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Friday 24th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… some astonishing news released today in respect of the Welsh football pyramid. One of the all-time greats is back – and he’s fifty-three!

The news is bound to upset former million-pound striker Lee Trundle, who’s still turning out for Cwmbran Town at fifty and who has been the oldest player in the pyramid for quite some considerable time.

Marc LLoyd Williams was a legendary player in the Welsh Premier League for over two decades, as well as several spells in the English football league with clubs like Stockport County, Halifax Town and York City. He played 467 games in the Welsh Premier League and scored a record 319 goals in that time. In the 2001/2002 season he scored 47 goals, a total that would have won him the European Golden Boot had it not been for Wales’s low coefficient.

He retired at the end of season 2013/2014 and since then has been a TV pundit and coach for some of Wales’s youth teams but the news today is that he has signed for Locomotive Llanberis as a player. All I can say to him is “good luck. Nice to see you back”

That’s a nicer thing that I said to myself when I awoke this morning at … errr … 02:30. It may well be that I’d gone to bed last night at 21:45 or something like that that had caused me to be awake so early, but that’s not what I was thinking at all.

So at 02:30, there I was, trying hard to go back to sleep but with no success whatsoever. I lay here and slowly watched the day begin to dawn. However, at one point I must have gone back to sleep because I suddenly awoke, bolt-upright, at 06:18.

When the alarm went off, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed claiming my early start. But, as usual, summoning up the strength and enthusiasm to go to the bathroom was something else completely.

First off, though, was that I had a thirst that you could photograph, and so I went into the kitchen for a drink of water with a good squeeze of lemon in it.

Once in the bathroom, I sorted myself out and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Our little travel club had gone to London because one of the girls was living there. We went to see her and have a good chat to make up old times, but she was saying that she had to go to pick up her new car today, and everyone whom she’d asked to drive her there had let her down. I said that there wasn’t very much that we could do because we didn’t have a car, but she went on for quite a while about this. In the end, she said “come on, let’s go” and walked out. There was her car, a white four-door Fiesta. I noticed that one of the doors wasn’t fitting properly so I asked her about it. She said that it’s not been bolted in. It’s just wedged in. She explained that she’d had a problem with one of the doors, and some English guy who ran a car repair place in Belgium had sorted out a door for her for five pounds. So we went into London and ended up where this event was taking place but it was not really good at all. There was nothing much happening, so we decided to leave. For some reason or other, I’d been eating a whole pile of paper, and all of a sudden, I had to spit it out. I just opened the door and spat out all this paper that I’d eaten and another huge load besides. I was sure that everyone thought that I was being ill. Eventually we found a private members’ club and we were able to order drinks there. Then we had to catch a bus right across London to Victoria Station to find our way home. I felt terribly disappointed because I thought that we all might have been asked to stay but we had to leave … fell asleep here … We were lucky because we found four seats on the tram and the tram was packed to the gunwales with everyone on it, people trying to leave through the “in” door by the driver. It was a total mass of confusion. There were two girls for some reason standing in the pathway of a tram on an adjacent line to ours. It was raining and pouring down, so our tram and theirs had their windscreen wipers working. Eventually, we arrived at where we were going, and one of the girls took us all up these side streets, which I probably thought was a short cut to the station but we’d have to see about that. There was a car pulling out of the kerb so I had to walk round it. The one that was behind it pulled out of the kerb and hit me, so we made a really impressive impact on the driver of that vehicle. The guy who had sold one of us that door, he asked if I’d had my van fixed. I replied “no” so he said that he’d be available after August if I wanted him.

There are a lot of things in this dream that mean something. My three friends, for a start. We’ve travelled miles together, one way or another, all over Europe.

The car, too, currently means something, complete with the missing door. And so does moving between Brussels and London

Many other items fit into events in real life, too numerous to explain, so I reckon that this dream is all about me sorting myself out one way or another.

The nurse turned up as usual, and we had a good chat about bikes and responsibilities while he was dealing with my feet. And then he cleared off, and I could push on and make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We’ve reached the end of the summary, having to wade through page after page of nonsense such as "Much of Europe was still pagan ; during a long portion of this period the Church among many Teutonic nations retained a missionary aspect; and even in Christian countries the Church had not arrived at her full influence. Finally, towards the end of the period the civil and spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investitures roused Europe to its very centre."

There was also "its glorious successor speaks of days when the Church had leavened the world, and, instead of missionaries labouring and dying among Pagan Danes and Saxons, sent forth from those very lands the warriors of the Cross to fight for the holiest spots of their religion.".

It seems that even the church and its ministers, such as Freeman have totally forgotten what is the message of Jesus, Exodus chap. 20 verse 13 and Deuteronomy chap. 5 verse 17.

Right now, we’ve passed on to Arabian architecture. I was expecting all kinds of offensive comments about Arabian architecture from him, and I wasn’t disappointed. We started with "But considered as a real work of architecture, any second-rate production of Grecian, Romanesque, or Gothic art, must rank far above their most splendid monuments. Their splendour is mere barbaric magnificence superadded to fantastic and inconsistent forms, lifeless germs which existed for ages without developing into the features which would seem to be their natural results" and it all went south from there.

Back in here, I had things to do, such as check the Leclerc order that I was about to send off, and then I could finish off the notes from yesterday. Although not without a struggle. You’ve no idea how many times I went to sleep and almost fell off my chair while I was working

Just before midday, I suddenly had this flash of memory – “the washing!” I’d promised my cleaner that I would do the washing today, ready for her to hang out when she comes this afternoon to do her stuff. I usually start it at 10:00 because it takes an age to do, so I hope that it has time to do its cycle.

Round about 13:00 I stopped for a disgusting drink break and the midday medication, and I was caught in flagrante delicto by my faithful cleaner. She set about doing her stuff, and we chatted for a while before I wandered back into here and set about doing some work.

But not for long, though. At 15:25 Leclerc turned up with my load of shopping. And although there wasn’t much, it still took a load of manoeuvre to fit all the frozen food into the freezer and the cool stuff into the fridge. And there was plenty other stuff to put in the cupboards and shelves. It’s becoming quite an art to pack it all away.

Round about 19:30, there was a calamity somewhere. All of the police cars turned up in the car park near us. There were sirens blowing, people shouting, policemen shouting and using the little new loudspeakers and microphones. I’ve still no idea what they are up to, but my cleaner thinks that it’s some kind of demonstration or rehearsal for something

Tea tonight was delicious sausage and chips with baked beans cooked with cheese and black pepper. It’s absolutely wonderful, especially when followed by two slices of my fruit bread.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and checked over everything that I need to do, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Ten Commandments … "well, one of us has" – ed … Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and all the people gathered round him. “It looked like the Crewe Carnival procession” he said later.
"Come on, Moses" they urged him. "Tell us the news."
"There’s good news and there’s bad news" he replied.
"Tell us the good news, Moses"
"The good news is that I’ve got him down to ten"
"What’s the bad news, Moses?"
"The bad news? Well, he wouldn’t budge on adultery."

Friday 17th July 2026 – AFTER THE DISASTER …

… of yesterday, today has been a much more satisfying, and a much more productive day, and for once in a long, long time, I am happy with what I have accomplished.

Not that you might have thought so during the night. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … it was 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed last night, looking forward to my long, uninterrupted sleep.

And there I stayed, too, until all of 02:03 (I checked). At that point, an enormous coughing fit awoke me (yes, the antibiotics stopped a week ago) and I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

At some point, though, I must have done, but it wasn’t for long and I was awake again, watching the darkness gradually turn into daylight as the sunlight slowly began to creep round the edges of the shutters.

The alarm shattered my reverie, and to my surprise, it didn’t take long for me to have my feet on the floor. Mind you, having my feet on the floor is one thing. Standing upright on them is something else completely.

Once I’d summoned up the enthusiasm and the energy, I went to sort myself out in the bathroom and then came back in here.

I had my CX500 out, so I thought that I’d go to see my friend on the Wirral. I went all the way there, but he wasn’t in. It turned out that he was in the local bar, so I went to look for it and there, I joined him. We were chatting about things and he mentioned that there was some kind of motorcycle rally taking place over the weekend in his area. We carried on chatting for a while and then I asked him if he wanted me to come up on the weekend to go to this rally, but he said “no”. I thought “there’s not much point carrying on this conversation” so I went to begin to go home. But I had no headlight on the motorbike. There was a sidelight but no headlight. First of all, I went down to another pub and had half of bitter. That was absolutely packed and I had trouble trying to find a seat. There was someone in there saying “God, this place is just packed with people drinking” so I shouted out “so what did you expect to find in a pub?” that brought a whole roar of laughter from most of the people in there. When I went to go, I climbed onto the motorbike and made sure that the sidelight at least was working, started up the bike and headed for home. But I was halfway down Electricity Street and Alton Street before I realised that I was going the wrong way, so I turned the motorbike round and headed for home. I stopped off on the way at a friend’s house in Winsford. He found a headlight bulb so I went to try it in the motorbike and it actually worked. I thanked my friend and my father. This other guy was here, he from the Wirral. He said to my dad and his friend “do you want to see two motor scooters?”. They had no interest in that so they said “no”, but it turned out that they were two types from Eastern Europe. One was a Korno but I don’t know what the other one was. Eventually, they went to see them but they were distracted by four kittens that came out of the garage. One of the kittens I knew, but I didn’t know the three others. When he went away to do something, my father, his friend and I just stayed there looking at these kittens.

There’s lots of mileage in this dream.

My father and his friend are here again, after making an appearance a couple of days ago. My father, I can understand, but not his friend, about whom I haven’t thought for something like thirty-five years.
As for my friend, there is a pub just around the corner from where he used to live. And there is actually a funny story about it, but the World is not yet ready to hear it.
He was also extremely moody and his rather abrupt “no” wouldn’t have been any surprise in real life.
Why I would be in Alton Street and Electricity Street (in Crewe) when I’m supposed to be on the Wirral, and coming home via Winsford is totally mystifying me.
The friend with the lock-up garages (and the kittens) is a different friend completely than the one on the Wirral.
In that particular friend’s garages, you might well be likely to find a couple of rare motor scooters from Eastern Europe, but as far as I have been able to find, there was nothing called a “Korno”. However, there is a village of that name in the Czech Republic.

And probably much more besides.

There was also a dream about me having a very tight timetable for the place where I worked. There was talk that I’d be having a few days off from the Wednesday to the following Tuesday to go to see a concert by a German composer, somewhere on the north coast of Scotland on the Saturday night. Nerina would be going with me and so would my brother and his wife. We met in a pub to discuss what I thought was the trip but it turned out that they had no intention whatever of going. They couldn’t recall mentioning it in the past, but I was certain that they did. But I’d warned everyone at work, but obviously we aren’t going now so it doesn’t matter.

Not that I’m likely to be going anywhere with my brother and his wife, a classical music concert wouldn’t be of all that much interest to me.

But the idea of organising everything and having it all fall apart at the last moment is nothing new whatsoever, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s something that happened frequently in the old days. As for working to a tight schedule, I’m sure that you have seen plenty of evidence of this.

But there was one boy who was fed up with having porridge and things like that for breakfast and was agitating his parents to have sandwiches. I hoped that that didn’t happen because I enjoyed my porridge in the morning.

This is something that I dread happening. Breakfast, with my porridge and toast, is just about the only meal I really enjoy these days and it would be an absolute catastrophe if I were to lose my appetite for it.

And that reminds me – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been talking a lot about the loss of my appetite following the chemotherapy sessions that I had. While I was browsing through these pages looking for something in particular, I came across this quote –
"At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy."

That’s a quote from the first time that I had chemotherapy, and in particular the ENTRY FROM 10th APRIL 2016 – over ten years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

The nurse was a little later than usual today, and he wittered away about nothing in particular while he dealt with my legs and feet. After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

At the moment, he’s having an interesting discussion on the difficulties that people had back in his day almost two hundred years ago, telling the difference between Anglo-Sacon and Norman stonework.

If you ever see them close together these days now that we know so much more, there’s no difficulty in recognising the differences

You can see the difference here in this photograph that I took of St Mary Magdalen Church in Geddington. The Anglo-Saxon stonework is on the left and straight ahead over the arch. Then round to the right, where it all becomes so much neater, that’s the Norman stonework. The Normans had much more experience of stonework than did the Anglo-Saxons, what with everything that they built in Normandy prior to the Battle of Hastings.

Back in here, I had the usual few things to do, and then I attacked the notes for this concert on which I’d been working. They are now all written and ready for typing.

After that, there was one that I started a week or two back, and that’s now all done too and ready for broadcasting, although that won’t be for a while just yet.

There were the odd interruptions while I was doing that. First of all, there was a disgusting drink break with the lunchtime medication, and then my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff.

While she was here, I had her take two of the drawers out of the freezer, and I sat on the chair and went through them, sorting them out. Some stuff was binned but the rest is now organised and I know what I’ve got and where it is. And doesn’t that make a change?

Back in here and after the radio stuff was finished, I began to tidy up the mass of papers that was hanging around in here. That’s mostly now done too. As I said, it’s been a very productive day.

However, I didn’t ‘arf have a fright. While I was looking at something out of the window, a big bird, probably a seagull, flew slap-bang head-first right into it. The noise was astonishing and I thought that the window had broken, but it remained intact.

I told my cleaner about it, and she went outside to look but there was no evidence of anything.

Not like the owl that flew into the window of a place where I was staying in Leuven.

The poor bird – an owl by the looks of things – quite clearly left his mark on the glass there, and I don’t think that he could have survived a collision like that. But on my window, there’s not a trace.

Later on, it was time for tea. Chips, sausage and baked beans – the beans cooked with freshly ground black pepper and vegan cheese. Delicious as always.

And for pudding, I had some of the fruit bread that I made a few days ago. It’s a little dry, but the taste is magnificent and I’m really happy with that.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about appetites … "well, one of us has" – ed … a young guy takes a young girl out for a meal. To his surprise, she orders almost everything on the menu. And then she gulps it down.
"Blimey!" said the boy. "Do you eat like this at home?"
"No" she replies. "No-one wants to sleep with me there."

Friday 10th July 2026 – I MIGHT HAVE …

… known how today was going to turn out. It’s a day after dialysis, isn’t it?

So last night, having made myself ready for bed during a half-time interval, I was able to fall into bed at the final whistle of the Penybont – Santa Coloma game. I’ve no idea what time the match finished, but it was certainly quite late.

As far as I can remember, I was asleep even before my head touched the pillow and that was that until all of … errr … 01:20, when I awoke.

And that was that. Never mind how hard I tried, I was still unable to go back to sleep. So I lay there for ages, watching the dawn slowly lighten up the sky until the alarm went off as usual at 06:29.

You’ve no idea how difficult it was for me to leave the bed at that moment. And it took an absolute age for me to find the enthusiasm to stand up. At one point, I was seriously thinking about going back to bed, but I managed to fight off the temptation.

Eventually, I managed to stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready to face the day, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on in the hour or so that I’d been asleep.

I can’t remember what my friend and I were doing but it involved a lot of waiting around, during which we were doing some of these competitions in these old newspapers. As the dream progressed, it became more and more intense, and we were spending much more time on these competition things, and they were becoming much more complicated. I remember that I was on the receiving end of some extremely abusive language over something to do with one of these questions. I don’t know where it went after that because I’ve forgotten what was happening.

That’s not really very helpful, is it? Forgetting most of the dream.

The competitions don’t mean anything to me but being “on the receiving end of some extremely abusive language”, although not about “something to do with one of these questions” reminds me very much of an incident almost fifty years ago in Nantwich, when my response was simply “ohh for God’s sake! Grow Up!”

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, at a much more reasonable time today. She was again in quite a chatty mood and we talked about not very much. However, she did ask me how I was and I replied “dreadful”, so she told me to rest. It was a very tempting offer, but I decided to stay up, try to stay awake and fight it out.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And his gratuitous polemic is really beginning to get on my wick. Today we have "No architecture can, as mere art, be more thoroughly worthless than such a hopeless confusion as the Roman style henceforth presented. It is simply the exceeding excellence of the two elements — the perfect loveliness of Grecian detail, corrupted as it was by its Roman imitators, and the magnificent boldness of the genuine Roman construction — that saves any of its productions from absolute hideousness … I shall only briefly allude to some of the strange and often ludicrous ways in which the two principles are sought to be combined."

It’s becoming really tiresome.

Back in here, I had things to do, like write up the notes from yesterday, and they are now on line at long last.

After a disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I turned my attention to editing the rest of the radio notes that I’d started yesterday. And not only are they now all edited, I’ve even assembled the two halves of the programme, chosen the joining track and written the notes for it.

There were several interruptions this afternoon, though. My cleaner turned up to do her stuff but she was clearly unwell and after thirty minutes, abandoned and went back upstairs to sleep. Not that I can blame her – the temperature reached 39°C outside this afternoon and 27.5°C in my room. I’ve had the fan going full-tilt all day.

As well as that, I’ve been persistently falling asleep this afternoon and that’s wasted a lot of time. That’s probably also due to the heat – either that or the after-effects of dialysis. But later on this afternoon, I had one of those high-energy drinks and for a change, it actually had some effect and I felt much better.

One thing that came to light quite unexpectedly while I was doing some research into a shipwreck was a Korean guy. Going back three or so months ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we had someone called Eddie Chan Fook Pong appearing in these pages. Today, it’s the turn of HUH YONG-BUM to make his debut.

Tonight’s tea was sausage chips and beans, the beans cooked with freshly ground black pepper, cheese and mushrooms. And having once again followed the recipe of my friend from Munich, the chips were absolutely delicious, as was everything else.

So now, back in here, I’m finishing off my notes and then there are a couple of other things to do, following which I’ll crawl into bed, and this time, I hope that I manage to sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about foul and abusive language … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old spinster inherits a parrot that used to belong to her seafaring brother.
The only problem is that with having spent all his life at sea, his language was extremely deplorable. She consulted the vicar who suggested that she put the parrot in the freezer for an hour to cool him down.
So after about an hour, she takes the parrot out of the freezer and he’s shivering with cold.
"Jesus Christ!" he exclaims. "That was flaming cold, and I was only in there for an hour. But what I want to know is what the hell did that chicken and those two fish do?"

Friday 19th June 2026 – THERE HAVE BEEN …

… some pretty bad days just recently – several of which have been candidates for “the worst day ever”. However, I don’t think that any of them were as bad as last night or today.

It was, as I expected, a busy night last night. The second half of my pizza went into the bin after three or four mouthfuls of what tasted like pure salt, as I said yesterday. Instead, I took a small packet of biscuits into the bedroom.

That didn’t seem to help matters much, and halfway along the road, I just quite simply blew up.

When I awoke, it was 22:40, curled up in my nice, comfy chair, so there wasn’t any point in carrying on. I just crawled into bed and that was that.

It was back to the usual “sleep, cough, sleep, cough” throughout much of the night, although I was asleep when the alarm sounded. It took me a good while to find the motivation and energy to dress and slide over to the computer. I was feeling dreadful.

Nevertheless, once I’d finally arrived there, I switched on the machine and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of part-exchange of household scheme going on for older houses where you could exchange your house for another type of house somewhere else in the country or maybe even in the same town. I was interested in this because I thought that I needed a change of scenery so I’d been down to look at a couple of houses, and one that pleased me greatly was a Wolseley 1500, so I set about negotiating for it, but the owner dug her heels in about it so I thought that I’d better find another. I found a really nice one and I was actually due to sign for this but then suddenly, a voice came out … we were down there and then as soon as we came out of this house, the house had been withdrawn from the market minutes before we were due to sign so that was something that really upset me all together.

One thing that I have always thought is that whoever has the capital and finances to launch a house part-exchange system, like we do with cars, is going to clean up and make an absolute mint. And I’m really surprised that no-one has gone into it in a big way. But I can’t see what a Wolseley 1500 would be doing in there.

And having the rug pulled out from underneath me when buying houses is, luckily, something that has never happened to me.

Seren and I were baking and, as usual, there were probably more ingredients on the floor than on the worktop. From there, it was pretty confusing, but we were going to have some kind of visit from some kind of alien. They reckoned that this wouldn’t help matters, our tidiness, very much, so we should probably be doing something else round about now rather than confronting artistic masterpieces as made for the purpose quite simply of causing problems.

Why this dream disintegrated into a pile of confusion is totally beyond me. But the question about an alien being involved in this dream is well-known. Whenever anyone asked “you won’t guess what happened at school/college/work/the pub, etc., today”, the answer always was “a spaceship landed and two little green men climbed out and asked to be taken to your leader.”

The nurse turned up as usual and asked how I was feeling. “Dreadful” was my reply. "Make sure you have a good rest today then" he answered, did his thing and wandered off to complete his morning round.

When he was out of the apartment, I made my breakfast, and while eating, I read some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

By the time I was ready to leave the kitchen, we’d finished “artefacts”, spending, as usual, a long time discussing pottery and coins. They seem to be the major source of artefacts in every book on Roman history.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, including writing up yesterday’s notes, so I made a start. However, I just couldn’t keep going. After several minutes of writing what seemed to be nothing but total gibberish, I set the alarm for 12:30 and climbed back into bed. And I didn’t need much rocking either.

When the alarm went off, I managed to switch it off and said to myself that I’ll be up in a minute. The next thing that I knew was that it was 13:35 and my cleaner was at the door chatting to me. She closed my bedroom door and went about her business while I went back to sleep again. When I finally awoke, at 14:45, it was like the Marie Celeste in here. My cleaner had gone and the place was looking really tidy.

Having had my disgusting drink and my afternoon medication, I came back in here to start writing my notes at long last. And it took much longer than I was anticipating too. Whatever is going on with me right now is just ruining my whole concentration.

When they were finally finished, there were one or two things that needed doing and then it was teatime. Tonight, I used the baked beans with cheese and pepper left over from a while ago, with a vegan sausage and some chips.

Tonight’s tea was delicious and I managed to eat all of it. So after the washing up, I came back in here to start writing my notes. But once more, I was overwhelmed by fatigue. It was another night when I crashed out on the chair instead of working. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke, but one thing that I knew for sure was that I was so exhausted that it was a real struggle to find the effort to stand up and go to bed. I didn’t even have the energy to write a note on my blog about the delay.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about aliens … "well, one of us has" – ed … a group of aliens came back to their planet after surreptitiously visiting Earth.
"And they’ve developed nuclear power, and they have these really impressive nuclear weapons." said one of the returning aliens.
"Wow!" said one of the other aliens. "They must be really intelligent!"
"Not at all" replied the first alien. "In fact, they are totally stupid. They’ve built all of these nuclear weapons and they are pointing them at each other."

Friday 29th May 2026 – WHAT AN EXCITING …

… day we had today.

Electricity power cuts, the Hound of the Baskervilles chasing rivals out of his territory, finally managing to open a car door, making exciting discoveries. You name it – it all happened here.

Not much happened here last night, though, except for the fact that I was late yet again going to bed. And once more, I slept on top of the quilt rather than underneath it.

However, when I awoke at … errrr … 04:00, I was underneath the quilt. The weather had changed and it was now 17°C – a far cry from the 25°C of yesterday. So I lay there, slowly watching the day dawning through the gaps in the shutters.

Round about 05:50, I took the plunge and went to leave the bed. At 06:00, I was dressed and sitting in front of the computer.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

There was something going on with music and last night there were five or so groups of different styles who had to practise rehearsing a country folk song to play the following week in the village hall. I was one of these five groups of people and so were Hawkwind. It seemed from the start that everyone’s music was totally wrong, including “Skip” Spence, he of one time of the album “Oar”, who seemed to pull together any kind of noise at all … fell asleep here … I don’t know what happened after this.

There’s probably a very good reason why “Skip” Spence and his album OAR would appear in a dream, but you’ll have to wait for a few months to find out why.

But this idea of different styles of groups playing the same song is not new at all. It’s been done on several occasions in the past.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Eventually, I heard movement from the kitchen, so I went in search of hot, strong coffee and I was not disappointed. A mug of the aforementioned was thrust into my hand and I sat down at my chair to drink it.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up and rang the doorbell, the Hound of the Baskervilles took absolutely no notice whatsoever. Mind you, when it came to having his tummy ticked or his neck scratched, he certainly noticed then. I was beginning to feel rather left out.

After Isabelle the Nurse had finished with me and given the Hound of the Baskervilles a parting stroke, I could turn my attention to making breakfast and reading my new book.

It’s called NOTES ON SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF FRANCE and it’s by, once more, Charles Roach Smith.

This time, he’s on holiday in the Cher Valley south of Tours and he’s exploring some of the many Gallo-Roman remains that are around there.

Incidentally, you should never say “Roman …” in France. I’ve seen warfare break out over this. The French insist (probably rightly) that they were perfectly civilised before the Romans came and that some of the Roman architecture and building practices relate back to them and the Romans took them up, rather than the Romans bringing everything here.

Hence, you should always use the term “Gallo-Roman”.

When everyone was ready, we went outside with a pile of tools. The first thing that we did was to connect the battery up to the vehicle on which we’d been working. After much binding in the marsh, we went to fire it up, but there was not even enough power in it to light the ignition lights.

That was a huge disappointment. We’d been really looking forward to hearing it running. We tried a few tricks and shortcuts and even inspected all of the fuses but there was no light on the Christmas tree, Momma.

We then turned our attention to the door that wouldn’t open. I finally managed to take off the door card on the other door so that I could see it and understand how it worked.

That gave me a much clearer idea of what I needed to do so I attacked the driver’s door. However, nothing I could do would free off the locking mechanism. The door card was right in the way of everything.

Eventually, I lay on the floor and tried again to free off the screw that was holding the door card in position. It took about half an hour, but eventually, I felt some resistance in the screwdriver, and after something of a fight, the door card finally came off.

We still couldn’t free the door, so we soaked all of the mechanism in WD40 and left it for a while. And after a while, still lying on the floor, I attacked it again and, to my complete surprise, suddenly it went “ping” and the door opened. That was success.

We then soaked it in yet more WD40 and when we were confident that the door would open next time we tried it, we went inside the apartment (which was a story in itself) and I had a disgusting drink.

My cleaner came along to do her stuff and she had to clean around us while we were recovering from our exertions. But after she’d gone, we carried on recovering for a while and eventually, we went back out.

The door opened straight away when we tried it and so I greased all of the mechanism and the catches in the hope that they would stay greased. And tomorrow, I’ll do all of the doors.

While we were sorting a few things out in the cab, we came across the huge 100-amp-hour solar panel battery that had been accumulating the charge off the solar panel that was, until a week ago, on the roof rack. I gave it a try and, to my surprise, it was still holding a very good charge.

This is now forming the basis of a cunning plan, more of which anon.

Back in here, we sat and recovered for an hour or so, and just as I was about to start to make tea, at 19:09 precisely, the power went off in the apartment.

It turned out to be a general power cut affecting the whole Haute Ville and we had to wait an age for something to happen. Just as we were on the point of abandoning tea and making sandwiches, the power came back on. And went off. And came back on. Etc.

It was not until about 20:45 that tea would start cooking, and twenty minutes later, we had out chips, sausages and beans with cheese and pepper. It was worth waiting for too.

So now that my notes are written, long after midnight it has to be said, I’m going to do what else needs to be done and then go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about power cuts … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a recent power cut in Crewe, two Crewe girls were talking.
"When the power went out" said one "I was stuck in a lift for 50 minutes."
"That’s nothing" replied the other. "When the power went off, I was stuck on a moving walkway for over two hours."

Friday 22nd May 2025 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

… day this has been. And for a whole variety of reasons too.

We’ll be discussing all of the wonderful parts of it later, of course, but right now, we’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

And the beginning, which was actually last night. I dashed through writing my notes and doing everything else that I needed to do before going to bed, but it was still about 23:15 somehow when I finally made it into bed.

Strangely, it was not as comfortable as it had been during the night before, and not even my favourite sleeping position helped all that much. However, I did manage to go to sleep. And I was dead to the World from then until about 05:10 when the Hound of the Baskervilles had a nightmare and was growling in his sleep.

At that time, he was the only one here in this apartment, and probably in the building too, who was asleep, but once he quietened down, I managed to go back to sleep again.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was well away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

When the alarm went off, there was a torrential rainstorm going on. I’d been walking around a town somewhere. When I came back, I had a jigsaw to do, but it was huge plates of metal that needed to be assembled together. I tried to do that, but there were certainly a few interruptions. My brother came along – something had happened at school and he was now looking for work. In the meantime, he was going to Dane Bank College for a couple of nights to learn something. He’d moved house from Bedford Street and was somewhere over Wistaston way, so I was wondering how he was actually going to get to Dane Bank for his studies. The dream drifted on like that until I awoke.

It’s been a while since a member of my family last took centre stage in one of my dreams. But at least last night they weren’t interfering in my plans, as they usually do. But it was a shame that the alarm awoke me at that moment because I would have loved to know what happened after that.

There was no-one else awake in the living room, so I imagined they were both still in dreamland, so I shuffled over to the computer and transcribed the dictaphone notes above, and there were plenty of other things for me to do to keep me busy.

Round about 07:50, I heard movement from next door so I went to join them. And the delicious smell of coffee-in-the-making greeted me as I walked in. What a nice way to start the day.

The nurse turned up as usual and, unprompted, gave the Hound of the Baskervilles a stroke. Things are looking up. Anyway, he sorted out my legs and feet and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

We’ve passed rapidly over such things as weapons and household artefacts and are now giving a thorough examination of a huge pile of coins that were scattered all over the place at Richborough. And one thing for which I am grateful is that in his lists of coins, classified by “Emperor of Rome”, he gives the dates of each emperor – something that no other writer to date has given.

We carried on chatting for a while and when they went a-walkies, I came back in here to work. They were gone for ages, and when they came back, we had to go back outside where I had to … "try to" – ed … free off a seized door on a vehicle. Believe it or not, I managed to scramble in and … "try to" – ed … take off the door card so I could … "try to" – ed … reach in with my hand and flip the catch.

The door card wouldn’t come off because a vital screw is in the door jamb, but I could push my hand in somehow. I oiled the catch, but try as I might, there was not enough force in my fingers to push it. It’s now thoroughly being soaked in oil ready for another try over the weekend.

However, I came out with my hands covered in oil and grease and a big cut up my arm, which was bleeding. Ohhh! Happy day! It was just as if I’d turned back the clock to the 1970s and 80s when I was doing things like this every other day and it brought back many happy memories.

One thing, though, was that with it being the hottest day of the year so far … "and it was hot too" – ed … I was totally dehydrated, and a high-energy drink did little to bring me round.

Later on, we left the Hound of the Baskervilles with his Aunty Cleaner and we went off to the shops to buy a window box 1 metre long, some compost, some potted herbs and a few other bits and pieces. We came back with … nothing. No wonder people tend to buy from these online shops and so on.

However, would you believe I met my favourite taxi driver in one of the shops? She was buying plants for her new house. We had a long chat and a kiss on the cheeks in the French greetings pattern, and that certainly made my day.

Back here, I collapsed into a chair and couldn’t move for ages. I really was quite out of it. Totally exhausted. Not even a cold, disgusting drink could bring me round.

Eventually, though, I came in here to sit down and think about the next radio programme that I’ll be preparing. It happens to fall on “World Book Day”, so I had a cunning plan.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve talked a lot in the past … "and on many occasions too" – ed … about artificial intelligence. I actually have an artificial intelligence web browser so I asked it to give me a list of rock songs from the late 60s, the 70s and the 80s that were concerned with books.

It took a fraction under ten seconds to present me with a list of about 35 songs based on books, and if that’s not impressive, I don’t know what is. It would have taken me an age with a standard web browser.

By now, it was teatime so I made a very democratic tea of chips, baked beans with cheese and vegan sausages. The simple meals are quite often the best, especially as I had to wash it down with two glasses full of lemon drink that I’m not supposed to have. I really was dehydrated.

After the washing up, I came back in here, serenaded by guitar and singing from the living room, and having had the windows in the apartment open all late afternoon and evening, we were having the first flies of the year.

Anyway, I closed the windows and wrote up my notes. When I’ve done everything else, I’ll be off to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for a new day tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about flies … "well, one of us has" – ed … When I was discussing the situation with my friend, I said "no flies on me!"
"No" he murmured under his breath "but you can see where they’ve been!"

Saturday 16th May 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been, especially after the “what a night!” I had last night.

As I said yesterday … "actually this morning, but more of that ‘anon’" – ed … I came back in here some time after 23:00 and crawled into bed under the covers, the latest I have been for some time.

As usual, it took quite a while for me to go off to sleep, and there I stayed, flat out, until all of … errr … 05:00 or so.

Seeing that there was an hour and a half or so to go before the alarm sounded, I tried my best to go back to sleep, but I failed miserably. By 06:15, I’d given up completely so I raised myself from the bed, went over to the computer and began to type the notes from yesterday that I had omitted to do.

When it came round to finishing, I heard movement from the living room, so it seemed that my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles were now showing signs of awakening, so I went in there, and we had a lovely early-morning mug of hot, strong coffee. I sorted out my medication to take with the coffee, but would you believe that despite having sorted it all out, I still managed somehow to forget to take half of it. I ended up taking it at about 11:00.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and she spent more time playing with the Hound of the Baskervilles than she did taking care of me. But never mind – they both seemed to enjoy it. The Hound of the Baskervilles has a very long memory for people.

After she left, we made breakfast, with yet more hot, strong coffee, and instead of reading Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT, we carried on chatting from where we left off last night – my friend and I, I mean, not The Hound of the Baskervilles and me.

Later on, they went for walkies and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night, and to my surprise, I had.

I don’t know why, but I was dreaming about a song that I’m including in one of my radio programmes in the future. It’s quite a long song and I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time and I can’t even remember the name of it now but I was trying to fit it in and chop it around, etc. Yet in the radio programme that I’d made, it fits in quite nicely, so I don’t know what’s happening in this dream.

It’s impressive that I can remember in a dream that a radio programme went together perfectly and there is no indication of what the song may have been. However, I do know that for most of the evening and night, I had the Little River Band song I’LL BE HOME ON A MONDAY going round and round in my head but that will be going through a good few weeks before whatever is … "or isn’t" – ed … included in the programme that I’ve just finished.

After that, I had my Welsh homework to finish. It’s the homework for the taster lesson for Uwch III next year and blimmin’ ‘eck, it wasn’t ‘arf difficult and time-consuming. I’m determined to go ahead with the course but I can see that for the next two years, I’m really going to have my work cut out. I can’t blame one or two of the others who have decided to go back and do Uwch II again.

By now, walkies were over and everyone was back here, so we carried on chatting. That went on until it was time for walkies part II, so I came back in here and carried on with some more stuff until they came back.

Later on, my cleaner came down to say “hello” to the Hound of the Baskervilles and have a little play with him, to such an extent that she almost missed her bus outside. And then my friend went for a walk into town, leaving the Hound of the Baskervilles to look after me.

While he was gone, a neighbour came round to see me, and he made an … errr … extraordinary proposition to me. There might be more of this anon, in which case I shall enlarge upon my comments. But it really did take me by surprise.

Some time later, my cleaner and my friend came back. Apparently they had met each other on the bus back from town. So we had another round of fun and games with the Hound of the Baskervilles before she went back upstairs to her apartment.

Teatime came around sooner than you might have thought, and so I made chips in the air fryer with burgers on baps. I managed to eat a burger and a handful of chips, but that was about all. I couldn’t manage another piece of anything, no matter how small.

Our chat had been continuing all this time, even as I did the washing up, but round about 22:00 we decided that it was bedtime so I came in here to write up my notes and then go to bed once I’ve done everything else that I need to do. It’s late right now, but tomorrow is Sunday, my lying-in day. However, I did explain to my friend that the aroma of a hot, strong coffee placed on the bedside table behind the head of my bed will usually wake me up just long enough to drink it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about extraordinary propositions … "well, one of us has" – ed … I explained to my friend, when he came back, that it reminds me of the Crewe mafia.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, if you have the Italian mafia who make you an offer you can’t refuse, in Crewe they have the Crewe mafia who make you an offer you can’t understand."

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

… my bedroom/office is in this evening.

You can’t move in here for computer bits, boxes, packaging, cables and all of that. It’s going to take hours to sort out all of it and make the place tidy enough that I can even crawl into bed.

Consequently, it won’t be anything like as early a night as last night was.

And “early” is certainly the word. Having abandoned tea at some ridiculously early time last night, I came back in here and dashed all the way through what needed to be done, with hardly a pause. That’s why I was in bed at 21:48, and I wish that it was as early as that every night.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I try to have an early night, without me having to explain it in anything like any detail.

Searing pains in the foot, intense fits of coughing – they would be guaranteed to awaken me at any moment without the extra assurance of an early night. And so, from about 04:00 onwards, I was going through phases of sleeping, dozing and awakening all the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there have been very, very few times when I have felt less like leaving my stinking pit than this morning.

Eventually, though, I was in the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, all the time wondering how long it will be before I’m back in bed. Totally ridiculous, seeing how early I was in bed last night.

Back in here, I managed to avoid the bed and instead, had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were Royals under attack again last night. This time, it was the turn of Prince Michael to face the music when he asked someone in the crowd what they knew about a certain organisation. They replied that they were the people who sponsored the prize given by the Prince for some kind of good social activity. That took the Prince quite by surprise, as it was as well-known as it seemed to be. But with a lot of attention on the Royal Family in these recent times, it’s hardly surprising that a lot of these little facts are creeping out into the open when they were hidden before.

The Royal Family is still making the headlines these days, even if the Press has moved on from AFKAP – The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince. They now seem to be concentrating on others, and I really do wonder when someone else is suckered into the Epstein web. Not that it’s likely to be Prince Michael, of course. He keeps himself well out of the limelight and out of controversial situations.

I’d joined some kind of club on the internet about something or other, and although there was a list of about seven or eight people who were supposed to be officiating this site, I had my suspicions that it was being done by artificial intelligence, so what I proposed to do was to sit down and draw some 3D models of people that would represent this mysterious committee. I began to draw one, and I was giving some people a few lessons on the anatomical arrangements, the clothing, etc., but it was coming close to midday. I had some cheese with me, but I wanted some bread or something like that to go on it. Seeing as we were at the seaside, I went to a few of the stalls to see if they would sell me a bap or something, but they would only sell me a bap if it had something on it. In the end, I had to settle for a really basic kind of salad bap with just lettuce and tomato on it. It cost me thirty shillings, which I thought was enormously expensive, but I thought then that at least I’d have something to eat with my cheese at the moment.

Yesterday, I had a posting removed from a British newspaper comments section. My comment contained a word that is completely innocuous in British English but means something completely different in American English. It seems that their comments “moderator” is an artificial intelligence program from the USA because it was zapped almost immediately.

And it’s been an age since I’ve done anything with my 3D program, but the story that no-one would sell me an “empty” bread roll is one that occurred on several occasions in the distant past.

I was back in the Auvergne at Cécile’s place. I’d put an advert in the local paper about wanting to form a group. I had a couple of replies, and the first person to turn up was a female keyboard player. The second was a guy with a guitar. We began to talk about what we wanted to do and what we intended to do, and it seemed to gel a little. We didn’t have a drummer, but that can come later, I suppose. The guy explained that he was something of a novice, but that didn’t matter because we’d improve as we went on. When it came to late at night, these other two people decided that they would have to go, but they said that they would be back in the morning. They actually left together, so I thought that at least, those two were going to get on really well. Then, it must have been Cécile who mentioned something about tea. We hadn’t eaten, so she was going to make a great big bean salad, and she wondered if I’d help too. The way that she was giving out the instructions, it looked as if I would be going to be making all of it. Then I remembered that I’d bought some bean salad dressing from Canada and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it, so I thought that I’d run down to the shop on the seafront and see if they had any. But I’d forgotten how late it was, and, of course, all the shops along the seafront were closed, so I had to come back empty-handed. As I was passing the police station, I noticed that there was a woman standing outside with a baby in a pushchair. The woman was smoking a Turkish cigarette right in front of the baby. There were a couple of people remonstrating with her about this, but she didn’t seem to care at all.

Cécile used to play the guitar, and so when we were together, I did actually put an advert in one of these ecological papers to see if there were any drummers about. We did actually have a response too, but Cécile had to go off to the Ile d’Yeu to look after her mother, and so that put an end to that project before it had even started.

All of the shops being closed is another recurring story from the past, but I’m not sure where the cigarette episode fits in all of this.

And back at the seaside again? Hmmmm.

I was trying to organise a football team, so I’d sent out an open invitation for players to come to trials. One guy, who played in the centre of defence, had brought along his wife, who also played in central defence, and asked if she could have a trial too. I put her on the field alongside her husband at the start of the game. Although, like most trial games, it was very bitty and disjointed, she had a really good game and, in fact, performed better than her husband. Anyway, I kept them both on for the next round of trials.

When FC Pionsat St Hilaire was due to play against another team one Saturday night, the opposition turned up with only ten players. There was a girl with their supporters, and she offered to play for them. We couldn’t see why she shouldn’t, so she ended up on the field with them. And she was quite a useful player too.

But the third and fourth dreams recurred all the way through the night, coming back on several occasions. It’s been a good while since I’ve had a dream like that.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was disappointed that I hadn’t found a doctor whom I could berate. And she made a bad move with her hand, right on the base of my foot exactly where the worst pain can be found. I was in agony after that.

After she left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve finished the Latin occupation of Greece, and we’re now dealing with the Ottomans. Surprisingly, life for the Greeks under the Ottomans is in some respects easier than under the Latins, so our author tells us. They are allowed freedom of religion, the power to appoint their own governors and all kinds of things like that, things that they were never allowed to do under the Latins.

And surprisingly, there is very little repression of the population.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. And for a change, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve had, and I wish that they would all go like this one.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff. She sat me down at the kitchen table, took all of the boxes off the shelf unit by the door and told me to sort them out.

It took an age, as you might expect because tidying up is not my forte, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, it’s almost all done now. There’s just one box of stuff that I wouldn’t know how to sort, and there’s a box that I brought in here, full of stuff that should, by rights, belong in the bedroom.

Surprisingly, even though I used more boxes than were there before, not only is the unit much tidier, there seems to be much less stuff on it. I’m not sure how that happened.

After she left, I came back in here and unwrapped my late birthday present.

As you might have guessed, it’s a new computer – or, at least, a reconditioned one.

The first thing that I did was to take the case off and installed the hard drives from the old one and uprated the RAM, but to my surprise, there’s no HDMI socket for the screen.

On the graphics card, there are four ports that look as if they might be USB ports but they are about twice the size. Some kind of HDMI adapter came with the computer and it plugs into the ports on the graphics card, but when I plug in the HDMI cable, there’s no screen display.

The screen is working fine because when I plug it back into the laptop, it works fine. So I’ll have to find a solution, and if not, I shall hope that the graphics card from the old computer will fit into this motherboard.

However, as you might expect, I have boxes, cables and computers all over the place and I can’t go to bed until I tidy them away somehow.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with cheese, followed by vegan cheesecake. Only a small tea tonight as I’m still off my food. It looks as if it’s going to be another period of semi-starvation right now.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’m going to tidy up and at some point, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find some room on the bed for me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pain in my foot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once told one of the doctors at dialysis about it.
"It hurts so much in several places, doctor" I said."What do you advise?"
"Well" he replied. "My advice is to stop going to those places."

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was, last night.

And it started off quite well too. Without very much to say about the day, I’d finished the notes by about 21:50, and by 22:10, I was in bed. Well before my curfew time of 22:30, and it’s been a long time since that happened, hasn’t it?

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what usually happens when I go to bed early, without me having to remind them. And it was at 04:10 too.

This time, though, it was something different that awoke me. First of all, it was a coughing fit of the like that I had not had before, and at the same time, there was the stabbing pain in my foot. Except that this time, it was like an electrical discharge going all the way down from the rear of the instep to the tip of the little toe.

One of those every minute or so, and I was having the worst amount of pain that I’d had since that muscular biopsy. But at least the muscular biopsy pain only endured for a minute or two. This electrical discharge was a sudden, sharp pain that lasted about three or four seconds but was continuous every few minutes.

There was no possibility of going to sleep and no possibility of leaving the bed, so I lay there and festered until 06:29 when the alarm went off. After a minute or two, I managed to haul myself to a sitting position in the bed, and then we had the usual struggle to leave the bed.

When the alarm went off, though, we were in Pionsat. It was 16:00, school chucking-out time. There was quite a lot of traffic coming round a corner and I remember saying to whoever I was with that this really isn’t the time to be in Pionsat right now. But again, that’s all that I remember of that.

This dream reminds me of yesterday, in Carolles, where we went to pick up that other passenger, and then an incident in St Jean le Thomas when we were trying to negotiate the narrow streets of the town.

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub and then went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. And guess who forgot that he’s now moved the medication into a drawer in the kitchen?

Back in here, I transcribed the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night.

Last night, it was one of the big battles between the Crusaders and the heathens, but this time it was near Constantinople towards the end of the Byzantine government’s rule. The Franks were badly defeated and their only hope was to send out for young kids to carry on the fight in the hope that they could do something to stop the Muslim hordes advancing and overwhelming the country, but that looked to be a really most unlikely situation.

This, of course, relates to ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT, the book that I’m reading at the moment, of course.

I was at grammar school, and towards the end of the previous year, I’d been talking to a girl who was in the first year – we’d been talking over the internet or over the ‘phone etc. We were back at school for the next year, and I rang her up again to ask her how things were. She told me that she’d finally managed to change her history teacher or geography teacher. She hoped that whoever she had was much nicer, and she told some rather lurid tales about the previous one. So I laughed and said “yes, you’ve certainly changed him. We have him this year, to which she laughed. We carried on chatting on the ‘phone for a while, and then I had to go. Then, there was something happening and everyone found themselves confined to their rooms. I went and had a wash and clean-up, and then rang up this girl and told her what had happened and why didn’t she come along to my room instead of hers and have a chat? I’m sure that the people who share with me wouldn’t object. I came out of the bathroom carrying a dirty dish and was immediately given a lecture about “no dirty dishes allowed in the rooms”, which I thought was rather strange, so I put the dish down and went into the room. There was a girl there whom I didn’t recognise. She was an enormous girl, and it wasn’t until she began to speak that I realised that this was the girl to whom I’d been speaking on the ‘phone so often.

As if we had the internet when I was at school. And mobile ‘phones.

This story about an “oversized” person is interesting too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall from things that I have said in the past that I keep a pretty close eye on my weight, and so should other people, I reckon. I’m not into this “big is beautiful” idea when it comes to people.

And at our school, we didn’t have many lurid tales to tell about the teachers at our grammar school, except for one who ended up with a two-year prison sentence, although there could quite easily have been a few similar. Mind you, we used to make up quite a few, and they quickly gained currency amongst the more gullible pupils.

The nurse turned up as usual, so I told him about my bad night and the agony that I was suffering with my foot. I warned him to be very careful, so didn’t he go and put his hand right on it?

After I’d come back down from the ceiling, he finished sorting out my legs and feet, and then he cleared off on his rounds. I could go about making my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still in the Ionian Islands today, and it seems that, in Corfu at least, the locals did experience some kind of sanity and better judgement and managed to keep themselves out of the hands of the Ottomans. However, for a period, they did fall into the hands of the French, then the British, and later on, the Italians.

Back in here, I was about to start work when I had a visitor. The electrician sent by the estate agency came to inspect my telephone wiring. I sent a message to my faithful cleaner to invite her down to see him in action to find out what’s going on.

He spent ages here searching for the telephone cabling and eventually found it, after much searching, behind the wall in the wardrobe cupboard. He didn’t have with him all of the equipment that he needed, so he promised to return later.

After he left, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and they are now ready for dictation.

There was a pause next for a disgusting drink, and then my cleaner came down again, this time to do her stuff. We were interrupted by the return of the electrician, who managed to thread a tracing cable through part of the conduit, and now he reckons that there should be no problem for the fibre-optic people to install the cable.

In the middle of all that, there was another interruption. The postie came by with a big parcel for me. I’ve ordered some new waste bins, the sort that slide out like a drawer, because I’m struggling with the ordinary type of waste bin with the swinging top. I really need two hands for that type of bin, but I need one to hold myself upright.

As well as that, there’s a new computer hard drive. That’s for my late birthday present, which arrives next week, with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby.

After a brief … errr … relax, which is hardly surprising given the bad night that I had, I sorted out the plans for the next two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing next week. And for one of them, I’ve already chosen the music and written the notes, and I’m right now in the throes of editing the music that I need.

For the other programme, I’ve made a list of the songs from which I’ll be choosing those that will be included in the programme.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with chips and salad, followed by the last of the birthday cake and some more home-made ice cream. I didn’t enjoy the salad and chips as much as I would have liked, though. Having only recently recovered my taste buds, I don’t want to start losing them again so soon. It makes me wonder what on earth is going on with my body.

But I’ll worry about all that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, to sleep if the agonising pain in my foot and these severe coughing fits let me. I honestly can’t take much more of these.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the teachers at my old grammar school … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion, following a series of arguments in our history class, it all came round to the teacher shouting, in an exasperated voice, "if anyone believes or thinks that he or she is stupid, stand up!"
So, of course, I stood up.
"Do you really believe or think that you’re stupid?" she shouted
"Not really, miss" I replied "but I felt really sorry for you, standing there all on your own like that."

Friday 6th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today?

It’s difficult to understand where all of this energy has come from, but it was certainly there today and I hope that it will still be there for the weekend too and I can keep it up.

Last night, though, it didn’t look as if it would be a good day today. Once more ♬ I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to roam ♬ and ended up being quite a bit later than intended going to bed. If I’d rushed, I could have been in bed by 22:30, I suppose, but it was in fact 23:30 when I crawled under the covers.

At least, I went to sleep straight away, which was one thing, but it was rather sad to awaken at 05:00. I could have done with much more than that. A good few minutes were spent deciding whether I should leave the bed at that point but instead, I curled up in the warmth of my quilt and went, surprisingly, back to sleep.

But not for long. I don’t know what time I awoke after that, but the alarm went off a short time afterwards and I tried my best to raise myself from the Dead.

Eventually, I was able to stagger into the bathroom for a good scrub-up and then I went into the kitchen for my medication and hot drink. And DISASTER – no fresh lemons. I had to make do with processed lemon juice, and it’s not the same.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was a huge meeting of some kind of Gamblers Anonymous thing where people were invited to comment on how they stopped gambling. There was one guy who gave a lengthy speech about how he’d managed to stop gambling etc. and everyone applauded him. He was taken as being one of the shining examples of this meeting. Later on, while he was with his friends, they all went off somewhere and left him on his own. It was then that someone else came round to bring him a prize that he’d won when he’d been gambling. It was a huge prize too, and there was no possibility of hiding it. The people who had brought him this cheque decided that they’d take him out for a meal, and they ended up presenting formally this cheque to him in a restaurant where his friends were actually dining at the time. That proved, of course, to be something that was most embarrassing to everyone. Of course, his friends were really angry at having supported him at this Gamblers Anonymous thing. They went over to the table later where he was sitting, or he went over to theirs and they had a most acrimonious argument or discussion about this whole affair.

This was a strange dream. It’s another one that seems to have come out of nowhere, with nothing that has happened in recent times provoking anything like this.

I’d met a girl walking around Granville and I began to chat to her. She was part of a large family whose father had died and they had been evicted from their house where they were living and were basically on the road looking for somewhere to stay. They were heading in the Rennes direction. It turned out that the previous night they’d spent in a hotel just down the road from where I was living, one of these cheap village hotel-type of things. I felt really disappointed that I hadn’t seen her then. After we’d had a really good chat and she had wandered off, I went down to look at the street. I thought that what was this big hotel had been all boarded up and padlocked. There was no possible way in to it, so I didn’t say or do very much. I realised then that she was actually at the house next door because I could see the tables being laid out for breakfast the following morning, so I loitered around there but she didn’t turn up, and neither did any of her family, so I wondered if they had moved on. At some point a little later on, I met her again. She said that they were leaving and were going towards Rennes. I was spending some time chatting to her. She had this very large family and one of the children was underneath my bed, stuffing stuffed toys up underneath the mattress, so I had to chase her away. I was chatting to this girl when this old, strange minibus turned up. She basically said “goodbye” to me, and I felt terribly disappointed that she was leaving. They all crowded into this ancient minibus, one of those that had the luggage underneath the floor, and they set off. I decided that what I would do would be to try to hitchhike down towards Rennes to see if I could catch up with her at some point. So I set off and arrived at Rennes. I was on an airfield when this strange aeroplane came in to land. It nearly knocked down an officer, who made some kind of gesticulation at it, but I thought that he shouldn’t have been walking across the landing strip anyway. I wondered if this was the family arriving, so I ran towards the aeroplane, but it had crash-landed, sticking up with the tail in the air, landing on its nose. There was some kind of riot going on around this ‘plane and the police were called to quell it, which upset the commander of the base because he didn’t think that it was appropriate for the police to intervene in some kind of military affair. But there was a description of the airfield somewhere, and somewhere, people were talking about the different places where the aeroplanes were parked etc, but I didn’t take much notice because I was hoping that this was the ‘plane in which the family had arrived and everyone in it, especially her, were all OK.

And I was going to say that this was another one too, but meeting a girl in the street and staying in one of these shabby village-type of hotels of the kind that you would have found in every French village fifty years ago but are now long-gone reminds me of my hitchhiking trip around Finisterre in the mid-seventies when, in Morlaix, I was staying in such a place, I did meet a girl while I was walking around the town, and we did have quite a chat.

Furthermore, the streets in which this dream took place resembled very much some of the streets in the Quartier St Paul of Granville around which we drove yesterday looking for one of our passengers.

The rest of the dream would seem to be pretty meaningless, especially the part about the airfield and the part about the little girl shoving stuffed toys up underneath my mattress.

Isabelle the Nurse wandered in as usual and organised my feet and legs. She had a little more time today so we had a little chat. She seems to think that I ought to buy some garden furniture so that I can sit outside. And I would, believe me, if only I could lift myself out of it afterwards.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The period of the Frankish occupation of Greece is coming to an end, due to the marauding Turks, and we’ve been discussing the Battle of Nicopolis when a reinforcing army coming from the West to relieve the besieged Franks in Greece was annihilated by a Turkish army, ending all hopes of salvation for the besieged. The End Is Nigh, right enough.

Back in here, I had things to do as usual, one of which was to send off an order to Leclerc because I’m now about to run out of soya milk. One thing that I really did fancy was a butternut squash because I wanted to make some butternut squash soup for next week, but it had gone out of stock since yesterday, which was a disappointment.

When I’d finished what I needed to do, I attacked the next radio programme and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation.

There were several interruptions too. I went to set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. I’m no longer able to hang the clothes up on the airer so I’ve arranged with my cleaner that I’ll do the washing on Friday lunchtime and she’ll hang it up when she comes in on Friday afternoon.

After she’d hung up the washing and done some cleaning, we emptied the top shelf in the wardrobe in here. There were plenty of bags, backpacks and so on, but we also found a large plastic box full of tools, screws and all kinds of similar stuff. I’d been looking for some of this stuff since the day that I first moved in here when I needed to erect the shipping radar aerial but couldn’t find it anywhere. So that’s another box to sort out this weekend.

Rosemary called me for a chat today too. Only a brief one – a mere fifty or so minutes – and, as usual, we didn’t discuss anything of any importance.

With what time was left, I began to prepare the following radio programme. This one will fall on the anniversary of the Day of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and you’ve no idea how many songs I have in my library that include the word “child” or “children” in the title. I could make a really good radio programme with all of those.

Tea tonight was baked beans with cheese, chips and vegan sausage, followed by the last of the apricot halves and some more of my delicious home-made ice cream. Tomorrow, I can start back on my birthday cake and finish it off during the coming week.

But right now, ordinarily I would be going to bed but onto the playlist has come a COLOSSEUM CONCERT FROM 1971. This is a really strange concert, because every time it comes round on the playlist, something dramatic happens. It appeared on the playlist on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in 2018 when I met The Vanilla Queen, and also in 2019 when Castor suddenly appeared on the scene, and we know how dramatic those encounters were. I was never the same again.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

But before I go and listen to the rest of Colosseum, seeing as we have been talking about Gamblers Anonymous … "well, one of us has" – ed … there’s a similar society for people who suffer from alcoholic issues.
"Is that called ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’?" asked one of my friends.
"Knowing the people whom I’ve met and known" I told her "it’s more like ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’."

Friday 27th February 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… I’ve had today. And if I did crash out for fifteen minutes towards the end of the afternoon, I can only put it down to the after-effects of some very hard work.

Last night was quite hard work too. Once again, despite my best efforts, I didn’t seem to make much progress, and by the time that I’d finished everything and was ready for bed, it was 23:30 and how I wished that it was an hour earlier.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29. Surprisingly, when I awoke, I found myself in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep, so it’s not a surprise at all that I remember nothing at all. I can’t have moved a muscle all the way through the night.

When the second alarm went off at 06:33, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor – which is what counts for “beating the second alarm” – but that’s a long way short of saying that I was actually up and about.

The first thing that I have to do is to wait for the room to stop spinning around before I can even think about standing up. That can sometimes take a good few minutes.

Eventually, though, I found my way into the bathroom, and after a good scrub up, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but to my dismay, there was nothing at all on there. It really must have been a deep, sound sleep. I had to find a few other things to do to fill in the time before the nurse arrived.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … not having any dreams to which to listen is extremely disappointing. It’s just about the only excitement that I have these days.

The nurse didn’t stay long today. He was being harassed by one of his boys about some clothes to wear at a paintball rally in the firing range and so needed to return to sort them out. That meant that I could start my new book, THE DEBATABLE TERRITORY WHERE GEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY MEET by A Lodwick.

This is a book that re-examines the excavation reports of Calleva Atrebates of 1909 and the collection of new evidence for the flora of the site in the prehistoric age.

Although I’m not much of a botanist (regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the only reason I passed my Biology ‘O’ levels was thanks to the helpful drawings on the walls of the Gentleman’s Rest Rooms at Crewe Bus Station) this is a fascinating book, as it talks about the expansion of the British crop pool during the Iron Age and early Roman period and suggests that many seeds common in the modern era were actually introduced into England by the Romans.

After breakfast, I started a new project. I went to make vegan ice cream.

In the fridge, I’d found some banana-flavoured milk and some coconut cream. So with some maple syrup, a pinch of salt, vanilla essence and a pile of chopped chocolate from the slab of cooking chocolate that I found, I went to work, whisking all of the ingredients together.

While that was doing, and in between going into the kitchen every hour to give the ice cream a stir to stop it freezing in one solid mass, I was editing the next lot of dictaphone notes.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came round to do her stuff. And a discussion. Apparently, Mme la Presidente of the Residents’ Association had had the engineers round to install her fibre optic system, but the engineers had declined, for the same reason that they had declined at my place.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

Anyway, it led to a flurry of e-mails, and I couldn’t resist throwing my weight in.

However, I’m appalled by all of this. The conduit for the telephone, through which they’ll be passing the fibre cables to the apartments, has been blocked for over twenty years, and everyone knew this.

Nevertheless, the estate agency that manages the site gave everyone the go-ahead to apply for the installation. I was the first to apply. I had the engineers round who couldn’t install the cable because the telephone conduit is blocked, so on the 21st January I wrote to the Estate Agency to tell them.

Since then, nothing has happened. The estate agency hasn’t sent out a letter to people telling them of the problems, and as a result, there have been countless hours of technicians’ time lost, countless frustrating hours of residents’ time lost and the fabric of the building, a listed building of the “Patrimoine de France”, has been irreparably damaged by the two impatient residents who had technicians drill through the listed walls of the building.

Later on, a couple more technicians turned up to see me, to make a written report as I had asked. However, there was no need. I grabbed hold of another resident and Mme la Presidente and sent them off to speak to the technicians.

And surprise! Surprise! The technicians said exactly the same thing as those this morning and those who came to see me twice before.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

After everyone left, Mme la Presidente came in for a chat and a piece of ginger cake, and once she’d left, I finished off editing the notes, assembling the radio programme, choosing the joining track and writing the notes for it.

This week, I’ve only actually written one programme instead of the two that I’ve been trying to do, but I’ve prepared two others, and tomorrow, I’ll try to prepare a third from the notes that I’ve dictated in the past. Then next week, I’ll go back to writing two more.

The stress and effort today were such that I crashed out in my chair as soon as I’d finished, and so tea was late. Beans with vegan cheese, chips and sausage followed by ginger cake and homemade ice cream. It’s not much of a success, texture-wise, but the taste is terrific, and I’ll make some more like that if my faithful cleaner can find some more of that banana-flavoured soya milk. The ground chocolate really added something special to it.

And that made me start thinking … "which is dangerous" – ed … I have some of these fruit cordials here of the type that you use to make fizzy drinks. How about a coconut milk-based one with chocolate and a stream of mint cordial running through it? There must be plenty of mileage with stuff like that, if the cordial won’t curdle the milk.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed, to sleep, perchance, to dream. Or, as Lee Jackson put it, YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ice cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the ice cream van at the park where I used to take Roxanne on Sundays, an old man hobbled over, obviously in great difficulty walking.
"An ice cream cone please," he asked
"Certainly, sir" replied the vendor. "Crushed nuts?"
"No" replied the old man. "I always walk like this."

Friday 20th February 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… better day today and I actually managed to accomplish a fair amount of work, which makes a change from how things have been just recently.

Mind you, it didn’t look much like it last night. Once again, things dragged and dragged and it was quite late once more, probably not much before 23:30, when I finally crawled into bed

And wasn’t I glad to be in bed too? As I said yesterday, I had fallen asleep quite embarrassingly and at that point I was all ready to throw in the towel and go straight to bed. However, I did manage to persevere (only just) and finish what needed to be finished.

Once in bed, it took me a few minutes to go to sleep. However, I awoke at some point, totally disorientated, and it took me a while to settle down and even longer to go back to sleep. And there I was when the alarm went off.

Although I was totally dead to the World, I did manage somehow to put my feet on the floor and sit upright before the second alarm went off. Eventually, I could stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good scrub up.

After my hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something going on in some kind of big house, and there were several families living there, including ours. In one of the families was a young girl and I was quite taken by her so I began to chat her up. Although she didn’t actually encourage me, she didn’t tell me to clear off or anything like that so I just tried to be nice and tried to talk to her. After a while, she ended up opening up and we had quite a nice little chat. And then my mother turned up, and as usual, she joined in the conversation to such an extent that I could see the tears beginning in this girl’s eyes and she walked out of the room. I waited for ten seconds or so and then went to follow her. And there, sitting by a wall, one of the interior walls, was a cat. Somehow, I knew that this cat was this girl so I crouched down and began to talk to it, to tell the cat that she mustn’t take any notice of that kind of thing. Then I picked it up and began to stroke it.

Now, this was rather a strange dream. But it seems to be par for the course when you consider how things were a couple of years ago, when I had these recurring dreams when I was just on the point of Getting The Girl after a lot of hard work, when someone from my family would come along and heave a spanner into the works. I hope that it isn’t going to become a recurring theme

But as for her turning into a cat, I must admit that I would love a cat here in this apartment but I’m not sure how feasible it’s going to be. For a start, I can’t travel anywhere to collect one.

There was also a dream about a woman who was separated from her husband. She had two children. Her husband wanted to come round to see her so my friend decided that he would hide in this woman’s apartment in case anything went wrong. For some reason or other, I was there too. We arranged one or two things that we arranged quite easily what was going on by putting things in various positions. One of the things was a hidden camera that was in a plastic bag on a shelf. When he came, he asked what was in it, but we’d had the forethought to put a couple of tins of pop in there, so she simply produced a tin of pop. The discussion went on, and then he began to attack her. I had a flask of really hot coffee for some reason, so I remember opening the top of this thermos flask and throwing the coffee all over him, which stopped him in his tracks. Then my friend came along from where he was hiding and dealt with the rest

This is a dream that seems to have come out of nothing, but why do I have the feeling that my friend was hiding in the thermos flask that I was holding? That’s a thought that I can’t push out of my mind

There was also some kind of vague memory about a dream concerning AFKAP – the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince – but I didn’t dictate anything and I can’t recall it now.

Obviously, this wasn’t a very arresting dream.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, earlier than she did yesterday. She told me that it was her birthday yesterday too so I wished her a happy birthday. It’s a shame that she hadn’t told me beforehand.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’ve now moved on to discuss bronze and iron working at the hillfort and this is a really interesting section.

He tells us that "Although sheet-bronze working appears to be at present a preserve of the hillfort, some aspects of metallurgy are shared with others, and, having considered the evidence of ironworking slag in the Iron Age deposits at the hillfort, "it is likely that at least 200 kg of iron artefacts were manufactured at Maiden Castle in the Late Iron Age".

This leads his team to the opinion that "it is clear that the ironworking site in the eastern gateway is one of the most important artefact production centres discovered in southern England."

Now, this makes me wonder if we are approaching some kind of idea of the purpose of hillforts in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

It has often been suggested that rather than being a defensive site against an enemy, a hillfort is the home of some kind of elite, with the peasants living outside it. Could it be that maybe the “elite” were the “elite” because they monopolised the important aspects of bronze and, later, iron fabrication, and the purpose of the defences was to protect the industrial site from being pillaged by envious locals who had no alternative but to obtain the sheet bronze and iron from the “elite” in the hillfort in order to fabricate their necessary articles?

Of course, the defences are somewhat extreme and the number of man-hours needed to build them must have been astonishing, and also the area covered by a hillfort is rather large. And as yet, it’s doubtful if the bronze and iron have been shown to have been fabricated in sufficient quantity in the hillfort to justify such a theory. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea that is worth exploring.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with the radio programme on which I’d been working.

Taking rather a leisurely ramble, it was eventually finished, with plenty of time to go. And so afterwards, I edited the notes that I had dictated for the joining track for an earlier programme and ended up assembling that. So that’s now complete and ready to go.

There had been an interruption too. One of the net curtains here in the bedroom fell down. They are held up by hooks on these sticky pads, and the stickiness wears off after a while. However, we had bought some net curtain rails that came with some metal screw-in hooks, so my cleaner and I went round the apartment and replaced all the sticky pads with the screw-in hooks. I hope that they don’t fall out.

Tea tonight was chips, falafel and baked beans with cheese. French baked beans, which I don’t like at all. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and order a tray of British baked beans online.

That was followed by tinned apricots and vegan sorbet, followed by a dismantling of the freezer when a pack of food fell down behind the bottom drawer.

So now, I’m off to bed, ready for a lazy weekend now that everything that I need to do has been done. However, I suppose that I’ll find plenty of things to do, as usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once had to take Tuppence, my old black cat, to the vets because she was not very well.
The vet picked her up and gave her a really good examination. After ten minutes, he said "I’m afraid that I’ll have to put your cat down."
"Good grief!" I exclaimed. "Is she that ill?"
"Oh no" he replied. "She’s just so flaming heavy."

Friday 13th February 2026 – DID YOU KICK …

… any black cats today? Or break any mirrors? Or walk underneath any ladders? Today was, of course, one of those days when you don’t need to do any of that to bring bad luck upon yourself.

Take my faithful cleaner, for example. She walked out of the building this afternoon at 14:30 only to be drenched in a torrential downpour that began ten seconds later.

My bad luck today … "so far – the night is still young" – ed … has been with this perishing fibre optic cable installation, but more of this anon. Let’s start with last night.

And last night was bad enough. I forget how many times I fell asleep trying to write my notes and doing everything else that I needed to do before going to bed. As a result, what should have been a reasonable time for going to bed turned into a rather late one, much to my regret.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly and that’s all that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. And what a time I had trying to haul myself out of bed. It’s definitely becoming more difficult as each day goes on.

Anyway, I was eventually in the bathroom having a good scrub and a change of clothes too because I’m going to run the washing machine later.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and had my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at a woman’s house. She had a son in his twenties who was one of these manic depressive types. This woman and I were talking, and she pulled out from underneath her pillow a box which had a collection of gold coins. She called her son up and he came, and she showed him this box. She asked “what do you think of these?”. He looked at them and he was completely disinterested, and in the end, he went away. His mother said “I told him this morning that I was going to have someone round to knock a few nails into the foot of your bed but he’s obviously not made the connection and he doesn’t know what these are” so we carried on talking. A while later on, the son came back in. He told us a story that he’d met a famous actress. It was while he was canoeing on a lake with a friend. The wind rose up, and these two girls in this canoe were feeling very uneasy and wanted to be helped, so he and his friend helped them. He’d been on a date with this woman once or twice but this affair was in the throes of petering out because he wasn’t willing to take things any further. His mother tried to encourage him but it didn’t really work and he couldn’t seem to generate a spark of enthusiasm. Later still, we were in her room again and her son was there. He was a guitarist, quite well-known with a recording contract who’d opened one of these fundraising events for charity along with a few other big names. Again, he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic but he suddenly realised what this box contained and he’d come back up to talk about it again and to talk about the money that he has that he hardly ever spends. His mother gave him a huge box of chocolates but instead of eating it, he just took a few and said that he didn’t want the rest so the woman ate a few and gave me one or two too. We were then going to tidy up around her bedroom so I pulled a pile of paperwork down from a shelf on the top. It was all her university coursework with exams, assignments and everything. I noticed that a few were in different names so I asked her about them. She replied that her mother was a typist and her mother had intended to type all of them out so that they were neat and proper but unfortunately, her mother hadn’t survived.

In the past, I actually knew a guy like that, but there would have been no chance of him dating a famous actress, and neither would he have been a guitarist. And any romance of his would have petered out sooner rather than later.

The pile of university paperwork is extremely familiar from the past, and the gold coins are presumably something from the various excavations described in the books that I’ve been reading.

A few of us had in the past been talking about buying an island. While I was chatting to someone on the internet, it turned out that he owned an island off the coast of Newfoundland and was interested in selling it. I found out some more about the island and said that I wanted to talk to my solicitors, to which he agreed. However, I realised that I was in no health whatsoever to do that kind of project, but I would still have a share in it, simply as a foothold if I were able to recover, which would be nice. So I started to tidy up everything away and found some things that I’d bought from the shops, a loaf of bread, some carrots, things like that, and began to reorganise everything. I’d realised that I’d paid over the odds for carrots because there was a flood on the market and the price was coming down, but everyone is keeping the price high for the moment. I also sent a letter to my friend in Newport telling him about this island and expecting a few comments coming back. I’d finally sorted out everything that I needed, and then I had to change. I had some scruffy clothes lying around and also some much more tidy, casual wear that I could wear while I was getting dirty rather than my best clothes. I put that on and then had a look at the map to see where I would have to go to drop off some of these things, but the map wasn’t very clear and there was a printer’s error down the centre of the page that confused everything so I had to look very closely to find out where all of this was going to go. Then I could go out to the van ready to load it up, put some petrol in and do these deliveries.

Buying an island is actually something that several of us have been considering. It would have been a good plan fifteen or twenty years ago, but not today, unfortunately.

The story about the carrots seems to relate to a news item that I read the other day about potatoes. It’s been such a bumper year for potatoes that Europe is awash in them and prices have tumbled dramatically.

There’s also an ongoing project involving my friend from Newport too.

Did I mention that a group of us had decided to go to Edinburgh for a wander around? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … I’d been doing something with my Welsh, like cutting and pasting a few exercises which in part talked about Edinburgh. Then someone decided that we’d go. We all met up, and I had a big picture under my arm. It was something that I’d seen in a shop that I thought would be really nice in my apartment so I was carrying that around. Everyone was interested in the fact that it was quite heavy and we’d probably planned a whole day out, and this was going to be something of an obstacle but we carried on and we were walking around a couple of shops, looking at different things when the alarm went off. There was something in the middle of this dream about meeting up with cars and because there were so many of us, we’d have to use two cars but we could park them up at the top end of the city somewhere

Edinburgh was a city that I used to visit often with Shearings. Shearings had an arrangement with National Express Coaches in the past and occasionally ran a duplicate service overnight from Manchester to Edinburgh via Motherwell, Glasgow, Airdrie and Falkirk, with the return the following afternoon. If I didn’t have anything better to do, I would volunteer for it and I went up there quite a lot. It was a lovely run through the night.

It beats me, though, where the cars and the picture fit in with this, but the shop reminds me of the dream a couple of weeks ago … "22nd January" – ed … about being in Montreal.

The nurse was early today. He had a lot of work to do, so he said, so he couldn’t hang around. That suited me fine, because I had things to do too. For a start, I went and made breakfast and began to read my new book.

It’s called MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples. It related to further archaeological excavations that were carried out at Maiden Castle, to re-examine and develop the work by Mortimer Wheeler.

They aren’t just excavating the hill fort but are also casting their net much wider into the surrounding farmland and chalk downs.

And after reading the first few pages, I regretted having criticised Wheeler’s rambling preamble because it has nothing on the preamble in this book.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve commented in the past … "and on many occasions too" – ed … about the criticism that Wheeler received about his claims of battles and war cemeteries taking place at Maiden Castle, with people denying that there are traces of battle up there.

However, one of the comments in Sharp’s book is that, examining the sites of arrowheads discovered up on the chalk downs, "the distribution of arrowheads in the present survey can be seen to cluster around Maiden Castle", which you might expect if the place had come under heavy attack.

One interesting fact about this distribution that, surprisingly, he seems to have missed is that there’s another concentration of arrowheads around a ford over a river down in the valley. He seems to think that this was the site of a settlement and they may have been lost by the inhabitants over a period of several centuries.

However, it also seems to be possible that any attacking army coming from the north would try to cross the river wherever there was a ford and any group of defenders would do their best to stop them crossing. Hence the concentration or arrowheads.

That was something that I would have loved to pursue but I was interrupted, and before I’d finished my breakfast too. The man from the fibre optic turned up to have a go at installing the cable. And just like the first one, he was confounded, and at exactly the same point too.

The person at the estate agency who manages the building had given me her ‘phone number to ring if there is a problem, so we rang it. And as you might expect, there was no reply. Consequently, I telephoned the President of the residents’ committee and let her speak to the technician.

This question of fibre optics isn’t my problem. It’s a problem relating to the infrastructure of the building and that’s a problem for the residents’ committee and the estate agency to resolve. And it’s a problem that has been known for years, apparently, and no-one has lifted a finger to resolve it in all this time.

Over this past couple of weeks, I’ve wasted enough of my time, enough of the technicians’ time and enough of my internet supplier’s time. It’s long past the time that the people who have stood for election and the people who are being paid to manage it should have taken it in charge so they had better make a start before I become completely fed up.

This is the kind of thing that I’ve seen happen so many times before, and I know exactly how it’s going to end up because it all follows the same pattern. This time, however, I’m too ill to take on the running of the show myself, as I have done in similar circumstances in the past, but I’m not too ill to deliver a few hefty kicks into the nether regions of a few people and propel them into action one way or another.

So still seething after yet another good rant, I came back in here once everyone had gone, and begun to work on the next radio programme. And by the time I was ready to knock off, I’d finished it – at least, to the point where I’d written all of the notes. The next time that I have an early start, I’ll dictate them.

There were a couple of interruptions to my day, though. Firstly, I filled the washing machine with all of the clothes that were lying about, and set the machine off to wash them. Secondly, my cleaner came along to do her stuff and she brought with me another neighbour who wanted to know how things went. And had I still had a spleen, I would have vented it at that moment, but I managed to restrain myself.

Once the neighbour had gone, my cleaner hang out the washing. That’s another job that I can no longer do unfortunately.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and baked beans with cheese and black pepper. It was the tin of French baked beans that I’d bought last week, and I do have to say that they aren’t a patch on British baked beans. They use these large beans that I tried but didn’t like.

The only answer then is that if no-one is going to come over from the UK in the near future to visit me, I shall have to bite the bullet and buy some online.

But that’s something about which to worry another time because I’m going to bed ready for tomorrow; And for once, I’ve already finished all of the work that I needed to do so I can have a weekend catching up on the arrears.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Friday the 13th and good and bad luck … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a club that I visited once, many years ago, and there was a bingo game going on.
The caller was on the stage calling out the numbers
"clickety-click, sixty-six"
"two fat ladies, eighty-eight"
"the Brighton line, fifty-nine"
"unlucky for some …"
"HOUSE!" shouted a voice from the assembled multitudes.
"House called on ‘unlucky for some, number twelve’" said the caller
"What do you mean?" roared the voice. "’Unlucky for some’ is number thirteen! Twelve’s not unlucky!"
"It is for you, madam."

Friday 6th February 2026 – I HAVE THROWN …

… away another huge pile of food today. And that included the leftover Christmas cake and mince pies.

And what a tragedy that was – all of my Christmas stuff consigned to the bin. It just shows you how ill I’ve been over the last couple of months that I couldn’t bring myself to eat all that much of it.

But last night, as I said, I was beginning to feel better. For the first time for a long, long while, I’d managed to eat a proper-sized meal, and that is definitely progress.

So back in here afterwards, I wrote up my notes, although I’m still not as well as all that because I managed to fall asleep a couple of times while doing them. In the end, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing, it was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

But here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that I was convinced that it was the after-effects of the dialysis, particularly the following morning, that were causing me so many problems with my sleep, leading me to wake up at some silly time of the morning. However, last night I slept all the way through to the alarm at 06:29 without moving a muscle.

So much for that idea.

Anyway, another desperate struggle to leave the bed, followed by a stagger into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a woman and her daughter – it might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We’d been for a drive somewhere, just aimlessly driving around the suburbs of this city. I remember that we came to some traffic lights and I was waiting for them to change, but I was busy talking. Suddenly, the car behind me beeped and overtook me. I could see that the lights had changed and I hadn’t noticed. We turned into the main road, and there was a side street on the left that I had never ever been down. We went down there and came to this really magnificent parking area. It had kind of wooden pavilions, lock-up garages and trees, these monkey-puzzle tree things, and there was a lake. The lake was enormous and there were quite a few people sitting around there enjoying it. Whoever I was with, she knew the owners of this lake. They were extremely rich people and this was part of their property, although people were allowed to go on it. We had some flasks, so we went to sit down by the water’s edge. One thing that we noticed was that there were several families. One of them was a small child, younger than the girl who was with us. That child was standing there, arms folded, in a real sulk. We wondered what could possibly have been wrong with this child, given the absolutely beautiful view that we were having.

The road, the traffic lights and the parking place with the lake are so familiar to me but I just can’t put a name to them. I’m wondering if it might have been when I was at FORT NIAGARA IN OCTOBER 2010.

As for the child sulking, I’m not going to embarrass someone who might (or might not) be reading these pages by reminding them of an incident at Pegwell Bay in Kent in 1966 or 1967.

Isabelle the Nurse was rather later than usual this morning, and she didn’t hang around very long. But she was in an exceptionally good mood today which was quite surprising.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

Now that he’s left his rambling preamble behind, his notes of his excavations are much more orderly, although not on a par with those of James Curle. It’s still rather difficult to follow his timeline for the occupation of the site.

But, going off on a tangent as I usually do, I ended up reading a critique of Wheeler’s work. He hasn’t yet reached the cemetery, as far as I have read, but someone, in his critique, has posted to the effect that Wheeler has posted “some kind of fanciful description” of a battle that took place at the site between the natives and the Romans but says that there is “no evidence to support it”.

Leaving aside completely the fact that “absence of evidence” is a totally different concept than “evidence of absence”, our critic notes that Wheeler uncovered some kind of ad hoc cemetery with twenty-odd skeletons in it, many with wounds that can only have come from battle, one of whom has a Roman ballista arrow embedded in his spinal column, but notes that “there is no evidence that they actually died there”.

Now, I’ve commented before on Wheeler’s flights of fancy, but even so, nothing in this World is going to convince me that these people with battle wounds died elsewhere and that some people hauled them all the way up to the camp from wherever it was that they died, simply to cast them any old how into a series of hastily-dug, poorly prepared graves.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I had a few things to do this morning and then I had to prepare my shopping order for LeClerc as I’m running low on a few things. After that, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d started earlier in the week.

Having done that, I then began to research the next programme. That took some doing too, but having found out what I needed to do, I had to track down some music, and that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

When my cleaner turned up, I had to knock off because we needed to make an inventory of the apartment and work out what we need the joiner to do when he comes back here for a day’s work. There’s quite a lot to do, and I’m sure that anyone who has visited this apartment can think of a few other things.

As my cleaner was leaving, she bumped into the delivery man bringing the food, twenty minutes early. And so the next hour or so was spent putting away all of the food and cleaning, dicing and blanching a pile of carrots ready for freezing. Only a kilo today rather than two because there are some left, although not enough to last until the next order.

While I was blanching, the ‘phone rang, so while the carrots were draining, I checked to see who had called.

It was Rosemary, who wanted a “little chat”, so there I was for one hour and nine minutes having this “little chat” with her. And once more, we talked about nothing much at all. But she was shocked to learn that my bill from the supermarket for three weeks’ worth of food was just €69:00. But it’s true, give or take the odd few mushrooms for the Sunday pizza that my faithful cleaner brings me.

There was time afterwards to finish selecting the music, reformatting, remixing and re-editing it and then pairing and segueing it. I even managed to write some of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with a pile of cheese melted into it, followed by some of the fruitcake from before Christmas with a soya dessert. It was a fair-sized meal, not the largest that I’ve had, but I still managed to eat it all, which, I suppose, is progress.

While I was messing around in the fridge, I threw out a pile of stuff that was long past its sell-by date and, as I said earlier, all of the uneaten Christmas stuff followed it into the bin. It really is a disaster, but it can’t be helped. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not like me to throw away food. I really must have been ill over that period.

After finishing the washing-up, I put the water in which the carrots had been blanched into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge to use to make my leek and potato soup next week (I bought some fresh leeks today) and then put the carrots into the freezer to freeze for future use.

And now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. I wonder if I’ll sleep as deeply as I did last night, or was that just a one-off? We shall see.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about those skeletons in that cemetery at Maiden Castle… "well, one of us has" – ed … Tessa Wheeler asked her husband Mortimer "fancy letting themselves be killed like that. Why didn’t they fight back at all?"
"Well, darling" said Mortimer "people like that just don’t have the guts to do it."

Friday 30th January 2026 – JUST BECAUSE I …

… awoke this morning at 02:10 doesn’t mean that I was in bed early last night. I would have liked to have been, and I might even have been too, had I not fallen asleep on my chair during the evening. However, it was nearer 23:00 than anything else when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it looks as if dialysis is the catalyst for these early awakenings. It always seems to be following a dialysis session that I only have a very short sleep.

So last night, after lying awake for well over an hour (I was watching the clock), I must have gone back to sleep at some point because the alarm awoke me at 06:29.

As seems to be the case these days, it took an age to sort myself out and crawl out from underneath the covers. In fact, I was giving serious thought to abandoning these 06:29 starts and setting the alarm for 07:15, today and for the future, but I still harbour faint hopes of being able to pick up my old lifestyle at some point.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up and then went for my hot drink and medication. And I do like my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

I’d received some kind of offensive e-mail from some kind of organisation so I was determined to sit down and reply. I’d been thinking for quite a while how to do it but eventually, I had some kind of idea formulated in my head. There was a young child, who was a cousin, who was in the house with us at the time so I sent her on a little errand to fetch a book, to fetch some paper and to fetch something else, and I said that she could help me write a reply. We sat down at the table, but for some reason, she was at the far end and I was at the other. There was a huge tablecloth on the table and as I tried to write, the pattern on the tablecloth was preventing me from writing on the paper so in the end, I had to roll it back. I began to write, and made three or four attempts but I couldn’t find the correct kind of words. All the time, this girl was sitting at the far end of the table. In the end, she asked if she could come and sit up near me. I said that she could, so she came up and climbed up onto the lorry that was parked next to me, opened the door and sat on the back of one of the front seats so that she was level with me at the table. Then I sat down to write out this reply. Even then, I couldn’t seem to express exactly what I wanted to say. I could see myself sitting there for hours trying to formulate some kind of response with what I had going around in my head previously for ages.

In fact, I have actually had such an e-mail, and I’ve been planning for some of yesterday evening and much of the day in order to make a suitable response. Why my cousins should appear, though, I don’t know. That’s twice in a week or so, and I haven’t really paid them much attention in the thirty or forty years before that.

As for the lorry, that was an extremely surreal situation. And I can see it now. It was either a Thames Trader or a Bedford S-series and was painted olive green.

But there was also something else about another one of my cousins who had left school. I enquired whether she had found a job yet. The response was “well, she doesn’t come from a very well-motivated family, does she?”. But I reminded whoever it was speaking that a couple of her elder brothers had actually gone on in life and started their own business so they were certainly well-motivated, and so were one or two others, so I didn’t really think that it was fair to pick on the younger ones like that.

And that’s perfectly true too. Two of my cousins, having left school with no job and no prospects, joined the Army and served under fire in Northern Ireland. On demobilisation, they went to work for a roofing contractor in Nantwich, and within a couple of years, they had their own roofing business. My niece came across a third who had been in a similar situation after leaving school. However, when she met her twenty-odd years later, she was running her own contract cleaning company. So even if their family environment had been non-motivational, they certainly weren’t.

But as I said, where do my cousins (my father’s sister’s children) come into all of this?

The nurse blew in quite early today to see to my feet, and he didn’t hang around at all, which suited me. I could crack on and make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

We’re now quite close to the end, going through the appendices. We’ve finished plants, animals and humans, and we’re now on coins. And once more, I must confess to having had a laugh at James Curle’s tale of cataclysm at the end of the occupation, as I mentioned yesterday.

He talks about the abandonment of the fort and in particular, "the bodies of unburied men". According to the anthropologist to whom he sent all of the human bones that he found, they related to just ten individuals, most of whom were in pits or ditches. Of those that were identified, two were children, three were women and four were men, and only one showed any signs of battle damage. That’s not, of course, to say that the others did not die a violent death – just that the parts of the skeletons recovered show no evidence of it.

The passage on sheep is interesting too. The bones recovered seem to relate quite closely, if not exactly, to the Soay sheep, the feral sheep on the island of Soay in the Outer Hebrides. As long as there have been written records – over a thousand years – there is no evidence of anyone having introduced a different breed of sheep to cross with the feral sheep there, so they would seem to be truly Neolithic sheep.

We’ve now started coins, which is interesting. And this is how a lot of dating of sites can be done. For example, if you find a coin dated 120 AD underneath a Roman road, you know that the road can’t be any earlier than that date. And successive coins (and pottery, of course) in successive layers can further help in dating.

After breakfast I came back here, and the first thing that I did was regrettably to doze off until about 11:00. I really was tired.

And then I had to chase up the comptes rendu of the aborted fibre-optic installation so that I can go and sit on the building’s management committee and make them pay attention to what’s going on.

Next task was to track down some music for the next radio programme, and if this lot isn’t going to be an obscure collection of songs, I don’t know what is. It took hours to track down everything that I needed, reformat, remix and edit it, pair it and segue it.

There were the usual interruptions too. My cleaner came in to do her stuff and she brought me a new pair of slippers, seeing as my old ones had died a death. We went for a stroll down the corridor to see what was going on in the technical zone too.

Then Rosemary rang. "Do you have a minute or two?" And so, one hour and twenty-two minutes later …

There was even time to write some of the notes for this programme, and with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, I shall finish it tomorrow.

Tea tonight was vegan sausage, baked beans and chips. Proper beans too, not ones that I made. The sauce on those that I made was quite good but it was the beans that were wrong. I’ll buy a tin of French baked beans with my next order to see what they are like, and if they aren’t up to much, I shall have to bite the bullet and buy a tray of real beans online, unless any of my British friends are passing a supermarket on their way here sometime.

There’s one thing about this meal, and that is that it seems to be the only food that I enjoy these days. And as it’s packed with protein and fibre, especially when I drop a handful of vegan cheese into it, it’s quite a healthy food.

So on that point, I shall clear off to bed ready for a good start tomorrow (I hope).

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sheep on the island of Soay … "well, one of us has" – ed … they are in fact a protected species, classed as “endangered” by UNESCO.
And as with most endangered species, they have to be counted every year. However, quite rarely for an endangered species, there has NEVER been a recorded tally of their numbers in the UNESCO yearbook.
One day, at a European Union meeting, I met a representative from UNESCO, and I asked him about it.
"Well, we do send people there" he said "but they don’t come back and we have to go to look for them"
"And do you find them?"
"Ohh yes, they are always there, but the task is never completed"
"Why’s that?" I ask
"Well, they only ever get as far as ‘sixteen’ or so, and then they always fall asleep."

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

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Friday 24th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

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