Tag Archives: cleaner

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

… I’d have gone back to sleep after the alarm sounded this morning. It was another one of those days when I have never felt less like leaving the bed.

If the truth be known, I should have gone to bed much earlier than I did, but as usual these days, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied and generally managed to waste a lot of time while I was finishing off the evening’s work. As a consequence, it was another evening that was much nearer 23:30 than anything else, and probably approaching from the wrong side too.

Not that I was all that tired either. That sleep that I had at the end of the afternoon probably had an influence on everything because, apart from everything else, it took a good while for me to drop off once I’d finally made it into bed.

At some point I remember waking up, but it wasn’t for very long and I was flat out, dead to the World when the alarm went off. And what wouldn’t I have given to have been able to have gone back to sleep. However, with the nurse coming around every day, a real, proper lie-in these days is quite impossible.

It was a real struggle for me to rise up from the bed before the second alarm, and then we had a desperate stagger into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to wash down my medication, and then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a group of US Cavalry to make a large armed patrol into Native American lands. I was appalled by the lack of security that was going on there. There was a General in charge, and he was insistent that the natives wouldn’t attack because we were so numerous, but I thought that that was a crazy situation to suggest because they will attack when you least expect it, in a manner that you least expect it and a place where you least expect it. You need to be at security all the time, for example, at night, he just set up a kind of camp on the plain and didn’t mount any serious attempt at pickets or guards. About a mile away, there were some rocky slopes. That’s where I would have gone to have my camp at night – amongst the rocks on the slope where you are pretty much hidden from view from what’s happening down in the valley, and you would have immediate defence if there were any problems and you came under attack.

These books that I have been reading about the US cavalry in the late Nineteenth Century are clearly preying on my mind. I must be doing too much reading, I suppose. It’s interesting that I’m happy about giving tactical advice to US generals but seeing the mess in which managed to find themselves in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, it’s not too difficult.

Later on, we were on board a train heading from Italy to Germany. It was one of these super-high speed trains. It was travelling at an incredible rate of speed, and it came to a new tunnel that was twelve and a half miles long so it shot into this tunnel and out the other side. I went and stood outside the carriage for some fresh air after that, but when I looked back in, all of my seats had been taken and there was no room for me. I waited for a moment until we stopped at a station, where everyone alighted except my friend and me so I could sit down again. Then we thought about making breakfast. There was a kind-of grill in each carriage so we made some breakfast, bacon, sausage, things like that. Suddenly, my friend looked at the time and said “we’ll be in Munich in an hour and we haven’t made the beds or anything”. He asked me if I would go to fetch the suitcases, but I explained that I didn’t think that I could manage the two suitcases on my own, so he began to become agitated. “And what are we going to do about making the beds?” he asked.

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find myself on a train these days, least of all travelling between Italy and southern Germany, much as I would like to. It’s simply a totally impractical proposition, never mind being able to sit outside the carriage.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to give me my injection, and then she sorted out my legs. Her happy mood is still continuing, which is nice. I don’t know what it is that she takes, but I wish that she would give me some.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re up on the moors right now, north-east of Manchester, and I’m still tracking down these camps along the way, trying to identify them.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I rewrote some of the radio notes to make them longer. I can dictate them the next time that I awaken early, I suppose.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. Once aboard, I had to go to the depot to witness a game of “musical chairs” as they swapped drivers around. Once I had my new driver, I could set off, but I was still late arriving.

It took a while for me to be seen, and once more they took a measurement of my dry weight. When they coupled me up, they didn’t want to take everything off but I managed to persuade them. If I’m not back for four days, I want to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she ignored me again. She really doesn’t love me any more, which is a shame. I was left pretty much alone all through the session, something that suits me fine.

The taxi was waiting for me when they unplugged me, so I wasn’t back home as late as I was fearing. I had pasta, vegetables and ratatouille for tea, followed by some of my ginger cake.

While I was at dialysis though, they gave me a booklet that included a recipe for a pear cheesecake, and I reckon that I can make it into a vegan recipe with no difficulty. I shall give that a try one of these days.

But not now because, having already fallen asleep once while I was typing my notes, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Romans … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was chatting to a friend about Roman numerals
He told me "I have enormous difficulty trying to remember Roman numerals. If you asked me how you write, for example, 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500, I wouldn’t have a clue. It makes me really angry."
"Is that so?" I asked.
"Oh yes" he replied. "I’M LIVID"

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Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

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Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

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Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

… at dialysis are quite difficult to bear, but I’m going to push ahead with them all the same for as long as I can, especially if it means that I can have an extra day at home.

By the time that I made it back home this evening, I was totally exhausted, and it was just as well that my tea tonight was already prepared without any intervention on my part.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. By the time that I was finally ready for bed, it was about 23:20 and there have been nights much later than that in the past.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed. I’d no idea what time it was that I awoke because I didn’t check the time as I usually do. But I was contemplating having a quick glance at the time when BILLY COTTON beat me to it; so it can’t have been too far short of 06:29.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to find my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I made my got lemon, ginger and honey and drink to go with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

It’s surprising how much there was on there too, considering that I remember nothing at all. There were different kinds of spraying machines. I counted about three different types, and for one type, water came out of the jets with such force that it lifted the pipework up off the ground. Someone wanted to know the name of that type of thing, and I knew it but I couldn’t think of it. It was something like the Douche Marie or something. I was wracking my brains for ages and I couldn’t actually think of another name by which that kind of machine is called.

Everyone has seen these videos, I imagine, of people holding two Kärcher pressure washers, one in each hand, and being lifted off the ground by the force of the water. It was something like that.

And then I was on my way to a family wedding. I arrived at some different town and was walking through there looking for the place to go. I came across a bathroom so I thought that I’d nip in there and read the time, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see what time it was. But my mother was there. She stuck her head in and saw me, and was about to say something but she changed her mind and walked away. After I’d finished sorting out some water, I went into the main room. There was all my family and everyone whom I knew so I simply said “hello, people”, found an empty chair and sat down … fell asleep here … and anyway, so they were sending meals around at some point during all the speeches. My meal came on my black glass chopping board. I thought that this was unusual. There’s a special name for a meal that’s served like this but I couldn’t think of it at the time and I still can’t now.

As if I’m ever likely to go to a family wedding. But why would my black glass chopping board feature in one of my dreams like this?

There was a taxi to go to the station but the taxi was hours late arriving. We were all beginning to panic about this. We’d made enquiries about walking there but I’d have to change partner thirteen times between my house and the station. There was me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend or wife and we were waiting. Another taxi turned up for someone else so we asked about ours. The driver decided that he would go back to the depot and find out what was going on, and my brother went with him. Just then, our taxi turned up so I shouted to my brother but he didn’t really pay too much attention – he was too busy on the ‘phone. So we went somewhere into the vehicle, but there were some things like some plastic hurdle fences in there so we’d have to fight our way around them to get into the car. For some reason, I sat in the front instead of in the back with my girlfriend. The car set off and after we’d been driving for a couple of minutes, I noticed that my brother wasn’t on board. I asked what happened to him, and one of the girls said that he had decided to run. I thought that thirteen changes of partner was a lot, but it’s bound to be more now. This is making life extremely complicated to reach the railway station on time before the train that we wanted departs.

These dreams of indecision are a regular feature of my nocturnal rambles, but it’s usually to do with my activities rather than someone else’s. And who was the girlfriend? Fancy having a girlfriend in my dreams and not knowing who she is. That’s a sad state of affairs.

There was a film being shown somewhere. I had a friend of mine round and I recommended to him that he went to see it, because it was an extremely classic film. I was away – I had some taxi jobs to do – so I went to pick up a family from a poor area of Crewe and they actually had a copy of the book and one of the kids was taking it with him to read. So off they went and off we went. A short while later, I had to go to take them home. I’d picked up my friend from the cinema in the meantime and when I reached the home to drop off these people, I saw that the boy put this book in the waste paper bin. I picked it up and said that before I go, I’ll mention to the family to see if I could borrow this. We went off somewhere else and while we were driving, I noticed that the book was on my dashboard. I’d mentioned that I was going to ask to borrow it but it looks like I already have.

The film was actually THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, based on A BOOK OF THE SAME NAME written by Erskine Childers. The book is much, much better than the film, even if Jenny Agutter is in the film. It concerns a couple of amateur yachtsmen who stumble across a rehearsal for a German invasion of the UK just before World War I. I actually have a copy of the book.

Ironically, when Childers was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, he carried out many patrols over the area from where the invasion was said to take place. However, he came to a sticky end after the war. An ardent Republican, he was executed by the “Treaty Irish” in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War.

With that friend, he was a guitarist – he wasn’t, he was a drummer – and we were round at my house because we were going to meet some guitarist. There was a concert or gig being played and he’d been looking for a bassist and a drummer. My friend asked what kind of music we’d be playing. I said that according to this guitarist, it would just be basic, well-known twelve-bar standards. He asked whether this person was a boy or a girl, and I said “I don’t really know. I’ve never actually met who it was”. We set off and reached this rehearsal hall and there were several people there. I gave some stuff to whoever was in charge to make a meal. He looked, and told us of four or five things that were missing. So we piled into this car, and had another girl with us and we set off for the shops. I suddenly realised that the Intermarché in Pionsat was much closer so we went to the Intermarché at Pionsat and wandered round, picking up the things that we needed. I noticed that at the till, there was a bin full of reduced stock. I looked in, and there was a huge tin of custard powder there for sale for €3:01. I thought “it’s a long time since I’ve had some real custard” so I added that onto the list too. There we were, with all this food that we’d bought and I thought that at this rate, these rehearsals are going to be over and it’s not really worth going back because it’s taken us so long to do all this shopping.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a giant tin of vegan custard powder somewhere? I’m having to make do with a sweetened béchamel sauce with vanilla flavouring and it’s not the same.

The nurse turned up as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He goes off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wanted to finish his rounds as quickly as possible. I could then push on with making breakfast.

This morning, I finished MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

In the past, we’ve talked about how certain words in the English language have changed their meaning over the passage of time. At least, I hope that that’s the case here when she talks about the commemoration of the battles up on the Bozeman Trail, saying "It is well the programme was no longer, or I should run out of expletives"

And like the previous Mrs Carrington, she has no sense whatever of irony. She notes, when talking about the area in which the battles took place, that "it is not to be forgotten that the Sioux themselves had stolen it from the Crow Indians" and "many of the Sioux, themselves, were beginning to realise that their occupation had been one of force, and not of inherent right."

Just what, exactly, was the American army doing up on the Bozeman Trail in 1866? Pot calling the kettle “black”, methinks.

She also notes a report from one of the contemporary local newspapers in Sheridan, that "the time ought to come before many years, and will come, if the present policy is carried out, when the Indians will have the same rights and duties as other Americans"

That was written in 1909 and we are still waiting even now for this to come to pass.

Back in here, I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off, and then I spent the rest of the morning revising for the lesson tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and that I had to wait for the taxi. Not only was it running late, due to a weird decision by the controller to insist that the driver took her break in the middle of nowhere, we had to pick up in Donville les Bains and then miles out on the road to Villedieu.

As a result, I was quite late arriving but at least, I was connected up quite quickly without having to wait around.

Or so I thought. One of the needles failed and they had to start again later.

Apart from a brief visit from the doctor, I was left pretty much alone, and when I was finally unplugged, the driver was already waiting for me.

Back here, my cleaner helped me back to the apartment, then after she left, I warmed up the half-pizza from last night. It’s even nicer twenty-four hours later.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover from my recent efforts. And I need a decent recovery because I’m still quite exhausted and I can’t see it ending.

But seeing as we have been talking about invasions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Duke of Wellington was told during the Napoleonic Wars that a prominent group of citizens planned to form a regiment of volunteer cavalry "but not to be sent overseas".
With one of his usual scathing remarks, he replied "except in the case of invasion, I suppose."

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Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

… to mention yesterday that the 20th November was the tenth anniversary of being rushed to hospital when a blood test revealed that, instead of a red cells blood count of between 14 and 16, mine was 3.8 – a figure that is officially too low to support life.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d begun to feel ill a few weeks earlier while I was in Canada and the position had slowly deteriorated since then. Eventually, I’d reached a point where I could no longer keep going.

When I was transferred to the University Hospital at Leuven in April 2016, they told me quite bluntly that no-one had ever lived longer than eleven years with this illness, so either I’ll be setting some kind of World Record or these notes will shudder to a sudden halt at some point in the not-too-distant future. We shall have to see how things pan out.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, just for once, I finished with indecent haste everything that I needed to do. The notes were on line before 22:00 and I was in bed, would you believe, by 22:20. If only it could be like that every evening.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s a waste of time going to bed early, because all it seems to mean is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. I was all set to write those words again this morning when I awoke at 03:27 and was still awake at 04:10. I was giving some serious thought to leaving the bed at that moment but the next thing that I recall was the alarm going off at 06:29 as usual.

The foregoing notwithstanding, it was still quite a struggle to raise myself from the Dead and toddle off into the bathroom. Next stop was the kitchen where I made my hot ginger, honey and hot lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I’d been down in the Auvergne with a friend of mine. There was this big party taking place, so they doped me up with cough mixture etc so that I sounded healthy, and they dropped me off at this party. It went on for quite some time, and then it was time to head north. It was early in the morning, and I was thinking that if I have to drive through the towns and across country to join the motorway that brings me up here, I’d be running the risk of being found drink-driving, because I’m not used to drinking beer. I thought that if I nipped across to Combronde, which is ten kilometres away or something, I’d be on the other motorway. That way, I would be much better off in driving and heading north. So I began to set off, but for some reason, I found myself travelling with my friend again and his son. They had been somewhere and picked me up again. We were heading north. As we were going further north, suddenly the car shuddered to a halt and this boy, the son of my friend, suddenly screamed. It turned out that he had stubbed his toe somehow on the street outside and he’d hit a rock or something as we were going past. That had caused the car to shudder and stop, and that had caused him a most damaging pain to his foot.

Whatever was going on here, I really have no idea. Apart from one bottle of beer halfway down a mountain in Bulgaria in 1994 (it was the only refreshment available), I’ve not drunk any alcohol for decades. The rest of it is totally meaningless.

This started off being on a Native American reservation, guarding the tribes that had tried to break out to seek their freedom. However, I came across an old schoolfriend of mine while I was there and we began to chat about old times. I asked him what he was doing these days, and he replied that he was working for a radio station. So, of course, was I. We had a chat about what we were doing. He worked the late show, which was called something like “Good Evening”. He didn’t say exactly what he did, but he said that he had an album of music from the 1960s that had over sixty songs on it. That was what he played through his programme. I told him that I had a library of over fifteen thousand songs. He said that he remembered it from the olden days, but I replied that it had grown much bigger these days as I had been collecting discs and albums unashamedly over the last ever-so-many years. We carried on chatting like that for a while.

Native American reservations have been the subject of conversation for several weeks. The Navajo Reservation that I visited in Arizona in 2002 was the saddest, poorest place on Earth and I don’t blame anyone for wanting to break out. The natives were struggling to raise crops in an arid semi-desert environment while the luscious, irrigated green fields halfway up the hill at the back were part of an irrigated golf course. I once read a report that when a group of Native Americans surrendered their best hunting grounds in return for an annuity, the annuity consisted of two yards of calico per person and one blanket between six.

The friend was someone whom I knew at school and with whom I shared an apartment in Crewe for a while. The record mentioned in the dream would indeed probably represent his entire record collection, whereas mine is probably much more than fifteen thousand songs these days … "it’s actually twelve thousand six hundred that he has digitalised so far" – ed ….

It was finally my last couple of days at work and retirement was actually going ahead. I left the bed early and then spent about half an hour trying to decide what clothes to wear. In the end, I settled on a grey suit, a grey shirt and a kind-of orange-red tie, but it took so long to do it that I was running horribly late, and my sister told me that my niece had been banging on the bathroom door for ages, trying to make me hurry up. However, I hadn’t found half of what I needed. There were some things lying around that I’m sure my sister was going to take home with her when she leaves so I discreetly hid one or two of them so that there would at least be something behind. I then grabbed my bass speaker cabinet and ran off for the final train. I burst into work just on time, where they were busy laying out some food for my retirement party. I thought that it was tomorrow that I retired, not today. But they were laying out this food, and I took them by surprise. I found that my brother was sitting at the desk next to me. He was playing around with the electronic equipment that the usual woman who sat there had left behind, and making some remarks about how far behind in her work she was, and how much chaos it all was. I dumped my bass speaker down and then dashed off somewhere else to do something, but I can’t remember what it was.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that being on the point of retirement has been a reoccurring theme in these dreams for quite some considerable time, but last night I finally made it … "well, almost" – ed … My brother has appeared in a few dreams here and there but one of my sisters? Where did she come from?

The nurse was quite early again, which suits me. No blood pressure to take, so he was in and out in five minutes, which suited me even better. I could push on and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

While she was travelling towards Fort Phil Kearny, she tells us that she "had an experience with cactus that, in the expressive term of a later day, was the limit.". Now who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that? What with women having had experiences with cacti and Native Americans having intercourse with their ponies, there must never have been a dull moment on the frontier, to say the least.

But leaving that aside, when discussing mental health issues (which is an extremely rare thing for a layman to do in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century), she notes that "such a condition as insanity is unknown amongst squaws, and if insanity is sometimes attributed to the red man, it is due to the white man’s firewater. ".

Despite the interesting nature of much of her writing, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt in some places. She notes that "It was well known that there was gold to be found in all the creeks near us, and a few pannings in the nearest branch abundantly proved it; but not a soldier deserted the post, or shirked his duty in its pursuit." and continues with her eulogy in honour of the troops.

However, Margaret Carrington notes at least four soldiers who deserted the fort, and according to a report that I read elsewhere, there were about twenty-five in total. There was also a military prison at the fort that was quite full on a regular basis.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do, and then I finished the selection of the music for the next radio programme, edited, re-mixed, paired and segued it.

The taxi turned up for me somewhat later than programmed, so it was something of a rush to go to the Centre de Ré-education. And it was walking from the taxi to the building that I realised how much the chemotherapy had affected me. I really was ill.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d telephoned the Centre de Ré-education to complain about them over-taxing what remains of my strength. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it seems as if I have been talking to the walls. Today, I had three sessions, next Wednesday and Friday four, the following Wednesday four and the Friday after, FIVE.

That is taking the mickey and no mistake.

The first session with my physiotherapist was all about working on my ankle muscles. These are, of course, non-existent so we aren’t going to go far with all of this.

The second session was sitting in this pseudo-rowing machine, pushing weights with my feet.

There was a pause of half an hour here so I took the initiative, went onto the attack and stormed up to the offices of my doctor there and berated the secretary. She assured me that she had spoken to the doctor, but she would speak to the doctor again.

We shall see.

The third session was standing upright in this machine for half an hour, looking out of the window. And then it was home-time. And what a struggle that was. I was totally exhausted.

Back in here, I was helped into the apartment – my lovely, shining, clean apartment – by my faithful cleaner who had been hard at work in my absence. And I needed help too because I would never have managed it on my own.

Once inside, I crashed into a chair in the kitchen, and it took me an hour to summon up the energy to move into my office.

Once in the office, I crashed out completely and there I sat for about an hour and a half, totally out of it. When I awoke at 19:30, I was feeling so dreadful that I crawled into bed, fully-clothed, and called it a night.

But seeing as we have been talking about our author and her “experience with a cactus” … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told that there was a saloon at Fort Phil Kearny. One day, she went inside and asked the saloon keeper for a double-entendre.
"What happened?" I asked naively
"The saloon keeper gave her one."

0

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

… of mine seems to be starting to bear fruit. At dialysis this afternoon, I was asked "do you still want to do three sessions per week of three hours, or to try two sessions of four hours and see how it goes?".

As a consequence, for the foreseeable future I have my Saturday afternoons back, assuming that all goes well. Of course, if it doesn’t, they will think again but let’s enjoy the moment for now.

It’s about time that I had some good news because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

It wasn’t such good news last night, though. Once more, despite trying my best, I was late going to bed. I really don’t know why I can’t seem to concentrate on things like this these days.

And once in bed, I might have been asleep quite quickly but it wasn’t for long because I was wide-awake again at 03:10. At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at about 04:30 and that time, it seemed to be for good. I lounged around in bed for some time but at about 05:30 I called it a night and left the bed.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, I went into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to accompany my medication. That drink really is wicked

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was something like a LORD OF THE RINGS adventure. Several people had gone into a large cave deep underground to liberate some kind of sacred, heavy chain. When they took out the chain, they made something of a noise and several enemies began to appear. These were the typical gruesome Middle-Earth type of enemies and these people were involved in some kind of battle. But I missed out something in the middle, which was when they pulled out this huge chain, there were plenty of other things too. He ordered his men to pick these other things out and pass them to him to keep. However, many of his men wouldn’t. Some of them did, but they were definitely not happy. One of them dumped a load of this stuff onto him, over his head, as a gesture of defiance after he had made a huge noise lifting up this chain. For some reason, this attracted the evil spirits and it became a fight to the death. Eventually, someone shouted “cut!”. It was of course a Hollywood-type of movie thing that had reached the end of a scene.

Wouldn’t that be nice if it were to happen in real life – finding yourself in a really sticky, unpleasant situation and all that you need to do is to shout “cut” and it would end? But what’s going on that a situation like this has suddenly appeared?

There was also something about going on an office trip somewhere. I was going with two or three other people and we decided that I would take my cat and one of these other people would take their dog, a collie. We asked a girl whom we knew if she was coming with us. She said that she couldn’t because in the evening when they would come back, there would be nowhere to park on the market. We found that to be a strange decision and tried to persuade her, but she was adamant. We set off walking through Crewe and were at the bottom end of Victoria Street. Someone said “well, it’s at the back of the fruit shop”. So we wandered our way up Victoria Street through an alleyway into the rear of the fruit shop, which used to be the old road that went down to the Ritz Cinema. There was a marquee there, and we went in. This was where everyone was assembling to go on this office trip.

What is surprising is that I can still remember where Perry’s Fruit and Veg shop used to be in Crewe Town Centre after all these years. As for the back entry that led into the street that dropped down to the Ritz Cinema before it was all swept away in a mad fit of demolition, the dream was actually perfectly correct.

The Ritz Cinema was great though. I’d fixed the projectionist’s motorcycle once so we had free admission. We’d go there in the late afternoon fifty and more years ago to watch the brilliant films of the day. Quite often, we’d be the only people in there but when we left in the early evening, there would be queues all the way down to the old Co-op.

The nurse turned up early today. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my feet. After he left, I should have gone for breakfast but I was engrossed in something else. In the end, it was a late breakfast.

Having finished AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, I’ve started reading MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington.

She was Henry Carrington’s second wife after Margaret Carrington died. She was however at Fort Phil Kearny as the wife of Lieutenant Grummond, one of the soldiers who was killed with Fetterman. It will be interesting to read her take on the situation.

It has to be said though that, in marrying Carrington in 1871, just four years after the death of her first husband, she can’t have borne Carrington any ill-will.

After breakfast, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and that’s now ready. I then went and uploaded the utilities to the computer’s new drive. I’d forgotten about them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then, while awaiting the taxi, I crashed out completely, hunched over the kitchen table. I was far-gone too and I had a real struggle to bring myself round when the taxi arrived.

We had to pick someone up at the hospital, and then we drove down to Avranches.

To my surprise, they put me in a room on my own today. And no sooner had I been installed when one of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

It’s all conditional, of course. It depends on how much water they need to remove and if the machine can do it (it’s limited to 950 ml/hour) in the time allowed. Otherwise, it’ll be back to three sessions.

Today, they kept me for almost four hours and extracted every last drop in order to give me a head start and we’ll see what happens on Monday for my next visit.

There is a down-side to all of this, though. The reason why I was in a private room was that they sent the psychologist to see me. Never mind about what she wanted – she blanched when I described my week’s medical appointments to her. I think that she needs to see a psychologist herself now.

She told me to let her know if I want to see her again, but I think that my problems will just make her feel worse.

They eventually let me go and I was late arriving home, as expected. They had kept my blood pressure sheet so I told the nurse not to bother coming round this evening. He was delighted by that.

It took a while to sort myself out once I arrived home, but then I made tea. I wasn’t all that hungry so I had mashed potato, peas and a vegan sausage followed by a piece of this delicious ginger cake that I have made.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … his off-the-cuff remarks were legendary.
When he was Lord Chancellor, a newly-appointed judge came to see him for some advice about sentencing in a case that he had been trying.
"What do you think I should give to a man who allows himself to be b****red?" asked the judge.
"Well, " said FE Smith. "Thirty shillings, two Pounds – whatever you happen to have on you at the time."

0

Tuesday 18th November 2025 – PART TWO OF …

… my offensive against all of these medical appointments went onto the attack this morning.

It involved a flank attack on the Chemotherapy section of the Centre Hospitalière Universitaire de Rennes. It was unfortunate that my target this morning was a young intern called Jade, but you can only fight those whom they send out to fight you.

Anyway, it’s the turn of Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre de Ré-education to come under attack tomorrow afternoon.

So last night, feeling definitely not like it, I dashed through my notes and everything that went with it, and ended up in bed at 22:40 hoping for a good sleep. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s something of a forlorn hope these days. For all kinds of reasons, I had a very difficult time dropping off.

It wasn’t as if it was a good sleep either. I awoke a few times during the night, and I was up and about by 05:50 this morning.

In order to be ready for the nurse and the ambulance, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed last night. It was a pointless exercise though because although the nurse told me that he’d be around at 06:30, it was 06:40 when he finally turned up and I’d already given up hope by then

Last night, when the driver dropped me off after dialysis, I joked that it will probably be him who will be coming to pick me up in the morning so I may as well sleep the night in his taxi. My faithful cleaner told him, on the other hand, just as jokingly, to make sure that he would bring the croissants round in the morning.

That was all said as light-hearted banter, and no-one seriously expected it to be him who would come to pick me up. But truth is stranger than fiction.

We made good time down to the edge of Rennes when a collision on the motorway produced a tail-back of about fifteen kilometres. We were consequently twenty minutes late arriving.

The intern was waiting and she grabbed me as I walked onto the ward, before I’d even had time to register.

She examined me and asked how things were. I told her that there had been a marked deterioration in my condition, and I repeated what I had said yesterday at dialysis.

Being young and impressionable, she was shocked to learn of my series of appointments – six days with no rest. I asked her why everyone was expecting me to recover from the treatment that I’m having when the sheer fact of travelling to and from it is killing me off.

Of course, she had no reply to make to that, but it gave her food for thought and she promised to discuss it with her superior and my consultant in Paris.

One thing that was confirmed at the interview, as I had known all along but it’s difficult to impress upon the minds of those at dialysis, is that the reason why my chemotherapy can’t be done locally in Granville or Avranches is that the use of one of the components of the chemotherapy can only be authorised and under the supervision of certain hospitals.

The local hospitals are not authorised to use it, so although it would be a good solution, there’s no point in the dialysis centre trying to promote it.

Anyway, the folder that I gave to the intern was missing the blood test, so they had to ‘phone up Avranches for it. And then it showed an anomaly … "one of many" – ed … in my blood so they had to contact Paris. Eventually, Paris authorised the chemotherapy and it began at 11:10, a far cry from the 08:30 appointment.

During most of the session, I was fast asleep. I was so totally exhausted that it was untrue. But even the sleep wasn’t enjoyable. Every few minutes, someone would come along and check something, which would awaken me

They brought me lunch as well, boiled potatoes with a vegan burger. When I’d had the burger before, I’d enjoyed it, but this time I didn’t like it at all. My taste buds are awful right now.

Eventually, though, the session was finished and by 15:30 I was in the taxi, along with another passenger.

Since I’ve been ill and have had to travel in a taxi, I’ve seen parts of Normandy that I didn’t realise existed. That was certainly the case today. And dropping off a passenger in the wilds well at the back of Avranches, we passed a garage with a few old cars, one of which was a Ford Cortina mkIV.

Those cars were responsible for the successes that I had with my taxis and I haven’t seen one for years. I’ve a couple of mkIIIs and mkVs down on the farm, but no mkIVs. How I was tempted to go back afterwards and spirit it away, but I can’t even walk to the van these days, never mind drive anywhere in it.

In any case, all of my towing tackle (the “A” frame, the towing dolly and the trailer) is still down on the farm, not up here.

Back here I crashed out in the chair in the kitchen for a while, having a good chat with my cleaner, when we were interrupted by a rather angry nurse. He wans’t happy that I hadn’t ‘phoned him as soon as I arrived, because he was in the area and it would have saved him a trip across town.

Well, it’s not my fault that the batteries were flat in my crystal ball, was it?

After he left, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was something going on about my brother and his wife buying a new house. When I was talking to my new boss at work, he told me that he had agreed that my brother could have two days off work in order to sort out all of the necessary paperwork. I asked about his wife as well, whether she would be entitled to a couple of days off because I reckoned, knowing them, that she’d be the one actually involved in doing most of the work with regard to the purchase of this property. He smiled and said that he probably agreed. Then, he asked about my brother’s complaint to the office, how he complained. I replied that he probably complained via AI up to the Cloud. The boss asked whether there would likely be any follow-up to that. I said that I thought that AI was supposed to be much more intelligent than any other form of computer contact, so it would seem very likely. But that’s all that I remember of that dream.

Artificial Intelligence is in the news quite a lot these days but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not infallible. I’ve managed to trip it up on a few occasions without trying too hard and I’m sure that the experts can make mincemeat of it much more efficiently than I can.

However, I do use it on occasion, even if I will admit that I much prefer Natural Stupidity.

Team was a nice, thick mushroom and tomato soup with pasta and I managed to eat all of it. My soup-making is improving, that’s for sure.

So now, later than I would like, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for my early start in the morning. My driver is coming round at 06:50.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going onto the offensive … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned this to my cleaner this afternoon when I arrived.
"Offensive" she replied. "That’s certainly the correct word to use with anything that you do, Eric."

0

Monday 17th November 2025 – WE HAVE HAD …

… a showdown at dialysis this afternoon.

This outrageous fatigue is continuing to lay me flat out, so I decided to take the bull by the horns.

The chef de service was on duty today so I seized the opportunity. I explained my week to him – dialysis Monday, Chemotherapy Tuesday, Chemotherapy Wednesday, dialysis Thursday, Centre de Ré-education Friday and dialysis Saturday.

"When am I supposed to have any time for myself?" I asked. "As if I don’t have anything else to do." And so we had a lengthy discussion. Whether anything comes of it or not, I really don’t know. Probably not, because so far, I have the impression that I am talking to a wall.

It’s no wonder, with a programme like that, that I am thoroughly exhausted. If I could concentrate on my notes and finish them at a reasonable hour, that would be a start. But sometimes I’m too tired to concentrate.

Like last night, for example. It should have been an early night but what with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … by the time I’d done everything that I needed to do, it was 23:10 when I finally crawled into bed.

So much for my aim of being in bed by 22:30.

Once I’d managed to fall asleep, I was flat out until all of … errr … 04:10, and at one point I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed. However, I must have gone back to sleep because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

As seems to be the case these days, it took me an age to raise myself from the Dead and head into the bathroom. And then it was a very leisurely start to the day while I made my ginger, honey and lemon drink with which to take my medicine.

When I’d finished that, I cut the loaf into two and put one half in the freezer. And then I cut up the cake into squares and put them into an airtight container.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise again, and I had to sit quietly … "if that’s possible" – ed … while she took my blood pressure.

Once she’d done that, she looked after my feet and legs, and then I made breakfast.

After breakfast, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. The Confederate Army had a kind of hospital where they put their. I was going there as part of the sick. One thing that I had noticed was that there seemed to be no sense of urgency in defending the fort, and no plan of what to do if the enemy were to attack. They didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to have everyone installed. The Union Army launched a campaign in that area and the hospital came under threat. However, it was the Union Army this time that prevaricated and seemed to waste every possible moment before launching an attack. Had it been a decisive attack quite quickly, it might have succeeded. The dream went on from there but unfortunately, I can’t remember it

What a shame that I can’t remember it. But it seems that I’m stuck in the American Civil War and I’ve no idea why. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED SEVERAL CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELDS and we’ve been reading bits here and there, but I don’t know why it’s become so imprinted in my subconscious mind.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been reading AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, and at long last, after many years of searching, I’ve found that which I’ve been seeking.

In the back of the book is a large fold-out map of Wyoming and the Dakotas, with the various trails and campaigns marked out, along with the sites of the forts and the major battles.

It doesn’t fold out so well in a *.pdf but a series of judicious screen prints and a good graphics editing program has produced an impressive *.jpg image.

The book does not contain a list of all of the battles (she says that it would be far too long) which is a shame, and I’m sure that the map is not complete, but how I wish that I had had it with me on my various forays into “Indian Territory” over the past twenty-odd years.

Doing that took up most of the morning, and in the remaining time, I edited the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

When my faithful cleaner appeared, I went into the kitchen where she applied my anaesthetic. And then I waited for the taxi.

It was early today, so I was early arriving. I was connected up quite quickly, which is nice. However, I tried a couple of times to doze off to sleep, to catch up on the sleep that I’ve been missing, but everyone seemed to awaken me today. In the end, I gave it up.

Towards the end of the session, the chef de service came to see how I was. He gave me a brief explanation of what’s happening, and then he went to leave.

"That’s OK" I replied "if you don’t want to hear what I have to say."

That rather took him by surprise.

Now that I had his attention, I described my week to him. I also mentioned that despite having told the Centre de Ré-education that any more than three sessions per day is killing me, they gave me four last week, and there are four next Wednesday too.

What with the chemotherapy too, I feel as if I’m being kept alive simply for the purpose of being alive for the next medical appointment, and so on after that. There’s no quality of life any more, I have plenty of things that I would like to do that I cannot do because of all of this, and the way that my life is being run right now, I’ve become a slave to the medical system. It’s no surprise that, with all of this, I’m so tired.

His reply was "you are seriously ill and we are doing our best to keep you alive."

My reply was "but if this is the best that I can have, I simply don’t see the point. There’s no point in staying alive if all that they can promise me is another medical appointment the following day. We may as well call it a day, all of it."

Of course, he wasn’t happy. But then again, neither am I.

In the end, he put a note in my file to hand to the chemotherapy people tomorrow, and he says that he’ll send a message to the Centre de Ré-education. As for the dialysis clinic, he’ll chat with his colleagues and see if it might be possible to reduce my sessions to two per week.

Whether he does actually follow it up, and whether the hospital at Rennes and the Centre de Ré-education react remains to be seen, of course. But something needs to change because I can’t go much longer on like this.

And in case you think that I’m not being serious, I promise you that I am.

The taxi driver, the young chatty one, was waiting. He had another passenger with him and we had an interesting chat all the way home. We arrived early for once and after I’d gathered my wits … "with the amount of wits that he has left, I’m surprised that it takes him so long" – ed … I amended the running order of the tracks and re-paired and re-segued them, as I mentioned a week or so ago that I would…

Isabelle the Nurse came to take my blood pressure as usual. It was as high as 13.4 – that’s extreme hypertension for me and it shows just how worked up I’ve become over this affair. She had to wait ten minutes for me to calm down.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes in butter with peans and a breaded spicy vegan burger followed by chocolate cake. And once more, I ate it all.

Now I’m off to bed, ready for chemotherapy tomorrow, I don’t think.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Wars in Indian Territory in the late Nineteenth Century … "well, one of us has" – ed … General Crook admitted to being impressed with the standard of horsemanship of the Lakota Sioux. He is on record, according to JG Bourke’s ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK as saying that they were "the finest light cavalry in the World"
When he finally met up with Chief Red Cloud, he asked him how they managed it.
"We’ve had plenty of practice riding horses over the last couple of Centuries."
"How come?" asked Crook.
"We had to" replied Red Cloud. "You try carrying a horse and see how far you can travel."

0

Saturday 15th November 2025 – THIS NEW, REVITALISED …

… me from yesterday didn’t last very long. When I awoke this morning, I was back to the same state of utter fatigue that I was on Thursday morning.

Some of it might be due to the fact that I had another late night last night. It took longer than it should have done to finish off everything last night and by the time that I crawled into bed, it was about 23:20. That’s far later than I would like it to be.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, I awoke at 03:40 and, having gone back to sleep, was awake again an hour later. I even managed to go back to sleep after that, and there I was when the alarm went off at 06:29.

By that time, the fatigue had set in and it was a really difficult battle to rise to my feet.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, scrub up and shave, just in case I meet the Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I loaded up the washing machine now that the water leak has been repaired. There are still some dirty clothes left, so the next time that I have a shower … "whenever that might be" – ed … I’ll change the bedding and then wash everything.

In the kitchen, I made my ginger, honey and hot lemon drink and then took my medicine.

What with how I was feeling this morning, everything took so long and Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise just after I’d settled down back in here. That suited her because she could take my blood pressure while I was in a fairly relaxed state. It’s not every day that that happens.

After she’d sorted out my feet, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast and read some more of AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

However, I was side-tracked quite quickly by the story of THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.

One thing that I have always noticed about these events is that whenever it’s a person of European descent, whether a soldier or a civilian, who is killed, it’s always described as a “massacre”. However, if it’s a Native American who is killed, whether a civilian or a fighter, it’s always described as a “battle”.

Things are, however, slowly changing and a much more objective point of view is being applied. But it’s still taking far too long for things to change.

When breakfast was over, I took out the washing from the machine and hung it on the clothes airer. And that’s another task that’s becoming more and more difficult. So much so that it didn’t look all that pretty when I’d finished.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a group of soldiers last night. They had been doing their preliminary training. There was some talk at one time on this particular base about having a football team but the colonel in charge said that with the small number of mechanics and manual labourers, it’s unlikely that they would have enough people to make up a team. One of the captains had this idea that in the recruits’ cabins where they stayed while they were doing their basic training, he would pin up a notice about the formation of this football team. He couldn’t get enough volunteers.

Not that I am, of course, likely to be with a group of soldiers. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. if ever there were to be an armed conflict into which I would run the risk of being conscripted, I would head for the docks and the nearest Merchant Navy freighter.

Then the dream moved into France and there were several soldiers and an officer dug into a kind-of trench across a main road. All of a sudden, these three or four soldiers from this basic training platoon appeared and threw themselves into the trench. They said that they had holed up and tried to stop the German advance for as much as possible, and destroyed the road and some telegraph wires. They were now falling back to find the rest of their unit. So they were there in this slit trench thing across the road. Right down at the far end, they could just about make out a German tank that was appearing on the scene. They had had no orders to retreat so they stayed there, but the tank didn’t advance. Suddenly, there came a horse and a kind of waggon, a yellow metallic box wagon heading towards this slit trench from down at the other end of the road at full speed. They shook their heads and wondered what on earth was happening with this. As it approached them, they opened fire. They must have hit the driver because it careened across the road and crashed into the front of a house. It was a brief glance after that, that they realised that it was a Mennonite who had been driving it. Their response was that if Mennonites want to keep themselves out from this war, they shouldn’t be anywhere near the battlefield. Then, some orders came through for these three soldiers to go to a big office and search it for indecent books and destroy them before the Germans could capture the building. This seemed to be a totally pointless task to them because they would be there for hours. They wouldn’t know where to look and would be likely to be overwhelmed. Indecent literature was likely to be the least of their worries as far as the Germans were concerned. However, they went round and ripped out all of the plugs, but someone came along to tell them that this was causing confusion with the refrigeration service of the building. They didn’t really know how to proceed after that. If they stayed much longer, they would be bound to be caught. Destroying this indecent literature was a totally irrelevant part of any kind of warfare.

It’s not just old-order Mennonites but also Amish who still ride around in buggies, and there are plenty of those around the border between New Brunswick and Maine. It’s no surprise to see a horse and buggy trotting along the side of a busy, fast-moving highway.

The vehicle that was being pulled by the horse in this dream was what is called a “Lancaster waggon”, except that one of those has side windows and are usually always black. I have never seen another colour

The rest of the dream is, as usual, totally bizarre and totally meaningless.

I was in Chester with some people whom I used to know there. We’d been discussing dreams. We were sitting there talking, not too far away from where the canal passes through the city centre. After this talk had been going on for a moment, I left these people and walked up to stand on the banks of the canal. There were probably thirty or forty other people there watching. I closed my eyes and wished very hard that I was a bat. Sure enough, I was able to take off and fly around while all these people were looking. I flew around for quite some time. I then thought hard again and changed into an albatross, so I was flying up and down this canal as an albatross. Eventually, I came into land but I’d had a really good time as a flying animal, a bird or a flying mammal. I wondered if it was something that I would be able to do on a regular basis.

If only I could fly like a bat or an albatross on a regular basis. Wouldn’t that be something? But this dream was so real, and so comforting, that I actually looked to see if it was of any significance. but as usual, there are one hundred different interpretations. Each reference gives a different meaning.

After this, I added in the last of the little programs that I use, and then it was time to prepare for dialysis. My faithful cleaner applied my anaesthetic and then I packed my things ready

Although I was a little ahead of myself arriving at dialysis, after I had explained my woes to the nurses, they ran another complete check, including yet another electro-cardiac test. Consequently, I was hours late again in starting the session.

One of the doctors came to see me and I repeated my tale of woe, including the fact that all of these appointments are proving to be too much for me – especially the four sessions per day at the Centre de Ré-education.

He took a note of what I said, but he didn’t seem as is he intended to follow it up. I would love to be proved wrong, of course, but we shall see.

Being late starting, I was late returning, but that was just as well because I bumped into a member of the Residents’ Committee so I buttonholed her about the fibre-optic. The Committee tells us that the Batiments de France (this building is a listed building) are refusing to allow the walls to be drilled to pass the fibre-optic cable, but other listed buildings here have been drilled and cabled. As you can tell, we aren’t happy. ADSL terminates in a couple of months and then we will be stuck.

Isabelle the Nurse came along to take my blood pressure, and then I made tea. A very small plate of mashed potato, peas and vegan sausage. And I managed to eat it all.

So right now, I’m off to bed ready for my Day of Rest tomorrow. Not much of a Day of Rest because I have so much to do, as usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about flying … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of Frankie Howerd in UP THE CHASTITY BELT.
Frankie was always trying to invent a way of flying from the castle, but kept on crashing, despite his comment "for a perfect take-off, eat two groats worth of butter beans"
Chopper the Woodsman was always seeing him fail, and one day he remarked "his flies will be his undoing."

0

Friday 14th November 2025 – MY NEW OFFICE …

… chair is not as comfortable as I would have liked it to be.

Mind you, that’s not the end of the World, not at all. Firstly, if I can’t try it out before I buy it, I have to accept whatever I can find. And secondly, it’s far more comfortable than the previous one.

Anyway, my faithful cleaner and I had loads of fun late this afternoon assembling it and I’m now sitting in it, making the most of a seat that actually goes up and down as it’s supposed to do and a backrest that reclines into a comfortable sleeping position if ever I need it.

As you can gather, I’m feeling rather better this morning. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, sleep has always been my go-to cure for all evils.

Not that I had a good sleep last night, though. I was determined to push on and write up the notes for yesterday and the missing ones from the day before yesterday, before I went to bed, and although I managed it, it was not far off midnight by the time that I hit the sack.

And although I was asleep quite quickly, it lasted until all of … err … 05:10 when I awoke, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end, round about 06:10, I gave up trying and had an early start to the day. Not that I was in any rush, though. I took my time having a good scrub up and taking my medication, including making another honey, ginger and lemon drink, and I wasn’t back in here any earlier than I might usually have been.

And so I transcribed the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in the tower block at work and had gone out for a quick coffee. However, there had been a couple of folk musicians playing in the café so I stayed around to listen for much longer than I really ought to have done. On the way back to my office, I found myself on the roof. It was November and it was a beautiful sunny day. There was a sandy kind of beach on the roof and you could see for miles, and the sea in the distance looked beautiful. I thought that I could bring my sandwiches up here at lunchtime to have a nice little relax. I looked back into the building through the fire escape. It seemed that the top floor stairwell had been completely redesigned over some kind of period and repainted. One of the senior officials who knew me was there, so I asked him when it had been done. He said that it had been done during the Luxembourg Presidency and made the building much easier to maintain and clean. I set off to walk down the stairs to my office but after about three or four floors, found myself on the ground floor. It was inside a little delicatessen type of place in the busy shopping street just outside. I wondered what had happened to all the intervening floors. I was being hours late back to work so I rushed to the lift and opened the doors, but there was a girl in it. I asked her “do you mind if I join you?”. She replied “yes, if you are going to do it today”. I asked her which floor she required but she gave a very non-committal answer so I set the dial to go to my floor and the lift set off. But there was the sound of a girl panting very loudly. It wasn’t the girl who was with me so I asked her if she knew what was happening. She replied that it was obviously some girl in a hurry so I asked “where is she?”. She replied “ohh, she’s around somewhere” and that made things even more confusing.

The tower block relates to a building in which I once worked for a short while in Manchester, although it didn’t have a beach on the roof and you couldn’t see the sea from there. There was no delicatessen on the ground floor either.

However, being horribly late back from a tea break or a lunch brings back a few memories of a very troubled time and I’m surprised that it has risen its ugly head once more after all these years.

And later on, I was at someone else’s house and my niece was there with one of her daughters and her daughter’s friend. They were messing around with an AI app and had managed to make the television in this room talk to them. They were discussing things like going out. It was a Sunday afternoon and fairly late and I would have expected them to go out much earlier because it was such a nice day. But they were talking to this app about going out, and in the end, one of them asked about when they could have a taxi. The app replied that he could be there in about ten minutes. My niece said “well, I want to get washed and get ready and everything” so I said “well, just go out as you are”. So they arranged to have this car come to pick them up via this AI app and they dashed upstairs to get ready. I went to look out of the window and there were crowds of people walking up and down the street, kids running around, and there was a huge dog, an enormous thing. Then there was a slightly smaller dog, all white like a polar bear, and there was a strange kind of deer that was also white. It had the two hind legs much shorter than the front legs so it was walking on a lead with someone in a kind of strange fashion. As I looked, a brown Cortina MkIII pulled up in the street at the bottom of the hill and went to reverse into someone’s drive. However, he hit a trailer that was parked on the pavement. I thought that if he’s the taxi, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. But he parked in the drive and walked off. So then I went up with the television and found my mobile ‘phone, which was an old type of Nokia. The back of it didn’t seem to fit on the front. I noticed that I’d written some notes on the back about where all the data was stored on which memory stick. I didn’t remember doing that in the past, so I sat down and began to play around with this television and this AI map. However, it was long after ten minutes, the taxi hadn’t arrived and the girls still hadn’t come downstairs from getting ready.

The view from this house corresponds with a view that I had from a house that I used to visit in Neston on the Wirral fifty-odd years ago, although my niece never ever visited it. Talking Ai apps are all the rage these days, although I’m doing my best to avoid them. I prefer text that I can cut, paste and save rather than rely on my fading memory.

The animals were quite curious too and I don’t know what to make of them.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and sorted out my legs. And then, in accordance with the prescription that I received yesterday, she took my blood pressure.

"If the blood pressure is less than 8.5" said the prescription. "telephone the dialysis clinic immediately."

And so she telephoned immediately. "Mr Hall’s blood pressure is 7.9!"

"Oh" came the reply. "That’s normal for him!"

After she left, I made breakfast and for once, I managed to eat everything as well as drink my coffee. And how I have missed a good mug of coffee!

Back in here, there was the uploading of a pile of little miscellaneous programs, some of which I’ve been using for over twenty years and which are difficult to find these days. Luckily, I’ve been saving all the installation programs but even so, there are one or two of the full executable programs that are no longer on line and in one case, the link to the executable program has been hi-jacked so I had to end up cleaning out all of the mess that it had created.

After a disgusting drink break, I made myself ready for the Centre de Ré-education and the taxi came to pick me up.

Having told them that three is the maximum amount of sessions that I feel able to do in a day, they had changed my programme to give me four this afternoon. And while it’s back to three next week, the week after, they have given me four again. I may as well talk to myself, I suppose.

The first session was sitting at something like a rowing machine, using my leg muscles (such as they are) to move some weights. A whole thirty minutes of it too and I couldn’t stand up afterwards. They had to lift me from the machine.

Secondly, I was with my physiotherapist who had me lying on my side giving me breathing exercises. She also suggested some exercises that I can do in bed, although I have my own ideas about those. That was when I realised that I was feeling better.

Thirdly, they strapped me to a machine that had me standing up. They kept on asking me every five minutes if I was still OK. I’ve no idea why, because it didn’t seem like any effort for me and I was enjoying the view out of the window.

Finally, the occupational therapist wanted to see me about hints and tips for the shower. However, that was really a waste of half an hour because he had no suggestions to make. And when he was talking about non-slip rubber mats, he was showing me examples at €150:00 or thereabouts. We’re doing the same job with a worn-out bath towel that one of my cleaner’s other clients was throwing away.

Back here, my cleaner helped me in and then we attacked the new chair. It was a complex piece of machinery to assemble but it seems to work really well. As I said earlier, it’s not as comfortable as I would have liked, but it’s definitely an improvement.

Tea was air-fried chips with salad and those breaded quorn nuggets that I like. And, regardless of there being only very small portions, for once I managed to eat everything. And it’s been a long time since that has happened.

So now I’m off to bed. With a repaired (I hope) washing machine, I shall be clothes-washing in the morning and then off to dialysis to see what delights they have in store for me there.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the girl in the lift … "well, one of us has" – ed … I did once meet a girl in a lift
"Do you mind if I join you?" I asked.
"I suppose so" she replied. "But honestly, I had no idea that I was coming apart."

0

Thursday 13th November 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… it was 11:30 when I finally left the bed this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I was in bed at 17:30 and was flat out, fast asleep until about 22:30. Ordinarily, I would have been tempted to leave the bed but I was feeling even worse than I had done earlier so for a while, I just lay there vegetating.

At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 as usual, and it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed.

Yesterday, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed and that was how I was found this morning. I didn’t wash, which is not like me at all, but simply fell into the kitchen for the lemon, ginger and honey drink with my medication. And to make the drink required another monumental effort.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I can’t believe that after all that sleep, there was so little on it. I was very ill, like I am now. For some reason, I was sitting on the floor, trying to work the computer when I was sitting on the floor. There was a cup of tea there, but it was freezing cold, and a cup of orange. There was a woman talking to me, and I recognised her as someone who had a lot of frizzy red hair and I know her from somewhere but I can’t think who she is. She’s something to do with the Health Service, and she asked me how I was feeling. I said that I was feeling dreadful. I told her that it had happened since roughly 15:00 which she said was the time that we all stop for a cup of tea. Surprisingly then, she left the room without saying anything else or doing anything else and I was still struggling about, sitting there on the floor.

That girl is someone whom I know from somewhere but I can’t place her at all. The hot drink and orange juice does come round at about 15:00 at dialysis and I do sometimes have the opinion that when I talk to the doctors about how I’m feeling, they walk away afterwards without doing anything about it.

Isabelle the Nurse noticed how ill I was looking. She told me to mention it at dialysis, which was what I had in mind to do. She gave me some advice and then left on her rounds.

After she left, do I make breakfast or go back to bed? Seeing as I wasn’t hungry anyway, I set the alarm for 11:30 and crawled once more under the quilt, fully-clothed again.

When the alarm sounded, I went to haul myself out of bed but it took so long that my cleaner was here by the time I was up and about. She applied my anaesthetic and it’s just as well that she hurried because the taxi came half an hour early.

It was a driver whom I hadn’t seen before, and she chatted non-stop all the way to Avranches. I really wasn’t in the mood.

Early at dialysis made no difference because once I’d told them about my health problems, they refused to connect me without speaking to a doctor.

Eventually, the doctor turned up and examined me, and they gave me an electro-cardiac test. It took them three goes before they were convinced that the results weren’t incorrect. They have diagnosed an irregular heartbeat.

As well as that, my blood pressure, low as it always is, was even lower today.

They asked me if I wanted to be admitted to Casualty but I said “no”, so they are going to speak to a few people and then call me in for a hospital stay while they examine me. I might have to wait a few days for that.

When dialysis was finally finished, it was another “Tour of Normandy” to come home, so I was no earlier than usual. My cleaner helped me in, and I sat on a chair and collapsed.

For tea, I tried a home-made mushroom soup but half of it went in the bin as usual.

So having written up last night’s entry and now tonight’s, I’m off to bed. Heaven alone knows what time I’ll awaken tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my electro-cardiac test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked the nurse if she had succeeded in finding my heart.
"Oh yes" she replied. "It’s still there "
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative."

0

Tuesday 11th November 2025 – TODAY’S WELSH LESSON …

… was another one that passed quite well, and I’m not sure why. Maybe, subconsciously, all of this preparation that I’m doing is having some effect, even if I don’t really notice it.

Having a good sleep also helps. I finished my notes fairly early last night, dashed through everything else that needed doing and found myself in bed for 22:50 – early by the standards of these days.

Once in bed, there I lay, fast asleep, until I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This time, though, it was at 06:17, just twelve minutes before the alarm was due to go off. And being sat on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm sounded allows if to be counted as an early start.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication. This involved another honey, ginger and lemon drink to hopefully dissolve what is causing all of these fits of coughing. It doesn’t seem to be working so well so far.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some big battle going on in Europe. In the USA, they would be sending thousands and thousands of shells over to Europe to fight this battle. When they had unloaded them on the docks and put them on a big railway, it would send them somewhere near the front line. Then, they would have a system of trench railways that would bring the stuff right up to the front. It was the Scots who were mainly involved in this battle. What they did in the USA was to encourage exiled Scots to make a monthly contribution. It only had to be a few pence or it could be a few Pounds every month to a bank account that had been set up, which could be used to purchase more ammunition and equipment.

That’s another thing about which I’ve been reading just recently – the trench railways in World War I. There were hundreds of miles of them built to bring supplies from the forward depots up to the front line. And this military subscription thing is similar to something that was set up to supply the Ukrainian forces in order to defend their country against the aggressor.

Isabelle the Nurse started her week this morning, and started in excellent fashion by turning up early. She was her usual cheerful self, except when she began to talk about the new War Memorial plaques that have begun to create a huge scandal.

In the town centre, they have commemorated the fallen by adding new plaques, listing the names of the fallen from the town in both World Wars, alongside the statue in the town square.

However, all of the names on the list are of the men who fell. There is not a single woman listed, although it is well-known that there were nurses from the town who were killed in action in both wars, there were female resistance fighters who were either killed or executed, there were females who were transported and died in the camps and there were females who were killed in the bombardment of the town. All of these people were mortes pour la France.

Many people are outraged by the omission of these names from the rolls of honour.

After she had left, I made breakfast and, having finished the project that I had been undertaking just recently, I went back to reading AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

It’s the diary of Margaret Carrington, wife of Colonel Henry Carrington of Fort Phil Kearny fame, and talks about her journey to the fort, her encounters there, and the final retreat after the Fetterman Massacre.

It’s written in a spirit of total naïveté, which would be charming had it not been full of comments that would be considered most offensive these days. Imagine someone writing today about the Powder River valley, saying"Buffalo Tongue and other Indians who infest its valley." and what the response would be.

She also has absolutely no sense of irony either. She mentions that "the Crows lost possession" of the Powder River "by robbery".

Furthermore, she then berates the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the Peace Council at Fort Laramie, asking them "Why do the Sioux and Cheyennes claim the land which belongs to the Crows?". They reply, quite naturally "The white man is along the great waters, and we wanted more room.".

Yes, no sense of irony whatever.

But she tells us of some very interesting events on the border. When talking about “Old Little Dog”, she announces that "he sprang upon the bare back of his pony with all the elasticity of youth and more than the skill of our mounted infantry, and galloped swiftly away. He had the appearance of being very old, but his agility and address in his intercourse with that pony were decidedly suggestive of the probable skill and activity of the young warriors of his nation"

Now, who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that?

The most noteworthy remark however, was when she was talking about her house catching fire just before leaving for the Powder River. "But as this was only an incident very possible in army life, the fun of the affair made up for its losses."

Yes, “the fun of the affair being “an incident very possible in army life”. I’m all agog to find out what she makes later in the book about the death at the hands of Red Cloud and his band of Oglala Lakota of Lieutenant Fetterman and the eighty soldiers who went with him from the fort. How much “fun” will she think that this “incident very possible in army life” was?

After breakfast, I had to revise for my Welsh and then I attended the lesson. One of the subjects that we discussed was the UK’s Postmaster scandal. Many sub-postmasters were convicted of false accounting and sent to prison, with several committing suicide, only to be told later that the new computer program that they were obliged to use contained a bug that corrupted the entries that they had made.

The Post Office knew all about it but chose to keep silent, thus destroying the careers and the future, and in some cases the lives, of many of their sub-postmasters.

After the lesson, my cleaner turned up to do her stuff and I had a lovely shower. So now I’m all nice and clean for once.

After she left, I fitted the new SSD hard drive into the computer and loaded up the operating system. However, despite trying all afternoon, there’s a corruption in the C++ libraries that is preventing many of the programs that I use from loading up.

Had I realised this, I would have updated the operating system before loading up the programs. What I’ll have to do now is to format the disk and start again.

Tea was another helping of Moroccan bean tajine, but once again, I left a pile of food on the plate. However, a helping of chocolate cake and strawberry soya dessert filled a hole.

So now, this nice, clean me is off to bed to make the most of an unexpected Day of Rest tomorrow, to see if I can’t sort out this C++ library and then finish this radio programme.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Margaret Carrington’s offensive remarks about the Native Americans … "well, one of us has" – ed … since writing this entry, I am told that the Oglala Lakota Sioux are planning to take legal action against the estate of Margaret Carrington, and have consulted lawyers.
"It’s quite surprising that you have done that" I said to Red Cloud
"Not at all" he replied. "We’re not called ‘the Sioux’ for nothing, you know."

0

Monday 10th November 2025 – MY CANADIAN VISITORS …

… have now departed. As I am writing these notes, they are probably hitting the high spots around Paris as a final fling before flying back out tomorrow morning.

This means that I can now do my best to return to normality, such as normality is around here.

It actually started last night. They left to go to have an early night ready for the voyage, so I could write up my notes, take the stats, do the backing-up and then sort myself out for bed.

It wasn’t as early as I would have liked, though. Probably more like 23:30 which, although not as late as some have been, is still after my ideal curfew time of 23:00.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and despite the odd brief awakening during the night, I was still asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29. How many times is this just recently that I’ve slept until the alarm? I reckon that it’s been more times this last ten days than in the previous ten months.

When the alarm went off, there was some kind of incident going on in the street. It concerns a prisoner. The prisoner managed to escape and climbed onto the back of someone’s motorbike in order to escape. However, the police set up a roadblock somewhere and the motorbike collided with this road block, and the prisoner on the back was catapulted over the cars that were blocking the road and into the street beyond, where the authorities managed to arrest him again.

This reminds me of a real incident that actually did take place in London years ago, but in that case the prisoner made good his escape.

Once more, it was an enormous effort to haul myself out of bed. I really didn’t feel like it at all. Nevertheless, I went … "eventually" – ed … into the bathroom to tidy myself up for dialysis, and then went for my medication.

That involved another glass of this honey, lemon and ginger mix, and remembering not to put the calcium in it.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a girl last night who resembled one of the nurses. I was disabled and hobbling along with difficulty on my crutches and she was with me. We ended up at the shops and were in a queue at the till, ready to leave. The people in front of us, their bill came to so many Pounds and so many pence. They had the Pounds but they didn’t have any pence, so the girl with me rooted through her purse and gave them the correct amount of pence for the sale. Then she prepared her purse for ours at the check-out and I noticed that her number for the Co-operative Society was 24287. I explained that that was very, very close to the number that we had as a family and kids when we lived in Shavington. We passed through the till, and the cashier put two things on top of the belt. One of them fell off so I had to bend down and pick it up. The other one was a pair of very used Levi jeans. I looked, and the girl with me was now wearing her new pair instead of the old pair in which she’d set out. I rolled the old pair up, busy making sure that nothing fell out of the pockets, and put them in the bag. I asked her how much the Levis were. She replied “£9:99”. I said that that was an excellent price for a pair of Levi jeans. I told her that I really liked Levi jeans and they were the only jeans that I bought that actually fit me comfortably and the cut was correct.

It’s quite bizarre that, after all these years, I can still remember our “divvy” number

It’s also true about Levi jeans. They were the only ones that really fit me correctly. And wasn’t it nice to have a certain nurse accompanying me last night? She can accompany me any time she likes.

And I can’t remember very much about the next dream but I was trying to go through the duplicate files on my computer and remove them. But for some reason, it was taking hours instead of the usual ten minutes. I’d even gone for some food and then come back and it was still performing its search. While I was doing this, there was someone doing a pile of washing-up from all of the cooking and baking and everything that everyone was here for last week. She suddenly announced “there’s no hot water any more”. She added “now, there’s someone on this site who is touching a commission from the Electricity Board for this and we’ll have to find out who it is” although I knew how to switch on the hot water anyway, I was interested in finding the culprit

It’s true that with this temporary hard drive in the computer, searches are taking much longer. But the electricity issue doesn’t seem to relate to anything.

The nurse came around a little later, still in a good mood. He sorted out my legs and then left. This is his last day for a week so I wished him a happy break.

After he had left, I ate the two remaining croissants and then made another batch for my guests. I then came back in here to work on a radio programme while I awaited their arrival.

They turned up in the middle of a rainstorm so while they were eating croissants, I organised a taxi to take them to the station.

The car arrived at the same time as my faithful cleaner, so I gave my visitors a good hug and they left for their train. They are going to Rennes and then on a TGV to Paris. That will make a change from the decrepit, derelict excuses for Canadian trains that have been THE SUBJECT OF CONSIDERABLE DISCUSSION on here.

The taxi turned up for me just a couple of minutes late, and we had to go to the Centre de Ré-education for another passenger. However, after a good search and a long wait, she didn’t put in an appearance. As a result, we were late arriving at dialysis.

There was no peace for the wicked. My blood pressure was in free fall throughout the session and every half-hour, the alarm sounded, which brought the nurses running.

The doctor came to see me, and she decided to reduce the quantity of one of the medicines that I take, to see if that will make a difference.

My taxi was waiting for me when I finished, and it was a good drive home where my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment.

After a rest, I portioned out all of the unused food into containers and then heated up some of the broccoli stalk soup. However, I couldn’t eat much and a large amount ended up in the bin. Nevertheless, I managed to eat the chocolate cake and strawberry dessert.

Having finished what I could, I washed up and then put the packed food away in the freezer in the bathroom. That involved a little sorting-out, and I really need to have a good tidying-up session in there.

That’s a task that will have to be done another time because I’m off to bed right now. I’m in absolute agony, aching from every joint, and I wish that I could snap out of this.

But seeing as we have been talking about trains … "well, one of us has" – ed … three men from Crewe were on a train where they met three other men.
They began to talk about their tickets, and the men from Crewe showed the other men their three tickets
"But we only have one" replied the other men.
"How do you manage for a control? "
"Watch" said the other men. And as the controller walked down the corridor, the three other men went to the bathroom and locked themselves in.
When the controller knocked on the door to ask for their ticket, they slid it under the door. The controller punched it and pushed it back.
On the return journey, they met again and the men from Crewe showed that they just had the one ticket.
"We don’t have any" replied the other men.
"How do you manage for a control? "
"Watch" said the other men.
As the controller approached, the three men from Crewe went to hide in the bathroom.
The three other men walked behind them at a discreet distance to go to a bathroom further down the train.
As they passed the bathroom where the men from Crewe were hiding, one of them knocked on the door and said "tickets, please" so the men from Crewe slid their ticket under the door.

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Friday 7th November 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

… debâcle this is turning out to be.

My niece and her daughter turned up at Charles de Gaulle Airport this morning at 10:30 as arranged, on Flight AC872 from Canada. However, their luggage didn’t. It’s still in the airport at Toronto, according to the tracking system.

"No problem" said my niece philosophically. "These things happen. Here’s my uncle’s address. Send it on to us when it arrives."
"Oh, we can’t do that " was the reply. "You have to come back tomorrow and pick it up "
"I can’t do that" replied my niece. "We’re only here for four days, we have a train booked and paid for, a hotel booked and paid for … "
"There is no other solution" replied the Air Canada official, and terminated the discussion.

They are now stranded in Paris, no luggage and trying desperately to find a hotel that they can afford.

Outraged, I rang up Air Canada’s helpline. After holding on for no less than seventy-four minutes, my call was finally answered.
"There’s nothing that I can do" replied the assistant
"In that case, put me through to someone who can"
"There’s no-one else here"
"You mean to tell me that, as a worldwide airline flying millions of passengers to thousands of destinations every day, there’s just one person on the helpline? Come off it!"
And I had the telephone slammed down in my face.

Air Canada has not heard the last of this. I have friends in the Canadian press.

My day has not gone as I would have liked it to go either … "but nothing like as bad as theirs" – ed …

Last night, I tried my best to finish at something like a reasonable time, but it was still almost 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed and curled up under the covers.

It didn’t take too long to go off to sleep either but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, whenever I have to wake up especially early, I have a very mobile night. And last night was no exception.

When I awoke for the final time, it was 05:35. And a couple of minutes later, with a great deal of effort, I left the bed and went into the bathroom.

It was a good job that I was early too, because this 06:45 of the nurse was nothing like. I hadn’t even finished dressing when he arrived.

On the basis of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”, I didn’t take my medication and just had a disgusting drink to keep me going while I awaited my faithful cleaner.

She staggered in, half-asleep, at 06:50 and sorted out the anaesthetic for my arm and then staggered off back to bed, poor thing. The sacrifices she makes for me are unbelievable.

The taxi turned up at 07:05 and we went off to pick up someone else who also goes to dialysis. We arrived quite early but they were having problems with the weighing machine so everything ended up running late.

The first needle went in fine but the second was one of those that really hurt and I suffered throughout the session. So much so that I didn’t do anything like as much as I wanted to.

They still hadn’t disconnected me when the taxi turned up, so the poor driver had to wait fifteen minutes for me, much to the disappointment of two other passengers. And then we came home via a Tour of Normandy so it was really late by the time that I arrived home.

There is one thing to be said, though, and that is that with these new Securité Sociale regulations, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and I discovered that they had tried to deliver another parcel (which should be arriving this coming Monday) but as there was no-one in, they have left it at a collection point. And seeing that I can’t go to pick it up, I’m not sure what will happen next.

Back in here, I sent off my order to the supermarket for delivery this afternoon, and then I made breakfast and had my medication. While I was eating, I had my … errr … frank exchange of views with Air Canada.

It was my plan to make a vegan lasagna today so I had some lentils cooking overnight in the slow cooker. This afternoon, I attacked it and after a couple of hours, it was ready. Once more, I’m over-estimating the cooking time of this oven and it’s scorched around the edges.²

However, while I was doing it, I could feel my health slipping away and I began to feel really ill. Doing the pile of washing-up finished me off and when the food delivery arrived, it was all that I could do to put the frozen food in the freezer. The rest can wait to be put away.

But seeing as we have been talking about my cooking … "well, one of us has" – ed … I have had quite a few requests. Most of them are physically impossible, of course, but I have had a request for the recipe for my bean tajine.

Of course, it’s not my recipe, but I have modified it to suit my palette.

  1. 240g dried white beans
  2. 1 large onion
  3. garlic to your taste
  4. honey to your taste (seriously)
  5. 4 carrots
  6. 1 tin of tomato purée
  7. concentrate of tomato (I use Harissa, the spicy stuff)
  8. olive oil
  9. salt
  10. turmeric (2 heaped tsps)
  11. other herbs if you like (I added basil and oregano)
  12. coriander (fresh if possible)
  1. soak your beans on “high” in a slow cooker for an hour
  2. drain, rinse, then soak again overnight on “low”
  3. drain the beans and rinse again.
  4. peel, then dice the carrots fairly fine
  5. put some oil in the slow cooker, on “high”. Then add the chopped onion and fry until transparent
  6. add the honey and stir
  7. add the carrots, tomato, turmeric, garlic, other herbs, and stir well
  8. add the beans and stir really well
  9. add water to cover, and stir really well
  10. bring to the boil on “high” then leave for a couple of hours on “low”
  11. garnish with coriander
  12. serve with couscous, peas and mint.

Back in here, I sat down and although I didn’t crash out, I definitely wasn’t in. And for a good hour or so too. My left shoulder was in total agony. At one point, I went to lie down on the bed but I couldn’t go to sleep. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, sleep is my cure for all ills.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was playing in a group with two other guys and living in Crewe. There was a home match played by Crewe Alexandra so I asked a friend of mine who worked for the radio whether he could obtain a few complimentary tickets for my friends and me. My girlfriend wanted to come too, but I can’t remember who she is. The two guys from the radio turned up but they didn’t have any complimentary tickets with them, so we chatted. Then someone else turned up with two kids and the conversation continued. I noticed that my girlfriend was taking some food with her to the football match so I went and found a flapjack that I’d made, and put it in my pocket. There was a knock on the door, and I thought that it might be my two friends who were coming with us, but it turned out to be two more people. One of them was in a wheelchair and the other one was on one of these low-down foot-forward bicycles. They came in. by then there was quite a crowd of us. Someone said to me “I hope you’re going to be OK after the game, Eric, with five people staying with you”. This was the first that I’d heard of this. “And those five people include those two children” someone else said. I said to these two kids “I suppose you want to sleep on the double bed in the spare room, do you?”. They replied “no. That double bed has been there for years, hasn’t it?”. So I had a think, and I thought that the double bed was about thirty-five years old so they were probably right.

Now, who was my girlfriend? It’s not like me to miss out on remembering something like that. There are many other things in this dream too that seem to have no significance either.

There was another dream about a man who was a comedian. He’d been invited to appear before a group of evil mafia-type people to entertain them. He wasn’t happy about this because she’d heard that they were pretty vile to people whom they didn’t like. He needed a lot of talking before he agreed to take it on. What he didn’t realise was just before this concert took place, there had been a serious jewel robbery with millions of pounds-worth of jewels stolen. He went along to this concert but as soon as he walked into the room, he took fright. He pulled out his gun, shot a couple of people and then ran. Of course, everyone ran after him, but he was hiding in places inside this theatre to try to shake them off. Then he made a break for it, and ran right across the motorway. Somehow, he’d managed to pick up this case full of these jewels in the meantime so everyone was chasing after him. They weren’t so lucky going across the motorway and a couple of them were knocked down. The rest of them couldn’t pass over to the other side. In the meantime, this guy was wandering up some kind of main road miles away from the scene, still with this briefcase. Stopped at a set of traffic lights was a mobile home, so he climbed in. This upset the owner but in the end the guy convinced the owner that he meant no harm, so the owner agreed to take him somewhere. Then he found the guy shaving inside the motorhome. There was something in the clause of the purchase of this motorhome that it should belong to the first person who shaved inside the vehicle. The owner hadn’t yet had a shave inside it so he had to relinquish control to this guy. The guy decided to drive off. In the winter, he’d be down in the southern tip of Italy or Greece and in the summer, he’d be back in Western Europe again.

This one is just like the first – a confused mass of nothing of any significance either.

Did I dictate the dream about the British guy who somehow managed to take possession of Heligoland in 1914 and succeeded in keeping the Germans off the island so that they couldn’t fortify it throughout the whole of World War I? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … I can’t remember very much about this dream but I wondered whether I’d written it down.

Heligoland, off the coast of Germany, used to be a British possession but the British swapped it for Zanzibar in 1890. It was a naval base in World War II, and the installations were destroyed in 1947 in one of the World’s biggest non-nuclear explosion.

I was with a guy and his two young daughters. As civilians, we were being pushed back from where we were living or where we’d been, rather, by an invading army. We had a few nightmares and confrontations but eventually, we made it back to his house. The fighting swarmed past his house but we stayed indoors while it was all going on. When things had quietened down, these two girls gave a big sigh of relief. One of them then was speaking to someone on the ‘phone and suddenly saying, “oh, I’m stuck in this huge wall of fire at the moment”. She didn’t realise what a wall of fire was until that particular moment when the battle raged past the house. Next morning, I had to prepare to leave. I had to wear all my heaviest clothes and carry as light a load as possible, but I had a lot of difficulty trying to find my boots. Eventually I found them and I could pack. But this guy and his daughters were already up and dressed, so I went for a chat after I’d dressed. I told them that I’ll have to be in touch with them because I needed the signature of the eldest girl for a reference to join the local library. We exchanged names and telephone numbers etc. Then I made big plans to slip out of the house and do my best to head for home. But the chat with those girls was really interesting, the one that I had. And I wish that I could remember it.

Children seem to be playing quite a rôle in my nocturnal adventures right now. I’m not sure why, though. But as for the warfare issues, that’s something that relates to whatever I’ve been reading just now. For example, at dialysis these last few days I’ve been reading Sir Douglas Haig’s reports to Parliament on the activities of his forces on the Western Front in World War I.

Tonight, I haven’t made any tea. I really couldn’t face anything cooked, for some reason. Instead, I finished off that cream cheese with some crackers. Not very healthy but it will keep the lupus from the porte, as they might have said in Ancient Rome while I go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my altercation with Air Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … I can recall part of the discussion that I had with that obnoxious helpline attendant earlier.
After I had explained the situation to him, he replied "I don’t have any words to say to that."
"Well, I have" I replied. "Would you like to hear them? "
It was shortly after that when he hung up, and before I’d really got going too.

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Thursday 6th November 2025 – JUST FOR A …

… change, tonight I tried something new for tea. And for the first time since I can’t remember when, I managed to eat a plate full of food and leave nothing behind on the plate. This is an exciting development.

However, more of that anon.

Last night, I tried yet again to make a determined effort to finish my notes at some kind of realistic time, to dash through everything else that needed doing and then have an early night.

But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall from past experience, I failed miserably. It was 22:34 when my notes finally crawled online and by the time that I snuggled up under the warm covers, it was 23:10, about half an hour later than I was hoping.

As seems to be the case these days, I was asleep quite quickly, despite all of the coughing that I was doing, and there I lay, totally dead to the World until all of … errr … 04:44.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so round about 05:20 I left the bed and dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. They turned out to be something of a dog’s dinner and will require some considerable editing, but at least they are done. I took full advantage of the quiet of the early morning.

After the bathroom, I went to take my medication. This involved making another one of these ginger, lemon and honey drinks. And once more, Brain of Britain forgot about the reaction between the acid in the lemon juice and the alkaline Calcium Carbonate. As a result, I ended up with only half a glass of drink and a mountain of soggy paper tissue.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And once more, I was surprised at how far I’d travelled. I was with some friends of mine. We were doing something in the front garden of the house of one of them. Suddenly, five people walked across the lawn from somewhere, but we don’t know from where they came. They went to the front door, but we couldn’t see particularly what was happening from where we were standing. All of a sudden, one of the people, the one nearest the door, seemed to flinch as if someone had struck him or attempted to strike him. Then one of the parents came out and began to kick at these people, trying to chase them away. I wondered what had gone on, but there was one of him and five of them so I went over to see what I could do. These people slowly began to retreat but suddenly there were more and more of them. I went around the back, but there were several hundred children coming in from down the hill and through the hedge. I went to the hedge and began to shoo the children away but there were more and more of them coming. In the end, I was overwhelmed. I decided to go back to the house to see what we could do but when I reached the back of the house, there were probably a thousand children and people on the back lawn staring at the house. I wondered what on earth was going on here and what are we going to do about this.

Whoever these friends were, I have no idea. But this was a really creepy, eerie dream that evidently has some significance about something but I can’t think what. I know that I like children, but only in small numbers where, if they begin to misbehave, you can give them back to their parents. Having a thousand or so dumped in my lap all at once would be quite overwhelming.

Later on, I was out in the van somewhere. I ended up stopping in a country lane where I set up a bit of a camp at the side of the road with a tent. I had my cooking facilities and everything. Next morning I awoke quite early and had to go into town to do some shopping, but I noticed that I’d left the van parked right in the middle of the road. It was a surprise to me that vehicles had been able to go by without actually saying anything. I had a look, and there was a space not too far from where my tent was pitched, where there was a small amount of tarmac that had been spilled onto the grass verge so I thought that I’d put the van there. Although there would be some of it on the road, there would still be a lot less and it wouldn’t be in the middle. For some reason, I had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to manoeuvre the van onto this small piece of tarmac. I remember that there was someone watching me too. I thought that this isn’t a very good advert for my driving.

This is my big worry these days. Just before I stopped driving, I could feel that my reflexes were slowing down dramatically and I didn’t feel as secure on the road as I once did. Even if I were to recover the strength in my legs (which is doubtful) I don’t think that I’d be safe on the roads.

One thing that I remember about that dream just now was that I actually walked to the van. I counted the steps, but I can’t remember how many there were. I thought to myself “that’s an improvement”.

Ahhh – if only …..

The nurse came along at his usual time, still cheerful and full of bonhomie which is very nice. He didn’t stay long and said that he’d see me tomorrow at 06:45. Yes, I have dialysis tomorrow early morning.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and have a leisurely start to the day.

After breakfast, I spent some time in the kitchen. While I was sorting out the food the other day, I came across a recipe for a Moroccan Bean tajine. One hundred percent vegan and, to my surprise, I had all of the ingredients in stock.

A proper Moroccan clay coking pot I don’t have, but I do have a slow cooker so last night, I had put some beans in it to soak overnight. This morning, I followed the recipe and mixed everything together, then I added it all into the slow cooker and left it to simmer away throughout the day.

Back in here, I had things to do, but I was interrupted by the postie who brought me another couple of packets. There are just two more to arrive now, and I can’t wait for them.

After the disgusting drink break, the taxi came to pick me up to take me to the Centre de Ré-education.

The first session was fifteen minutes working on the muscles of my arms, followed by fifteen minutes working on what remains of the muscles in my legs. I still live in hope that something might happen to enable me to walk again.

The second session was with my physiotherapist who had me squeezing rubber balls with my feet, and then she took me for a walk with a walk frame. A walk frame is no good, though. It twists my arms into all kinds of unfortunate positions that are quite painful after a short while.

The final session was a team effort in the gym, playing carpet skittles. They have some strange ideas in this place.

Back here, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I crashed out for an hour or so. The combination of the early start and the effort at the Centre de Ré-education had wiped me out.

Once I’d come round back into the Land of the Living, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme. Even so, I’m beginning to fall behind again and I need to motivate myself much more. I’m hoping that when the chemotherapy and the physiotherapy are finished, I’ll have much more time to press on with things. It’s hard to find the energy to do things when I’m wearing myself out with all of these medical appointments.

Tea tonight was a ladle-ful of the tajine with couscous. It was excellent too and not too heavy. I managed to eat all of it too, as I said earlier. Couscous is a high-protein food and so are white beans, so add that to the fats and the carbohydrates in my vegan chocolate and coconut cake, and for once, I had a healthy meal.

And not only that, it was delicious.

So right now I’m off to bed. But not before I’ve rinsed the lentils in the slow cooker. Tomorrow, I’m going to make a vegan lasagna so the lentils are simmering away nicely.

But seeing as we have been talking about children climbing the fence … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago, I caught a couple of kids climbing over the fence at Gresty Road during a Crewe Alexandra football match.
"It’s no good, kids" I said. "You’ve been caught red-handed. You’re not getting away with this. Now, you can just jolly well climb back and watch the second half."

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