Tag Archives: dream

Thursday 30th March 2023 – I’VE FOUND ANOTHER …

… use for my air fryer this evening.

While I was fumbling around in the freezer looking for those Chinese whatsits I came across a slice of apple pie that had been in there since the dawn of time, well and truly frozen.

The problem with frozen pie is that when it defrosts, whether in the microwave or in the open air, it goes all wet and soggy. Consequently, I decided to have a little go with the air fryer.

And so five minutes later I had a nice warm slice of crispy defrosted apple pie that was delicious with some of the soya cream that I had left over from the curry yesterday.

That was something good to know and I’ll remember that for the future. Defrosted vegan pie done in the air fryer at the end of cooking a batch of roast potatoes should make a wonderful meal. I’ll have to make a pie now, if only I had some room in the freezer.

If there’s one slice of apple pie in the freezer there might be another, and I’m cooking sausage and chips for tea tomorrow night. That will involve the air fryer so I’ll have another rummage around and see what I can find.

Once more, I had a better night in bed. I was in bed at an appropriate time and when the alarm went off at 07:30 I found myself in the middle of dictating a dream.

When the second alarm went off I was already up and about (well, sort of) and went for the medication. Following that, I checked my mails and messages.

Next stop was to check the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night. I was in a car. There was a car in front of me stopped at some roadworks so I stopped. There was a towbar nearby with a trailer attached. I thought that it belonged to this car so I went to unhook it. While I was doing that I damaged the rear end of the car. The driver was very unhappy. I had to wait there while he sorted himself out and then we went to fill in the form about the damage. I pretended that it was a road accident but I knew that I was at fault. He was humming a tune and I said that I recognised it. He said “yes it sounds like that group ..” and mentioned a couple of songs that they did. I said “ahh, that’s Budgie. They come from your neck of the woods”. We started to talk about the Newton Lane and Hoole Lane area of the town where I used to live back in the early 1970s. All a quite friendly basis although I’d just wrecked the rear end of his car.

And later on I was in a town having to seek therapy. This girl was talking to me in the centre of town. She sent me off for a walk around. I had to talk out loud about what was going through my mind and why I was doing what I was doing etc. I set off for a walk and went around town talking like this but I noticed that she was nowhere to be seen. I thought to myself that I’d go back to where I started. When I returned she was there. She hadn’t moved. She repeated a few of the things that I’d said and added “you need psychiatric therapy, don’t you? Would you like some?”. I replied “yes OK”. She said “go and do this exercise again. Go to these places”. Off I set and she still didn’t come with me. I was walking around and went into a shop. I ended up buying an enormous sheet of hardboard. I thought “this is silly because I haven’t finished what I was supposed to be doing yet and I now have to walk around with this huge sheet of hardboard”. Someone saw me struggling around the shop with it and came to help me fold it but that still didn’t solve the problem. In the shop I’d somehow ended up downstairs in the basement. There was a way out around the back. I could see more shops. I thought “the girl still hasn’t come with me and doesn’t know what I’m doing. I could nip out at the back here and go to visit these shops that she hasn’t said anything about and see what happens then”.

That wasn’t all that happened during the night but you don’t really want to know about the rest of it, especially if you are eating a meal right now.

For the rest of the day I haven’t done all that much. I finished off the notes from the radio programme that I’d been doing yesterday, and then I paired off the music for the last one in the pipeline.

Tomorrow I’ll write out the notes for that and later at night I’ll dictate them. I can’t dictate them during the day because there’s too much noise in the street. That’s one of the reasons why I’m up and about at 06:00 on a Monday morning before everyone else is up and about.

My tea tonight was delicious. Apart from the apple pie, I had rice and veg with those Chinese pastry things that were in the fridge. As I mentioned yesterday, once the rice had been cooked I fried it in a mixture of lemon grass, vegan butter and olive oil, along with a dollop of soy sauce.

And I’ll have that meal again because it was delicious. In fact, thinking on, next time I have a vegan burger that isn’t tomato based, I’ll go for fried rice again but with some cumin and coriander instead of the lemon grass. That should be really nice, I reckon.

Rosemary rang up later on and we had another one of our marathon chats. We had plenty of news for each other but nothing of earth-shattering importance. Just basically exchanging ideas and plans.

So the plans that I’m going to exchange is that apart from the physiotherapist I’ll just be doing that radio stuff tomorrow ready for the weekend. I might have a sort-out of the freezer too to see what I can eat in the near future in order to make more space. I’m still not sure what there is in there.

It won’t do any harm to empty it out a little though. If I’m going to be moving, I don’t want to take too much with me.

0

Wednesday 29th March 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a much more quiet day today. Only the cleaner disturbed my peace this afternoon. Apart from that, and a chat with my niece on the internet, that was all the excitement today.

There wasn’t very much excitement during the night either. I was in bed early and I had a fairly decent night’s sleep again. I’m wondering if my sleeping issues might have had something to do with the blackcurrant, lemon and honey drink that I used to drink before going to bed. I’ve not had one for the last few nights and that seems to correspond with when I’ve had a better sleep.

There was still plenty of time to go off for a wander around during the night. I might not have remembered much of what went on, but there was plenty of stuff that I dictated. I’d become a serial killer. I was living in the poor area of a city somewhere. All these down-and-outs who lived in the same area as me, I’d been bumping them off one by one. There in my living room I had about 20 bodies. I had to start to dispose of them soon and I had no idea how I was going to do it. I began to realise that it wasn’t the best decision that I’d made, to kill these people. If I wasn’t happy before I started I’m certainly not happy now. Some woman who knew my secret was going on about how she wanted to live a quiet life in peace, to see out her days etc. The way she was talking, her targets weren’t set very high as to her quality of life. I began to realise that that was the kind of thing that would be ideal but would never ever happen to me. It was a really sad dream, this. I felt awful.

And then a couple of us had been to London for some kind of event. On the way back we were driving up the A5 instead of the M1 and M6. At a certain point there was a guy hitch-hiking. We recognised him as someone whom we knew who had been to this concert thing or whatever it was. We stopped and picked him up. We were all chatting. I was drifting in and out of sleep for some reason, being a passenger. I remember coming up to a certain town with loads of roadworks. I recognised it immediately as Bedford. We became stuck in these roadworks, first of all because someone coming through the roadworks against the lights kept us waiting to leave, and then they changed halfway through and rather than push on to the end our driver just stopped in the middle. I thought to myself that this is going to start to cause some real problems if he doesn’t move. He can’t stay here.

There was also something about some powerful man sending messages in the name of his wife to his son but I can’t remember much about this but he was boasting about it. I thought that it was an extremely strange thing to do.

When the alarm went off I struggled to my feet and went off for my medication and then to check my mails and messages. And for most of the day I’ve been writing out the text for most of the music that I’ve been preparing over the last couple of weeks and that’s really about it.

One other thing that I have done – well, three things actually – is that I’ve found three more soundtracks for old analogue albums that are in my possession.

One of them is taking ages to convert because it’s on an extremely rare digital audio format. The converter has been running for several hours already and there is still a good few hours to go. Ordinarily I’d try to find another version in a more common format but it’s a rare spacerock album by an unknown German group whom I first heard at a Hawkfest years ago and I’ve never ever heard anywhere else.

The cleaner did another nice job and gave me her accounts. I’ll have to do those on Friday, the last day of the month. She has a form to fill in because I have to nominate a “next of kin” for the hospital and Liz is no longer here. I’ll give her my niece’s details too in case they are required. She knows what my future wishes and plans might be.

My leftover curry this evening was the best that I have ever made. I’m really getting the hang of stuff like this now, and so I should after all this time.

Tomorrow night, I have the rest of those Chinese whatsits so I think that I’ll make them with fried rice this time and see how they go. A little olive oil and some vegan butter along with some lemon grass might make something really nice.

But that’s for tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed. I want a nice long sleep if I can ready for a good day’s work tomorrow if I can. A nice little voyage or two into the surreal would be nice too as long as it’s not all about mass murder. But then beggars can’t be choosers.

0

Tuesday 28th March 2023 – AFTER ALL THAT …

… I didn’t have my door painted today.

Just as I was going out to the doctor’s, the painter rang me again. “Apartment 13 isn’t it, yours?”

“Yes it is but you’re not coming round now are you? I told you yesterday that I’m out this morning” and he confirmed that he would be back at 14:00 as we agreed yesterday.

At 13:30, just as my Welsh lesson was coming to an end, the bell rang. “It’s the painter”.

When he eventually found me, after having wandered around the building for 10 minutes, he said “there’s been a mistake. It’s not your door I’m supposed to be painting at all. It’s another one somewhere else”.

“That’s what I thought” I replied. “My landlord never told me anything at all about having my door painted” and that was that. he wandered off again elsewhere.

So retournons à nos moutons as they say around here – just for a change last night I actually had a really good sleep without too much tossing and turning around at all. The only disappointment from my point of view is that having gone to bed much later than I was intending, I didn’t have enough of it and that was rather depressing.

It was another real struggle to leave the bed this morning but I didn’t hang about too long. I managed to beat the second alarm, but not by much.

And after the medication and checking the mails and messages I went and had a shower so that I could look my best. And climbing into the bath to take a shower is no longer any kind of effort – at least, at the moment. Who knows what the future might bring?

Having dealt with the painter as I said earlier, I went to see the nerve specialist. And regrettably, I fell asleep in the waiting room. I must have been tired.

So the news is that there is a trace of cancer in the nerve cells and also a trace of infection. But what’s causing most of the problem seems to be some kind of inflammation. And that’s what the hospital is going to be treating when I go there for a week. He told me not to be too optimistic but I should certainly expect some improvement.

And if there really is some improvement on top of what I’ve already noticed, I shall be quite happy for once.

On the way home I went via LIDL but there wasn’t all that much that was interesting. I still spent €15:00 though, without an awful lot to show for it.

Back here I made myself a vegan cheese butty with tomato (I’d not had any breakfast of course) and then attended the second part of my Welsh lesson, that passed off OK.

This afternoon, there was football on the internet – Cymru under-17s against Montenegro under-17s, many of whom looked rather older than I was expecting.

Cymru needed a point to qualify for the European finals in the summer and were cruising along nicely, but two goals in a minute in first-half stoppage time seemed to have sunk them. The first goal, fair enough, but in a mad fit of rush of blood to the head, the whole team swarmed upfield from the kick-off to try to score an equaliser, and were hit with a sucker punch – a long ball out of defence over the top of the advancing Cymru defenders with an attacker running on from deep.

Pretty much text-book stuff.

Cymru pulled one back 10 minutes into the second half and then in the dying seconds the centre-back showed them how to do it, running in from defence and backheeling one home from three yards out to equalise and for Cymru to qualify.

But Cymru are going to have to find some strikers from somewhere. The midfield tore the Montenegrins to shreds and the guy on the right wing, Freddy Issaka, had them in all kinds of spins but the front two couldn’t hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument with all of the chances that they were given.

Shooting wide from just three feet out, right in the centre of the goal, was just one of the several simple chances that Cymru missed.

During half time I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d taken over the job as a football secretary of a local football club. The very first day I’d received some forms to fill in but I thought that I’d deal with them after the weekend. When I was talking to one of the guys from the club on the Saturday night he told me that one in particular I should have dealt with immediately and sent back because it concerns their match on Sunday. If it’s not dealt with immediately then the match won’t go ahead. There’ll be all kinds of consequences. I was totally unaware of that so I thought that I’d go to the bank to see if the form was still there. I arrived at the bank. The woman there was most unhelpful and I didn’t feel like pushing the matter. I thought that I’d leave it. I’d been invited to a party on the Saturday night. Lots of people were going. I walked along to the venue. Instead it was by the side of a river. Even though it was late at night it was all lit up. Photography would have been excellent had I had a decent camera and a decent place to stand to take the photos. I tried with what equipment I had but nothing actually worked that I wanted. There were far too many people in the way. On the way I’d stopped off at a chip shop to buy sausage and chips. I put my £2 down on the counter. Eventually I was served – about half a dozen cold chips and a small sausage which I thought was ridiculous for the £2 so I took a photo of it. While I was at this waterfront site I heard a couple of people saying that even though a couple of the girls were going to somewhere in the Spring, they were going to build a castellated wall around. This woman was describing in detail what this castellated wall was. Her friend was listening intently and so was I. at the same time for some reason I was mixing cement in the back of Caliburn on a plastic sheet. I couldn’t think why I was mixing the cement. There wasn’t much of it and trying to mix it in the back of Caliburn where I can’t stand up was extremely complicated.

The physiotherapist came round and ran me through my paces. He asked me if I would be interested in upping my programme to include a few more exercises. He was telling me that most people only like to take their therapy up to a certain point and leave it as it is but what about me?

My reply was that there’s a whole world out there still waiting for me and I want to get out and see it and take part in it. So he’s going to work out another programme for me

In between everything else I’ve been selecting more music for the radio programmes. What I’ll have to do now is to start to write out the notes. I’ve a few now that need text and then I can dictate one or two of them over the weekend to start to make some more programmes. I’ve plenty in the pipeline already prepared but you never know when I’m going to be “indisposed”.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg. And my stuffing is now down to a fine art and tastes really exquisite. I can’t wait to get my hands on a real kitchen though, although I’ve no idea when that might be.

Tomorrow the cleaner is coming so I’ll have some tidying up to do. It’s the last time this month that she’ll be here so I’ll have to do the accounts at some point. That might be a good thing to do if I need a break from writing radio notes.

However I am hoping for plenty of dictaphone notes. I need to bring some more excitement into my life and nothing much is happening during the daylight hours. Wandering off into the next dimension when I’m fast asleep is about the best that I can manage right now.

0

Monday 27th March 2023 – IT SOUNDS AS IF …

… I’m going to have a visitor here tomorrow afternoon at 14:00.

This afternoon there was a ‘phone call from a painter and decorator. “Is it OK if I come tomorrow afternoon?”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Your landlord says that I have to paint your front door”.

That’s the first that I’ve heard about it and if I wanted to stand fast to my rights and principles I could have told him to clear off as I’m supposed to be given plenty of notice that the landlord or his agents want to come round, but it’s no skin off my nose that he’ll be here.

Not that the door actually needs it. But in fact the door on my new place could do with a good coat of paint and I need to find out the paint code and so asking a painter sounds like a good plan whenever I can lay my hands upon one. And it’s no skin off my nose if he comes here tomorrow.

There’s my doctor’s appointment in the morning and the physiotherapist at the end of the afternoon so as long as he fits in with those plans it’s fine by me.

So I’ll try to plan a decent night’s sleep for once because last night’s sleep wasn’t much to write home about. Even though I was in bed early I couldn’t go off to sleep, which probably isn’t much of a surprise seeing as how late I actually awoke yesterday

And apart from that it was quite a restless night as well, and wasn’t helped by the batteries in the dictaphone going flat at a crucial moment.

But anyway I struggled to my feet when the alarm went off and once I’d dealt with the medication and my mails and messages I attacked the radio programme.

Once again, it was rather a desultory stroll through the work rather than a rapid rush, but it could have taken much longer than it did had I not been lucky enough to have dictated the speech for the final track at almost the exact length required to fit the bill.

And as I always include in the final speech some stuff that I can cut out quite easily that won’t affect the value of the speech in any way, it was even better.

Now, people won’t get to know that the Billy Bremner who was a session guitarist at Rockfield Studios at Monmouth is not the same Billy Bremner as the former Leeds United footballer. But you can’t have everything.

Once I’d finished I listened to the programme and also to the one that I’ll be sending off, to make sure that they are good enough for broadcast and don’t contain any major errors, like talking in the present tense about a musician who has died since I recorded the programme.

It wouldn’t be the first time …

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on one of the little Neva buses with my mother and a third person going to Pionsat. I had an appointment at the hospital there. When we reached the edge of the town we dropped off some passengers at a bus stop and the driver then did a U-turn. We asked where he was going so he said that he was going to Plas Derwyn, a big stately home type of place on the outskirts of the town. He said that they were contracted to provide a service to Plas Derwyn twice an hour. If we were to alight there we could catch the Bus 28. My mother looked at her watch and said “that’s a 25 minute wait and we’ll be late”. he apologised but said that there was nothing he could do. We reached the place which was like a huge children’s holiday camp-type place. My mother and the other person alighted. Just as I was about to alight – I was taking my time – he started to move so I had to shout. he stopped and I eventually alighted. We had to fight our way through all these kids to enter this place. There was some kind of discussion going on between a few of the kids and one of the staff talking about the place being overrun with cats. This teacher-type person said “don’t worry if there are too many things here. We’ll shoot the kids instead of the cats”. She looked at me and said “and here’s a guy who would do it too”. We went in to try to see someone.

And then I was with a woman and a little girl with a dog last night. I had to go to the hospital which was about a 15-minute walk away. I took something with me like a stuffed toy on wheels that I had to rub along the floor backwards and forwards as I went but I don’t know why. This took hours and I thought to myself ‘I’m going to miss my appointment doing this. I’ll forget this cleaning the pavement thing”. I looked around and the girl and dog had gone. I asked “where have they gone?”. The woman replied “she’s gone across the road”. I was really annoyed at this and ran after her. I couldn’t catch her and kept on shouting to her to slow down so I could catch up with her but she was running really fast for a small child saying “we’ll be late at the hospital – we’ll be late at the hospital”. I had the devil’s own job to try to keep up with her

It seems that this trip to the hospital, or, rather, missing the appointment, is beginning to prey on my mind, although I don’t know why because during my daylight hours I’m not bothered at all about it.

Finally I was on a coach tour last night with Shearings as a passenger. As we were going down the road towards Batley (or Bramley – I couldn’t make up my mind apparently) we saw what looked like a miniature narrow-gauge railway alongside the main line. We were told that it was a connector between the town and a wellness centre a couple of miles outside the town, a kind of tramway. Several people were interested at that so we pulled into the town centre of Bramley (or Batley) near the railway station. There was already a coach parked on the visitors’ car park so we went next-door to a yard where there were some kind of lock-up garages. There was a West Indian proprietor and in exchange for fuelling up the coach he let us leave it on his property. We fuelled up and everyone set off to this railway station to look at the start of this tramway. It took me a couple of minutes to alight because of my disability. Then I grabbed my crutches and began to shoot off following them to Bramley (or Batley) Railway Station.

And it seems that my mobility issues are now coming to the fore too.

The rest of the day has been spent sorting out music for future radio programmes.

Having spent a week or so revising my databases into a different way of working, choosing the music is so much quicker these days, and much more logical too. It’s taken me over 200 programmes to end up in a much more efficient way and I bet that there is still plenty of room for improvement.

The “frozen pepper” experiment was not a great success. They had frozen nicely but when the one that I’d taken out had defrosted, it had gone all limp and you wouldn’t believe the amount of water that came out. There’s that much water in these peppers, so it seems.

And that got me thinking again – that if I filled it while it was still frozen and then baked it in the air fryer rather than in the microwave, that might dry it out better. I’ll have to try that next week.

So on that note I’m off to bed. It’s a busy day tomorrow with the doctor and the Welsh lesson, the painter and the physiotherapist. However did I manage to find the time to go to work?

0

Sunday 26th March 2023 – I’M NOT GOING …

… to tell you the time that I left the bed today because you’ll be as embarrassed as I am. And losing an hour because of the change of time made things even worse.

By the way, did you all remember to adjust your clocks last night? If you live in the real world your clocks should have gone forward an hour but if you live in the UK under Tory rule your clocks should have gone back to 1770.

So really there wasn’t much left of the day in which I could do all that much. The toasted cheese sandwich in the air fryer was not a particular success but not a particular failure either. However, it might have helped had I turned it over half way through the procedure.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And having had plenty of time last night to go places, I hadn’t hung about. I’d recently bought a house in Crewe, in Bedford Street. I was waiting for completion so I could move in because living with the family was just getting on my nerves completely. I felt that everyone was trying to provoke me into a fight or an argument etc, and what is there that is news about any of this? I happened to overhear by accident a conversation that proved that it was in fact the case so I couldn’t wait to leave the family and move into mine. But for some reason signing the contract was just taking an age, just like the contract here to buy the apartment downstairs.

Later on there was some kind of dream about a couple of girls. One of them was very fond of the alcohol and possibly a few drugs as well. I was talking about the situation with a female friend of mine but I can’t remember who it was. I can’t remember the rest of the dream either now but it was a very long and complicated one that went on for quite a while

And congratulations to one of the girls in that dream for being ready in 20 minutes. Congratulations to another one who might have been Zero who was ready in a tenth of the time. And if it had really been Zero, I’m dismayed that that was all that happened concerning her last night – a very brief cameo appearance like that.

There was also something about 3 people, a boy who was rather arrogant and full of himself. He invited a girl out for an evening and she decided to go with him. He also invited another girl out too at the same time and they all met up. He picked up the girl first and then another boy but as the night went on it was the other boy who was spending most of the night with this other girl, flirting around with her. It looked as if they’d become something of a couple instead. When it was time for going home the other guy had disappeared. It was the first guy who had to take the girl home even though it was quite clear by now that she was no longer interested in him. And if that sounds confusing, then don’t worry because it sounded confusing to me too.

Later still I was in prison in the USA I think. First of all I’d been placed in a holding cell and then taken out and put into a reception area. Someone came to fetch me. He handcuffed the 2 of us together and set off with me to my real cell. He was in such a rush that he was dragging me along. I asked “are we in a race or something?”. He replied “you have to be in your cell by 18:30”. We walked down this corridor with doors opening in front of us and closing behind us as we approached the cell where I was going to be imprisoned.

Tonight’s pizza was the best that I’ve ever made. The dough was made to perfection and it just goes to show what happens when you use a decent batch of flour. It might be expensive but it’s worth it. The base ended up being all light and spongy around the edges but beautifully cooked and tasted even better.

So now, after my exciting day, I’m going to bed. It’s exhausting having a lie-in and then doing almost next-to-nothing all day. But tomorrow it’s a 06:00 start as I have a radio programme to do. I’ve not dictated the text yet, never mind edited it, so I’ll be busy for a bit. And then on Tuesday I have the nerve specialist to tell me the damage about my visit to the hospital.

That should be exciting, I don’t think.

0

Saturday 25th March 2023 – AFTER HAVING SAID …

… that I don’t need much from the shops today, it was one of the more expensive days out around the town.

A whole variety of reasons for that too.

At Noz –
Firstly they had the spices in stock that I like to use and so I stocked up with them for once. None of the more exotic ones that I use for curries, it has to be said, but some of the more usual and common ones in the nice little hexagonal jars.
Secondly, they were having a cooking sale. And apart from the pie slice and the metal flipper (I’m trying to move away from plastic) they had some really decent non-stick frying pans, small and heavy. The one I have is not non-stick and I’m fed up of things sticking to it.

It was at LeClerc where I did most of the damage though.

There was some more vegan cheese in the reduced bin so I grabbed all that was there. And then, to my surprise, they had the vegan falafel back. That’s something that comes in stock only rarely and I started my last bag of that earlier this week so I grabbed some more.

In the hardware section I did really well. Sean and I have been talking about bowls to put in the air fryer to cook vegetables and I found a perforated metal sieve that will fit perfectly in the basket of the air fryer to hold the veg, and the air can circulate through the holes.

As well as that, I bought a trivet. I don’t have anything on which to put hot stuff that somes out of the oven and usually have to scratch around for a cork mat. A trivet is just the job for that but strangely, it has four feet, not three, which means that it has to be put on a level surface. And nothing anywhere around where I ever am is likely to be on the level.

There was also something else for which I’d been searching for quite a while – a measuring jug for measuring small quantities. I don’t seem to have anything that measures less than 250ml.

All in all, it was a good day.

In fact, it was a better night too. I might have beaten the alarm this morning – been up and about before 07:30 – but it wasn’t at any silly time like 03:30 or 04:45. In fact my saw the light of day at 07:27 and that’s much more like it. Mind you, it still took a while to go off to sleep and I was awake here and there at some point or two during the night

After I’d had the medication I went off for a shower and to clean myself up, and then I hit the streets. Just Noz and Leclerc today. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I was moving around much better and I was even tempted to go for a wander without my crutches.

Discretion was the better part of valour though and I’ll leave that for another time. But going down to Caliburn using just one and taking the shopping trolley, and then coming back inside afterwards using just one crutch and with the fully-laden trolley was quite a comfortable exercise.

With having plenty of cheese in stock now, I don’t need to be so careful about using it sparingly just for pizze so I had cheese and tomato butties for lunch instead of buttered toast. That made a very nice change. Now what would a toasted cheese sandwich taste like done in the air fryer?

Hmmmmm.

Most of the afternoon was spent sorting out the spices. I need to know what I have and where it is and, more importantly, how many of each I have because it would be a calamity if I were to run out.

There’s a plastic storage box under the shelves in the kitchen full of all kinds of surplus stuff so I wwent through it, sorted everything out and made a card with a list of what’s in there so that I can keep an eye on it. There are tons of stuff in there which many people might think is rather a strange thing to do, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for several weeks after coming back from Canada, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out to buy food.

That’s not something that I would want to go through again without being prepared for it.

Something else that I’ve done is to have a play around with a track that I found from my “usual sources” the other day. It was edited down to make an unsuccessful “single” of 3:30 and the ending was awful. However I worked out that the ending was actually part of the lead guitar break in the middle so I copied that in its entirety, added it onto the end over the top of the messed-up ending and I ended up with a track of over 5 minutes that sounds much more like a rock song than a pop tune.

It took an age to synchronise the edited part and then after it was all finished and up and running, I suddenly realised how I could have done it so much easier and so much quicker.

You live and learn.

There was time to go through the dictaphone too in order to find out where I’d been during the night. A group of us had gone camping where we normally camp in our vans. It was near a big patch of gravel that was like a hill where they’d dumped allthis gravel. We arrived there and walked to the top of this hill to have a look round. Below us was a brabed wire fence with a forest on the other side. There were these people roaming around in the forest. They stopped at the fence and asked “do you have permission to be there?”. On eof our party replied “we come here quite often” and was making up excuses so I asked these people if they had permission to be in the forest. That led to quite a heated argument. I went back to the van and had to set up the kitchen because I was cooking. I had a few other things to do while I was there – write a couple of letters. As it was early I thought that i’d make a start writing these letters. I had to fetch my things out of Caliburn but I couldn’t find which box they were in so I thought that I’d take out all of the boxes. They were far too heavy for me they way that I am at the moment. I could see that I was creating one problem after another for no good reason. My niece came up and asked if I wanted a cherry coke. I said “no, I’d have a coffee”. She said “we don’t drink coffee any more and I don’t think that I have any”. She shouted over to someone to make me a coffee. I said that that’s OK – I don’t need one at the moment.

Actually that brought back some happy memories. In the summer of 1976 I was playing bass in a rock band and living in my old J4 van. A group of us ended up living in various vehicles and tents at an abandoned sand quarry between Sandbach, Holmes Chapel and Congleton. Simming in the lagoon, sunbathing on the “beach” where the side of the quarry had collapsed into the lagoon, all that kind of thing.

It was much more exciting and interesting than Leonardo de Caprio’s rip-off of our story.

I was in Virlet later. It was a Sunday morning and I was lying in bed and heard a commotion outside. It turned out that it was the village’s 200th anniversary so they’d arranged a communal breakfast. They were all setting off at 11:00 to walk to this field, the whole village, where we could have breakfast. I got up quickly and changed. I stuck my head outside and saw all these people. The first person I saw was a friend of mine. She was so surprised to see me so early on a Sunday morning. I told her that she wasn’t as surprised as I was to actually be up. She then noticed that i’d cut myself. She went to tie a bandage around me to stop the cut. When she’d done it she said “that looks much better”. I thought that it makes me look like Paddington Bear so I undid the bandage and took it off.

And then I had some people round whom I knew from Virlet so I was making some food – a huge fry-up in a wok using soya cream etc. It looked absolutely delicious. I mixed in all the ingredients etc that had been cooked separately – it all went in. I stirred it round and finished off frying it. Then I tipped it out into a serving bowl and took the cooking equipment and put it in the sink. When I returned the husband of this woman had grabbed hold of the serving bowl as if it was his own and was happily eating away from it. I said to the woman “don’t stand there on ceremony. Dive in!”. She had a plate ready but wouldn’t go to interrupt this guy from wading his way through this big serving dish full of food that I’d just cooked.

There was football on the internet later. Cymru under 17s v Iceland’s under-17s. If the Cymru midfielders had had Iceland’s two attackers we would have had a cricket score out there. But Cymru’s misfiring strikers only scored one of about 20 chances that they had given to them throughout the game whereas the Iceland strikers scored the only one real chance that they had

Cymru now need a point from their final game on Tuesday against Montenegro in order to go through to the finals of the competition.

For tea, I tried another experiment. There was the salad and the breaded quorn fillet of course but I diced some potatoes and put them in a pyrex bowl in the air fryer with some herbs, garlic and a little olive oil and they were beautiful. I’m ever so slowly expanding my repertoire with the air fryer

Tomorrow then I’ll try the toasted cheese sandwich and see how that works. It ought to be interesting and it’ll certainly give me something to think about when I’m making my pizza dough, for I have run out of that after last weekend. I won’t be making that in the air fryer though.

And I’ve found out something else this evening. Down on my knees to pick up something off the floor, I could pick myself up without any real problem. That’s the one thing that stopped me from going off anywhere in Caliburn – after having no fewer than three punctures last time I went anywhere serious, I was really worried about what would happen if I were to have another one. But going down onto my knees and back up again as I did just now means that I’m not quite so worried about that.

So where can I go for a break than?

0

Friday 24th March 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I wasn’t up and walking about at 04:45 this morning.

It was in fact 03:30 instead. And I think that that tells you all that you need to know about another miserable night that I had.

However, I didn’t manage to be up and about this morning before the alarm went off. I was definitely awake at 07:15 but I must have fallen back to sleep at one point because it was something of a rude awakenng at 07:30 and I staggered out of bed looking like a cross between The Death of Nelson and the Wreck of the Hesperus.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages (including one from this guy with whom I spoke the other day about my shower) I contacted the hospital at leuven to sort out these appointments. The result of this is that I’ve arranged for them all to be on the 11th May. That means that I can breathe some kind of sigh of relief about my congested fixture list.

For most of the day I’ve been planning. I’m planning in the future to reorganise my radio programmes to give them more structure, and I’ve been going through my record library making a list of songs that make reference to space exploration. At the moment I have Elton John’s Rocket Man off with Guns and Roses’ Rocket Queen on the Hooters’ Satellite for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars, to name just a few of the tracks I’ve been sorting out.

The dictaphone contained a few sound files too that needed transcribing. I was at a class for French lessons at one point last night. We were divided into groups of 2. With me and my partner, who was an old guy, we had to wander around the streets looking at nouns and adjectives, finding where they’d been paired either before the noun or after. I was very difficult for me of course because I was on crutches but I did the best that I could. We spotted maybe half a dozen where the adjective was in front of the noun. I couldn’t remember what they were so we had to go to scrounge an old envelope and pencil off someone, go back and start again. On the way around I ended up with a bottle of wine. As I was returning to where our group was standing there were some people with a dog. It wasn’t on a lead and began to run at me, barking. Every time it came close I gave it a kick with my left foot. I was quite accurate too. They were surprised and so was I because the way that my health is for walking I was surprised that I could kick anything at all. This dog certainly knew that it had had half a dozen good kicks from me as it tried to close in. In the end I gave the bottle to one of the people who was there with the rest of the class.

And then I was in a LIDL somewhere. It was half-full of all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Nothing in there of any particular importance. The rest was stuff that they were assembling for the following day. I was having a look around and couldn’t see anything that I liked. There was a film crew in there. A guy was filming something. He was with his son. Something happened and the father bawled out his son and said to the film crew “I hope that you didn’t record that”. I asked “why? Are you ashamed of it? You ought to be! Fancy treating your son like that!”. He followed me down the aisle and started trying to provoke a fight. he was completely out of his mind.

At another moment I was a passenger in a minibus that was doing a school run. We were all dropped off somewhere. The driver wandered off. He came back and got into his bus. Then he came over to me and said “can I ask you something?”. I replied “yes”. He said “next time you fuel the bus up can you fill it right to the brim?”. I replied “yes. Of course I can. I always wondered what happened to this bus after I got off it”. Just them another guy came up. He said “excuse me but someone was telling me that you don’t have a PSV licence, the blue and yellow one”. I pointed to the sign on the door that said “Shearings Bus and Coach”. I replied “of course I do. I worked for Shearings before. I used to work for Shearings. You could see a strange look on the faces of both of these guys.

There was a break in the day’s programme for the physiotherapist, who was very pleased with my progress, and tea tonight was a rather rushed salad and chips with veggie balls.

Rushed because there was football on the internet. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Drenewydd. It’s never easy to play football in a howling gale and rainstorm as it proved tonight but Connah’s Quay, playing with the wind in the second half, took full advantage and scored two goals.

However, I would have liked to have been on the touchline to check the positions when Harry Franklin played the ball to Jack Kenny for the second goal. From up on a gantry on the halfway line you have a totally different view of the proceedings and the perspective.

Nevertheless, there were several moments when I was convinced that the referee and the linesmen were officiating a completely different game to the one that I was watching.

Shopping tomorrow, and I don’t need much, although I have said that before with disastrous results. In any case, as I’m out on Tuesday I might nip to Lidl on the way home from the doctor’s then, which means that I’ll need even less today.

But we’ll see. Just because I don’t need much doesn’t mean that I won’t be buying much, does it?

0

Thursday 23rd March 2023 – AT 04:45 THIS MORNING …

… I was up and about wandering around the apartment. So much for my idea of having a nice deep sleep sometime.

What’s even more surprising is that i’ve managed to keep going all day as well without very much sign of dropping off to sleep. Mind you, I’d be a liar if I were to say that I’d had a productive day today. Not even I am that good!

However I did go off to sleep at some point during the night because there were a few travels that I’d managed to dictate at some point. I was cooking a meal last night with a group of people. I added the cornflour into the liquid to make a gravy. After I’d added it I noticed that there were tons of liquid in there. The whole thing was about a foot deep in water. Of course I’d added the cornflour so I had to drain out the liquid but try to keep the cornflour still in. I went to drain it but it wouldn’t drain properly. Then something fall into the sink and wedged underneath the pan so I couldn’t tip the pan any further. In the end I had to get a sponge, stick it in and use that to absorb the water then squeeze it out in order to make sure that there wasn’t too much gravy. But it looked an absolute mess. Of course the cornflour had disappeared while I was doing all of this. I was going to have to turn round and make this gravy again because I’d had it in an awful state.

There was a girl I knew from school who lived in Shavington and who was about 11 or so. Not a popular girl, she was a little overweight at the time. No-one really took her seriously. She had to move a car, a silver MkIII estate. She moved it around in this garage. When I saw her she was standing by this car looking really sad. I asked her what was the matter. She didn’t say very much so I was cajoling her, trying to have her tell me what was happening but she was very reluctant to speak. I thought that I’d leave it for a while. later she asked for a volunteer to watch her reverse the car.Everyone else there shouted “no” so I said that I’d voluteer to watch her. It was as if she didn’t hear me. It didn’t register with her. She didn’t turn towards me or anything – she just carried on asking others around this garage at the top of her voice and they replied equally at the top of their voices “no”.

At another point I was with someone watching some events unfold, some very surreal events about some people with a red Reliant van that was continually changing into a red A35 van. It all involved a plot about something going on in Hebden Bridge. I wish that I could remember who it was I was with – it was someone whom I knew very well. We were watching this. I didn’t know where I was at first but then it suddenly struck me that “yes, this is Hebden Bridge”. The person said “yes! And do you know why this film was made in Hebden Bridge?”. I didn’t so the person replied that it was to do with a Court case. I suddenly remembered that there was a little girl who had been murdered and some famous author had written something really disparaging about the town and its inhabitants. When it was discovered that it was someone xompletely different who was responsible the judge ordered him to use his talents to bring some money into the town as a way of recompense. I was talking to this person saying about how I’d stayed in Hebden bridge for a while with someone. The conversation drifted on to our life in the Auvergne. She said “do you remember that patch of garden that I still haven’t done yet?”. I replied “yes” so she asked “why don’t we go back to my house and do it?”. I replied “that sounds like a good idea”. She answered “yes, but I bet that we won’t”.

And I wish that I could remember who it was. It was someone whom I knew very well but I can’t think who it was.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already out of bed dressing, and then I went off for the medication. And having checked the mails and messages I had a very slow start to the day.

Eventually I managed to find the enthusiasm to do some work so I’ve been pairing off the music for another radio programme and writing the notes. And I might have finished them too exceot for a couple of interruptions here and there and another long chat with Rosemary.

The physiotherapist didn’t come today. He’s still feeling under the weather and he’s going to try to come tomorrow if he can.

That was rather disappointing because there has been another improvement in my physical well-being and I almost felt well enough to go to the waste bins outside on my own without crutches, but discretion was the better part of valour there.

Howevern the highlight of my really exciting day was to take out the rubbish and then to bring back the rest of the shopping from Caliburn. And I can say without fear of contradiction that that was the best expedition that I’ve been on since I’ve been back from Canada. In fact I felt not far from normal, and that’s a worrying thought, isn’t it?

While we’re on the subject of my trip out … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve had the confirmation of my trip to leuven on 11th May. So tomorrow I need to ring up and change my other Leuven appointments to the same day to try to avoid two trips. The bad news is that Alison tells me that she’s in the UK that week so we’ll miss each other yet again.

Tea tonight was something different. While I was going through the freezer the other day I came across some kind of Chinese pastries that I’d bought from Noz ages ago. I’m not sure why, but at least they were vegan. So I bunged half of them in the air fryer for 8 minutes while I made some rice and veg, and liberally soaked in soy sauce they were actually quite nice.

The other half is in the freezer waiting for another time and when I eat those, I’ll try to remember to fry the rice with soy sauce. That will probably be even better. But once more, the air fryer strikes again.

So I’m off to bed in a minute. But I’m not going to make any remarks about sleeping. I’ll just have to take things as they come and if I fall asleep during the day, that’s just too bad. It can’t be helped.

But I wish that I could.

0

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, today was a much quieter affair and no-one phoned me at all.

There were a couple of e-mails though. Someone had sent me the address of some handyman who might be interested in fitting a shower in my new place so I e-mailed him. And shock! Horror! He actually replied to me.

That’s a first, isn’t it?

It’ll give me something to think about in bed tonight. And that will make a change from lying there thinking about why I can’t go to sleep. Yes – we had another night like that, didn’t we?

No car alarms this morning but I was still awake quite early. I was on the point of thinking about gettign up when I must have gone back to sleep because the next think I remember was the alarm going off at 07:30

It was a real struggle to crawl out of bed this morning and I didn’t beat the second alarm by all that much.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages it was a very slow start to the day and I didn’t do all that much at first. But once I’d organised myself I made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve paired off all of the music and by teatime I’d written all of the notes.

Not one of my quickest efforts today.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a shower. And I needed it too because I forgot yesterday what with there being no physiotherapist. And getting into and out of the bath was no problem at all. Things have improved considerably and I’m much more comfortable doing my exercises. I still can’t walk properly but anything is an improvement to how I was 3 months ago.

Another thing that I was planning to do was to take the rubbish out and bring the shopping in but not only was there a howling gale, it was pouring down with rain too so I’ll leave that for another time.

While the cleaner was here I carried on with the notes for my radio programme and after she left I made a mug of hot chocolate. And then, regrettably, I crashed out for a good hour or so and I felt awful.

But that’s not a surprise because when I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, I was astonished. We were in the latter stages of World War II. There was a huge battle taking place on the border between Germany and France. What had happened was that the Front had been shattered and there were hundreds of these German pockets of resistance everywhere. The logical thing for the Germans to do was to abandon many of these pockets of resistance and try to create a front line somwhere but the American general who was being interviewed was adamant that he thought that the Germans would try to defend everything. Their forces would be so thinly spread that they would be overwhelmed. Something had happened to his legs. He’d been blistered with something and the blisters had died so all the skin on his legs was peeling off. It looked a complete mess. Then we had the German Army HQ in this city that was surrounded by all kinds of bomb damage. These high-explosive shells were falling on this concrete bunker. It was very clear that they couldn’t stay there because of the pounding that the bunker was receiving from these shells.

I’m not sure when I reached when I dictated that other dream (and I’ve no idea which other dream that would be) but I finally made it to the hospital for my appointment. There were no notices about which floor you were on in the lift. You had to press a button with some kind of shadow outline drawing on it and hope that the lift stopped at the correct floor for you to go for your appointment.

That previous dream – I forgot a lot of it that I hadn’t remembered but basically I had to go to the hospital at Avranches but there was much more to it that I’ve forgotten and I wish that I could remember it now

Later on I had to sit down and make a map or proper agenda of where I was supposed to go for all these appointments but I couldn’t remember where half of these examinations took place in the first place so I could work out where I had to go again for the repeats. There were all these strange things that happened to me and I didn’t have a clue how I ended up there or even where it was where I had undergone some tests. I really didn’t know how I was going to find these places again in order to go there this time round

I’d hired a Volkswagen to go and do something. When I went to pick it up next morning one of the tyres was down. I strapped an air compressor to the wheel, coupled it up to the tyre and set off. When I arrived at this dirt track that I had to take I turned onto the track and stopped to disconnect the compressor. There were loads of people standing around there examining this Beetle, pointing out the defects. Someone kicked the door. I started to be really annoyed. I went up to one guy and gave him a sharp kick. I asked “how do you like it if my car came along and gave you a kick?” and I kicked him again. “Stop kicking my car and go away”. These people just stood and looked at me as I went to go back into my car. One guy was standing by the door so I said “excuse me”. he asked “do you want to get in your car?” I replied “no, I want to open my door and hit you in the face with it” so he moved off as well.

And then I was with my girlfriend (I wish that I could remember who she was) and 2 other people, another guy and a girl. We’d gone skiing somewhere in this expensive ski resort. I’d been playing bass in this rock band and the guy had been playing drums in it. On our way back to our room afterwards we noticed that the orchestra had set up in the ballroom. He got behind the drums and I picked up the bass. One of the employees came running over and shooed us away telling us not to touch the instruments, going on about the mess that we were bound to make trying to play these things, the noise and how we would disturb everyone in the building withour realising that they almost had for free a concert that they would have paid hundreds of Euros to see.

Finally I was with a friend of mine. We’d constructed a big lean-to shed at the side of Virlet for the rainwater butts to keep them out of the way. I thought that if I were living here I probably would put the batteries in here too. That sounded like a good idea to me. We were busy trying to take some stuff to the tip so we began to tidy up. We began to drag stuff into this shed to see exactly what we had. The first thing that went in was a huge box of coal and wood. That was tucked in the corner. We moved a few things in and then went out for some others. His wife was busy wrestling with a board with some electrical equipment on it so he went to take that from her and put it away. She said that she would put some more stuff in that box of coal and would but we said that she’d have a real problem trying to reach it now that we are arranging everything and getting things ready to go to the dechetterie.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. Not as good as it usually is (but that’s not saying that it was bad) because I had to rush. There was football on the internet at 20:00 – Cymeu under 17s against Scotland under 17s. I missed the first 5 minutes and by that time Wales were already 1-0 up, and they scored a second goal quite quickly too.

And for the first 70 minutes they were scything their way at will through a very static Scotland defence and how the score was only 3-0 by then I really don’t know.

And then we had a raft of substitutions by each team. It completely disrupted Cymru’s rhythm but it seemed to galvanise the Scots and to everyone’s surprise they scored 2 goals in a matter of 5 minutes and looked by far the better side from then on. We actually had a really exciting final period.

But then Scotland were caught short at the back pushing forward for an equaliser and Cymru scored a fourth.

The next couple of Cymru under-17 games against Montenegro and Iceland should be very interesting.

But now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. I can’t keep on going with these bad nights and something will have to happen at some point. I have to be prepared for a nice deep sleep sometime, and my money will be on when I’m at the wheel of Caliburn if I’m not careful.

0

Tuesday 21st March 2023 – THERE’S NO PEACE …

… for the wicked, is there?

Following a couple of telephone calls that I’ve either received or made today, my agenda for the next few weeks looks like this –
28/03 – the neurologist
17/04 – hospital Avranches
18/04 – hospital Avranches
19/04 – hospital Avranches
20/04 – hospital Avranches
21/04 – hospital Avranches
04/05 – hospital Leuven
11/05 – hospital Leuven

If I can arrange one of those appointments at Leuven it might end up to be a little better but it’s still a hectic schedule.

The appointment next week is with the neurologist where he will tell me the results of the tests that I did last week and what they propose to do in the future in order to deal with the issues that they have discovered.

The fact that there is already a whole week of further appointments (in at 09:00 and back home every evening) seems to indicate that they are optimistic about doing something about it. But what that’s going to be all about, I really don’t know..

In a sense I’m glad that I’m not having to stay over at the hospital. Hospital beds are not known for their comfort and I’m having enough trouble trying to sleep here as it is in my own comfortable bed. But 25 miles in and 25 miles back every day for a week is not exactly what I had in mind. I shall have to fuel up Caliburn of course.

And I’ll need a bank loan for that.

It goes without saying that I had another bad night last night. I think that this is becoming the default these days and I’ve no idea why I’m having so much difficulty trying to go to sleep.

And flaming car alarms going off at blasted 06:50 with enough noise to awaken the perishing dead doesn’t help matter either. Luckily though I managed to drop off back to sleep at some point, only to be rudely awoken by the alarm at 07:30.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I sat down to prepare for my Welsh lesson. And the lesson itself was a miserable effort because it was a revision exercise and I’d forgotten almost everything that we needed to know for it. I was really glad when it was all over.

No physiotherapy today. He’d sent me a message saying that he he wa sill and of course he doesn’t want to spread his germs around. So armed with a pile of fruit I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had to write out my notes during the night but I couldn’t find a pencil. When I did find one I couldn’t remember what day I was on and where I had to start. I was keeping my diary of course but I was weeks ahead of where I was supposed to have been. That was OK for one thing but when it came to writing it out I needed of course to write it out on the correct day

Later on there was a group of emotionally-disturbed kids. They had to go somewhere so they asked me if I’d take them and hand them over to this teacher. A couple of them weren’t particularly any great problem but the third one was a young girl, a teenager who seemed to think that the reason why she was having to go somewhere else was that someone wanted to get rid of her out of their class, something of a paranoia situation. I assured her that it was nothing to do with me. I was just doing what I’d been told. If another teacher came along to tell me not to do it I’d quite happily not do it. If she didn’t want to go to that other class it’s up to her to go to talk to the teachers concerned, tell them that she doesn’t want to go, tell them why and for them to come back and tell me. It took quite some convincing to do. In the middle of this argument or discussion someone rather senior in the hierarchy came past. I stopped him, took hold of this girl, basically gave her a push and said “right – go and tell him all about it”. I sat and watched those two having a debate. As far as I was concerned I was doing what I’d been told. That was what i’d been told. If anyone wanted to tell me any different I was fine with that as long as it was someone official telling me.

Finally, there were all big upheavals in the football world last night. Rhyl’s charge for promotion remained on course but the rails came off Bangor City’s promotion bid with a couple of defeats. The whole club was in turmoil now as they were falling well short of expectations. There would have been much more to this had that stupid car alarm not gone off at 06:50.

That latter dream though is quite interesting. Rhyl and Bangor City were until quite recently two of the biggest names in Welsh football but due to reasons that I would mention if it were not for the laws of slander and libel, (of course, vulgar abuse can’t be slanderous or libellous but that’s not really the point) they were obliged to reform way down in the pyramid.

They have both had an inexorable rise back up so far in the pyramid but while Rhyl are remorselessly ploughing on, Bangor have lost their last 2 games and it looks very much at this stage as if they won’t be going up with Rhyl to Level 2. And all those people who put their mortgage on Bangor’s promotion will be very disappointed.

The rest of the day has been spent either on the phone or sorting out this new database that I’m trying to create for my radio programmes. As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I want to try doing something new once I can organise myself better.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg – delicious as usual and there is quite a bit of stuffing left over that will go nicely in a leftover curry tomorrow evening.

There was football on the internet tonight – Wales C v England C. Played in a driving rainstorm on a waterlogged pitch it was never going to be a classic and England scored the only goal of the game from a howler in the Wales defence. But I was bewildered by one or two of the substitutions that the Wales manager made. I’m sure that he must have been watching a different game to the one that I saw.

So I’m off to bed now. I’m going to have a nice comfortable night with no plans tomorrow except that the cleaner is coming round so I’ll probably end up quietly in my room writing the notes for a future radio programme while she does her stuff in the living room.

That probably means that I’ll have to spend half an hour tidying up before she comes. And then I’ll have to think about what’s going to happen about my legs. This all sounds extremely interesting.

0

Monday 20th March 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

… me long to finish off the radio programme this morning.

Had I been more motivated I could have finished it even quicker but I had a leisurely stroll through what I needed to do and it was all done and up and running by 09:30. I don’t suppose that I can complain too much about that.

On the other hand, there was plenty to complain about last night, if I were the complaining type … “perish the thought” – ed. Going to bed quite early was one thing, but going off to sleep was something else completely.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I crawled out of bed wishing that I could stay in bed for another 12 hours because I felt absolutely awful and I couldn’t see how I would keep going for the rest of the day.

But kept going I did, and I bet that you are surprised. I know that I was.

First thing was to go for my medication and then to check my mails and messages. And then to attack the radio programme. Luckily I’d done most of it, including dictating the notes for it. It was just a case of editing the notes, assembling the sound files, selecting a final track, dictating the notes for the final track, editing them and finishing off the assembly.

The programme ended up being 5 seconds over so I had them to find some text that I had included that I could go back and edit out

While I assembled my thoughts I had a listen to what I’d done and then had a listen to the programme that I’ll be sending off to be broadcasted this weekend.

That took me up to a rather late breakfast and the fruit buns that I made yesterday are the best that I have ever made.

The next step was to listen to the dictaphone notes from the night, for I had been off on my travels. There was some kind of strange dream about a couple. I can’t remember anything about it except the boss of this woman’s husband telling her to go home and wait for her husband to arrive and she’d send him on home and the husband would know about what happened to the cousin. That’s all that I remember about this.

But really I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m forgetting all my dreams at the moment. There was another one where I was working in an office (this is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it?). I had a file out before me belonging to someone. I was going through it and noticed that all the details in this person’s file had changed. Even the file number was no longer correct. Looking through the file it seemed that he had actually been to prison for killing someone. I made sure that the front of the file was prominently marked “murderer” or whatever then referred it to whoever I should have referred it to, to make sure that they were aware. At some point I was talking to Rosemary. We were discussing a few things about this and that, I can’t remember what. I was on my way to see her. I was speaking to her on the ‘phone while I was driving. She was saying that when I slowed down or stopped she could hear all the animals in the background. As I went round the side of a mountain she suddenly said “I can hear you so much clearer now”. I replied “that’s because I’m in Shavington”. We continued our chat and she said “one thing’s for sure that if ever I’m made redundant I think that the two of us would get on very well”.

A little later on I stepped back into that dream again about the guy but this time I was looking at another file about a guy who had been under some kind of enquiry since 1927 when he’d been the heritee in a Will but there had never been any trace of him. People now started to enquire about his antecedents but he’d chased off everyone who had come to visit him on his farm and shop. He’d died and his estate had been wound up because of all these issues that he’d had. His daughter was a dancer and she was in all kinds of issues. I was on the verge of retiring and only had this one file left that I needed to sort out. I was sitting at a desk by my Irish friend. There was all kinds of stuff coming up on my computer on a big overhead screen above my desk and I’d be much happier if she didn’t see it, although how she could avoid doing so I really don’t know. It was then time for me to leave. At lunchtime I’d been getting in my car, going for a little drive and sitting somewhere quietly in a lane. Then I was on my way home. To go into this lane I had to stop at a T junction. There was nothing coming so I just pulled out into the lane and drove. Then I was overtaken by a whole stream of motorcyclists who came to the next junction and were turning left. One of thes emotorcyclists had stopped to act as a marshal to show all his friends which way to go

At lunchtime I had some fruit and then I had to ring up the solicitor. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been sending money in dribs and drabs to this solicitor for the purchase of this apartment. All of the money has now been sent and I had a pile of receipts sent to me in the post.

As I checked them over, I found that there was a payment that I had made that hadn’t been receipted so I phoned them up. The accountant there acknowledged that they had received it, but the missing payment had arrived the day after they had sent out the receipts and I should receive a receipt at some time in early course.

That was something that cheered me up. I wasn’t at all happy about this money aimlessly ambling around in cyberspace.

Also in the post was a summons to the hospital in Leuven on 4th May. I’ve heard on the ‘phone that I’ll also have an appointment in another department there on the 11th but the confirmation for that hasn’t arrived. When it finally turns up, I’m going to have to ring up to try to swap things around so that all my appointments are on the same day.

If it’s not possible, then I might have a little think about a few days at the seaside in Oostende in between, but that’s not going to be much fun on crutches. Let’s hope that this little improvement that I’m noticing keeps on going.

Something else that I did was to choose some more music for another radio programme in the future. I need to keep on going with these for as long as I can.

There was still plenty of time left so I’ve been tidying up the databases for the music that I use for broadcasting. I’m trying to make things much easier for myself as I go along and I keep on having these little ideas about how things can be improved.

There’s also a little plan in the pipeline to change things around somewhat but more of that anon

Tea was another delicious stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and to go into a curry on Wednesday. We’ll slowly have everything sorted out.

Now I’m off to bed. Hoping for a good night but doubting very much whether I’ll have one. I’m not doing too well with that right now. But I’ll have to try nevertheless. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to be on form.

0

Sunday 19th March 2023 – WELL THAT WAS A …

… total waste of time.

It was a beautiful afternoon today, so much so that I had turned off the heating for a while and had the window open, so I reckoned that I’d go out to this Home Exhibition that was taking place this weekend.

It was a long walk – the longest that I’ve done since I’ve been back from Canada – and quite uncomfortable on my crutches, but I made it there all the way without too many problems.

But as I said, I needn’t have bothered. Of all the stalls that were there in this big marquee, there was only one that made any reference to bathrooms. And when I finally managed to speak to the guy in charge, he told me that he had no means of assisting with the installation.

And that’s no good for me.

So anyway, I just came back home. I didn’t even stop for an ice cream.

It was a tough climb back up to here and I had to make more pauses than I otherwise would have done, but I made it back and then collapsed on a chair.

It’s no surprise that I was tired though because apart from the walk into town and back, I’d also had another miserable night, following on the usual pattern just recently.

And despite it being a Sunday I was wide awake at 08:45 and out of bed by 09:30, and it’s not something that happens every Sunday. There have been Sundays when I’ve been lucky to see midday.

After the medication, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. There were tons of stuff on it from the night. We were having a big argument. I can’t remember very much about it except that it was with some people who were not very well-educated. I had to write out an essay. It was to do with some kind of subject but my life story seemed to fit in there so I was in order of writing my life story. For some reason it had taken me so much time to make a start that I didn’t have much time left so I was doing it as a kind of “cut and paste” but with real paper, a pen and a pair of scissors trying to write it out so I could then cut everything around and fit it into the exam paper in the right kind of order. It was really quite a complicated thing. Then I had to write out the word “seizure” but I couldn’t remember how it was spelt. I asked someone who you spell it. Then I realised that instead I could just say the word “sizes” so I said that there’s no need to bother – I’ll use that instead. Off course “sizes” wasn’t the right word. That was one thing that while I was dictating this I couldn’t think of what words I was supposed to be using in this dream.

And then I was round at someone’s house. They were proudly showing me their anemometer that they had attached to the eaves of the roof of their house. I remembered the one that I used to have at Virlet. I was quite admiring it. They had some kind of set-up in the back, a framework with solar panels etc. I took advantage by fastening a pole to this gantry and putting a wind turbine on it. We went into the house. It was bedtime. I went to bed. All of a sudden this whole framework collapsed. My brother was actually standing next to it outside but he didn’t notice for some reason. I got up to go to see what had happened but immediately fell over because my right knee gave way. Eventually I managed to drag myself off out. They were busy trying to prop it up by driving wooden stakes into the ground with a hammer. I didn’t think that that would do the stakes much good but it was all they had. I had a sledgehammer but it was in the back of Caliburn. Every time this guy had it in the correct kind of place to hold up, my brother would try to adjust it just that little bit more and it would all collapse again. We were fed up of this and shouted at him to leave it alone. There were all kinds of things like bricks there that were separated by little bits of foam to stop the bricks knocking against each other. They had percentages written on them. I worked out that it was some kind of calculator that calculated the percentages for numbers of days in the year. I thought that the only way that this is going to work now is that if they put it back in the right order. But apart from the writing on it there was no way to determine which was the correct order and which wasn’t.

Later on we were on a bus trip in a white Van Hool Alizee taking us all around. I was a passenger. A lot of my family was on it. My mother was there and she was keeping everyone waiting because she always seemed to be the last to turn up. I said to my youngest sister “that will teach you to be born so late in life. If you’d been born before, you wouldn’t have had to wait for so long”. We were all waiting in this park by these iron gates for the bus to appear. While we were waiting there someone who was the guardian of the gates was asleep on the gate. Someone wanted to go out for a minute but they couldn’t awaken him so they just opened the gate anyway and dashed out after their 2 children who’d got out somehow. We all wondered what was going on because no-one had given us any explanation when we saw the woman suddenly dash out of the gates of this park.

Finally, a lot of turmeric had been used in flavouring some green beans that were cooking on the stove in a big pot. So much so that they had gone a greeny-yellow. We were trying to find people who had eaten from here to see whether in fact they’d turned yellow, there was so much turmeric in this cooking pot.

The morning was very quiet. I didn’t really do all that much at all. After all, it is a Sunday and I’m entitled to have a day off once a week.

Lunch was early today and then I nipped out to the Exhibition to make the most of the glorious weather.

Back here, once I’d recovered, I made a pile of dough for the fruit buns. Lots of dried fruit and the like to give it some ooomph. And I made enough dough for a dozen, with the idea that I won’t have to make any for a while. I’ll be just a couple of days short of Easter then when I run out and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I now have some hot cross buns in the freezer for Easter.

But while we’re on the subject of the freezer … “well, one of us is” – ed … I don’t know where I’m going to put the fruit buns that I won’t be eating this week. The freezer is jam-pack full with the couple of bags of carrots in there and I had a real struggle to open the drawers today.

There’s a bit more space in there now though because after lunch I took out the last ball of frozen dough for the pizza and it had been defrosting all afternoon. While my fruit buns were busy proofing, I kneaded the defrosted dough and rolled it out onto the pizza tray.

Rosemary rang up for a lengthy chat about an issue that is ongoing involving one of her friends in the UK. And while we were chatting I baked my fruit buns and assembled my pizza. And when the buns were baked (to perfection) I put the pizza in to cook.

With the oven being stinking hot the pizza was cooked to perfection too and it was delicious. I’ll make some more like that!

With a spare half-hour I dictated the notes for the radio programme so (in theory) it shouldn’t take too long to do the radio programme. “In Theory” because we all know about “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” that often “gang aft agley” when you are trying to do something.

We’ll have to see how it all pans out.

0

Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

… of the last few days, everything finally caught up with me today.

Again, it wasn’t helped by having another miserable, depressing night when I had a real struggle to go to sleep and when I finally did, I had a real wander around in the ether all the way through the night.

Mind you, not that I’m complaining about that because first of all TOTGA and then Zero came to see me during the night and that’s something about which I can feel quite content. They (and Castor too, who has been disappointingly absent for some considerable time) can come to visit me any time they like.

Once again, I was out of bed and up and about before the alarm went off. I had my medication followed by a shower and then I headed for the shops.

First port of call was a bathroom shop called “Aubade”. They sell all kinds of bathroom equipment and fittings, like showers for example, and seem to be quite an upmarket kind of establishment. Although they don’t do installations themselves, they have a couple of teams of approved contractors and the assistant gave me their ‘phone numbers.

She also gave me a catalogue of their products, and that was rather a shame for the poor rain forest that had to be sacrificed. One more page in it and I would have had to have borrowed a fork-lift truck to bring it to Caliburn.

Noz had nothing at all of any interest and LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special. They had some grated vegan cheese on special offer so I bought a couple of packs. I have to encourage their vegan range of products.

When I returned I brought up a few of the things that I’d bought and the rest can wait for later. I had to think about some food though, and there was a stray leek hanging around in the vegetable rack that needed to be used.

First of all I fried a small onion in a saucepan with some olive oil until it was browned.

Then I added the chopped leek and a pile of garlic

Half a teaspoon of cumin, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of tarragon and a pile of fresh ground black pepper went in next.

Two small potatoes were washed and cubed and then added into the saucepan. It was all stirred around in the pan.

Then I covered the food with enough water and added a stock cube and a helping of soya cream, and let it simmer for 15 minutes while I put away the food that I’d bought.

Then I whizzed up what was in the saucepan, added a little more water until it had a nice consistency and then sat down to eat the most delicious soup that I’ve ever made, along with some nice crusty bread that I’d bought.

While I was at LeClerc I’d bought a bargain pack of 2kg of carrots. Next task was to wash, dice and blanch them. When they were ready I put them in the sink in sieves to drain so that I could put them in the freezer later.

Back in here I sat down in my chair and promptly fell asleep. So much so that in the end I struggled into bed where I stayed until I awoke – at 18:00. That was some crashing out.

And while I was away I went off on a little voyage too. I was doing a coach trip. We ended up in Germany. I dropped the passengers at the coach park and they all disappeared with their suitcases. I sorted out the coach etc. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I thought that I’d better go along to look for a hotel. I’d seen a hotel on the way in that looked nice. It was a 5-minute walk away so I set out to walk. As I walked up the back of this car park there was the back of a big hotel-type place there but it looked dirty and scruffy, not very niceat all so I ignored it. As I waslked up to the main road I looked behind me. I could see that the hotel was called the Hotel Adler. It was a huge place. I seemed to remember that it was something that all the passengers had talked about so I wondered if it was actually the tour hotel and where I was supposed to be staying. I had better turn round and retrace my steps to the hotel to have a look.

Once I’d finally recovered I decided that I’d finally make a start on some work but as luck would have it, Rosemary called me for one of our chats. I’m convinced that she set up a camera in here when she came to visit because she always seems to call me at exactly the right moment.

After we’d finished I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about me having a cat. Also, there was a radio presenter who was presenting some stuff. He was quite well-known for certain reasons. But ass I was dictating it I awoke instead and at that moment it all disappeared.

This was another one of these dreams where I had to visit South London, where I seem to visit quite often. We were all at the Underground station picking up the tickets etc. When we had the tickets everyone left. Of course, I couldn’t run – I could only hobble. I shouted at someone to hold the lift for me but he didn’t hear. he went in and went on down. When I reached the lift I couldn’t remember to which floor I was supposed to be going. I always end up on the wrong level at this station and on the wrong train so always end up with an enormous walk at the end because the Underground in South London is pretty poor. I was there scratching my head trying to think which would be the best platform for me in order for me to go where I needed

And then I had TOTGA round last night. She was here at the same time that the physiotherapist was here. As well as giving me plans for the physiotherapy he was giving me plans for counselling. He was trying to have me agree to do 3 things differently and gave me a list. I had to choose 3. But I was trying to talk to TOTGA as well because she was having to leave at 15:30 because her plane back home was at 18:30. I was trying to have this 3-way conversation talking to these 2 different people about 2 different things and nothing seemed to be resolved. I could see that in the end TOTGA was going to go and the 2 of us had never resolved anything that needed to be resolved between us and I doubted that I’d ever have the chance to see her again, which is probably true. He was babbling on all the time about me making pizzas.

Next I was with a couple of people, man and wife. I’ve no idea who they were. We were in Stoke on Trent. They were a couple much older than me. I was round at their house preparing some food but they had no mushrooms. We were down at the Fenton area somewhere so they suggested going to the market in Stoke. The husband and I set off on foot. It was quite a trudge. We went through one set of market stalls, out into the street and reached the main road. He stuck his head in a shop and said that they had none. We wandered round a few market stalls outside that were closed up. They had things like meat out in the open air etc that can’t have been hygenic. By now the wife was with us. We came to a cheese stall where they had some cheese samples. They kept on trying to offer me cheese samples but I told them that I couldn’t take it. In the end we went back to the shop where we were first because we had seen someone coming down the street carrying giant-sized mushrooms. We could see through the window that we had some that were individually priced. We thought that we’d go in. By now the woman had selected some fish from one of the outside stalls. We were about to go in to pay. To go in you had to climb up this rickety wooded ladder and somehow slide in between the rungs into the shop. I thought “I’ll take the stuff and go in to pay because I’m staying with them”. Because of my disability I couldn’t bend my leg enough to enter through the ladder. After trying for a couple of minutes and holding up everyone I gave it up in the end and one of them went in with the stuff. Eventually I managed to enter. There were some people in bed like a geriatric ward or hospital, all this stuff on sale. The woman there was making some drinks, a kind of cocktail. She passed one to me and said “this is for my husband”. Then she passed another one to me and said “this is for the baby. Whatever you do, don’t get them confused”. I had to take them out to the door and pass them to the husband and try to remember whose was what and to make sure that he kept them the way that this woman wanted them keeping so there would be no confusion as to who had the alcoholic drink and who had the soft one.

There was another one about a bunch of people including me getting a round of drinks and something to do with a large box or packet full of butter but I can’t remember anything at all of this.

Finally I was round at Zero’s parents. I hadn’t seen her father for ages and we weren’t on particularly good terms but I had to go round there for something. I was having a chat to Zero etc when he came round. He was surprised to see me but anyway we had a vague little chat. I don’t think that he was very happy but suddenly it started to rain and we all had to go indoors. There was another little girl there and she was out on a bike. Zero ran down to the end of the garden to look to see if she could see her. She shouted that she was on her way back. They started to ask me about my house. He said that I had 2 properties. I replied that in fact I had 3. His wife asked if I’d signed for my house. I replied “not exactly but it’s all paid for etc”. She asked if I’d used the money in that Santander account. I replied “no. I managed to keep away from there and 1 or 2 other accounts. I had no idea how many other accounts I had in total”.

With all of that it’s hardly any surprise that I was totally wasted this afternoon.

Tea was a delicious breaded quorn fillet with baked potato and salad. What with my leek and potato soup at lunchtime I’ve had some really excellent meals today. I’m really doing well with this cooking at the moment.

Tomorrow I have to make some fruit bread again and also go into town for this Home Renovations Fair thing for a few tips about my new bathroom. So it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

It’ll be pouring down with rain probably and that would be enough to dampen my enthusiasm but if I do make it into town I might stop and have my first ice cream of the year. I’m not even sure if I had one last year.

0

Friday 17th March 2023 – WHAT HAPPENED …

… during the night tells its own story about how things went .

That long sleep in the afternoon was clearly the wrong thing to do because when I went to bed last night it took hours (and I do mean hours) to go off to sleep.

And add to that the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about, that will tell you even more.

As well as that, during the brief moments when I must have gone to sleep, I travelled miles. And I DO mean miles. I started off washing the crockery in the sink. There were tons of it. Some of it had dried plaster on it but because it had been soaking for so long the plaster had gone soft. Like a fool I drained my carrots and peas into it without noticing so I had to fish those out one by one from all of the mess as well. Washing up all this was really pretty dismal. I didn’t enjoy it for a single minute with all the stuff that was in there and the sink was absolutely overflowing.

And then we’d gone somewhere to play a game of football. When we arrived there had been a little bit of snow. Someone had drawn out the lines of a pitch in the snow on the carpet. It was tiny. You couldn’t have more than four people standing on this carpet never mind playing the game. In the end we just wiped the line markings off, cleaned the carpet and went round looking for other bits of carpet that we could butt up to the first one to make some kind of circuit. It was still quite small but we found all that we could. There was a lot of argument about some carpet that we were using because some people used them as cushions to sit on. We said that that’s just too bad because they’ve come here to see the game and if we don’t have these bits of carpet to make the pitch larger there won’t be a game of football to watch etc.

There was some kind of advert for a jazz group to form in London. I’d turned up. We were going to set up to have a jam. I’d brought my drum kit along and was in the middle of setting it up when the drummer appeared. he started to assemble his. We chatted about drum kits etc. I explained that I’d bought mine to learn but I wasn’t any good. I started to get the guitar and amp ready. While I was doing a couple of things he picked up my bass and started to try to play it. We had a little chat about that as well for some unknown reason the lead between the bass guitar and amp was very short. Trying to untangle ourselves to walk around was something quite a nightmare.

Did I dictate that dream about travelling to the office on the train and then on the Underground going with an old friend of mine from my school days? “No, you didn’t” – ed …. so we arrived at out building but the building wasn’t going to be hours for much longer because we were moving 2 streets away to another building. I went back into this dream and went off to post some letters. I couldn’t find my British stamps so I bought some more. I wanted some stamps to go to Canada that cost me 24 cents. I opened a letter. It was a letter about a loan that someone had had to take out for some reason or other that required a loan. It was to do with a political campaign where someone had been wrongly accused of hiring a black car in an ice storm in Montreal. I had to write to this person so I wrote a letter. While I was ferreting around in my wallet for the stamps that I’d just bought I came across the original ones. Eventually I managed to find the 24 cents stamp. I went to put it on my letter but the guy next to me started talking. He asked about the letters that I was writing. I said “I’m writing to North America”. He replied “it’s only 16 cents to North America”. I said “I’m writing to Canada and it’s 24 cents” but he didn’t really believe me. I put the stamp on the envelope then went to fetch some airmail stamps out of my wallet to put on it. He was admiring the perforated security holes in these airmail stamps. he asked if I was going back to the USA on business shortly. I replied “no. I’d only just come from there and wasn’t planning on going back for a bit”.

Later on we were all on a coaching holiday. I said that I liked going away on these holidays because I’d meet new people and I’d have to write to them rather than send e-mails. I’d been writing a couple of letters to a couple of girls whom I’d met on a previous coach trip. I was addressing the envelopes. One envelope I made a right mess of, a spelling mistake in the address with big felt-pen letters etc. Eventually I finished them but we were going out soon so I had to go upstairs to change. For some reason I kept on putting it off and putting it off until in the end there was only about 20 minutes. I had to dash upstairs. I thought that I’d better put the camera on charge. I remembered that the battery for the camera hadn’t charged last time I’d tried it so I ended up having to put my credit card into the slot in the camera charger so that it might work. It did this time but I had my bank card that needed charging as well. I thought that with the credit card in the charger the bank card wouldn’t charge up now. It was one of those panicky dreams where nothing goes right, everything goes wrong and I end up running around in circles for no good reason.

And then did I dictate the next dream about going on another camping holiday? “No you didn’t dictate this one either” – ed … so this time I wasn’t going on it but Terry was. He wanted some bread so I said that i’d contact the organiser of this in the USA and have her have the bread ready and Terry would pay her when he arrived with these people. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember it. That’s all that I can remember.

As you can see, I’m surprised that I managed to find any time at all to go to sleep with all of that going on.

After the medications and checking the mails and messages I had a long chat with Liz on the internet. She wanted to know how I got on at the hospital so we spent a lot of time talking about that and our new premises – because she has recently moved house too.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent sorting out 4GB of music. Over the last year or so this programme of digitalising my record collection has continued into the more obscure realms as I’ve tracked down more and more of the digital sound-files to the albums that I own.

Anyway, over the last year, I’ve prepared another 4GB of tracks that I’ve now recorded, split, edited and remixed so I could merge them into the runs of playlists and copy them onto a USB key that I can play on the hi-fi in the living room to pick out music ready to broadcast.

All of that took until teatime tonight. I had salad and chips with veggie balls and as usual it really was nice. I’ve definitely got the hang of this air fryer now, especially when it comes to frying potatoes. In fact one might say that once the potatoes get close to my air fryer, they’ve had their chips.

Afterwards there was football. Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS. TNS just needed a point to win the title and they duly won it with a 0-0 draw, thanks to the heroics in the Nomads goal by ex-Glasgow Rangers keeper Andy Firth. It really was all one-way traffic towards the Nomads goal.

Strangely enough, all thhee ex-TNS players in the Nomads team who have been almost ever-present this season failed to make it onto the pitch. Cue some kind of conspiracy theory somewhere sometime.

Tomorrow I’m shopping. For bathrooms as well as the usual stuff. Time I pushed on and organised myself about this apartment. I want to have everythign in place for whenever the solicitor decides to contact me about the place.

0

Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

… any idea just how painful it is to have a needle stuck in your central nervous system in your spinal column?

I do!

And you don’t want to know either. Just sit and hope that it’s something that never ever happens to you.

In fact I must have expected something along these lines because I had another miserable night tossing and turning around in bed not being able to go to sleep. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 this morning I was already up and about.

It didn’t take me long to prepare myself and by 07:30 I was on the road to Avranches. It’s a good job that I was early too because in a daze I missed the by-pass around Sartilly and ended up being stuck in the roadworks in the town centre.

There was plenty of space in the car park at the hospital but there’s quite a long way to walk. It’s uphill too and that’s not ideal for someone on crutches to negotiate.

When I went to check in I found that I had forgotten to bring my wallet with my money and my personal papers with me. However, I’d remembered to bring everything else but surprisingly they didn’t ask me to produce any of it – not even the medication that they had told me to buy for the appointment.

After wandering around the hospital for quite some time trying to find my way I ended up in the Day Hospital where they found me a bed. First thing that they did once I was settled down was to send me off for one of these scans in one of these Stargate time-travelling portals.

It was a Siemens machine so I told them that I’d worked in the past for General Electric but they told me that they had tried those but preferred Siemens.

Back in the ward the nerve specialist came to see me to try to tell me what she was going to do but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I told her that I wasn’t interested in knowing. I just signed the “consent” forms and told them to get on with it.

They put some kind of numbing plaster on my lower back, brought me a coffee and then left me to it for an hour or so while the numbing liquid did its work. And then they came back for the real business.

They drew off a couple of CCs of clear liquid which they said they would send away for an analysis and then communicate with the specialist in Granville whom I saw a few weeks ago. He’ll be in touch with me and let me know how we’ll proceed.

They wouldn’t let me go home straight away but insisted that I stay for a while to recover. They sent a choice of food to me and I settled for bread and lentils.

Surprisingly, I’m sure that what they did has done me some good because I seem to be moving a little easier and I could climb into Caliburn’s cab a little better. I’m sure that I’m not imagining this.

On the way home I called at Brico Cash in St Pair. I went to look at the showers that were on offer and ended up having a lengthy chat with one of the guys in the warehouse who gave me the phone number of someone he knows who installs showers. I also called somewhere else to look at showers and they gave me a helpful lead too that I shall be following up at the weekend.

By the time that I arrived home I was feeling rather feak and weeble so having fallen asleep on my chair in here, I ended up going to bed where I crashed out for three hours in a really deep sleep. At the hospital they warned me about this.

Once I’d awoken I had a listen to the dictaphone to discover the night’s activities. I was arguing with my family and friends last night. I had a record player that I hadn’t seen for ages because I’d lent it to some member of my family. It turned up at this family party. I noticed the number of LPs that it had played because there was a counter on it that had reached over 2000. I was horrified by this because I’d hardly ever used it. Bt it was borrowed out of my apartment not long after it was new. Then it was food time – burger and chips. Someone pushed my plate into my stomach. I ended up with all these boiling hot chips stuck to my clothes. I was busy trying to sort myself out but everyone just carried on eating and totally ignored it. I picked up the plate again and half the salad fell off the burger. I made some kind of remark about how I was pleased to see how interested my family was in looking after me, taking notice of how things were going on here. Again they all totally ignored me. Someone else passed me a burger but it was an ordinary one not a vegan one so I couldn’t eat it. Generally I was in an absolutely foul mood in this party.

And then there was something else to do with groups and music, about recording 2 extra tracks for some reason but I can’t remember very much about this because I was in the middle of starting to dictate it when I had a bad pain in my right knee again that totaly distracted me.

Finally I’d been away somewhere for a while and was slowly heading home. I called in at a library, a big modern building for a look round and browse through their second-hand books. I ended up with 3 or 4 books. I thought “should I stay or should I go” but was wondering about how long the parking ticket would last on the car. I decided to go anyway but I had to be home as they’d asked me to cover to drive the taxis the following day. When I walked out of the library I found that the car park was probably about 20 feet below where I was standing and it would be quite a jump down to road level. I wasn’t sure whether I could manage it but I couldn’t see any steps anywhere to take me down so I wondered how I was going to manage now to reach the car park with all the stuff that I was carrying and no way down this 20-foot drop.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta, veg and spicy tomato sauce. And that went down quite nicely too. I was good and ready for that. Rather a banal meal but I have tons of burgers to deal with following the spate of recent offers at LeClerc.

Tomorrow I have nothing much to do so I might have a relaxing day. I can’t have a day off on Sunday because there will be some fruit bread to bake and some carrots to peel dice and freeze because I’m running out.

There’s also the annual Home Renovation Fair in Granville at the weekend and I’m intending to visit because I want to see what else I can do about showers. I’m determined to find a few more quotations for the shower because, much as the work done by that company whose representative came to see me yesterday is of excellent quality, their price is way out of my pocket.

0