Tag Archives: dream

Friday 14th April 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… delicious evening meal tonight.

While I was going through the freezer the other day I came across some small kidney bean burgers that have been there since the Dawn Of Time.

Two of them, there were, but there are none left now because as part of my programme to go through and slowly empty the freezer, they went into the air fryer with the diced potatoes and were eaten alongside a nice salad.

It won’t be long now before I can get back to baking pies again. A nice vegan pie like I used to make, when I had room in the freezer, would be lovely for tea for a few nights in the near future. We’re getting there.

Something else that I had that I’ve also had before was a bad night when I struggled to go to sleep and then awoke and some kind of silly hour of the morning.

Not another 04:45 start, but I was certainly out of bed well before the alarm at 07:30.

And that reminds me. Next week I have to set the alarm for 07:00 for my week at the hospital, so I’m reckoning that I’ll leave it set at that instead of 07:30, but compromise by not having an early start on a Monday.

The reason why I had such an early start was that I could dictate the radio notes in peace and quiet before the traffic started up and the kids passed by on their way to school, but I seem to be managing right now by doing it very late on a Saturday night.

After the medication I had a nice shower, sorted out some clothes and then did a little tidying up ready for the physiotherapist. He had my lying on the floor with my back on a rolling pin and I had to roll up and down. The idea is to ease off some of the tense and tight nerves in my back.

Surprisingly, I was able to stand up after lying on my back on the floor, and if that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

He’s very pleased with how things are going, and I have to say that so am I. I hope that it keeps up. I’m regularly doing all the exercises that he’s programmed for me and the stuff that I’ve bought, like the weights and the elastic straps, are doing me a lot of good.

After he left (and he was here for ages) I went through the paperwork, downloaded and printed off what I need for the hospital. There’s a French Government site for health services and everyone has a folder there, so I uploaded some details there too while I was at it.

Having done that, I made a start on a radio programme, the notes for which I dictated the other day. It was a slow laborious process because I was side-tracked here and there along the way, but in the end it’s completed. That’s good news because it’s the one that I should have been doing on Monday but, of course, I’m not here.

Having said that, I’ve not been all here for quite a while, have I?

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. We’d been to Glasgow to try to find a festival that was taking place where some friend of my father was playing with his group. We eventually tracked it down in Paisley (but it wasn’t in Paisley really). I had a good look round. There were 3 different companies of stewards there, Pye itself in dark blue clothing, another company and a 3rd in a kind of black and white tartan. We made a few notes and then came home. Later on my father asked me to move this boy’s father. He wanted to speak to him but he was busy. I rang and eventually got through. Father by this time was in the middle of a heated argument so I continued making some small talk but didn’t really say much. The subject of this festival came up. The father passed the telephone to his son and we had a lengthy chat about the events at this festival, who was there who we saw, what clothing everyone was wearing etc

At one point I was in Oak Street in Crewe. There was something about some boy who had died. Someone had thrown a wreath into the brook that runs at the back there. I’d been working on something – I’m not quite sure what it was. My father was with someone else. When we finished I wanted to go into the barn to fetch something but they were standing in the way. I had to ask them to move. Then I couldn’t get into the barn because of all the stuff that was there. I wanted to go in there to do some tidying up but it would be really difficult to get what I wanted from the barn with that much stuff in it.

The family is back again and has been, here and there, over the last couple of days. But it would be nice if one of my preferred companions would show a leg here and there every now and again.

Tea was, as I said, quite delicious again. I really am eating well right now which is excellent news. But don’t worry about the kidney bean burger supply being exhausted because someone posted a recipe today for falafel burgers that I am determined to try one of these days. And if the recipe works for chick peas, no reason why it won’t work for kidney beans.

Tomorrow I’m shopping, and I’ve created quite a little list. Supplies are slowly winding down again and I ought to be thinking about stocking up. While it’s nice (and sometimes necessary, as December last year proved when I couldn’t go shopping for five weeks) to have a stock of food on hand, it’s also nice to recycle through it. I seem to have let things drag a little with the freezer.

So another early night again. Let’s hope that I can make the most of it.

Thursday 13th April 2023 – THE VISITING NURSE …

… came round this morning to take my blood sample, and I was surprised. After all, he’d tried one of my biscuits when he was here on Monday, and he’s still alive. They must be quite good so I’ll have to make some more of them.

Mind you, he wasn’t so good at taking the blood sample from me. I ended up looking and feeling like a dart board. And to add insult to injury, he said that he hadn’t managed to fill all of the three tubes that were required but he hoped that there would be enough for the analysis.

When he turned up, at 08:40 this morning, I was really pleased because I was starving. And so would you have been too had you been up since 04:45 this morning. I’d awoken a long time before that too but just couldn’t go back to sleep.

And so with an early start like that I took full advantage of the peace and quiet by dictating some of the backlog of notes that i’d been accumulating.

While I was on my travels around the internet checking up on a few things that I’d written I happened to notice that the first Hawkfest – Space-rock festivals promoted by Hawkwind to try to recapture the spirit of the early rock festivals of the late 60s and 70s – started on a 19th July some time 20-odd years ago.

By pure coincidence that’s a Friday next year.

One thing that I’ve wanted to do is to dedicate a whole programme to just one group and while that’s not really feasible, I have quite a collection of music from obscure space-rock bands who came to whatever prominence they had thanks to an appearance at a Hawkfest, so I think that I’ll have my own Hawkfest on 19th July next year, if I’m still here

A couple of hours of spacerock would be really nice, but I’ll have to find out who has the recording rights to Nik Turner’s performances with his old group “Children Of The Sun” after he died last year.

Once the nurse had gone, I had a bowl of cornflakes and then set out for town in the rain to pick up my Aranesp. It didn’t take me long to go there and come back, although I was quite exhausted when I arrived back home.

One thing that I didn’t have to do though was to go to the post office. NIkon got back to me this morning to tell me that the old NIKON D5000 can’t be repaired. It’s not been made for years and parts are no longer available.

Considering that I bought it in June 2010 I’m not really surprised, but it would have been nice to have kept it going for longer.

So what do I do now? Mirrorless seems to be all the rage but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we don’t seem to have much luck with the NIKON 1 J5. It’s not strong enough to withstand shocks and being smaller than a conventional camera, the moving parts are smaller, lighter and much more delicate.

Having said that, I do persevere with the Nikon 1 because it fits quite nicely in a pocket and being lightweight, I can carry it around quite easily when I’m doing something else. The quality is surprisingly good but only within its limits and I’m expecting it to do much more than it’s capable of doing.

Armed with my cheese on toast and a coffee I came back in here to carry on working but I just couldn’t keep going and by 13:00 I was back in bed asleep. And that’s no surprise either.

Not that I was there for long, though. The laboratory rang me to say that they needed more blood. Caliburn came to the rescue and we went off there.

Surprisingly, the nurse there found my blood straight away with no drama and it didn’t take long to sort out.

The laboratory is just over the road from But, the electrical houseware supplier, so I went over there. I need a built-in microwave oven to go in the units that I bought in Germany last summer that I’ll be installing in the new apartment.

Another thing that I want is a big fridge-freezer seeing as there’s a nice space there in the kitchen, and so I reckoned that I’d go there for a good look around.

Back here I had my hot chocolate and finished off the last of my home-made biscuits while I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was dictating out the music (do I mean the text?) last night and had it all arranged. The speech had been edited and I was intending to snip it into sections ready to assemble but for some unknown reason I forgot how to do it. I was sitting there for ages looking at the database that I keep, wondering about what I was supposed to be doing to assemble it all to make a proper radio programme. The way it was laid out on the database it just didn’t look right to me at all.

Later on, our mother was keeping us prisoner in our house. We couldn’t go out. We worked out where she’d hidden the key. While we were doing that someone else had worked out a way by which he could open the door but it was long and complicated. he waited until our mother had got up, left her bed and gone out and he began to creep downstairs. Of course we knew that mother would have left her key in her bedroom so we said “you want the third door”. He made a gesture, one, two, three, and started to go downstairs again. We said “no, Clive, the third door” but he carried on downstairs. He didn’t understand that we wanted him to go to the third door on this floor which was my mother’s room where he could find the key just sitting there.

At another point I had plenty of things to do but it was lunchtime and I was being friendly to my colleagues. We were standing around talking and I could see my lunch hour fading away rapidly. But then she invited us up to the 1st floor to have a look at the furniture that she was making in this warehouse. We said that we’d go. Before we reached the stairs she took us to a wall. She pressed a button and a panel rose up. There was an old fireplace that had been bricked up. She asked us to smell by it. We couldn’t smell anything at first but as she closed it there was a smell of varnish. I told her about it. We went upstairs. She had tons of furniture up there including a gorgeous collection of kitchens. We had a good look around here. I thought that there was some lovely stuff. The quality was undeniable but it wasn’t exactly my taste. I ended up spending a lot of time looking at everything to see if there was anything there that really caught my eye.

Tea tonight was beautiful – yet again. That vegan Cheshire cheese that I found in LeClerc a few weeks ago melts really well and with the new dairy thickener that I found there the other day, my cheese sauce was the best that I’ve ever made.

Consequently, steamed vegetables and falafel balls in a vegan cheese sauce it was. I’ll certainly have more of that some other time too. I’m really pleased that the supply of vegan food in mainstream French shops seems to be growing all the time. And not before time either.

So tomorrow I have the physiotherapist coming round in the morning to put me through my paces. I need to be at my best because I have some working-out to do ready to go off to the hospital next week for treatment.

So an early night it is. Here’s hoping that it’s not an early morning.

Wednesday 12th April 2023 – MY HOME-MADE …

… garlic naan was delicious. And what’s even better is that there are two more balls of dough in the freezer for further use for the next batch of leftover curries. And shock! Horror! I didn’t use the air fryer but stuck the naan in the wok to cook when I’d finished cooking the curry.

The leftover curry tonight was even better than usual too. The naan bread recipe called for just half a pot of soya yoghurt so instead of soya cream, I added the remains of the pot to my curry and that definitely gave it a certain je ne sais quoi that it didn’t have before.

The fact is that gradually I’m working on my diet and my meals and I’m having some really good stuff. My diet is improving in leaps and bounds and that can only be good news.

It’s better news that what happened during the night. That’s certainly true. I was late going to bed and when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already sitting down here working. I’d been up since 06:00 and awake for more than an hour before that. It was quite a dreadful night.

Anyway I went for a shower and then set off to walk to the doctor’s, with both my crutches. I almost had a fall going down the steps to the Place Pelley but I managed to hang on and made it the rest of the way.

The doctor was extremely pleased to see me and he said so. He also said that when he saw me for the first time after I came back from Canada via the hospital he was extremely worried and wasn’t sure at all that I would pull through.

Not the first time that I’ve heard that either. I had a friend once who told me that he had been at death’s door but the hospital pulled him through.

After the doctor threw me out, armed with a pile of prescriptions, I went first to the little Carrefour and then round to the pharmacy. Outside, I met the friendly neighbourhood itinerant street dweller and we had quite a chat.

The chemist has to order in my Aranesp so that’s another trip down into town tomorrow. And I’m slowly warming to the idea of going to Leuven next by train regardless of the struggle through Paris because right now I seem to be managing to walk fairly well, all things considered, on my crutches and I’m hoping for an improvement after my week next week at the hospital.

What underlined that was the walk back home afterwards. I made it all the way back here without having to stop to catch my breath and it’s been an age since I’ve been able to do that. Things are looking up.

While i’d been in town I’d bought a crusty baguette so I made some cheese on toast for a late breakfast, especially now that I can actually buy vegan cheese in the big supermarkets. It’s not just my cooking that’s looking up but the supply of ingredients too.

Tons of stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night despite how short it was. I was driving a taxi last night. I had my little company going but all kinds of issues were going on. I ended up with just one car doing a few bits and pieces here and there. I was fed up with trying to organise everything and do everything. It ended up in Court for some reason or other. It was all very depressing last night.

And then I was in a house with someone. She was going to have a bath. She had left me alone in the living room. I’d seen all of her plants. She had some books on plants.

There was also a dream about a big female cat like Chloe (the cervil). She’d had kittens and one of them wasn’t very well. It had a respiratory issue. She brought the kitten to me to presumably take to the vet. I took the kitten and her too at the same time.

Later on I stepped back into one of these dreams again about a girl whom I’d been dating. Her parents began to accept me as some kind of fixture. She told me that Robert had rung up to talk to me. She thought that this was my father. I explained that this was Percy Penguin’s father. I couldn’t understand why he would want to get in touch with me. Her mother didn’t say very much and wandered away so I talked to this girl who by now had become Percy Penguin. She was saying that she’s being treated much better at home now because she’s been spending more time with them and more time looking after the pets and animals which has made har parents quite grateful. Maybe my new favoured position has something to do with all of that.

When I awoke later on (whatever that’s supposed to mean) I was with this girl again. I don’t know what’s happening here now.

That’s not everything that happened during the night by the way, but you really don’t want to know about the rest of it.

The cleaner came round this afternoon and we had a good chat while I wrote out some notes for one of my radio programmes. But then I crashed out – good and proper too – for at least an hour so I didn’t do as much as I would have liked. But I still managed to find the time to make some dough for the delicious naan bread.

having talked about my curry earlier, I’m just going to do a little more work and then I’ll head for bed. No lie-in tomorrow of course because I’m having a blood test and I have to have had nothing to eat. So right now I’m finishing off the last of the special chocolate that I bought for myself for Easter and then I’ll be going to bed.

But after crashing out like I did today I probably won’t have much of a sleep tonight either. Still, a good walk into town should wear me out enough and I’ll be fit for nothing when the physio comes round on Friday morning.

It’s all go around here, isn’t it?

Tuesday 11th April 2023 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… yet another morning when I was up and about before the alarm went off. Things are certainly full of surprise these days.

After I’d had my medication the first thing that I needed to do was to think about what I was going to have for breakfast seeing as I had run out of fruit buns

Consequently I made a small loaf of bread and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I added a handful or two of raisins. Cooked for 30 minutes in the air fryer, it made a lovely loaf of raisin bread and I’m going to make more of this. I might even go berserk and add some sugar to the next one.

But anyway it was a lovely surprise for breakfast, toasted with vegan butter and wolfed down with a mug of hot coffee. I just wish though that my bread would rise better than it’s doing.

Next thing while all of that was going on was to redo this radio programme that hadn’t come out correctly when I’d prepared it. And I’m not sure why but using exactly the same music and the same speech, it ended up 19 seconds short. However a little bit of minupulation and a lot of time managed to fill it out.

After lunch there was plenty to do. Firstly I had to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of horse race taking place last night. It was won by a little girl who was given a horse’s name. There were several others in the field but she was the only human in there, although there were two children who were a little older who had also taken part in the race that was over something like 4 furlongs. The other 2 tired quite quickly and she romped home to win. There was another similar race but that took place beforehand and I can’t remember what happened about that.

And then I had an animal, either a cat or a dog, I can’t remember now. It was extremely well-behaved. Someone sent me some kind of miniature cake saw or something. When I had this tray of cakes I unfortunately dropped them on the floor. Of course I couldn’t really eat them after that but the animal whatever it was came in, saw it and started tucking into all the food on the floor. I thought that that was right seeing as it was the animal who had won all of this anyway. It deserves it.

I was also around Granville last night in the red Cortina estate. Who should I bump into but one of the regular readers of this rubbish who was quite happily wandering around. We had a chat for a while and then I headed home. I don’t understand why I didn’t invite him back to the apartment for a coffee or something. I drove home but on the way back in the rue Paul Poirier I ended up on foot again walking home. I was being chased by a young Indian squaw who was waving a tomahawk at me. In the end she said “I’m sorry but you can’t sleep with me”. I asked “why not” and she replied “I would have a baby out of wedlock and what then? I’d have to help my mother with the washing up” I asked what was wrong with that and she replied “I don’t eat breakfast in the morning”.

And I’m still trying to work that last one out.

Secondly, now that I’m feeling a little more athletic these days and more optimistic that when I’ve been to the hospital I’ll be in a better state of health to go out and about for my afternoon walks, I need to think about photography again.

The NIKON D500 alas is no more and while the NIKON D3000 still works, it was only ever meant to be a stop-gap camera. Consequently I resurrected the NIKON D5000.

There’s an issue with that in that the power doesn’t seem to be going from the battery into the circuit board so I’ve set steps in motion to have an estimate to have it serviced or overhauled, if it’s going to be cost-effective.

The idea of having a new camera is appealing but I’ve heard a rumour that Nikon is going to make “a major announcement” shortly and everyone is hanging on to hear the news.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent choosing music for my radio programmes for the future. I’ve not written the text as yet because that will all depend on when the programmes will be broadcast, because I’m working on a cunning plan right now for how my programmes will run in the future. High time that I had a little change around.

However I shall still be dictating some stuff and storing it up for use at another time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg and, as usual, it was very nice. And tomorrow I’ll be having another bake-in as I try to figure out the best way to make naan bread for my vegan curry tomorrow night.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to bed as I’m having to go to the doctor tomorrow for some more medication and to sort out a few other things in town. I suppose that I’d better have a shower before I set off – I will have to look my best for the little walk out.

Monday 10th April 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

… the idea of having something of a little lie-in this morning.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:40 I’d been awake for a couple of hours and been up and about for quite a while. It’s not as if last night was an early night either. If anything, it was maybe a little later than a normal night might have been.

No question of having a good sleep either. As usual I was tossing and turning around for quite some time.

Anyway, after the medication I checked the mails and messages and then carried on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. It was a desultory, slow stroll through the work that needed doing rather than one of these hard-working and super-concentrated efforts and so it took quite a long while to complete.

The nurse came round to see me as well to give me my injection. He wasn’t here long, but I gave him one of the biscuits that I made yesterday. If he’s still alive on Thursday to come and give me my blood test, I’ll know that they are good.

No more hot cross buns now unfortunately. I used the last of those this morning and it was really sad because even though they didn’t look very nice, they tasted exactly as a hot cross bun should taste and that’s the important thing. I’ll make some more like that.

After my lunchtime fruit I went upstairs to my neighbour’s apartment, having been invited. And I went without my crutches to see how I’d do. It was a little unsteady but I made it up there and back down again and that’s the kind of thing that would fill me with a little optimism. After all, it was two floors up.

It was important that I went, because it was the President of the Residents’ Committee who had invited me, and she was the one who very kindly put me “in the know” when the owner of the apartment downstairs was talking about selling up. That was a very big favour that she did me and I shall be forever grateful.

The plan was that I would be there for just an hour or so to show the flag, but I ended up being there for over three hours. But it was worth it because I learnt quite a lot that I shall need to know when the ink is finally dry on the purchase agreement.

Back here I made some hot chocolate and had a handful of biscuits and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a girl last night. It might have been a certain girl who was in my class at school. We wanted to go somewhere but her mother said that she’d arranged for two seats at the local cinema. We set off but when we arrived it was absolutely crowded. One of the assistants found us and said “yes, we have 2 seats. I’ll show you where they are but we’re so busy that you can’t even stay for the entire performance. There’s a lot of people coming later on and you’ll have to go”. He took us into the auditorium. There was a lot of confusion about our seats because the tickets weren’t clear at all. We worked out eventually where we should be but there was a row of suitcases and some people sitting in it. We had to shuffle them out of the way. They were being quite difficult about it. The only one who seemed to be quite normal, as I said to my girlfriend, was a young boy. With all of this disturbance and with us sittign down we ended up being on board an aeroplane. I’m not quite sure how. As the film hadn’t started yet I said that I’d better take advantage of this and nip to the gentlemen’s rest room. We were sitting right behind the pilot’s seat so I pushed it forward and opened the door so that I could hop out of the door by the pilot’s seat. For some reason all the signs etc were written in Dutch so I began to wonder exactly where I was.

Somehow the subject of apprenticeships came up at another moment. I went off to do an apprenticeship. It was the first day and at lunch so I had to go to have my lunch somewhere. There was a room with 3 other guys sitting in it. I thought that I’d go there. I only had my left shoe on, not the right one, and I was limping. I went up to the door, knocked and went it. The 3 of them looked at me so I introduced myself. I said that I’m the new apprentice and not to worry that I only had one shoe. The other was in the machines somewhere. It made them laugh. I sat down and started to sort out my sandwiches.

Finally, there was an exciting, riveting dream but when I went to dictate it I found that I couldn’t remember a thing at all about it, not a thing. I was really disappointed because this was something that had been so exciting while I was asleep. That’s what I call a really dismal, depressing situation.

And, regrettably, I crashed out for a short while as well. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with rice. It was quite nice too and the stuffing was pretty good too. Plenty left as well for a taco roll tomorrow and the rest to go into a curry on Wednesday. And I remembered to buy the vegan yoghurt as well at the weekend so I can make some naan breads for the curry.

That should be interesting. After all, I have plenty of garlic butter in the fridge that will go quite nicely with the naan breads.

Tomorrow I have a radio programme to repair. It’s one I did ages ago but having a good listen to it, the quality of the speech is awful so I’ve decided to redo it. I’m not sure why it all went so wrong that it sounded so bad.

But that’s tomorrow because right now I’m going to bed. Not that I’m particularly tired but a good sleep when I can is always welcome. I might even feel better tomorrow if I can keep it up.

Sunday 9th April 2023 – MY AIR FRYER …

… is pretty good at baking biscuits too.

Searching around on the internet I came across a generic recipe for biscuits – basically sugar, margarine and flour in a ratio of 4/8/10

Consequently I made up some dough with 200 grammes of flour and then added some desiccated coconut, raisins, nutmeg, ground ginger, vanilla essence and orange essence and mixed it all up.

Once it had seet for half an hour in the fridge (it won’t rise of course because there’s no yeast) I rolled it out and with my biscuit cutter there was enough for 20 biscuits.

The shelf in my oven is only large enough to take 16 and that meant that there were four biscuits left over. So no time like the present to try out the air fryer.

And I do have to say that at 160°C for 12 minutes (turning them over halfway through) they were cooked to perfection and tasted delicious. After all, you have to try them out.

There was probably too much margarine in there if the truth is known, but it’s all down to trial and error considering that I’ve never made any before. But rest assured – I shall be making more of them again

And while we’re on the subject of baking … “well, one of us is” – ed … the pizza that I made tonight was far and away the best ever.

It’s taken me several years to realise it but over this last few days I’ve worked out where I’ve been going wrong. So what I did today that made a difference was that I put the sliced tomato on the pizza last of all, on top of the cheese.

So not only were all of the mushrooms and onions cooked properly, the base was nice and firm, not soggy, and the tomatoes were nice and crispy.

And that’s something else that I’ll do again as well.

Another thing that I’ll do again is to have a good night’s sleep. Because at least I wasn’t disturbed last night as much as I have been just recently, and no-one bothered me at all with the ‘phone or anything else.

There was still plenty of tossing and turning but that’s par for the course. nevertheless I stuck it out until 10:30 when I reckoned that it was time to show a leg.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I didn’t do very much at first. I had a really nice leisurely morning right up until lunchtime and my porridge, cheese on toast and coffee.

This afternoon has been spent on tracking down biscuit recipes and then making and baking the aforementioned. As I said earlier, it’s something of which I’ll be doing much more, and it will be so much better when I have a bigger oven.

While I was at it, I found a recipe for custard creams but I don’t have any custard. However, I have had a great deal of success making chocolate sauce in the past instead of custard so I wonder if a chocolate cream biscuit would follow the same principle.

There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

While I was waiting for everything to happen, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And I travelled miles during the night. At one point I had to go into work which was in Brussels. I was in a canoe, actually a kayak. This meant going from the north of the city through the poorer areas, underneath a couple of railway bridges and down some back streets to the centre of Brussels. I had to do it in a kayak even though of course there wasn’t any water. That was interesting. There were a couple of other people on their way there who were following me but they soon realised that I knew the way far better than they did through the side streets so they let me carry on. They all followed me.

And then there were several concrete lamp standards that wanted moving from somewhere into Crewe. Seeing as they weren’t very heavy I said that I’d take them. I didn’t have any transport and no-one had sorted out anything at all. I was left with these lamp standards. In the end I just picked one up and put it on my shoulder with the other end trailing along the ground and set off I was pushing one of them towards Crewe. I arrived near Rolls Royce and the stream across the river was flooded. I’d arranged for a vehicle to take me across. It was a case of crossing the bridge, a flat-bottomed affair that was partly submerged. Getting the first one or two over on this vehicle then carrying on wasn’t a problem but by the time I went back for the third one the river was a raging torrent. I tried to time the approach of this vehicle so that it would get on the downstroke of this bridge but it was going to be too complicated and I could see it ending in tears. There was a better, more modern bridge not too far away. In the end I abandoned the idea. I left STRAWBERRY MOOSE (who hasn’t appeared in these pages for quite some considerable time) there to guard the bridge and took my concrete post off with me to go over the other bridge. A girl there was watching the events. She went over and began to talk to Strawberry Moose. I carried on pushing the lamp-post. I ended up on an aeroplane. I was sitting on this aeroplane, about 20 of us on board this thing that could take a couple of hundred passengers. It was due to depart at quarter to. I looked at my watch. It was now 46. We were already running one minute late and there was nothing like as many passengers as you would expect there to be on this aeroplane so what’s happening now?

Later on I went back into that dream. There had been some kind of confrontation taking place at this fraud. A group of people had been arrested and charged with assault. As the trial started and more and more evidence came out, the judge became of the opinion that a more serious charge ought to be preferred against one of the defendants and that person give evidence. he decided that he himself would issue a summons to the person referred to for a charge of violent conduct. Have him arrested and tried on the spot while this court case was going on.

Later still I was at work. We were extremely busy. Everyone was getting in my way trying to do things. I was speaking to a girl whom I knew who was a colleague of Nerina’s. We arranged to meet for a cup of tea in the canteen. Something cropped up – someone came to talk to me and completely distracted me. I didn’t go. In the end I was speaking to another girl whom I knew. The subject of coffee came up so i went down at that moment and met her. We started to talk about all kinds of different things going on in the office etc. Later on that night I ended up at her house in bed, in a separate room etc. She brought me a cup of tea in the morning. I said “this is nice. It brings back many happy memories of lying in bed being brought mugs of tea”. She gave me a computer program that she’d used, called Walt Disney’s Imagination, for enhancing photos and videos that we’d talked about previously.

The funny thing was that after dictating that dream I put the dictaphone down and started to look around for the cup of tea. Of course it wasn’t there and you’ve no idea how disappointed I was

“Life’s too short to read” said Gail who had given me another book. And I really did dictate it too, just like that. Later on I had stepped back into that dream with those girls with whom Nerina worked and so on and of course I was impressed that I remembered that that the name of one of the girls was Gail.

There was much more to the night than that as well, but I’ll spare you the discomfort if you are currently eating anything.

As for tea, I mentioned that just now with my perfect pizza so now I’m off to bed.

Monday is usually an early start at 06:00 but not this week. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow and although the nurse will be coming to give me the injection he won’t be here at 06:30 (and that’s Famous Last Words, isn’t it?). The alarm usually rings at 07:40 on a Monday as well and so everything will be switched off until then.

And here’s hoping that I will be too.

Saturday 8th April 2023 – THAT WAS DISAPPOINTING

There I was this evening settled down in front of the internet to watch Y Fflint play Caernarfon Town. Y Fflint deep in trouble at the wrong end of the table and Caernarfon only a few points ahead desperate not to be dragged into a relegation scrap themselves.

It took just 90 seconds for Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro, the Côte d’Ivoire international centre-forward to put Y Fflint 1-0 ahead. And after 9 minutes they went 2-0 up and we were going to be in for a cracking match that would promise everything as Caernarfon would have to throw the kitchen sink at them to get anything from this game.

But then what can only be described as an “incident” off the field which led to stewards, paramedics and the police being summoned led to the players being led from the pitch. After a delay of 45 minutes, the maximum allowed by rules, and the game still not being restarted, the match was abandoned.

There will doubtless be some repercussions about all of that. It was extremely disappointing.

Just like my night, really.

My clean and tidy bed was quite comfy and I nestled down in there quite early. I even managed to go to sleep quite quickly too but it didn’t last. In fact, when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. I’d long-since abandoned the idea of going back to sleep.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I set the washing machine off on a cycle (a very clever machine, mine) only to discover later that I’d forgotten a pillow case (but that’s another story) and then hit the streets, carefully dodging the crane that was outside the door repairing someone’ window surround on the top floor.

Noz came up with nothing except for a small hard-backed spiral-bound notebook that has now been pressed into service as a recipe book, and LeClerc was pretty much the same, although I found that I’d forgotten my vegan biscuits.

But never mind. That’s what the internet is for and I’m sure that i’ll be able to find a few good recipes there.

As I said yesterday, I went off with just one crutch which worked sort-of, but I still don’t have enough force in my left leg (never mind the right) to haul myself up a tall kerb. Back to two crutches it is then.

Back here, Liz told me that my web hosting sites were down so I had to chase that up. It appears that there had been an upgrade to the server during the night and instead of switching the main server back on, they’d switched off the back-up server instead, or something like that.

Having put away the frozen stuff and the cool stuff, I made some coffee and cheese on toast and had a very late breakfast / early lunch.

This afternoon I sorted out my paperwork and filed away a pile of stuff so the place is looking a little tidier. I’m going to try to do some stuff every day to reduce somewhat the amount of stuff I have to take with me when I finally move.

And then I turned my attention to the dictaphone. Despite the miserable night there was plenty of movement. At one point I was walking down the street on some kind of 1930s council house estate. There were all kinds of people at the window. I don’t know why they were there or what they were doing but you could see them there, and their shadows etc because it was late at night. It was something really weird.

And then I was with people who had gone out for a walk. They were staying in Yorkshire and were walking down some of these old stone-walled country lanes. They’d all gone their separate ways but met up again. I was watching them. Suddenly my whole perspective of view changed. It began to be a telephoto view as if I was miles and miles away. It was just zooming out all the time. I tried to bring myself back to the point of view where I could see them or to advance in little stages so that I could catch up with them again in stages but no matter where I was, my viewpoint ended up being miles away from where they were. I couldn’t bring myself back to be with them. I wasn’t with them physically. It was some distance from me standing there basically in the background as a spirit I suppose watching them

Later on I was with a rock group last night, either Semisonic or From Good Homes. A girl singer had not long joined them. She needed something doing to the roof of her house so someone from the group had arranged for her to have some slates. She went to pick them up but there was an argument about them. Considering that these slates were costing her nothing she should have kept quiet and just taken them. Instead she got into an argument that started the Gods sending thunderbolts at each other and the people taking part in this play.

Finally I was with the brother of a girl friend of mine from school who was with his wife. He was farming near Nantwich but had to go somewhere up in the mountains to bring back a trailer. I said that I’d go with him. We’d been camping out somewhere at this festival at first. I’d been there with another girl, whoever she might have been. I’d put our tent up. I was assembling something. I turned round to my wife and said “can you give me a screw” that brought everyone nearby to fits of laughter. When the festival finished we met up with this guy and went to pick up this trailer. I can’t remember what vehicle we were in but he was in a Land Rover. He said that one the way he’d drop off a box of stuff at someone. We set off through the mountains and eventually arrived where we had to be with this trailer. Then he realised that he hadn’t stopped to drop off this thing. He arranged that when he’d return home he’d post it. We coupled up this trailer to the Land Rover and set off back to Nantwich. It was a huge thing and was towing a trailer itself. How he was doing it with a Land Rover was anyone’s guess. Eventually we were back in Nantwich and went round to see his childhood home (which it wasn’t). It was being renovated and work was being done on it. He began to talk. He had the Land Rover, one of these Japanese pickups, a Volvo saloon and was thinking about selling maybe the Land Rover. He also had a Transit van by this time, not a Land Rover. He’d had the Transit from new, a brown swb one. He said that his wife didn’t understand why he still had it and he was thinking of selling it. I saod that the vehicle I would have sold could have been the Volvo saloon. Everything else was the right kind of vehicle to keep when you are working on a farm. He wasn’t convinced. He was talking about either moving back into the college or moving house into the area to do something differently. We talked about farming but at this point I fell back into sleep and all you can hear is me yawning.

Having dictated the text for the next couple of radio programmes I settled down for the football but as I mentioned just now, that was rather a disappointing waste of time.

Tea tonight was more of those baby roast potatoes with a salad. I’d taken some stuff out of the freezer that I thought was small breaded quorn fillets but was in actual fact some small falafel discs. But they were nice anyway and the air fryer does do a nice job on stuff like this.

So now I’m going to bed. It’s a Day of Rest tomorrow but if it’s anything like last Sunday there won’t be much rest for me. But I’ll track down some biscuit recipes and see if I can’t have a little baking session.

It will be interesting to say the least.

Friday 7th April 2023 – A CALAMITY!

Yes, we have had a calamity here today.

Last night after tea I took out some of the hot cross buns from the freezer and left them to thaw out.

This morning when I looked at them, they were all dry and crumbly and there were traces of a green mould. And so they, and all of the others in the freezer have gone into the bin. What a waste and I was so looking forward to eating them too.

That’s really beyond disappointing because the freezer has been jam-packed with stuff, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to such an extent that I’ve been turning away some really good offers. Had they not been in there, I could have done so much more.

Still, no use crying over spilt milk.

And no need to ask what I was going to do now. The internet is our friend in these circumstances and within about 5 minutes I’d found a recipe for vegan hot cross buns. And, apart from some dried mixed peel, I had all of the ingredients, even some orange concentrate

They even had a dinky little cross on top. I don’t have an icing piping bag but a plastic bag with the corner cut off made an acceptable substitute

They weren’t a particular success because I couldn’t make the dough rise, and while it was proofing it cracked (probably too dry). But toasted with some nice hot butter they tasted just like hot cross buns should, and it’s the taste that matters after all.

But when one has a calamity, the pendulum usually swings the other way at some point, but never as quickly for me as it did this afternoon. And in less than three weeks time I shall be back on the property-owning ladder because I’m signing for my new place on the 26th of April at 09:30 in the forenoon.

So with three months required to give the tenant notice to leave and then some time to install a shower and a decent kitchen, I might even be in there before the end of the summer. And I can’t say that I’ll be sorry.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I rented this apartment when I first came here 6 years ago so that I would have a base to look round and find somewhere in the neighbourhood that I liked. But I love this building, its situation and my neighbours so much that I had no desire to leave, so I stayed on as a tenant until something came available to buy at a price that I could afford

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that I was bemoaning the fact that I wouldn’t be able to have a lie-in this morning because even though it’s a Bank Holiday, I had the physiotherapist coming round.

But I needn’t have wasted my time complaining because when the alarm went off this morning at 07:30, I was already up and about.

In fact, I’d been awake since not long after 06:00 and I could have left the bed at any moment after that because trying to go back to sleep was a waste of time. But eventually I lifted myself up and out and set about today’s tasks.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages, I went to have a shower and get myself all nicely cleaned up

The physiotherapist had me running through my paces with the stuff that i’d bought last weekend. He thinks that I have bought stuff that is too powerful for me and that’s rather depressing news. Not because he thinks that I’ve wasted my money because he thinks that I can no longer mutt the custard, as Doctor Spooner would have said.

As kenneth Williams once famously said when the starring roles that he used to receive begn to run out “what you’re offering doesn’t stretch me. I’m used to enormous parts”. And that’s the same with me. I should be pushing myself onwards and upwards, not slowly sinking downwards. Neil Young once said “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” and that’s my philosophy too.

Back here after he had gone, that was when I noticed the catastrophe that was the hot cross buns. And so the rest of the morning was spent making half a dozen of those to keep me going over Easter.

In between while the dough was doing its stuff I was changing the bedding so that I’ll have a nice, clean comfortable bed to sleep in tonight, the first time for a while, and also having a very long chat that went on throughout the day on and off with Liz.

This afternoon I finished off the French Revolution stuff and I’m now well advanced on my space exploration theme, although bearing in mind the different time zones it’s likely that I’ll have to settle for the 20th July as being the date recognised as that of the first landing on the moon which won’t come round on a Friday for several years.

There have also been chats with Alison on the internet and Rosemary on the phone and also with a neighbour who invited me round for a coffee on Monday. I have been in demand today.

In between all of this I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This first bit was another dream where I’d forgotten most of it. There was some kind of celebration to take place for D-Day that involved travelling on an aeroplane. We were going to fly over all these places that figured prominently in the early days of the battle on the anniversary of these events. I boarded the aeroplane but unbeknown to me one of my rabbits had boarded too. I didn’t find out until we were in the air. I had to scavenge round for something to keep them in. When we landed and were at people’s houses I had to find someone who had a cage that I could borrow so that I could put a rabbit in that so it would be much safer to carry. But there was much, much more to it than this but I just can’t remember it.

And then I was in an office. Someone wanted to make his room less affected by direct sunlight. he asked my advice whether he should paint one of his windows over in black. I suggested that he did it white in a nice stripy arrangement. He wondered what I meant by that. I explained that you take a wide brush and just go across from left to right and right to left but only one way. Do all the brushstrokes the same way. He went off so I had a quick look in later on. It looked quite nice what he’d done. Then I had to go to see the boss. I couldn’t think of a good excuse to go to see him. I went in and thought for a minute. I said “I’m thinking of applying for a holiday”. He asked why so I told him that I had a Cortina that I wanted to take out the engine and gearbox to put a different engine and gearbox in. That would involve a little work. It was aon old MkIII Cortina estate that needed much more work than that but that was what I said to him. We had a little chat about it and I left without agreeing anything conclusive. Then I found myself trying to work out someone’s income tax. Some guy’s wife was a teacher somewhere in the Three Bridges Council area. And when I was dictating these notes I realised that i’d been working it out wrongly in my sleep. I was taking away his wife’s income from his instead of adding it on. I can’t understand why I did that.

Tea tonight was a salad and some of those veggie balls from out of the freezer. I was intending to have chips with it but my bag of potatoes is mostly full of potatoes that are too small so I chopped them into small squares to make little baby roast potatoes.

To prepare them, I mixed them with some oil and herbs in a pyrex bowl and then tipped them into that little metal colander that I’d bought the other week. The holes in the colander let the hot air percolate through much better and cooked them to perfection.

It was a really nice tea and I’ll do the same with the potatoes tomorrow with my breaded quorn fillets

So in a moment I’ll be off to bed. It’s early but I’m going shopping tomorrow. In principle I feel as if I ought to be going without my crutches but that’s being rather optimistic. I’ll take one with me, I reckon, to see how I do.

One thing that I want to buy is a soya yoghurt. I found a recipe for making naam bread while I was wandering around and I wonder what that would be like done in the air fryer to eat with my leftover curry.

Another thing that I can but is some more frozen food now that there’s some space in the freezer. What a calamity that was about those hot cross buns, but every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.

Thursday 6th April 2023 – MY CURRIED FRIED RICE …

… was delicious tonight.

The other day I mentioned that due to the success of my Chinese fried rice with soy sauce, I’d try some curried fried rice one of these nights. And as I was rummaging around in the fridge I came across some outdated millet burgers that were rather bland but obviously needed eating.

And so having cooked my rice and veg, I fried it in some vegan margarine and olive oil with cumin and coriander. And that reminds me – when I go back to Leuven on the 11th of May I need to stock up on spices like that because I can’t buy them around here

Well, I can, but have you seen the price? Amazon has fennel at €8:50 for 250 grammes and I can buy it at the Asian warehouse in Leuven at €1:29 for 150 grammes. Fenugreek seeds are at €5:00 per 100 grammes and exactly the same packet will cost me €1:49.

Better news than the prices of spices on Amazon was the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. Last night was still something quite depressing but when I awoke quite dramatically at 07:15 this morning I thought that I’d push myself onwards and upwards.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I carried on with writing the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday and now they are finished.

Next stop was to go outside to Caliburn to look for the strong black tape, but no luck there. I don’t know where that has gone.

But the good news from that point of view is that I can come back up the stairs without holding on to the hand rail. There’s not sufficient force in my right leg to push myself up the steps with it but the left leg seems to be working. I had the crutches with me of course but I didn’t really need them and it was the quickest that I’ve been up and down the stairs for quite a while.

Despite the lack of strong sticky tape I took out the two freezer drawers that needed repair and just superglued them, hoping that the glue will hold them together. I had a good sort through and found a couple of interesting things that will need eating quite soon. I might even make a start on Saturday seeing as there are a couple of those small breaded quornburgers that I bought a while ago.

But I managed to make some room in there, not the least reason being that I took out three of the stock of hot cross buns ready to defrost and eat over the Easter period. What would Easter be without hot cross buns?

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast (I found half a baguette in the freezer) I transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were plenty. There was a rock concert on somewhere or other. I’d invited one of my little friends to go with me. It was a Thursday night. At first she wasn’t very keen but we went anyway. We really enjoyed the concert, a Southern Rock band so of course I really enjoyed it. What was interesting was that for their lead guitar solos, they flashed the music up on the projector so that everyone could see it. It didn’t occur to me until much later in the concert that “why don’t you take a photo of it and go home and learn to play it?”. Then they announced that there would be a pause. Everyone was quite exhausted. I looked at my watch – it was 02:15. I asked her “have you seen the time?”. She was doing some kind of work for a coach or bus company for school holidays. She wasn’t really all that interested. Everyone was feeling tired so everyone including us lay down on the floor and went to sleep. I had a disturbed sleep tossing around there because what was going through my mind was first of all what would her parents say when they go into her room to awaken her in a couple of hours and she’s not there but with me, and what’s she going to say her work etc. I could see a whole mass of trouble ahead with this. She wasn’t bothered about it by the looks of things so I wasn’t either any more than that. Anyway she awoke after about half an hour and I gently probed her to see how she was feeling, whether she should go home now or whatever like that but she didn’t seem to want to bring the matter into discussion. She was just quite happy being there. I thought “well, it’s not for me to say anything is it really if that’s what she wants”.

She was a lovely girl. While she was at school she worked in the library at Nantwich on a Saturday and she’d go through the new records that the library would purchase, and smuggle out the ones that she knew would interest me so that I could tape them, and then she’d smuggle them back in the next Saturday and repeat the cycle.

Her parents hated me though and I think that they were glad when we split up.

What went wrong was Christmas 1976. I was flat broke, living in a squat and in an effort to liven up our Christmas we spent the last of our money buying card and glitter and the like to make some nice Christmas cards.

Audlem was a funny village. It really was a village of two halves, one half being the farm labourers and the other half being the rich, dazzling suburbanites. We went around the latter with our cards. “Ohh how nice and thoughtful. Do come in. have a mince pie. Have a glass of sherry”. We were wasted by the end of the evening and her parents took a very dim view of it all.

A few years later I was driving a coach for Salopia and stopped in Whitchurch to go to the bank. Guess who was serving behind the counter?

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long enough for a chat but the at the next opportunity I went back. However she wasn’t there.

Instead I buttonholed another cashier and asked about her. At first no-one remembered her but then someone said that she was in fact a new recruit who was there in that branch simply to gain some experience, and no-one knew where she had gone from there.

And that was that then.

Later on I stepped back into that dream. I was with her again driving around somewhere. We went past the house of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I had 2 headlights for the car there. as the headlights on this one were fading and pretty bad I thought that I’d go and pick up these. I parked at the side of the road. She said that she’d stay in the car which was probably a good thing as I didn’t want any confrontation and secondly I wanted someone to look after the car. The pavement wasn’t wide enough to be completely clear of the road. There was a garage across the road where we’d just been. I thought that we’d park at the back of the garage and fix these headlights but there was very little space. Next to it was a public car park. I thought that we’d go on the public car park, aprk there, fetch the headlights and change them over on there. It’s a pay one but at this time of night no-one will bother too much. When we pulled on there every single space was a disabled persons space. There were quite a few people lounging around on the lawns there. The saw me drive slowly around and asked me what was happening. I said “apparently I’m not disabled enough to park here”. They replied jokingly “step out of your car and we can arrange that”. I drove around. There were even holes being dug for graves here on the lawn and I still couldn’t find a place to park the car

Anyway, it really was nice to be among charming company again for an evening. It’s a shame that I can’t do it more often, and in my waking hours too.

The rest of the day has been spent working on a cunning plan. The 14th of July is a Bank Holiday to celebrate the Fall of the Bastille, and it’s also a Friday.

Consequently, I’ve been working on a special radio programme. The Beatles have called for a Revolution to overthrow Curved Air’s Marie Antoinette. So as Alvin Lee and Ten Years After Want To Change The World, Hawkwind’s Urban Guerillas are going to the Bastille with Simple Minds to Kick It In.

With a little effort I can run this thing on for an hour, if you get the picture.

Ironically, the following Friday is the anniversary of the Moon Landings and that’s when Elton John’s Rocket Man is going on board the Hooter’s Satellite with Guns and Roses’s Rocket Queen for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars from where, with REM’s Man In The Moon, they can Look Into The Sun with Jethro Tull to see Hawkwind’s Children of The Sun. I’m sure Steve Hillside-Village and Khan can write a Space Shanty about that.

Now what other interesting dates are there that fall on a Friday? We had an Armistice Day special last year.

Yes, I’m hoping to be much more imaginative and inventive for my radio programmes in the future instead of playing music haphazardly. I didn’t put too much thought into them at first because to be honest I never expected to be still here. But I seem to be fighting back right now.

Tea was, as I mentioned, quite delicious and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. No lie-in for me despite it being a Bank Holiday because the physiotherapist is coming round. What with the nurse to inject me on Monday morning, it’s going to be a pretty miserable Easter break for me.

Thank Heaven I have my hot cross buns.

Wednesday 5th April 2023 – AFTER ALL OF THE …

… misery and depression that’s been about for the last couple of days, today was a much better day as far as I was concerned and I actually managed to do some work today.

Not that you would have thought so after last night because it was another miserable night where I couldn’t go off to sleep and when I did I awoke at 03:20 and then couldn’t go back to sleep again for what seemed like for ever

Mind you, when the alarm went off at 07:30 I actually was asleep and it was a battle to raise myself from the dead before the second alarm went off.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I actually made a start on doing some work and that’s not like me these days, is it?

But by the time that lunchtime came round I’d written all of the notes for one of the radio programmes that I was intending to do today. Not exactly going flat-out, I have to say, but slowly keeping on going regardless.

First task though was to make up a playlist of albums from which I’ll be selecting the next batch of music. I used to do this every week but I haven’t actually updated anything since before I went to Canada. I’ve been letting myself go somewhat.

Another thing was to telephone the doctor for an appointment as I’m running low on some medication. I can go to see him on Wednesday morning next week at 10:00. I also need a pot to give a urine sample for the laboratory to analyse and the nurse will be taking it away with the blood test that he will come to do on Thursday morning next week.

So he’ll be taking the p*** then.

Lunch came round rather quicker than I was expecting, but I called a halt to my progress in order to have a shower and to do some tidying up. What with the cleaner coming, I have to make both myself and the apartment look presentable.

While she was here doing her stuff, I was making a start on the text for the next radio programme and talking to a neighbour on the internet. She was supposed to be coming home tomorrow but she finds herself stranded in Paris due to industrial action.

Several people have asked me why it is that the French are so upset about having their retirement age raised from 62 to 64 when for the UK the retirement age was raised from 65 to 67. Why do the French have it easier than the Brits?

The answer is that when the French are upset they go out to do something positive about it. The Brits just roll over and take it and, if they feel particularly incensed, they get up a petition, just like we did at Primary School.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to work for a pan-National Organisation that was inundated with petitions. The net result of all of these petitions was that our annual bill for toilet paper was zero.

And apparently I’m also in someone’s bad books. As soon as the apartment downstairs went up for sale, I was given the wink and the deal was all done and dusted within a matter of a couple of weeks. And I kept silent about it until I’d signed the commitment to purchase.

Now the news is spreading around the building that I’ve bought it, and someone else is bitterly upset because no-one told him or her that there was an apartment for sale and they were just as desperate as me to buy an apartment here.

So we have a very unhappy bunny somewhere in the building. And I have to say that I’m not sorry.

After the cleaner left I made some delicious hot chocolate and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night I was defrosting the freezer. I can’t remember who I was with now but it was a very long rambling dream again. One of the things that we were doing was dealing with the frozen food. We were having a lot of trouble fitting it all into the drawers. The girl said that we ought to defrost the freezer. I was certain that it didn’t need it because it wasn’t iced. But when I looked again it was so iced that all of the frozen ice blocks in there were all being pushed out. We ended up taking out everything and starting to repack it. But instead of there being ice blocks they were now like flexible containers like these heat bags. trying to squeeze them into the confined space because the shelves were so small was as if this freezer bag was taking up more than half the place inside with the equivalent of a vacuum flask meaning that there was very little room if any left for the frozen food. I was sitting there scratching my head about how this could possibly be. It certainly wasn’t like that when we’d started and the freezer wasn’t like that before. I was as if it had undergone a metamorphosis

Did I dictate the dream about going off to Canada with a few of my friends? … “no you didn’t” – ed … We wandered around New England for a couple of weeks without having much time to do very much. When we came back two other of my friends had gone away. They’d also gone to the USA. We set about changing the house round. We stripped out the kitchen and had a new window somewhere and had the old window from there in one of the current window frames, put some furniture in one of the bedrooms. When they came back I showed them around. They were very impressed with what we’d done. I went to bed but I didn’t really go to sleep. Whoever was there with me got up and went. I ended up getting up and going for a walk around. On the way back was a really steep hill that you actually had to climb. There was another woman climbing this hill. She couldn’t quite see how to get over the top. I explained that it was a case of having to climb up the fence, over it and then down again on the other side. She wasn’t willing to do that so she went. I managed to climb up that last bit and over the fence and on to the other side.

And I wish that I could remember who these girls are who keep on featuring in my dreams and then disappearing before I can put names to them. That’s really disappointing.

Rosemary rang me up later on and we had another marathon chat. We were talking about cruises and in particular one that is setting sail in November for three years, 300 ports and 137 countries. Three years at sea would suit me fine – after all, I’ve been all at sea for most of my life – but I draw the line at finding $158,000.

Nevertheless it would be interesting to find out more about it.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry, and now there’s a little room in the fridge.

There will be some room in the freezer tomorrow too because I’m going to take out a couple of the drawers, empty them and then clean and repair them. That’ll give me an opportunity to see what’s in them and work out a plan about reducing the contents of the freezer.

There’s far too much old stuff in there that I don’t know that I have. I need to sort it out and use it before something drastic happens to it.

But that’s for tomorrow. Right now, even though it’s early, I’m off to bed. I reckon that I’ve earned it. I certainly deserve it.

Tuesday 4th April 2023 – I’VE HAD A …

… very quiet day today and I’ve not really done all that much at all.

It’s possibly because the excesses of the last day or two have caught up with me because much of the afternoon was spent asleep on my chair as well.

That was really disappointing because I went to bed last night at some kind of reasonable time and had what, for the last couple of weeks, was a reasonable night’s sleep. And so I just don’t understand why things were so difficult.

There was quite a bit of travelling during the night , but that doesn’t really count for much I suppose. It was a Round of the the Scottish Cup in Scotland last night. One of the semi-professional sides was playing against an amateur local team. The local team managed to go 1-0 up thanks to intercepting a poor clearance out of defence. It wasn’t a particularly strong shot. It just about rolled over the line ahead of a defender who was running after it. There were the usual arguments about whose fault it was and how this village amateur side was just a couple of famous names who had rtired from professional football etc.

And later there was one of these Agatha Christie-type of murders that took place involving poison. The dream that I had was a long and complicated dream about who could possibly have been responsible until in the end they found the person who did it. I couldn’t follow the logic. I tried to dictate it as it all happened but it was just so complicated to try to follow.

And that always reminds me of the delicious mushroom soup that Nerina once made for me.
“This is a really beautiful soup” I said. “Where did you find this recipe?”
“In an Agatha Christie novel” she replied.

At one stage too I owned a single-decker bus, quite a modern utility type that was used for transporting schoolkids around the Northwich area. I had to do some job on it, a quick service but noticed that all the wheel nuts had come off. I had a closer look and the threads had all been stripped on the studs on the wheel. It was only held on by one nut. I thought “this is dangerous”. I went to scavenge another stub-axle from somewhere to put on it, although why a stub axle would solve this problem I don’t know. I had an endless job trying to hunt around in my garage for one. I had to ring up my father and try to contact the garage etc. In the end I patched up the bus enough so that it would go out to do this job. I was on board there with my brother. We started to dismantle it while it was driving, to undo the seatbelts. The kids all wondered why I was doing this so I thought “there’s no point exciting all kinds of unusual discussion. We’ll leave it until everyone gets off”. This bus was crowded. I hadn’t understood just how many people we’d take on this school run. Some people alighted and some boarded. I was chatting to a little kid as the bus carried on. It didn’t occur to me until I awoke that for changing the wheel studs is a simple 5-minute operation that doesn’t invove any kind of dismantling at all except to take off the wheel. Why I didn’t do that during the night I really don’t know.

It was a desperate stagger to arise from the dead before the second alarm, and then after the medication I checked the mails and messages and then tried my best to summon up some enthusiasm to do something.

Once I’d recovered somewhat I transcribed the dictaphone notes and then carried on with sorting out my music database and then choosing the music for some more programmes.

In between all of that I crashed out, and for quite a while too, and then I wasn’t in much of a mood to do anything else.

Having made several steps forward over the last couple of weeks, I’m really disappointed to have taken one rather large step back – at least as far as keeping awake goes.

On anothee matter, I actually picked myself off my knees with one hand today and quite easily too. That is certainly progress and as far as my mobility goes, I’m making progress there. Not quite the “giant leap for mankind” – just a couple of little baby steps.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. Things are looking up on the cooking front , at least, from that point of view. But disappointingly, there’s still no news about signing for my apartment downstairs. There’s no reason why it should take this long

But I can worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed. The cleaner is coming tomorrow of course so I need to be in some kind of energetic mood in order to whizz around the apartment and make it look nice.

But making anywhere look nice wherever I am is a pretty difficult task.

Monday 3rd April 2023 – THAT EXPERIMENT …

… that I was going to try about taking a frozen pepper, filling it full of my own-brand stuffing and then baking it from frozen in the air fryer is definitely going along the right lines.

That pyrex bowl that I bought a week or two ago came in handy for that. I put that inside the basket and cooked the pepper in it so that the stuffing didn’t boil over and make a mess. But 8 minutes is probably too long though because it scorched the top of the pepper.

However, as I said, the principle is what counts and the pepper ended up cooked quite nice and crisp, not like when it’s cooked in the microwave and goes rather on the soggy side.

And so we had some good news for once, which makes a change after last night which was rather a disaster.

With an early start at 06:00 on a Monday I’m usually in bed by 22:00. At least, that’s the plan but last night I didn’t go to bed until midnight and then I couldn’t go to sleep either. In fact I don’t really remember going to sleep at all.

However there was something on the dictaphone from last night so I must have gone to sleep at some point. I was at a meeting with a friend of mine, a colleague I should say, a young girl and a few other people. We were waiting outside a door not doing very much in particular when a guy appeared. I thought “I know him”. On a closer inspection it was the footballer Pele. I nudged everyone and said “this is Pele”. A lot of people said “who?”. As soon as he came past I went up to him to shake his hand. I said “hello”. A friend of mine went over and shook his hand as well. One of the young girls went over too rather shyly and shook his had. She had a beautiful smile from him. he went on into this meeting. I was saying “wow! Pele has just gone in there” and all these people were asking “who’s Pele?”.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I staggered out of bed feeling like the Wreck of the Hesperus and drifted “a dreary wreck” into the living room for my medication.

After checking the mails and messages I made a start on the two radio programmes that I wanted to prepare this week. Two because next week it’s a Bank Holiday on Monday and I’m having a day off work.

But badger these Bank Holidays for a game of soldiers. Usually I have a lie-in to celebrate Bank Holiday but on Friday the physiotherapist is coming at 08:45 and on Monday the nurse is coming round to give me the injection at some crazy hour of the morning.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … office, I dashed through one and a half of them quite quickly, having already done much of the donkey work. But the second one, I chose a track that was exactly to the second the right length to finish off the programme only to find that I’d chopped the track in the wrong place and I was 27 seconds short.

That’s far, far too much of a gap to pad out so I had to choose another final song and then retype, re-dictate and re-edit the text to fit.

As a result it took rather longer than it ought to have done.

This afternoon I merged into my run of music all of the music that I’ve been editing over the last few months here and there. I hadn’t realised that there was so much. In fact, I’m giving some consideration to making a seventh run of music instead of the six that I have at the moment.

Another thing that I’ve done is to have yet another play around to elongate yet another song. It’s one that fades out after the final verse so I copied the solo out of the middle seeing as it was nice and long and then edited it into the ending. A song that started off as 3:03 is now at 4:25 and you can’t hear the joins.

It was rather more complicated than the others that I’ve done so far because the tone and volume was different at the end and I had to edit all of that around.

Once I’d organised that I chose the music for the next radio programme. I really wanted to chose another two but as usual I was distracted by not very much in particular.

Tea was a success as I said, especially as it was followed by the last of the apple pie, defrosted and heated once more in the air fryer. I’m beginning to have my money’s worth from that and I’m even more convinced that it was one of the best €29:00 that I’ve ever spent.

However, the evening was disrupted by a blocked sink and I had to empty out the cupboard underneath to disconnect the drainpipe and clean it out. It’s happening far too frequently these days.

So having had a nice chat to Alison on the internet I’m off to bed. No Welsh lesson tomorrow – we’re on holiday for two weeks – but I’m going to try to motivate myself to do some revision.

Another thing that I was going to do was to sort out the issues that i’m having with procrastination, but that’s a task for another time.

Sunday 2nd April 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about something coming along to disturb me.

However that’s nothing to shout out about. After all, it’s pretty much odds-on, isn’t it?

But who – just WHO would ring up someone on a Sunday morning at an ungodly hour like 11:05 – that early in the morning?

When I find out, there will be someone drinking soup through a straw, that’s for sure, because if you really ARE going to ring someone up at that time of the morning then at least have the decency to stay on line instead of hanging up after just two rings.

And don’t do it a second time 5 minutes later either because that’s really annoying.

What was worse was that when whoever it was phoned up the first time, I found myself in the middle of dictating a dream. There’s a beautiful ‘phone ring right in the middle of it and of course I forgot where I was and lost half of my voyage, which was disappointing.

Things were going so well too. I wasn’t really all that late going to bed last night and although it was another restless night, I was hoping that quantity would make up for the lack of quality. Ahh well…

So instead I arose from the bed, had my medication, checked my mails and messages and then transcribed the dictaphone notes. My older sister had a bank account with Lloyds Bank and I had an account there too. While we were having a discussion several months later she’d actually transferred all her accounts from one branch to the other so she was no longer at the same branch as me. But when she’d phoned to make an appointment for herself to go she’d made one for me as well. This would be extremely complicated because where she’d arranged it they didn’t have my papers. I drove into town anyway but the car park in town was a pay car park. There was a long queue of traffic snarled up in the centre so I thought that I’d nip out to do what I had to do. I was distracted as usual and it took me very much longer to do something. When I looked up I saw that all the cars had gone. Mine was stuck in the middle of the road blocking all the traffic. I had to run over there to move it, and that wasn’t as straightforward as it might seem.

Later on I was somewhere in a town watching some people. Someone was playing the piano then someone went up there with him and they played a double handed piece that I recognised. This went on for quite a few minutes. It wasn’t until they began to talk mentioning their names that I realised that it was the Grateful Dead. I began to talk to them. One of the girls who was hanging around said something like “would you like to talk to Maureen?”. I began to wonder whether in fact this was Mo Tucker, the drummer of Velvet Underground but in the dream I confused her with the drummer of the Grateful Dead. We began to chat and she offered to show me her drum kit. I said “yes! I’d love to see it!”. She and her friends took me down some steps into a theatre, all the way through the theatre we had to fight our way through the crowds. At the bottom end right by the stage on the other side was her drum kit. It was a 1978 and she did say the name of it. I asked her if I could play it but there was someone else playing it so I couldn’t have a go. That was ever so disappointing. I asked if I could take a photo of her and her drum kit. There was something quite strange happening as well. Someone was talking about their secretary having gone off with a guy. While we were going through the theatre we bumped into a couple of other people who were following us. One of them of the two introduced himself, one of the organisers, and said “I’ve just been making love to your boss’s secretary”. He said it 4 or 5 times as if he wanted a round of applause. I thought to myself “that’s a strange thing to wan tthe whole world to know and want to be a subject of conversation”.

There was something else later about a woman who was locked in the lavatory. They went down to talk to her but for some unknown reason she didn’t want to come out. There was something happening or going on that she wanted to be part of. I can’t remember very much of this dream but in the end they found someone to go down to help her free herself. She was very insistent that she didn’t want to go right at that moment – they all didn’t want to leave. I was wondering how they were going to persuade her to leave once they open the door if she doesn’t want to go. There’s lots more to it than this in this dream but I can’t remember it all now.

Something else about which I’ve forgotten a lot – I’ve gone for a massage session with a physiotherapist, a girl. She massaged my back and legs then gave me a folder with a whole list of treatments etc in it. We arranged another appointment. It was coming up to some kind of festival like Mother’s Day or similar. The way she was talking was as if she was expecting me to do something for her, invite her out or something. It wasn’t very clear and I didn’t want to force any issue. The conversation turned round to what she’d heard at the weekend. She said that she’d been to a party where she’d done some massage and was the only one who had made any money. We talked about the state of the economy. I set off for home. On the way back I stopped by a café to check my money etc. A group of kids were at the tables. As usual with little kids they were very inquisitive. They were asking what I was doing etc. I was intending to talk to them but for some unknown reason I set off again. One of them came running after me with a piece of litter that I’d dropped out of my purse while I was sorting through my money. She saw me and gestured to me. I wondered what she was doing so I didn’t do anything. She just threw it on the pavement. That brought her a telling-off from a passer-by. At that point I realised that I hadn’t brought the paperwork back with me. I thought to myself “this is going to be difficult now”. There was also something about going to a florist and obtaining a blank receipt but I can’t remember why I wanted to do that now.

Finally I was on a bus in Crewe. There was a couple of girls on there as well talking about houses that were being built, these replacement terraced houses. They were being built of course to replace existing terraced houses and keep some kind of affordability. One girl was thinking of buying one and the other girl was trying to tell her that they would just be full of riff-raff and not worth doing anything. They were then talking about stuccoing. They asked my opinion and I said “stuccoing is not something that can be done by anyone. They need to be a specialist”. They said that it would improve the looks. I said “yes but it’s not for a DiY person”. Nantwich Road was blocked off so the bus was having to dodge down a few of these side streets to head off towards Nantwich. I ended up on foot. I was walking northwards from N antwich in what would have been the direction of Church Minshull but God knows where it was going. I seemed to be walking quite well. Someone behind me was listening to Golden Earring’s “Radar Love”. I could hear it so I was singing along to it. Then we came to a door. This road was closed off after hours. We had to pass through the door. There were a set of steps up. I was struggling to climb them so a couple of people had to push me. They pushed me up the steps and I came onto a kind of plateau where there was a big lake and lots of kids playing around.

It’s hardly surprising that I had a disturbed night after all of that. And that isn’t everything either because there’s other stuff that was going on too but you don’t want to know about that if you are eating a meal.

For the rest of the day I haven’t done all that much. I decided that I’d have a day off and that was that.

The pizza was something of a calamity if the truth is known. Not that it wasn’t made well or that it wasn’t cooked properly, but I had issues with the base. I had to have a couple of goes to roll it out onto my pizza tray but it didn’t work for some reason. I ended up with rather a mis-shapen pizza. But at least it tasted nice.

So now after what should have been a really relaxing day I’m off to bed. I have quite a bit of stuff to do tomorrow and a 06:00 start to do it as well. That should keep me out of mischief, but it doesn’t seem to have worked much so far.

1st April 2023 – HAVING SAID THAT …

… I didn’t need much from the shops last weekend and ended up spending a small fortune, I ended up spending next to nothing today, which is always good news for my bank account.

Noz came up with something for which I’ve been searching for years – a small biscuit tray for the oven. It’s still bigger than what I wanted but it’s small enough to let the heat circulate around the oven without blocking off the top from the bottom, which is always good news.

That’s all that I bought from there. From LeClerc I just bought the basic stuff for a mere €17:00. There wasn’t anything on offer or anything in the clearance bins or anything special that I needed.

At Intersport though a very nice young girl showed me the stuff that the physiotherapist says that I need and although it was expensive, the total that I spent today was still less than whatever I spent last weekend.

It was a good day at the shops today.

Much better than the night though.

Apart from the fact that I spent much of the night tossing and turning again, that stabbing pain in my foot came back. In the heel this time, not the sole of the foot. This kept me awake for quite some time and it wasn’t very nice.

Consequently it was a very weary and bleary me who staggered out of bed when the alarm went off but I still managed to summon up the effort to head out to the shops, despite the devastating wind that was blowing around outside.

And in news that will make everyone sit bolt upright, I actually just used one crutch and my wheelie shopping trolley today to do the shopping, and it all went off very well.

However, I’m still not too confident about it although there are signs of hope. I’ll keep on practising because if I can do it convincingly and confidently, then travelling with a suitcase comes right back on the agenda.

What with these improvements, I’m interested to see how I get on at the hospital and what they might be able to do for me to make life easier.

Back here I made some coffee and with the air fryer I made some cheese on toast with tomato. It was quite a nice brunch and I’ll have to do more of this. As you can gather, I’m becoming quite involved in this air fryer lark now

Once I’d finished eating I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was cat-sitting someone’s cats. That person was actually there at the start. While we were organising ourselves 2 people knocked at the door. I went to see them and dealt with them. That seemed to be it but 2 other people knocked on the door – 2 people with whom I worked in the past. They came into the apartment and began to talk to whoever it was whose apartment it was while I continued getting these cats ready. One was a small kitten which was stuck behind a sofa and a door across a room. It couldn’t climb over the sofa to come back into the room. I had to help it. I noticed that while I was trying to sort it out there were 4 dummies lying around on the floor. I thought that the cats would be okay if they become lonely.

And then I was at an animal refuge last night having taken jars of sweet wrappings in as some kind of donation. There was one jar of sweet wrappers that was absolutely full to the brim. It was just not possible to fit anything else in there. I produced Tuppence, my old black cat, who was going to help me sort through it. If there was anything nice, she’d eat it. The people at the refuge took one look at her and began to ask me about her. I said that she’d been mine for years. We’re an old couple together. They said “yes but you really need to take her to the vet”. I replied “I’m afraid to take her to the vet because of what the vet might tell me. I don’t really want to lose her”. They said that I’d lose her anyway if she died so it’s much better that she’s looked at in comfort. There was a question about an old Alsatian dog there too but I’m not sure where that fitted into this.

A group of us were having a meeting at my house in Virlet although it was a different house. I’d been to my University exam which was on the fate of Sir John Franklin. I did absolutely dreadfully. I couldn’t even remember the name of his ship etc. All the basics had just evaporated out of my head. I ran out of time trying to think as well. Back at the house we’d been talking. I’d done some work on it since the last time they were there. My friend agreed to come and see it. We crawled through the hatchway into the front area of the house so I could show him the work that I’d done. It looked to me as if someone else had been doing stuff there to such an extent that I was confused as to where I was. It certainly looked as if someone else had been having a go at doing some work. I didn’t say anything. I just let them see it and peer through the broken floors etc. My friend pointed out a huge bulge in the wall. He asked “what’s going on there?”. I replied “nothing as far as I know”. I thought to myself that that bulge wasn’t there last time I was here. I wonder what’s going on. I noticed that someone had tied a blue cargo strap around it to stop it going any worse. I certainly hadn’t done that. I’d no idea what was happening there.

Even more interestingly I was in the middle of another dream when the alarm went off. It awoke me. When I looked it was actually 05:30 and it wasn’t the alarm at all that had gone off. I must have dreamt that. Whatever it was that I was dreaming at the time completely evaporated out of my head. I can’t remember anything at all about it.

Just recently I seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about cats during the night. I grew up with cats and when I had a more settled lifestyle I had a few of my own. One poor girl who I thought was wonderful, I showed her the door because she wanted me to choose between her and Tuppence.

Luckily Nerina liked cats as much as I did and so did Roxanne who acquired a couple of kittens for our little family much to her mother’s annoyance.

Maybe if I do eventually move onto the ground floor where there are windows to the outside and if my travelling days are over, any objection that I might have had to looking after another cat would no longer exist

Rather regrettably, I crashed out this afternoon, and that’s no surprise given how my night went. I’d dictated the notes for the two radio programmes that I wanted to do and was in the middle of editing the first one when I crashed out. I was gone for a good while too.

However I awoke just in time for the football – a bottom-of-the-table match between Pontypool United and Aberystwyth Town. Whoever would win would put some daylight between themselves and the loser in the battle to avoid relegation.

Pontypool played the better football in the first half and went into the break deservedly 1-0 up. Only some heroics from Aberystwyth keeper Matthew Turner had kept Aberystwyth within touching distance.

During the second half Aberystwyth slowly came back into the game and piled on the pressure, but still had to rely on Turner a couple of times and a couple of desperate goal-line clearance to prevent certain goals from Pontypool breakaways.

But deep into stoppage time, Aberystwyth won a corner. Turner went upfield in a brave attempt to put pressure on the Pontypool defence and I don’t think that there was anyone more surprised than him WHEN THE BALL FELL AT HIS FEET.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last weekend I had a play around with the soundfile of a song and cut in a few extra bits and pieces. And after I finished it, I suddenly thought of a way that would have made everything so much easier.

So having listened to STEVE MARRIOTT yesterday and all of the memories that it brought back, I decided that the song wasn’t long enough so I had a play around with that. And now the song has extended from just over 3 minutes to just over 4 minutes and you can’t hear the joins.

That’s something that I must try to do more often, I suppose. It certainly makes things much different and much more interesting. With the truncated attention span that people have these days anything over 3 minutes is turned down flat by most record producers.

Ohhh! For the good old days of Southern Rock bands like Widespread Panic, Blackberry Smoke and the Marshall Tucker Band and lead guitar solos that could last for several weeks.

Anyway, I shall go to bed and dream about cats and lead guitar solos. And a nice lie-in until tomorrow with nothing planned to do all day. High time I had a Day of Rest.

However something will probably come along to disturb me. It usually does.

Friday 31st March 2023 – MY SAUSAGE …

… chips and beans for tea was delicious. Now that I have some melting vegan cheese, and more importantly, now I know where I can find some more without any effort, I added some cheese to the beans while they were cooking and that made an impressive difference.

The air fryer struck again. Cooked my sausage and chips to perfection. And later on, seeing as I found some more frozen apple pie in the freezer, it defrosted and crisped up my slice of apple pie.

And rummaging around in my box of cooking accessories, I found a shallow porcelain pie dish tested for use in the oven that fits nicely in the basket of the air fryer.

Things are looking up!

There are several other things that also seem to be looking up too.

Firstly, I had another better night of sleep. I was late going to bed and it was a real struggle to awaken but I even managed to beat the first alarm this morning, never mind the second one.

That’s a surprise in itself because although it wasn’t anything as like as restless as it has been in the recent past, I still put in a god few miles while I was asleep. The subject of Lonnie Donegan came up in a discussion between me and several other people. It brought out the fact that after he’d finished with a musical career he’d gone into the motor trade. He’d bought a ruined garage somewhere and had started to work from it. I was hoping that there might have been something going here for me but no-one said anything so I made a few enquiries of my own. I was pointed in the direction of where he might be. I turned up there and it was an ice speedway race taking place on an ice rink somewhere in south London. He was actually racing in it and won, which of course cheered everyone. Then there was something about music. One of the guys in it was called Kenny Driscoll whom I know from “Lone Star”. We were talking about some kind of jazz group that was involving him and someone else well-known was looking for an over-dub guitarist for making albums of the live concerts they were doing

There was something else involving music but I can’t remember very much of this except that it involved some kind of guitarist who was fleeing from justice. They had him surrounded. It went on from there but I can’t remember very much but one of the tracks on the album that he was recording was called “A State of Bohemia”. Someone interpreted it to mean that they were living some kind of uncomplicated life. It was really quite funny because they didn’t know, although most people did, that Bohemia was the name of an ancient State in Central Europe now part of the Czech Republic (and I’m impressed that I knew that in the middle of a dream) but there is lots more to this dream than this but I can’t remember it

And then I was driving taxis in a new town last night. It was a town about which Nerina or whoever the woman with me was knew something about. She showed me a couple of places that she had visited when she was at University there. We had a new driver starting as well. We gave him a run-down of what to do and what we expected of him then we set off. The first job was that we were going to the same place but picking up from different places so we met up and went together in the end. This person paid for both taxis. It came to £2:50, £1:10 for me and £1:40 for him. It had to be split up but for some unknown reason the maths were extremely complicated. I was scratching my head about this because I knew the answer straight away but I didn’t want to say it in case everyone thought that I was trying to cheat someone. We were talking about whether we’d be busy or not but on the way into dropping off these passengers we’d seen queues at almost every taxi rank so we expected that we would have a really busy night. For some reason I wans’t in the mood to be busy. It was very difificult when there were just 2 of you and one was a new driver.

Something else occurred as well. The place was untidy so I asked the family if they would halp me tidy it. One thing was an enormous pile of books with books all over the floor. Their response was a quote from Churchill about “you should find books everywhere in a house and that’s a good sign if there are”. I thought that that was typical with no-one coming round to help me out.

Finally I was out last night somewhere in the Home Counties. There was a group of people who had gone to meet someone. They had an Avengers-like plot trying different pulls on them to see which was the most efficacious in killing them. They lured someone down to a quiet remote cul-de-sac in the countryside. They person whom they were supposed to be meeting wasn’t there so he stopped a passer-by who happened to be one of these secret agents who planted this thing on him and gave him directions as to where he ought to ben which of course were false. He set off with the idea that he’d die. I’d observed this so I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I got into my red Cortina estate and reversed out of the side street. I hadn’t noticed this traffic island. The rear of the vehicle went up on it and stuck so I gave it some extra revs to take me right over. There was a car coming behind me, one of these horrible yellowy-green 1100s. I hit it and said “oh God! Here we go again”. I pulled up on the side of the road to go to talk to the guy but he just turned his car round and drove away. I wondered what to do next – do I sit there and wait for the police or wait for him to come back or do I go and risk being prosecuted for driving away from an accident. I really had no idea.

So Nerina was there last night, but also so were members of my family (well, Nerina is a member of my family too but you know what I mean). It’s been a good few days since TOTGA and Zero have put in an appearance and my other favourite girl, Castor, seems to have dropped off the radar now. She’s not been around for ages.

It all reminds me of “I’ve been having bad dreams
Well maybe tomorrow when I’m hungry baby
I’d beg for you, what’d I say steal and borrow
Would you help me
Really help me, really help me
To run down the road
Would you be with me”
But not even STEVE MARRIOTT can conjure up Zero, Castor and TOTGA for me.

Anyway, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, so live for the present!

After the medication and checking my mails and messages it took me a good while for me to come to my senses and once I’d had a rather later-than-usual mid-morning coffee I started work.

First thing to do was to pay the property taxes on my place in Canada. I had high hopes for that piece of land, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and was out there getting quotes for log cabins and the like, only to be struck down by a thunderbolt back in late 2015.

The fact that I’m still going is a tribute to the medical staff at Leuven but how I would have loved not to have had to involve them in my projects.

Wouldn’t things have been different? But then I wouldn’t have made it to the Arctic and I wouldn’t have met the Vanilla Queen (who dropped off the radar a long time ago) and Castor.

Second thing was to pay my cleaner. I also had to leave her my niece’s details for when I’m in hospital if the necessity should ever arise. And of course I have a different phone to the one that I used to take with me to Canada so I had to hunt down all of the details and check with her that they were still correct.

During one of the pauses I had a shower too. The physiotherapist was to come round this afternoon and I wanted to be nice and clean for him. And climbing into the bath to take a shower is no longer an issue, which is good news. This physiotherapy is working.

The rest of the day has been spent writing notes for the radio programmes, which are now all done, writing out the details of my trips during the night, and also converting and remixing a couple of soundfiles that I tracked down the other day.

A little earlier I mentioned that there were a couple of other things that seem to be looking up. The second one is that the physiotherapist is as pleased with my improvement as I am and reckons that he can see a time when I’ll no longer need the therapy.

That’s not to say that I’ll be cured, of course. What he means is that if I keep up the exercises as I seem to be doing, then I won’t need him to supervise me.

He’s given me a few more exercises to do and a list of things that I need to buy at the sports shop tomorrow. And as of next week he’s only going to come once a week, Friday morning, to check on my progress.

That’s interesting, to say the least.

Tea was delicious as I said just now, and the apple pie with soya cream finished it off nicely. One more slice of pie left, as far as I could see, so that will bite the dust tomorrow.

While we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m out shopping if the wind has died down. It reached 110kph this morning but hopefully it will blow itself out at some point.

That’ll be something for me to think about while I’m in bed, and I’m going off there right now. Goodnight.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: dream

Friday 14th April 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Thursday 13th April 2023 – THE VISITING NURSE …

Wednesday 12th April 2023 – MY HOME-MADE …

Tuesday 11th April 2023 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Monday 10th April 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

Sunday 9th April 2023 – MY AIR FRYER …

Saturday 8th April 2023 – THAT WAS DISAPPOINTING

Friday 7th April 2023 – A CALAMITY!

Thursday 6th April 2023 – MY CURRIED FRIED RICE …

Wednesday 5th April 2023 – AFTER ALL OF THE …

Tuesday 4th April 2023 – I’VE HAD A …

Monday 3rd April 2023 – THAT EXPERIMENT …

Sunday 2nd April 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

1st April 2023 – HAVING SAID THAT …

Friday 31st March 2023 – MY SAUSAGE …

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