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Wednesday 18th December 2024 – IT’S REALLY HARD …

… to believe that this time next week we’ll all be sitting around stuffing ourselves with mince pies and turkey.

Well, you might but you can rule out the turkey from my point of view and if I don’t find any motivation from somewhere very soon, I won’t be eating any mince pies either. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt less like Christmas than I do this year.

At least the Christmas cake is something worth eating. I opened the oven door this afternoon and the whole building was overwhelmed with the smell of fresh-baked spices, and my faithful cleaner had something to say about it. So at least there will be something for Christmas.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve told the nurse not to bother calling on Christmas Day. I’m going to have a lie-in and savour the day at my ease.

That is, unless the lie-in was anything like this morning’s.

Last night wasn’t all that late going to bed – about 23:30 or something like that, and once in bed I was asleep quite quickly.

And there I lay, without moving a muscle or anything else until all of 06:45 when for some unaccountable reason I sat up bolt-upright, wide awake. I’ve no idea at all what disturbed me, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty good.

Just as I was deciding whether or not to leave my stinking pit, BILLY COTTON made up my mind for me, bellowing his raucous rattle loud enough to awaken the dead.

Once I’d managed to stagger to my feet I wandered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then into the kitchen for a drink to wash down my medication.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night but to my surprise there was nothing on it at all. It must have been a deep sleep

However, do not be downhearted because when I awoke this morning I was actually away on my travels and I remember everything so clearly too, even now. What I remember was that we were in some kind of derelict, run-down city and we were going to a party. We were four of us, and three were going in one car with some members of someone’s family, not mine, I was going in another car with another group of people. We were waiting in this street for this taxi to arrive. There was me, a friend of mine and a girl, and the friend of mine was dating her. We were waiting in this street for a car to come to pick us up. We saw something that was of interest a little further down the street so we wandered off down there. We went past an Indian restaurant where there was a waiter outside trying to entice us in. For some reason the prices were hanging from an awning above the door. We couldn’t reach it or see it so we carried on walking a little further and then a little further. We came to a T-junction with an Insurance Company across the street. It didn’t look like an Insurance Company – it was several shops. Then I happened to look up and I could see the name of the Insurance Company in a window so it was obviously in the offices that were above the shops. We went over there, past another Indian Restaurant where there was another waiter outside trying to cajole us in. Again, the prices were out of reach so we couldn’t see them. This girl remembered something about one of the addresses in this street so she went over to have a look at the numbers so we followed her. The number that she wanted was 200-and-something but we were in the 120s or something. We had a look, and it was a run-down street with all kinds of old terraced houses of all different styles. We turned round and slowly began to walk back. Suddenly this girl took off like a rocket to run down to the far end of the street where we’d been waiting at first. The guy, he asked “what’s the matter with her?”. I didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t said a word but she just took off. The thought went through my mind that maybe she’d seen the car in the distance that had come to pick us up. I was totally unable to run and having trouble walking so there was no way that I could run after her so I really had no idea what was going to happen next. And it was right at this point that I sat up bolt-upright

And if anyone wants to know where this took place, it was in Stoke on Trent, on one of the side streets off Campbell Road near the old football ground. I can see it quite clearly in my head even now. However who the people were, I have no idea about them either but the girl was dressed all in red, a red tee-shirt and red shorts. It was a totally bizarre dream.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t stop here long this morning. She admired the decorations again, oiled and greased my legs, fitted my compression socks and then cleared off. In and out in just a couple of minutes.

After she’d left I made breakfast and carried on reading the report of this excavation.

They are slowly coming round to the idea that the farm and its buildings were demolished with purpose, rather than being a random act of wanton and gratuitous destruction. Non-reusable material seems to have been put carefully into a ditch rather then being left scattered around, and there is no trace of anything lying around on the surface that might have been useful.

In one of the cellars though, it’s a different story. There, they have found a rather large grinding wheel of the type that would be used in a mill for grinding corn. It’s hand-powered, so that was probably a task undertaken by slaves.

Slaves would have been plentiful back in those days. There were no such things as prisoner-of-war camps and a victorious army would have a pile of useless mouths on its hands. Anyone important would be ransomed, sometimes making his captor a very rich man indeed. But if there was no-one to ransom you or you weren’t wealthy, then if you were lucky you’d be sold into slavery by your captor. If you were unlucky, you would be slaughtered.

And believe it or not, there were also people who gave themselves voluntarily into slavery. In a society were there was no welfare, if your crops failed, you and your family would starve to death. However, a slave-owner had the obligation to feed, clothe and house his slaves which, let’s face it, wasn’t much less than the life of an early medieval peasant anyway. So if the alternative was to starve to death, then slavery was an option that some people considered.

Back in here I had a few things that I wanted to do and that took me up until lunchtime. The after lunch my cleaner came round to do her stuff.

One of her tasks, according to this Association thing that has taken me in charge, is to help me with my grande toilette. We interpreted that as being the shower and so every Wednesday is shower day.

It was beautiful in there again today and I really enjoyed every minute of it. I didn’t really want to climb back out.

Still, back in here I began to find the music for the next radio programme and by the time I was ready to knock off for tea, not only had I found what I wanted but it had been remixed, paired off, segued and some of the notes had been written.

There had been a big interruption too. There was the afternoon hot chocolate break and then I made some dough for the naan bread for the next few weeks. But we’ve hit a tragedy, and that is that the soya yoghurt has frozen in the fridge and when it does that, it all separates out. I must order some more if I can.

Nevertheless, my leftover curry tonight was another good one, and the naan was cooked to perfection. Things are looking up around here and will be even better when I’m downstairs. Pretty much like only five months to go and then I can install myself in my own place. Won’t that be good?

So tomorrow I’m at the Dialysis Clinic and what I’ll do will be to prepare my order for LeClerc. I may as well make some good use of the time that I’m there

But the cleaner, when she came up, brought me a pile of post that had accumulated in my mailbox downstairs.
There were a couple of bills that needed paying so I had a close look at them, because I like to try to keep on top of things like that.
One of them concerns my taxe foncière from my current département of La Manche
"Please connect to the internet at the following address and make a bank transfer by electronic means"
The other is from from the Crewe Municipal Council where I used to live years ago.
"Please take the enclosed stone tablet, chisel your bank account details in block hieroglyphics thereupon and send it by native bearer to the Council’s Accounts Cave, situate …."

Monday 16th December 2024 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… the session at the Dialysis Centre this afternoon was almost totally painless. I don’t understand that at all

Added to that, I was lucky enough to have had a visit from Emilie the Cute Consultant. She came to see how I was and if I needed anything. Anything medical, that is.

Mind you, whatever rift we have had hasn’t healed quite yet because our chat was quickly business and she didn’t say “goodbye” as she left. It’s fair to say that she doesn’t love me any more, and that’s sad, especially after our cosy chats in the Summer with her perched on the edge of my bed, spending hours discussing nothing in particular.

What else that doesn’t happen any more is me being in bed at a reasonable time. Once more, it was long after midnight when I crawled into my stinking pit but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … much as I would like to be in bed before 23:00, I’ve given up rushing and am now taking things easy. I’ll go to bed at whatever time I happen to finish.

Once in bed though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep and there I stayed, dead to the World, until the alarm went off at 07:00.

BILLY COTTON’S DULCET TONES aroused me from my slumbers and I staggered off into the bathroom to prepare myself for the ordeal

As well as a good wash, I had a shave and then washed my undies ready for Wednesday when I hope to have another shower and make myself all nice and clean. These showers are not very convenient only once per week. When I have the apartment downstairs and the shower is all nicely installed, I’ll be having a shower every Dialysis morning, and probably a few more besides

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. To my surprise and disappointment, there was nothing on there this morning but I have vague memories of being a singer/songwriter being at some kind of concert, or going to play at some kind of concert. We had to arrive at a certain time and camping was very sauvage in a field. When I arrived there was already a mobile home with someone and a tent from someone else. There were some restrictions on what you can play – you couldn’t play anything that anyone else was going to play etc. That’s really all that I remember of that.

Pretty much similar to what happens at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton. Camping is on the National Park out by the reservoir and although the pitches are pretty well set out, it’s still quite wild camping and every now and again a deer or a raccoon scurries across your path.

But not as wild as that camping ground in Upstate Maine where I stayed one night, where everyone was told to make sure that all their food is kept well inside their vehicle as the bears that roam through the place at night will otherwise steal it. As the Park Ranger explained to me, "there’s a considerable overlap of intelligence between the smartest of bears and the dumbest of tourists, and we have them both here"

In the wild of course, you’d throw a rope over a branch, tie your sack of provisions to one end of the rope and then pull the sack up aloft, out of reach of the bear.

It’s certainly though a case of “disappointment” that there’s nothing on the dictaphone. Something else that I’ve said before … "and also on many occasions too" – ed … is that the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on during the night.

The nurse was early again and didn’t say much. He’s probably still smarting from yesterday. He was in and out in five minutes, which suits me fine, and then I could carry on with something more exciting.

Like making my breakfast and reading my book. It’s the story of the accidental discovery of a Roman … "Gallo-Roman! GRRRR!" – ed … building on a field, which led to an archaeological investigation that uncovered a farm dating from the 1st Century BC to the 4th Century AD

At the moment they are digging down and have uncovered a cellar with the steps that go down to it

The site isn’t as rich in artefacts as any site in the UK. That’s mainly because there never was the dramatic rupture of private life of the inhabitants as there was in the UK with the arrival of the Saxons, then the Danes, then the Normans.

Anyone abandoning the site in France generally had time to pack up and take his possessions with him, or if not, come back and fetch them when the emergency was over. In the UK, the arrival of the barbarians led to wholesale destruction and massacre, with nothing left worth taking and no-one left alive to take it anyway.

It’s the difference between “orderly evacuation of a site” and “panic-stricken flight”.

Back in here I carried on with my Welsh homework, but it wasn’t finished when my cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches. I’m leaving early today to go to the hospital.

The taxi came, driven by a very taciturn driver, and what he lacked in conversation he made up with speed and we had one of the quickest trips that I have ever had down to Avranches.

He pushed me in a wheelchair to the X-Ray Department and there he left me, although he may as well have waited because I was in and out before he’d probably had time to find his way out of the building.

Armed with some pretty impressive photos of my foot, I waited for the next taxi to arrive, and a very pleasant woman took me over the road to the Dialysis Centre.

For a change I didn’t have to wait long to be seen, and the plugging in was almost totally painless. I had the usual crash out once the machine started and then everything went OK.

As I said earlier, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me but our conversation was on a professional level. The two of us, and Anaïs who seemed to be the nurses’ shift leader, had a chat about my forthcoming trip to Paris and they could indeed, exceptionally, fit me in on the Wednesday morning beforehand.

That’s quite inconvenient, but it can’t be helped, I suppose. And I thought that I’d better arrange it and tell Paris what I’d done rather than leave it to them and find that they have forgotten to do it.

As for reading matter, I came across a book about infamous Cheshire personalities. And to my surprise, I’m not in it. But the author is an unashamed and unrepentant fan of that politician who was called A LIAR AND A CHEAT by the Grauniad and never ever went through with his promise to them for libel, something that led many people to wonder what might come out in evidence if he actually did take the paper to Court, and why might he be afraid of it so doing.

He champions several other Cheshire people who were caught up in various allegations of sleaze and dishonesty, and one thing that all these people had in common was that they were all members of the Conservative Party when he wrote his book.

Most of them have by today though been found even too extreme for even the current batch of Tory politicians and have been pushed out to the Fascists where they belong. But I digress. These pages aren’t about politics.

When the time came I was uncoupled, and clutching the Christmas present that the Dialysis Centre gave to each one of us, I headed out to the taxi that was already waiting.

The run back home was quick and I was soon back in the warmth of my lovely apartment.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with pasta in tomato sauce, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

Tomorrow there’s no Welsh lesson, but I have homework to finish and then I’m baking my Christmas cake. I can’t believe how quickly Christmas has come. It has taken me by surprise and I’m nothing like ready. But this evening I installed my strings of lights in the windows here and they look quite nice, seen from the street.

Before I go to bed, on the subject of professional behaviour, at the hospital today I overheard two doctors conversing
"Didn’t I see you last night" said one "in the company of Madame X, the notorious local prostitute?"
"I’m afraid that you did" replied the other. "But you needn’t worry. It was for purely professional reasons"
"I don’t doubt you for a moment" answered the first. "The question simply is, were the reasons concerned with your profession or hers?"

Friday 13th December 2024 – IT’S FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH …

… today and so far nothing disastrous has happened. Mind you, there’s still three hours yet to pull defeat from the jaws of victory so I’m not relaxing yet. But as soon as I finish these notes I’ll be scrambling off to bed, pulling the quilt tightly around me and praying that the ceiling doesn’t drop down on my head

That was what I should have done last night – scrambled off to bed as soon as I’d finished my notes but the new reformed me, desperate to chisel out of my busy schedule some private time for myself, stayed up for a while and loitered around cyberspace until … errr … let’s just say “some time later” than 23:00.

Once in bed though, I had another sound sleep all the way through to … errr … 06:05, when I note from the dictaphone that I was awakened by a phantom alarm call. How many of those have we had just recently?

Having said that, when Billy Cotton let forth his RAUCOUS RATTLE I was fast asleep and it was something of a struggle to make it to my feet before the second alarm sounded.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen for a drink and to sort out the medication. I really wonder how long I’ll have to keep up all of this. Mind you, bet that I’ll order a further pile of medication in mid-January,, only to have my prescription amended when I’m in Paris on the 23rd

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. I’ve told you about the phantom alarm, but there was other stuff too. When I was in bed I was dreaming that Steve Knightley came along and began to play COUSIN JACK and began to give a talk on how the song was made, how the song was formed etc. I was asleep me room down a corridor in some old Victorian building. I had to get up, make sure that my shorts were on but I couldn’t find my socks anywhere in the room and I had a really good look for them and couldn’t see them at all

Then I dreamed that a load of folk musicians like “A Show of Hands” and a few others came to awaken me and make me leave the bed. When they turned up in my room I had just awoken so I wasn’t exactly asleep but I wasn’t really awake either. Then they had this huge discussion about should they search me for searching the lyrics to one of the songs that they’d play. They all had something of a discussion about it. In the end one stepped forward and ripped off my blouse and found that I was actually wearing the shorts with this particular music written on it. So again another chat ensued, during which I escaped out of the centre where I’d been sleeping. Of course, they didn’t notice until after I’d gone, when they began to have a guilty chat amongst themselves

All this probably has some relation to the famous comment of Kim Howells, who said in 2001 that "listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell". At the time, he was a Junior Minister in the UK’s Ministry of Culture

Steve Knightley replied by singing that his"idea of urban sprawl is a pub where no-one sings at all"

The nurse was early again today, and decided once more that I don’t need any more plasters on my leg. But I’m not going to file them under CS quite yet. I’ll speak to Isabelle the Nurse and make sure that she agrees.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s finally made it onto dry land at what was then Buffalo Creek but which is today the city of Buffalo. He and his friends have engaged native American guides to conduct them through the forest towards New York.

His observations are remarkable though. He comments that "the varied hues of the woods at this season of the year, in America, can hardly be imagined by those who never have had an opportunity of observing them ; and indeed, as others have often remarked before, were a painter to attempt to colour a picture from them, it would be condemned in Europe as totally different from any thing that ever existed in nature"

Those are comments with which I concur wholeheartedly. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s always been my habit until recently to go across the Atlantic at the end of August and stay there for several months, as the autumns and early winters there are fantastic and the colours of the leaves are unforgettable

Talking about several treeless plains that he encounters on his way back from the Lakes to New York he notes that "very different opinions have been entertained respecting the deficiency of trees on these extensive tracts of land, in the midst of a country that abounds so generally with wood. Some have attributed it to the poverty of the soil; whilst others have maintained, that the plains were formerly covered with trees, as well as other parts of the country, but that the trees have either been destroyed by fire, or by buffaloes, beavers, and other animals … It appears to me, however, that there is more weight in the opinion of those, who ascribe the deficiency of trees on the plains to the unfriendliness of the soil … Dutch farmers, who have made repeated trials of the soil, find that it will not produce wheat or any other grain, and, in short, nothing that is at all profitable except coarse grass. I make no doubt but that whenever a similar trial comes to be made of the soil of the plain to the westward, it will be found equally incapable of producing any thing but what it does at present."

After the Native Americans were expelled from their land on the Plains in the States of Oklahoma and Kansas, those Plains were settled by farmers who ruthlessly and relentlessly ploughed up everything and planted as much as they could on what was perceived to be the fertile plains of the Mid-West. This led to the legendary “Dust Bowls” in the 1930s and the flight of tens of thousands of impoverished “Okies” to California and Chicago.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall accompanying me in 2002 to THE HIGH PLAINS OF WYOMING – the Plains taken from the Native Americans after “Wounded Knee” in 1894 and farmed extensively, making millionaires out of people like “Judge Garth” of the “Virginian” fame, who had millions of head of cattle roaming around up there. And when we went for a look, we found nothing but a dust bowl and abandoned shacks where farmers had fled from the land that they had destroyed.

He’s also still going on about the preoccupation of the European Americans with money and profit. He notes that "we were particularly struck with the prospect from a large, and indeed very handsome house in its kind belonging to a Major Wadsworth, built on one of these hills. The Genesee River, bordered with the richest woods imaginable, might be seen from it for many miles,, meandering through a fertile country, and beyond the flats on each side of the river, appeared several ranges of blue hills rising up one behind another in a most fanciful manner, the whole together forming a most beautiful landscape. Here, however, in the true American taste, the greatest pains were taking to diminish, and, indeed, to shut out all the beauties of the prospect. Every tree in the neighbourhood of the house was felled to the ground; instead of a neat lawn, for which the ground seemed to be singularly well disposed, a wheat held was laid down in front of it; and at the bottom of the slope, at the distance of two hundred yards from the house, a town was building by the major, which, when completed, would effectually screen from the dwelling house every sight of the river and mountains. The Americans, as I before observed, seem to be totally dead to the beauties of nature, and only to admire a spot of ground as it appears to be more or less calculated to enrich the occupier by its produce."

There’s no doubt that some of his prophecies were remarkably and surprisingly accurate

All throughout the day I’ve been working on my next radio project. This has involved speaking, would you believe, to one of the artists who was on the stage performing at the first Glastonbury Festival back in 1970 and who very kindly sent me a rare recording of himself and his friends performing one of their numbers. I also managed to track down a copy of the very first ever song performed at the very first Glastonbury Festival.

However, that’s not true. It’s a little-known fact that there was a series of Glastonbury Festivals between 1914 and 1925 but when it was revealed that the organiser was a paid-up card-carrying member of the Communist Party who debased the Nativity with a crude joke, his festivals were quickly brushed under the carpet.

There were interruptions for lunch, for my cleaner and for my hot chocolate break, but most importantly, I’ve selected all of the music that I need, tracked it down, downloaded it, edited it, paired it, segued the pairs and written about half of the notes. That’s what I call a good day’s work.

Tea was vegan nuggets with chips and vegan salad, delicious as always, especially when followed by home-made ginger cake and soya dessert. I am lucky.

So now I’m going to bed, and probably dream of folk singers again as I now have Lindisfarne round on the playlist.

But going back to Kim Howells, it reminds me of the French schoolboy who was asked "can you list the factors that separate modern Homo Sapiens from the Palaeolithic Humanoid Stone Age culture?"
The little boy puts his hand up and says "please Sir – it’s la Manche – the English Channel"

Thursday 12th December 2024 – IT SEEMS TO BE ..

… confirmed that the X-Ray that I’m going to suffer on Monday is in fact on my right foot. I was handed the summons and it definitely says pied droit so there we are.

But having said that, I’m not sure if it is in fact my foot. I know that that sounds strange but I had a colleague once who lost a leg in the war and he still had severe pains in the foot that he no longer had.

In the end, in his case, it turned out to be a trapped nerve and that what makes me suspect that I have something similar going on.

Rosemary came up with a good idea the other day too, and that is that your foot is controlled by the same nerves that control other parts of your body, and it might be something to do with the other part of the body rather than the foot.

Intrigued by this, I had a look to see what I could find, and some reflexologist has posted a map of the foot and which regions of the foot, he thinks, are related to other parts of the body

So I found about one hundred maps of the foot, and about one hundred different plans. So if the reflexologists can’t agree, what chance do I have?

But seriously, if it’s not one thing which me at the moment, it’s another and I’ve no idea when it’s going to end, if it ever will. I seem to be fighting a losing battle.

Going to bed before 23:00 is also a losing battle. I’d finished everything quite early but once more, I was side-tracked by a concert that came round on the playlist so I stopped up to listen to it. And one thing inevitably leads to another, and once you start, you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are.

Once in bed though, I slept the Sleep of the Dead all the way round to about 06:55 this morning. And just as I was wondering what time it might be, BILLY COTTON told me.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub and even a shave to make myself look pretty, and then went into the kitchen to make a drink and take my medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a new female nurse starting to work in a castle. Her job was to look after this tribe of Europeans who were settled near her. She had to go out to inspect the health of one of the leaders of the people, some young guy who was big and powerful. He hadn’t met this girl before. Quite naturally he became attracted to her while she was busy trying to do her job. He was asking her all sorts of questions such as “how long have you worked there? Where did you come from originally?” all of this. She was aware of what he was trying to do and was also very careful not to give any sign of any particular encouragement because that could only lead to complications amongst tribal people like this but she wondered how long it would be before some kind of approach is made.

Some nurse once told me that on average she received about one proposal per patient per week. Proposals of marriage were quite frequent too. It became quite an art to side-step them. I’ve also heard that someone from some medical establishment that I’ve visited (and shall remain nameless for the purpose of this discussion) whose job it is to make home visits to the elderly and infirm has had more than just proposals, which only goes to show that these people aren’t as elderly and infirm as they pretend to be.

Later on, I was back in work again. It was a Thursday and I was finishing at 16:00 because I was driving to Munich in my old Mercedes to go to my birthday party which was on the Saturday. As I was going to be away for a couple of weeks I tidied out my drawers, made sure that there were only about half a dozen files in there that needed work, and everything was all ready with about an hour to go. So I found the “post out” pile and decided to review that. I was reviewing the “post out” and came across a letter where the typing had typed over several lines twice. I took it back to the colleague who had dictated it and explained to her that it couldn’t go out like that. Could she retype it? But the boss was there chatting to her so I had to wait until after he left. When I finished explaining to this girl I walked back to my desk. The boss came up to me and said “I hear that you’re on the move tonight”. I explained to him that I was off to Munich in the old Merc. He said “you should have a good time”. I replied “I know, because it’s not where you are or what you are doing, it’s who you are with that counts”.

It’s quite a change for me to dream that I’ve finished my work. When I was going through that series of dreams about work, it was always about retiring spontaneously leaving a huge pile of work behind. And as for my old Merc, that’s festering down the field back on the farm along with a Ford Cortina and an old diesel Transit for company. The final sentiments of that dream are sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly. That’s why I’m happiest on my own. Not even Percy Penguin could change that, and how she tried!

The nurse came early again and having ordered twelve boxes of plasters that he wanted, he’s now decided that I don’t need any at all. Judging by the piles of unused medication around here, the Social Security would save a lot of money if they were to dispense it in smaller amounts.

After he left I made my breakfast, and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s now left the First-Nation and Native American encampments, and his final words on that subject are not too encouraging. "The filthiness and wretchedness of their smoky habitations, the nauseousness of their common food to a person not even of a delicate palate, and their general uncleanliness, would be sufficient, I think, to deter any one from going to live amongst them from choice, supposing even that no other reasons operated against his doing so. I had fully determined in my own mind, when I first came to America, not to leave the continent without spending a considerable time amongst them, in the interior parts of the country, in order to have an opportunity of observing their native manners and customs in their utmost purity ; but the samples I have seen of them during my stay in this part of the country, although it has given me a most favourable opinion of the Indians themselves,, has induced me to relinquish my purpose. Content therefore with what I have seen myself, and with what I have heard from others, if chance should not bring me again into their way in prosecuting my journey into the settled parts of the States, I shall take no further pains to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with them."

Having said that, however, he’ll probably change his opinion somewhat for on his departure down the Great Lakes, his ship was driven onto the rocks by a storm and he came within an ace of being shipwrecked. Luckily the wind changed round just as the ship was about to break up, so that they could steer it down from the rocks

There’s no doubt that he’s having some serious adventures on his travels.

Back in here I had things to do and was so engrossed that I hadn’t noticed the arrival of my faithful cleaner who had come to fit my anaesthetic patches

After she’d done that, I collected my plastic bottle and waited for the taxi.

It was one of my favourite drivers today. She helped me down past the broken handrail and outside into the car, and then we shot off to pick up our other passenger who comes with us on Thursdays and Saturdays.

The drive down to Avranches was rapid but uneventful, and for a change, I wasn’t last into the ward. In actual fact, I was connected quite early but it was still just as painful as it usually is.

However I went to the bathroom on the way in and on the way out of the smallest room, struggling to open the door, someone outside opened it for me. And it was none other than Emilie the Cute Consultant. Had she known that it was me, she probably would have leaned against it to keep it closed.

According to the nurse who connected me, the doctor wants to discuss the follow-up to the examination that I had the other day in the hospital. However, no-one came to see me. If Emilie the Cute Consultant is the one on duty, she’ll probably leave off talking to me and send an oppo on Saturday.

No-one interrupted me at all today. I could sleep for half an hour (which I seem to be doing every time the machine starts up now), revise my Welsh and carry on with my LeClerc order. In fact I was so engrossed in that that I was taken unawares by the end of the cycle.

Uncoupling me was painful but straightforward, I only had to wait five minutes for the taxi, and it was a quick drive home. Once more, we had another passenger in the back whom I didn’t notice at all until she said “hello”. It’s a good job that I didn’t commit any indiscretion when I climbed in.

Back here my faithful cleaner was waiting and she watched as I climbed up to the lift. I’m going up in the lift from the first half-landing and then coming back down on foot as I can’t do the second flight of stairs with this handrail hanging off.

Tea tonight was steamed veg and vegan sausage in a cheese sauce, all of which was cooked to perfection and was delicious, especially now that I have some cauliflower, broccoli and sprouts. The ginger cake and soya dessert were delicious too. My meals may not be exciting but they really are delicious.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow there ‘s nothing of any importance except the cleaner and in the evening, Connah’s Quay Nomads v Mold Alexandra in the Welsh Cup

But Isaac Weld is still struggling with his ship in the storm. All the masts have been torn away so the ship is powerless.
The captain comes on deck with a pile of planks and says "I’m going to give out two planks to each passenger and you’ll have to do your best to row to the nearest port"
Isaac Weld turns to one of his friends and says "this is going to be quite an oar deal"

Wednesday 13th November 2024 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… the second radio programme, the notes of which I also dictated on Saturday night.

This one was much more complicated than the last one but because of my little program it was all done, finished and dusted off much quicker.

It helps having used an array for the numbers rather than entering them manually whenever they needed to be changed, so let’s all give it a big hand … "hip, hip, array" – ed …

Last night I had a lot of things to do and as a result I didn’t go to bed until late, long after my ideal time of 23:00 but one thing that I can say is that I had the best sleep that I have had for ages. I awoke once during the night as far as I can remember, but I was asleep very quickly afterwards so I didn’t pay much attention

When the alarm went off, three girls had just come round to my apartment. I was still in bed but I was wide-awake. I was making plans for the immediate future, what I was going to do. Then one of the girls came up to me, ripped the bedclothes off and shouted “wakey wakey”. At that moment the alarm went off and Billy Cotton REPEATED THE CALL.

But can you imagine that? I suppose you can because it’s pretty much par for the course. 3 girls come into my apartment and just as it’s about to become interesting, Billy Cotton spikes my guns. It’s a change for him to do it though. Usually it’s one of my family who would put the spanner in the works, just like they did in real life.

So there I was, sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the World to stop spinning around and then when it stopped I got off and headed off to the bathroom to clean myself up.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My girlfriend had come round with her mother, and we’d left her mother in my apartment while the two of us went to a kind-of party in the afternoon. When we came back, the taxi dropped us off by the club on Nantwich Road and we walked down the side street there to the side door of my building. The first thing was that we couldn’t open the padlock. It was as if something had been stuffed down the keyhole but eventually I managed to open the padlock and could unlock the place and walk in. At the first glance I thought that her mother had died, the way that she was lying on the sofa, but she was lying there chewing, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was chewing a chocolate. My girlfriend went over to talk to her to make sure that she was OK while I prepared the papers and so on from this party/reception type of thing to which we’d just been.

Who this girl was, I have no idea at all which is a shame. Some kind of company would be a nice thing to have in a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have met some really nice girls on occasion during the night. It would be nice if I could do that today but first of all I don’t go anywhere these days and secondly I’m far too old for any of that kind of nonsense.

The nurse came early again today and after making the usual remarks, saw to my legs and then cleared off. He can’t have been here ten minutes. Not that I’m complaining though. It suits me fine.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book.

Samuel Hearne is on the move again, out on his third trip to find the Coppermine River. He makes some very prescient and penetrating remarks about the First-Nation women whom he encounters which, if read in the wrong spirit, would not be appreciated. He likens them to nothing more than beasts of burden

However, it should be remembered that if the men are out hunting for food, chasing deer around and hoping to catch them, they need to be able to move quickly so someone else has to do the heavy lifting and carrying. Life on the Barren Grounds is really tough and in fact a guy from Nantwich, John Hornby, starved to death with two companions out there almost 100 years ago. It’s a fight and only the toughest survive. Co-operation and partnership is essential.

Back in here, I had some editing to do. Listening to the radio programme that I’d prepared yesterday, I found that I’d left in there a reference to a track that I’d cut out. So the reference had to go too, which meant that I was now 2.23 seconds short.

Not a problem though – just add in some applause at an appropriate moment and we’ll be fine.

Then I began to prepare the next programme by editing the notes that I’d dictated.

Having done that I broke the finished sound file up into segments for each track and then entered the times of the sound-bytes and tracks into my little program and the machine did the rest.

It found me a selection that ran out to one hour and twenty-eight seconds – not a problem – except that one track wasn’t what it was supposed to be and by the time I’d edited it to represent what I wanted, the batch was short by several minutes. And there was, regrettably, an error in my programming that caused one track to be counted twice.

In the end, I was nine minutes short so I had to go again. This time I was one minute and twenty seconds over, but editing that much out is no problem at all.

There were several interruptions.

Firstly, there was lunch. I can’t go without food and I had a slice of the flapjack that I’d made a while ago.

Secondly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and that meant a shower for me this afternoon. And although she stood and watched, I did absolutely everything on my own today and you’ve no idea how proud I felt.

She cautioned me about attempting a shower when I’m on my own. There might be an improvement in my mobility and I’m right to push myself onwards, but I mustn’t take any risks. I’m not out of the woods yet. I have simply moved into different woods.

We then spent a pleasant half-hour going through the medication and you wouldn’t believe (or maybe you will) the amount of medication gathering dust around here that is long out-of-date. There’s some stuff dated 2017 and I bet that I can find stuff older than that if I look around. It’s high time someone got to grips with this over-prescribing of medication.

After my hot chocolate I had naan dough to make because I’ve run out. This lot is extremely garlicky which is just as well. I’m not going to be bothered by werewolves and vampires, especially when the garlic naan is smeared in my garlic butter

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, as usual. It really was delicious and I reckon that it was the best that I have ever made. My chocolate cake, with lumps of real chocolate, is also excellent, especially with a pistachio soya cream

So that’s enough for today. Tomorrow I’m off to dialysis so Heaven help me. I can’t take much more of this.

But I’m still having a laugh at some of the comments made by Hearne in his book.
Apart from his beautiful quote "they never give themselves the trouble to acquire what they can do well enough without" to describe the philosophy of the First-Nation people in the Barren Grounds, something from which many people in Western society would do well to note, he records a conversation between several of his First-Nation guides
Sitting around the fire late at night after a heavy meal of venison they jokingly ask each other whether they would ever consider having "an intrigue with a strange woman"
It reminds me of a party in Munich to which I went several years ago and an Italian girl asked me "tell me – would you ever consider making love to a perfect stranger?"
"Madam," I replied "the way that things have been just recently, I would even consider making love to a bloody awful stranger"

Saturday 19th October 2024 – THEY LEFT ME …

… pretty much to myself at the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon.

Once they’d plugged me in, they only came back once to deal with an alarm, one of the nursing assistants brought me a coffee, and that was that until it was time to unplug me

That’s much more like my way of doing things and if they can keep it up like that every time I go, I shall be much happier.

Another thing that shall make me much happier is going to bed early. Last night was ridiculous. Just as I was about to switch off everything and go to bed, round on the playlist came the classic Quicksilver Messenger Service version of Elias Bates (Bo Diddley to you)’s version of WHO DO YOU LOVE, all 25 minutes and 15 seconds of it.

Of course, one thing leads to another and once you start you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are and it was after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed

For once though I had a good sleep. Apart from a brief, very brief moment, I was asleep for the entire night but I was still feeling the worse for wear when I crawled out of bed at the sound of the alarm.

First thing was to go into the kitchen. I’ve no bread left and so I set to work to make a loaf of bread, starting by making the dough and giving it a good kneading.

Whilst it was busy festering I went into the bathroom. With it being a Dialysis Day to day I gave myself a good scrub and even applied the deodorant, not that it makes much difference

Having organised myself I sorted out the washing. There’s tons of it, but I washed the bed linen today along with some of the stuff of which supplies are running low. When I came here from the Auvergne I didn’t bring everything with me – just enough to keep me going. But there’s no chance now of going back to the Auvergne to pick up the rest.

When the nurse came round he looked at the dough and asked “are you making bread?”. His asinine, patronising comments are getting on my nerves.

Luckily he didn’t stay long and was soon down the road, and I can carry on with breakfast and my book.

Today, the Woolhope Naturalists are at Llandrindod Wells where we hear them applauding the efforts that are being made in salmon conservation and calling for some kind of control of pollution of the local rivers – a good 100 years ahead of their time.

And then I put the bread in the oven.

After I’d started the washing off I’d made a start on the dictaphone notes but the arrival of the nurse had put paid to that. So after breakfast I carried on. There was this very small girl. She was very small and very lively, and very interested in everything that seemed to be going on around her. One day I had to go to the hospital. A car came for me – it was a big Austin A110. I climbed into it and it had to go to pick up some more people. A guy was picked up and he sat in the back, a woman or a guy – it seemed to change between the two. Then there was this small girl and this woman. The woman insisted on sitting in the front, so much so that she actually climbed into the front while I was in the seat. In the end I agreed that I’d step out of the car and sit in the rear. The little girl made some kind of comment so I said “God, I’m sitting next to you, am I?” in one of those harmless fun tones which started a little bit of a play argument. This all took place at the entrance to a car park somewhere but it turned out to be at the Earl of Crewe. We were all at the Earl of Crewe outside, all fooling around, all of us. Someone came up to me and said “You’ve forgotten that it’s her birthday today, haven’t you?” meaning the little girl. I replied “I didn’t really know”. “Don’t worry. The driver has bought a little present for her on your behalf”. I thought “that’s nice of him. That’s the second time that he’s done that. I’ll have to see about paying him back or something”. But I have half an hour when I’m not doing anything. I was planning on looking at a recipe that someone had given me. Instead, I can look at the recipe in the car and go to buy her a present then. We all ended up in some kind of old house with low ceilings and wattle-and-daub walls. We were all inside there and making conversation with each other and the little girl was doing her school homework. There was someone else there doing some work at the seat behind her. I was going to read this recipe but I thought that I’d go to talk to this girl and see what she’s doing. and this dream carried on like that for ages.

This dream certainly dates me if I’m being picked up by an Austin A110. I was still a teenager when those cars were top-of-the-range. And I often used (and probably still do) tease young girls like that. The incident of the woman wanting to sit in the front reminds me of that strange guy at the Dialysis Centre who never opened his mouth all the time except when the taxi driver asked “who wants to sit in the front?”.

Having had one phantom alarm call we have a second. And one of my friends seems to be coming “extremely close” to everyone who comes to her house. Tomorrow morning there is going to be someone new going so we should all be at the house and we should catch her. Se we were there and were waiting. Sure enough, someone came, a refugee from some island somewhere. She had a close encounter with him which makes the fourteenth in fourteen days. After that we walked home. I walked away over the hills and when I was round about at an arch some woman came up, a type of girl, not even wanting to talk to me about anything other than the items of clothing in my freezer bag that I had to give her, a freezer bag with eight items of clothing in there so now there was one piece of pizza and just three or four left. She wanted to search through them and wasn’t going to let me go home until I’d submitted to a search

There is actually one of my friends who behaves like that. Mind you, it’s a good 15-20 years since I’ve seen her and even then I used to keep a respectable distance. However, I don’t understand anything about the second part of that dream.

By the way, I have absolutely no recollection of either of those phantom alarm calls.

Finally I was in a bedsit room in Manchester. It was something of a mess but I was leaving today. I had a train at 18:00 that I absolutely had to catch. I wanted to see one of the many followers of this blog before I left but he could only fit me in after 17:00. As he lived in Altrincham that was leaving it rather tight to go out there to see him then come back to Manchester in the centre for my train. I’d have to have everything ready but it was now 09:25, I was lying there, I was hearing people washing so I arose, found a bearskin to keep me warm and then went to see if there was a washbasin free where I had a really good wash ready for going out catching the Underground and going off to do the things that I needed to do

If I could go across Manchester on the Underground, that would be something of a miracle. Any plans for an underground network in the city have long-since been scuppered which was a shame and today everyone has to go by tram and even then it’s not all that convenient. The “Northern powerhouse” promised by so many politicians is a myth, a vote-catching soundbyte and as long as the politicians won’t admit that there’s anything of any importance beyond the M25, so it will remain.

Having hung up the washing to dry, I sorted out the bread. One side of it hadn’t risen at all so we can call this loaf a failure, which is a shame. But I can’t understand why that would be because the bread was in the middle of the oven with the heat, in principle, passing equally all around it.

While the bread was cooling and the washing was drying I came back in here where I was supposed to be having a morning off. However, I made an interesting discovery relating to what might in the near future be an interesting radio programme so I followed it up.

Round about 11:50 I had a message – “could you be ready for 12:15? We’re short of numbers today and there’s a person needing to go to Avranches for 13:00. Would you share?”.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am being offered an extraordinary service that exists nowhere else in the World to my knowledge, and it’s all free to me. Who am I to argue about any of this? In any case, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish

It meant a mad panic though, for me and my faithful cleaner to prepare me for the trip and we only just made it. Just as she was leaving, the driver turned up.

It was someone who had taken me to Paris in the past and we had a good chat on the way down to Avranches.

With the taxi coming early, I was early arriving and so I was coupled up quickly, and then left to my own devices.

For the first time in a couple of weeks I crashed out (and isn’t that a change?). Only for twenty minutes or so and when I awoke I had the most appalling indigestion that plagued me for hours.

With no interruptions I reviewed my Welsh, last week’s and the forthcoming week, had a close look at the homework that I need to finish off and then tidied up the laptop. The whole desktop is far too cluttered and there are loads of tabs open in Waterfox and I’ve no idea why. They aren’t open now.

No-one bothered me or interrupted me and as far as I could see, there wasn’t even a doctor on duty. But for the compression stage of the procedure where someone has to clamp my arm for ten minutes I had Julie the Cook again
"You really ought to try to do this yourself" she said
"Clear off!" I replied. "How else am I going to have a beautiful girl sitting beside me for ten minutes holding my hand?"

When they weighed me I found that I’d lost another 2kg. My “unfit” target weight is now firmly in my sights and if I can reach it I would be delighted. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … getting it off is one thing. Keeping it off is something else completely.

The taxi driver was a new girl. She was an ambulancier in the Champagne-Ardennes who moved here five weeks ago. She applied to the company for a job and in the kind of logic that only they think is reasonable but neither my driver nor me could understand, they put her to driving taxis when she’s no idea of where she’s going. At least as an ambulancier she’d be with someone, which would help her pick up the hints.

And for once in our lives, having left the Dialysis Centre early, at Sartilly we find ourselves in a long queue stuck behind a tractor (it’s that time of year again) and we crawl all the way to Granville at 30kmh.

My faithful cleaner watched me up the stairs, and today I could manage nine before I need to lift up my leg with my hand. This is certainly progress and I hope that it keeps up.

Back in here even though I was early I did nothing until tea time. I was exhausted. But I made myself a lovely tea of a burger on a bun with salad and baked potato followed by apple cake and soya cream.

Now that this severe indigestion has eased somewhat I’m off to bed once I’ve dictated the radio notes. Tomorrow I’ll be busy with the radio, with pizza dough to make and there’s something else that I need to make but I’ve forgotten what it is right now. I hope that I remember.

But I forgot to mention an incident that caused panic and embarrassment at the Dialysis Clinic today.
A man walked by mistake into the ladies’ cloakroom and a couple of minutes later two women walked in behind him.
Suddenly there were all kinds of panic as a couple of nurses dashed towards the cloak room with the emergency gear.
"What’s going on?" I asked
"It’s one of those two women" replied a breathless nurse. "She’s had a stroke!"
"What about the other one?" I asked
"She wasn’t quick enough" replied the nurse.

Tuesday 15th October 2024 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, last night was something of a disaster.

In fact, it was quite a disaster, if the truth was known. Wide awake at 04:00 drenched in perspiration, up and about at 05:00. Of course, I had dialysis yesterday. It seems to be every time I have dialysis that this happens.

What I’ll have to do is to talk to a doctor next time one of them comes to see me. I’ll have to see if it’s an anticipated side-effect or whether there’s something else going on.

If it’s Emilie the Cute Consultant, I can always request that she comes here to rock me to sleep but I imagine that if I were to ask for that I’d be told to clear off in the fashion that JAH Catton, editor of “Athletic News” described when discussing an outburst from Wales international goalkeeper Leigh Roose, as "not such as might be expected from a gentleman.".

But as long as they don’t give me a sleeping pill. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days takes place in bed while I’m asleep, and I wouldn’t miss that for anything.

You would think that that would be the trigger for me to rush to finish everything and dive into bed as early as possible, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work like that. Take last night, for example. I might have finished my work at a reasonable time, but then we had the battle to lift myself out of my chair.

Eventually though I made it into bed, later than I would have liked, and once again it took rather longer than it has done of late to go off to sleep.

My memory tells me that I awoke once during the night and went back to sleep almost straight away but by 04:00 that was that. I was wide awake, perspiring profusely from my legs, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end, at 05:00 I gave it up as a bad job and went to make myself a coffee and catch up with some personal stuff.

However, I had had a disaster. The toenail on the little toe on the right foot must have stuck in the bedding somehow and on leaving the bed I’d torn it off.

At first I hadn’t realised but I soon did, especially when I noticed the blood. Wrapping some tissue round it I staggered into the living and took one of the compress pads. I couldn’t reach to plaster it so I just wrapped it around the toe and hoped that it might stop the bleeding eventually.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, and that surprised me. No Castor, no Zero and no TOTGA either unfortunately, but several other people whom we all know and love and who are pretty close to me. It was the birthday of someone whom we all knew. Alison, Jackie, Liz, Terry and I had been amongst the invitees to go to his birthday party. We’d all chipped in and bought some kind of present, something that had a long stalk on it. They asked me if I’d write some poems. I wrote the poems and circulated them around. Everyone liked them but Jackie asked me “what was this event that took place in January?”. I couldn’t think of what it was at that point so I mad some kind of light-hearted comment. Liz ‘phoned me up and we were having a chat on the internet about this but suddenly it went dead, the conversation, right at a crucial moment. That’s the problem with the conversations on the internet – they go dead because someone comes to the door or you lose connection and you never know. eventually we were all assembled there. I presented the present to him which he gratefully received. Then I took it back because I’d fabricated some kind of grip for the stalk, made out of elasticated material. I put it on but it was too lose so I borrowed a needle and thread and began to sew it so that it was tighter. Everyone made a few comments so I told them that if anyone thinks that they could do it better, I’m only doing this by default so I’d gladly give up the place to someone else. No-one did so I carried on and was about halfway through it when the dream ended.

I’m impressed that I can discuss the issues about internet connections in my sleep. And sewing too. I can certainly sew in real life, and knit too, but when I’m asleep? Is there no end to my nocturnal talents?

And then later on I was with some people. They wanted me to take a caravan and trailer down to the South of France and into Italy. Although I was in principle agreed the first problem was that I didn’t have a car. They said that a car would be sorted out for me somehow so I didn’t say much until the very evening they produced this car. It was in a shocking state and it was impossible for me to even consider taking this, never mind towing a caravan and trailer behind it. There was some heated discussion about this and they proposed a variety of solutions which I rejected. In the end they produced a motor bike, a 350cc Triumph. I thought that this was the most absurd thing that I’d ever seen. I wondered where they had found the motor bike. It turned out that they had stolen it. All kinds of alarm bells were ringing for me at that point. The first thing that I said was “what about the insurance?”. There they were, rummaging through the papers in the side of this motor bike and they came across an insurance document. In the end, much against my better judgement, I was persuaded. We were in somewhere on the south of Manchester . We coupled up the caravan to the motor bike then coupled up the trailer to the back of the caravan. It would just about move it but I knew that it was all going to lead to a huge disaster. I thought that the first issue would be to take it over the Pennines, all of this, and I’ve no idea how I’m going to do that. I had a think and could remember how the major road system went. I thought that if I went a little way north I could probably pass over there somewhere towards Sheffield and then on the M1. I set out, but when I came to a road junction I heard someone shout “Phil Miller”. “Did you hear that?” and one of the other people said “yes”. I said “you know who Phil Miller is, don’t you?”. They replied “no”. “He was the keyboard player in ‘Caravan’. I wish that I had the time to go to say ‘hello’ to him”. They said “why don’t you go?”. I replied “don’t be silly. I have far too much on my plate at the moment with all of this”. We set off again. They were unhappy with the way that I crossed a certain road but I didn’t care. The further I went down this street heading out of this town the more I know that I was just coming closer and closer to disaster. This is all going to go wrong before too long.

Apart from having all these people on a motorcycle, it was Steve Miller who was the keyboard player in “Caravan”. Steve’s brother Phil was a guitarist who, although he guested on Caravan’s album WATERLOO LILY is much better know for his collaborations with Robert Wyatt. Nevertheless, it’s still quite impressive that I could come out with that. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when WE WERE IN NEWFOUNDLAND IN 2010 we encountered a car pulling a caravan pulling a trailer.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, the way to go south-east to the M1 is via Stoke on Trent and the A500 to Derby, but if I’m heading from the south of Manchester and want to keep away from traffic I’d go via Macclesfield and Leek, past my old stamping ground in 1975 of Bosley.

Having done a pile of work I stopped for a good wash and then waited for the nurse to appear.

He didn’t have much to say for himself, but he thinks that my left leg is almost back to normal so he’s going to try it today without any plasters to see if it holds out. And he put a small plaster on my toe where I’d torn off the nail. It had actually stopped bleeding but it’s better safe than sorry.

After a quick breakfast I came back in here and revised for my Welsh. And once again the lesson passed quite well and I enjoyed it. I was surprised at how much I could figure out, even if I didn’t understand everything. The key to understanding is not to understand and translate every word, but just to understand the gist of the conversation. I reckon that when you are having a conversation in your mother-tongue, you don’t hear three-quarters of the words that are spoken but you know what’s being said all the same.

No lunch today. I started work straight away and by the time I’d finished, not only had I chosen all of the music for the next programme, I’d written half of the notes too. And that was without really trying either

Once again, there was something that happened that made me realise that I must be feeling better than I have been for several months. That cheered me up a great deal too because I need to convince myself that I’m feeling better.

As for my chocolate cake, I had a slice with my hot chocolate this afternoon. And it really was delicious. The best cake that I gave ever made. But it was more done at the top than at the bottom. If only I could turn it over somehow and cook it upside-down for some of the time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice, followed by apple cake and coconut-flavoured soya cream. That was delicious too and there’s no doubt – I might be eating simply but I really am eating well. If I ever lose my appetite or lose the will to cook then I will know that it’s the end.

So now it’s the end of my day and I’m off to catch up with my beauty sleep. And after last night I certainly need it. But then again I always do, especially with a dial like mine.

But before I go, I have been taken to task for what at least one person considers to be humour that really belongs in the gutter and not in a family-orientated web page
"Don’t you know what good, clean fun is?" I was asked.
"No" I replied. "What good is it?"

Sunday 13th October 2024 – ♫ I WOKE UP …♫

♫… this morning♫

At 06:05 and thought “here we go again. Just when I was hoping to have a really good sleep for once …”

But I did in fact go back to sleep again. And I’m glad that I did because I had a visitor – a most welcome visitor too who came to see me in my sleep.

But more of that anon.

After I finished my notes last night I dictated the notes for the two programmes that I’d prepared during last week and, having reviewed them yesterday, it was much easier, and much quicker to dictate them. And hopefully, much quicker to edit them too.

Everything was finished by about 23:15 which meant that, although it was after my target time of 23:00, there’s a lie-in tomorrow until 08:00. And how I need it too.

Nice clean shorts in which to go to bed too. Life’s becoming a luxury here these days.

As I said just now, I awoke at 06:05 and after a few minutes I was convinced that I could raise myself from the dead but I’m glad that I didn’t. Instead, I had sweet dreams until I awoke again at just a couple of minutes before 08:00.

When the alarm went off I sprung out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a quick wash before the nurse arrived.

The spare dressing gown fell off its hanger on the back of the door. There it was on the floor and I didn’t have time to pick it up. I suddenly began to think “when will I have thirty seconds to pick it up and hang it back?”

Yes, there is so much to do that life is becoming a race – a race against time. LIFE IS JUST A BET ON A RACE BETWEEN THE LIGHTS and that’s all that I can say.

The nurse came late today. She made a few encouraging noises and left off a few of the plasters to see how my leg improves. She’s certainly more optimistic than I am.

After she left I made breakfast and READ MY BOOK. Today we’ve made it to Stonehenge, as it sits in its natural state.

But before we leave the villa at Bignor, it’s worth mentioning that Thomas Wright had heard that "the farmer to whom the land belongs is desirous of selling that portion of it which contains the remains of the Roman villa ," and so "If the government will not interfere in a case like this-which it would do in any other country—it is to be hoped that there is public spirit enough to secure the preservation of these interesting remains on the site where they stand , in such a manner that they may be seen to the most advantage by every one that will visit them"

And so we see the seeds being sown of the idea of the National Trust, or English Heritage. But it took until 1882 and the Ancient Monuments Protection Act before the Government took any action, and even then the Roman Villa at Bignor was not on the list.

Back in here I carried on with the dictaphone notes. I’d made a start earlier before the nurse arrived but hadn’t finished. I was doing a character analysis of Lewis Carroll at one point last night. We met him once and had to ask him whatever questions we liked. Then we had to go away and write down our assessment of his qualities. For some reason or other I was busy writing stuff about his liking of folk music

Lewis Carroll – can you imagine how hard it would be to do that? Everyone is a product of his time and should be judged in respect of the prevailing conditions at that moment. How difficult is it for us to be able to put ourselves into the mindset of another period and judge someone in accordance with those characteristics? I personally am fed up of people making judgements on historical characters, or even contemporary people living in another culture, based on our own standards of today.

There was also something about being on the trail of the Romans in Derbyshire, finding soapstone blocks that had been really well-shaped and practically professional and listening to a talk on them. At the same time people were interested in reading about French place-names and how they’ve derived from the one that was given by the Romans when they came to settle in the area.

And that reminds me – It’s never “Roman” in France. The French don’t accept that the Romans brought civilisation and urbanism to France. It’s considered that France was already civilised and urbanised before the arrival of Romans and so the remains should be called “Gallo-Roman”. I’ve seen a historical meeting in France almost break out in a brawl when someone used the word “Roman” instead of “Gallo-Roman” to describe some remains.

Having awoken once, then back to sleep and who should come to see me but Zero! There had been a festival taking place, a music festival. It had been pouring down with rain and all the crowd was dancing under a huge piece of plastic. When it was time to go everyone ran with the plastic to put it away but I was caught in the middle and overwhelmed by all of it. In the end I managed to make my way to where my friends were waiting for a ride back to the campsite. We were sitting there chatting away. One of them was Zero’s father. I ended up round at his house. His brother-in-law was living with him – a right waster, fond of alcohol and buying all these derelict cars and somehow selling them on at a profit. It was really annoying Zero’s father. We were having a really good chat when his son came up and asked “could you do me a favour on Sunday?”. I asked “what is it?” and he replied “could you run me to Gatwick?”. I replied, laughing (and when I listened to the dictaphone I found that I had been laughing too), “I could run you to Gatwick but i certainly wouldn’t be for a favour”. He answered “OK, but I’ll buy you a pint”. I thought “it’s going to take a lot of pints for me to drive him to Gatwick”. We actually agreed on an arrangement. When I went to pick him up he had Zero with him. We arrived in London and I dropped him off. She asked if I could run her somewhere else. I replied “yes” and we ended up at some traffic lights in the south of London. She alighted and someone, I don’t know who, said “that’s the last you’ll see of her”. I set off to go north from there. There was some trouble with the van’s clutch. If I tried to pull away in second instead of first the clutch would go dead and the van wouldn’t move. If I then put it in first it wouldn’t move back and I had to perform some really complicated arrangement to make the clutch grip. That was causing all kinds of problems in these traffic queues with cars cutting in. I thought to myself “I’ll be glad to join the motorway and go back to when I don’t need to use the gearbox. But I was perplexed about the appearance of Zero. I thought “what is it that she’s doing down here in London? Why didn’t she want a ride back etc?

And then I stepped back into that dream later. Zero’s father went out and then her brother made arrangements to go out with his friend. That left the two of us alone together. We had a cup of coffee and a chat and she took her brother a cup of tea. Then we went into the living room and began to tip out the drawers of one of the units where she kept her things. What she wanted was some lined wallpaper that she would line her drawers and put her tools in, all in one long line in this drawer. But we hunted high and low in that house for some lined wallpaper – wallpaper with lines on it. I knew that there was some somewhere but we couldn’t find it. This was beginning to become complicated and we had all her things tipped out all over the living room floor.

How nice is that? Not only did Zero come to see me, I stepped back into a dream and she returned. I couldn’t wish for anything better and I wish that she’d come back to see me more often. As Counting Crows sang, MAN, I SURE DO LOVE THEM RED-HAIRED GIRLS.

Having done that, I attacked the two radio programmes that I dictated last night and by the time I stopped for tea, they were complete, 11th track added for each programme, notes for that extra track written, dictated, edited in and now I have two more programmes fully prepared that take me up to 20th June next year

There were plenty of interruptions during the course of the day.

Firstly, I had soup to make. Due to a confusion between my cleaner and myself I ended up with two lots of mushrooms. That can only mean one thing – mushroom soup. And seeing as I had some soya yoghurt, then that could only mean cream of mushroom soup.

Rosemary rang me too for a chat. Just a short one today – 1hr 11 mins. So my Welsh homework is now pushed back to tomorrow too but it can’t be helped. Talking to friends is much more important.

Tonight’s pizza was excellent again. I had two tomatoes that were looking the worse for wear so that called for a home-made tomato sauce as I made the other week. This time I made a couple of changes to what I did last time and the sauce was actually beautiful. It certainly made a good pizza

So now I’m off to bed, in the hope that Zero will come to see me again.

But all his talk about vans, France and so on reminds me of the time I went in the van to p-p-p-pick up a Penguin, a Percy Penguin in fact, from work one evening
A new French restaurant had opened in Holmes Chapel and I wanted to try it out so I asked Percy Penguin "do you fancy some Coq au Vin?"
"Yes please" she said, and climbed over the seat into the back

Thursday 10th October 2024 – TODAY IT WAS …

… the turn of the dietician to come to bother me and disturb my pleasant … "well, sort-of" – ed … relaxation at the Dialysis Centre.

It’s remarkable (but no surprise really) that the trick cyclist never ever came back to see me for a second time, and I don’t know if this dietician will either after today, even though she promised to bring me a book.

Of course, here in any kind of French institution they don’t know what a vegan is and it’s cuisine à la Tricatel in these establishments so they are in no place to give me any advice about my diet. And in any case, as Kingsley Amis once said, "No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare".

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve no interest whatever in clinging on to life by my fingertips as long as possible just for six more months of agony or whatever. I intend to enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, growing older and riper and more degenerate

You should see the list of foods that she wants me to abandon. And there’s no chance whatever of that.

But last night there was every chance of my being in bed by 23:00 but, loitering around to no useful purpose, I missed it by five minutes. And once I was asleep there I stayed until the alarm went off and that’s something that hasn’t happened for a while.

So at the sound of BILLY COTTON I turned over and made a valiant attempt at leaving the warmth and comfort of my bed and only beat the second alarm by a whisker.

Having washed the clothes under the shower yesterday there was nothing to clean so I had a shave and applied the deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then came back in here.

There wasn’t much on the dictaphone this morning, as I found when I went to transcribe the notes. Someone came to see me during the night from Ireland and wanted me to leave the bed. They said some kind of motivational phrase, I don’t know what it was now but it referred to one of their towns so I sat upright and began to leave the bed. Then I had a rough idea of the time and thought that it’s not really worth it so I turned over and went back to sleep

So who was that who came to see me? I have a couple of Irish friends of course and one of those could quite happily have come into my bedroom and been quite welcome too but I couldn’t be that lucky

The nurse came to see me, her usual smiling face, and we had a little chat about nothing much. She forgot the prescription for the tubular bandage that my cleaner wants and promised to bring it tomorrow.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY BOOK. Today we are wandering around the Devil’s Arrows near Boroughbridge. They are some peculiar standing stones embedded in the ground at a certain angle, not perpendicular.

Once more he was lamenting, lamenting the fact that one of them had been uprooted in a futile treasure hunt and then smashed to pieces and hauled away. How much else of the Country’s heritage has disappeared like that?

Back in here, in another fit of wild enthusiasm, I attacked the radio programme that I started yesterday. Now, all of the tracks are sorted and segued and I’ve written half of the notes already. I don’t know what’s come over me right now.

My cleaner came round to fit my anaesthetic patches. We discussed next shower day and she’s going to change the bedding while I’m under the jet. That means that on Saturday morning I’d better shift this backlog of washing in the bathroom so as to make a space to dump the dirty stuff

The taxi was late coming for me – it had been to pick up that British woman about whom I talked the other week. She’s becoming far too friendly for my liking and I’ll have to do something about this

At the clinic they were waiting for me so I didn’t have to wait for too long before I was plugged in

It seems that I now have a hospital appointment for 8th November. It’s for a scan and an electrograph on my foot to find this trapped nerve that I think that I have. Things in this respect are moving fairly quickly which is good news

As I promised yesterday I went to read my course book but I don’t have the new one loaded onto the portable laptop so I contented myself with the last chapter of the previous one. And then I carried on with reading Lewis Carroll’s biography.

There was nothing in there today that would have worried the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, but there always were plenty of hints, rumour and suspicion about his activities that would have worried the editor had they reached her ears. It’s certainly true that his family destroyed many of the photographs that he took and tore pages out of his diaries before they were passed to his biographers.

One thing that made me laugh about the book was the account by the biographer of his job as curator of the Common Room at the University and especially the Smoking Room "hard by for those who do not despise the harmless but unnecessary weed, "

How times have changed since 1898!

But having posted that on the internet now via the medium of my blog, I wonder how long it will be before someone from Q-Anon or another one of these stupid sites goes around saying that he’s read something about smoking on the internet that the scientists missed, about it being harmless and its safe for everyone to light up again.

The dietician turned up to interrupt me. She gave me many instructions about my diet and so in return I told her about the scandalous meals that I’d been served in her hospital, and that took the wind out of her sails somewhat.

But having given me her instructions she’s going to order a blood test in four weeks time to see if I’ve been a good boy but Austin Powers KNOWS WHAT THE NEXT STEP WILL BE

Apart from that, no-one bothered me at all – no doctors or anything – until my machine sounded its alarm that the process was complete. Then I was uncoupled and weighed (I’d lost 1.7 kgs today) and then I could clear off

There was another passenger in the taxi back, a crabby old woman who was busy expressing an opinion that all foreigners should clear off back to where they came from, so I said “bonjour” to her in a perfect simulated English accent and that shut her up.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched me as I climbed the stairs. And today, I managed five stairs without having to lift my leg up with my hand. Still a long way from when I could stagger up all 25 unaided, but if it keeps on improving like this, I might start to go back to the shops on Friday morning

Tea tonight was steamed veg and vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. There’s no doubt that although my meals are plain, they are very very tasty and I’m not going to give them up without a fight.

So right now I’m going to bed as I have bread to bake in the morning. But before I go I’ll tell you about an incident that took place at the Dialysis Clinic today.
A nurse going past looked at me, stopped, and said "don’t you have such beautiful blue eyes?"
"Thank you" I replied
"Did your father have them?" she asked "or was it your mother?"
"Knowing our family" I replied "it was probably the milkman."

Saturday 5th October 2024 – GUESS WHO …

… came to see me during the night last night?

That’s right. Out of the gloom and murk came none other than Castor, back again after an absence that has been far too long

Even now I can still see her, which is no surprise. After all, they say that absence make the heart grow fonder, and the absence has certainly been long enough to tax my emotional wellbeing. We need more nights like this – that goes without saying.

What might help considerably would be if I could manage to be in bed at a reasonable hour. Last night was of course especially late with the football running on like it did and then everything that I needed to do afterwards. And it would have been even later had I not washed up at half-time.

But once I was in bed I was in bed, and there I stayed. I don’t have many memories of anything much during the night and seem to think that I stayed asleep until the alarm went off at 07:00. And that seems to be a rare thing these days too.

After I’d closed down the alarm I staggered off into the bathroom to wash myself, my shorts and my undies. I need to keep myself and my clothes as clean as I can. Having said that though, I forgot to wash my socks. I must try to remember that.

Despite the raucous roars of laughter from my friends last time, I still applied a liberal helping of deodorant so that I smell nice in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Dialysis Centre.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night. That was when I realised that Castor had been to see me last night. And not just Castor either but Castor AND Pollux. There was some kind of communal bathhouse place where everyone would sit around the lip of a bath underneath a jet of water where they could regulate the temperature themselves to whatever they liked, very hot or very cold. The idea was that it was more of a social thing than anything else and was very popular with the ethnic community. I had to go into Hanley as I was organising a raid on the market. I was wandering around looking at the products, looking at the men’s suits that were hanging there. There was an “Adult Shop” there and the girl who was partnered with me had never seen one so she was trying to peer into the window to see what was on offer while I was looking at the products that they were selling – from everything to start off the process all the way down later on through to the end and the kiddies’ pushchairs. They had some suits too and I though that that was a funny place to be measured. At the signal I moved a cart across the street that I was watching so no-one could leave and then we advanced in and herded all the people up to check their papers. When we came to the communal bathhouse I noticed Castor and Pollux sitting on the edge. I just discreetly walked up to them and turned on their tap so they had a soaking. I expected them to be outraged or something like that but Pollux said “ooh. Please turn the tap off for a minute but turn it back on again for the second half for 32 seconds”. I stood there and waited while they chatted amongst themselves. Just then some local Indian guy came up and began to talk to them. He pointed out something in the distance. It was a couple of people in a Jeep driving through the desert and some other activity out there. They began to talk about this and to comment on it. In the meantime I was counting. When it reached the appropriate moment I turned on the jet of water and soaked them again which completely interrupted the conversation

Whatever prompted this raid on the Market at Hanley? It would have been much easier the last time that I had been there because the Market is now indoors in the basement of the new shopping precinct that they built on the site of the old Port Vale football ground, and they could simply close the doors

And a desert in Stoke on Trent? What they are more likely to see these days is an industrial wilderness. All of the old heavy industry that used to be in the Potteries has now gone, and gone for good like in most other places in the UK.

There was also something about body positions … "presumably relating to the adult shop – ed" … in some kind of factory… "can’t be Stoke on Trent then – ed" …. Someone was saying that they didn’t know what use it was but maybe it’ll come in handy if they are doing first aid lessons. But that’s all that I can remember of that.

There’s also a very vague memory of walking – showing off my new-found skill to someone and proud of it too.

The nurse came rather later than usual and talked about not very much. He was soon gone and I could make my breakfast and read in peace. My reading of the excavations at Holborough came to an end and following yet another diversions, I’m now on the sands at Minnis Bay, just down the road from where my mother lived, investigating some Medieval wells that have recently been discovered

Once I’d finished breakfast I came back in here and I made an executive decision. For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be wrong, the person making it is executed.

Anyway, as I have far too much work to do to be able to take a Day of Rest on Sundays as I used to do, I have decided that Saturdays will be a couple of hours of rest – from the end of breakfast until the taxi comes at lunchtime, I shall emulate my namesake the mathematician and do three fifth of five eights of … err … nothing.

And so I did.

When the cleaner came she fitted my patches, helped me pack my things and we were busy chatting away when the taxi arrived. I was all on my own today down to the Centre and there weren’t all that many of us there today either.

The girls coupled me up a lot less painfully that on some occasions, but then it took them a good while to make the machine work. Everything was being difficult today.

Once we were up and running I listened to some music and read Lewis Carroll’s biography until it was time to go.

There weren’t all that many interruptions. My blood sugar level is still far too low so they were plying me with orange juice for much of the time that I was there. And now, at home I have to have a blood test. For that, I shall wait until next week, like everyone else.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too but she gave me a wide berth and didn’t even give me a wave, which I found rather disappointing.

Once I’d finished I had a good ride back home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. And to my surprise, I could make three stairs without using my hand to lift my foot before I ran out of steam. It was still a pretty rapid climb compared to at the beginning.

Back in here I found that I’d forgotten my headphones. That’s a tragedy and no mistake I shall have to ‘phone them on Monday morning.

Tea was as usual a baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by spotted dick and caramel soya cream. All very nice indeed.

But now I’m going to dictate this two lots of radio notes and then go to bed for a good sleep, in the hope that Castor comes to see me again. YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS right enough.

But talking about the “Adult Shop” … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of when one opened in Crewe years ago. When the guy next door wanted to sell his house, the Estate Agent used a previous picture of the house that showed the previous occupant of the premises next door – “The Christian Science Reading Rooms” and I’m sure that you think that I’m making this up. Personally, I don’t know which one would be the more embarrassing.

However, some woman wasn’t so embarrassed, and she sneaked in for a good look around.
Later that night in bed she mentioned “foreplay” to her husband, so he went outside and brought back three friends.

Friday 4th October 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

… be another late night tonight.

In fact it’s going to be a rather long day because not only is it going to be a late night, it was an early morning too. When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already just about to begin to make the bread after having had a good wash.

Then again, it was an early night last night. Somehow I managed to have everything finished by 22:30 and it wasn’t many minutes later that I actually climbed into bed.

Once in there, it didn’t take me long to go off into the Land of Nod. All in all, it’s about time that I had a night like that

It was about 06:00 when I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how I tried so in the end I gave it up as a bad job, climbed out of bed and went off for a good scrub down.

Having finished that I went into the kitchen, scrubbed down the worktop and began to make the bread. I decided against trying to make some bread rolls, for the rather prosaic reason is that there’s no room in the freezer to stock them and it’s pretty pointless making just one.

But once again, the dough didn’t rise as much as I would like. That’s bizarre because the pizza dough goes up like a lift so there’s nothing wrong with my technique. All that I can think of is that it’s the flour. This stuff is the special bread flour, while the pizza dough is made of the cheapest plain flour, so that’s quite strange.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night. It wasn’t as exciting as last night unfortunately. I was sure that I had just been spotted by the police as I was driving using my ‘phone at the same time so that’s one point on my licence and a fine that I could well do without. Even worse, I hadn’t been paying my mobile ‘phone bills for a while so the ‘phone company is now going to start to chase after me. And then the car didn’t have any tax or MoT so I had a feeling that the book was now going to be thrown at me and they would be intent upon making me suffer for this. I sat down and thought about how I could clear all of the bills and all of the backlog but it would be the end of April before I had any money available and that’s a long time to wait and I didn’t think that anyone in these kinds of organisations would wait that long. As I was walking through Belgium … "Brussels actually" – ed … around the Inner Ring near the old theatre that had been boarded up I was thinking about all of this and wondering whether the fines from the traffic police or the fines about the mobile ‘phone would come first and how they would all affect my driving licence. I reckoned that I would be in for a very bad six months before things would ever improve

Fortunately most of my transgressions occurred before the days of mobile ‘phones, ANPR and computerised police forces. I would have been totally out-of-place and totally unprepared for the modern World. When I think back to how we used to behave back in the late 60s and early 70s, I’m reminded of Daniel Gooch and his "whatever would be said of that mode of proceeding today?"

But it’s a shame that I didn’t meet that girl from last night again. That reminds me of Lee Jackson singing YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

The nurse was in a good humour again this morning and was in chat mode again, although he didn’t say anything important . Mind you, he gave me some instructions about more supplies that we need. We seem to be running low yet again

After he left I gave the bread its second kneading and then went to make breakfast and carry on reading the REPORT OF THE EXCAVATION of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Holborough.

We’ve finished our examination of early Anglo-Saxon grave goods with specific reference to pot-hangers, and moved on to pathology lessons, having a master class on skulls with specific reference to dentistry. There’s no doubt that if I could absorb all of this book I’d be an expert on Anglo Saxon physical history. It’s one of the most fascinating books that I’ve ever read.

After putting the bread in the oven I came back in here and started work.

Today I’ve been a very busy boy. I’ve cracked on and completed all of the notes for the next radio programme. That burst of energy took me completely by surprise.

And there was a couple of pauses too. Firstly, I had to take the bread out of the oven when it was finished. It’s not perfect but it does look really good, that’s for sure.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a small one today – one hour and thirty-four minutes

Then there was a leisurely lunch – cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwiches on fresh, soft, delicious bread followed by a pile of fruit. The bread really was nice.

The cleaner came down too and had a good blitz through the apartment. Now it looks as if someone actually lives here, which is always nice

My afternoon hot chocolate was rather late today, and back in here I rather regrettably crashed out while I was doing something else. Only for about 20 minutes though, so I can’t complain too much. A few weeks ago it would have been for a couple of hours.

Tea was a rather rushed chips, salad and vegan nuggets. Rushed because we had football – Penybont v Barry Town

After their famous victory against TNS, Penybont somehow managed to lose against Llansawel, the bottom club in their following game, and when they went 1-0 down early in this game I thought “here we go again”

But whatever Rhys Griffiths put in their half-time cuppa, I wouldn’t mind a swig of it because they ran out 4-1 winners in the end. And we were treated to some of the finest goals that you would ever see

The standard of football was excellent – over the last couple of seasons we are really seeing an improvement in quality – and Penybont were the better team. But 4-1 is something of an exaggeration because Barry were much better than that.

And once more, this was another game where both I and the commentators thought that the referee must be refereeing a completely different game to the one that we were watching.

So right now I’m going to go to bed. I want a good sleep as tomorrow I have two lots of radio notes to dictate so it’ll be a late night.

But the match tonight made me feel rather sorry for Barry Town who deserved much better than to lose by three goals. It reminded me of Harry Carpenter trying his best to console Ken Norton after he had been badly beaten in a boxing match by Mohammad Ali
"Cheer up, Ken" he said. "Without you, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight".

25th September 2024 – YOU WON’T BELIEVE …

… this, but this afternoon, I have had a shower. In my apartment.

Had you been here, you would have laughed, watching my faithful cleaner and me struggling to help me climb over the side of the bath into the basin and, with even more difficulty, climbing back out afterwards.

Many people have a life that is full of nothing but problems, but it seems that my cleaner and I have lives that are full of solutions and we managed it in the end.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that was that I was so exhausted afterwards that I almost fell asleep standing up while I was making my hot chocolate. And I did crash out later for half an hour or so on my chair in the office.

However I put that down to the miserable night that I had last night. When it came round to bedtime I was too exhausted to stand up from my chair (and I’m not sure why, as I’d done nothing strenuous all day) but not tired enough to go to sleep.

In fact I was so exhausted that I didn’t even have the strength to perform my daily back-up of the computer. Instead I just sat here with a blank expression on my face … "so what’s new?" – ed … just like Chris Isaak, WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO FALL

It was about 03:20 when I finally fell into bed. That was what I call “ridiculous”. But it’s no wonder that I fell asleep this afternoon, and it’s surprising that it was only for half an hour.

At least it didn’t take me long to drop off and there I stayed, totally out of this world when the alarm went off at 07:00

When the alarm rang I was away with the fairies. I was carrying out some kind of investigation into a General who had recently come out of hospital, I don’t know why, whether it was for an operation or a war wound. But this was coming back to Roman times, and as they began to tell me the story about the General I suddenly realised that I’d heard all this before some other time and this was a repeat of a previous incident that had taken place. So I wondered what on earth was going on about this because this sounded just far too unusual to be any kind of coincidence

And I’ll tell you exactly where this took place too. On the way to Avranches, half a dozen kilometres from the railway station, there’s a roundabout with a petrol station just past it and a wood to the eastern side of the road. It was in that wood, looking north-east where this went on. Obviously the stress and strain of hitting the road three times per week to Avranches and back is starting to take its toll.

It won’t surprise you to learn that I had a struggle to haul myself out of bed when the alarm went off. I really didn’t feel much like it at all but it’s one of those things that the longer I leave it, the more difficult it becomes

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back to listen to the dictaphone. There was nothing else on it so I carried on with tagging the videos. And that’s difficult too because for many of the videos, the metadata is locked and I can’t edit it.

When the nurse appeared she sorted me out and gave me a few instructions about this and that. She didn’t stay long either so I could carry on quite rapidly.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY BOOK. And the more I read, the more I like the author, Thomas Wright.

Today we’re wandering around the remains of Verulamium. And if you think that I’m far too cynical for my own good, you ought to read his account of the history of the Abbey of St Albans and the founding of the town
"The monks who built it wanted a saint; they found in a then popular Christian Latin poet, Fortunatus, mention of a man named Alban, who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Britain. The Saxon monks accordingly dug up some Roman bones, declared that they belonged to the martyred body of St.Alban, and built their church upon the spot"
And later on, when King Offa decided to found a monastery on the site in penance for the murder of King Aethelbert –
"More bones were dug up, and these were miraculously shown to be the same relics of the saint which had been lost since the first church was neglected"
And I thought that I was cynical. I tell you – I have nothing whatever on him

But all these little anecdotes from people who were there at the time or who interviewed people who were, they are all in danger of being lost as modern research is just centred around Wikipedia and nothing else, and the old books are abandoned.

Back in here I went to pair off the tracks ready to write the notes but I hit a problem. The audio-editing program that I use has had an upgrade, and all of my settings have been set to default. That means that when I’m editing, the program is doing things that I don’t want it to do.

This issue cropped up previously and I asked for help in the users’ forum and we managed to resolve it. And here it is again, I can’t remember what I did and I can’t find my original request in the forum.

It took me an age to find my question and once I had the answer it took just seconds to fix. And then I came across more issues but I had an idea of what might be causing them and I was able to fix them with e little persuasion and a lot of time.

It wasn’t until after (a late) lunch that I began to write the notes, and it took an age to finish them, what with all of the interruptions.

Firstly, I had to hunt for my swimming trunks. In the end after about half an hour I gave up. They aren’t in here. However I did find the missing pair of shorts which is good news. And that’s what usually happens with me. You never find what you are looking for but you always seem to find what you hunted and gave up looking for last time.

It’s like when I was rebuilding the house. I’d seen stuff on sale at a bargain price and think “I’m going to need that in six months time” so I buy it at the cheap price. And then when I come to need it, I can’t ever find it, have to buy a full-price article and then find the bargain price one two weeks later.

Anyway, now that I have two pairs of shorts, I can wear one in the shower. I don’t want to frighten the cleaner.

Helping me into the bath was one thing. I sat on a chair at the side of the bath, lifted my legs over the side and then tried to stand up. At first I almost fell over but the cleaner caught me and I struggled upright with the aid of a crutch. Imagine that – a crutch under the shower!

The shower wasn’t all that good, mainly because I couldn’t stand directly in the stream, having to lean against the wall. But it was so lovely just to be there with the warm water cascading down onto me.

There were many things that I could have done better, and I will do next time. Because there will be a next time. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make a mistake. I just learn a lot. I can’t remember who said it but I do remember someone saying "experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted". … "It Was Randy Pausch" – ed …

Helping me out of the bath was even more fun. As the bath is higher than the floor, the chair on the floor at the side of the bath was too low for me to sit on. My cleaner had the bright idea of fetching a wooden box and putting that on the seat. I could manage that and I gradually managed to lift my legs out of the bath, dripping water everywhere.

But at least I managed it

We did have quite a laugh though. "Imagine if someone came to the door now" said my cleaner
"Yes" I replied. " ‘Just give me a minute to put on my trousers’. They’ll wonder what on earth we’ve been doing"

After she left I carried on with the notes and then had a pause for my hot chocolate and coconut cake. And it’s quite nice, my cake. It really is. The coconut oil works really well. I’ll make this cake again, that’s for sure.

As I mentioned earlier, I almost fell asleep standing up while waiting for the chocolate to heat up, and back here, I didn’t hold out long before I was gone.

While I was asleep I dreamed that I’d gone to look at someone’s ‘H’ registered Volvo 7-series estate that was for sale. There was some kind of comparison run by the local newspaper. They had a total of 5 adverts for similar cars and compared the prices. They thought that one at €1895 by a private seller sounded like a good deal. And then We ended up somehow in the tundra and someone was driving a green industrial machine down along the railway track through a pine forest.

And I almost had a Volvo 7-series estate too once. Not long after I’d started chauffeuring in Brussels the garage where we bought our petrol had one on the forecourt at a reasonable price, a diesel, so I took it for a drive. It was a lovely car but it was at the wrong time. I couldn’t really afford it. But it’s true to say that I am yearning for the tundra. A trip to Upper Labrador, every night, “sleeping out” like I did in Strider, listening to the timber wolves howling. I’ve told my niece and her husband to make sure that there’s a cross planted for me at my favourite spot in the Mealy Mountains.

After I’d finally finished the notes I went for tea. Tonight it’s a leftover curry with rice and a naan bread, and there was enough leftover to make two helpings. And I’ll be looking forward to the second helping because it really was good. Right now though, it’s freezing to be put aside for another time.

The spotted dick with coconut soya cream for pudding was lovely too and I’ll make that again as well. My cooking is improving and I reckon that I’ll go berserk when I finally have a decent oven, whenever that might be. It’s a shame about the one in Caliburn.

So right now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. And I need it too.

But talking about miracles … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the Priest who came back from a trip to Lourdes. At the airport coming home he was stopped by Customs who searched his belongings.
"What’s that in that flask there?" asked the inspector
"Holy water from Lourdes" replied the Priest.
So the Customs inspector opened it and sniffed it. "No it isn’t!" exclaimed the Inspector. "It’s brandy!"
"The Saints be praised!" shouted the Priest. "Another miracle!"

Sunday 15th September 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today.

Yes, even though it’s not Pancake Tuesday, Eric’s busy baking. Currently cooling down on a rack is a coconut-flavoured oilcake and (rather overcooked) tray of flapjack. There’s enough here to keep me going for a couple of weeks.

And I’ll need it too because I won’t have much time for anything else once this dialysis stuff gets properly under way. I worked out that I’ll be losing at least 18 hours per week at this, and as I’m not crashed out for 18 hours per week, time that I can recover by having the dialysis, if I’m only crashed out for, say, 9 hours, I need to find the other 9 hours from somewhere else.

Either that or there has to be such a major improvement in my health that I can work twice as fast.

Either way, it looks as if many of those hours will be lost for good in which case I shall have to do something.

What I could do is of course go to bed later and use the afternoons in dialysis to catch up on my sleep, seeing as there’s nothing much else going on while I’m there.

And so we made a start on this idea by being later in bed last night, staying up to dictate the radio notes that I’d written during the week.

Actually a late night wasn’t so important because with it being Sunday it’s a lie-in day where I can stay in bed until 08:00.

That is of course provided that I don’t awaken at … errr … 06:25 like this morning.

Even so, no chance of my leaving the stinking pit at that hour even if I could have recovered 90 minutes of my missing time. Instead I curled up under the bedclothes and waited for 08:00

When the alarm went of I leaped … "yes" – ed … out of bed and headed off for the bathroom to make myself ready for the day

There was then time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I seemed to have been subjected to the old dodge about the blind man who loses the bottom six inches off his cane, standing there on the edge of a precipice about to fall over. Luckily I came to my senses and realised what was happening before I’d made it completely out of bed so I could control the situation from where I was

Yes, I remember, in trying to help the old man I was almost out of bed before I realised that it was a dream and so I climbed back in. If I’m going to go sleepwalking around during the night, it’s a good job that I’ve started wearing shorts in bed. I don’t want to give anyone an inferiority complex

And then I was with Cecile. We’d had a huge, blazing row just before we’d planned to go off on a skiing holiday in the Highlands of Scotland. I’d picked a really interesting route by going as far as the Ayrshire coast and then island-hopping all the way to the far north, which we were both looking forward to. After this row she decided that she didn’t want to go and I had to persuade her and use all the tactics in my power to persuade her to go, telling her about all the wildlife that we’d see and the good time that we’d have have etc. But she was worried that her ex-boyfriend would be up there at that time and make life difficult for us but that wouldn’t bother me and all of the usual replies. The situation still never resolved itself by the time that the dream ended but I certainly did my best to try to have Cecile change her mind and come with me to the North.

Arguing with Cecile is a new dream. I seem to recall in a dream having argued with anyone else but not with her. And I wonder how she’s doing. Since she abruptly quit the Auvergne 10 or 11 years ago to go to help her mother on that isolated island in the Bay of Biscay I’ve not seen her, neither have I had any news. I hope that they are OK, although in all honesty I doubt if her mother is still with us.

Finally, I was with a group of people, Americans, and they wanted a cup of coffee so we went to a café but it was busy and the people were queueing outside. These Americans were most annoyed and snapping at the serving staff about the delay. I was so embarrassed because it was clearly nothing to do with them and was so sorry for them that I apologised. A little later I found myself on a stretcher being pushed around Charles de Gaulle Airport. The guy pushing me encountered a girlfriend and they stopped, chatting for 10 minutes. Then they pushed me, on this stretcher, onto a TGV. We had to go into the cafeteria carriage. We were there in the cafeteria, me on the stretcher and the guy in attendance, as we were hurtling at 300 kph across Europe. It was really most astonishing.

Where would I be going on a stretcher from Charles de Gaulle Airport on a TGV? If you’d asked me a year or two ago it would of course have been Brussels and then on to Leuven. Today it would be Rennes where I’d be put on a local train or, more likely, an ambulance to bring me back home

But issues with Americans, we all know about those. Many Americans, and indeed many other city-dwellers, don’t seem to understand that the pace of life is so much slower over here and they need to take it easy.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up. She wanted me to take off the plaster and look at my operation, so I asked her if she knew the reply given in the case of “Arkell v Pressdram”, which she didn’t.

She sorted out my puttees, took the recipe for Jam Roly Poly which she had asked me to prepare and then she complied with the reply given in the case of “Arkell v Pressdram”.

But Hans is going to have his work cut out writing the Epic Hall Book of Vegan Recipes at this rate

Once Isabelle had departed I could make breakfast and then go to read my book while I ate. Today we’re talking about abandoned settlements and those at Silchester and Venta Icenorum have been the topic of discussion.

As for the latter, its situation was only tentatively identified as “likely” and it wasn’t until 1928 when a chance aerial photograph revealed something hitherto inexplicable.

So if you take Google Maps or whatever, put it in “aerial view” mode and copy co-ordinates 52°35’00″N 1°17’27″E, now isn’t that absolutely beautiful, streets and all?

Back in here afterwards we had Stranraer v East Fife and what a game that was. Stranraer actually managed to win (for once) and that will make them feel better. With a squad ravaged by injury and barely able to put out any substitutes, they went into a 2-1 lead and clung on until the final whistle.

Meanwhile, in other news, over at the Excelsior Stadium in Airdrie, in the game between Airdrie United and Falkirk we had a classic example of PLAYING IT OUT FROM THE BACK from a goal-kick. What price a glorious hoof upfield?

After lunch I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed.

They are all edited, assembled, the length of the extra track calculated, the track chosen, remixed, notes written, dictated, edited and everything joined together as it should be to make one good hour-long radio programme

And then we started on the baking. A tray of flapjack and an oil cake, but with some of the oil substituted by melted coconut oil, and heaps of desiccated coconut added in

The oil-cake needed longer than the flapjack so I covered the flapjack with baking paper and that seemed to work (thanks, John).

The problem with my oil-cakes is that they rise really well in the oven but the moment that I open the door to take them out when baking is finished, they collapse again

Anyway, it’s baked now and everything else is cooling off. I’ll see what the coconut cake tastes like tomorrow.

With a stinking-hot oven I was sure that my pizza would cook nicely – and I was right. This new cheese is good, the base is excellent and the heat of the oven made sure that it was cooked really well.

So dialysis again tomorrow. I wonder where it will end. But I was so impressed with that aerial image, so if you have access to an aerial map, go for a look

But the story of the blind man with a cane reminds me of the time that a family was eagerly awaiting the return of their husband and father from work back in the Victorian era.
He’d gone up to London in a thick smog and throughout the day it went from bad to worse.
On the way back to the station for his train he found his way by tapping his cane along the street
"And then what happened?" asked his wife when he finally returned home next morning
"Suddenly, there was nothing. No sound, and no feeling" he said. "I thought that I reached the end of the pavement"
"What did you do then?" she asked
"I tapped my stick to the left, but nothing" he said. "So I tapped it to the right, but nothing. So I turned to go back, and still nothing. I thought that the World had come to an end so I stayed still, didn’t move, and prayed"
"So when the fog cleared and the dawn broke, what had happened?" asked the wife
"I found that the bottom six inches had broken off the end of my stick and it wasn’t reaching the ground."

Tuesday 10th September 2024 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we’ve featured an old car on these pages?

Or, more to the point, how long is it since we’ve featured a photo?

So here you are – a photo of an old Panhard C24 Coupé

One of the very last models made by Panhard, this vehicle would have been built some time between 1963-1967, but this vehicle may well be manufactured later in the range rather than earlier judging by the restyled tail lights.

Not exactly my favourite old car, the styling of these 850cc flat twins was supposed to be aerodynamic and while well in advance of its period, I didn’t find it to be an attractive design at all

Another problem was that, unlike Fords, they required a lot of care and attention to keep them on the road, and the bodywork contained some notorious rust-traps

It’s a shame that the photo hasn’t come out too well, but it was taken on the camera on the phone in the miserable grey afternoon from a moving vehicle and through the car windscreen.

No-one can be the best in these circumstances.

And neither can I, seeing as I had a horribly late night again last night.

One of my ground-hopping friends was out and about and was somewhere near Bathgate just outside Glasgow, watching the game between Armadale Thistle Ladies and Bonnyrigg Rose Ladies.

Bonnyrigg were unbeaten this season but my friend thought that Armadale would give them a good run for their money tonight so he went along and streamed the game.

He was right too. Armadale matched Bonnyrigg all the way, and their Khya McGurk scored what surely must be a goal-of-the-season contender to win the game for Armadale.

Although the game was somewhat short on skill, THIS PIECE OF SKILL ought to be enough to win any game any time anywhere in the world. Thanks to NORRIE WORK for the video clip. You can hear him going berserk in the background of the clip!

You’ll notice the copyright logo on the video extract. I’m currently experimenting with a few videos and a couple of editing programs. Until I settle on a good version and pay the unlocking fees, I’m stuck with free versions and their copyright logos.

If anyone can suggest any programs worth trying, drop me a line. There’s a “contact me” button on the bottom right of the page.

So with a horribly late night again, I crawl off to bed and there I stay until the alarm goes off. That might sound as if it’s good but believe me, I’ve slept for much longer than that and called it a bad night.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up, a shave, a complete change of clothes and I hand-washed my trousers and undies. That was rather drastic, and dramatic too, but I’m off out this afternoon, waging war.

First task though was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I can’t believe that I’m standing in a queue at an event somewhere or other and there are four people around me. Every single one of them speaks Welsh. There’s me, there’s that girl who looks like my friend from Trefynnon, there’s a guy called Gareth Owen and he’s speaking Welsh to Nerina who’s replying. I thought that there’s something totally strange happening here. We’re just in queue for a coffee at some kind of festival

That’s what I dictated anyway. And you wouldn’t have caught Nerina speaking a different language. She was a mathematician and computer person and therein lay her talents. But it’s not every day that I’m dreaming in Welsh. It’s really getting to me, isn’t it?

Isabelle the nurse came to see me too. She gave me the injection and fixed my puttees (which fell down shorty afterwards) while she told me about her walking holiday in Brittany. It was of interest to me because one summer in the mid-70s I went hitch-hiking around Finisterre and enjoyed every single minute of it.

Our Welsh course started up again today so I did some revision, of the wrong unit as it happened (which depressed me immensely) and then I had to abandon the lesson because the taxi came early.

We then had to drive around Granville picking up two others, and then the driver made a complete hash of leaving the town and we ended up stuck for ages behind a tractor. Mind you, if we’d gone the way that I would have gone, we’d have been ages earlier but we’d have missed the Panhard

That vehicle crossed our path somewhere near Sartilly and we followed it until it turned off on the outskirts of Avranches.

The hospital where I had all of these problems is installing a pay barrier, and that tells you everything you need to know about the hospital, its financial situation and why it’s trying to do its best to hang onto my money.

Because of our problems, I was late for my appointment and the doctor was waiting. I’d hardly got into my stride before he was full of apology for what had happened and was issuing instructions to his secretary.

The appointment didn’t last long. He looked at the reports, didn’t even look at his work, and gave the all-clear for dialysis to start. Apparently I’ll be “hearing from” the dialysis clinic.

There was then a phone call – from the hospital administration. Full of apologies (and excuses) but they have prepared a cheque and it will be sent to me “in the next couple of days”. We shall see.

The driver to take me home was my favourite Rastaman driver. After we’d dropped off some other passengers around Avranches and he’d given me a sightseeing tour of the town we set off for home.

He’s the most amenable of the drivers and as there were now just the two of us we stopped at the bank in Sartilly where at long last I was able to activate my new bank card, which pleases me no end.

At Granville my faithful cleaner was waiting and she stood and watched, impressed beyond belief, as I took myself up the stairs without help.

How long this will go on I really don’t know, but make the most of it!

She had some good news to tell me too about my ground-floor apartment. We’ll see how that develops too.

After she left I had a very late lunch and came in here where, true to form these days, I crashed out.

Just before I slid off into oblivion the dialysis clinic rang. I will have my dialysis on Thursdays, Saturdays and … errr … Mondays. Putting my foot down about Tuesdays has worked.

Afternoon though, not morning, but you can’t have everything I suppose. At least I have two full days in the week free. Roll on the Physiotherapy classes!

And then they called me back. I’ll have to go earlier than planned because the nurses are refusing to apply this anaesthetic cream stuff. But don’t worry – they’ll organise the taxis.

With some time to go before tea I attacked the paperwork again and sorted out some more stuff. The desktop is positively empty at the moment. How long will that last?

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll followed by apple crumble. What a good pudding that is. There’s still enough for a couple of days, and then maybe I’ll make a chocolate sponge for pudding next week

But not right now, because I’m off to bed. And maybe another dream in Welsh. Who knows?

Unless it’ll be a dream like the one where someone went to speak to the hotel management where he was staying.
"Last night" he said "I dreamed that I was eating a marshmallow, but it went on for ages this dream."
"It must have been a huge one" said the management. "A veritable giant"
"I suppose it was" said the guy
"But what’s that got to do with me?" asked the manager
"I just wanted to tell you" said the man "that when I awoke this morning, I couldn’t find the pillow"

Saturday 7th September 2024 – THE PLAN WAS …

… to sit back and do nothing whatever today.

And so of course, as you might expect, I have been quite busy and done quite a lot of stuff. But nothing really towards the huge backlog of stuff that’s been building up. That seems to be growing even bigger as I’m simply swept aside in a torrent of paperwork and the like.

What didn’t help matters very much was that I had another really late night last night. After falling asleep so completely during the afternoon I was quite wide awake during the evening and come bedtime I wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep.

Too tired though to haul myself off my comfortable chair and cross the couple of inches that separates chair from bed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s more exhaustion that I’m feeling than actual tiredness.

Nevertheless I did end up sorting myself out and at round about 00:30, long after the time at which I would have liked to have gone to bed, I finally hit the hay.

As seems to be the case these days I didn’t need much rocking. I was soon asleep and there I stayed until all of 04:30. After that, it was a miserable night of tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 it was close to Christmas. Some of our friends were visiting. We hadn’t prepared any Christmas cards and had no idea about what we were going to do about this. It was noticeable that our friends sent their children to the door first so they were obviously paving the way to see what kind of reception they’d receive. They’d receive a warm reception of course but they wouldn’t receive a Christmas card. That might upset them. When they finally turned up at the door she (…my friend’s wife…) said something like “is it any use us doing this?”. It was something like this that she said.

Right at that moment the alarm went off. When the room finished spinning around I hauled myself out of bed and crawled off to the bathroom.

In the bathroom I had a really good wash, a shave and of course I washed my shorts ready for tonight. I must at least make an effort to be clean and tidy, even if I don’t feel like it.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. For some reason there was a pile of clothing in one of my dreams too, a pile of clothing for a small girl probably about seven or eight years old. I have no idea why but there were some high-heeled shoes there of the type that had a small high heel that didn’t have any superstructure above the sole at the back to hold the shoe onto the heel at all. It was just held on the foot at the toe by a strap there. I don’t know where all this came from.

And neither do I either. I know that I’m likely to have some strange dreams every now and again but sometimes even I’m amazed at what I dream.

The next one is even more bizarre. For some reason I was identifying as a woman last night. I was playing for the Belgian national ladies’ volleyball team against a team from the Netherlands in a cup match that was taking place against the Netherlands. While we were waiting for the game to start I saw the crowds arriving. There was a bent little old woman leaning over a stick. I thought that I recognised her – it turned out to be my aunt from Ottawa. After the game she came over to chat. She asked about the performance. She thought that it was rather lethargic. I explained that that was hardly a surprise. This morning I had to get up really early to travel all the way here. I’d missed my breakfast. I’d normally come on the train as far as here all the way from Belgium but luckily this morning one of the other competitors and her friend brought me in their car.

Unfortunately this modern way of thinking is not for me, where you can self-identify as something completely different and expect everyone to adapt to you. Let’s face it – I self-identify as an intellectual who can write some really excellent prose and I wish that everyone would respect my choice and identify me accordingly. But some of the names that I have been called are not only unkind but completely disrespectful and I am offended. So there! As far as my writing goes, I can only echo the comments of the Reverend George Gilfillan of Dundee who, when commenting upon the works of another author 150 years ago, said "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this"

This was a series of dreams about a small girl. She reminded me a little of Percy Penguin, probably in her late teens or early twenties but she wasn’t very switched on. You had to explain even the simplest of tasks to her three or four times before you thought that she might have grasped it. Everything that she was doing was always a couple of tasks behind for example I remember telling her once to do something then telling her to do something else then telling her to do something else, but she came back with a problem about the first thing “yes, I’ve emptied the bath” which she should have emptied ten or fifteen minutes ago. It was very hard for anyone to look after her because she was so willing that she’d run around trying to do things and being too eager, she’d usually do them incorrectly or there would be a mistake where she’d forget something so all her work would have to be re-done. It was terribly frustrating because she was a lovely, keen, willing girl but she just could not grasp the same ideas that we had as quickly as we did.

“I remember telling her once to do something then telling her to do something else then telling her to do something else” – hark at me, barking out the orders. Who do I think I am? However, as we very well know, some people are like that and need to have orders barked at them if ever you wish to accomplish anything. Sometimes, organisation can be something of a thankless task.

The nurse came round as usual and he seemed much more like his old self – almost friendly in fact. However he asked if I had been down to the pharmacy to pick up the anaesthetic cream.

and so I asked him how he thought that I should have gone down there but he didn’t answer me. Instead, after much beating about the bush he asked me if I’d received the prescription.
"What prescription?"
"For the anaesthetic cream"
"I’ve not had any prescription"

It turns out that I should have had a prescription for the anaesthetic cream, I should have collected (or arranged to have it collected) it from the pharmacy and everything should be ready for the nurse to apply the cream because I start dialysis on Tuesday.

"No I don’t" I replied. "Apart from anything else, I told them right at the beginning that I’m not free on Tuesdays"

Then we had the usual argument that I have with everyone in the medical profession. Their job is to keep me alive, and the longer they do so, the more of a success it is.

However that all comes with a payoff with regard to the quality of life. I’m determined to have some quality in my life and if it means that I shuffle off this mortal coil six months or a year or two years earlier, I couldn’t care less.

There’s no way that I’m going to finish my days living like a vegetable in a Home. As Neil Young said, BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO FADE AWAY

As you might expect, the nurse was horrified but that’s just too bad. That’s the way it is. If they come for me on Tuesday I’m not going and that’s all there is to say about the matter.

After he left I made breakfast and then sat down to read my book. I’ve finished the book on THE ICKNIELD WAY and have started on THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN

That’s a book written in 1923 as a collection of lectures that were presented at Toronto University. It doesn’t pretend to be a scholarly tome but more of a lightweight approach as an introduction to what will inevitably be an inexhaustible study

Once breakfast was over I made some more bread. I’d used up the last of the old loaf this morning.

The bread didn’t rise as well as I would have liked. Nevertheless it’s quite light and fluffy. It was really nice having a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch made with totally fresh, soft home-made bread.

This afternoon I had a chat with Alison on the internet and also rang Rosemary back after Friday when I fell asleep.

Rosemary’s garden s doing really well, which is nice, but we didn’t have much time to chat – only a short one of one hour and seventeen minutes – because I had a caller at the door.

My transformer (thanks, Grahame, for the heads-up) to power the Genz-Benz has arrived at last. But I can’t use it yet because the power cable that I need wasn’t included with the order. That’s coming from the USA apparently and will be here in a few days time. So we still aren’t up and running.

And then we had the football. It’s sad to say it, but Llansawel are already down, in my opinion, after just a handful of games. If form is anything to go by, the remaining relegation place should be occupied by either Aberystwyth or Y Ffint, and they were playing each other this afternoon.

It’s smething of a grudge match because Aberystwyth’s manager apparently said something unkind about Y Fflint when they were relegated a couple of seasons ago, and that has rankled with Lee Fowler, Y Fflint’s manager.

So far this season I’ve already seen each club, and for a team second-bottom with no points, I’ve been impressed with Y Fflint. They’ve taken the attack to the opposition and have been robbed of some of the spoils on a couple of occasions just by the cruellest of bad luck.

On the other hand, although Aberystwyth haven’t impressed me, they always seem to find something special at the important moments.

Today’s game was actually quite entertaining. It roared from end to end and each team created quite a few chances. It was littered with mistakes though – neither team could hang onto the ball and would lose possession far too easily.

For once though, Y Fflint had the rub of the green and while the score of 2-0 in their favour might be an exaggeration, you have to ride your luck when you can. If they play with this kind of spirit and enthusiasm and their luck holds, they should be OK but sometimes this league can be cruel.

Tea tonight was as usual, a baked potato with salad and one of my breaded quorn fillets followed by home-made apple crumble. I know that my meals are quite repetitive but I happen to like them and that’s what’s important.

So right now I’m off to bed, later than usual but with a lie-in until 08:00. And won’t I be happy when I can say goodbye to all of this nonsense with the nurses?

But all of this talk about people self-identifying reminds me of the man who went to the psychiatrists
"Doctor! Doctor! I think that I’m a dog"
"Really?" asked the psychiatrist. "How long is it that you’ve had this feeling?"
"Ever since I was a puppy"
"I think that you’d better lie down on my couch"
"I can’t" replied the man. "I’m not allowed to"

EPIC HALL

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

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Wednesday 18th December 2024 – IT’S REALLY HARD …

Monday 16th December 2024 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Friday 13th December 2024 – IT’S FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH …

Thursday 12th December 2024 – IT SEEMS TO BE ..

Wednesday 13th November 2024 – I HAVE FINISHED …

Saturday 19th October 2024 – THEY LEFT ME …

Tuesday 15th October 2024 – AS YOU MIGHT …

Sunday 13th October 2024 – ♫ I WOKE UP …♫

Thursday 10th October 2024 – TODAY IT WAS …

Saturday 5th October 2024 – GUESS WHO …

Friday 4th October 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

25th September 2024 – YOU WON’T BELIEVE …

Sunday 15th September 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Tuesday 10th September 2024 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Saturday 7th September 2024 – THE PLAN WAS …

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