Tag Archives: late night

Tuesday 30th July 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely tea tonight.

With plenty of stuffing in the fridge left over from yesterday, ordinarily I’d be having a taco roll with rice tonight followed by a leftover curry tomorrow and something different on Thursday

However when I was reading back a couple of years in my blog I noticed a reference to pies, and it suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t had a really good pie for ages.

Add into the equation the fact that I need to bake some bread as I have now run out, so the oven will be on, but the bread will only take up half an oven. There’s half an oven going spare.

And so the answer is pretty obvious. I hope that I can remember how to bake a pie because it’s been years

It’s also been years since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. At least, that’s what it seems like. And last night was no different. It was another late night when I finally crawled into my stinking pit

And once again, I didn’t need much rocking before I was fast asleep, dead to the World.

And there I remained until all of … errr … 04:15. This is becoming a habit.

However, today I managed to go back to sleep, at least for a short while. But since then I’ve had an annoying itch in my right wrist that is driving me to distraction. It’s been going all day.

Add to that the persistent dull throb in the left wrist where I had the operation and all in all, I’m in something of a mess.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom where I sorted myself out for the day and washed the crepe bandages that had been soaking for the last 24 hours. They are now hung up to dry.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone from the night. Someone rang me up to talk about a friend’s illness and how it was going to affect me. They rang a couple of times and wanted to speak to me about this kind of thing, making sure that I was aware of what was happening and what was going on, which was a surprise when you are asleep like that sometimes. I’ve no idea why

Then Nerina and I were living in Gainsborough Road. We were working on the Industrial Estate there. It was time to go to work but only one of the alarms had worked, which was mine, so I took my pushbike and began to cycle to work. Nerina, realising that I was going to work, dashed out of bed, dashed to wash, dashed to put on her clean clothes then leaped onto her bike and chased after me. She passed me at the corner and cycled off into the distance. There were one or two other guys who were cycling with her. I was hoping that she would find a place where she’d no longer cycle and she’d have to walk. For me, I was quite happy to push on on the bike but Nerina was rather more difficult. She wanted really to lose any confrontation like lhat. She was one of these people who would only do it if if it was all marked out and mapped out etc. But on this particular run she ended up talking to a couple of other guys as she was cycling and it was an effort to keep up with them that she made this distance between the two of us and once again there was nothing that I could do to close this gap.

All of this sounds familiar too, but that’s all water that has long-since flown under the bridge.

My friend from Stoke on Trent joined the Open University and began to study but he lacked the self-discipline and was unable to make much progress. He didn’t have what it took to knuckle down like that on a six-year course. We had a few arguments about his studying but in the end I left him to do what he wanted to do rather than what he ought to be doing and it all went pear-shaped. But it was interesting listening to someone at the University talking about the OU’s Marketing. First of all, they obviously hit the students with all of the renewal business etc but eventually they hit the sleazy Newsgroups and sleazy chatrooms to invite their members along. Some of their members did quite well at studying too when you consider their background. There was certainly plenty of different people and plenty of different classes studying at the University and I was glad to have been there at a very interesting time when we had their own new chat system where we could actually see how things were evolving

So I’m now running marketing campaigns in my sleep. But had this taken place 25 years ago when I was at University there would have been plenty of sleazy Newsgroups to go at. Usenet was at its anarchic, chaotic height and there were all kinds of things going on in its hidden bowels and a Marketing campaign would have had plenty of room to manoeuvre. As for self-discipline, a lot of people totally underestimated the amount of self-discipline you needed to study at the Open University, with no tutors and lecturers sitting over you, and work, colleagues and family getting in the way. I had to revise my study plan considerably after the events of 2001 which meant that we were working practically permanent overtime. But our chat system, “First Class”, was excellent. Hats off to the designers of that. We had hours of endless fun and games

I was teasing one of the kids who belonged to one of the women. I asked her what she wanted for dessert, whether she wanted Christmas cake or Christmas pudding. She couldn’t make up her mind so I told her that seeing as the Christmas cake was mine if she chose pudding I’d give her a slice of Christmas cake too but she was dithering about, umming and ahhing, couldn’t make up her mind so I was quite busy teasing her while all of this was going on but she still hadn’t made up her mind.

Teasing kids is all good fun as long as you know where to draw the line, because there is a point where although the adults think that it’s hilarious, it’s no longer fun for the kids. You need to stop a long time before then. However, I wonder who the kid was. She wasn’t one of my three favourite young ladies, which is a shame.

It’s Isabelle today for the next week or two. She was her usual cheerful self but she couldn’t hang around as she had a blood test to do back at her office. She was in and out in 5 minutes doing my puttees, but she didn’t forget to give me my injection.

After she left, I had breakfast and then for about an hour afterwards I did something that I haven’t done for ages – nice and comfy on my breakfast chair, I read my book, BYWAYS IN BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY or, rather, finished it off. I had about 100 pages to go but I was so deeply engrossed that after I’d eaten my toast I just carried on until the end.

The book, published in 1912, explains the author’s theory that many churches are built on old pagan religious sites to a plan that is proto-pagan in origin. It’s a fascinating book, as are most of these ancient tomes stored on-line.

It’s amazing how much has been forgotten too, when you read the facts that are disclosed within its pages that never made it onto the internet and into Wikipedia. And with people now just doing their research on Wikipedia and going nowhere else, all these facts will be lost for ever.

When I’d finished my book I phoned up the hospital at Avranches to say that I won’t be going to this appointment at the private hospital. But the surgeon and his assistant are away until 18th August. Could I call back after then?

So tell me – what good is this emergency number that I was given.

And then there were the final radio notes to edit from the batch that I dictated on Saturday night.

These radio notes are important because it’s for a live concert. There’s a World-famous live album recorded 50-odd years ago but the entire recording of the whole concert has somehow found its way into my possession, so on the anniversary of its recording I’ll be doing my own live concert and you’ll hear the album as it was meant to be, not how the producers wanted it.

This was something else that so engrossed me that I forgot my lunch.

After my mid-afternoon hot chocolate I set about making the dough for the loaf for the next few days.

And while the dough was proofing I had to think about the pie. The traditional recipe is 1 part flour to one part margarine, but I seem to remember that vegan margarine is much more oleaginous so I just used 50% of the butter and that worked out really well.

There wasn’t quite enough filling but a small tin of lentils did the job perfectly. And with the pastry that was left over from my mix I made an apfel strudel.

The oven was nice and full so I put everything in to bake while I washed up and cleaned up.

A pan full of potatoes and veg with gravy was next on the agenda and that was all tipped onto a plate with a slice of the pie.

One thing that I vowed never to do, but I did it all the same, was to eat at my desk.

But TNS were playing Ferencvaros of Hungary in the second leg of a Champions League match.

Following a defeat in Budapest they had their backs against the wall but they held out for 43 minutes when a goal that was so far offside that even the player scoring it looked with amazement at the linesman who had kept his flag well down

And when TNS conceded a penalty with 30 minutes to go to fall even further behind, then that was it. But they battled on bravely and deep into stoppage time scored a consolation goal. But to be quite honest, the Ferencvaros players had long-since clocked off for the night.

It’s fair comment to say that having drawn the top seed at this stage in the competition, the draw for this round wasn’t very kind to TNS.

But TNS and its officials have aspirations of competing in the Group stages, and they’ll encounter plenty of teams as good as Ferencvaros and many seeded teams much better who will join the competition at a later stage. So heavy defeats will become the norm if things don’t change.

On that note I’m going to prepare myself for bed. It’s another late night but it can’t be helped.

But going back to the old days of Usenet, it reminded me of that slogan that just about summed up everything about it
"Usenet – where men are men….. and where women are men …..and where children are Law Enforcement Officers"
Who will ever forget that “14 year old girl” trying to entrap a “15 year old boy” and he eventually took the bait and agreed to meet the girl.
It was in fact an elaborate sting operation by one County in California posing as a girl in the hope of catching a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage boy. What they caught instead was the Cybercrime Unit of the neighbouring County posing as a teenage boy hoping to catch a man looking for a victim posing as a teenage girl

0

Thursday 25th July 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision.

And for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one that you make where if it all goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

My decision is that I am not taking off my puttees until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed ready to climb in last thing at night.

Especially after last night where I was sitting in a pool of blood for ages trying to stop the flow that was pouring out of the hole in my leg. My blood is so thin with this Kardegic powder and this Binocrit injection that it pours out non-stop without even an attempt at slowing down.

The idea with thinning out my blood is to make it easier for my heart to lift it but like anything else, solving one problem created a bucket-load of others and we just go round and round in circles. Do I have a heart attack or do I bleed to death?

So there was I trying to slap on plasters and in the end it was one of the big ones that the nurse uses. Not that it stopped it very much, but it stopped it enough that I could crawl into bed.

Glad I was to be in there too, late as it might have been. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

At about 06:15 I awoke but ended up going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I was disorientated at 06:15 but that was nothing to how I felt at 07:00. It took me several minutes to gather my wits which, seeing how few wits I have these days, took longer than it ought to have done.

First thing was to inspect the damage. And the place was in rather a mess after last night, and so were my clothes and slippers. So after washing me, I washed everything else

Eventually I made it back in here and I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’d been on a shopping trip. On the way there in the car I was listening to a radio programme about mistreated children. They were talking about children who had been abandoned and placed in foster homes, how their parents had made all the wrong decisions, like their whole houses were furnished by IKEA, all this kind of thing. It had been bad money management that had put these families into difficulties. The conversation went on to talk about children who had no possessions and were never allowed to do anything. They thought “what kind of life did these children have to live? How awful it was”. They were busy discussing this. In the meantime I’d turned up at this shop in Crewe at the Market Precinct place. I hadn’t actually bought anything but I’d walked through and was going happily outside. It started to talk about people who had gone to the aid of these children even in adult life. I thought of Percy Penguin of course but I must have been totally distracted because just after leaving the shop I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought “God what have I done now?”. It was the manager of the shop, very apologetic, saying that I’d been charged £15:00 too much. I wasn’t sure how that was possible because I hadn’t been near a till and I’d not actually bought anything at all. However I was interested to see what his story was so I followed him back into the store and up to one of the cash points where I thought tha we’d be able to sort out any problem.

Once more, I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I’m not likely to be going round the Market Precinct Shopping Centre in Crewe any time soon, that’s for sure. I can’t really tie that in with anything else but as for the story about mistreated children, we all have our own tales to tell. I’m totally convinced that this idea of a happy home with happy parents and 2.4 children and 1.8 cars is nothing but a total myth and exists nowhere except in the minds of people who shoot margarine adverts for television.

The nurse was dismayed that I’d used one of “his” plasters on this bleeding. And he was even more dismayed to find that the leg started to bleed as soon as he ripped off the plaster so he had to use an extra one this morning. It’s not his day, is it?

But he managed to clean off the dried blood on my leg that I couldn’t reach. I really am in a right state, aren’t I?

After he left, I had breakfast with the last of the bread and then a leisurely start to the day. I wasn’t in any great hurry, which seems to be the story of my life right now.

Once I’d wound myself up, I paired off the music for the next radio programme and segued the pairs, and then carried on writing the notes. And by mid-afternoon I’d finished them all. That included stopping for lunch at some point in the proceedings.

With no bread left, I decided that I’d make some more this afternoon. But I’d also seen a strange recipe for making a kind-of chocolate bread, or maybe chocolate muffins with yeast. For want of anything better to do, I thought that I’d give it a try.

The bread was quite easy to make of course but this chocolate stuff was bizarre. It’s rather like an oil cake but with water and only a small amount of oil, and then with added yeast.

My home-made loaf of bread was perfection itself but these chocolate bun things are, well, interesting. It’ll be a few days before I tell you what they are like because they are planned as a replacement for my flapjacks, the supply of which is temporarily exhausted, so I won’t get to them until Monday or Tuesday.

But they certainly look as if they might be nice

Tea tonight was delicious. I need to make space in my freezer so I had some of my lasagne with steamed veg in a cheese sauce. My vegan lasagne definitely worked and I was impressed with that, almost as much as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

So that’s everything for today. I’m going to unwind my puttees and then go to bed. Tomorrow morning I must send an order to LeClerc. I don’t need much but it still needs to be sent

But talking about home-made bread, when Liz, Zero and a few others of us went to Chester Zoo all those years ago, we saw a loaf of bread in one of the cages.
And so we asked one of the keepers "why is that loaf there in that cage?"
"It’s quite Ok sir" he replied. "It’s bread in captivity"

0

Wednesday 24th July 2024 – MY LITTLE COMMENT …

… yesterday about the “Evening Sentinel” awoke a few memories.

Going back 60 years, the bus that ran between leek and Hanley on the outbound journey used to drive without stopping, past hordes of potential passengers

There were regular complaints about this and on one occasion it was brought up in a meeting of the City Council.

Being questioned on the issue, the Councillor in charge of the City’s transport, Arthur Chollerton, replied "but if the bus stopped for the passengers it would disrupt the timetable!"

70 Years ago, you could imagine the kind of scathing comment that a remark like that would have attracted in a leading local newspaper with a wide circulation.

Eighteen months ago, they re-opened a new railway line in Devon. However, they only re-opened some of the previous railway stations, despite a considerable demand for hem all to be re-opened and even some new ones built.

Se despite the fact that there were passengers ready and waiting to be carried by the train, they were being left behind.

When asked why, the result that I received was that "we couldn’t fit those stations into the timetable"

It seems that the satire of the previous couple of generations is becoming the reality of the current one, and consequently I am waiting for the day that strange women living in ponds distributing swords becomes an acceptable way of choosing your leader.

Let’s face it, compared with a system that chose Johnson, Truss, May and Trump, it can’t be any worse.

But going back to trains in Devon not stopping, one day someone will tell the train-operating companies that if the trains didn’t stop at all for passengers and ran light between different termini they would have a much better chance of keeping to time.

And once they realise that, we’re all snookered.

But to give you a better example of how screwed-up railways in the UK are, there’s a railway station at the back of Coventry City’s football ground.

At the final whistle the platform is swamped with fans trying to catch a train back to town and the train is overwhelmed. The railway company’s response – “let’s not have the train stopping there after the game. The fans can go on the bus”

Of course, why should the railway company care about passengers? It makes its money from the subsidies off the taxpayer so it couldn’t care less whether there are passengers or not.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was another late night when I ended up going to bed long after 23:00. But nothing new there. It seems to be the current trend, to go to bed later and later.

But once more, once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking at all and once I was asleep I stayed asleep, right the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00. and it’s been a long time since that’s happened.

When the alarm went off I was being involved in the situation at Sparta Prague where they were having to be relegated for a certain reason. They’d just made a 0-0 draw with a Polish team in the European Cup but something had obviously gone wrong and I was in the middle of trying to sort it out and untangle it when the alarm went off.

Don’t ask me what I’d be doing with Sparta Prague because they haven’t come up in any conversation any time. As for “a Polish Team”, Caernarfon are to play against Legia Warzawa in the next round of the Europa League

So having had a good wash and transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as they were, I waited for the nurse to arrive.

When he turned up he saw to m legs and then attended to my arm. Even though it hurts and is quite tender, he didn’t have anything to say about its condition. So no news is good news as far as I’m concerned.

After he left I had my breakfast and then Liz came on line so we had a chat. And it was a Rosemaryesque chat too, that went on for one hour and twenty minutes. But it was different in that we actually had a lot to discuss. It wasn’t just an aimless, meandering chat.

So having sorted out a few things Liz wandered off for a coffee and I started work.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is to download and reformat a couple of concerts from a Canadian group called “Black Mountain” (thanks, Amber). They featured at a Hawkfest a while back and they recorded a live concert for German television

Despite everything, I’m trying to add to my repertoire of concerts and other live recordings, and I’m trying to encourage other artists to send me recordings of their concerts. It’s my aim to broadcast them on the radio on the anniversary of their taking place.

There’s still a lot of good music out there somewhere but it is difficult to find.

And then I’ve been choosing music for another radio programme and have even begun to write up the notes. Let’s crack on while I still can.

My cleaner came round today and we had a good chat. I’d actually finished my tac return so I gave it to her to post next time she’s at the Post Office. She also told me something about what is (or isn’t) happening downstairs and which confirms a suspicion that I’ve had for a while.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan, and the naan was perfection itself. I seem to have found the knack of making those now which is quite satisfying.

So now I’m off to bed, later than expected. I scratched my leg earlier and you wouldn’t believe the amount of blood that went everywhere. I’ve had to plaster myself up and wash the floor of the office round by where I sit.

My leg is still bleeding now, about an hour after it started. But with the blood being so thin what do you expect?

It does remind me of the time a short-tempered doctor and a nurse with only an imperfect grasp of English went to see the patient in the next bed to me who had come in from a road accident.
"The patient, nurse. How is he?"
"Him footballer at Crewe Alexandra" replied the nurse. "Him bleeding terrible"
"Never mind his qualifications" roared the doctor "How’s his condition?"

0

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 – THESE LATE NIGHTS …

… and early mornings are slowly beginning to catch up with me.

After all, I can’t keep on going to bed at midnight and getting up at … gulp … 06:15 night after night and morning after morning without something giving in the middle.

This evening I should have been searching for an anonymous VPN somewhere to which I could have connected the computer so that I could have watched Ferencvaros v TNS but I was simply too tired to concentrate on what I was doing.

That’s a shame because in order to enable me to do it I’d rushed through the evening’s chores and had tea prepared and cooked on the tray ready to eat all within 28 minutes flat and if that’s not a record in recent times, I don’t know what is.

Actually, it wasn’t midnight when I went to bed last night. It might not actually have been 23:00 but it was a much more reasonable time nevertheless

And I was asleep quite quickly too. I don’t seem to need much rocking these days once STRAWBERRY MOOSE has tucked me up and read the bedtime story

However, I was awake yet again at some kind of silly hour. By 06:15 I’d given up any thought of going back to sleep and was actually up and about yet again.

After I’d had a wash and a shave I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And what I dictated, verbatim, was Round about the early part of the morning I awoke from quite a deep sleep. A picture rolled into my mind that I needed to go to hospital to have my bandage re-fixed because it had slipped. However the district nurse managed to make it look a little better. When I went to hospital the first thing that they did was to ask me about the dressing so I explained what was happening about it so they set to to undo it to have a closer look. They had actually taken all of the bandage off before I was able to turn round on my heels all the way to the (… fell asleep here …)
So whatever is the significance of all that, I don’t know.

Next task was to write a letter.

Well, it wasn’t actually. It was to track down the siège social or “registered office” of a certain company and the name of its Director General. And then to write a letter.

It concerns the affairs at this hospital last week. I’ve decided to fight the good fight at the top of the tree by writing not to the hospital but to the Director General of the company.

Not that it will do much good. I don’t expect any results or anything at all to change, but seeing as I don’t have a spleen to vent these days, I have to find other ways of expressing my displeasure

The nurse was in a rush this morning. He gave me my injection, dealt with my legs and that was basically it. He didn’t hang around much at all.

But I wish that he’d put things away when he’s finished with them. My life is totally chaotic and disorganised and the only way that I can cope is by having a place for everything and everything in its place.

If something isn’t where it’s supposed to be or where I expect it to be, then I’m sunk. I can fall into some enormous depths of chaos totally on my own without any help from anyone else.

After he left I had a leisurely breakfast and then came in here for a nice, slow start to the day.

There’s been some good news this morning, which is nice, because as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

The recorded devilry letter to my tenant telling her that the lease isn’t to be renewed has been delivered and the receipt returned to the agent. And so it’s official that, barring any last-minute hiccups, I shall take possession in about 10 months time.

Mind you, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip. “Never be sure of the bird on your plate until you have your fork stuck in it”. I’ll believe all of this when I’m actually unlocking the front door with the genuine set of keys.

Although I feel bad about ending someone’s tenancy, it has to be said that firstly, if a property is offered for sale it has to be offered first to the sitting tenant. It’s changed hands twice since she’s been in there so she’s had two chances to buy it.

Secondly, this apartment in which I’m sitting right now is more-or-less identical to the one downstairs, apart from the 25 Steps it takes to climb up to it, and I have offered to swap accommodation so that she can move in here, but she’s turned down that opportunity

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I carried on with where I’d left off with the notes for the final radio programme that I dictated on Saturday night.

That’s all done now, the programme is prepared, the final track has been chosen and the notes for that written ready to dictate on Saturday night.

It took me long enough but I wasn’t in a hurry, and besides, I had a little … errrr … relax here and there while I was doing it.

Making tea tonight was a mad scramble to be ready in time for kick-off. Nevertheless my rice and taco roll were cooked to perfection and were delicious. But I couldn’t concentrate on trying to configure the computer for the football.

However we did end up with a football match, and what a match it was.

One of the biggest rivalries in football is in Ireland between Dundalk and Drogheda. Drogheda are bottom of the table, having been soundly beaten by Dundalk a short while ago in a match that triggered off all kinds of nonsense reminiscent of the worst days of the 1970s

And so we had the Irish Cup, where Drogheda were at home to … errr … Dundalk.

With a whole town itching for revenge in a packed cauldron of a stadium with an atmosphere you could cut with a knife this game was played at 100 miles per hour and ended with Drogheda having their revenge, winning 2-1.

The Dundalk fans were contained within the stadium by an enormous force of police until long after the Drogheda fans had dispersed and so the worst excesses of the previous match were avoided.

Which was a shame because it’s much more exciting when most of the action takes place on the terraces. We all need more passion in our lives. I know that I do.

There was something else that I saw earlier this afternoon that reminded me of the 1970s.

This modern habit of “playing the ball out of defence” that has led to more loss of possession and more goals conceded than I could ever imagine has been getting on my nerves this last couple of years.

But this afternoon I watched the highlights of a Scottish Cup game between Spartans and Bonnyrigg Rose where we had two goalkeepers really travelling back in time, launching enormous clearances out of their own penalty area into the opponents’ penalty area.

Modern players have forgotten, or never learned, how to deal with this kind of tactic and there was all kinds of chaos going on at the back. Nothing wrong with a return to the good old days of 6’5″ Ross Jack of Crystal Palace leading the line against battle-hardened centre-halves like Ian Ure and Gordon McQueen

So on that note I’m off to bed. It’s too dark for any more football anyway.

But that reminds me of the time Port Vale moved to their new ground at Burslem in the mid-1950s and they had their floodlights installed – one of the first grounds in England to have floodlights.
They wanted to have some sort of showcase occasion to celebrate the switching-on of their new floodlights and, according to the headlines in next day’s Evening Sentinel "Neighbours Stoke City did the honours with a match"

0

Sunday 21st July 2024 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S LITTLE …

… commotion, it’s been a much better day today.

To my surprise, and probably yours as well, I didn’t actually fall asleep once. Not even for a minute.

And not only that, firstly it was a late night again last night and I was actually up and about early this morning before the alarm went off.

So don’t ask me what’s going on because I don’t have a clue.

Last night after I’d finished writing up my notes I set about dictating some radio notes. For two programmes there were just the notes for the additional tracks but then in a mad fit of enthusiasm I dictated no fewer than three lots of completed notes.

One of them was complicated by the fact that there was a track in there that shouldn’t have been. It seems that I copied and pasted it into the wrong place several weeks ago and had been looking for it ever since.

Well, I’m glad that I found it.

When I finished dictating I slowly unwound and then eventually headed off to my nice warm bed. And I can’t say that I was sorry to hit the hay because regardless of how comfortable my chair here might be, there is absolutely no substitute for being underneath the quilt on my lovely mattress.

As you might expect, it took an age to drop off to sleep but I wasn’t too concerned as long as I was in the warm. But sleep I must have done eventually because I awoke with a start at about 07:30.

With an 08:00 alarm on Sundays I had half an hour to wait but instead I raised myself from the dead and set about sorting myself out. There was even time to check the dictaphone before the nurse came. Joining the list of unlikely heroes is Richard Jones. When he came onto the field his only contribution was touching the ball once and saying “it’s OK” but the fact is that that touch of the ball has been crucial and he’s just won the game for his club – coming on as substitute, touching the ball once and that was it. We could do with a few more subs like that I should say throughout the year to be going on with.

This dream about this footballer went on and on. I must have dreamed it about three or four times because it was still circulating around later on when I awoke, so I’ve no idea why it would be such a thing of significance at all. It seems pretty strange to me.

There was something too about me having an idea for a Gothic horror novel and trying to contact an established female author who wrote that kind of thing so that I could tell her my ideas and she could help me prepare something. I eventually tracked her down and we arranged to meet. Unfortunately when we met she was on her way somewhere else and didn’t have very much time. I could only give her the briefest outline of what was in my mind and she could only give me the briefest reply. I felt in all honesty that it had been something of a waste of time, this meeting, which was a shame because I would have liked to have discussed my idea at great length with her in order to give her an opportunity to consider it and then come back to me to prepare a plan but by the sound of things, after this brief meeting nothing at all like this will ever happen. I felt really disappointed

And quite honestly if I had a good idea about a story I wouldn’t be hawking it around anywhere. I’d be writing it myself. In fact at the moment I have several ideas for good stories but regrettably they won’t ever be written. I only have so much time and all of that is dedicated to other things.

The nurse was late this morning. She was pleased to see clean puttees but not so pleased to see the tangled mess that the bandage on my arm had become. Of course I blamed it on STRAWBERRY MOOSE which will have to do. IN the olden days I’d blame things like that on the cat.

After she left I had breakfast and then watched Stranraer lose gracefully 3-0 against Hamilton Academicals in the Scottish League Cup

In fact, we had something of a footfest throughout the day as other clubs posted online the highlights of their cup games. No exciting or unexpected results though which was a shame.

The rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes that I dictated. The notes for the two “additional tracks” have been edited and those programmes have now been prepared. That takes me up to 27th December incidentally.

And then I edited the first of the three longer notes and prepared the programme as far as I could. I’ve worked out how long the 11th track needs to be, chosen it and remixed it, and written the notes for it. I’ll do the other two during the course of the week.

Yes, I’m cracking on with this. I need to leave behind me a nice big batch ready for broadcasting after I’ve gone.

After my salad sandwich for lunch I took some pizza dough out of the freezer and it had been defrosting during the afternoon. I kneaded it and rolled it out this evening and made myself a delicious pizza. The dough rose beautifully to help me make one of the best pizzas that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed. It’s the male nurse again starting tomorrow. Isabelle is on her week off. So what is he going to find that’s wrong, I wonder.

There is of course some kind of upset going on here with the nurses. My neighbour asked the nurse "what do you think I should do about this mole that’s suddenly appeared on my cheek?"
"Don’t worry about it" replied the nurse. "Next time you go outside it’ll find its way back to its burrow."

0

Saturday 20th July 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible, miserable, depressing afternoon curled up on my chair in the office fast asleep, totally out of this World and I’m totally fed up of all of this as well.

It’s reaching the state where I just can’t seem to accomplish anything, because I’m either too tired or fast asleep. And there’s so much that I have to do with so little time left to do it and I’m going to run out long before I’m ready to go.

It’s not as if I’m having any devastatingly late nights that are making me this tired. It’s quite true that being in bed by my target time of 23:00 is more of an ambition than a reality, but it’s not as if it’s 02:00 or 03:00, or anything like that.

And then, if I were so tired, why would I awaken at 06:00 and 06:15? Surely the situation would be that when the alarm goes off at 07:00 I couldn’t find what it takes for me to leave my bed.

In fact, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not unusual for me to be up and about before the alarm goes off.

Last night was another night that was later than I would have liked – but not all that late. And once more, it didn’t take long for me to go to sleep once I was curled up under the quilt.

And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 07:00. Mind you, I had awoken at 06:15 but thought “sod that for a game of soldiers” and curled up under the quilt again for a final 45 minutes.

When the alarm went off I went into the bathroom for a wash, and then washed some of my clothes – the shorts that I wear in bed, my trousers and my undies. I try to hand-wash stuff like this on a regular basis to keep up the habit.

Years spent living out of a suitcase have taught me the necessity of keeping o top of the washing when I can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a summer job on a farm. Basically, they’d given me a Series I Land Rover, an ancient thing that was dropping to bits, to run around, fetch and carry stuff all over the farm and all over the neighbourhood. I was having a great time that summer doing all of that. It came down to the last day. I’d parked up the Land Rover, found everyone and went to say “goodbye”. I asked them where they put the diesel. They replied “in the tank down at the bottom of the yard but they didn’t have the time to do it at the moment”. They asked me where the diesel was. I replied “in the tank of the Land Rover”. We had a chat, and the subject of the Land Rover came up. They said that they were going to scrap it. I told them that I thought that a crazy idea to scrap it. Even if they daren’t risk running the Land Rover around on the road with no tax, no insurance and no MoT, running around the big farm that they have from one end to the other a Land Rover is an ideal vehicle for that. But there was some guy with some ancient 1940s saloon who was doing pretty much the same thing, he looked rather distressed at the idea that they’d scrap his saloon instead but I said that there’s nothing better than a Land Rover for this kind of work, fetching and carrying around a farm. In the end I said my goodbyes and set off for the railway station on foot. I thought to myself “what a really good summer I’ve had doing this”.

In actual fact I did have a Summer job working on a farm back in 1972. After our school exams finished, we were excused attendance so while we were waiting for the results I found a job on the harvesting. Hardest work that I ever did but at 18 you can do it, and I was saving up money, desperately, because once I had my results in my sweaty little mitt I was escaping from that madhouse in which I’d been living. I preferred to take my chances in the big wild World. I ended up in Chester working in an insurance company with a little bedsit in Hoole, and I was incredibly happy, as well as being totally broke.

When Isabelle came I passed on the congratulations from the clinic yesterday for what she and my cleaner had done to my arm. She checked the wound and changed the dressing again, and then dealt with my legs. She told me off about the state of my puttees and ordered (yes, ordered) me to prepare the clean ones for tomorrow, and gave instructions on the best way to clean these ones

after she left, I had breakfast, and then had a busy morning, which was just as well seeing as how the rest of the day panned out.

The radio programme on which I’d been working was first, and I finished that off and that’s all ready for dictation at some point (minus the final track of course)

Next task was something that I’d been meaning to do for a while, and that was to unwrap the Genz-Benz.

When I was in Ottawa I saw a beautiful 200-watt Genz-Benz bass combo in a pawn shop and fell in love. It was on sale for peanuts and at the time I had aspirations of going back on the road, so it found its way into the back of Strider.

Of course, Canada is over so there was no point in leaving it there so when I was in Canada in 2022 I wrapped it up and posted it to Rosemary. She brought it up the other week and it’s been sitting in its protective coating in a corner of the apartment ever since.

So now it’s unpacked and it looks just as beautiful as it did in 2019 when I saw it. Unfortunately, the voltage selector has been blanked off so I can’t switch it to 230 volt, and so I was tracking down a power transformer on line. I’ll have to wait a little longer to listen to how beautiful it sounds when I can run the Gibson EB3 through it.

This led to a little tidying up and rearrangement of the apartment, and a desperate search for a power cable because it seems that the one that was with it has been lost somewhere in transit which is a shame.

One thing is certain though, that is if I ever want any packaging doing ever again, a combination of my niece’s husband, Rosemary and Mr Ukrainian would be totally unbeatable.

For lunch I had a salad sandwich made with my beautiful fresh bread. My loaf yesterday is an absolute masterpiece and is by far and away the best bread that I’ve ever made. Apart from the fact that my mould is somewhat flexible and makes strange-shaped bread, this loaf would pass muster with the best shop-bought bread.

It was at this point that everything started to go South, and with all of the things that I have to do, I jus slept. I managed to make it into the kitchen for my mid-afternoon hot chocolate but I was soon back to sleep again where I stayed until 19:00.

Tea tonight was baked potato with vegan salad and one of my favourite breadcrumbed quornburgers that I like.

So now my puttees are soaking in warm water as per Isabelle’s instructions and the clean ones are rolled up waiting for the morning. I’m in my clean shorts about to do some dictation before I go to bed

That’s enough about today. Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. But let’s see where I get to with these radio notes. I can’t dictate more than a couple of programmes as my voice starts to break up after a while.

With these bad throats I have to be careful about the medicine that I take. Lemon juice used to be recommended but it’s fallen into disrepute after the incident at the Catholic School, the Blessed John Sheard High School, in Crewe a while back.
One of the girls went into the Mother Superior’s office and said "Mother Superior! Mother Superior! I think that I’m pregnant. What can I do?"
"You can suck the juice of six lemons" replied the Mother Superior
"Will that stop me being pregnant?" asked the girl
"No" replied the Mother Superior "but it’ll wipe that silly smile off your face!"

0

Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

"things could be worse!"

And so I smiled. And sure enough, things were worse.

It’s difficult to believe just how things are unravelling here right at the moment. Getting ready for bed last night after finishing my notes, I fell over.

It was another one of these “falling over backwards” things like I had in the kitchen the other day. This time though it was in the bedroom.

What is hard to believe and it’s true all the same, that despite all of the rubbish, mess, guitars and everything that clutter up this place, I actually hit the ground on my back without hitting anything on the way down. And the chances of that happening must have been extremely remote, to say the least.

It took me about half an hour to make it to my feet. Some kind of weird gyration from a sitting position into being able to crawl onto the bed with the aid of a well-stuffed suitcase as some kind of half-way step

But what a state to get into. I had visions of pulling the quilt down and sleeping on top of the carpet until Isabelle the nurse would rescue me in the morning.

However I struggled back upright, finished what I had to do and then rather happily crawled into bed with a sigh of relief.

After all of the exertions I was totally surprised to be wide awake at about 06:15 and I was actually up and about before the alarm went off

This morning I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave and change of clothes if I’m going out. And then waiting for Isabelle the nurse, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my taxis last night. We had a town, we had a plot of land so we decided that we’d set up something there and run the taxis from it. I had a nice little garage and a couple of cars but while I was talking about setting up everything I awoke in the middle of it and lost all of the momentum in the dream that I was having which was a shame

Not really a shame. I might have enjoyed running a taxi business 40 years ago but the gloss soon wore off and I wouldn’t go back to doing it again, not even during a dream, thank you very much.

And then I was expecting to slip into the estate of a relative of mine who was dying. What was important about this was that there had been another relative who had died under mysterious circumstances abroad and his body had been in a deep-freeze for years while people argued about where he was to go and what he was to do etc. I suspected that the British Coroner was unwilling to accept the body because he’d have to perform a post-mortem on it. There had been this huge campaign for years to bring this person’s body and that of several other people in similar circumstances, to bring them home and lay them to rest. The first thing that I did when I inherited the estate was to contact some firm of undertakers and make arrangements for this body to be brought back to the UK. I was expecting to be besieged by the Press and by news reporters but no-one actually came to visit me last night about this. The only person who set foot on my premises was my brother and I didn’t really know what he wanted. It was certainly nothing to do with this particular thing but after all the fuss and bother that had been made when the relative who died had refused to repatriate the relative from abroad, the fact that I issued repatriation instructions immediately that I took over the estate and that passed unnoticed, it was totally bizarre.

My greatest wish is that no-one repatriates me to the UK. I own a burial plot in the cemetery at Ixelles in Brussels where Marianne is interred but I don’t want to go there either. I want to be put in a natural cemetery and a tree planted on top of me. That’s how I shall live for ever – being absorbed into the roots of a tree that will grow and grow.

Finally I was living at home and wanted a bath so I stuck my head in the bathroom. My little sister was in the bath and my two younger brothers were drying themselves so I thought “never mind – I’ll have a bath again”. I went off to do something or other. On the way back I heard some noise in the bathroom so I went to see. Now my sister had left the bath so I thought “ahh, here’s a bath full of water free”. My brother said “the shower by the way is totally useless but the bath is wonderful” so I thought “I’m really looking forward to getting into the bath at last and having a good wash. I certainly need one”.

Ahhh the good old days – all in the bath, oldest first while the water is hotter. If we are lucky there might be a bit of hot water left in the baby burco water boiler – careful not to scald yourself when you pour it into the bucket and tip it into the bath.

All the smaller kids in the bath together. “ohh look, a bubble-bath” – yes, it was baked beans on toast for tea

Apart from the fact that I don’t have two brothers, anyone who goes on about “the good old days” will receive a smack in the mouth. There was nothing whatever that was good about them.

Isabelle was late coming. There’s all kinds of chaos going on all over the place this morning apparently. She didn’t wait around long because she was in a hurry so she cleared off quickly and I had a rather late breakfast.

The taxi was late coming too. All of their computing system and radio control has broken down and they are driving around with pencil and notepad with a list of jobs. Just like back in the 1960s before radio control in fact. Nothing seems to be working this morning.

They were all working at the Nephrology Clinic – at least, the people who saw me were. Unfortunately Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there to soothe my fevered brow but her sidekick was and I told him my tale of woe about being held to ransom at the clinic down the road.

He had the decency to be upset and apologetic, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to set even one foot ever again in that maudit établissement

And it turned out that while Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there, she’d been talking about me to the others and some of my little secrets are now in the public domain.

Still, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s NOT being talked about. It’s nice to know that Emilie the Cute Consultant thinks that I’m worth talking about.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … Nephrology Clinic, the consultant there admired the work that my cleaner and Isabelle the nurse had done. He considered that I’m lucky in having such good and attentive people around me.

There’s localised swelling but the wound itself is healing, it’s not septic and he’s pleased with the progress.

He can’t explain the panic the other night because there were no obvious signs. If we hadn’t imagined it, which I assured him that we hadn’t, he reckoned that my little team of helpers had resolved everything on the spot in the nick of time.

While I was waiting for my taxi back his secretary went off in search of an orange juice. And just as she came back with apple juice, the taxi arrived.

On getting in I texted my cleaner to say that we were on our way back, only for him to announce that we had other pick-ups.

So eventually with a full car of passengers we headed back to Granville. The driver asked if he could practise his English on the way home so we had a very interesting chat on the way home

Back here I had a salad for lunch and then came in here where I promptly crashed out. And how. I was dead to the World. I hadn’t even noticed that my cleaner had been and gone.

Rosemary rang me for a chat and it must have been a very strange chat at first as I struggled to awaken.

After she’d finished I had my hot chocolate and then made a loaf of bread. While that was proofing i made some naan dough

And then I could finally have the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to to, catching up with radio stuff. I should have finished off that radio programme today but what with one thing and another I didn’t.

So don’t forget, Saturday night, my Hawkfest at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time, 15:00 Toronto time.

But thinking of all of the kids in the bath together reminds me of the noble Lord being attended to at his bath by his manservant, Wibble.
Suddenly the noble Lord breaks wind in the water. And the manservant dashes off and comes back with a hot water bottle.
"Why have you brought that?" asked the noble Lord
"You asked for it, My Lord" said Wibble
"I asked for it?"
"Yes, my Lord" replied Wibble. "I heard you clearly. You said ‘what about a water bottle, Wibble’ "

0

Thursday 18th July 2024 – LAST NIGHT I FINISHED …

… my notes with "Which way did it go?"

So which way did the early night that I promised myself go last night?

It ended up being long after midnight with the cleaner and I mopping up blood yet again and I tell you that I’m thoroughly sick of all this.

When I took off my jacket while undressing there was a blood-soaked bulge on my arm where a plaster was supposed to be. Of course I’m not touching anything like that (I really am nesh) so in the end my loyal cleaner came down.

It’s really lucky that she’s here. She has all of the first-aid certificates and the like so she was able to clean everything up, inspect the arm, consider that there was no real damage and bandage it up again.

It took her long enough but she did a really professional job and bound it round with a long strip wrap to hold everything in place until the morning so that at least I wouldn’t bleed to death during the night.

After all of that I could go to bed.

But not to sleep. I wasn’t in the mood which was hardly any surprise. All in all, things were pretty miserable and there was nothing on the dictaphone of course. Zero didn’t come back to continue part II of our voyage which was a disappointment.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and a cursory inspection showed no signs of anything unusual or out-of-the-ordinary, no trails of blood anywhere so I had a good wash and came back in here to wait for the nurse.

When she came, she had a look at my arm. She changed the dressing, commented on the good job that my cleaner had made, and remarked that she thought that my wrist was swollen.

She did a check of my fingers to make sure that everything moved as it should but she still wasn’t satisfied. She urged me to contact the hospital as soon as she left.

Not quite as soon as she left though. I wasn’t going to do without my breakfast.

When I was sipping a mug of coffee afterwards I rang them up. Apparently the surgeon is only there on Tuesdays, but his secretary will tell him that I called with a problem. So I can’t see what use this “24-hour number” is to anyone.

Meanwhile, the nurse called me She’d had the same irrelevant response when she phoned them so she went to see my doctor who has his office in the same building where she is.

He’s away on holiday, of course he will be at a time like this, but he has a locum and she will come round at lunchtime.

Meanwhile, my cleaner came round. She’d brought back more supplies, and wanted to know how I was getting on so I gave her the good news.

This locum – the first thing that she did when she came round was to hold my hand and feel my pulse. And I’ll tell you – she can hold my hand and feel my pulse any time she likes.

She thinks that my wrist is running a temperature but she didn’t want to disturb any of the bandaging as there doesn’t seem to be a problem as far as that goes.

She made several ‘phone calls, gave me a couple of phone numbers that are more likely to produce a response than the one that failed so miserably, and told me that if all else fails I mustn’t hesitate to telephone the emergency services.

She then wrote out a prescription for yet more dressings, which my cleaner came down to fetch.

An hour or so after everyone had gone and come back, I had a ‘phone call.

The neurosurgeon’s secretary called me. "we’ve heard from your doctor" she said. "We’re all quite concerned here. Can you come tomorrow at 11:30 to see the neurosurgeon and have an echograph?"

So that’s the taxi booked for 10:45 then. I wonder at just what point the Social Services will become fed up of paying for me to go gallivanting across northern France at the taxpayer’s expense.

In between all of this I’ve been trying to prepare a radio programme. I’m chosen all of the music, paired it off and begun to write the notes.

Not that I’ve gone very far, and I could have done much more had it not been for a little wobble at one point. But with no sleep last night it’s hardly a surprise.

There’s been no food tonight either except a bag of crisps and some biscuits. I’ve been watching the football, and watching hearts break all over Europe

Caernarfon clung on to win through to the next round but Bala were cruelly denied progress by a very late goal in Estonia and Connah’s Quay in Wales by two very late goals, one right at the end of normal time to be pegged back and then a killer punch right at the end of extra time.

But the fact is that there’s a wealth of difference between teams in Europe and teams in the UK, in style of play and in temperament too.

British teams tend to ride their luck instead of relying on technique and fitness. There’s too much of the “it’ll be all right on the night” about them.

When I interviewed Granville’s manager a while back about fitness levels between full-time teams and part-time teams, I brought up the subject of part-time teams running out of steam.

He poo-pooed the idea, and then Granville conceded three very late goals after matching Olympique de Marseille toe-to-toe for 75 minutes.

After tonight’s results, I’m more-than-ever convinced that there’s something in what I said to him and one day I’ll produce some statistics.

But not tonight because I’m going to bed in the hope of a decent sleep and some pleasant dreams, preferably in the company of Zero if she comes back after the other night.

But on the subject of statistics, and vital statistics at that,; I remember a civil servant friend of mine who went to buy a new bra for his wife
"what size, sir?" asked the shop assistant
"Sixteen and a half" he said
"Sixteen and a half?" repeated the shop assistant, rather puzzled
"That’s right" said the customer "My bowler hat is size eight and a quarter …"

0

Tuesday 16th July 2024 = I’M STILL ALIVE …

… but in indescribable agony I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this. In fact, one way or another I’ve not had a very good day today.

Just like last night actually. Once more it was a very late night, not that I was bothered because if I’m tired I can sleep at the hospital. I won’t have much else to do there.

Nevertheless I slept right through until the alarm went off at 07:00 with just the odd bit of tossing and turning here and there

But as the alarm sounded I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, completely forgetting that I’m supposed to be using this special shampoo detergent stuff.

While I was waiting for the nurse to arrive I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I went during the night. This competition is now coming down to a knock-out between clubs rather than based on a league performance. There aren’t too many clubs or teams left and newspaper reporters are interviewing. They are astonished at how much has been spent but someone seems to think that it’s worth every penny and brings an enormous amount of revenue from advertising. And everyone doing this would have a team of his own racing in these races considering that it would put his town on the map. There were several other chairmen who thought it important that their team climbed onto the world stage and played this type of event for the attraction of the World all looking on and making sure that they did all their best

Where that came from, I don’t know. But it certainly seems to be true. I remember when Llandudno surprisingly won the Welsh Cup and qualified for Europe, the town council sponsored the club’s shirts for the European games and paid the travelling expenses of the club simply for the reason that the club’s presence on the European stage would attract enough tourists to the town to make it a financially viable proposition. And who am I to argue with Llandudno Town Council?

What I found was that there were too many small, tiny shopkeepers or market traders standing on this market each selling very high turnover goods which meant that there was no speciality or anything like that. It was all pretty much the same. There was nothing to choose between any of them. Where you bought your magazine from was by random and it made no difference. They weren’t sufficiently skilled in the products that they were selling. One of the shopkeepers was trying to market some kind of typing course but admitted that he hadn’t managed to work it himself . He had no idea how he could actually make it work but was still trying his best to sell it on to members of the public. I thought to myself that people with just one or two racks of magazines in a place like this just aren’t going to make any difference whatsoever. It needs one or possibly two major sellers to come in to reorganise it with a much wider range of goods and know much more about their product and generally go out to sell the stuff instead of being haphazard, hoping that someone would come along and buy it. I thought that it was very depressing and dismal that they were just sitting back letting the World roll by. They should have been out there selling their wares. But definitely half a dozen people with one magazine rack each trying to make a living in a place like this was never going to be a possibility. It just needed one or maybe two major players who could go for the variety of product and go all-out to try to grab hold of the passing trade.

So as well as fighting wars and inventing machinery in my sleep, I’m now running some kind of Cost Accounting and Business Planning service. I’ve definitely been doing something wrong all these years if I can think of all of these exciting and satisfying ways of earning a living while I’m asleep. The sad part about it is that not only am I asleep while all of this is going on, so are my clients. If they were awake and paying me good money for my services and advice, I’d clean up.

There was also something about a friend of mine asking me why some other friends of ours who had been in France as long as we had, hadn’t succeeded in accumulating more resources. She pointed out to her house, the holiday cottage and so on that they had managed to accumulate without too much effort and wondered why they hadn’t managed to do the same.

And that’s true too. In the Auvergne you can have as much property as you like. The place is littered with all kinds of tiny farms that are abandoned and available for next to nothing. The mechanisation of agriculture in France after World War II and the industrialisation of the country led to a flight of all the young people to the towns. All the old people died off and the houses were simply left to abandon.

The nurse came and did her best to cheer me up which was nice, seeing as I’d lost yet another clip for my puttees. I was expecting an argument. She’s given me a few tips about the hospital and then wished me luck.

No breakfast for me this morning. I have to be without food so instead I checked over my packing and made sure that I had everything that I needed. This requirement about “medication in the original boxes” is ridiculous, especially just for one night’s stay.

Next was to make some sandwiches because, without doubt, the food, if in fact I receive anything, is going to be rubbish. And if I’m without food all morning, I’ll be needing something.

Back in here I had a few letters to write and things like that but I was taken by surprise by the taxi that turned up a good 20 minutes early and I was nothing like ready. Nevertheless, we went with what we had.

It was a lovely drive down to Avranches and how I enjoyed smelling the open countryside for the first time since I don’t know when. It’s a shame that there wasn’t more of it.

It’s the Polyclinic, not the hospital, where I’m going. And finding my room was rather complicated as we turned up at the lunch hour. Eventually someone directed us to my room, which it seems I’m going to be sharing.

A nurse checked me in and asked me a load of questions, most of which I answered wrongly. She had to fetch an electric razor to shave my arm – what did I know about doing it – and then she wandered off.

They gave me a load of paper clothes to wear and once I’d changed, they wheeled me away in a wheelchair as far as surgery where they put me on a trolley and took me into a corner of the room.

While I was waiting, I fell asleep. I was dreaming that I was dreaming and dictating the dream into my dictaphone but someone snatched the dictaphone from me, threw it onto the bed and wheeled me off somewhere. There I was for hours hoping that at least they would be able to take me back to wherever it was that the dictaphone had landed and that it had been switched off so that the batteries hadn’t gone flat

It was another panic attack but with everything that’s going on right now, that’s not a surprise. I’m surprised that I’ve not had more of them just recently.

They moved the bed across the room (waking me up). “Hold out your arm” said someone, so I did.

Next thing that I remember, it was a couple of hours later, there was a big white plaster on my arm and a pain going all the way up into my shoulder. But at least the worst is over (I think) and it was done exactly as I would have liked it – no fuss, no explanation, no nothing. Knock me out and get on with it.

They took me back to my room and put me to bed where I slept for an hour or two before gradually coming back round into the Land of the Living

And then I had to hassle them for my meal. They seemed quite reluctant to bring it, although I can’t see why. I made sure that I had plenty of bread for my soup and my main course of carrot purée (and that’s it), thinking that I’m glad that I made my butties. I’ll need those if things don’t buck up.

One of the nurses asked about the pain. It’s been increasing all the time as the anaesthetic has worn off. When I mentioned it to a nurse she came back immediately with some Doliprane. Which I refused, of course. The whole of France is awash with Doliprane.

Seriously though, if you have a pain, it’s for a reason. And if you hide or mask that pain and put effort on joints that really need time to relax and recover, you can do more harm than good

So gritting my teeth, I went to bed.

And my arm in a sling reminds me of the well known Austrian who invented the brassiere, Otto Titsling

0

Sunday 14th JUly 2024 – I’M UP TO …

… my neck in paperwork again. Ahhh! The good old days!

And not only am I up to my neck, I’m miles behind where I ought to be thanks to a
recalcitrant printer than only works when it feels like it and a Credit Agricole website ditto.

As well as that, I’m supposed to be completing my on-line registration for the hospital on Tuesday but the hospital website doesn’t recognise my “Withdrawal Agreement” carte de séjour and when I’ve finally managed to make their mobile app work on my ‘phone, it tells me that I don’t have an appointment.

So in the end I’m not much further forward than I was before I started. It all has rather a familiar ring about it.

Last night had a pretty familiar ring about it too, with not going to bed until long after I ought to have done. Nevertheless, I didn’t mind too much because I’d been dictating and that’s another pile of stuff all saved ready for editing. It was nice and quiet for an hour or so outside so I could crack on.

One thing that I did though was to change the microphone, and that seems to have made a difference to the quality of the recording. Two identical mikes, yet the quality is so different. It’s quite surprising.

The one big advantage of going to bed at that kind of “late” is that I don’t need much rocking

And so there I was, dead to the World until all of about … errr … 06:15.

But I didn’t make “that” mistake again. I curled back up under the bedclothes and there I remained until 08:00 when the alarm went off and I fell out of bed

There’s not much time to hang about on a Sunday morning as the nurse will be here at 08:30 (or thereabouts) so a quick scrub up in the bathroom was all that I had time to do.

Isabelle brought the sunshine with her when she came. She soon had the plasters on my legs sorted out and my puttees on my legs. But these wounds are still weeping and I despair. When are they likely to stop?

We had time to talk about my general condition. She seems to have noticed an improvement, although it doesn’t seem like it.

She thinks that this fatigue might be due to the fact that my kidneys are struggling so much to work that they are exhausting my metabolism, or words to that effect.

Basically, despite what I might think, it’s a physical tiredness due to te effort that is going into my kidneys. And she’s a nurse, so I suppose that she knows more about these things than I do.

After she left I had breakfast of cornflakes, toast, coffee and grapefruit juice and sat and relaxed for a while, reading my book on the siting and location of early Medieval churches

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were doing something with a music studio at work. I was actually some kind of huissier or “messenger” on the top floor. I went down to the canteen to fetch a coffee. It was crowded in there and you couldn’t hear a word that someone was saying. I had to fight my way into the queue to pick up a coffee. Eventually after t’d battered him a couple of times I said to the guy behind me “I’m not hurting you, am I? I’m really sorry”. He mouthed something back at me but I didn’t have a clue what it was because I couldn’t hear him so I just smiled, thanked him and walked away but I thought “I wonder what it was that he said. Whether it was polite or whether it was difficult or whether he wanted me to sit down and talk”. I’d no idea. But I took my coffee and began to climb all the steps back to the office. One or two of my workmates kept on coming downstairs going for their coffee. They kept asking me “who is this coffee for?”. I replied that it was for me. They looked with some kind of astonishment as if “what would I be doing with a coffee at this time of morning?”. But I checked the time and it was only 09:05 so it would be correct. We were waiting for something important to happen in the office but I can’t remember now whether it was a group or a piece of music but we were all waiting there for this but it all seemed to be tremendously important and was going to change all of our lives and all of our routines

Nothing like that ever happens to me these days. Wouldn’t it be nice if something were to come along and change my life and my routine. It’s pretty monotonous right now. When I was working, it was quite lively, but then in a building of 2,000 people and each one waiting for something earth-shattering to happen, a simple event could trigger a chain reaction that would reverberate around the building in no time flat. It would be like a snowball of excitement, gathering its own momentum. And I was convinced that there were people who would spend the whole day walking around with a tray of coffee and not doing any work whatsoever

I was driving some kind of bus or motorhome in the Midwest USA. We were going through these small towns. There was one where we had to climb a hill in this town. This hill was tree-lined with all the old Nineteenth-Century saloons and so on to the side of it. I thought to myself “this is really mid-west America here. This is typical USA. We kept on climbing up this hill and I thought that we’d never have enough steam to make it but eventually whatever I was driving managed to climb to the top. I found that we were on some kind of dirt track instead of the main road. I followed the dirt track for a while and it came to a castle where there was a notice from someone asking for partners for table-tennis so it was quite obvious to me that I was in the wrong street somehow. I had to stop and try to think how I was going to return to the main road because continuing to drive down this track was clearly out of the question

On my travels around States like Wyoming and South Dakota I came across plenty of towns like this. I remember in 2018 being in a town that proudly advertised “Population – 9”, and every one of those 9 people came out onto their porch to watch me drive through the place.

Some of the day has been spent editing some of the radio notes that I dictated last night. There are now two full programs completed and third is just missing the final track. I would have finished it and even done the fourth program except that the fatigue caught up with me and I was out like a light for an hour or two this afternoon.

And then I’ve been trying to print off a sheaf of paperwork but when the printer doesn’t work the website does and vice versa. And then there’s trying to make sense of this mobile app that tells me that I have no appointment lined up

There was however time to make tonight’s pizza. And a good one it was too. I’ve no idea what happened but for the first time ever the oven cooked it correctly. That’s a first.

What’s also going to be a first, at least for a long time, is an early night. I seem to have finished earlier than usual and I don’t know why.

But all of this technology and its accompanying issues makes me hanker for the old days. I didn’t have this trouble in Crewe.

But then again, whilst in Crewe they may actually have tablets for their own personal use, they also have the hammers and chisels that they use to carve their hieroglyphics on them

0

Thursday 11th July 2024 – I’M LATE AGAIN

and if it carries on like this they’ll be calling me “the late Epic Hall” long before I officially earn the title.

And for a change, I don’t mind being late at all for I have very good re son. It’s “Europa Cup” night tonight and while Connah’s Quay travelled to Slovenia and Y Bala to Estonia to follow on from the game that TNS played against some Albanians, Caernarfon made the long trip down the road as far as Nantporth Stadium on the outskirts of Bangor to take on those giants of European football … errrr … Crusaders from Belfast.

Late nights seem to be the norm these days and instead of moaning about them, I’ll just have to say nothing and celebrate the early nights instead, so there was nothing to celebrate last night.

In fact it was long after midnight when I hit the hay and I settled down for sleep for what was left of the night. And I awoke in the middle of it and took an age to go back to sleep again

Mind you, I was dead to the World when the alarm went off and it was a rather ungainly stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out.

There was blood on the floor too, but I’ve no idea where it came from. It could be anywhere.

Back in there I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were all going flat out in pursuit of this monster . We had a good idea of where it would be and where it would strike next so we put a cordon round with people just doing ordinary things, nothing suspicious, hoping that whatever it was would pass within this cordon to pick a victim and we could all close in behind it. I was in charge of course but there were lots of other people who were quite willing to take responsibility. My job was the big tree that was the focal point of this little community, which was where probably the most important person would expect to be and that was where you’d expect the final battle to be so they left that responsibility to watch that area to me. And now we just waited around for things to begin.

This looks as if it’s a continuation of the dream from the other night when we were chasing monsters around. And it’s quite rare to have two episodes of the same dream so close together like this. Usually they are months, if not years apart.

And later on I’d gone down to Virlet for a look around and for something. While I was in the house I heard a noise as if a couple of people were searching around in te lean-to. I picked up a blunt instrument and just as I was going to go outside to catch them in the act a guy came through the door into the house. He looked so shocked to see me so I just said “can I help you?”. He just stood there totally open-mouthed as if I was the last person he was expecting to see.

And it would be a shock too if it were to happen, but I’m not likely ever to go down to Virlet again. That’s a chapter of my life that is well and truly completed unfortunately. Someone else can take over down there when the time comes.

Finally I was making a salad. I didn’t really have all that much to go in it but I was listening to the local radio and there was a bring-and-buy sale taking place at the church at Audlem. Someone was selling picked courgettes. I thought that that sounded interesting for a change but I couldn’t really summon up the enthusiasm to go all the way to Audlem. They kept on talking about one or two other things that they had and it all sounded perfectly tempting to me but there were all these excuses popping up about why I shouldn’t go but I kept on finding out answers to these questions and still pointing out (… fell asleep here …)

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few recently, when I say that I “fell asleep” I am actually asleep when I’m dictating. I’ve been working as part of this project for almost 30 years. But when I say that I “fell asleep” what actually happens is that whatever I’m dictating tails off into a mumbled silence and then sometimes you’ll hear a little snore or two and I’m sorry for doubting you about that, Percy Penguin.

But courgettes in the Auvergne – they were the only things that seemed to thrive down there. You’d check your courgettes over, think “they look nice, I’ll pick them in the morning” but you’d have a downpour during the night and end up with half a dozen enormous marrows.

Everyone was sick to death of courgettes after a while. We used to pass around recipes (and courgettes) and I for one don’t ever want to see a courgette ever again.

It’s Isobelle the female nurse for the next week or so and she usually brings the sunshine and warmth with her (although I have seen another side of her once or twice that I didn’t realise existed). She nicely and cheerfully informed me that on Saturday she’s going to take a blood sample.

There’s another sample to be take too, so she’ll leave me a little pot on Friday. I have a feeling that she’ll be taking the p*ss too.

After she left I had breakfast and then a look through the notes for today’s lesson. Unfortunately I didn’t get as far as I would have liked and so my enthusiasm tailed off towards the afternoon.

The hospital rang me up about registering for my operation on Tuesday – right in the middle of a crucial point and so towards the end of the lesson my concentration (such as it was) was broken and I was all at sea.

Mind you, nothing new there. I’ve been all at sea for years, up a creek without a paddle for most of the time.

After the lesson finished I sorted out the music for the next radio programme and began to write a few notes. And then we had the football.

Y Bala didn’t do too well, going down 2-1 to Paide Linnameeskond but Connah’s Quay performed brilliantly, winning 1-0 in Slovenia and being set up nicely for the return match next week.

Then we had Caernarfom playing in front of a packed house at Nantporth. And the Cofi Army burst into song after just four minutes when Morgan Owen picked up a pass 20 yards out from the Crusaders goal and walloped it home

They had even more to sing about after 35 minutes when Danny Gosset found Darren Thomas whose delightful through ball was inch perfect for Zack Clarke to pounce on and slot home for the second.

The game though wasn’t a particular spectacle. It was rather agricultural at times bordering on the desperate at the end as the Crusaders threw everything, including the kitchen sink at the Cofi goal but Caernarfon held out to record a famous victory in their first ever match in European competition.

But these results are really good news for Wales because the more successful they are, the higher their coefficient will be which means that they could have more teams in club competition and maybe even enter the tournaments at later stages.

Not to mention of course the money that’s on offer for doing well in Europe. The prize money from UEFA is well-worth having for a small club. A team that’s defeated in Round One will receive €150,000 and if they make it through to the next round they’ll receive at least €350,000.

And then there’s sponsorship, TV revenue, all of that kind of thing.

After the final whistle I threw some pasta into a pan with some frozen veg and tomato sauce. That will keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

So on that note I’m off to bed ready to kick off nice and early tomorrow morning.

But talking of courgettes reminds me of the guy in the Auvergne who was determined to protect his courgettes at all costs so one night he slept with them. And instead of the fine weather for which he was hoping, it snowed instead.
They found him next morning and he was frozen to the marrow.

0

Monday 8th July 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

… be another horrible, miserable, depressing late night going to bed tonight.

But at least it’s not been a waste of time and something good has come of it because I whizzed through this evening and not only edited the remaining sound file from those that I dictated on Saturday night, I’ve assembled the programme.

All that remains to do is to choose the final track and write the notes for it, and that’s a job that I can do tomorrow morning.

It’s quite strange really, because the sound file was one of the longest that I’ve ever dictated yet when I’ve edited out all of the umms and ahhs and the bits that were rubbish, it edited down to be one of the shortest. There are some things that are quite difficult to explain.

It was a late night last night too. I wasn’t in bed much before midnight and that’s not much good at all. I awoke at about 05:15 too and valiantly resisted the temptation to raise myself from the dead at that time.

When it came round to about 06:00 I thought “give it another five minutes ….” and the next thing that I knew, the 07:00 alarm was going off. And that was a mystery too. What happened there?

After I’d had a good wash and complete change of clothes I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, if any of my favourite young ladies had come with me.

But no such luck last night. “Swansong” in the Sports pages refers to the goalkeeper who was selected for the national team – the women’s national team, with selection issues about form etc, loss of form, new brooms sweeping clean and all this kind of thing it was necessary to find another keeper to join the National squad as first choice and she was it. At 38 years of age it was only a temporary solution while other players sort themselves out. But it was the best available at the time. It might have been unpopular but sometimes popularity is the wrong thing to do. You don’t do things for popularity you do things for success. Sometimes, for success, you have to do things like this but we’ll see where she is in two seasons and see who’s taken her place amongst this crowd of people who are almost there but not quite at the moment.

And what do I know about women’s football? My first encounter with it was AT BURLINGTON IN VERMONT IN 2015 and I might have seen the odd match since then, but I’m hardly an expert. However, Jocelyne Montoya of one of these Mexican women’s teams can come and take a throw-in with one of my footballs any time she likes.

And then later we were all at work discussing the working arrangements for the next week or so. I’d been driving a snooker player around for a week. He was someone who had been very famous but had fallen on hard times and had been extremely wayward but had slowly been dragged back onto track again. I’d been driving him around but I’d not had any instructions for the coming week so we were all in the office waiting for things to happen and for someone to come along with a work schedule. A couple of my colleagues came in and asked me why I wasn’t at the top end of the town. I asked why so they replied “your snooker player is up there looking for someone or other”. They had a huge discussion about this snooker player. I mentioned that I’d driven him last week and tried to keep him on track for all his appointments, matches etc. One or two people said “yes it’s a shame that he didn’t think about engaging you earlier because you’d been sure to have made him at least conscious of these things” which I thought was probably one of the nicest compliments anyone in that place had ever paid me. So even though no work schedule was down I had to quickly discuss where this snooker player was and then decide to nip in the car to catch him to see what his plans were for the week and maybe fit in with his anyway and do the work that he wants doing, especially as he seems to be so keen to see me around according to my colleagues, which again I thought was a pretty nice comment from someone like that.

Yes, compliments were rather thin on the ground in that place. Everything was done on the basis of “dead man’s shoes” gallantly resisting all attempts to bring things kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Trying to reorganise things there to be more efficient, I was met with "and what do you know about it?"
So saying nothing, next time that I was out I stopped at a stationer’s and bought some picture frames. That night I framed all of my taxi operators’ licences and my Certificates of Professional Competence (issued, would you believe, by my Employer) to operate a Road Passenger Transport business in the UK and in Europe, and next morning, hung them on the wall over my desk.
No-one in that office spoke to me again after that and a few months later when my boss’s office was moved to a different building it was "wouldn’t it be a good idea if you went to be based in ‘Kortenberg’ with him instead of down here?"
"Suits me fine, thanks."

But what I don’t understand is why there is a snooker player in the middle of all of this.

When the nurse came round he sorted me out and bandaged me up and then asked for my advice. He’s off to Brussels to see a concert t the Stadion Roi Baudoin and wanted to know where to park. Where I lived was about 20 minutes from there and there’s plenty of parking. And if he plays his cards right, there’s a bus that runs between the hospital at Jette and the Metro Station at the Stadion Roi Baudouin that goes along the road where he’ll be parked. Where I lived in Jette was really good. 200 yards from an exit on the Brussels by-pass and surrounded by public transport going just about everywhere, bus, tram, train, you name it.

After he left I had breakfast and then began to prepare for my Welsh Summer School that starts today. We are 10 students and a tutor, a tutor whom I’ve had before on some summer school or other. He’s sent us a little booklet of his plans but I bet that we’ll be a long way from there by the time that we finish.

It’s actually a level below the one that I was studying in the year just finished but it doesn’t hurt to go over stuff that I’m supposed to have learned and to know. And I’m not the only one doing a “revision course”.

The way I see it, if you throw a lot of whatsit at a wherever, some of it might stick at some point.

No prizes by the way for guessing who fell asleep at one point and sat there staring into space when he should have been in a break-out room. D’ohhh!

After the end of the lessons today I cracked on with the radio programme. I wanted to at least finish the editing. I could have done more too but I ran out of bread and had to make another loaf. I took full advantage of the oven being on by baking tonight’s stuffed pepper and making a pasta-bake, although that wasn’t very successful

That took me back a while. A friend of mine and his wife in the USA were so hung over one New Year’s Morning that they stayed in bed all day and their two kids were starving. I was there giving instructions over the internet on a messenger program to Tina, the 11 year old, on how to make a pasta and tuna bake in the oven

Anyway, that’ll have to do for now. I’ve been another busy boy today, following on from being rushed off my feet yesterday. Can I go for the hat trick tomorrow or will I be spending most of the day flaked out and recovering? It remains to be seen.

But thinking of Tina trying to awaken her parents reminds me of the girl who once asked me "do you wake up grumpy in the morning?"
And I replied "actually, she’s usually awake before me"

0

Saturday 29th June 2024 – SO FAR TODAY …

… I’ve managed to avoid falling over. However, the night is young and there’s still plenty of time yet to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

And defeat? They are the things inside de slippers of course!

There has been plenty of the day to go at too. More than usual, in fact, because once more I was up and about at an ungodly hour long before the alarm went off. I’ve no idea why that would be because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not like me at all.

It was a late night too. The other night when I was in bed before 23:00 must have been a fluke, that’s all I can cay because much as I would like that to be my target time, it’s pretty much unattainable right now and that’s something else that I can’t understand. Where does all the time go?

So last night after my misadventures on the kitchen floor I crawled off to bed late as usual as I mentioned and for a change it took a while for me to go off to sleep. After my fall you could probably say that I was shaken and not stirred.

Round about 05:00 – 05:30 I sat up, bolt upright, wide awake, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Just like yesterday morning too.

After lying awake for a while trying to drop off, I abandoned the struggle and took to my feet, a little more steady than last night, it has to be said. I sorted out some clean clothes and then went for a good wash and scrub up

Back in here afterwards I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was newly-retired, so I was back at home. There were all kinds of medical upheavals going on. Even I’d been interviewed for a medical and failed it completely so was going to have some kind of further treatment. A whole week had been set aside for us to receive the kind of treatment that we needed. This was to take place at home, or at least, some kind of clinic but we’d all be at home during the day, during the night. It had been arranged that I’d look after my niece’s daughter while all of this was going on. We were making plans and making appointments. Someone said something about the daughter staying with me. It turned out in the end that she was only going to stay with me for two days because Friday the had something sorted out but there were so many things arranged that this stay was gradually being whittled down until in the end it probably wouldn’t be anything. That was a big disappointment to me because I had lots of plans and lots of ideas about what I was going to do and where I was going to take her. I’d been quite looking forward to going off for a few days with her to show her around, so I was starting to be even more disappointed and fed up than I am.

Later on there was something else that cropped up which would have been a really great idea had she been staying with me. I happened to mention this idea thing that had come up but it turns out now that whatever time she had left was going to be reduced yet again as something else was found for her to do. I began to wonder whether I was completely wasting my time with all of this and trying to be nice and helpful

So here we go again. I’m planning on having a good and interesting time and various members of my family come along and spike my guns, shoving "le baton dans la rue" as they would say around here. That’s one thing on which you could count – if I were going to be having a good time they would want to spoil it. I tell you, leaving The Land That Time Forgot and coming into the 21st Century was the best thing that ever happened to me and it’s a real shame as far as I’m concerned that I couldn’t ever persuade Nerina to take a leap into the future instead of being back there in the past

The nurse told me about the fun run taking place tonight. The town is closed off this weekend and it’s a car-free “pedestrians only” to celebrate the start of the summer season. There’s a 9km trail laid out around the town and the fun run starts this evening with everyone joining in for a lap – or two, or three, or four if you want the full marathon – to celebrate the summer, the Olympics, or anything else that you like.

She’ll be taking part and she’ll give me a wave as she runs past my apartment. I said that I’d keep an eye open for her;

After she left I had breakfast and then came in here – where I promptly fell asleep again. So much for this early start, I have to say.

While I was away with the fairies I was over the hills and far away. While I was asleep during the morning I had a very clingy girlfriend, a younger girl with large thick-lensed glasses and I know who she is but I can’t think of her name now. We we were out one afternoon and evening and she was just clingy. At first I thought “how lucky I was to have someone who wanted to be so near to me so much” but after a while I began to realise that someone so clingy can also be se needy and so much closeness can be oppressive.

It’s amazing how deep your inner consciousness and realisation goes when you are asleep. I’ve come up with some profound thinking in my dreams and I quite often wish that I could think so clearly and profoundly in real life. Things would be quite different. But what the heck is the name of this girl? I can see her even now but can’t think of her name.

When I awoke I finished off all of the notes for the radio programme on which I was working and then went for a very late lunch, not that I was too bothered about the time.

This afternoon, apart from sleeping, I’ve been carrying out a few amendments to my Homepage (and there will be some more in the fullness of time too), finishing off the updates to my “Canada 2022” pages from October 2022 and once I’d finished those, making a start on updating the pages that I wrote during my recent stay in hospital. So all in all, a very busy boy today even if a tired one.

Having had my breaded quornburger last night, tonight I had air-fried chips with a vegan salad and a burger on a bap – one of those burgers that I made with this dried compound stuff from Germany;

The taste is cerainly different, but not disagreeable, especially when there’s plenty of vegan mayonnaise, dijon mustard and onion plastered all over the place.

So now, early though it is, I’m going to dictate some radio notes for editing during the week and then off to bed. An 08:00 start so if I’m lucky I might have a little lie-in.

But going back to yesterday and needing help too raise myself from the floor reminds me of a story that Bishop Bell of Chichester used to tell me, about the time that he had difficulty rising from his seat in the park
A small girl dashed over and asked if she could help him
"Are you sure you can, dear?" asked the Bishop. "It’s not going to be easy"
"It’s all right really, sir" said the girl, brightly. "I’ve often helped my daddy when he’s been much drunker than you"

0

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

The anaesthetist “wants to see me” and has set aside 16:45 on Wednesday 3rd July for the purpose.

And then the operation will take place on 16th July. I shall be there overnight because given my opinions of hospital, operations, blood and gore as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have elected for the “General anaesthetic” rather than the local anaesthetic.

There’s no way in this World that I’ll be lying there watching a local anaesthetic slowly wear off and catching sight of what is going on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures in Castle Anthrax a few years ago where they turned up unannounced in my room, whisked me and my bed off to the cellar clamped a gas mask over my face, said “smell this” and the next thing that I knew, it was four hours later and I’d had a surgical operation.

Even today, I still don’t know what they did, and that suits me fine. If all operations went like that, I’d have more of them. But this modern 21st-Century society where I have to be informed of each step and each procedure in graphic detail and formally agree to them.
"But it’s your right!" they wail.
But what about MY right not to want to know? No-one cares about my rights.

As long as the operation is in the morning. TNS are playing in the Champions’ League that evening. That time in Castle Anthrax I missed Newtown v Caernarfon

Meanwhile, abandoning another good rant for the moment, last night was again horribly late by the time that I went to bed. I just don’t seem to be able to make the time go any slower

Yes, when we were kids, our six weeks of summer holiday used to last for ever. Now six weeks goes in the blinking of an eye.

And once in bed, I didn’t need much rocking yet again. It’s lovely and warm and comfortable in there, just me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE tucked up tight.

Not so comfortable that I didn’t awaken before the alarm went off. When I awoke at about 06:00 I made some kind of comment and I’m certain that I had some kind of reply from someone sleeping in the next bed about life in the RAF. Of course, then then kind of thing evaporated and I realised that it really was 06:30 and I really was awake in my own bed with my own things

And that was weird too. It really did sound as if there was someone else in the room. And it wasn’t His Nibs either. If only he could talk, he would have a few tales that he could tell that would be worth a good few bob to anyone who might be interested.

He could tell me a few tales too of when he’s been let loose on his own in the company of ladies of the opposite sex.

But returning to the dream, I’ve no idea what was happening there.

I also have a vague impression of walking through Shavington en route for somewhere else, just using one crutch and feeling quite confident about it too

If only I could walk with one crutch. I used to be able to do that up until about 9 months ago but how my mobility has reduced over that period of time. There are times when I’m hard-pushed to walk with two these days.

Just to prove that I can do it when I really try, I pushed myself out of bed before the alarm went off. Only by five minutes, it has to be said, but five minutes is five minutes and they all count.

After a good wash and scrub up I loitered around for a while transcribing the dictaphone (such as they were) until the nurse came round.

When he arrived I told him about the prescription to which he readily agreed, and then he cleared off without writing one out. I hope that he does it back at the office and drops it off in the morning.

Once he’d finally gone I made breakfast – porridge and toast with orange juice and strong coffee. And believe me, I needed it.

There wasn’t much time to revise or review my Welsh before the lesson started, and having missed a week, Bane of Britain revised the wrong module. But it makes no difference because I’m rubbish whether I revise or not.

And having given the matter serious thought, as well as studying next year as normal, I’m definitely going to retake this year in an evening class with another provider because I’ve missed so much of it with hospital and all of that, and I don’t want to embarrass Coleg Cambria by doing it with them.

The difficulty is finding a provider who offers “North Welsh”.

For the southern dialect there are more courses than you can shake a stick at. It’s not too much of a problem because my grandmother came from down south even though she lived most of her life up in the north-east so I’m used to hearing both dialects. But I’m definitely a “North-id”. Bangor University is affiliated to the “LearnWelsh” programme so they might have something.

After the end of the lesson, when we all went our separate ways for the summer holidays, I changed the habits of a lifetime and had a sandwich seeing as I won’t be having my mid-afternoon snack.

And then I made myself ready for my trip to Avranches.

The trip down there was the first time that I’d felt tired? but I soon livened up when I couldn’t get out of my chair and everyone in the building had to rally round and help. Fancy a hospital waiting room with no arms on their chairs!

Anyway, the surgeon played ball, which was nice. He understood my fears, mumbled his way through what he was supposed to say, didn’t say anything else and asked if I agreed with what he’d just said.

How could I do anything else?

Next step will be the anaesthetist. He wants to “see me” – I suppose, in the same way that the executioner looks over the condemned man. I’m already feeling rather uncomfortable and we haven’t started yet.

We had a full car going home – it seems as if we went to every medical establishment in Avranches on some sort of Cook’s Tour to pick up everyone heading to this neck of the woods.

Back here I was first out, and my faithful cleaner helped me up the steps, standing behind me lifting up my foot with hers.

This can’t go on much longer. I don’t have the force to keep on dragging myself up the handrail, and neither does she, I suspect. I can only see an unpleasant future of doom and gloom if this carries on. And if I have dialysis, I’ll be doing it three times per week at least.

Once I was home I sat down – and crashed out. I was dead to the World.

Only 20 minutes late starting tea. At least it was taco roll with rice so it didn’t need much preparation.

As for me, neither do I. I’ll be in bed before you know it and there I intend to stay until my name changes to Rip van Epic. I am totally wasted after this afternoon – and I have to do it tomorrow too. That’s when I go to see Emilie the cute consultant’s sidekick.

But as I said, I’m off to bed to reflect on the events of the day and mull over the words of the surgeon – at least, the words that I understood.
"I’ve listened to you for fifteen minutes" I told him "but I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not" he replied "but you’re certainly better-informed."

0

Monday 24th June 2024 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

…long, hard, miserable, depressing afternoon when I’ve been more asleep than awake, more dead than alive

And that’s exactly how I’m feeling too – more dead than alive. This afternoon has been horrible and I can safely say that there was a certain moment when I felt worse than I’ve ever felt with this illness.

What’s depressing me about it is that it’s not actually anything physical. Having bitten off my tongue and having it sewn back after a car accident in 1987 I know what pain is, believe me, and while the physical feeling is nothing like the same of course, it’s something about when I awaken from one of these coma-type things

It’s as if there’s some kind of chemical being released into my body which immediately makes me think of one of these pills, powders and potions.

When we we were at school and the teacher left the Chemistry class for a few minutes, we’d experiment by dropping different chemicals into a test-tube in order to see what happened.

Sometimes something would go “boom” so we’d make a note of what it was that we’d mixed together so that it would come in useful in our adult life and boy, did we sometimes have some impressive “booms”. I wonder if somehow somewhere a couple of these chemicals are having the same effect inside me once their protective coating wears off in my stomach.

The medical professionals have assured me that that’s not the case and, after all, they ought to know, so I could go to bed without having to worry about anything.

Except going to bed of course. It was another really late night again last night by the time that I finished everything and I wished that I’d finished everything an hour or two earlier.

But exhausted as I was after my efforts I crawled into bed, I didn’t need much rocking. I was asleep quite quickly and didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off. IN fact, judging by the position in which I was lying, I don’t think that I’d moved at all during the night – not one inch.

It was a very groggy me that lifted a shoulder from the bed when BILLY COTTON finally called and you’ve no idea the struggle that I had to leave the bed before the second alarm five minutes later.

In the bathroom I had a really good wash and brush up, and then went for breakfast. Grape juice and strong coffee with porridge and a couple of slices of my lovely, perfect fresh loaf toasted and smothered in vegan butter. Totally forgetting that I was supposed to have nothing whatever this morning as there was a blood test.

Ahh well. They’ll just have some very peculiar results but so what? Many of my results are already quite peculiar and so a few more won’t make any difference. It’ll give them something to think about at the hospital and stop them being bored.

The nurse did in fact ask me "you haven’t eaten, have you?"
"Who? Me?" I asked innocently, brushing the toast crumbs under the table quickly.

One thing I forget though is how many times he told me to write my name and date of birth on … errr … another little sample pot. But let’s be honest – no-one could ever mix up anyone else’s … errr … “sample” with mine.

He spent quite a lot of time today worrying about nothing at all but also gave me a shopping list of the supplies that he uses that are running low. So after he left I sent a mail to my loyal cleaner in order to set her a task while she was in town.

Next thing was to put away everything that I’d used yesterday and washed up. It had been draining overnight and needed tidying up. And there was a lot of it too. I didn’t realise that I had so much stuff. No wonder that I was struggling for room on the worktop.

But it’s a shame about the oven too. When I was on my final fling around Europe two years ago I picked up a fully-fitted full-size oven from Jean-Marc, the guy with whose family in Macon I stayed on a school exchange in 1970. He was modernising his kitchen and the oven that he’d just taken out found its way into Caliburn.

Hans lives in Munich about half a mile from one of the biggest IKEAs in Europe and so about a week later when I was there, I bought a kitchen unit in which to fit the oven.

That’s in the back of Caliburn downstairs too, but I don’t have the physical ability to bring it all up here. So all of that stuff will have to stay there and I’ll soldier on with my little desktop oven.

In here I didn’t do much at first. It takes me a while to warm up, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night, which was a surprise. Mind you, I’ve no idea what to make of it. “There was the boys stuff and then more stuff about bombers … indistinct … and I can’t remember any of it which is a shame” and that was all that it said.

Whatever it’s supposed to mean, I haven’t a clue. When I say that I was “away with the fairies” I think that I was over the hills and far away when I dictated that.

There was a ‘phone call too – could I go earlier to see the surgeon tomorrow? I declined the invitation because quite simply firstly I mess the taxi company around often enough with some of my trips. I don’t want to exhaust their goodwill by unnecessary changes.

Secondly, I have my Welsh lesson tomorrow and I’ve already missed far too many sessions what with hospital and all of that. I can’t really afford to miss any more.

The cleaner came round a couple of times to drop off different things. Apparently the nurse’s prescription has run out but the chemist obliged. The nurse must write out a prescription tomorrow for today’s supplies and I mustn’t forget to tell him.

While she was here I gave her a list of supplies to be bought from LeClerc when she goes to do her shopping. Things like my sunflower seeds and vegan cheese aren’t available on home delivery

After lunch, back in here I began to carry on with the editing of the notes that I’d recorded on Saturday night (thanks, Grahame) but this was where my troubles began.

No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t keep going. At one point I thought that if I just let myself go, have a good sleep and awaken, I’ll feel fresh enough to accomplish more than I would be fighting it off all afternoon.

Some hopes. It made me feel worse.

Finally at about 19:15 I began to pull myself together and by 19:30 I could go to make tea. A plie of stuffing, some of which went into a stuffed pepper and the rest into a container in the fridge for the next few days.

But with pasta and veg cooked in a tomato sauce, my stuffed pepper cooked in the air fryer was delicious, as it usually is. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I eat quite simply here but I don’t ‘arf eat well.

But right now I’m off to bed. I need to be at my best tomorrow as I have my Welsh lesson, this appointment with the surgeon and who knows what?

However I am going to make a rule, and that is “no breakfast until after the nurse has been and gone”. That way we can avoid any more unfortunate lapses of memory.

After all, we don’t want him in such a bad mood that he makes a mess of my blood test. It’s painful enough as it is without asking to be hurt.

But the way that he snatched up my other … errr … little sample pot before leaving. I thought to myself "now that is REALLY taking the p*ss"

0