Tag Archives: bad night

Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

… are back to normal (well, as normal as things ever could be around here) I can carry on and do what I ought to have been doing, and update everything.

And had I known how things were going to have worked out, still being on my feet (well, OK, on my chair) at 02:00 I would have had an early night instead of being up to all hours watching Stranraer, after several weeks of impressive football, go back to their old, miserable ways and be easily beaten by the bottom club in the league who spent most of the night playing with just ten men.

That was as embarrassing as the defeat aginst Clyde a couple of weeks ago and was really depressing after the last three or four performances.

So anyway I went to bed eventually and had another perspiration-laden night where I was only really half-asleep for most of it.

When the alarm did go off I hauled myself to my feet and headed off to the bathroom for a scrub and even a shave. After all, you never know if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there today.

No medication right now because you also never know if the nurse might actually want to come along and do this blood test this morning and it has to be done à jeun so I listened to the dictaphone instead to find out what had gone on during the night. There I was, lying here asleep and a girl was trying to load some ink or something into my mobile ‘phone so that it could print a document. I tried to pur some fat into it but the fat was in a chip basket thing. Of course, every time you tilted it to pour it the liquid would seep out through the holes so I wasn’t having any success with my cooking last night.

Can you imagine trying to lift molten fat out of a chip pan with the chip basket? I’ve no idea what goes on inside my head at night, but there again, I don’t have all that much more idea about what goes on inside my head when I’m awake.

Later on I was out in North Wales looking for an address. I ended up somewhere beyond Conwy in an area that I didn’t know very well but I couldn’t find it. I ended up on an extremely steep hairpin bend. Trying to walk or cycle up there was extremely complicated. When I reached the top there was a waterfall. The waterfall was where some kind of primitive dam had been that had been broken and the water was cascading over it down into the valley where it joined the main river. There was a main road off there to the right and there was a lot of traffic coming that way so it was complicated to cross the road. I did cross the road but still couldn’t find this address. In the end I saw a map with the shape of where it was and I identified that I should have been four miles beyond Abergele so I had to retrace my steps and try to return across the road on a pushbike was even more complicated with all of the traffic that was coming straight on down the main road. Once or twice someone paused and that was the signal for someone to nip over but I had to wait for a while and found myself in the end with about a dozen vehicles on the central reservation waiting for a gap in the downhill traffic again. Once we set off there were all these vehicles passing so closely and I was then freewheeling down the hill listening to the news about a bicycle race. There were two people in the middle of the road, a man and a woman with bikes and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me as I came hurtling down and I missed the woman by a matter of millimetres.

As it happens, I recognise this road too. It’s out of Llangollen heading down into mid-Wales and I was there 20-odd years ago with Nicole when we came to pick up the old LDV. The dam is very much how I would have imagined one of the “Dambusters” dams to have been after it had been blown up. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we WENT FOR A LOOK AROUND the dams few years ago on our way to Colditz and STRAWBERRY MOOSE‘s famous escape attempt.

Incidentally, four miles beyong Abergele up a steep mountainside is one of the Iron Age hillforts to which Arthur Allcroft took us a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing about any hillforts anywhere last night.

When the nurse did finally turn up he did actually take the blood sample and I knew all about it because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he just doesn’t have “the touch”.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We’re discussing exciting subjects today, such as men marrying their daughters and the young killing off the old folks once they stop being productive and become useless mouths to feed.

He’s actually done some research into this and has found plenty of examples back in history and in more remote parts of the World where those customs were still current when he was researching his book. All I can say is that for someone whose day job was a clerk in London County Council, he had some strange pastimes and hobbies.

However, he has proved a point over which I have been puzzling. If people back in ancient history were so concerned about having useless mouths hanging around eating the produce, the produce must have been so scarce that not even family ties could hold the people together and stop them killing each other. So I remain totally unconvinced by the modern way of thinking that these hillforts were nothing but symbolic. The huge amount of effort that went into the construction of these immense defensive works and the amount of time they had to spend away from the fields or from the hunt, they really must have been scared almost to death by what might have happened had they not spent all that time and effort in their construction.

Back in here later I had a few things to organise and sort out but was interrupted by the telephone. "Is it OK if I come a little earlier, like 12:00?". It was my taxi driver.

What has happened was that last week these new Social Security regulations came into legally-binding force and so this is how it’s going to be from now on – taxis turning up at any time they like if they are obliged to combine trips. Not that I’m complaining because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …, it’s a free service and in any case the sooner we arrive, the sooner I can leave and so I sent a message to my cleaner to inform her.

Poor thing, she had to scramble here to fit my anaesthetic patches and was still here when the taxi arrived – at 11:47. The Sécu has instructed that a timespan of 45-minute either side of the booked time is acceptable under these new regulations and by my reckoning the car was actually 43 minutes early. That’s cutting it fine.

We had to pick up someone else on the way of course, someone who had a hospital appointment for an operation. "As we’re so early we may as well drop madame off at the hospital first."
"She’s going to hospital in Rennes"

When I arrived at the dialysis centre I was so early that they hadn’t even finished dealing with the morning’s patients but Julie the Cook saw me and she quickly finished off setting up my machine (patients have their own individual settings) and I was installed and up and running by 13:15.

She tried a new trick this afternoon. While she was setting up the machine she slapped an ice bag on my arm. And that actually might have helped a little – at least until the effect wore off.

Apart from the coffee, no-one bothered me at all until it was time to unplug me. Julie the Cook had gone home a long time before and one of the others came to sort me out. For some reason I was rather unsteady on my feet at first. It can’t have been low blood pressure because that was OK.

So it was 17:30 when I staggered out of the centre and the taxi was already waiting for me. We had someone else with us to drop off along the way but even so I was back at home by 18:15, much to the surprise of my cleaner

That was when I discovered the catastrophe in here, with the big desktop computer spinning around in BIOS mode complaining “I can’t find any disk with an operating system on it”.

Luckily I had a spare 1TB SSD that I’d dismantled from another machine so I formatted that in a disk caddy with the help of the travelling laptop and set about dismantling the big computer. It’s always good to perform a clean installation every couple of years because you’ll be surprised (or maybe you con’t) at the amount of rubbish that accumulates over the passage of time.

While I was doing that, I actually found what I suspect is the fault. There’s an internal power lead with three connectors for disk drives. The one that was connected to the SSD system drive has a crack in it and what seems to have happened is that the crack has allowed the internals to flex and they have shorted out.

No problem. I just disconnected the internal back-up drive and plugged the new SSD System drive into that connector. I’ll have to order a new power lead from somewhere in due course to connect everything back up on a more permanent basis.

While it was sorting itself out I made a quick tea – just like THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on the table inside a tin".

Back in here afterwards, I settled down and steeled myself ready for what is going to be a very long night

But while we’re on the subject of Colditz Castle … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of that legendary “Two Ronnies” sketch from years ago.
"We’re making a film about prisoners escaping from a camp in Germany"
"What’s it called?"
"The Colditz Story"
"What are you making next?"
"A film about life in a South Wales mining village"
"What’s it called?"
"The Coal Tips Story"
"And after that?"
"We’re doing a film starring Raquel Welch who will be playing the role of an Inuit"
"What’s that called?"
"We haven’t decided yet"

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Wednesday 5th March 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine – an absolute marvel, and I’m really pleased and grateful that she’s here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that now that I’m properly settled here on the coast with no prospect of returning home to the farm, I’ve been changing a few things around.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is slowly disposing of all of the plastic that I have and replacing it with glass as much as possible. My plastic chopping boards are looking very much the worse for wear and I have been planning to let them go the Way of the West whenever the next opportunity presents itself.

A couple of weeks ago, LeClerc sent me a preview of the next instore sale that started on Tuesday. They had some lovely tempered glass chopping boards – huge ones too – at just €2:85 each and had I been able to do so, I would have been queueing at the door on Tuesday morning.

When she was here last week I mentioned it to her in passing and talking about how I would have liked to replace my two plastic boards (I have one for smelly foods and one for other stuff).

So today when she came in to sort me out, she produced two tempered glass chopping boards, one black and one white.

It’s quite strange really that it’s the slightest thing that makes such an impression and makes such a difference. I couldn’t believe that I’ve been so impressed by this – even more impressed than I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

Not so impressed though with last night. A late night again and then pretty much more of the same old same old …, difficult to sleep, waking up drenched in perspiration again. The difficulty in sleeping I can cope with, but it’s everything else. However, at least, despite what I said yesterday, if I had another perspiration-laden night when it wasn’t a Dialysis Day, it can hardly be the dialysis that’s causing it.

Nevertheless I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off, doing something with someone else, talking about food, saying that the food, which should be a natural substance and not a processed kind of meal or processed kind of product. Then we were watching something on the television, a quiz game where people produced some kind of extraordinary object and the second team had to try to decide exactly what the purpose of that object was. They had invented some kind of quiz game out of this.

Something else that I can do in my sleep that I can’t, or never had the opportunity to do during my waking hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had found someone capable of making some use of all of these marvellous ideas that I only ever seem to have when I’m asleep. I’d be typing this from the deck of my yacht in the Bahamas with floozies peeling grapes and tossing them into my mouth.

It was another struggle to extricate myself from my bed before the second alarm and to struggle into the bathroom. Back in here straight away afterwards because I can’t ingest anything until after the blood test.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. Apparently at one point I’d just been for a walk through part of Crewe. I went down Mill Street and up Brook Street and up and over the railway bridge in Edleston Road. In fact was walking over the bridge in Edleston Road when I awoke. I don’t know what I was doing and there was no-one else with me. I was just strolling around.

That’s a disappointing evening, walking around Crewe like that during my sleep. I’m old enough to remember when the east side of Mill Street was a maze of cheap, crumbling terraced houses until in the early 60s the whole lot was swept away practically overnight. And as is typical for Crewe, it remained a derelict bombsite for thirty years afterwards until some kind of new development began. I can see the demolished town centre being like that for the next ever so many years.

Later on I was talking to some American woman about some people who had left the USA to go to live over the border in Mexico. I was explaining to her that to actually come to live in the USA and work was quite a straightforward matter but complicated as long as you had the right kind of education, background and qualifications but once you were in the USA changing jobs is extremely complicated and difficult. For many people it’s no longer an option to do so and they begin to look around for other ways of earning their income. At first she didn’t believe what I was saying and pooh-poohed it but gradually she began to understand the point that I was trying to make. She ended up by agreeing with everything that I was saying.

That’s a rare achievement, isn’t it? Having people agree with me like that. But conditions for employment in the USA are quite strict. Even though my niece’s second daughter is married to an American and lives in Michigan, she couldn’t even think about changing her job and leaving her Canadian employer until she’d applied for and been granted a work permit to do so. It took her fifteen months to obtain it.

The nurse came round and told me that he’ll take the blood sample tomorrow. So I’d gone without my morning drink for nothing. There’s no point remonstrating with him about it because it will only give me ulcers. I know what I would like to give him.

Breakfast and medication was next while I read MY NEW BOOK. Today, we’ve been talking about the myths of buried treasure, the myths of open-air meetings and also the ancient Graeco-Egyptian LEGEND OF RHODOPIA. Have a read of that legend and see if you recognise anything in it from your own childhood.

There is going to be a considerable amount of mileage in this book, I can see that. It’s going to destroy a great many of my childhood illusions.

Buried treasure, usually guarded by a mythical monster, is another story with a lot of mileage in it. It was usually buried in time of war and disturbance and his answer to the mythical monster is the threat that the person who buried it made to whoever was watching him bury it. People believed in mythical monsters in those days.

That’s not so far-fetched either. Nerina and I were driving around Brittany once many years ago and came across a garage proprietor who had discovered several ancient French cars from someone’s collection walled up behind a false wall to hide them from the Germans. The person who had walled them didn’t live to reclaim them and there they stayed until the garage proprietor found them.

“Buried treasure” is regularly turning up, buried in haste in the path of invading armies centuries ago, and presumably the owner didn’t live to dig it back up again.

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve decided after much thought that I’m still going to keep on well in advance with one programme per week to keep up the rhythm, and use the spare time in the week to work on the Woodstock set. That way, I shan’t become bogged down.

Anyway, by the time I knocked off tonight, I’d done everything for the programme except dictating it and choosing the final track. That’s going to be another Saturday night/Sunday effort.

There were the usual interruptions – not a lunchtime one though because my appetite is still very much diminished. There was the visit of my cleaner, the shower and the disgusting drink break, as well as probably one or two other things that I can’t remember right now.

Tea was a leftover curry, except that there aren’t any leftovers. Instead I found a helping of pie filling in the freezer and used that instead. Not one of my more memorable meals, but you can’t win a coconut every time. The naan was delicious though. This batch of dough (of which this naan was the final helping) was an exceptionally good batch.

Tomorrow is Dialysis Day but I’m past caring about it and how it’s going to turn out. I’ll just wander off to bed (late as usual these days) and tomorrow will be another day.

But while we’re on the subject of treasure … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me "my wife is a little treasure"
"Is that so?" I asked
"It certainly is" he replied "and furthermore, I’m not going to tell anyone where I’ve buried her"

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Tuesday 4th March 2025 – IT’S NOT THE …

… heating in this room that’s making me perspire during the night, I’ll tell you that. Last night was one of the most perspiration-laden nights that I’ve had for quite some considerable time, but the heating in here was turned down quite considerably. In fact with the temperature being only 2°C outside, the bedroom was freezing.

It’s true that one of the side-effects of my cancer is a nocturnal perspiration and I’ve been having those since 2015, but nothing whatever anything like those that I’ve had over this last couple of months. And in any case, for the moment my cancer is stable, not worsening.

It’s even much worse on the night following the dialysis, and so the only thing that it can be is something connected with that process. They deny that they are doing anything that might provoke it, or that they are putting something extra into the mix, but there’s something definite going on.

So that was yet another restless night where I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping. I’d been to bed late, as usual these days, after taking too much time finishing off everything that I had to do. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, I was awake again shortly afterwards and that was how I remained throughout the night, drifting in and out of sleep.

When the alarm went off I was definitely asleep and it was a struggle to make it to my feet before the second alarm. But into the bathroom I went for a good scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. I dreamed last night that my punctures had burst while I was in bed and there was blood everywhere and someone had to come along to compress it so that it would heal. That wasn’t very nice at all.

That is my greatest nightmare, and we had something similar to that in real life a couple of weeks ago when I found the pillow soaking in blood. But as I said last night when I was talking about dreaming about dialysis, if those dreams are now becoming nightmares, it really is the end of the line as far as I’m concerned.

A little later a friend of mine from University who lives in Germany put in an appearance last night with her husband. They were talking about when they first met all those years ago and how for their first heavy date they actually had to go to London for a health appointment which was quite amusing for them and particularly when her mother warned her about going on this kind of heavy date with boys and young men. They were telling me all kinds of stories about the first time that they slept together and one of them made me squirm because it was horrible.

Actually, I can tell you a funny story about the first time that I shared a particular bed with a certain someone and my old black cat had a fit of jealousy, but as it might touch a sensitive nerve if you are eating your tea, I shall restrain myself. However I shall say that the first time that I took Cécile out was to a funeral in Pionsat, and the first time she took me out was when she was giving evidence in a criminal case in Riom. We did have some really exciting dates.

While we’re on the subject of Pionsat and the Auvergne … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was in the Auvergne walking past a vehicle garage where he was doing repairs and working on all kinds of old cars, mainly Peugeot 203s scattered around for pieces outside. I heard him talking to someone on the ‘phone and then I heard him say “that Mr Hall, he’s the guy”. I was intrigued to find out what he was talking about. I went into the workshop where he was still on the ‘phone talking away so I had a look around. There were a lot of old motor bikes there, Japanese ones from the 1960s and 70s. I was having a look through them to see what he had to try to find something of interest. After he finished his conversation I went over to him and said “so you were bringing my name into the conversation. Now what have I done?”. “Nothing at all really” he replied. “It’s about Wind Turbines and everything. When you have your system all properly working it’ll certainly be something for everyone else to see” so we had a chat about that. I told him that I was having problems with my car and he needs to look at it. He said that he would be able to do that. I told him that if I were to drop it off someone would have to run me back home again. He replied “either that or we could come round and pick it up from your place”. We had a bit of a chat about that.

Strangely enough, I can see the garage proprietor now, and he is a garage proprietor in the Auvergne. But it was someone else’s garage where he was, not his. And that was confusing when I thought about it.

The nurse came round and I gave him some bad news, such as he has to take a blood sample tomorrow. He hates doing them and certainly doesn’t have “the touch”, but it needs to be done even if we both aren’t looking forward to it.

After he left I made breakfast and began to read MY NEW BOOK. It’s called “Folklore As A Historical Science and the author, Laurence Gomme, is going to argue that many, if not most folklore tales have an actual basis in fact, but that the facts were misunderstood by an imperfect contemporary understanding of modern science.

In my opinion, that’s quite likely. The westward spread of the “more advanced” civilisations into the area of a “more primitive” culture several thousand years ago and the skills that they brought with them must have had a terrifying effect on the latter.

We can see that too in the tales of the Norse Sagas in “Vinland”. Just because the Sagas talk about unipeds and other mythical beasts doesn’t change the underlying fact that the underlying events in the Sagas such as the voyages, the encounters with the “Skraelings”, the settlements in Labrador and Newfoundland actually did happen. We’ve found some of the settlements and the encounters with the Norse are preserved in several folk tales of the Mi’kmaq

A reviewer in “Nature” magazine of 4th June 1908 is not however as easily convinced. He states that Gomme "still has to account for e.g. why the cult of Lug in regions so far apart as Leyden, Lyons and County Wicklow, as well as a host of intermediate places"‘ was celebrated simultaneously

But perhaps Gomme didn’t feel the need to explain it because all you need to do, in my opinion, is to consider the westward spread of civilisation as Allcroft and many others whose books we have read recently have stated. Work out at what period in history a civilisation that was in occupation of those places where Lug is celebrated and trace that civilisation back to its starting point. Not only will you then have a good idea of where the cult originated, but when – as in before the civilisation dispersed to the various destinations in the West.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. I was rather disappointed today with that which I did (or didn’t, as the case may be) accomplish. I’m going to have to do much better than this if I’m going to be making any progress. I can feel myself sliding backwards and that’s disappointing.

After the lesson I had a really good think about my radio programme for Woodstock. It’s not going to be as easy as I think that it will. For a start, a couple of the groups were totally unknown and then a couple of acts only ever performed at Woodstock and nowhere else. Much of the information is contradictory too – there are two, three, four and even more versions of the same incident doing the rounds.

However, if it’s not going to be a challenge, there’s no point in doing it. I’ll sort something out though.

Tea tonight was different, vegetables made into a kind-of potato salad with onions, mushroom and something out of the European Burger Mountain, followed by date bread and soya dessert. Tomorrow is curry night and with no leftovers to use up as yet, I shall have to be inventive.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now I’m off to bed. It’s shower day tomorrow so with a bit of luck there will be a nice clean me tomorrow night.

While we are talking about our Welsh course … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of the tasks for homework in a few weeks is to tell a joke in Welsh. It reminded me of the story of the three Englishmen who married on the same day in the same church with the same vicar, one to a Thai girl, the second to a Japanese girl and the third to a Welsh girl.
During the pre-nuptial interview with the vicar each Englishman said that regardless of current thought and opinion he was going to tell his new wife that her role was to keep the house clean and tidy and to prepare his meals punctually.
A couple of weeks later the vicar encountered the three men and asked them how things were going.
The man who married the Thai girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days I noticed that she was making an effort and she slowly got the hang of things"
The man who married the Japanese girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days I noticed that the meals began to arrive and the house began to take on some kind of shape"
The man who married the Welsh girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days the swelling went down and my left eye began to open a little"

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Sunday 2nd March 2025 – I NOW HAVE …

… a complete flapjack and also a complete loaf of home-made bread.

And as well as that, I also have a large bowl of leek soup, mainly in the grounds that at lunchtime I wasn’t at all hungry and there’s no point in forcing food down if I don’t feel like eating it. It will do for tea tomorrow night instead, complete with a fresh bread roll that I also made today.

There were in fact lots of things that I didn’t feel like doing, but what accounts for that is the really miserable, wretched night that I had.

It was late when I went to bed, for one reason or another … "mainly the football highlights" – ed … but I was soon asleep. However, not for long. As I said into the dictaphone at the time, “not long after I went to sleep I was talking to a girl about music and one or two popular musical sayings. I didn’t go very far into that dream before someone walked past in the street blowing a saxophone and awoke me, and that was that”.

And that was it too. Not the noise from the disco or the fairground last night, but a whole series of attacks of the most severe cramp that I’d had for ages. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I was having regular severe attacks of cramp, and last night they were back.

There wasn’t much danger of going back to sleep after that.

Anyway, I stayed in bed until the alarm went off at 08:00 and then had a difficult climb out of bed and into the real World. The nurse came round very early today and caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. He wasn’t happy about being made to be kept waiting but that’s his problem not mine.

After he left I made breakfast, had my meditation and read some more of MY BOOK.

We are still wandering around the South Downs admiring the scenery, something that has very little, if anything at all to do with the “Earthwork of England”.

However, I’m still puzzled over his book, even more so these days. Is it a historical account, a scholarly work of reference, a travel guide for the educated tourist or simply an exercise in prose? When you see flowery phrases such as "your dreams here should be of times and peoples yet earlier than the Roman—of taller warriors clad in skins and armed with stone, and of others harnessed in bronze or helmeted with the horned casque of the iron time, but not of those terrible squat interlopers who made such play with the short sword and the pilum, and carried upon their shields the blazon of the thunderbolt." you begin to wonder what on earth he must have been smoking, and could he maybe pass it round to the rest of us?

Back in here there was the dictaphone. Surprisingly, there was something else on it from last night. I went back into that dream … "presumably the one where the saxophone awoke me" – ed … later on and I was talking to a girl from Crewe, one of the friends of a girl whom I knew. She was actually doing something like being a hairdresser, something like that, and I was waiting to have my hair cut. I recognised her and remembered her name, Jennifer Marie something so I said “hello Jennifer Marie”. She looked at me and said “well I’m going to obviously have to change my name if people start recognising me”. I said “yes, change it to ‘Miss Crewe 1962’ ” which made her smile. Then we began to have a chat about the old days when a group of us used to go to the rock venue in High Street in Crewe. It was a real surprise to see her in a dream.

This is rather interesting because the girl concerned didn’t have a friend of that name, and I knew most of them. They were much younger than we were but used to sneak into the rock music venue to watch the groups on Saturday night – the one where I had that very long and interesting chat with that Dutch rock group “Alquin”. At their age (the girls, not Alquin) they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a bar, never mind a night club full of rockers, but they used to tell their mothers that they were sleeping over at a friend’s and the friend would tell her mother that they were sleeping over at the first friend’s – you get the picture. Then at 03:00 when we were thrown out of the club they would go and sit on the station drinking coffee until it was time for them to “come home after breakfast”. I’m surprised that they got away with it for as long as they did but the downfall was inevitable. For once, I managed to keep myself well out of trouble and well out of the picture because even then, the young, naïve irresponsible me had no doubts at all about how it was going to finish. It’s strange though that it should all come flooding back last night.

After that, there was football to watch, Edinburgh City v Stranraer. Stranraer seem to be on a roll at the moment and it carried on today with a hard-fought 1-0 away win up at Meadowbank. Once again, luck was on their side as they survived a few desperate scrambles on their goal-line,

They were also lucky to have finished with all eleven players still on the pitch after a foul that would have seen many other players in many other clubs and many similar moments taking the walk of shame to the tunnel for the early bath.

Then I’ve been intermittently working. I’ve been sketching out the bones of how my “Woodstock” programme is going to work and it’s going to take some organising too. I have very little live music for the groups and artists who played on the Friday night and not much more for the blues artists that appeared on the Sunday night. As for the rock groups on Saturday, I could fill half a dozen programmes with what I have and still have plenty left over.

No lunch, as I said, but I did make a bread roll to eat with it. It will still be good tomorrow night. It means that if I have another bad time at dialysis I shan’t need to worry too much about tea.

The flapjack was interesting though. I added some coconut oil in place of some of the vegan margarine and it certainly made it sweeter. A little softer too, which was surprising.

As for the bread, in view of my recent successes I went back to where I was right at the beginning and added several handfuls of sunflower seeds. Once more, it rose up light a lift and was as soft as anything that I have ever made. And because it was a full-sized loaf, that was baked in the big oven too after the flapjack.

Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, and the third thing that went into the oven was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier.

This pizza was another resounding success too and tasted as delicious as any that I have ever made. In fact, my baking seems to have moved up another gear right now. I hope that it keeps going.

But I’m not going to keep going. I’m going to bed, hoping that there are no attacks of cramp or people playing the saxophone.

Yesterday though, we were talking about Carnaval and dressing up … "well, one of us was" – ed …
Today I spent some time thinking about if I were fit, well and able to join in, how would I dress up?
At one time I thought to myself "why shouldn’t I dress up and disguise myself as a suitcase?"
But then of course a touch of realism crept in with ourselves and I thought "now let’s not go getting ourselves carried away here with this idea"

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Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who don’t celebrate it. And my leek soup was delicious. Even better – there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

That is of course, always assuming that I’m here to eat it because a few more nights like last night and a few more days like today and I won’t be.

As I expected, last night was another late night. I didn’t hang around at all though so I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have been in bed at a reasonable time.

Once in bed though, I couldn’t sleep. I had a pain in the neck (and I’m not talking about a partner here) that was absolutely agonising and try as I might, I couldn’t make myself comfortable. What with all of the music drifting up from the ball in the town centre and the revellers making their way back to the millions of motorhomes parked all around here, I lay awake for hours and I’m not joking either.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep though and once more it was a very weary, bleary-eyed me who struggled to his feet.

After a wash, I set the washing machine off. And how many times is this now that I’ve had dirty clothes left over after I’ve filled the machine? Either I need a bigger machine or else I need to use the machine more frequently.

Next, it was into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I was surprised to find some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I seriously thought that I hadn’t been asleep long enough. I’d been out on a night off and had gone to the pub to sit and have a quiet drink. Then I thought that it was becoming late so I’d better set out and head for home. I began to jog and when I reached my house, I carried on running but suddenly realised that I was supposed to be going home, not for a run as I used to do at night, so I turned round and went back to the house but suddenly found myself running again. I had to stop and go back another time. When I reached the house I put my hand on the door to open it and a dog began to bark. Someone said “it’s Eric”. They came to meet me and said “a girl has been to see you” and mentioned her name. I thought that I recognised the name from somewhere as if it was someone whom I knew in Stockport but I suddenly realised that it was a girl with whom I’d worked once. Whatever does she want? “Well, she’s left her business card”. I went in and saw on the table a business card so I picked it up. It wasn’t hers though, but for a guy called Tim Edmonds who works for the Government. “Who’s Tim Edmonds? What does he want?”. My youngest sister asked me “is your car OK?”. I replied “yes. Shouldn’t it have been?”. She looked at her husband and said “I’m just making sure that he has some windows in his car” so that there had obviously been something about windows in cars between the two of them.

When I was taxi-driving when I lived in Winsford I often used to go for a run when I came home at some kind of silly hour in the early morning. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good way for me to relax and unwind. I lost the habit after that when I moved to Crewe but I started running again when I moved to Belgium. After I taught Roxanne to ride a bike she used to chase me through the local park. There’s also a story about my youngest sister, her husband and a window too but that’s yet another story that the World isn’t quite ready to hear.

Isabelle breezed in, hours late because of Carnaval. Today is the defilé des enfants – the Children’s Procession when all the kids dress up as their favourite characters and walk into town accompanied by the brass bands, and they have begun to close all of the streets even at this time of the morning. That’s actually my favourite part of the long weekend and a few years ago I hit the streets with my recording gear and interviewed some of the kids to make a radio programme

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about Burpham Camp in Sussex. And having disputed at great length (as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) the opinion that some of these hilltop camps are “Danish camps” because the Danes wouldn’t build impressive fortifications, he tells us, about Burpham Camp, that "it is safe to suppose that it is not a British work. For reasons as obvious it is not Roman. It has no known characteristics of Saxon work, and had it been such, the church would certainly have been within the vallum. It must therefore be either Danish or Norman. To Norman work it has no resemblance, and the conclusion is that it is Danish.".

So having insisted "that it is not a British work" and "has no known characteristics of Saxon work", according to archaeological excavations undertaken on behalf of the National Heritage List, "the Iron Age promontory fort at Burpham is an example of an inland fort where the natural defensive qualities of the land were utilised and the site was reoccupied as a burh in the Anglo-Saxon period. ".

After breakfast I had bread to make for tea tonight – just a couple of rolls – and then I went to sit down for half an hour for a rest with a mug of coffee.

When my cleaner came in, she found me hard at work. Not only had I prepared all of the veg for my soup, I actually had it all in the pot simmering away and the bread was in the air fryer cooking. Today we gave the anaesthetic cream a try-out and after she left, I carried on with my soup.

The taxi was driven today by my favourite taxi driver but she was late. And then we had to go to pick up someone else but because the roads were all closed because of the defilé we had to go miles and miles out of our way.

It took an age to sort out the other passenger and then we had to go almost to Bréhal before we could pick up the road to Avranches, a detour of about a dozen miles.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and was even later because there were two emergencies admitted. My appointment is in principle at 13:30, and I wasn’t seen to until 14:45.

By that time the anaesthetic had long-since worn off so I knew all about the connection. And Julie the Cook tried to do it all on her own and failed, and I was in total and utter agony and despair throughout the entire session.

However, I did manage to watch the football. The result was predictable, with TNS, eight points clear at the top defeating Aberystwyth, eight points adrift at the foot of the bale, winning the League Cup.

What wasn’t predictable was the heavy weather that TNS made of it and while Aberystwyth never looked like threatening the TNS goal, a 1-0 win isn’t a safe win by any means. All I can say though is that if Aberystwyth had played with the same fire and spirit throughout the season that they showed today, they wouldn’t be in anything like as much trouble as they are.

What with one thing and another it was 19:45 when I returned home. While all of the police had ringed the town with roadblocks to hunt down drunken drivers, a bunch of drunken teenagers were misbehaving in the street blocking all of the traffic and needed quite a lot of persuasion to move.

When I finally returned home I finished off making the soup and have somehow ended up with two litres of it. That will keep me going for a while, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll be bread-making, a complete loaf this time, and flapjack-making. As for the radio programme, Grahame and I have been chatting on the internet exchanging ideas and I’ve decided to make three programmes for my “taste of Woodstock” – one of the Friday to be broadcast on the Friday, one of Saturday and the third of the Sunday, to be broadcast similarly, mutatis mutandis. So tonight and tomorrow I won’t be radioing.

But talking of Carnaval and dressing up, I told my taxi driver to be careful on the way home. "There are several elephants in the town and at Carnaval they disguise themselves by dressing up in black suits and black glasses and pretend that they are the Blues Brothers"
"That’s nonsense" she replied. "I’ve lived in this area 30 years and I’ve never seen tham"
"There you are then" I said. "It shows you just how good their disguise really is"

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Monday 24th February 2025 – THEY SENT THE …

… minibus for me again today to bring me home.

It is a free service, I’m well-aware of that, but it’s even more complicated and difficult for me than climbing into an ambulance. Next time I see the driver who thinks that he runs the show I’ll have to have a word with him about it and see what they can do.

My faithful cleaner said that seeing as it’s my birthday today, given the amount of money that I help put into the owner’s pocket, they should have sent a Rolls Royce for me.

That’s right people, another year older and deeper in debt. Seeing the start of another year that, back in the summer, I honestly never thought that I would see. I was in all seriousness preparing my funeral.

Thank you all once again for your unwavering support over the last twelve months. It means a great deal to me to receive your messages, those of you who write to me. Why don’t some of you others drop me a line too?

So last night it was another late night going to bed – just about midnight in fact, and I could have done with being in bed a couple of hours earlier, that’s for sure.

As it was, it was another turbulent night just like a few of the others just recently, and the tempest that began at 04:00 and started to rattle a sign on this building with a noise that awoke me and stopped me going back to sleep was all that I needed.

It goes without saying that when the alarm went off I was already up and about. And I even remembered to shave and to change my clothes too just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there today.

After I’d taken the medication I went to have a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was at dialysis last night lying in my bed watching a couple of the nurses working. One of them was Julie the Cook. She seemed to spend most of her time folding up sheets and putting them away in a cupboard which I’ve no idea why

That’s something else that I could do without. It’s bad enough having to go there during the daytime, never mind during the time when I’m supposed to be relaxing.

There was also something going on where I was discussing the rules of inheritance with someone, leaving money to the first-born which I suppose makes sense if it’s something like a farm but I can’t see what other reason it makes for anything else

This relates to a conversation that I’d had with Rosemary the other day. Inheritance Tax is a hot topic in the UK at the moment but I can’t see why it’s a worry to anyone over here. And then, when you are dead and Inheritance tax is applied to your wealth, you are in no position to worry about it.

Finally I was in Paris with a couple of people and they had been giving me the run-around so we set out to go to Lille or to Leuven or somewhere. When we arrived in the railway station I managed to give them the slip and abandon them. Walking around, I came to the shopping centre which was up 25 flights of stone stairs. There was a large flight of stairs that went up from the street but if you went round the corner into the forecourt of the railway station there was a flight of stairs there which weren’t so many which I hadn’t noticed until today so I set out to work out how easy it was to go up these because there were fewer of them. I did my trick of hauling myself up with my arms. Everyone was watching me and a few people walking up quicker than me were looking at me. I reached the top where there was a convenient handrail for me to pull myself up right outside the door of the flower shop there. I could see the flowers, I could see the shop assistants and everything selling. For some reason or other I was doing something with the coins in my pocket but I don’t know why. But when I’d made it up to the top of the stairs I was really unsteady on my feet and thought for a minute that I’d end up falling backwards all the way down again.

Twenty-five stairs is a familiar number, isn’t it? And having to haul myself up them three times per week at least is something that I won’t ever forget even when (if) I am living downstairs and no longer have to do it.

The nurse was in and out in a flash today. He’s off on his break now for a few days so I suppose that he doesn’t want to hang around. I could make breakfast and continue to read MY BOOK

Today we are discussing contemporary earthworks and he finds a great deal of amusement in some of his colleagues having mis-identified some contemporary slit trench for a Neolithic burial pit. I shall be waiting with bated breath for the omelette sur le visage moment.

Seeing as it’s my birthday today I emulated my namesake the mathematician and did three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing for a couple of hours. I just stirred a few papers round with no great urgency and spoke to several friends on the internet, who had contacted me to wish me well, which was nice of them.

My cleaner, who had popped in earlier for the list of medication, came back with some of the supplies and to fit my anaesthetic patches. Then I had to await the taxi.

Late again leaving, the other passenger in the car was even later so we had to drop him off first, right across town at the Clinic. So I was very late arriving for dialysis.

Not only that but there were six other people who had arrived simultaneously and I was as usual the last. Then we had to run through a handwashing demonstration to waste even more time.

Plugging in was slightly less painful than normal, and then I reviewed my Welsh, although there’s no lesson tomorrow as it’s half-term.

The doctor in charge came to see me. There’s no real indication of anything that might be causing these sweats, so he said.

He did have two items of good news for me and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Firstly, this new dialysis centre in Granville is all systems go and will be open within a year. Secondly, as things stand I would be one of the patients to be transferred there. So that will save me about four hours per week.

While he was there, I tried to negotiate a reduction in hours. My weight seems to be stable right now compared to how it was, so I wondered if instead of reducing the machine’s power they could reduce the hours that I have to spend.

His reply was that it’s not as easy as that but he’ll check the analysis and see what it says.

While I was there I had a video chat with my niece, her husband and one of her daughters in Canada. That was a lovely surprise, one of the many highlights of my day.

When they finally threw me out we had the pantomime with the minibus but I managed to enter it in a slightly more dignified way than the other day. Leaving it is still the same old circus though.

It was a very exhausted me who made it into my apartment and now that I’ve had my stuffed pepper and written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted. I have all these goodwill messages to answer but that will be tomorrow. I can’t keep my eyes open.

But seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told be "I have a completely irrational fear of negative numbers"
"So what do you do?" I asked him. "Is it a serious problem?"
"It’s extremely serious" he said. "So much so that I’ll stop at nothing to avoid them."

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Sunday 23rd February 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy again today. Not only have I completed everything that I intended, or, as TS McPhee would have it, I’ve DONE EVERYTHING THAT I’VE EVER SET OUT TO DO, I had half an hour to spare too, and that’s not something that happens every day. And how I wish that it did.

That was despite several interruptions too, because I can’t seem to have a day without something happening to knock me right out of my stride.

Things actually set off with a good start because I’d finished my work and all of the dictating quite early. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it was before midnight which means, with my lie-in, that I could have over eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

In theory, at least.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m back with my turbulent sleep patterns, and last night was no exception. And following a Dialysis Day, it was a hot, sweaty night too and I really am going to have to find a solution to this

However, for a change on a Sunday morning, I was still in the bed when the alarm went off at 08:00 and although I can remember times when I have felt less like rising from the bed, there aren’t many of them that have been more difficult than today.

After my trip to the bathroom I came back in here because on a Sunday there’s not much time before the nurse arrives. I made a start on the dictaphone notes (of which there were more than just a few) instead.

In midstream I was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who tended to my legs and then spent a few minutes trying to make his card reader read my health card so that he can invoice the Social Security for his visits. Being someone who is terminally ill, I’m 100% covered for my medical expenses so I don’t have to pay anything.

After he left, I made breakfast, took my medication and carried on reading MY BOOK.

Today we’re discussing dykes and ditches and we’re back on things about which I might know something.

He’s discussing the building of these earth ramparts and ditches that straddle the countryside and I’m not following his logic at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the discussion from a few days ago where he stresses that invaders wouldn’t build earthworks and complicated defences. They would be the work of the beleaguered defenders.

Now when you build a wall, the purpose of the wall is twofold – one is to hide behind it and the second is to stop your enemy crossing it. To build a wall, you need to find the earth, so you would have to dig a ditch from which to extract it. That serves two purposes too – it means that you only need to build the wall half as high, because the other half of height is the depth of the ditch, and it also makes the defence stronger.

So if you are going to dig a ditch, you would dig it in front of the earthen bank, firstly to make the defence stronger, and secondly to keep your enemy farther from the wall. If you had the ditch behind the wall, it would allow your enemy to shelter behind the wall and you wouldn’t be able to come close enough to dislodge them. So the ditch will be the direction from where you are expecting the attackers to arrive.

Having said all of that, if the Cambridge ditches are to the south-west of the dykes, why does he propose, on page 511, that "they may very well represent the work of some of the earliest of the Baltic immigrants, who, as is now believed, began to make settlements on the east coast of Britain".

Why would the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” be building these extravagant earthworks when they are the invaders? Especially when he tells us on page 518 he tells us "none of the finer and more elaborate English dykes contradicts the fact that the civilization of the island has moved always from east to west.", which is, I imagine, what the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” will be doing.

So although I don’t have a clue exactly what his argument is, I shall refrain from saying “neither does he” because you will all be calling me “T Rice Holmes”.

When I’d finished I began to make a small bread roll for lunch. I’ve enjoyed the ones with my soups and the flexibility of an air fryer means that I can serve up one or two without any effort or heating the big oven

Back in here the first task today was to finish the dictaphone notes. I was preparing myself ready to go to dialysis, explaining to Nerina just how painful it was. She didn’t seem to believe it particularly. She thought that I was being a baby. She told me that I ought to do better with it and think more positively. Then she began to discuss operations with me. That’s the kind of thing that makes me squirm and was causing me all kinds of agony in all different parts of my body so I asked her if she would stop talking about it. Eventually she agreed. Later on that night though I was writing out my notes. She asked if I was writing out the story of what had happened early in the day between the two of us. I replied that I was. She replied “that’s fine as long as you don’t write anything personal about me”. I replied “that’s rather difficult to avoid because the fact that you and I were together is something rather personal”.

Actually, I suspect that the nurses are secretly, under their breath, telling me “not to be a baby” but we all have our phobias. But the situation about people in my dreams, I had a discussion about this with someone just recently. I’m not obviously in control of what goes on during the night and so I don’t usually “name and shame” people who appear. It’s bad enough that they know me at all, poor people, without being outed for it. But some people’s association with me is too well-known to be hidden behind a nickname.

There was a plot of waste land opposite out house in Crewe that actually belonged to us. One day I sat down to clear it all out. I removed most of the weeds, bushes and shrubs, and there was a stream that ran through it. When I was upstairs in the bedroom I could see that it was full of big fish swimming around. I thought that it was wonderful. From a horrible, stony limestone surface it gradually began to turn green as I watched it. I thought that with another couple of hours work we’d have a nice lawn over there with a little featured brook running through. I went outside and sorted out a few things. I had an old Ford Thames van … "a Thames 400E" – ed … parked in the street with no tax and no MoT so I pushed that onto there too. In the end it was really looking quite nice and I was quite impressed with it

There actually was a patch of waste land (almost) opposite the family home in Davenport Avenue when we moved there in 1970. And the story of the fish relates presumably to the fish farming from the other day.

Later on I was working in the despatching of the ambulance company. One of the drivers came in towards the end of his shift and said that he had to go to fuel up his taxi ready for the morning. He asked if he could still keep the same car for tomorrow morning. I said that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t but he’d have to let me know what number it is so that I could mark it down on the sheets. He went outside and I heard his car start so I called him up on the radio and asked him to tell me his number but he didn’t reply and drove out. Then I was in the car with him after that. he said that he still had to go to pick up fuel and his car was number 210. I noted “210” on the sheets and he set off. He drove through Crewe down Badger Avenue and up to Bradfield Road at probably 100 mph. Someone pulled out a little further ahead and he said “look at that person there! No respect for anyone else. I whispered to the other passenger and said “said he, driving at 100mph through the town”. We turned onto Bradfield Road and he said “I hope that the petrol station down here is still open”. When we passed over the railway bridge there was a queue of taxis, the biggest queue you have ever seen. he looked at me and said “all of these will be alright for you, Eric” because of course they were Crewe taxis. He swung round and pulled up onto the station with a big line of vehicles but he weaved his way up the inside and went to an empty pump to fuel the car. There was a van next to us. Our driver had a jerry can and went to fill the car and the jerry can. The woman next to us was pumping diesel and it smelt horrible. he said “that’s a disgusting diesel, isn’t it?”. I replied “it’s the low sugar stuff so it doesn’t smoke and clog up your injectors”. he replied “I can’t think why people use it so I repeated that it doesn’t smoke and doesn’t clog up the injectors.

There is actually a petrol station where this one in the dream was situated. But the whole place being saturated in taxis is most unlikely, particularly as many as there were parked around there last night. But despite all that I have said about Crewe in the past, they do stop and fuel up their cars with diesel. There’s not one single driver left in the town today who stops at the stables to fuel up his cab with a nosebag full of oats

There was also a dream where I was with some friends of my own age. maybe we were at school, I don’t know. Someone turned up with some parcels and I wondered what this was all about because it was nearly Christmas. It turned out that it was a girl who had left. She’d sent some of us some presents and one of them was for me. It looked as if it might have been a cake. I thought “this is nice of her”. When I looked at it, it was the wrapping that resembled the cake. When I undid it, it was a board game all about growing your crops, harvesting them and making all kinds of vegetarian and vegan food, which I thought was really wonderful. One of two of the others then received some strange board games from this girl too. I thought “this is a really nice idea. I shall have to try to find where this shop is and investigate it for myself to see what else they had that I could maybe give as presents to other people”.

That game actually sounds quite interesting and I wonder how it could be made to work. There’s an on-line course doing the rounds on OpenLearn about making a game app for a smartphone and I’ve been debating about using my dialysis spells to catch up with a few more short courses. This game app one might be interesting, with this idea as its theme.

I’d been in Northampton and was heading back out towards the motorway with “that” Liz. We’d gone a different way this time to see what was alongside the motorway the other way. We ended up in this town but didn’t recognise it. It was a very modern town with a huge distribution centre for a supermarket, one of the ones in red, right at the end of the main street. We parked up and walked out to have a look round. We asked these two boys the name of the place. They wanted to know why we were here if we didn’t know where we were. We explained that we’d been to Northampton and wanted to go back a different way. He began to ask passers-by “which is the best way from here to reach the motorway?”. He told us that this place was called TW17. He then went to a travel agent’s to ask her where she could send him on a flight while we decided that we’d go for a look around and maybe have a meal. I set off to find the car to park it somewhere better so that we’d have time to eat.

So here’s “that” Liz back yet again. We had someone who sat on a University Committee on which we served who lived in Northampton and we went there a couple of times. But Liz was more of a friend with her partner and she unfortunately sought her release from her difficulties in an extremely tragic way and we never went again. One thing is certain though. None of this took place in Shepperton.

Next task was to watch the football, Stranraer at home to high-flying Stirling Albion, and against the run of play demolish them 3-0 even though a friend of mine from University days plays in goal for Stirling Albion.

And hats off to Robbie Foster. A big, burly, clumsy but quick and powerful centre-forward, out of his depth at this level of football but due to an injury crisis of epic proportions, forced into the side for the last couple of months.

He knows where to be and what to do – he has all of the strikers’ instincts, but he’s just not able to do it. No-one on any football field ever has ever tried harder than him and today he had his reward when he muscled his way into the path of a loose ball and prodded it home

But one day someone is going to give the “man of the match” award to eighteen year-old Josh Lane, forced into goal for the first team for the last few games. A nervous start a few weeks ago but the last few matches he has pulled off some wonderful saves to give his team a fighting chance.

If you are interested in the highlights, you can SEE THEM HERE

Today’s work was to edit a series of radio programme notes that I’d dictated last night, and prepare or complete the programmes.

The first one was a concert that I stumbled upon in Germany in 1981. I’d written the notes the other day and they were the first that I’d dictated.

By the time that I’d finished the editing I was almost four minutes over, but that was part of the plan because there were several short tracks that I could edit out to fit everything down. So one track then went, a pile of applause and other “irrelevances” followed and it all went together quite nicely

There were two “extra tracks” for the two programmes that I’d prepared last Sunday, and I managed to resolve one of them and complete the programme before lunch.

Lunch was a fresh bread roll cut in half and transformed into “cheese and tomato on toast” in the air fryer. And it really was delicious too. I shall do all of this again too.

This afternoon I attacked the remaining programmes and despite stopping to make a full-sized loaf of bread, I finished bang on the moment as the telephone rang. I’m convinced that Rosemary mounted a camera in this apartment when she was last here.

Our chat today was only a small one, just one hour and three minutes. And the most exciting news is that Myrtille the cat goes to sleep under the bed but when Rosemary awakens, the cat is asleep on the foot of the bed. I’ll give it two weeks before they are both curled up together.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one I ever knew ever won a battle with a cat.

After a half-hour break I went to make my pizza. And it’s another one of the “best ever made” pizzas. My loaf was perfection itself too . it all seems to be working fine these days. What I think has been happening is that firstly my technique is improving and secondly, I think that my water measurer is inaccurate. If I use more water than suggested in the recipe it works so much better.

So having done all of my work, I’m having a Day of Rest tomorrow. Well-earned too, I reckon. If only I could work as hard as this all the time.

If I had worked as hard as this when I was at school I probably would have had a different path. I had this discussion with Nerina once and she asked me "what would you have done?"
"I would have been a criminal lawyer" I replied
"How far did you go in your studies?" she asked me.
"Only half-way, I’m afraid" I said. "I still have to do the ‘lawyer’ part."

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Saturday 22nd February 2025 – I WAS BACK …

… here early this evening which made a lovely change. Mainly because I set out earlier to the dialysis centre. The taxi was well in advance. At least the driver sent me a message to say he would be here early, which is always a good idea.

Unfortunately though, I couldn’t emulate that last night going to bed. That night or two where I really cracked on and had things done early seems to be just an unexpected flash in the pan and I can’t repeat that, much as I would like to.

By the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I needed to do it was well after 23:00 and even later by the time I went to sleep in my nice clean bedding, having found the pillow case that had somehow gone missing from the wash the other week.

It was a turbulent night of the kind that I had when I was going through that cycle a few weeks ago and it was a very weary, bedraggled me that crawled out from under the covers when the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I remembered the sample that they need at the dialysis centre but forgot to shave and change my clothes for fresh ones. Emilie the Cute Consultant won’t be too impressed with me if she’s there today

The kitchen was next, and all of the medication. There’s a lot less than there used to be when I was going through that crisis six months ago, but it’s still an impressive quantity all the same. I wish that I could turn back the clock before my kidneys gave out and I was on just four per day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night as well. I fell asleep quite quickly and found myself in the doctor’s discussing phallic symbols with him, I’m not sure exactly why but I wasn’t asleep very long and that’s hardly surprising.

Strangely enough I can’t remember dictating that – or even being awake at all at that particular moment. I thought that I would have remembered something about phallic symbols if it had been going on in my head. It’s not the kind of thing that you forget.

And then Nerina came round to my place of work last night. There was some kind of talk about a Trade Union meeting taking place in Manchester where the Trade Union Executive Committee was having its quarterly meeting. Someone was giving an account. They were talking about how they completed so much work, how it was sometimes quite emotional and how wen everyone went out into breakout rooms the observers were shared out between the rooms so that they could go to see. This person who had been on the Monday was extremely impressed. I was sitting tight up in a corner with Nerina. She turned and whispered to me in my ear “next time we ought to go to see this meeting”. I asked her if she really wanted to go because it was not something to which she had shown any particular interest before, but she was quite adamant about it so I decided that I’d make a few enquiries and see how we could go there. But I was actually with her and the two of us were so close together and so tight up in the corner.

That’s the kind of dream that brought back a few happy memories of former times. As for Trades Unions, I served on the Executive Committee of the Students’ Union at University and held a few other posts as well, such as Chair of the branch of students of Northern Europe. Those were the days after I’d taken early retirement from work and was looking for something to do. However I went back to work later, first covering for someone on maternity leave at General Electric’s training school in Brussels and then at that weird American company where I met Alison

And then it was my birthday so I had invited a lot of people round to my apartment, mostly friends from the University. They were all ages and they really were a bizarre bunch. Then at the end of the night I settled down in the armchair to go to sleep. Liz who was there as well, she settled down in the other armchair to go to sleep. Various other people settled down in all kinds of various other settees and chairs and prepared to spend the night. First thing was that I had to get up to go to the bathroom and come back down again. Liz came with me but she disappeared off somewhere. Gradually one by one other people began to disappear too. I began to wonder where they were going. There was a group of two people sitting on the sofa who suddenly began to awaken and eat chocolates again. A third person went along to sit on the sofa and join in with them. I asked them “is the party starting up again?”.

“That” Liz (not “this” Liz) has featured in several dreams just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. In a fortnight’s time it will be sixteen years since she died. She came from the North-East of England and served on the same University committees as I did. As she couldn’t drive, she used to travel with me from one meeting to the next. Back in 2006 we were on our way from a meeting of the Disabled Students in Bristol to another meeting in Gosforth when we stopped for a meal in a pub near Oswestry, when into the dining room came the very same girlfriend from school with whom I was chatting yesterday. And despite it being 35 years later, you could have put her in her school uniform and she would have looked exactly the same as she did back then at school

Finally, In that dream … "which dream?" – ed … there was a moment when I was in the office. I was wandering around outside in all of the buildings that were there. I came across a woman who was walking around. I was the only person in the office at that time so I wondered who she was. She wondered who I was too so I told her which building I was in and asked her if she knew which one it was. She said that “it’s the one right down there at the entrance” so I imagined that she did. I ended up walking down a corridor where I saw someone else. Then I came into my room where everyone else was. I sat down on the sofa and then had to stand up, but suddenly realised that I couldn’t stand up sitting on the sofa. I had to go through all kinds of strange manoeuvres like leaning my back against the wall trying to push up with my ankles so that I was in an upright position in order that I might be able to stand up and move

That is actually my big fear – falling over, because I can’t pick myself back upright again if I do. When I fell over in an Underground station in Montréal in 2022 a couple of passers-by had to pick me up. It was difficult then, and I have even less control over my muscles today than I did back then. As for the “office”, the image that I have in my head is the hospital in Paris, which is in fact a collection of individual buildings on a campus.

There was more to it that all of that too, but you don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse was later than usual today and didn’t hang around at all. He didn’t even have time to ring the doorbell from downstairs to warn me that he was here. He was in and out in a matter of seconds.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I could make breakfast and carry on reading MY BOOK

Today we are discussing medieval fishponds and the delights of catching, cooking and eating a nice fresh bream “in its jacket”. In my opinion, he’s welcome to it. Even when I used to eat fish, oily, pungent fish like that was not to my taste at all.

Back in here I sorted out the bills that I needed to pay, dealt with all of that, and then finished off my Welsh homework so that I could have a day off to relax on Monday.

Some time round about then I had the ‘phone call from the driver who is going to take me to Avranches. Would it be OK to come round fifteen minutes earlier?

“No problem” I replied. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish (in theory) and I sent a brief note to my cleaner.

Just as I finished my homework she put in an appearance. Perfect timing, that. She sorted out my anaesthetic patches and then I had to wait for the taxi.

We had to pick up that woman who lives at the back of the dialysis centre and we arrived at the centre at about 13:05 which was rather early, because they don’t open the doors until 13:15.

For a change I was second to be dealt with, which suited me fine. I could settle down and watch the football.

A real bottom-of-the-table clash between Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd, and it looked it too. Y Drenewydd were quite poor but Aberystwyth were dreadful and on this form they’ll find the second tier rather tough going. They look like a team that is already resigned to its fate.

The manager, interviewed afterwards, didn’t pull any punches about his team’s lack of fight but the problem lies with the club. Four years ago they had quite a strong team but a whole raft of players left and the ones who have come in haven’t been able to replace the quality and it’s been downhill ever since.

Unfortunately I fell asleep after that for a few minutes and then carried on tidying up and updating the travelling laptop.

Early in, early out which is good news and I was back here by 18:45, and I wish that I could do that every trip instead of some of these ridiculously late returns home that we have had.

Tea was a burger on a bap, some red-hot chili burgers that I found in the freezer. Certainly different, and quite enjoyable, especially with baked potato and vegan salad, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And it’s the first time in well over a week that I’ve felt like eating a proper meal.

So now I have things to dictate and then I’m off to bed. Loads of editing tomorrow, bread making and probably a few other things too, if I feel like it. But that’s not always obvious at this time of night.

But seeing as we have been talking about that meal in that pub near Oswestry … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told a little joke and the ex let out a sigh.
"Ohh Eric" she said. "You told me that joke when we were at school!"
"Yes that’s as may be" I replied. "I don’t change the material. I just change the audience"
"That’s why Eric likes travelling with me" said “that” Liz. "I have such a dreadful memory that he tells me a joke one day, then tells me again the next day and because I’ve already forgotten it I hear it again for the first time and laugh once more."

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Thursday 20th February 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… the other day when I prophesied how I would be feeling today after dialysis. Not only have I gone back to square one, I have fallen off the edge of the board. I can’t be doing with too many more of these dialysis sessions.

However, I have to carry on for the rest of my life and if it goes like this for much longer, that won’t be too far away.

Last night I was in bed rather later than previous, but not at an unreasonable hour. It was before midnight, at least. However we were back at the awakening shortly after midnight and staying awake for several hours.

And even if I did manage to go back to sleep, I was awake again at about 05:50 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about. No point in staying in bed when I have things to do.

We had the usual routine of bathroom and kitchen, and then back here, the dictaphone was next.

There was a group of us singing that Supertramp song “Schooldays” while there was a radio presenter talking about presenting the song, about what was actually behind it. A couple of people who were with us were quite young and obviously wouldn’t have remembered the song when it came out originally but this was one of those things where I was quite young too so it must have been the first time that I heard it. It was one of these anthem-type singers and there was a couple of other people there too but I can’t remember very much about what they were doing.

SCHOOLDAYS is actually a song by Gentle Giant, but let’s not be carried away by the minutiae. It’s impressive that I could even remember the song seeing as it’s one of the Gentle Giant songs that I can live without.

There were then two girls had stowed away in an aeroplane. They had been arrested and imprisoned there while the ‘plane took off to fly them home. There was a problem there with one of the engines on the ‘plane and the crew was busy doing some work on it in mid-flight. Under cover of the noise that the crew was making to hit this engine with a hammer the girls were chiselling away at the side of the aeroplane to make a hole ready for them to escape when the ‘plane landed. Suddenly the hole gave way and one of the girls was sucked out in the air pressure. She disappeared into nowhere. The other girl was left there just looking at it. She suddenly thought “well perhaps maybe this is the moment for her to escape”. She ended up next falling out of the ‘plane but her clothing was hooked onto a jagged edge and she was there suspended outside the ‘plane, thinking “this is wonderful, I’m flying! How marvellous it is!”. Suddenly her clothing gave way and she cascaded out. She was immediately in a panic about this but realising that there was nothing that she could do she just sat back and admired the view from 30,000 feet. She could see that she was about to hit the water on the edge of the coast just off the beach. The water couldn’t have been very deep. She hit the water and managed to walk away. She was rescued and taken to a local Air Force base where she broke down and had an emotional crisis. She could never concentrate on her career on the Air Force again. She resigned four or five times, her marriage had fallen to pieces with her being in such an emotional state but of course she was lucky to be alive.

Bizarrely, I can see them even now as they fell from the ‘plane. I was a few hundred feet underneath them, looking up. And I can still see the second one as she fell and hit the water. And she wouldn’t walk away from that. The water is a lot harder than you might think, especially if you were to fall from 30,000 feet. I’m not surprised that she had an emotional outburst or two subsequently.

Nerina and I had gone on holiday again, driving around the UK looking at different places. We’d ended up in New York driving around. Then I ended up walking around somewhere. I’d seen an old disused railway line that used to run down to the port so when I was back in New York a couple of years later I went to look for this railway line and began to follow it. I had to cross a street and this street was so, so wide that it took me an age to cross over. There was a lorry coming in the distance and I thought that I would never ever reach the other side in time before the lorry would arrive. It was miles. On the other side I saw a strange-looking building so I went to have a look. As I put my head inside the door a voice said “don’t stand there, come on in”. I couldn’t see anyone who had said anything so I went in. It was like a small community centre with a table tennis table, some comfortable chairs and a couple of annexes. There was a coffee bar so I ordered myself a coffee and went to sit down. Back in the car later on Nerina was feeling tired or something. I was listening to music. She said “you couldn’t put music on your headphones, could you? On the car ‘phone put a track of complete and utter silence so that I could sleep?”. I thought “why not?” so I was busy trying to programme the telephone in the car that it would play the longest possible track which would be called “Silence”.

Crossing this street resembles somewhere where I’ve been in the past, although the road was nothing like as wide as this. I’m wondering if it might have been NEW BERN where the railway does actually run down the centre of the main street. However, in this dream there was a very big green park on the far side of the road.

The nurse was late today. I recon that he was on his bike because he brought his rucksack inside with him. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone so that I could press on.

Breakfast and MY BOOK were next. But as far as the book goes, I didn’t read it for long. I had too much to do and in any case, the events of modern times are not as interesting as what I’ve been reading to date, in my opinion.

Yesterday, I said that I’d catch up on correspondence, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I reckon that I’m as up-to-date as I have been so if you are awaiting a reply and you haven’t had it, let me know. The chances are that I’ve forgotten or overlooked it.

Having dealt with that I pushed on and attacked the Welsh homework. It would be nice if I could finish that before Monday, then I can have Monday morning off which would be a nice change.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and then I had to wait for the taxi. And although it was a little in advance, it made no difference because it was running late for another passenger’s appointment at the clinic on the other side of Avranches so I had the round trip

Dialysis was about as painful as normal, and I had the pleasure of the company of the unsociable doctor today. He’s wondering if I have an infection so they took a blood sample and on Saturday I have to take in …. errr … another type of sample.

The Social Security regulations are beginning to bite too. We have a new patient in dialysis today. He lives out in the sticks and used to go to St-Lô but the Sécu reckons that it’s closer for him to go to Avranches. So here he is.

Late in, I was late out too. It was my usual Saturday evening driver who brought me home, pretty much in silence too. I’m not sure why he’s suddenly gone quiet but these days he doesn’t have much at all to say.

Climbing up here was a struggle, given how I’m feeling. And tea was a handful of pasta and veg in a tomato sauce. I don’t have the morale, the courage or the energy to do much else.

So even though it’s really early, I’m off to bed, hoping that the sleep will do me good and I’ll feel better in the morning. That would really be nice, but I doubt it.

But seeing as we have been talking about archaeology … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once asked me "why are archaeologists so popular on these dating sites?"
"I’ve no idea" I replied
"Its because they spend most of their time dating these ancient and unusual ruins"

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Wednesday 19th February 2025 – STRANGELY ENOUGH …

… last night was almost an identical carbon-copy replica of much of the previous one.

Awakening shortly after midnight and not going to sleep for several hours afterwards. There’s something bizarre happening right now and I wish I knew exactly what it was. or maybe I don’t. Some questions are best left unanswered.

One of the questions to which I wish that I did have the answer is “how come I finished so early last night?”. It was like back in the old days back on the farm when I would finish everything by 21:30 and then watch a video or a DVD until bedtime.

In fact haven’t seen a film for many weeks, the last time being halfway through LORD OF THE RINGS. But then again, these days I am far more engrossed in my reading matter and it’s probably a more healthy pursuit anyway.

So even catching up on a couple of missed football matches (like the local derby of Llay Miners’ Welfare v Gresford Athletic in the Welsh Second Tier) I was still in bed way before 23:00. And it’s been a good while since I’ve been able to say that.

It seemed to be an age before I fell asleep but it can’t have been that long because at 00:20 I was back awake again. Wide awake too, to such an extent that at one point I was actually up and about. But I soon thought better of it and went back to bed, where I did finally manage to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and rising up from my bed was quite the struggle. It really was touch-and-go for beating the second alarm.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen to take my medication and notice that I’d forgotten to fill the water carafe and put it in the fridge before going to bed last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I alighted from the bus at Shavington, at the “Sugar Loaf” and began to thumb a lift to take me down to the family home. Eventually, a strange three-wheeled van went past, something similar to a Reliant but with a kind-of fastback rear with two aerials on the back sticking out of the roof. It shuddered to a halt just round the corner so I wandered round there and there was a woman. When I opened the door to see who it was, there was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat carrying a huge bunch of flowers which protruded onto the passenger seat side of the car. I asked her if she could take me to Vine Tree Avenue. She said yes, if I didn’t mind a bunch of flowers on my head. So we set out, and she said “when I saw you there earlier you had a Value Village bag in your hand. What was in it?”. “Probably some flour” I replied. So we arrived and I alighted from the car with my things. There were a few people standing around at the top of the garden. We had a friendly chat. I’d put my things down on the floor while I was talking so then instead of picking up my things I kicked them down the hill. There was a jumper and a bag of something or other that might have been the flour. I was also (…carrying a mug of hot…) tea. I was halfway through kicking these things down the hill when I thought “this is going to be dangerous because if I miss my kick like this I’m going to end up on my face with this hot cup of tea all over me”.

If I’m going to hitch-hike for a trip that I could walk in five minutes I’m clearly doing something wrong. But Value Village is the Canadian equivalent of a charity shop. They don’t have isolated charity shops scattered around here and there in the town like in the UK but one big one where the different-coloured price labels indicate which charity supplied the goods. If you look in my collection of books and CDs you’ll see plenty of Value Village labels. There’s stuff available in Canada that never made it over into Europe and which turns up in a Value Village.

As for me being forewarned about doing myself a mischief, I wish that it was like that in real life. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make mistakes. I just learn a lot of lessons and for some of them I pay a very expensive price.

The nurse was almost human today, and that makes a change. If he keeps going like this he might even become normal by the end of his spell on duty. But he did confirm a rumour that I have heard before – that they could well be opening a dialysis centre in Granville. That would save me a good hour every day at least.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We’ve finished the Saxons, passed over the Norse voyagers and moved into the Norman era.

So far, there has been nothing particularly controversial, although I did have a smile when I read his remark that "the Saxons were not by habit builders of military earthworks at all. At their first coming they seem to have made few or none : theirs was not a military invasion but an immigration, and one need no more look for extensive traces of earthworks to mark it than one looks for them in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers of the New England States."

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our way down to South Carolina and Rhys’s wedding in 2005 we stopped off at ROANOKE ISLAND and went for a look around at the fort (or, rather, its site) of the very first English colonists of North America that the “Lost Colonists” built some forty years before the Pilgrim Fathers.

He further states that "Earthworks, except where they mark a deliberate military occupation like that of the Romans or of the Normans, are the work not of the people who attack, but of those attacked." which will certainly come as news to whoever wasted all that money building all of those stone castles in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth Century.

Back in here afterwards I started on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off – at 17:30, would you believe, I’d chosen all of the music, tracked down that which I didn’t haven edited, remixed, paired and segued it and even written all of the notes. If that’s not a good day’s work I don’t know what is.

There were several breaks too in the middle of all of that. No lunch, but still a break for the lunchtime medication.

Next was my cleaner and a shower, and much as I need a great deal of motivation in order to make myself climb into the bathtub (roll on when I have a walk-in shower downstairs) I really do feel better for it.

Finally, there was the disgusting drink break. I seem to have quite a collection of these disgusting drinks right now. There’s the anti-potassium stuff and then this protein drink. All of this medication really is a torture.

Having finished work early I relaxed for a couple of hours as a little reward to myself, well-earned, in my opinion, and then went to make tea. A left-over curry with naan bread. Only a half-size curry but I still had to battle with it to finish it all, but the naan was delicious.

So I’ll be off to bed and home for some sleep tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to have a correspondence morning before I head off to dialysis. And see what they have to tell me about anything.

But yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were talking … "well, one of us was" – ed … about cutting your losses and starting afresh.
A few years ago I was talking to Nerina about that.
Her response was "I suppose that that explains it"
"Explains what?" I asked
"Why your parents had more children after you" she answered

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Tuesday 18th February 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little better today. I can tell that because earlier this evening I began to look forward to eating something. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have any lunch today, but then again I’ve not had lunch for a few days either and I’ve still not felt all that hungry in the evening.

Even though I was late going to bed last night, I didn’t hang around after I’d finished work and was soon tucked up in my little cot where I was asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though. At 00:39 (I checked the time) I was wide awake. And awake for quite some time as well but I’d obviously gone back to sleep at some point because I awoke again, this time at 05:44 (I checked the time again).

Despite everything that I tried I couldn’t go back to sleep this time and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about. I seem to be making a habit of this.

After a wash and good scrub up, I went into the kitchen and sorted out the medication. While I was there I checked the loaf that I’d baked in the air fryer the previous evening.

This one is yet another candidate for the best ever loaf of bread that I have ever made – even better than the previous best. So much so in the sense that it had risen so much that I had difficulty lifting it out of its mould.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There wasn’t much on there, but after the wretched night that I’d had, I was surprised that there was anything at all. I was dreaming about the Middle Ages and the knights on horseback etc with some kind of fortifications in the centre of something going back to that particular period but again, when I went to reach for the dictaphone the story evaporated and I could hardly remember a single thing about what I had been dreaming of up until that moment.

Judging by the timestamp, that was at the first awakening at 00:39. I’ve no idea to what this dream relates but my book’s author Arthur Hadrian Allcroft is nowhere near approaching anything vaguely near the Age of Chivalry.

Later on I was doing some 3D modelling during the night based on some human figures. I was trying to make something extremely lifelike and I must have spent hours at this dream just looking at this one particular figure trying to make all of the parameters exactly correct but it just didn’t seem to want to go. I stood there looking at this feeling that the more I did, the more it was all going wrong.

That’s a situation that I know only too well. quite often trying to amend something simply seems to make it worse and I’ll end up with something irrecoverable. There have been more than just a few occasions in the past where I’ve ended up scrapping some work and starting again from scratch. I went on an on-line course several years ago to perfect 3D animation but that was not really one of my more startling successes, to be honest. I don’t really have the patience for work like that.

The nurse was early today. He’s heard that it has been suggested that I go four times per week to dialysis. He’s a former dialysis nurse and he reckons in his experience that I should resist at all costs. He’s not surprised that I’ve been feeling so ill after all of the extended hours and rapid pumping just recently.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

Our author tells us on page 382 that "neither record nor tradition speaks of any walls of Ida or fortresses of Penda, and the name of Alfred himself attaches to no earthworks such as are claimed by Caesar, by the Danes, or by the Devil. Even the arbitrary imagination which allotted all ” camps,” round, rectangular, and oval, to Briton and Roman and Dane severally made no provision for the Saxon. ^"

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of months ago we read the “mushroom report” of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Club and I quoted a discussion that had been reported there during one of their field outings, where at least one person claimed that some of the Iron Age hillforts around the Clun area of Shropshire were Saxon in origin.

Regardless of the fact that his opinion was dismissed at the time and subsequent events have shown that they indeed were not Saxon, Allcroft’s dismissal of “arbitrary imagination” making “no provision for the Saxon” is clearly unjustified.

Back in here I began to prepare for my Welsh lesson. What with one thing and another, at the dialysis centre I hadn’t done as much as I would have liked to have done so I was rather running behind.

However, we didn’t go very far into our course today. We’re running slightly ahead so we ended up having several very long discussions. I’m sure that we are shunted off into breakout rooms in little groups so that the tutor can go off to have a coffee.

That was the same with afternoon sports at school. When I learned subsequently of how much sports coaching children at other schools received, we were simply turned out onto the sports pitch and left to our own devices. I bet that the sports teachers disappeared inside for a smoke and a coffee too.

On the whole, the lesson passed really well and I was impressed. One of the things to which we had to listen was a television programme about sports for disabled people, and answer twelve questions. I really struggled with this but in fact not only did I come out top, but I even picked up a nuance that the tutor missed. I might not be doing too good overall with this course, but years of listening to these football commentaries is improving my aural skills.

That’s right, people. If I have my own trumpet I’m darn well going to blow it.

After the lesson was over I didn’t feel like any food so I had a relax for a while. Several whiles actually. I wasn’t in any hurry and I ought to be able to relax every now and again.

Later on though, I made a start on the next radio programme. This one is going to be complicated, and not helped by the fact that I don’t have to hand much of the music that I need. Even so, that won’t prevent me from planning it out and writing the notes. It’ll be a nice job to attack tomorrow, I reckon.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg. Not much of anything, but it was all the same nice to eat something that I enjoyed. The date bread and soya dessert was quite nice too, although the bread is too well-cooked on the outside. I was hoping that it would be something like a fig roll that I used to like. Never mind – Rome wasn’t built in a day.

For a change, I’ve finished everything quite early. I suppose that I may as well go to bed and try for a good sleep, and see how I feel in the morning. We’ll probably find that my health will pick up, only to be knocked back again in the dialysis centre when I go back on Thursday.

But while we’re on the subject of medieval knights and the Age of Chivalry … "well, one of us is" – ed … a few weeks ago I mentioned the story of the stately home just outside Crewe where a major pharmaceutical company has its laboratory.
With the big square tower on the corner, it’s ideal for these jousting tournaments that take place, and one of the regional heats of the North-West Area Jousting Competition was held there recently.
A few days ago I talked to one of my friends in the town. "How did it go?" I asked him
"Overall, very well" he said. "But the competitor from Crewe was disqualified"
"Why was that?" I asked him.
"Apparently he slew the damsel in distress and rescued the fiery dragon."

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Monday 17th February 2025 – I AM DEFINITELY …

… sickening for something, and it’s going to be tremendous, I reckon. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when I am off my food then you know that I’m ill, and this evening I struggled even to eat a kiddies’ portion of food

This burst of energy that I had yesterday, of course it was far too good to last but at least I made the most of it while I had it.

After I finished doing my night-time chores I watched Stranraer beat Elgin City by a goal that, if it had been scored in the Premier League, YOU WOULD BE WATING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES. It really was that good.

It was after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and went to bed, ready for a good sleep. At 04:40 I gave up the struggle and raised myself from the Dead. No point lying in bed being unable to move or unable to do anything, drenched in perspiration.

Instead, I went into the bathroom, had a wash and a shave, washed my undies and then went into the kitchen to have my medication and to have a little think

Back in here, then as a matter of form I checked the dictaphone but there won’t be anything on it if I haven’t been asleep. Instead, I found a few things to occupy my time, forgetting maybe the most important, which is to check the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend.

And that reminds me – I hope that you enjoyed the one that was broadcast last weekend. You won’t hear that anywhere else.

Isabelle the Nurse was early, which was a surprise. It’s her last day today before her oppo takes over so I expected her to be snowed under with blood tests and injections and so on. But apparently not.

Nevertheless, it was only a brief chat and then she cleared off, leaving me to my breakfast and MY NEW BOOK.

Our author is at it again. On page 351 he tells us "There was therefore no necessity for any high road leading to, or even very near to, the villa. A road of some sort there naturally was, but probably not often a high road. … The existence or non-existence of a Roman road hard by has little to do with the distribution of Roman villas"

On the following page he tells us "It is exceptional for the vestigia of villas to be unearthed save at long distances apart, but exceptions do occur, and naturally some parts of the island were more sought after than others. Around the shrunken remnants of Somerton, once the capital of Somersetshire, lie or lay the ruins of a dozen or more of villas … all served more or less immediately by the road from Ilchester through Street and Walton"

Back in here I began my Welsh homework and hadn’t quite completed the first half of it that I had intended to do when my cleaner stuck her head in the door ready to deal with my anaesthetic patches

After she left I waited, and waited quite a while for my taxi to arrive. Today it was the 12-seater minibus for just me and someone ese, and he left halfway through the journey at the Aqua-gym.

And the ambulance nearly left me behind too because we had another pantomime with me trying to climb into the vehicle. Eventually I managed it, only to have another one as I tried to climb back out again.

But there is something that I noticed – and that is my body instinctively rejects certain methods which, on reflection, I know will fail and instinctively tries to look for solutions which, on reflection, I know will succeed. That’s the strangest thing about all of this.

Hours late for my appointment, the system of “what doesn’t go in won’t be there to come out” seems to be working because there wasn’t as much as usual that needed to be removed. I was hoping that they could still leave the machine turned up full so that the process would be completed quicker and I could go home sooner, but apparently it needs to be apportioned equally over the allotted time.

The doctor in charge of the unit came to see me today. He didn’t mention this extra session, so neither did I. However I did tell him about my health problems right now and so he told me that if I bring in my details from Paris for him to read, he’ll contact the hospital there to compare notes.

My nurse today was Julie the Cook so we had a good chat about baking and she showed me a photo of the cake that she had baked for her birthday the other week

So after another painful four hours they let me out and my taxi, a normal one this time, was waiting to take me back home.

We did however have a complication in that my phone hadn’t fully-charged during the night. The battery was now flat so I couldn’t warn my cleaner that I was on my way home. Consequently she had a desperate scramble to come downstairs to meet me.

The climb back up here was agonising in this current state of health, and I collapsed into a chair on arrival. I couldn’t loiter around because I had bread to make and then to sort out tea.

Luckily the pepper wasn’t very big today so with a handful of pasta and another handful of frozen veg that was all that I managed. And that was a struggle too.

So now I’m off to bed in the home that I’ll be able to sleep, and maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.

Some hope though. It reminds me of how I was feeling a few years ago and just happened to bump into someone who I hadn’t seen for ages.
"Eric" he exclaimed. "What a surprise to see you. Someone told me that you had died"
"Well, you can see for yourself that I am not"
"I’m not too sure about that" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I know the guy who told me" he said "and he’s much more reliable than you."

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Saturday 15th February 2025 – I REALLY AM …

… off my food. And that can only mean one thing – and that is that I am going to be ill. It’s quite simply not normal for me to be off my food.

That’s something that I can well do without because I have far too many other things going on right now to worry about that.

Sleeping is one of them. I was not unreasonably late in bed last night after I’d finished what I had to do, but now for the howevermenyeth night in succession I could count the minutes of sleep on one hand

Once more, tossing and turning in a perspiration-laden semi-comatose state waiting for something to happen. I might have been asleep at some point but I was wide awake when the alarm went off, actually planning on raising myself from the Dead..

In vast contrast to the other more recent nights, I was wide-awake too on leaving the bed and I was thinking “this can’t be correct at all. I can’t have had as little sleep as this over the last few days and still feel rather sprightly (well, comparatively sprightly)”

Not just washing myself this morning but washing my clothes too. It’s Saturday so the night attire and undies go into the sink for a good scrub around so that I can keep on top of the wash. With so few clothes in this apartment, that’s important.

In the kitchen I had the medication, including the sunlight solution, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No Zero, no Castor, regrettably. They have probably gone for a rest to prepare themselves for the next time that I’ll need them

Instead there was a young person at home on its own in the house so it decided that it would go to have a shower. As it was stripping off its clothes and putting on a dressing gown ready to go into the bathroom it noticed that the window in the dining room was slowly sliding open and could see a shadow outside. The person screamed. Whatever it was outside also screamed and ran off screaming. A couple of minutes later the parent turned up with a small child in tow, obviously scared to death. What had happened was this this was the younger sibling of this other child that had come home and because it couldn’t open the door it decided to climb in through the window. But just at that moment its elder sibling had seen it while in a state of deshabille, had screamed and the younger sibling had run off to find its parent. The mother ordered an enquiry about who hit who and who screamed at who and who did what. In the end the truth was brought out but no-one claimed to have hit anyone else although someone claimed to be hit. In the end the mother took an SD memory card and went to download the information onto the SD card but the child who had told the story wanted it left where it was rather than moved and was then having to find a way to think of either distracting its mother or trying to persuade its mother not to do it.

Putting in an SD Card in order to extract a memory – if only it were that easy. It would save me a lot of time but it doesn’t really happen like that. I’m impressed that I’m dreaming in French though, even if I don’t have a clue as to what this dream might be referring.

And then I walked into a pawn shop last night and was having a look around. I noticed on the wall there were two really long boxes with a well-known make of amplifier written on it, a bass amp. The boxes were bent, implying that their contents inside were bent, but the price was €269:00 for one of the amplifiers. I knew that that probably wasn’t a tenth of the price that it was worth because these were proper stadium amplifiers of the type that you would have on the stage in a stadium when you are playing bass to thousands of people. I went and had a look and opened one of the boxes. It was certainly bent but it was exactly what I was thinking. I thought that maybe I was onto something here. I asked if they had a bass guitar that I could use. They said that it comes with a bass guitar and produced a very bent and battered Fender clone. It was completely blank of any name so I wondered “it couldn’t possibly be … could it?”. I had a look at the pickups and they were called “Mercury” which didn’t ring any particular bell and any importance. Of course as soon as I opened all of this everyone began to crowd around wishing that they had seen it first but I wasn’t going to let this lot go out of my hands without some kind of a fight.

This of course relates to the Genz Benz combo amp that I found in a pawn shop in Ottawa when I’d gone in there with my cousin Sandra to look at something else. And the Jaguar bass came from a pawn shop in Montréal. I used to have hours of endless funs in pawn shops in Canada, but not in the USA. The hundreds of guns on open display in an American pawn shop is enough to put the willies up anyone

Finally, I awoke again, right in the middle of this next dream and lost half of it but it was something to do with increasing the size of the keyboard by having two new characters to increase the scope of names that were available but I can’t remember any more about it than this. I really did awaken too, and it was all of this that was going on when the alarm went off.

Isabelle the Nurse was in another big rush today. Plenty of blood tests to carry out today. Yes, her oppo is back in a day or two so everyone is having them done right now beforehand.

After she left I made breakfast (I did have breakfast) and read MY NEW BOOK.

And never have I been so confused as he probably was either. On page 291 he tells us that "the habit of accidentally losing things is no special peculiarity of modern days, and a Roman was as liable to lose his purse as any other man. He might lose also his hunting-gear, brooch, ring, or pocket-knife, and the chance discovery of any single article of such personal character is no more proof of a ” site” than it would be to-day."

However, when talking about a site at Masham in North Yorkshire, he tells us that "it is absurdly called a Danish Camp in the vicinity. The late Mr. Lukis had a statuette of Diana in silver, 8 inches high, which was ploughed up in the field next to the camp."

So why is the statuette of a Roman goddess, not actually at the site but “in the field next to” it, proof or disproof of anything?

Back in here I had bills to pay. It’s that time of the year again and I can’t see why one particular bill, a failed monthly standing order, comes up every month as regular as clockwork when, each time I go to pay it on-line, the payment order automatically inserts the bank account details that they say I haven’t supplied?

My cleaner appeared on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and to help me prepare my bag, and then stayed and chatted for a while until the ambulance turned up.

Yes, an ambulance. Saturday is a strange day when timing goes out of the window, and an ambulance dropping people in Granville and its next pick-up back in Avranches means that I don’t have to wait as long as otherwise I might.

My way of clambering into the rear has them all bewildered though and although it is their natural instinct to try to help me, there’s only one way that it works and only I know that particular way.

Leaving the vehicle is just as bewildering but it does work and I was eventually safe and sound in my bed.

Connection wasn’t as painful as some have been, but once the anaesthetic wore off then I knew all about it, to be sure.

They took a blood test today, the miserable doctor came round to ask what he could do for me (“nothing, thanks”) and then I was left pretty much alone. I revised my Welsh and spent the rest of the time doing some research into something that I had wanted to do for a while

When I was unplugged the taxi to take me home was already here. It was the driver who usually brings me home on a Saturday but once again, he wasn’t as talkative as he used to be. I have the impression that this is really his usual self and when he was more talkative, it was to probe me about some of the other drivers.

My cleaner was waiting again and she watched as a very weary me stumbled upstairs and collapsed into a chair.

A small tea, write my notes, then I’ll do my dictating and go to bed. I hope that I’ll feel better in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about tha ambulance … "well, one of us has" – ed … they were telling me that they had taken someone from last night’s football to the Accident department because of an injury that he had suffered during the game.
When he saw the sign he said "not there! not there! You’re taking me to the wrong place!"
"What do you mean?" they asked
"That basket back there who did this – he did it on purpose!"

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Friday 14th February 2025 – HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY …

… to everyone who didn’t have anyone to send a Valentine’s Card to them.

Not that I am in that bracket, of course, … "he said, smirking" – ed … because at 00:01 precisely on Valentine’s Day morning a Valentine’s Card fell into my electronic inbox. You know who you are of course, and so do I, and a big thank-you to you because it cheered me up immensely. I imagine though that with all of your connections, you weren’t short of too many

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s not true in my case because all the night did was to harden my resolve.

And my resolve is just about the only thing that will harden overnight, Valentine’s Cards notwithstanding, these days. Times are definitely sad.

But what I have decided is that I am not going for a fourth session of dialysis. I have to draw the line somewhere otherwise I’ll be living there permanently. Not only that, my cleaner has her own life and a business to run. She can’t plan all of her affairs around the caprices of the dialysis centre.

Consequently, I foresee a major argument breaking out on Monday afternoon. We shall see.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to brood on my situation last night because this was yet another night where I had almost nothing in the way of sleep. Tossing and turning and perspiring all the way through the night with just the occasional flash of sleep, an odd five minutes here and there. How many nights is this now?

When the alarm went off I was however asleep, and once more it was a desperate struggle to fight my way out of bed before the second alarm. And having said the other day that I had never felt less like doing it, I now wish to withdraw that remark.

After a good wash I went into the kitchen to take my medication and then came back in here to find that the computer wouldn’t fire up. Well, it would fire up, but it wouldn’t launch the software operating system.

That’s twice now that it’s done that after a major update, and the last thing that I felt like this morning was to be playing about in the BIOS

When Isabelle the Nurse came round I told her of my woes. Her response was "but you have to" However, when I asked her to give me one good reason why, she was stuck for an answer. Instead, she was out of the apartment like a ferret up a trouser leg.

My appetite is still diminished but I made breakfast anyway and then went to read MY NEW BOOK

We’re discussing water supply at some of these camps that have no obvious source, and he is relying heavily on the presence of dew ponds, which is a somewhat precarious way to go about things.

He also mentions that "It is surprising how little drink is really needed even by modern man when he has perforce to stint himself; probably his Neolithic predecessor required still less, not merely for climatic reasons, but also by habit.^" Whether that’s the case or not, I’m intrigued to know what he thinks are the reasons why Neolithic Man had so many pot-boilers, clearly showing signs of heavy use, lying around if he didn’t have much water in which to drop them.

Back in here, once I’d finished playing with the computer and persuaded it to fire up, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise there were actually some to transcribe.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were going though some kind of crisis similar to this one a few months ago, Castor appeared in the night and stood silently at the foot of my bed as if watching over me to keep me safe from harm. Last night, not only was Zero’s father there again, so this time was Zero. I’d been doing something with someone but I can’t remember who. It was quite late in the evening so we walked round to their house for some kind of reason. Zero was there with her parents. We talked, or, rather, I didn’t. The guy with me talked to Zero’s father but I was doing my very best not to fall asleep because I was so absolutely tired. As the evening drew on I felt even more and more tired. During this whole dream I just didn’t even say a word to anyone. I just listened to the conversation that was taking place. At the end of it we both set out to go back to from where we had come.

It was really strange that neither I nor Zero said a word during all of this. We just sat there looking at each other throughout the whole affair. If it’s this kind of thing that can summon up Castor and Zero, maybe I ought to throw teddy out of the pram more often.

A little later I heard someone read out the football results. There were just a few and one of the last ones that I heard was “Crystal Palace 1, Notts County 5” and then I awoke. I’ve no idea what would have inspired this.

There was also the Welsh rock band “Man” being included, trying to sneak along under cover and under disguise as the name of another group at one point during the night. Bizarrely, just as I am typing this, round on the playlist come George Jones (Mickey’s son)’s group “Son Of Man” with guest star Deke Leonard. So no early night for me while this plays out.

So there we are anyway. Zero came back to see me last night, and how nice it was to see her too.

Next task was to check over my shopping list and send it off, especially as my faithful cleaner sent me a message to remind me

Having done that, I sat down to think about preparing another radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off today, I had chosen the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written the notes for it too. So that’s two ready to dictate tomorrow night if I’m up to it.

There was even an hour or so afterwards to chill out.

That radio programme wasn’t all that I did either. About an hour later the delivery driver ‘phoned me. "I know that you said ‘after 17:00’ on your form but is it any problem if I were to come round in half an hour?"

Clearly someone wants to be away early today. I’m not going anywhere so it’s no problem to me. But I had to rush to put it all away before my cleaner came around to do her stuff. She doesn’t want to be tripping over it, which is why I don’t usually want it delivered until after she has gone.

Lunch was next, but only a short lunch as I wasn’t hungry. And while there was no mid-afternoon snack, there was still the disgusting drink break

So all-in-all I’ve been a very busy boy today. I ought to have a few more of these crises.

Just another small tea tonight – a handful of chips, a couple of vegan nuggets and a small salad followed by apple cake and lemon soya dessert.

So when Son of Man finish, I’m off to bed for what I hope will be a good sleep. I can’t believe that I’ve had so little sleep just recently but I’m still going on. Tomorrow I have to fight the good fight at the dialysis centre and then on Sunday there’s a Welsh Cup foot-fest as well as Stranraer hoping to stop the rot.

Four days at the dialysis centre? They must be joking.

But while we are talking of Zero appearing … "well, one of us is" – ed … a bunch of us, Zero included, went once for a day out years ago and I ended up buying lunch for her.
And quite frankly, I was amazed at what she was preparing to put away.
"Does your mum make you meals like this at home?" I asked
"Ohh no" she replied. "She doesn’t want to sleep with me."

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Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anyone else around here, but I reckon that I’ve had enough now and I wish that I would be somewhere else right now. Even shovelling coal into the fires down below can’t be any worse than this.

A few days ago I mentioned that I can’t do with too many more days like the one that I had then, but today I reckon that we’ve reached the stage where there’s no longer any pleasure left in anything any more. As I said right back at the start of all this ten years ago, I’ll keep on going as long as there is something left to enjoy.

It might have been something to celebrate, I suppose, that I had a night last night where I was in bed at something like a realistic time. Not 23:00 of course, because those days are long-gone, but something not too far unadjacent to that.

Once I was in my bed it didn’t take too long to go off to sleep and if only Id have stayed asleep it wouldn’t have been so bad, I suppose, but another mobile, perspiring night. Although I might have slept longer than the ninety minutes of the previous one, it didn’t seem much like it.

When the alarm went off this morning I was just as wasted as yesterday morning and it was yet another undignified stagger into the bathroom. A wash and a shave later, I was in the kitchen taking all of my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night too.

And so it happened, I had. But these continual bouts of awakening had interrupted any sequence of anything important. There was something about Prehistoric man and about being in bed in comparatively modern times but as soon as I awoke, whatever it was that was going on at that particular moment just evaporated and I lost all of it. But I was certainly in bed and it was certainly something of particular interest.

No prizes for guessing where this idea about Prehistoric man comes from. I’ll really have to stop reading these books on ancient architecture. But I wish that I knew where this dream was going.

There was also a woman with whom I used to work once making an appearance last night. She was visiting this prisoner-of-war site at the west end of Crewe where people were incarcerated after the fighting had passed by. She’d gone there to check on their needs etc but the Belgian Government wanted an assurance from the British Government that any changes would not be applicable and were to be backdated but the British Government would not agree to do this so the prisoners were held and she was to check on them but there was much more to it than this and I can’t remember a thing now.

Why this woman should be there I really don’t know because I can’t have thought about her even once since I moved on to pastures new all those years ago. But I’ve no idea where the prisoners of war fitted in. However in the South Cheshire area there were two prisoner-of-war camps, which later became Displaced Persons camps

There was also a group of us in work having a good time passing the time working, chatting to each other. The question of what we were going to do that evening came up because it was a Friday. I said that if I could find someone to go dancing with me I’d be off to the nightclub. “How are you fixed?” She said one or two words and then said “yes, why not?”. So we left the office and walked hand-in-hand down the street, skipping and laughing, down to the nightclub. But there was never anything serious about it. She spent most of the time telling me about her boyfriend and how ever since they had met they had only spent three days away from each other so I knew that this was just the whim of a moment and that it would be all over in a couple of hours by the time the nightclub closed but it was one of those things that you have to seize the moment as it goes by.

This was my Irish friend again, the one who had far more sense than to hitch her cart onto my star, and who can blame her? But almost Getting The Girl is a darn sight better than what usually happens in my dreams. But even in a dream, I realised that it was just something ephemeral, and that’s interesting

Isabelle the Nurse turned up late and in a whirlwind of a rush. Apparently everyone is making their requests for blood tests before her oppo comes back at the weekend and I can’t say that I blame them. I will almost inevitably do the same.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished hillforts and now discussing dwelling houses. But he can’t leave off hillforts for long and we’ve had a delightful ramble through Caer Seion near Conwy

This is a fascinating place because it consists of two forts, one inside the other, but there is no internal communication between the two parts. You have to go back outside the one and come back into the other.

Digging around on the internet, I found an archaeologist’s report from the 1950s. His conclusion went something along the lines that "all dates are inconclusive and capable of several interpretations".

Back in here afterwards I had tidying up to do and I didn’t accomplish anything like what I wanted to do because a text message told me that the taxi was coming early.

Once I was in it, we drove all around the town, to areas that I didn’t know existed and then the four of us, driver and three passengers, set off for Avranches.

They weren’t ready for my at the dialysis centre so I had to wait, but once I was seen it was another painful session where I was in agony.

It wasn’t just four hours either. A nurse came along and said "we’ve seen your weight graph, and the doctor says that you have to stay for an extra half-hour". And by this time the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot had started up..

A doctor appeared shortly afterwards so I complained. "Are you going to make me sit here for four and a half hours in this agony and do nothing about all of the tests that I’ve had on this arm that show an anomaly?"
"I’ll prescribe an anaesthetic spray" she said
"An anaesthetic spray isn’t going to do me much good" I said. "I’m not going through all of this every time I come here for the rest of my life. It needs to be dealt with"
"I’ll have a look in your file" she said, beating a hasty retreat.

When they came to unplug me, they brought me more bad news. The weight graph shows no signs of stabilisation so as of next week I may well have to come in four days per week.

Having arrived early, I was hoping to be home early but with the extra half-hour and the delay at the start it was even later than usual by the time that I returned, totally and utterly exhausted, and completely fed up.

There was no energy left in the tank to make tea. A baked potato and some salad was the best that I could do, and now I’m off to bed. And if I don’t awaken in the morning I couldn’t care less. “Tomorrow is another day” they say, but it will be just like this one.

All of this reminds me of the story of the man who goes to see the doctor about his (the man’s, not the doctor’s) chronic alcohol problem
"If you keep on drinking like this" said the doctor "you are going to die"
The man turned to the doctor with a smile on his face and said "when?"

It’s better, I suppose, than the doctor who announced to his patient "I can’t find what seems to be the matter with you. It must be due to drink"
"That’s no problem" said the patient. "I’ll come back when you are sober".

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