stuffed pepper, and that was really tasty too. But that’s all that I’m going to be doing. I’m exhausted now so I’m going to crawl into bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form.

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Wednesday 27th September 2023 – THEY’VE HAD ENOUGH…

… of me at this hospital. They’ve told me that I can leave

In fact I could have left this evening but there would have been an issue about trains going home, so instead I’m going home tomorrow .

The train that I’ve booked departs at 13:54 for Granville so my neighbour, who is in Paris at the moment, is coming to collect me at 11:00, we’ll find a taxi to take us to the station and then I’ve invited her for lunch before the train departs.

Last night I departed quite rapidly and actually had a good night’s sleep. Someone came to take a blood sample at 05:45 and someone else came in a little later but I didn’t pay much attention.

It was at about 08:00 when I arose from the dead and I had a slow start to the day, but it didn’t last long. My doctor came to see me, with a gaggle of students, to give me a thorough going over. And thorough it was too. They were here for quite a while.

After lunch I had a social worker come around. She had a lengthy chat with me about this and that and made copious notes. It remains to be seen why she did that and what the outcome of it all would be.

The next visitor was one of the students from this morning. She asked me a pile of questions again about my mobility, my capabilities and the like. And then she had a little game for me.

WHat I had to do was to pull a few phials from something like a honeycomb, and then put them back – a test designed presumably to test my co-ordination. With the right hand it took 25 seconds and with the left, 24. Apparently those times are quite good.

She then had me walking up and down the corridor for 6 minutes, timing me and measuring the distance that I walked. I can’t remember how far I walked but it was a depressingly small amount.

Finally, the doctor and her student came back later and sliced open my lip to extract a few living nerve cells that they are going to examine to see whether there’s any infection, or whether there’s an sign of my cancer having entered into the nervous system.

But the fact that they are going to these kinds of lengths goes to show that they haven’t found any signs of anything yet and so they are probing deeper and deeper into everything.

It’s quite likely that they won’t have finished analysing everything by the time that I leave, so they’ll probably reply to me by letter.

While all of this was going on, I was transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was having a really interesting dream about a CA camper that I had. I was living in the Auvergne but the Bedford was still in the UK and I was loaning it out to my friends who wanted to go camping or something like that. Nerina was in charge of looking after the keys, paperwork etc.. Liz and Terry had borrowed it and they were saying that they’d gone all the way to Southampton and it didn’t miss a beat all the way there. I don’t know why they went to Southampton but I ought to know. One of my friends from the Wirral asked if he could borrow it. I told him to contact Nerina and she’d organise it for him. Then I began to think about the insurance and MoT – do I know if these are still in effect? Do I need to do anything or change anything or Sign anything or are they renewed? I began to have this really complicated question going round in my head about the paperwork that was involved in looking after the camper.

At some point in the early 1980s I had a Bedford CA camper, a really old one with a three-speed gearbox. I bought it cheaply because I had a lot of plans for it but they never worked out and in any case the camper didn’t survive its MoT test.

And then I’d had another huge row with my brother. A short while later I was walking past his house and he came out and began to chase me – he and his wife. They were trying to catch me but they couldn’t. I managed to slip away. I ended up at some kind of meeting where they were present. It was extremely unpleasant. In the end he paid someone £100 to kill me. He gave them the money and asked them to meet him somewhere in a few days time to discuss the proceedings. Then he did the same with another couple. He paid them £400 to kill me. I thought that that was stupid, for giving them money in advance he would never see them again despite the arrangements that he had made to meet them on Winsford railway station on the Saturday. I somehow ended up in the same car with them and someone else. We were going towards Manchester. We stopped for a drink and his wife made some food and offered me some but I refused it. I was thinking that we’d stop at z chip shop on the way and I could find something there. The chip shop in this town had been voted the best chip shop in the Northwest so there was an enormous queue outside the door. At the one just down the road there was no-one there so I thought that I’d stop and buy some there. We ended up looking in a junk shop. My brother and his wife went off to look at something but the other guy and I just carried on walking. He said that if we were to run now and return to the van we could leave them stranded here. However my opinion was that we should stay with them – “Keep You Friends Close But Keep Your Enemies Closer” so that I could keep a really good eye on them and see what they were doing because I don’t think that they would have the courage to kill me – I’m sure that they would need someone else to do it. As long as I could keep an eye on them and keep them away from someone else I would be OK.

After that, Nerina and I were in a restaurant. It was like 05:00. We walked in and sat down. The waitress came over with her notes and a couple of small cakes which she left on the table for us. She asked what we wanted. I thought that we’d come here for a main meal because we’d had nothing to eat the previous evening. She went off and came back with 2 menus, 2 small bags of sweets with some 20p pieces in them. She said “we offer you a glass of port with your meal” which didn’t make any sense at all. I was looking through the menu but I couldn’t see anything vegetarian, never mind vegan. Then I noticed, written in biro on a corner “vegetarian meals available – add £1:00 to the price”. That piqued my interest so I hoped to catch the eye of the waitress when she came to ask her some more about the vegetarian options.

And finally there was something about a van for sale. Someone rang up but they had no way of going to see it. As I was going up that way I d=said that I’d take them. There was me and the girl with me in my old Reliant van that I’d had when I was at school. We picked them up, this couple, and picked up another person too. For some reason there was a load of children’s and dolls’ clothes hung up on the sides of the van. We set off but of course the van only had a 750cc engine in it. It was not very powerful so we weren’t going very fast. Hills were a struggle. Then I was stuck in a town centre. All the time this couple in the back were giving a running commentary, making remarks about the van thinking that they were funny but after a while it was really getting on my nerves. At a certain point I pulled into a lay-by, stopped and told everyone to get out. This led to quite some arguments and disputes. In the end they gathered their things and prepared to leave. They were still making remarks but by this time I didn’t care. The guy on his own who was with us had a few things to say too but I told him that I had an incurable disease that was going to kill me so anything that I wanted too do, I had to do it quickly. I couldn’t mess around waiting. He wasn’t convinced and tried to argue with me about it. In the end I was glad that I got rid of all of these people. There was just me and the girl in the van, going to where we wanted to go in the first place.

There was also a time when I had a Reliant van, anothet one that was a old as the hills. I’d had a motor bike when I was 16 but I had a serious accident when I broke both knees. My father refursed to allow me to have another nike and so I had the Reliant.

It was quite exciting. These vehicles had to weigh less than 5cwt in order to be classed as a motor cycle, so as it had a really old 750cc side-valve, the bodywork weighed next to nothing. However we found a 700cc all-alloy overhead valve engine and dropped it in. It weighed next to nothing and so it went like stink, but it sheared off half-shafts like nobody’s business. IN he end, when I left home and moved to Chester, the Reliant went the Way Of The West and I had an Ariel 250cc motorbike.

While I was chatting on the phone to Rosemary, the evening meal came round, with white fish again. That chat with the dietician really did some good.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m going to have a good sleep (I hope) and prepare myself for my journey home. And then I have a couple of plans to put into action. I have had a couple of ideas for the future, always assuming that I have one.

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Thursday 7th September 2023 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I probably won’t be here.

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not all here and I haven’t been all here for quite a while but tomorrow I shall be somewhere else.

What I have been doing today is preparing for my journey. And it’s taking some preparation too.

There is however some good news. You might think that the idea that my neighbour isn’t going to work tomorrow morning so can’t drop me off at the station on her way meant that I’d have to make other plans.

Before I phoned to book a taxi (yes, I really am that ill) I checked the bus times. The bus from outside here doesn’t for some reason that only the dispatcher will know, go into town or near the railway station. I have to change buses.

There are three places where it’s possible to do so and in the past, I’d miss a bus to the station by a couple of minutes. However I checked today and found that they seem to have adjusted the timetable, meaning that I have a 20-minute wait at the port for a connecting bus.

There’s only 15 minutes to leave the bus at the station and board the train before it departs, so I shall have to hurry as best as I can. But it seems to be the most logical way to go to the station.

If ever I had anything to say about it, I’d have a major re-route of the bus network. It defies all understanding that here in the walled city, where the population density is heaviest, the bus doesn’t go to the town centre, the railway station and the hospital, and stops a good few hundred metres away from the largest supermarket.

So be that as it may, I’ve been quite busy today.

last night was rather depressing because I went on several little voyages that completely evaporated out of my mind when I tried to dictate them. My brain is really turning to spaghetti right now.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the world and had something of a scramble to rise to my feet.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a chat with Alison and with Liz on the internet and we had a few things to say to each other. Rosemary also sent me an e-mail to say that the internet was down at her place. The Auvergne is definitely “The Land That Time Forgot”.

First thing that I needed to do is to book my train from Brussels to Leuven. I’m not going to have much time in Brussels to buy a ticket when I arrive and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not as mobile as I used to be.

Once I’d done that, I had to track down all of my paperwork and print it off, and then organise my medical folder. I don’t need the stuff that I took with me to Paris last week.

But it really is a sign of the times that even one unnecessary piece of paper in the backpack makes such a difference in my mobility.

There was the backpack to pack too. And we had a slight catastrophe because I can’t find my box of medical stuff that I take with me. I’ve no idea where that might be. I’ve put it somewhere but I can’t think where.

That’ll teach me a lesson. I’m the world’s worst at organising myself so I have to have a place for everything and everything has to be in its place. And if it isn’t, than I am totally lost.

So now that my bag is packed as much as possible, complete with food to sustain me on my journey, I backed up the computer onto the USB key that I take with me when I travel.

And not having backed up the portable computer since my last trip to Leuven, which was in May, there will be tons of stuff to amend and append when I’m on the train tomorrow morning. A mere 2,338 files, to be precise.

There was even time to finish off sorting out the music for another programme. But I’ve not written any notes for it as yet as I’m going to have several days when I won’t have anything to do so I can catch up with it then.

A little earlier I talked about my nocturnal voyages. We were doing a remake of EL DORADO last night. I was accompanying John Wayne on his travels on his horse. Our version was much better than John Huston’s … "actually Howard Hawks’s" – ed. We did so much more in the film and went into it in much greater depth. It was another one of these that went on for absolutely hours but I ran out of steam while I was in the apartment of the girl who was trying to give him false information. It was nothing like the cabin in which the girl was living – it was an office block in a huge complex and an apartment above the Bank that was there, all modern glass and chrome etc. The person who gave John Wayne his information at the sheriff’s office, which was a huge place with lots of small offices was actually one of his ex-wives. She struck me as being quite a nice woman. But I ran out of steam while we were confronting the woman about the disappearance of the gang that we were trying to hunt down.

There was another long rambling dream, however as I mentioned earlier, I’ve forgotten almost all of it. The interesting thing about it was that we encountered the wife of a friend of mine. Her birthday was 5th September. I had another friend who was also a nurse. Her birthday was also 5th September. I thought that that was the most amazing coincidence.

Later on, there was another dream that I’d forgotten, one in which we encountered the body of a friend of ours in the Stores in a castle. She’d obviously been very unhappy and she’d committed suicide but I can’t remember any more of this.

However a little later I had something of a recollection of a few things relating to that last dream. There was something to do with hire cars. Whole fleets of cars had been hired out by big reputable companies but some were so old – quite a few “G” registration cars there as in the mid-80s. They had been hired out for this event. I was interested to know whether they’d hire them out again but the person concerned with whom I was talking didn’t know. All my colleagues at work were making remarks about the vehicle that I’d hired and about me driving it which I thought was awful but never mind! There was also something involving a bowlful of the dirtiest water you could ever imagine but I don’t now where that fitted in.

Tea tonight was fried rice and vegetables with some of those Chinese whatsits that I bought a while ago. It was a really nice tea too and i’ll have some more of those when I can

Actually I ought to have a think about making them myself. They are basically tofu and vegetables wrapped in some of that brick pastry stuff. I suppose that I could make them like sausage rolls and slice them into smaller lengths.

And that reminds me – I need to think about making my sausage rolls at some point.

Before I finished, I diced the remaining carrots, blanched them and put them in the freezer. There weren’t many of them but it would be a shame to throw them out.

So I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow. I shall be in a rush so I need to get a move on. And it will be a long, tiring day which won’t end for quite a while. At least I can sleep on the train, if I’m not too busy with those 2,338 files.

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Saturday 2nd September 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

… believe this (or maybe you will, I dunno) but this afternoon and evening I have wiped off the various hard disks that are running at the moment from this computer a total of over 600GB of duplicate files.

That’s not all either because even as I’m typing this I’m coming across more files that I can delete so i’ve no idea how much free space I’ll create by the time that I finish.

That is, of course, if I ever do, because I’ve been at this project and off since August 2021 when I began to upload the contents of ever hard drive that I’ve ever owned that is still working.

And seeing as I bought my first PC over 30 years ago and always kept the hard drives when I dismantled them, you can imagine how many I have.

It’s now quite late so I’m hoping for a good sleep and a nice long lie-in in the morning, something that I didn’t have today.

Struggling to my feet when the alarm went off was quite an adventure and I still wasn’t feeling much like it when Caliburn and I hit the streets.

Noz was a big disappointment today because there was nothing of any interest in there.

However I struck it lucky in LeClerc There are some really nice but expensive vegan burger and vegan sausages that are well out of my price range but they had some on special offer in the Clearance range so I stocked up.

Something else that I bought was a set of cheap pyjamas. If I’m going into hospital sometime soon I’ll need a pair. I don’t like these hospital ones.

On the way home I went via the Biocoop. I need to make some more hummus and I don’t have a lot of tahini. They don’t sell that in LeClerc

Back at home I sorted out the freezer and packed away the stuff that I’d bought. The freezer now really is quite full but at least it’s full of stuff that I can eat. I’m not going to be short of interesting meals for a while now.

Armed with my coffee and my cheese on toast, I came back into here to sit down where I promptly crashed out, not that that’s any surprise given how things have been just recently.

When I eventually awoke, that was when I began to crack on with the duplicate files. There are a couple of handy utility programs that help here but the files still need to be sorted and filed away by hand first and that’s what takes the time.

Tea tonight was chips (potato and sweet potato) with a vegan salad and burger in a bun, made with my own home-made dough in the air fryer.

Following that I had my chat with Rosemary – quite a lengthy one as I suspected. She’s going to see a specialist at the end of the month and wanted to have a chat about it.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. One of the dreams involved a brawl between players at a women’s football match with a few despicable scenes that concluded with one player slamming another one’s head against a wall and a table on several occasions really hard. The noise of the head hitting the wood etc in my dream was awful, it really was.

There was another dream of which I can only remember bits. I was going to a rock concert somewhere. When I’d arrived or was on my way there I’d met these Hells Angels, I suppose. One of them took me under his wing a little. I can’t remember much about it but I had to change my clothes, ending up getting completely dirty working on a motor bike. At the end of the concert I had to leave of course. That guy said that he’d run me home. I thought that with all the beer he’s drinking and breaking wind it’ll certainly be uncomfortable on the back of his motor bike like that. Then I began to change my clothes. Then I realised that I had the model of a church or something that I’d built to exhibit somewhere. The whole idea was quite controversial so why don’t I ask this guy, seeing as I’m on his right side at the moment, whether he’d like to be a bodyguard for this model while it was being exhibited. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember any more than this, which is a shame.

Did I dictate this huge long dream about writing a thesis? … "no you didn’t" – ed. I kept on being interrupted by all kinds of people. There was a deadline by which it had to be done. Not only that, I was staying in a hotel in the Pigalle. All of my possessions were there. The day was drawing on. When I finally finished I had to send it off. Then I realised that I had no conclusion so I had to think of a good one. The conclusion ended up not being very good because the final photo of my thesis was a group of people fighting. I had somehow to tie my conclusion to that. Then I still had to go to the Pigalle to pick up my affairs. I’d told them a while ago that I’d be another hour when they asked. I thought that at this rate it’s going to be another one of these things where they’ll take my possessions in charge and that will be that. There was then a queue of people all waiting to use the computer to send off their theses. Everything seemed to be going wrong. There was much more to it than this too but I can’t really remember the earlier parts of it

So having finished, I’m going to bed. And not before time either. Tomorrow I have some hummus to make and some tidying up to do ready for next week. Work is beginning to pile up yet again and I need to crack on and do it.

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Friday 1st September 2023 – FOURTEEN MINUTES …

… of added time was played at the end of the second half of the game between Caernarfon and Connah’s Quay this evening.

When a spectator ran onto the pitch after 53 minutes I thought “here we go again. A repeat of what happened at the game of Y Fflint v Caernarfon towards the end of last season”.

However, it was slightly different this evening. The fan was wildly gesticulating at the Medics’ bench and they suddenly got the message because they sprinted over to the supporter with their medical bags.

After much confusion and a lengthy waiting period, we saw the two medics helping from the ground someone who was clearly in a great amount of distress. And then the game could restart.

When I awoke this morning I was in great distress too because I’d had another turbulent night, as seems to be the pattern these days. I managed to beat the second alarm, but not by much, and then gradually dragged myself into the Land of the Living.

The 09:10 bus was late this morning and so I had to hang around in the wind for a while. But I made it to Carrefour with enough time to do some shopping for the weekend. A few bits and pieces including a couple more small peppers.

The freezer is now full of those but that’s just as well because I can’t ever find them when I want them. Giant peppers I can find by the dozen but they are too big for my air fryer. and there is too much of them anyway for a small appetite like mine.

Back here I had my coffee and cheese on toast and then attacked this back-up task that I’ve been planning.

And by now it’s all ready in principle. I just want one more hard drive for the images which I want to keep separate from everything else. There’s a spare drive bay (in fact there are two) in the array on the shelf so there’s no problem there.

While I was waiting for things to happen I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And I had a surprise visitor. I’d been round to Stoke on Trent to talk to someone whom I used to know. Just at that moment Zero came back home. She went into the house and came out on a scooter, a 3-wheeled thing where you put both feet on and push yourself off and go whizzing down the hill. Her mother ran after her and I ran after her too. Then her mother was on a bike and I ran. She shouted at me “come on Eric, keep up”. I thought “there’s no way that I could keep up with people going at this speed the way I am”. She reached the bottom of the hill, turned round and came back up, came up alongside me, stopped and jumped off She said “get on, we’re going to ..” I thought she said “Meir” so I replied “that’s miles away”. “No” she replied” My house nearby”. She shot off and I chased after her on the scooter thing.

Mind you, I didn’t catch her. Even in the ethereal world she manages to keep well out of the way of my evil clutches as, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, so does TOTGA.

That wasn’t the only excitement of the night either. I’d been away somewhere and then come back with a load of clothes etc all of which I’d washed and hung up. We were a big family living in this house, sleeping anywhere. We didn’t so much have bedrooms allocated. I slept on the sofa in the living room and my chest of drawers of clothes was behind it. Someone whom I knew came and began to disrupt my entire routine. I had to go to have a shower. The first thing that I needed was some clothes so I went to fetch some but the only top that I could find was a thermal vest top. I thought “never mind – I’ll take that”. My mother asked me if I was taking that. I replied “yes”. Once I’d climbed over this rubbish and back to my settee I had to climb back because I needed my deodorant etc to take with me into the bathroom. The visitor was ever so confused about what was happening and so I think was everyone else including me.

Later on I was looking for clothes for one of my 3D figures. I’d just uploaded a whole pile of brand-new stuff and the folders weren’t sorted out correctly as I would like so things were in a bit of a mess. I wasn’t quite sure where I should be looking to find the item of clothing that I wanted my figure to wear. This meant that I was going to have to start to do a big organisation of all of that but I certainly didn’t feel like it at this time of the morning when I’d been asleep.

I’d also invented some kind of leg brace to improve the posture on young girls, like a V_shape with holders at the open end of the V in which you’d put your legs so your legs were always a constant distance apart and could only go forwards and backwards so much. This was intended to keep their composure and poise while walking. They could buy one for use at home if they didn’t have access to one during the day

Finally, and depressingly, I was with my family last night, a whole bunch of them. Everyone was there and many more besides. My youngest sister was marrying and I’d been invited to the wedding. I didn’t want to go but I couldn’t find a good excuse to turn it down. There was some pre-wedding meeting. I’d finished doing a taxi job so I went. From the freezer I brought some things that I’d cooked to take with me as some kind of offering, only to find that they’d leaked in the car. I arrived and everyone tried to hoist onto me the job of giving my sister away. I flatly refused, saying that it’s my father’s job. He was unwilling because he wasn’t very confident. I just didn’t want to become involved at all in any respect other than to be there and then only reluctantly. I was telling my father that he’d been working up his life for giving away his daughter and there he was, “bang!” she’s gone and I’ve given her away. Everyone looked at me, outraged, when I said that. But I added “well, that’s what the gist of it is, isn’t it?”. It wasn’t very popular at all but then again neither am I.

So much for all of that. After the sunshine comes the rain, as we all very well know.

Tea tonight was chips from the air fryer with vegan salad and some of those nuggets. Eaten quickly because of the football.

Caernarfon were second in the table, unbeaten so far this season, and Connah’s Quay were uncharacteristically quite low down having been swept aside by TNS the other week and then beaten by Y Bala. So we were expecting a really tough match

The Cofis, having been known for their flaky defence for the past few seasons, had been playing much better this season and had been the main reason why their team was second in the table, so no-one expected them to fold up so dramatically.

Although they had their moments in the attack, they didn’t amount to anything and conceded four of the sloppiest goals that I have seen ever since Aberystwyth shipped a miserable bagful against TNS 9 months ago.

A 0-4 home defeat was a disaster and they are going to have to do much better than they did tonight.

But not right now because I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow but I won’t need much Rosemary gave me a quick ring this evening just before kick-off so she’s going to ring me tomorrow. I’ll have to lay in some supplies though as it will be a long phone call.

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Wednesday 30th August 2023 – AS SEEMS TO BE …

… usual these days when I have to go somewhere important, I was actually awake and up and about (in principle, at least) when the alarm went off at 07:00

That was despite having gone on several travels during the night. There was something about trying to download the course book for my next lot of Welsh lessons and then trying to find and download a mannequin and various poses for when we’ll be taking off a Welsh lesson but I can’t remember too much at all about this and I fell back to sleep afterwards.

And then I was with Rosemary. We’d been staying for a weekend with a couple whom we’d met somewhere who had 2 children, a young girl and a young boy. They were in the middle of rebuilding a house so I went up on the scaffolding to have a good look around. He didn’t really understand what he was supposed to be doing so I gave him a few tips from my experience and we actually did some work together. I told him of a few things that he needed to buy, one or two tips about sanding down the wood and filling gaps etc. He was very impressed. Sooner or later it became time to go so we had to climb down and say goodbye. For some reason this was a really heart-breaking moment. I remember saying to this woman and guy that I wanted to stay. Rosemary said that it’s not quite possible and we’d have to go which was certainly true but for some reason I was truly heartbroken about having to leave. That was what was most disturbing – not so much the dream about having to leave but how I was actually feeling about leaving

Finally I had to take the young girl to the station because she was going to Boarding School. When she’d been before, she’d been taken as far as the barrier and sent through on her own to look for her own school party. She was saying that that was really difficult so she asked me if I’d come through the barrier with her down onto the platform and help her find her group of people. I didn’t see any reason why not so I said that I would. She was talking about being sent away to school, basically to give her mother some free time which I knew but I had somehow to explain to the girl that it was so that she would learn a whole variety of different things that she’d never learn at home, how it would be a big experience for her and how much of a better person she’d be because of it, although I wasn’t convinced myself. On the way to the station we walked down the street past the University Library. She made some comment about how a pile of books had been arranged in a Y shape but we were talking about the library saying how untidy it was. I said that I was surprised that the librarians would let a University Library fall into this state. I was really enjoying my conversation with this little girl. again, it was another thing that I was going to be really sad when it was all over and she’d gone.

First thing was to dive into the shower and clean myself up ready to be poked and probed by a doctor, and then, having grabbed by backpack and crutches, Caliburn and I headed off to the railway station.

Luckily there was a parking space available outside the station so we managed to tuck ourselves in without having to walk miles.

The train was already in the station and, to my surprise, the coffee machine which has been out of order since Covid struck is now working so I could fuel up with a coffee in peace and comfort. I can’t carry a mug while I’m walking as I don’t have my hands free, so I had to drink it leaning up against the wall.

For a change, I was lucky with the train. The earlier train that had set out before this one had encountered a fallen tree across the line but the issue had been resolved by the time that we set out and we arrived in Paris on time.

Being limited to what I could bring with me, I didn’t have the computer but I did have a book.

Ages ago I’d bought a copy of Dashiell Hammett’s famous novel THE MALTESE FALCON but I’d never had the opportunity to read it so I brought it along.

Much as I like THE FILM which is one of my favourites and I can watch time after time, the book goes into the story in much more detail and answers several questions that were left unanswered in the film. Some of the action is quite different too and makes much more sense.

We pulled into the station on time for a change but I had to wait a while for my lift to arrive and then they drove me to the hospital, flashing blue lights through red traffic lights, the whole works.

At the hospital I had to wait around for some time but eventually I was dragged into a room where they gave me the works. It was another one of these electrical shock things that really hurts and I really hate, and it was much more thorough than the ones that I’d had before. It took much longer too.

The doctor spent some time examining the results and then we had a chat. He tells me that there are two reasons why I might be suffering. One is that my underlying illness might be eating its way into my nervous system, or else I might have a serious infection.

However, everything that everyone has seen in all of the examinations that I’ve had, the lumbar puncture included, don’t show any of the classic symptoms that they would expect to see in either of the two situations.

The net result of this is that at the moment they are puzzled. However "we can’t leave things alone and leave you like this".

What they are proposing is that I "would probably benefit from a stay here for a few days while we undergo some more exhaustive tests".

They’ve taken all of the details about the hospital in Leuven too in order to contact them about my case and compare notes.

And so we’ll have to see how the future unfolds, but at least I haven’t been abandoned to face my destiny on my own, and that’s a good thing to know.

There’s a café outside the building where I was being examined so I went and had a coffee before I was picked up again and taken back to the station. Here, to my dismay I found that my train would be departing from Vaugirard, so I had a long walk down the platform, during which I came within an ace of falling over.

There was a very long wait for the train back home and we didn’t pull into the station until 23:10. It was 23:30 when I finally sat down in my little apartment, thoroughly exhausted and wasted. It had been a very long day and, to my complete surprise, I hadn’t crashed out at all.

However I was far too tired to do anything else so I cleared off straight to bed. It’s actually 5 years to the day that I first encountered The Vanilla Queen and 4 years to the night that I’d had the first of a short series of the strangest, most bizarre nights that I’ve ever had

All of these were events that totally changed my perception of various aspects of humanity.

The artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell who had accompanied James Clark Ross on his Arctic voyage of 1848-49 and said of Captain Robert McClure, who had almost come to grief in the ice, that a voyage to the High Arctic “ought to make anyone a wiser and better man”. All that I can say is that it didn’t work for me.

But ask me if I want to change any of it.

That’s something on which I can dwell while I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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