Thursday 15th December 2022 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was sausage, beans and chips. And how beautiful it was too. I really enjoyed it.

One of my neighbours was going for a walk down to the shops this afternoon and he saw my note on the door so he came by to ask if I needed anything. Of course, if someone is going down to town on foot they can’t bring back very much of anything so a bag of potatoes it was.

At least my desire for chips is satiated for now and there’s enough for tea on Saturday night.

And in other news, I’ve had to make a start in tidying up the apartment as I’m going to have a visitor on Monday at lunchtime. I’ve finally managed to contact the doctor and he’s going to make a house call on Monday.

It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out once he comes round. What he’s going to say and what he’s going to suggest. At least it’s a start, but then again as I used to say back in the 70s when I was attending auctions as a buyer, it’s not where we start that’s important, it’s where we finish.

And to tell the honest truth, I’m probably finished already.

While we’re on the subject of finishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … I finished early last night and was in bed quite promptly looking forward to a good sleep.

Not that it worked out that way because I still had to leave the bed to go for a stroll down the corridor, and then apart from that I went off on quite a few little voyages during the night. We were living in Shavington and it was all quite primitive. We only had a cold water tap in the downstairs sink so I was trying to work out how I could make some kind of hot water tank underneath the sink with a candle to heat the water. I had a rough idea in my head but but it wouldn’t be particularly good. I spoke to my brother and said that maybe we ought to give it a go. My mother and my sister had been out somewhere. They came back in. We’d been watching a cowboy film but they switched over to watch The Clitheroe Kid. Then the two of them were in bed and were fighting over a sandwich that my sister was trying to eat in bed so I said something like “fancy swapping the TV over on our programme and then not going to watch it”. She said that we could swap back. It was right at the end, a Western something similar to one of the EL DORADO trilogy of films where the fight was over and the young boy was leaving. A young girl who had obviosly been close to this boy was practically in tears about him going but he said that he had to leave. “We’ve had 3 or 4 years of good times but it’s time to move on”. She was totally distraught about the whole idea of him leaving and rather than it being a happy ending it was a really sad, dramatic one. Even in my sleep I could feel how powerful the ending was.

Later on I had some money so I was going to invest it by buying a property in PIonsat, some apartments but it had to be a good quality apartment (not that there’s anything quite like that in Pionsat). I didn’t want to buy any old rubbish. There were several decent buildings in the town so I had a wander around and ended up at the bank. That was almost fraught because there was a traffic hold-up and a lorry decided that it would reverse down the High Street, nearly knocking me over as I crossed the road. In the bank I had to queue. It looked as if someone had forgotten his carrots but he walked off without them so I asked the guy in front of me if they were his. He said “no”. It was then my turn and I started to chat to this girl. This guy slipped a piece of paper “I know all about you” it said. “Don’t do it”. I asked “what on earth is this about?”. He said that someone chatted up a bank cashier and ended up meeting her in an alleyway and finished by murdering her. I said “I don’t remember this”. He replied “no, it was in 1968 so just you be careful”. I couldn’t understand what this guy was talking about. He was clearly not in the same world as the rest of us.

And then it was this summer and I was deciding to go into work very early, having spoken to someone who worked the early shift once this year. It would start at about 05:45 that meant that I would be in there by then. Of course my mother threw a fit, saying that I was never at home to help out. I told her that I was at home 24 hours per day 7 days per week except when I was at work, and going to work was normal. We had quite a row about it. When I arrived at work, rather than find the place empty there was someone around sticking up posters about the Roman excavations taking place in the wood. I was expected to go to work on some kind of bricklaying supervision. I tok myself out and was watching these bricklayers work while I was supervising this little group that I had with me. I felt that I was talking to myself all the time about what these bricklayers were doing. I thought that these few people here must have thought me totally crazy. When I concentrated on the work I found that we had a dip in one of the courses, a quite bad dip. There was no way that it could be rectified and we were going to have to take it all out again. There was one woman from work whom I came across as I was on my way into work who was sitting in a chair at the side of the road. She said “hello” to me so I said “hello” to her and didn’t think anything of it. Then I saw in the paper that she’s actually been in prison and was on some kind of rehabilitation course so I don’t know what she was doing at that particular moment, just sitting by the side of the street saying hello to passers-by unless it was part of her rehabilitation.

As you might expect, we have the family back in the equation but none of my favourite characters. That’s something that I find quite depressing.

When the alarm went off, I was in no mood to leave the bed. In fact if I hadn’t had to go down the corridor one more time I’d probably still be in there now.

Having slowly come round, I made a start on the radio programme that I wasn going to do, but my heart wasn’t in it. It took me much longer than anyone could ever imagine to complete it, not helped by crashing out on a couple of occasions and then a break to call the doctor.

When my neighbour called, I was fast asleep yet again. That seems to have been the story of my day, but I’m glad that he awoke me because tonight’s tea really was delicious.

After tea I had a long chat with Liz on the internet where we put the world to rights for a good while.

So right now I’m off to bed early again, in the hope that one night at least I’ll have a really good night and a good sleep to go with it. And if one of my three favourite young ladies could come and keep me company, then so much the better.

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Wednesday 14th December 2022 – MY LITTLE NOTICE …

… on the door didn’t produce any response today, regrettably. But it’s early days yet and I remain optimistic. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

But one of the reasons why is probably the same reason why I haven’t set foot out of the door at all today. And that is because overnight we’ve had a snowfall and just like in HOLY GRAIL “the snows of winter cover the land”.

Not anything like an epic Auvergnat snowfall. There’s a light dusting on the roads. Nevertheless that’s enough to bring all public transport to a shuddering halt. No service buses, no school buses and it’s all been as quiet as the grave. God alone knows how these people would function in a metre of snow and -16°C.

But I’m going soft in my old age. It was really cold when I awoke and, for a change, I awoke a good while before the alarm went off. That’s what comes of going to bed an hour early but I was wasted last night. So much so that I still couldn’t drag myself out of bed when the alarm went off.

During the night I’d been on my travels as well. I was with my friend from the Wirral last night. I’d seen all of the flyers and a lot of the leaflets and publicity for the Cropredy Festival so I asked him “how do you fancy a weekend away this coming weekend?”. He replied immediately “yes” – in fact he was going away. He and his wife were flying to New York on Friday. He asked me why so I told him what I’d seen. He said that really that’s all that there is to Cropredy. He started to tell me all about it. You just turn up on Friday evening and pitch your tent where you fancy, sometimes around a raconteur who is well-known, sometimes with a group of people who you know and gradually things start to happen with music etc throughout the weekend. I made up my mind that I was going to watch it. Then of course I had the question of my health issue. What do I do about that? But I didn’t get that far, unfortunately.

Once I’d vaguely come round into the Land of the Living I went for another gymnastic display in the batchoorm as I tried to put my sooty foot into the bath so that I could have a shower and look something like clean in case a neighbour knocked on my door.

After the shower I had a chat with Liz and then I had some work to do. There’s an important e-mail that needs writing – well, quite a few actually but I mean one in particular – and that also meant speaking to someone from this building, which resulted in a series of e-mails. All in all it was quite a “brisk exchange”.

But one thing is certain, and that is that the more I learn, the less I understand.

Having dealt with all of that I organised some more stuff relating to the radio and paired off another selection of tracks because I’m going to have a go at doing another programme tomorrow. I’ve been letting my stock run down and I need to build up a healthy reserve.

No 06:00 start though – I’m not that dedicated. It’ll be the usual 07:30 start and I’ll see how I get on.

For tea tonight I fancied something different. And so a tin of mushrooms, a tin of chick peas, a tin of veg and I made an impromptu curry. Not as good as my vindaloo from the other day but it was different.

And so if I’m lucky I’ll be having another early night. Totally wasted yet again – these days of 3% effort on the fitbit are killing me off. God knows what I’ll be like if I ever go back to living anything like a normal life.

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Tuesday 13th December 2022 – WHAT A STATE …

… to be in! Downstairs on the front door there’s a notice “if anyone is going to the shops, could they take me with them?” Can you imagine how things have worked out for me over the last few months?

This afternoon I went out to try to start Caliburn and eventually after much coaxing, he staggered into life. I set off for a drive and probably went about 30 kms trying to warm him up and charge up the battery.

However it didn’t seem to do much good because when I pulled into LIDL car park to see whether I could stagger over to the trolleys, I tried the starter and it was a desperate moment as I almost ended up walking home.

That was enough for me and I decided that if I didn’t leave the engine running and go home now, I never ever would get home. I can’t believe that I’d gone so far and the battery was even more dead than when I started.

As well as that I had to park where there was a kerb because I don’t have the strength to haul myself into the cab off the ground.

And so you can see, there’s a very fine line to walk between discretion and valour and God knows where it is right now.

Last night was another miserable, depressing night with me tossing and turning and I really don’t know what’s happening here either. When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was in no fit state to leave the bed and it was a real struggle for me to sort myself out.

The Welsh lesson though went reasonably well because I managed to prepare for it and I feel so much better when I can do that. However I’m not making the kind of progress that I would like. I’d be the first to admit that.

After the lesson I went for my run around in Caliburn and then came back to listen to the dictaphone. And there was tons of stuff on there from the night. There was a group of us packing to go somewhere. The conversation drifted round to all sorts of things. Several of the people were being extremely difficult in my opinion. One woman was really taking her time filling out a form. Everyone was explaining the difficulties that she was having but I didn’t think that they were anything at all. A few of us were talking about insurance and how it was sometimes quite catastrophic. I told them about how I worked in an insurance company (… and I did too …) and someone a few years later had T-boned my car. They actually worked for that insurance company and had their insurance there and how it was an endless tale of delays. We were discussing this. Suddenly I remembered the girl’s name who I worked with who this girl who was talking knew. I said her name and of course it cut the conversation. I felt extremely guilty about this. We were all sitting there trying to organise this and that one woman was taking so much time filling out a simple form. I was of the opinion that we weren’t ever going to get away at this rate
This meeting where there were people on about this insurance company and everything like that was where that guy stood up to make that announcement that his girlfriend was pregnant or they were getting married or something. That was really raining on everyone else’s parade at that particular moment. They were all disappointed that their thunder had been stolen.

There was some kind of tropical storm hitting the Carolinas and everyone had taken shelter. I’d gone with a news party to have a look at the situation inside one of these bunkers because the roof was damaged and water is getting in. I found several women, one of whom I knew very well, busy rolling up tissue and cloth in order to make some kind of something or other that would pass the time. This particular girl was working so quickly that she was way ahead of everyone else. While I was talking to her I looked up. A young girl who had come with her into the shelter was walking past on her way to the corner to lay down. I drew this woman’s attention to it. She invited the other one over to come along and join her to fold up tissue. Of course they started chatting like a couple of people in this situation would.

It was Friday night. I’d finished work and gone home. There was a story on the radio about how business was suffering from big bankruptcies and P-registered Cavaliers were being sold for as little as £3,000. I was wondering whether to go round to see a friend of mine and his wife, and of course Zero but thinking that I’d been round there every night this week I imagine that they must be becoming pretty fed up. The last thing that I wanted them to do was to stop me going round at all. So much as it hurt me, I decided that I’d stay at home tonight and start to sort through my toolbox. While I was doing that the TV was on. There was something happening about relief supplies involving DiY equipment. A whole pile of Opposition amendments were taking place to ensure that the Queen paid VAT on everything. They were all being passed so obviously there was some kind of mini-revolt going on in the House of Commons. Ordinarily that would have been just the kind of thing that I would have talked about with my friend but with having made a vow not to go round tonight I decided to keep to it and stay at home. I started to go through my toolbox making up kits of things that I might need in the future like electric sockets and so on

But imagine that? How many times is this that during the night I’ve turned down an opportunity to go and see Zero. I must be ill or something.

Tea was falafel with pasta and veg. I was hoping to have some potatoes so that I could have sausage, beans and chips tonight but that was something of a failure due to the issues that I had at LIDL. I hope that some good comes of my sign because I can’t go on living on my stocks of food. Rosemary and I talked about that on the ‘phone earlier and this was one of the things that galvanised me into making my sign.

And so we’ll see. It’ll be nice if it works and I can get some stock back in. The cupboard will be bare before I know it if I’m not careful.

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Monday 12th December 2022 – YOU MAY NOT …

… believe this, but Caliburn actually started up this morning on the battery that was on the van. And that’s astonishing, especially as he hasn’t run for over 11 weeks. There’s a small leak in the electrical circuit somewhere that slowly drains the battery so I was expecting it to be dead by now.

What wasn’t nice though was that I’d left open the window in the driver’s door. It had rained in somewhat but one of my neighbours had stuffed a black plastic bag in the door and taped it up to keep the worst out.

Nevertheless, fancy Caliburn starting. I gave him a couple of laps around the block to warm him up and charge up the battery but I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that driving him in my condition is a nightmare.

And so as you can imagine, I’ve been outside this morning, and in the freezing fog too. I had to take some rubbish to the bins across the road and even though it is just “across the road” it took me an agonising 25 minutes to do it, going in baby steps. I thought that having had a good relax and a gentle easing off of the stiffness would have made things better, but far from it.

This trip to Leuven for 2nd January is therefore looking less and less likely.

In other news, Strawberry Moose is back home. On eof the reasons why I put a battery on charge last night and then went to start him today was that a couple of guys from the radio had told me that they would be around today at lunchtime.

It was my intention to ask them to help me carry the battery downstairs and to couple it up in order to start him but that wasn’t unnecessary. But they brought back my suitcase completr with His Nibs.

It was interesting too because they work for the local council and they were able to give me some useful hints about dependent living. Having had some kind of impromptu interview, they told me that someone would be in touch.

And I’ll need it too after last night, which was another awful, horrendous night. I kept on waking up, went for one or two walks down the corridor and so on. I was also on my travels quite considerably during the night in another sphere as well. I was with my friend from the Scottish Borders last night. To my surprise she was heavily involved in Black Magic and Spiritualism. She had one of the original books from that period and she had lent it to me. Every time I tried to make a start on reading it someone came past and I wasn’t comfortable about reading this book in full view of whoever it was so I kept it hidden below the desk or down the bed or something until that person had gone. After a while my friend became frustrated and quoted some phrase in the book about “whoever has taken me from my possessor” or something like that. I explained that I hadn’t actually done that. I’d explained what I was doing but she thought that I had to be a lot more forthright about reading the book even though I was uncomfortable. In the end there was always a piece of music that I played that stopped us arguing. She handed me my guitar and asked me to play this piece even though I hadn’t played for quite a while. My performance was bound to be suspect but I thought that I’d give it a go, although I felt that this was just a sticking plaster over a wound and wasn’t actually solving the problem of me getting down to actually reading this book. Whether or not I has an interest in Spiritualism I had an enormous amount of curiosity and I was intrigued just as much as anyone else to see what was in this book and how everything would unfold. However just glancing through a couple of pages made me seem to think that she had at one time or another said something about almost everything that was in there

There was something in there as well about working in the suburbs of Brussels, how some people were complaining that it was expensive. The question was then asked “why don’t they move even further out? That way they could find somewhere more affordable”. The reply came back about the cost and time of commuting which would put them back to Square One even if they were to do that.

Percy Penguin sent me a text to ask me if I could run her to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. I replied “yes I would” but then I had a realisation that there was no MoT or tax on the car. I had to send her another e-mail straight back. She said that she had cancelled her transport at work so now I was pretty-much obliged to take her unless I could find someone else or someone else would volunteer. Then I was with friends walking around Middlewich. I was pushing something like a pram or a push-chair or whatever. We came off the street around some kind of semi-circle parking place to try to get through to where Walgrens and Marks and Spencers was. We’d been talking about the traffic problems being caused by people turning into their car park. I said that they should get all the nouveau-riche pretentious people, put them in Marks and Spencers and Walgrens and then drop a bomb on the place. That didn’t go down too well with my friends. We were trudging round this semi-circle car space with a cinder base thing. I suddenly wondered if we could get through to Walgrens from here. They replied “no, we should have gone through somewhere else”. On the skyline 100 yards ahead of us were these most peculiar buildings, tall and really narrow. They looked most unsafe. It turned out that these were single-bedroom flats for single occupancy. We were thinking that maybe Percy penguin could find a place there. Then we thought that they looked so delapidated that they would be bound to be closing down these places and demolishing them soon. Nevertheles we went in. There was only a small ladder on the ground floor on the inside. I thought that we had to climb up this ladder, look out of the top by poking our heads through the roof to look out over the top to see how we could get to where we wanted to go. If this ladder wasn’t tall enough for us to be able to do that then we would have a great amount of difficulty. I didn’t fancy leaning too much against the wall of one of these buildings in case we pushed it over because it was really unsafe.

I was also having a dream involving Rosemary. A Government had arbitrarily cut some kind of rate on bankruptcies. She couldn’t see a problem except that someone else had noticed and pointed out to me that it had wiped out the whole market for Insolvency Practicioners. This led to a big discussion about the acounts already agreed with Brussels. The only difference was that the dissident who was supposed to have been held in Moscow at some time but turned up eventually in China. She had a talk that they had a benefit concert for this guy in China but the two people who contributed most in bringing his name to the forefront never actually turned up for it. That name rang a bell with me.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I felt absolutely awful and I was all ready to stay in bed but I forced myself out. I’d already written half of the notes for my radio programme so I finished the rest, recorded and edited them and then assembled everything.

For a change, I was working backwards so I fell about a minute short so I had to expand my notes and re-dictate some of them. Therefore I didn’t really save as much time as I might otherwise have done.

Then I had Caliburn who required attention, and then my visitors.

Once everyone had gone I had a play around on the computer but fell asleep on my chair. That prompted me to go to bed, something that I have been trying not to do but there was no alternative as I have never in my life felt so tired, as all of … errr … 7% of my daily target will testify.

When I finally crawled out of bed (due mainly to a need to go and take a ride on the Porcelain Horse otherwise I’d probably still be there now) I ended up doing … shock! Horror! … some tidying up. Not much but just enough to take me up to tea time.

So now I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form and then I’ll (hopefully) take Caliburn for another spin. See how I feel and maybe in a few days I’ll pluck up the courage to go to the shops.

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Sunday 11th December 2022 – I’M EXHAUSTED …

… and it’s not as if I’ve done anything either today. I’m on 3% of my daily target, having staggered a mere 200 metres all day.

And as I said yesterday, I haven’t put my sooty foot outside the door either.

Being up and about at 09:45 is already something on a Sunday but it’s even more astonishing considerind that I didn’t go to bed until 02:00 or thereabouts. Actually I was in bed before midnight, having crashed out in my chair, but once I’d lain down, all thoughts of sleep had disappeared.

The computer was doing something so I had left it, but with all thoughts of sleep gone, I raised myself from the dead and finished it off properly.

There were several trips down the corridor too, and Brain of Britain had left the alarm switched on at 06:00 as well, so all in all last night was a mess.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too, and much of it was the same. This time I can tell you all about it. I dreamed that I was married and that my wife and I had been away for a while. When we came back we found that my mother had actually divorced my father and married the father of my bride.

And as it happened I didn’t just dream this once but I dreamt this two other times as well during different stages of the night

There was something in there too at one point during the night about the buses on which I’d been travelling just recently. Someone was marshalling the buses. It involved them going round a roundabout somwhere and disappearing off up one of the exits. On the one occasion when I was doing it on my own it meant that one of the buses had to come back from that exit so there was a kind-of marshall there who was standing there in the middle of the road stopping it coming back on the roundabout. I couldn’t work out what that was all about either

When I finally aroused myself from the dead I had a few things to do here and there, such as tidying up in here, sorting out some papers and sending off a few e-mails. There’s a mountain of correspondence that has built up that needs my attention and I’m a long way from dealing with it all so my apologies in advance.

There was also a bill that need paying and I couldn’t leave that any longer.

After lunch I had to sort out the music for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. Things need to get back to normal. It’s going to be a “special” so I had to choose the music and remix it, as well as pairing it all off.

There was even time to write out half of the notes too. I’m getting ahead of myself again, and I should think so too. Things have been running to seed a little as a result of all of my exertions over this last … errr … 11 weeks.

We also had a break for the football – Y Drenewydd v Hwlffordd in the Welsh Premier League. Considering the glacial weather conditions it was quite an exciting match played with a considerable amounnt of skill and was another one of these games that was a good advert for the league.

Henry Jones, who has featured in these pages quite often, was pulling the strings in the midfield for Hwlffordd but his team-mates couldn’t match his skill of endeavour. They did however have plenty of the ball, hit the post once and had several good chances to score on other occasions.

Y Drenewydd scored two which was rather flattering I suppose really, and their opening goal WAS SUBLIME.

All in all, it was nice to see a couple of mid-table teams let the ball do most of the work, a style of which I happen to appreciate. If I were to manage a football team, the emphasis would be on the quick passing game.

One or two of my friends have been in the habit of mocking me due to the amount of tinned food that I have here. However I did a quick inventory and found that at a puch I can keep going with tinned ‘basics” for at least a fortnight. There’s a lot to be said for a good supply of tinned food, as I knew that there would be.

Tonight though, it was pasta in spicy tomato sauce with frozen veg and a couple of small, breadcrumbed soya burgers. That will keep me out of mischief for a while. And while we’re on the subject of frozen food, this is an opportunity for me to thin out the stocks in there a bit too.

There is always the possibility of having a home delivery, but it costs €10:00, there’s nothing like the choice of foods, and what there is is much more expensive than trying to buy it over the counter. But it’s an avenue to explore, I reckon, if things go badly and I can’t get out. But I draw the line at paying €2:49 for a kilo of fresh, dirty carrots when 2kgs of washed fresh carrots costs €1:29. They don’t ‘arf stoke it up.

But for the moment I’ve put the spare battery for Caliburn on charge overnight. If I can enlist some aid to take the battery downstairs, I can swap it over. And then I’ll just have to worry about climbing into the cab.

However, that’s for another day. I need to concentrate on things that are of more immediate concern, like the radio programme. I need to be up at 06:00 so I suppose that I’d better go to bed.

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Saturday 10th December 2022 – IF I WERE …

… to say that I stayed in bed until 11:00 this morning, you would probably think that I had had a good night’s sleep for a change.

However, when I tell you that I didn’t go to bed until at least 04:00 you might change your mind.

And when I tell you that I had a pretty dreadful night in between, then you might be even more convinced. I had a mad fit of the itching that means that I was having withdrawal symptoms to something that they were giving me at hospital and I had to smother my legs in this type of cold cream that they give me.

There was this extremely depressing and dismal dream as well and what was even more depressing and dismal was that after I’d settled down again I had exactly the same dream again word for word. But don’t worry – it’s one of those where if you are having your tea right at this moment you wouldn’t thank me for typing it out.

When I left the bed at 11:00 it really was more of a case of not having anything better to do. I’d been awake for quite some time without being able to go back to sleep.

It should be no surprise to anyone that making a start this morning was rather difficult. I had to slowly bring myself back into the swing of things. And having spilled a pile of lemonade all over the floor part of the morning involved giving the kitchen floor a good seeing-to.

Steam-cleaning (and I DO mean “steam-cleaning” the microwave oven as well, that was next.

And then the fridge. When I first opened the fridge door, something inside switched off the light and closed it again. So I had to put on a brave face and attack the cartons of overinflated and fermented drink in there. I’ll look at the rest another time.

Add to that the tidying up and putting the washing away from before I went off on my travels, and I was exhausted even before I’d started, and I wasn’t feling very well either.

With a clean microwave and a fresh carton of milk I could make myself some porridge. And together with a strong coffee and a glass of orange it was something like a decent breakfast. And didn’t that make a change from jam butties?

Next step was a shower, and that was hard work in itself. Somehow managing to climb over the edge of the bath into the shower was only half of my problems. The other half of my problems was climbing out afterwards. You’ve no idea how much of an exertion that was altogether and I’ll have to do this for as long as I’m still breathing

The rest of the day has been spent backing up the computer and even as we speak, that’s a task that’s still going on. It seems to be never-ending and is an indication of maybe how much time I had on my hands in the hospital.

But just when I was feeling really down and looking for a lift, there in the bottom of the freezer was a portion of pepper-and-lentil vindaloo and that went down extraordinarily well. I needed that very much.

And if you’ll notice, I haven’t been out of the building at all today. The steps are going to defeat me if I take things too quickly. I’m going to have to spend some time just walking around the apartment, I reckon, building up my muscles on a daily basis.

Yesterday, on my way home I did 21% of my daily target and while that may not sound like much, it’s 10 times the daily rate of what had been happening while I’d been in hospital. Consequently 6% today is slowly stepping up the rate from how things have been in hospital, and clambering in the bath will stretch a few muscles more.

That’s not to say that things were easy today but by the time that tonight came round I was feeling a little more optimistic. I wonder how long this new wave of optimism will last.

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Friday 9th December 2022 – “THERE’S ONE THING …

… that I got to tell you man, and that it’s Good To Be Back Home”.

So said Barry Hay on the beach at Scheveningen in the Netherlands back in 1993 when I was there on my old CX500 and I can’t disagree.

But I owe a great big thanks to two of my neighbours who drove to the railway station here at Granville at 19:00 to meet me off the train because, believe me, I was finished, totally finished when it pulled into the station

And I was right about my affairs at the hotel. I really was given the run-around and at 07:00 when I was on the point of leaving and wanted to pick them up, I was told that they weren’t there as far as they could see and I could stand there all day and wait for them if I liked and it would change nothing at all.

So that’s the NIKON D500, the 70-300mm LENS and all of my photos from Canada along with all of my portable electronic equipment gone the Way of the West.

Ahh well!

It’s not surprising that i was in a bad mood about this because I’d had a bad night, as I always do when I’m having to go somewhere early. Not that it stopped me going off on my travels and although I don’t remember much about my travels, I do recall that had I not awoken suddenly, I would have had a visit from one of my favourite young ladies.

So maybe that’s why I awoke suddenly. My whole outlook on life has changed just recently.

Having finished my rather acrimonious but otherwise pointless discission with the hotel staff (I seem to be arguing with everyone right now) I set off in the ice and freezing cold that made my already unsteady gait even more so.

But not for the railway station at Bruxelles-Midi. Instead, I clambered gingerly down the stairs into the metro station at the Boulevard Lemonnier. Crossing the road to get there was fraught, and no mistake.

Even more fraught was crossing the tram rails to the opposite platform and I was convinced that at one point rather than travel by tram I would be out on my ass but in an incredible feat of gymnastics I just about managed to keep my feet.

The platforms at the Gare du Nord were a mess and I must have staggered for miles trying to find my way up to ground level, having to be helped up a few steps by a few people. But when I did I had to go round and round in ever-decreasing circles in order to find my way out of the station.

Yes, “out of the station” because I’m not going by train.

Eventually I found my way outside in the freezing fog and having completely lost my bearings, I wandered around (such as I can) until I stumbled quite by accident on that for which I was looking.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back several years ago when there was a rail strike I ended up HAVING TO GO BY BUS. I remembered that it called at Caen and then went on via several stops to Bruxelles-Nord – without going via Paris.

It was going via Paris that was frightening me. Can you imagine the fight in the Metro and the long walk down to the station at Montparnasse? Not on your nellie!

But trains now go from Caen to Granville and there were, to my surprise, two that corresponded with the arrival of this bus. So sitting comfortably (not that it’s comfortable on these buses but you get the point) all the way to Caen without moving has to be a good deal.

It’s not surprise to anyone that I had to be lifted onto the bus, and then I was sat in a seat by the door. And to make sure that I didn’t move, I didn’t eat or drink anything all the way to Caen. What doesn’t go in can’t come out.

It was a long, boring drive all the way to Caen but every time I started to become fed up, I began to think of the fight through the metro in Paris and that restored me to my senses.

We were late arriving at Caen which means that I missed the 16:11 but there was plenty of time for the 17:16. And that wasjust as well because it’s a long walk from the bus stop to the station. Once I’d bought a ticket from the machine I bought myself a coffee (first drink of the day) and made a tomato butty while I waited for the train.

And what a stagger it was to the lift, through the subterranean tunnel and back up the lift on another platform. I was really gone by this time and I just fell into the nearest seat on the train. My journey had been well-documented on social media and you have no idea the size of the sigh of relief that I breathed when Marie and Anna asked if I would like to be picked up.

The station at Granville was iced up and I was even more unsteady that I had been in the morning and I took hours to leave the station. Marie and Anna were heartbroken to see me because, believe me, I am not the same person who left here in September. That trip to Canada was one trip too many and one trip too far.

When we arrived back here there was a little ad-hoc reception committee that met me but I was really in no mood to see anyone. Marie helped me into my room here at Ice Station Zebra and that was that.

When I’m finally tired enough to sleep, whenever that might be, I’ll go to bed. And there will be no alarm until Monday. Not that I care either. It’s been weeks, if not months, since I’ve slept with no alarm and I deserve some time off

And when I’m ready, I’ll rebuild my life with what’s left of my health and what’s left of my possessions and start again until the end. I just can’t fo it any more.

A big thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me on my travels around and who has helped me in my difficulties. So many of you that have helped restore my faith in humanity. I love you all, more than I can say.

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Friday 9th December 2022 – BEFORE I START …

… going on about my woes and miseries, I want to make it clear that there are people who are far more worse off than I am. And some whose woes and miseries have regrettably come to an end.

And when it’s people whom we all know, after a fashion, it’s even more regrettable.

One of the trawlers that has featured quite often on these pages in the past has been the Jersey trawler L’Ecume II

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen her ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS coming into port, in the harbour here, having a coat of paint in the chantier naval, moored in the harbour in Jersey etc etc.

As well as that, regular readers of this rubbish will recall a story that has been circulating around the naval world that another vessel that has featured on these pages, albeit from a distance, COMMODORE GOODWILL has been accused of running down and sinking with all hands a trawler off the coast of Guernsey in the early hours of Thursday morning.

A press release this afternoon has made it clear that following the collision on Thursday, it’s L’Ecume II that has failed to answer its calls and an underwater survey has identified her wreck on the sea bed in roughly the position where the collision took place.

It’s devastating news and I am totally devastated. There isn’t very much that I can add to what has already been said.

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Thursday 8th December 2022 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a room in a hotel by the railway station in Brussels.

And I actually made it here without falling over and if that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is.

But there is one thing about which I was right, and that is having spoken to several different people in the hotel, my missing possessions have yet to reappear. Every time I see someone, it’s “you need to see my colleague who comes in later”. At the moment I’m down to “seeing the cleaning staff” which, seeing as I’m leaving at 07:00, is going to be difficult.

The alarm went off as expected at 06:30 but I didn’t care all that much. It was about 08:30 when I finally arose from the dead.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone. Last night I was on my way to bed. It was midnight when my father turned up. I was so surprised to see him. He’d been out partying or something and came back and said “did you know that we had some taxi jobs on?”. I said “no” but I had a quick look at the book. There were 2 jobs, one of which was a trip to Colwyn Bay and the other was to a place called Kingsley near Wrenbury. I sent my father off to pick up this Colwyn Bay job and put a SIM card in his microphone. I went to get another car to head off. Then I heard a voice on the radio or something. I said to my mother “do you know if Alpha One has a radio on?”. She said something so I said “I’ve sent him to Colwyn Bay and I’m going to Wrenbury. Do you know anything about this Kingsley?”. She said that it’s a big place where a load of chartered accountants hang out, but that’s all she knew. I basically said “never mind. I’ll try to find it when I’m on my way out there”. I headed off for Wrenbury and this place called Kingsley. It was strange how my father turned up just as I was going up for bed, there were taxi jobs on and there was no-one around at all and I knew nothing about it.

It was a slow morning when I didn’t do all that much except fend off the cleaning staff who were trying to make their way into my bedroom. It was just like Mrs Mopp from ITMA and her “Can I do you now, sir?”.

Anyway by about 11:40 I was on my way. I left all of my “extraneous possessions” at the hotel reception desk and Alison will try to pick them up. If they end up going missing it won’t be too bad because there isn’t anything of earth-shattering importance in them and I shall still continue to live.

It was a slow struggle, and I do mean “struggle” down to the station. Slow and uncomfortable. Luckily there was a ticket machine in the subterranean passage so I was able to buy a ticket without having to go all the way across to the station building.

A train had come in early too and was waiting patiently at the station. A type 08 multiple unit on its way to Kortrijk so I climbed aboard and found a seat right by the door where I was joined by a young family with a hyperactive toddler.

At Brussels I alighted with difficulty and found an escalator down to the ground floor.

According to the map it’s 460 metres to the hotel and it was the longest and most difficult 460 metres of my life. All I had with me was my backpack with the laptop and that alone weighed a tonne but I staggered on regardless and to my great surprise I made it here.

Here the fobbing off about my possessions began but at least I have a nice room – not really surprising given the amount that I paid for it.

Later on I went down once more to see about my possessions and then out to the shop a couple of doors down for some food. I’ve had bread and tomatoes and a large bottle of orange juice and that’ll do me for tomorrow.

And tomorrow, assuming that I find my possessions, which is not always guaranteed, I’m off on what might be my final leg home. That’s going to be difficult although I’ve tried my best to make it as easy as possible.

To prepare myself, I’ve had a few naps but now I’m off to bed for a good sleep as it’s an early start tomorrow. Let’s see how we get on.

Keep your fingers crossed.

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Wednesday 7th December 2022 – FOR THOSE OF YOU …

… who were keeping score, I made it as far as the railway station before I fell down the stairs there. A couple of kind passers-by and a railway employee helped me to my feet and bandaged the cut on my hand, and then a railway porter was summoned to escort me – well, rather half-carry me to the hotel because my legs had turned to rubber.

Previously though, I couldn’t summon up the strength to climb onto the bus and a passenger had to help me. And then at the station, I couldn’t climb up the kerb so I couldn’t go down the ramp from the bus station. I had to walk all the way up the side of the road and onto the station where I had my encounter with the stairs.

There’s no doubt about it. This is serious.

At least I had a good sleep last night. It took ages to actually drop off but once I’d gone I’d gone for good. The alarm awoke me and I even managed to go to the bathroom but I had to be shaken awake for them to give me a blood test and I really didn’t notice breakfast coming in. It was already on the windoowsill when I looked for it.

Later on the nurses came to visit me and they went through their usual questionnaire
Senior nurse – “have you been to the toilet this morning?”
Our Hero emerging from the toilet – “errrr …. “

They gave me all of the medication that I needed to take over the next few days and also some of the paperwork. We had to wait for the rest.

The priest finally came to see me too but he had nothing to add to our discussion of Monday and it really was a waste of time.

After lunch the doctor came round and handed me the rest of the paperwork and wished me well, with that crooked smile on her face. The nurses came along after and took out the catheter from the back of my hand which was a great relief to me, that’s for sure. The pain was starting to get on my nerves.

From there I bravely staggered off to the showers for a good wash and brush up before I set sail. And then I changed into my own clothes.

Some of the stuff I’d packed before leaving and the rest I quickly gathered up and then said “goodbye” to the nurse who came to see me off.

There’ a sign on the wall from the rest area by the top of the steps near the entrance that “it’s 4 minutes” to the lift up to the ward where I had been living. The walk took me 25 minutes and I really did have to stop for a rest.

While I was there I took a gamble and went to book a room at the Ibis Budget Hotel at the back of the railway station. The bad news was that they only had rooms for tonight and not tomorrow.

Not to be outdone, I noticed that tomorrow night there was still a room at the hotel by the Gare du Midi in Brussels where I stayed when I arrived and where I had left some stuff. Consequently I booked the room there and with a bit of luck I can recover my things, if they still have them.

My journey down to the bus stop was slow, steady and painful and I’ve described my journey from there down to the hotel. And how I was glad to fall onto my bed.

in the evening I went across the road to the fritkot for some food. It was slightly easier without anything to carry so i have made an executive decision – and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, an executive decision is a decision where if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

And the decision? I’m going to jettison absolutely everything that is not essential – everything – and just make a crawl for it with just the laptop and a little paperwork. No medication, no washing equipment, no food, nothing. Alison will come past at some point at her convenience and pick up what I’ve left and keep it for whenever.

If that doesn’t work then nothing will. Of my 700km journey I’ve gone about 5 kms so far and already had one accident. How many more am I going to have before I make it home? If I ever do.

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Tuesday 6th December 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the plasma transfusion. I was knocked out for a couple of hours afterwards. It took that much out of me.

What else I was right about concerning this plasma was that it did come up by messenger, it was a nurse who coupled it up and I didn’t see a soul at all from the Oncology department.

Instead, I listened to the dictaphone. I was getting married but because I was now a priest I could perform the marriage myself, which I did. There was also another couple behind me who was wanting to marry too so I took the ceremony involving me. Of course being my first ceremony it ran on and on. These people behind were extremely impatient. I made something of a mess of my ceremony as a result of which it over-ran. Then I had to marry these two people. It was difficult because I could hardly remember the words. There was a question of writing out the marriage certificate. My brother was in the middle of writing one out for someone but had left it. I had to take out the carbon paper and put carbon paper in for my marriage certificate because everything had to be done in order. The people behind were urging me to get on with my certificate. I started but it was a nightmare. I had everything wrong, I couldn’t remember where the phone box was where I’d first met my wife. It turned out that it was right outside my brother’s house and that would cause some embarrassment to someone, just generally speaking I was making a total mess of it. It was taking hours and these people were extremely impatient. They said something to me that they needed this certificate urgently. I could see that whatever reason they were giving was now completely ebbing away. I felt embarrassed but I had to do mine first even though it was a total mess. I hadn’t even begun to think about witnesses for the certificates and my wedding party had broken up a long time ago. This was all going to be an extreme embarrassment.

Later on I was holding a football training session last night. There were several kids there and several senior players from clubs like Manchester City, Liverpool and Birmingham City etc. We’d been playing there for most of the morning and it became lunch. I gathered everyone around me and said that I’d treat them all to lunch so I needed to collect their order. People were giving me orders for fish and chips and cans of drink. I was writing it down ready to go off with Caliburn to buy everything. One of the Liverpool players said that he would use the lunch break to practise his techniques about this and that and also try to commentate to see how a commentator would be. Of course all the ears of the young kids pricked up. They all decided that they’d stay too so that they’d have some experience with this Liverpool guy. Another senior professional said that he’d stop. The 2 Manchester City guys said that they’d go home and come back later but almost everyone there decided that they’d stop to see what this Liverpool guy could do for themselves in their lunch break. I had a feeling that this lunch break was going to run into a fortune but nevertheless I’d promised so I took everyone’s order for fish and chips or whatever and canned drink and made arrangements to go off to buy them

Who else I didn’t see was the priest who told me that he would be back to see me today, and although the doctor from yesterday came by to gloat earlier in the day, she didn’t “come back to see you later” as she said she would either.

Not of course that I’m worried. As I told Liz when we were chatting on the internet and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve met their sort before and they don’t worry me in the slightest. It’s just one more raccoon skin on the wall, as the delightful saying goes, and the world will still turn round regardless of their best efforts to throw a spanner into my works.

What was much nicer – so much nicer in fact – was that the Iranian refugee who is nursing here and the student nurse who has featured regularly in these pages, both came to see me to say “goodbye”. We had quite a chat, much to the chagrin of the other patients on this side of the ward who were presumably waiting for attention, but they will just have to wait.

And so tomorrow I shall wake up slowly, go for a shower, change into my own clothes, throw my possessions into a red and white spotted handkerchief, attach it to a stick, throw it over my shoulder and set off to meet my fate.

One thing that I did say to the doctor was that as it’s 600 metres or so through the hospital to the bus stop, I’ll be organising a sweepstake among my friends around the world on the internet to see how far I get before I fall over.

And that reminds me. The physiotherapist from yesterday came to see me today to take me for a stagger down the corridor and a crawl back.

She was insisting that I have one of these two-wheeled, two legged perambulator things but I flatly refused. I walked in here and I’ll be walking out. I can’t see why my condition in this respect should have deteriorated so much while I’ve been in the care of the hospital and if it has, then that’s their problem rather than mine.

This led to quite an argument but I stood firm. I’m not walking in normally and going out like a handicapped person. It defies all logic.

She then asked me whether I would like to do some kind of cycling exercise. I replied “how would I know? I’m not the physiotherapist – you are” and that led to another argument.

Anyway, she brought in a kind-of bicycle thing that you can use while sitting on a chair. She set it up for 15 minutes in 1st gear and left me “to care for another patient”.

As she hadn’t come back by the time it stopped, I worked out how to configure it and set it off for another 15 minutes but in 8th gear. As if 1st gear is going to do me any good.

When she came back she took away the machine and disappeared without even checking the data on the computer screen. All of this therefore sounds pretty pointless to me.

What wasn’t pointless was the amount of sleep that I had last night. I must have fallen asleep quite quickly because I awoke with a start round about 23:15, presumably because of something on the Old-Time Radio.

So having switched off the computer I tried my best to go back to sleep and must have gone back to sleep because I awoke once more with a start at 06:00. And again at 06:30 when the alarm went off.

For some reason I was absolutely wasted and couldn’t move from my bed. But what surprised me was the silence. It was as if everyone had been beamed up by aliens and I was the only person left on the ward. However, eventually a clattering of bedpans from down the corridor brought me to my senses, such as they are.

But anyway I was unable to leave my bed before breakfast and consequently I was rather late making a start today.

Perhaps I ought to mention that there was a Welsh lesson today with it being Tuesday. I was dipping in and out as different people came to visit me but I made it through to the end although it could have passed off rather better.

We’ve discussed all the excitement today and that really is that I suppose. Things need to calm down now because tomorrow I’m on the road again, as I said earlier.

A good sleep will probably do me some good but it will all pale into insignificance if I can’t get out of the door.

What a state to be in, hey?

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Monday 5th December 2022 – SO THAT’S THAT THEN.

On Wednesday I shall be out on my ear. Complete, presumably, with the dressing on my left shoulder but without the virus, without my mobility and without an answer to the dozens of questions that I have asked.

And without the possibility of going for this physiotherapy thing either. Apparently there are strict criteria about who is and isn’t permitted to go and I don’t fit.

So what are the possibilities of going home?

  • having an ambulance (actually a Voiture Sanitaire Legère) to take me to my door – at a cost of €3600
  • having an ambulance of the hospital deposit me anywhere I like within the borders of Belgium
  • being shown the door here and left to fend for myself

Quite obviously, the first option is out of the question. It’s an absurdity.

The second option is out of the question too. Being deposited at Quévy or Doornik where I don’t know anyone or anything, don’t know where the railway stations or the hotels are – those kinds of options are out of the question too.

And so n°3 it is. I’ll stagger to the bus stop if I can, take the bus to the railway station and then head for the Ibis Budget at the back of the station and plan my next move.

Of course, going home and arriving as quickly as possible is my goal and I can’t wait to to be in the comfort and safety of my own four walls. But if I have a fall I’ll find myself in the Casualty department. The hospital isn’t the only thing that can play at going round and round in circles and eventually disappearing up its own catheter.

The doctor took quite a delight in telling me this. You could see her trying to suppress a smile as she spoke. She actually said “although we know that you’re not in any fit state” to make my own way home, or something like that. You can imagine the guffaw that that brought forth.

The Social Services woman just sat in a corner trying to pretend that she wasn’t here so I took a great deal of delight trying to drag her into the chat, much to her dismay.

Of course you can imagine how this developed. I told her that if this had happened 40 years ago no-one would have believed it. But what would have been satire 40 years ago is now very much the norm these days and no-one bats an eyelid any more.

Half an hour after they had left, bang on cue, the priest turned up – the one who saw me a while ago. He asked how I was so I told him the situation. He was appalled as you probably are by the whole situation.

So seeing as I had his attention I rather bent his ear with my problems. I concluded my rant by saying that the Byzantine administration is totally divorced from reality. He described it as an administration disjoncté (we were talking in French) and that’s a phrase that I’ll remember for future use.

In the end he wandered away. Somehow I’d managed to beat him down. I don’t think that anything will actually come of this but as I have said before, “throw a lot of whatsit onto a wherever and some of it might stick”.

Actually, I’m rather lucky. Their plan was to heave me out tomorrow morning and then I’d have to come back in the afternoon for my appointment with the Oncology department. But they agreed to let me stay until Wednesday and the Oncology department will come to me on Tuesday.

In actual fact, what I bet will happen is that instead of coming to me, the oncology department will send a messenger with the plasma and a nurse will couple me up. No-one from the Oncology department will set foot in here.

That would be in accordance with usual practice from the departments involved in my (lack of) care.

On the good side though, once more my friends have rallied to the flag. I was chatting to Rosemary later on the ‘phone and she said “why don’t you come and stay with me? Get the train down here”.

This is on a par with Rachel’s offer to fly over from Canada to look after me. As I’ve said before, I don’t have many friends but those I have are the best in the world.

Unfortunately I had to decline Rosemary’s offer. If I’m going anywhere, I’m going home. I need to have my things around me, regroup my forces, and make plans for the future. if I’m going to stay at home and let nature take its course, I won’t be able to negotiate the long journey home from Rosemary’s whenever it becomes necessary,

Last night I needed to regroup my forces because I had something of a rough night. I went to sleep late but awoke at about 03:00 with the computer and the Old-Time Radio going and my headphones on. I switched everything off and tried my best to go back to sleep. But that wasn’t easy.

It was a very tired and exhausted me who dragged himself out of bed when the alarm went off at 06:30. I was playing about on the laptop when the student came to see me. She told me that my breakfast would be delayed as they needed a blood sample.

When she came back with all of the equipment she told me that she’d heard that there was a lot of trouble trying to find one of my veins and that they moved about quite a lot.

Nevertheless she crawled all over me inspecting my arms until she found something that she thought would do. “Be brave” I urged, so she dived in with her needle. It was the most painless that I have ever had and she cried “look, it works!” and I was so pleased for her.

When she’d finished I asked her how she’d managed to do it so well if it was so difficult and my veins moved around so much.

“Before I come to work” she said “I practise skipping with a rope to keep myself fit.”

She also tells me that she has a deep-sea diver’s licence and has been scuba-diving around the odd wreck or two. Here’s a girl who has a lot to say for herself.

Before she left she took my blood pressure etc. And after all of her mountaineering it’s hardly a surprise that half an hour later a qualified nurse came by to take my blood pressure again.

“Your blood pressure was rather high just now” she explained.

“Ohh really?” I asked. “I wonder why”

The rest of the day has passed between falling asleep and being shaken awake for something or other.

There was a new physiotherapist who took me down to the door at the end of the corridor. It was the usual stagger down there and a rather undignified stumble back here. It’s clear to almost everyone that never mind the 600 metres to the bus stop – I can’t even make 60 metres right now.

She had me doing a couple of exercises afterwards and I managed to tear a muscle in the side of my thigh. This bodes well for Wednesday, doesn’t it?

The doctor passed by during the morning too, presumably to soften me up for the meeting this afternoon. There are very strange things happening in this place, to be sure.

At some point I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I dreamt that all the nurses were trying to do something to me, pulling me about some on one side of the bed, some on the other so I couldn’t actually roll over into a comfortable way for them. I suddenly awoke and found that it was 02:15 and I still had the headphones on and the radio on the computer was still going. It was a programme about doctors and nurses coming to the bedside. I had something of an imaginary fight trying to deal with the skeleton of this situation before I realised what was going on and decided to go to sleep.

I’m not sure if I recorded this but somewhere during the night I dreamt that there was probably 20 people sleeping with me last night, all officers in different army regiments who had somehow come down to see where I was and what I was doing, and who I was doing it with, and ended up sleeping all around me. What I’d done was that I’d awoken early and switched everyone’s alarm clock around so that they would all be awoken at the wrong time, or each person would be awoken at the wrong time so that I could have a lie-in that particular morning

While I was asleep in the morning I was dreaming that I was Ali Baba. I was actually at an office and we were having a Christmas party. It was a fancy-dress parade and I’d bought everything for the people who worked for me, some little presents. When they’d all left after this party in this room that the office was throwing I changed into someone who was half-naked and climbed into some kind of silver sack kind of thing, a mesh sack, and went into the room where the party was taking place as Ali Baba in his laundry basket. I went to have a look and there were all kinds of stalls over at one end of the room with flowers and Christmas wreaths etc. There was some kind of stall selling DiY tools, all old kinds of stock that you’d typically find in a market stall including liquid easing oil at £2:99 a tin, like a reasonably-sized spam tin size. It was all quite interesting, this old stall selling these tools that were there. The strange thing was that no-one too any notice of me. I thought that my costume of Ali Baba was extremely ingenious but no-one made any kind of comment about it whatever. I was quite disappointed about that.

So right now I’m off to bed I’ve had enough for today and with the Oncology department becoming involved it’s going to be a tiring day.

And then there’s Wednesday and leaving here too. I’m not looking forward to that but even so, I need to be on form.

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Sunday 4th December 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that Sunday would be pretty much the same as Saturday. But then, it was no surprise, was it.

One of the minor differences though was that when the doctor came to see me, I was in bed. I hadn’t had my morning wash yet.

She didn’t have anything new to tell me and I didn’t have anything new to tell her. However I did have a lot to say for myself (as you might expect) which was cut short by her saying “Mr Hall, we’re just going round in circles”.

As indeed we are but until she (or anyone else for that matter) answers the questions that I raise, what did she expect?

Anyway she cleared off mid-discussion and I’m sure that you never expected anything else.

They are still intent on expelling me, even though my blood count, that rose from 6.6 to 8.8 after the blood transfusion the other day, had fallen to 8.5 by Friday.

For the benefit of new readers, the accepted blood count for a healthy individual is between 13.0 and 15.0. The lower the blood count, the faster my heart must beat to convey the necessary oxygen to the various parts of the body. The critical limit is 8.0 by the way.

And as is pretty evident, my heart can’t keep on beating at this rate for ever. Vous avez le coeur du champion – “you have a champion’s heart” said a doctor at the beginning of all this back in 2015 and it’s only that which has kept me going. If it begins to fail, then I will have real problems.

And so now you know why I’m so concerned when my heart and my breathing start to show signs of breaking down, and why I’m on the warpath when they seem to be ignoring my concerns.

There were a few concerns about the events of the night.

The computer and Old-Time radio was still running at 23:15 so I switched it off and tried to go to sleep. I was still awake at 02:00, having spent some of the time surfing the internet on the mobile phone because I couldn’t go off to sleep. It’s really hard to sleep, light sleeper or not, when nurses and patrolling doctors have meetings right outside your open door.

Something else was that I allowed my imagination to run off on its own for a while and that will be important later.

I was having a really bad night. I was awoken at about 05:15 by a nurse who asked something like “where did I get something or other?”. I really can’t remember anything about it but I remembered what it was that she wanted to know but I’d forgotten now but I can remember when she said it what it was.

I was also at one time thinking or talking to a girl whom I knew from school and asking her next time why doesn’t she wear a skirt instead of jeans or trousers?. But where that came in I don’t know. I’d actually been thinking a lot about her before I’d gone to sleep while I was tossing and turning, as I mentioned earlier, so that was possibly something to do with it too

There was also something more than this too but if you’re eating your tea right now you don’t want to know about it.

After all of that I didn’t go back to sleep. When the alarm went off I made it to the bathroom, weighed myself on my return (I’m still below my upper target weight) and settled down with my laptop.

“You’re starting early” said the doctor who came in at that point. And I don’t think that she was prepared for the torrent that that comment unleashed.

Breakfast was late again and from then on the day just drifted. Much of it was spent either being asleep or shaken awake, which is no surprise after the catastrophe of last night.

Later in the afternoon Rosemary rang me for a nice chat and I had a lovely internet chat with Liz, although I think that I took her by surprise.

What must have been an even bigger surprise was my niece Rachel. She’s appalled, really appalled, by what’s happening and she asked me whether she should come over from Canada to look after me. And that’s the nicest thing that anyone has said to me for quite a while.

Of course I declined. I can’t drag someone a quarter of the way around the world. I’m pretty sure that as long as I manage to make it home I can manage to look after myself with a bit of help from the neighbours.

But right now I’m going to look after myself in bed. There’s a meeting about me tomorrow, to which I’m not invited of course, when they will discuss my future. I bet that they’ll vote to expel me on Tuesday morning.

And seeing as I have an appointment at the Haematology Department on Tuesday afternoon, will I have to come back for the appointment or will they simply cancel it?

We are living in interesting times.

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Saturday 3rd December 2022 – IT’S THE WEEKEND …

… and so it’s been quite quiet in here yet again.

There was a brief visit from a cardiologist though but she didn’t even give me time to sit down. She did come into my room and bellow my name while I was shaving and as a result I have a cut upper lip.

When I did come out, she pounced on me before I’d even had time to sit on the edge of the bed. She gave me the usual platitudes so I sent her packing with a flea in her ear by giving her my usual spiel about what I reckon is going to happen on Tuesday next week.

As Hawkwind once said, YOUR ONLY REAL PROTECTION IS FLIGHT and she adhered to Michael Moorcock’s counsels.

That’s really about all of the excitement today, although one of the nurses – and not a student nurse either – seems to be starting to become a little over-familiar. As if I don’t have enough on my plate.

Last night though was another strange night. I went to bed late as you might expect, and couldn’t go to sleep for quite a while. I’d turned off the computer (and the Old-Time Radio) at some point but still didn’t go off to sleep. I was left hanging on for quite a while.

At some point I must have fallen asleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:30. And so I had a listen to the dictaphone. I awoke 3 or 4 times and saw someone’s father kicking an animal. It might have been a beaver or something each time that I awoke. It was so real that I almost called someone to make a note of it because it really seemed as if that was what he was doing each time I awoke around 01:45.

After breakfast (which was rather late today) a nurse turfed me out of bed so that she could change my bedding. I cleared off for a wash and that was when I had my encounter with the doctor from Cardiology.

On several occasions I fell asleep – and deep sleeps too – only to be awoken by various nurses for various treatments and on one occasion for lunch.

And we’re back on the old soya burgers that I don’t like again. That was a shame after the nice burgers that we had had yesterday.

Apart from a chat with Liz today, nothing else has happened, except this over-familiar nurse. It’s been as boring this afternoon as boring can be.

Tomorrow will be the same too, I reckon, so I need to have a good sleep to prepare me for the effort that I’ll need to make o keep awake.

It’s all go, isn’t it?

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Friday 2nd December 2022 – THE SOCIAL SERVICES …

… lady came to see me this afternoon, with a student trailing along behind her.

“Is it Thursday already” I asked innocently. Nothing like knocking them out of their stride. But then again, if they say that they’ll see me on Thursday then what do they expect?

Their plan apparently is that they can send me home in an ambulance and my health insurance would pay 80% of the costs.

“So what has happened about this physiotherapy at Pellemberg?”

“Ohh that’s another department looking into that”.

In other words we have a couple of different departments looking into different things and consequently working against, if not competing against, each other. I shall have to scotch this straight away before it’s gone too far.

But the idea that I’m too ill to go home under my own steam so they have to send me home in an ambulance is a horrendous idea. What happens next when I have to fend for myself with no after-care?

If anything signifies the beginning of the end then this is it, isn’t it? If I need an ambulance to go home, how on earth am I supposed to be well enough to come back?

And come back I have to as well. Not only do I have an appointment on 6th December, there are several more on 2nd January and then another on 13th March.

As I expected, the story about my breathing issues is going to run and run. And as I don’t have much longer to live, I may as well not bother. I told the Social Services person that I may as well stay at home and let nature run its course.

We talked about euthanasia but I don’t think that she took me seriously. But as for me, I’m in … errr … deadly earnest.

Especially after last night. Having gone to sleep at something like 22:00 I was awake again at 23:15 complete with headphones, listening to the radio. I switched everything off and lay there trying to sleep for several hours, watching the clock go round and round.

Eventually after several hours I must have fallen asleep because the alarm went off at 06:30 and awoke me. And having slowly come to my senses (which takes much longer these days than it ought given the amount of senses that I don’t have these days) I prepared to face the day.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone. I just dreamt that the whole floor here had been whitewashed even when I awoke and wanted to go to the bathroom I still didn’t leave my bed for a good few minutes thinking that it had been whitewashed and someone would come in very shortly and give me some instructions. It took me a whole 5 minutes to be able to pluck up whatever was necessary in order to put my feet on the floor and to find out that it was still the same old floor that it had been the last time I’d got up to go to the bathroom.

It really was quite amazing.

Nothing much happened for a while and eventually I fell asleep again. I was however shaken awake on a couple of occasions, most noticeably by someone who wanted to take me to an echography.

No schoolgirl around this time but I had a nice long wait in the cold and draughty corridor until I was seen. And then some technician poured all over me with the machine thing.

When she let me go I had another wait until someone came to fetch me. Back here my lunchtime meal was already served up. We had different Quornburgers for lunch and they were quite appetising.

The nurses came along shortly afterwards and they gave me an infusion of antibiotics. And immediately afterwards the Social Services people turned up.

So here they are, talking about releasing me from hospital with one hand and giving me an intravenous drip with the other hand. What on earth is really going on with all of this?

Later on in the evening there was football. Pontypridd v Cardiff Metropolitan.

Cardiff played some really nice football but lacked a cutting edge up front as they have done for the last couple of seasons. Pontypridd, second from bottom, played like it and offered even less but nevertheless it really did look as if anyone was going to score it would be a Pontyridd breakaway against the run of play.

However, a hopeful, aimless cross from the Met into the Pontypridd penalty area and a wild slash from a defender took it out of the hands of the Ponty keeper and that, dear reader, was that.

The match was rather like how I feel like now. A desperate rearguard action combined with a few moments of brilliance, only to be brought down by something completely out of my control.

So what do I do now? A taxi back home is not the answer but if it’s the only game in town I’m not sure what is.

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