Tag Archives: alastair sim

Thursday 7th May 2026 – IT SEEMS TO ME …

… that no-one in the hierarchy at dialysis has the least idea of what is going on there. The nurses and assistants are all adorable and I’d bring them all home to my apartment afterwards if I could, but as for the rest …

On Monday I pointed out that, having gone in there with just a few hundred grammes to lose, they suddenly went into a huge panic, wound the machine up to three thousand five hundred, and the time to four hours.

Today, having carefully managed my intake, it was once more just a couple of hundred grammes. And then they came swarming into the room to wind it up to two thousand. An hour and a half later, they wound it back down to eighteen hundred. So what’s going on? And why all the panic?

Anyway, that was today.

Last night, I mentioned my rather strange night and the fact that I was in bed round about 20:00 or so. Out like a light straight away, there I lay until shortly after 03:00. And to my surprise, I was lying on my back and not coughing at all.
At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because I had another one of these dramatic upright awakenings that I sometimes have, and it was 05:11.

Now here’s something that will surprise you. I left the bed and went to stroll the parapet and then came back in here, sat down at the computer, and started work. I must have been feeling better.

The first thing that I did was to start to write the notes from yesterday, but I hadn’t quite finished when the alarm went off so I abandoned them for now while I went into the bathroom.

After my trip into the kitchen for my medication and mouthful of grapefruit juice, I came back in here to carry on with the notes.

When they were done and online, I turned my attention to the dictaphone notes to find out what had happened during the night.

There was a very long and complicated dream about Steve Tyler and his daughter Liv and I don’t know if I can remember all of it. He was taking part in some kind of event in the USA and there was a parallel event in the UK at the same time. While he was searching the web, he came across a blog written by a girl of about fourteen who was at the UK event, so he began to comment on her entries about the difference between what was happening there and what was happening in the UK. This correspondence went on for hours and days. And then there was something to do with his daughter Liv. She was only something like four or five. He had to go out but couldn’t find a babysitter but there was some kind of place where you could take children where they could sleep overnight. There would probably be twenty or thirty kids in this place with four or five monitors. The kids would be left there to sleep so he took her there. As Liv grew up, she was constantly being warned about her father’s bad habits, substance abuse, etc., and to be very careful about what she took that he offered her. At some point, she decided that she would leave home and go to New York, so she was on a train waiting to depart. She had some kind of irrational fear of losing her money so she was checking it every minute or two to make sure that she had it.

Steve Tyler’s problems are legendary, unfortunately, and the story of his relationship with his daughter got off to a very bad start and ended in a whole web of confusion. The story of a girl of fourteen plays some kind of role in this, but that’s another story for which the World is not yet ready to hear. Being a rock star in the late 1960s and 1970s was a minefield.

I was staying in someone’s house in a commune-type of place. It was early morning and I’d been up and about repairing the lawnmower and one or two other things, including some kind of gauge with a backlight. The woman in charge of this commune place came out and began to roar at me about not having begun to tidy up the garden and weed it. I said to her “you know, all you need to say is ‘Eric, could you weed the garden?'”. She stormed off in a foul mood saying “I shall expect a full apology”. I took the lawnmower back and found that I’d lost half of this gauge. One or two people searched and found one of the bits but not the other, so I thought “I’d look for that later”. Then I had to go to the bathroom but I didn’t feel like going into the house to the bathroom so I went out and walked down the main street. Eventually, I came to the covered market so I went in there. There was a guy sitting there behind a stall so I asked him if he knew if there was a public convenience in the building. He replied “yes”, but that wasn’t the answer that I wanted. Two young boys with him began to smile and joke so I glared at them and they cowered away. He still wouldn’t tell me so I walked away. Eventually, I found what I was looking for but they were so small and tight that it was a struggle to fit in. It had a strange kind of glass there that smoked on the outside when there was someone inside but the person inside could quite happily see what was happening outside. It was very, very strange and weird.

Back in the mid-seventies, I lived in a commune for a while. A very short while. I met some of the most selfish people I have ever met and in the end, I preferred the companionship of the spider in my van.

The nurse turned up as usual and didn’t seem to be all that interested in my day and night yesterday, so we didn’t say much.

After he left, I made breakfast and finished off THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON by the Kent Archaeological Service. The remaining pages didn’t have much to say for themselves.

Back in here, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. All of the music has now been traced, reformatted, remixed and re-edited and it has all been paired and segued. Tomorrow, I’ll write the notes for it.

My cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was ten minutes early arriving but we had someone to drop off at Sartilly. Nevertheless, I was early arriving at dialysis, but even so, I had to wait for over an hour to be connected.

And just my luck – it was the nurse from the other day but when she saw that it was me, she made an excuse and left me to her colleague.

Then we had all of the shenanigans and I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I was trying to write out a shopping list but all of the traffic coming to my bed disrupted that. Everyone came to see me, even the dietician who now wants to put me on an intravenous drip. No chance of that.

By the end of the afternoon, I was half-expecting the trick cyclist to put in an appearance.

Late again as usual leaving, my driver was waiting so we were home quite quickly, but still horribly late.

My faithful cleaner helped me, and after she left, I came in here to write up my notes.

Now that they are done, there are just a few little things left to do and then I’ll be off to bed. I had a really good start to the day but it all seems to have gone downhill subsequently. So here’s hoping for further improvement tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Liv Tyler counting her money … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the film INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY when Alastair Sim, hanging upside down over a roof edge, loses all of the money in his pocket.
"Oh no!" he replied. "I’ve lost two and sevenpence ha’penny!"

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Saturday 4th October 2025 – WHAT A DREADFUL …

… twenty-four hours this has been.

Round about 02:30 this morning, the wind started to blow up. By about 04:00, we were having gusts of over 100 kph and it’s not let up since.

And seeing as I now live at the front of the building, I’m having the lot rattling against my windows, and I’d forgotten just how noisy a howling gale can be.

It was looking quite good though earlier in the evening. I’d finished my work a good while before 23:00 and I’d climbed into bed with an air of optimism … "makes a change from a hot water bottle" – ed … hoping to have a decent sleep for once.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but it didn’t last. I awoke as the wind began to rise, and although I fell asleep again shortly afterwards, by about 04:00 I was awake and had given up all hope of going back to sleep.

Having said that, at one point I did actually go back to sleep but I was wide awake again at 06:00 and at that point, I arose from the Dead and headed off for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and if I had been able to persuade one (or more) of my favourite young ladies to put in an appearance.

I was doing something with some kind of newspaper. There had been some issues with a couple of women over something, that were not connected to the newspaper at all. I’d actually witnessed something so I was ready to make a statement before the police, but this newspaper launched a big personal attack on me, basically to say that if I were to go before the police and make some kind of statement, then they had plenty of statements that they could make about me. I wasn’t sure what they meant, and in any case, that was a wicked thing to say. However, I decided that I’d publish in my newspaper these letters that I’d received, in the headlines, and that way, I could control them without any kind of problem. But the offence concerned related to offences against a certain man. They mentioned his name but I can’t remember it now.

The centre of France was rather lawless with people with objections making up the rules as they went along. I had four litres of milk on hand at Virlet but I was told by a troop, one of Barber’s troops, to empty it all away because somehow lying unattended on a battlefield could be extremely dangerous, so they extracted this promise from me. But it made life difficult because every time I was coming to the hoarder, and the hoarding was at the top of the list, I was stopped and thoroughly searched. But my ankle right at the time who was resigned was never searched, and neither was the bass guitarist woman who actually played together in the concert drive. It seemed to be that they were just targeting me and no-one else in this.

As I mentioned the other day, sometimes I have no recollection whatever of some of my dreams, and these two certainly fit in to that category. I can’t remember anything at all about them. But did you like the archaic use of the word “before” in the first dream?

We were in Crewe last night and we were planning on setting up some kind of radio post in a motel there. So we checked the equipment that we had. We had the radio, of course, and we had a suppressor to act as an aerial and a few other things like that. Someone else brought with him another receiver so that we could boost the power, and then we set off. We turned from Gresty Road into Davenport Avenue, and there were the two new houses on the corner. There was a third one in the far corner, a small detached house, with access into the garden of one of the houses next door. I explained that this was bought by the family to house one of their daughters who had grown up. She lived there but she had communication and shared facilities with her family. We walked past one of these signboards where the American President had several of his statements and his Truth Social account, and every time you wrote something in this book on this table, one of his Truth Social things sprung up. The one that I noticed was “only half the water on the earth is due to water”. We saw some of the comments and some of them were hilarious. We were thinking that we hope that this book will be available in a thousand years time to show the people just how stupid the current times were. Then we went to set up in our hotel but for some reason, every time the radio was plugged in, it kept on screeching. Changing the amplitude of the aerial didn’t seem to help. The person with us said that he couldn’t possibly couple up his radio to this network with this noise happening. We’d have to try to think of a way to overcome it but that was going to be complicated.

When our family moved from Shavington in 1970, we settled in Davenport Avenue in a house right on the corner with Gresty Road. I know the patch of land on which the new houses were built. Furthermore, I reckon that I know the girl referred to in the dream. She and her family lived in one of the houses in Gresty Road just before you turn in to Davenport Avenue.

As for the American President and the stupid current times, I try to keep politics off these pages but someone clinically insane in charge of the most powerful country in the World, another madman trying to turn the clock back to 1940, and another group of people committing a genocide of a magnitude that the World hasn’t seen for 1400 years, all of which while the rest of the World looks hopelessly and helplessly on, I’m glad that I shan’t be around to see how it all transpires.

Finally, I’d been doing some things around this stately home for some reason or another. I’d begun to chat to the daughter of the owners. She was in my opinion a very nice girl, not the kind of girl that you would normally meet when you are dealing with the aristocracy. We began to see each other on a very informal basis. One day, I was round at their house early one morning to take her to work but there was a commotion somewhere. I rushed to see what it was, and at first I thought that it was the Lord and his son who were being attacked. However, they were sitting there quite nonchalantly, not having heard anything. Then we heard some screams coming from across the lawn. In another wing of the house, the butler or whatever was trying to defend it from some burglars. The burglars came running out, we rushed over, and there was the mess. Once we’d tidied it up, I happened to notice that there was a film playing on the video recorder, one of the INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH FILMS so I stood and watched it for a few minutes; Then I thought that I had to take this girl to work, so I tried to stop the video recorder, but I couldn’t see the “stop” button or a “pause” button so after a few minutes, I ejected the cassette and then I went upstairs. The girl was waiting for me, and she was not very happy. She said that if we had gone as soon as I had turned up, which was what she wanted to do, she would have been at work for six minutes already. I could only apologise, but I felt that it wasn’t going to be enough. But one thing that I noticed was her perfume. She had on this lovely perfume and that’s something else that I can still smell it now, this perfume.

It beats me where this one has come from too. But the Inspector Hornleigh films, the vastly underrated Gordon Harker with his sidekick, a very young Alistair Sim, are amongst my all-time favourite black-and-white films.

And the perfume was gorgeous too.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with the wind, sorted out my legs and then blew out again, so I could make breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The American Army is half-starved, unclothed, unpaid and near mutiny. But even so, the British still refuse to sally out of their camps to press home an advantage. It’s as if they have given up all hope and are waiting for a miracle. It makes very depressing reading.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is however also hilarious. He has a complete and utter failure to recognise irony when he sees it. He tells us that General Greene detached General Morgan to, inter alia "collect provisions and forage, form magazines, prevent plundering, etc."

Maybe someone ought to explain to Colonel Carrington that the difference between "collect(ing) provisions and forage" and "plundering" is “who is doing it?”. When an army is plundering, it’s called "collecting provisions" but when a starving private soldier is collecting provisions, it’s called "plundering."

Back in here, I carried on with my notes for this radio programme and it’s now all finished, ready for dictating if I’m up early tomorrow. But I probably won’t be. I’m really exhausted after today and the bad night last night.

My faithful cleaner was late to come and apply the anaesthetic, and shortly after she left, there was a knock at the window. I thought that it was the taxi coming early but it was in fact the tenant of one of the holiday homes in the building who had locked himself out. I could have done without that.

The taxi was late again and in the howling gale, it took me ten minutes to walk to the car, hanging on grimly to my crutches and the driver. It was no fun at all.

There was someone else to pick up too, out in the back of beyond, so all in all we were horribly late arriving.

They put me in a different room today, but I had no peace. The low blood pressure alarm went off every half-hour and the nurses came a-running, poor things. Not that it did any good though.

For a change, I was reading about the battlefield clearances ofter World War I, the hunt for bodies and the consolidation of smaller cemeteries into larger ones. It made some quite gruesome reading and I’ll probably be having nightmares about it in the very near future.

Bodies are still being discovered in Flanders Field, on the Somme and elsewhere even today. As recently as eighteen years ago, a mass grave was discovered with about two hundred and fifty Australian soldiers in it.

As seems to be the case these days, I was left to be the last to be unplugged. Consequently, I was once more horribly late returning home.

My faithful cleaner and the driver had to help me to the apartment, in view of the wind, and I was glad to be back inside, even if it is cold right now.

Tea was a baked potato with a burger on a bun, and once more, even though I cooked a smaller portion, I left food on my plate. This is not very much fun at all. There’s definitely something wrong somewhere.

But that’s to worry about tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed. Sunday is a lie-in until 08:00 of course, but we’ll have to wait and see. If this wind keeps up, it will be most unlikely.

And seeing as we have been talking about the archaic use of the word "before" … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of once upon a time when I uttered an expletive in front of some rather posh lady.
A short while later, her husband came to see me. "how dare you swear before my wife?"
"I’m terribly sorry" I replied. "I had no idea that she wanted to go first."

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Friday 16th June 2023 – I’VE BEEN DOWN …

… in town this morning.

Not that I walked, though. I think that I’ve had that for good.

Instead I hopped on the bus with a neighbour who just happened to be waiting.

The bus took me down to the port and I staggered off to the Carrefour where I bought some mushrooms and peppers as well as a bit of bread to make some cheese on toast.

And then back to the bus stop where I met my neighbour who had done her shopping elsewhere, and we came back together on the bus.

It was actually quite nice out there today as well. It was the first time for ages that I’ve felt really warm. There wasn’t much wind about either. In fact it would have been the kind of day where I would normally have gone for a nice long walk. However …

Anyway, during the night I went for a few long walks. Despite my nice, new, clean and fresh bed I don’t think that I spent much time in it.

I was in North America again last night in a fishing community preparing a lot of things ready to go somewhere the following day. By 16:00 I’d finished. I said to the people at the counter that I’d finished. If they would send someone into town to pick up some fishing tackle for me I’d be grateful. They weren’t paying a great deal of attention so I didn’t really say much. Next morning I came in and asked for my stuff. They replied that they didn’t have it. I sighed and said that it was important and I’d told them yesterday etc. They were all extremely apologetic. Then the little girl who hung around there, whether she was someone’s daughter or not I don’t know, skipped into the back and came out with a packet that she handed to me with a big smile on her face. Everyone else began to laugh. I told the girl that she ought to have a good spanking and they all laughed at that. And I had my things

After that I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now with having to mess around with the batteries and dictaphone at some crazy hour of the night. Everything has just slid out of my head but there was something about a woman with a yellow handbag thing on the quay, a handbag having just been on the market. There she was with an enormous one on her shoulder obviously well in advance of everything else around here

We were then back on the subject of these old cars again. I had old cars scattered around here and there over the town. I came to one place where there were 3 or 4 of mine. The first thing that I noticed was that a Volkswagen Beetle that I had there had gone since the last time I was here. The MkII s-type Jag was still there although one of its rear wings was missing. I went round and found the person for whom I was looking, sitting on the terrace outside the building. They gave me the key to go inside. They told me that I needed to go in through the second door but to be careful of the animals and the cow in there that wants to come out. We talked about the cars and what we were going to do, not that I had any real plans but I just said anything. he said that the Jag was looking very sorry. I said “yes, we’ll have to bring it back to my place, take the engine out”. He wanted to know how we were going to do it because for some unknown reason the car wouldn’t tick over. It was going to be complicated to move it and take out the engine. I didn’t really have a clue how I would make it work.

Finally on the way out of Sandbach they’d built this huge new petrol station. It wasn’t open yet but things were progressing rapidly. There were scores of people around there. I knew a lot of them too from Crewe. It seemed that they’d recruited the labour force now and were preparing to open. I went over there, said hello to a few people whom I knew and asked if they could introduce me to the boss. They thought that I was touting for work, which I was. Eventually after much hunting around I found the boss. I explained about my taxis and how we’d be available if ever they needed any here for running the staff around or anything like that. She thought that I only had some plates for working in Crewe but I told her that I had some plates for working in Sandbach which quite surprised her. She said that she’d bear it in mind if anyone ever needed anything

When the alarm went off I was actually already up and about again. I’d awoken with a start at about 06:50 and I’ve no idea why. However it did take me quite a while to gather my wits this morning, not that I have many wits left to gather these days but here we are.

In fact I almost missed the bus into town and had to dash. Well, relatively speaking.

Back here I made my cheese on toast and some strong coffee but regrettably I crashed out and awoke to a mug of cold coffee. That’s what I call “embarrassing”.

This afternoon I’ve been pressing on with my Canada 2017 trip and I’m just leaving the cemetery at Paradise River. I had hoped to have been in Cartwright by now but trying to match up the names on the headstones with the poor handwritten entries in the Censuses is complicated

As well as the Census records I’ve been trawling through George Cartwright’s diary. The influenza epidemic that ravaged the Labrador coast in 1918 was devastating, but Cartwright mentions an outbreak of influenza that occurred in 1778 and an occurrence of smallpox a couple of years earlier that played havoc with the native population

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … it’s no surprise to anyone that Canada took such strict measures about the Covid rules and regulations when you see what happened in the past in these isolated communities where even today there’s no medical service.

Something else I’ve come across is some kind of diary where people who lived around Sandwich Bay have added little pen-pictures of their lives going back 100 years to the period of the 3 Fs – Fishing, Furs and Forestry that were the mainstay of life on the Labrador coast.

All that has changed dramatically today. Even as late as 1961 there were as many as 161 people living in Paradise River. At the Census in 2021 there were 5.

When I visited the place in 2017 there were 10 inhabitants, and I think that every one of them turned out to watch me drive to the quayside.

Tea tonight was potatoes baked in the air fryer with a salad and some of those vegan nuggets. It was absolutely delicious.

But we’ve hit a tragedy. I finished the very last of my HARRY POTTER COLLECTION of films. That’s a shame because I really enjoyed them. But like most films of that genre, they really only scratched the surface of what could have been something really powerful.

What I’ll probably do for my next teatime film sessions will be the SAINT TRINIANS films. These are of course a completely different kettle of fish.

But they do include some of the funniest lines ever recorded in British traditional comedy, all delivered by Alastair Sim of course
“when girls usually leave school, they find that they are not ready for the big wild world. When our girls leave this school, it’s usually the big wild world that is not ready for them”
and when one of the girls burnt down the school Sim said with exasperation
“there’s far too much arson around in tis school”

They don’t make films like that any more in the modern PC World where everyone is so easily offended and there’s no humour around any more. I’m just not cut out to live in this modern world, I’ll tell you that.

However, that’s tomorrow. I’m going shopping and I’m debating going to Noz after my little accident a fortnight ago. I suppose I really ought to make an effort but it’s probably a lack of confidence after my fall. I was like this after my fall on the boat coming back from Jersey, I seem to recall.

But there’s bound to be a change in my state of health. There’s plenty of room for things to be worse.

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Thursday 25th February 2016 – IN WHICH OUR HERO FINALLY GETS THE GIRL

And we aren’t talking about the Girl from Worleston either, but someone else completely.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a girl who has featured a few times in my nocturnal rambles. She and I had something of a close encounter (but nothing like as close as I would have liked it to have been) over a period of a couple of years a good while back and ever since then she’s been described as “The One That Got Away”.

But she didn’t get away last night.

I was back in Nantwich, at the top end of Welsh Row right by King’s Lane, which was the back entry into our school. Up Welsh Row, hand in hand with a boy of her acquaintance, came the young lady concerned. They were both wearing the school uniform of my old school (which is surprising because the girl didn’t go there, and I don’t have a clue who the boy was). When they reached where I was standing, we started to have quite a chat, a laugh and a joke. I was teasing them both, particularly this girl, because something had happened in her past that related to a pile of younger children. I was therefore talking about her “15 children”, implying that she was their mother (which would of course have been absolutely impossible) and quite naturally, the subject of her “16th child” drifted into the conversation (well, it’s quite natural in any kind of conversation in which I’m involved). At first, she was not willing to participate in all of this teasing but as the conversation wore on she became more relaxed and joined in the fun. From here, we all ended up heading back into town. As we set off, the boy and girl were still hand-in-hand but by the time that we had crossed the River Weaver Bridge and up towards the Swine Market, the situation between the girl and Yours Truly had become such that the boy had disappeared and it was me walking hand-in-hand with her. We turned into Beam Street towards the bus station and the further down that we walked, the more evident it had become that we were now a “couple”. Turning into Market Street, we passed in front of the Civic Hall and who should come out of there but Mrs Hayes, the school secretary (although of course, it wasn’t her at all) and she gave us a really long, cold, withering stare. And so we continued onwards, down and round the corner into Churchyardside, passing all kinds of other people who knew us and who were noticing what was going on between us. There were crowds and crowds of people milling around outside the church – apparently there was some kind of service going on there and such was the size of the attendance that people had to assemble in the shops opposite the square and were being sent over to the church on batches of 100. By time we realised what was going on, we thought “well, sod it! Enough people have already seen us together so that the word of our new relationship will have already spread like wildfire around the school no matter what we were to do from here on” and so we walked off hand-in-hand into the sunse … errr … shop across the square. All very nice and homely, it was.

But last night, I managed to watch the first of the “Inspector Hornleigh” films. And I must be mistaken when I say that it’s never been broadcast on British television because, sure enough, every 17 minutes or so we have the “revolving checkerboard” in the top right-hand corner that was put in by ITV to indicate that the commercial break would be along in 15 seconds and sure enough, you can tell from watching the film closely that the commercial breaks have been edited out. The quality too is very suggestive of VHS video, so it looks as if it’s been downloaded fom ITV onto a good-quality video recorder and then edited.

The film itself, the first-ever collaboration between Harker and Sim, doesn’t have the rapport that developed between them in the later films and Harker himself hasn’t developed the quick repartee and master of disguise that became his trademark in the later films. But there were certainly some priceless moments in the film –
Chancellor of the Exchequer – “members of the public shouldn’t go around robbing the Chancellor of the Exchequer with impunity like this!”
Harker – “quite right. It’s usually the other way around!”.

What with one thing and another, I had a really good night last night and you have absolutely no idea just how hard it was to pull myself out of my stinking pit this morning. I was well-away in the land of the fairies.

And after breakfast I was once more distracted because the site of the 3D program that I use was having a sale of items at $0:80 a throw so I spent the morning having a really good trawl through it. After all, I haven’t bought myself a birthday present yet.

This afternoon, in a totally new departure from my current existence, I went out and about. To St Gervais in fact. Liz’s new spectacles had arrived but a couple of things about them needed to be sorted out so I had to go with Terry as interpreter. And it was snowing there too. I know that it’s forecast for tonight here, and al of the way through to next Thursday too, but St Gervais, which is 100 metres higher up, is starting early.

This afternoon, I pushed on with the dictaphone notes for Canada 2014. I’ve made a considerable amount of progress too – so much so that I’m almost back to the point where I entered the USA from Canada in early September. If I can keep this up at this rate, I’ll be finished within a week and won’t I be happy?

I’ve made myself a pizza tonight and there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow. These big pizza sheets that Liz prefers to the round ones that I like do have their advantages.

Anyway, I’ve done enough for today. I’m going to have yet another early night and watch the second Inspector Hornleigh film.

And then, I wonder where I’ll end up tonight. And more interestingly, who will be coming with me?

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Wednesday 24th February 2016 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Yes, I’m not going to tell you how old I am but when we lit the candles on my gorgeous vegan chocolate birthday cake, there was an avalanche on the ski slopes at Super-Besse and when I went to blow them out later, I was driven back by the heat.

We had vegan meatballs and tomato sauce with spaghetti as well for a birthday tea and now I’m well-and-truly stuffed. And to make things even better, the nurse forgot to come this morning and give me my injection. What more can any man desire?

I haven’t bought myself a present because firstly, I wasn’t sure that I was still going to be here (either here at Liz and Terry’s, or anywhere else for that matter) and as you all know, I’m not all here anyway. Secondly, I do have my eye on something but whether I’ll now be able to have the use out of it is anyone’s guess.

But I know that I am going to be in for a good time tonight because the birthday present that I do have lined up is something well worth having. I’m a big fan of the 1930s actor Gordon Harker, as regular readers of this rubbish may have realised. Amongst his output were three films in which he starred as Inspector Hornleigh with Alastair Sim as his sidekick, Sergeant Bingham. One of them, Inspector Hornleigh Goes To It, has been discovered and was broadcast, with 20 minutes of it missing, on BBC television years agobut since then it’s been restored in its entirety and is available from archive.org. Of course, I’ve long-since downloaded it.

As for the other two films, “Inspector Hornleigh” and “Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday”, the latter was likewise rediscovered and broadcast on BBC Television but had not only a 20-minute missing section but a 1O-minute piece where the soundtrack was lost. Since then, it has disappeared. The former film has never been aired on TV as far as I can tell, and I’ve always considered it to be lost.

However, there’s a new film archive site that’s sprung up, and would you believe, it’s actually offering those two films. It goes without saying that I’ve downloaded them, and I’ll be watching them in bed tonight as my birthday treat.

I didn’t contact the Medical Insurance people today because other things cropped up. We had another visit so we needed to tidy up, and the visitors stayed until early evening. You can’t do much when you have company. I’ll have to do this on Friday now. But I have cracked on with my dictaphone notes and seem to be making quite good progress.

I wasn’t making much progress during the night however. Anything but, in fact. I started out in an office trying to work out the business affairs of a couple of stockbrokers but I couldn’t receive a reply from them to a simple enquiry. One of these stockbrokers was a magistrate and what I wanted to know was how many penalty points a person received for being convicted for shoplifting (yes, this makes sense, doesn’t it?). I couldn’t obtain a reply to my phone calls or my letters – then suddenly a big illuminated sign went up in our office to announce that the firm of stockbrokers concerned had undergone a heavy internal re-organisation and were far too busy training new stockbrokers than to spend their time helping businesses like us perform our tasks (and the message was delivered in rather a patronising, insulting tone). We were told to contact them after 15th January (it was September at this moment, I recall). This meant that I needed to find someone else who was a magistrate and so I asked around the office. In the end, some of my colleagues gave me a name which was a Mr Hyde-White (Wilfred?) so I had to search the building in order to find him. Everyone with whom I spoke replied that it was in fact Mrs Hyde-White who worked here but even then, no-one could direct me to her office and I seemed to be going around in circles. The simple answer, of looking on the internet or even trying to find the records of the relevant Court case, never ever occurred to me;
But clearly my medical situation is preying on my mind because one of my nocturnal rambles last night was to go off and seek a second opinion about my medical condition. This involved taking the train to a town called “Port” which was somewhere along the railway line between Lyon and Marseille. The train that we needed was one of these old-type of 1960s long-distance expresses (not the TGV) and so we set off for the station, which was a huge station, just like the one at Crewe but many times bigger. We arrived there hours early for our train which was at 11:30, so we settled down to sleep on the benches on the platform – me, my brother (whatever is he doing here again?) and a girl whom I don’t recognise. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright – and it was 11:25 and the train was just pulling into the station. But here I was, half-undressed, I couldn’t find my socks (there was a pair of blue ones but I was sure that they weren’t mine but I tried to put them on anyway) or my jumper, my possessions were strewn about just about everywhere. My two companions were in the same state but they were in no kind of hurry to prepare themselves to board the train – there was only me rushing to get ready – I was trying to encourage one of them to board the train so that we could simply throw our gear on board and leap on straight away afterwards. But bang on 11:30 the train pulled out (this is of course any other country in the world rather than the UK) and we were stranded, totally unprepared. I was now panicking that I’d missed my appointment for wherever I had to go. The woman with whom I was travelling just didn’t seem to have any sense of urgency whatever. My brother and I wandered off to try to find some left-luggage lockers to dump all our superfluous stuff. I had decided that there would be just me and the clothes that I stood up in. He then decided that he would like to have the keys as he was going to wander off and make some other kind of arrangements for something else. “Don’t worry!” he said, “I’ll be back in a day or two”. I replied that I wanted the keys to do this NOW and I want you back in five minutes. This of course led to yet another interminable argument. Afterwards, I ended up back with this woman who was still totally nonchalant about all of this. She said that she couldn’t understand all of the fuss. “We’re taking the train to Porto, aren’t we?”. I replied that we weren’t at all. It was to PORT that we should be going. She couldn’t believe it, but there it was, written on the tickets. She wandered off to find a ticket inspector to see if there would be another train within the next 5 minutes that would take us to our destination in time for my appointment. But we STILL weren’t ready, with our possessions strewn about the place, I still didn’t have any socks on and all of this kind of thing. It was totally absurd, it was.
I can’t remember where I was after that but it was nowhere that I recognised. We (whoever we were) were driving along a road through a town or city that may well have been mainland European (we were certainly driving on the right) alongside a railway line and then up a slip road into the main traffic. There was a song playing, one about “riding in a taxi” and we were changing the words to sing “riding in my A60” which is strange to say the least because much as I like A60s, the cars with which I will always be associated when it comes to talking about taxis will of course be Cortinas. But as we merged into the traffic up ahead, we noticed in front of us a Morris Marina which was clearly a taxi because it was black on the lower part and up to the high waistline on the sides, with white upper body and roof and boot lid.But this was a bizarre vehicle to be using as a taxi in mainland Europe.

But this is twice just recently that I’ve been having issues about trains. This is bizarre. I wonder what it’s all about.

But I can worry about this later because I’m now off to bed to watch my films. I reckon that I’ve earned it.

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Sunday 22nd April 2012 – It was another day today …

… when I hardly went out at all. However, after the traditional Sunday lie-in (until all of 09:40) and breakfast I started packing. And that’s it – all done. All I need to do now is to round up the rest of the electrical equipment I shall be taking, and I wish that I knew where the spare camera battery is.

All of the tickets are printed off too, and they are safely installed in their wallet in the pocket of the suitcase. And Strawberry Moose has tried out the suitcase and he’s quite comfortable in there too.

I’ve cut my hair as well and so I’m ready to go. All I need to do tomorrow is the 9 things that are on this list that I have prepared. Tuesday morning I’m recording radio programmes and then making sandwiches, locking up the place and I’ll be off.

In other exciting news, I’ve been searching for years for a copy of the Inspector Hornleigh films from the late 1930s. These films, starring Gordon Harker and Alastair Sim, are real and proper classics. And just by chance tonight I’ve tracked them down – not only free to view but free to download – at The Internet Archive.  

There are thousands of films there and I’m really disappointed that I didn’t discover this site earlier. As it is, I’ve downloaded half a dozen or so films and I’ll download some more as I get the chance. It will be nice when I’m out in the wilderness somewhere at the side of the road to relax with a classic black-and-white film and a can of spruce beer.

And what has made my day about this is that I noticed the internet speed. Two or three years ago I was struggling with 18 kbs. I’m downloading these films at an average of about 250 kbs. Not as fast as you might be having but it’s comparative luxury for me. 

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