… where all this energy is coming from, but I know where it’s going. I’m about three quarters of the way through tomorrow’s work already.

The way things are going, I’m beginning to wish that I’d had this dialysis a long time ago. It’s quite constraining of course but if I can keep on going like this, even in the short term, it might even be worth the disruption. I only wish that it wasn’t so painful.

But there’s one thing that can be said for it, and that was that with having finished everything at a reasonable hour last night I was in bed before 23:00. And that doesn’t happen very often.

It wasn’t long before I was away with the fairies either, although I did refrain from engaging in anything on which the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine might comment.

Asleep I stayed too for quite some considerable time, which was just as well given the events of the previous night. I’ve no idea what time it was that I awoke briefly, but I was soon back to sleep again.

It was a struggle to raise myself from the bed this morning when the alarm went off and I almost missed the second alarm. That would have been a cardinal sin, right enough.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was working on a car last night, a Ford Cortina MkI, changing the front wheel bearings. It was interesting to say the least watching me try to stand up after lying on the floor. I spent hours but I couldn’t set the adjustment of the wheel bearings correctly. In the end I set them to “something like” and gave up. While I was repairing it I was thinking “who’s going to fix Nerina’s car after I’ve died?” and “if the head gasket blows on this I’d have to go round to see my father but he’s really not likely to be interested – maybe after supper I think but I’m on the way of dying and I have to think about things like this”. While I was working there there was this young Chinese girl looking at me from out of a window. I thought to myself that sometimes it’s very nice to have an audience and maybe she does this kind of thing, watching people all the time – she might know (…fell asleep here …)

Back in the past I had a couple of Cortina Mk Is. The first one was great. Back in 1973 I was working for an insurance company and this car was a write-off. It had been hit in the front offside and was judged to be beyond economical repair. It was in our car park on its way to the scrapyard and owed the company £12:50. Nevertheless it was taxed and MoT’d for seven months so I bought it, patched it up with body-filler, stuck a headlight in the mess and ran it. When the MoT ran out and it wouldn’t pass the next, I loaded a friend and her baby into the car and drove it to the scrapyard to weigh it in. The owner looked at me, looked at the girl, looked at the baby and said “I’m terribly sorry son. I can’t give you any more than £15:00 for this”.

As for having my father fix my car, the highlight of my life was my father once asking me if I’d fix his because he couldn’t manage to do it. I treasured that moment for years.

Later on I found a job working in an Old People’s Home thanks to an agency. I had to start at 08:00 so I set out at 07:40 and parked where I thought this Home was. It turned out to be a big, expensive hotel so I roamed around for a couple of minutes and couldn’t find anything. Somehow I ended up in the basement and asked one of the personnel there behind the desk. He took me to the fire door, opened it and pointed to a building and said “it’s that one” so I set out to walk. It was much further than I anticipated. When I reached the building I went in. The ground floor was like a storage area. There was a couple of people wandering around so I asked them. They said that the Old People’s Home is further up. I looked around but there was no lift so I thought “how do these old people leave if they want to go for a walk or go out in a wheelchair?”. I walked up two flights of stairs – I was walking quite easily. I finally found the Old Peoples Home and the reception desk where they were very pleased to see me, saying “oh good, you’re here at last”. I thought about whether I should recount my adventures to them but I decided against it.

As if I’m ever likely to be working in an Old Person’s Home. But strangely enough, even though I can’t remember anything about the dream itself, I can still see the buildings. The hotel was a huge chalet-roofed place on the type in which I’ve stayed at Lech in Austria. Lech of course was a small town in Austria through which we drove on our honeymoon on our way to see Nerina’s relatives in Milan. It was such a beautiful town that we vowed to go back there again. I don’t know if Nerina ever made it back but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been back there ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS and of course, it is the favourite town in Europe OF STRAWBERRY MOOSE where he runs A TAXI SERVICE advertising his favourite hobby.

Isabelle the nurse came along and took a blood sample from me. Hit the vein straight away, totally painless and no drama either. She has “the touch”, quite unlike her colleague, so it’s no surprise that she gets to take all of the samples. Everyone waits until its her turn on the rota before they ask for their blood samples to be taken.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY BOOK. Today we’re wandering around Aldborough in North Yorkshire and looking at the remains of the Roman town of Isurium. What’s interesting is that back in the 1850s there wasn’t a railway station anywhere near the town so he and his friends thought absolutely nothing of alighting from the train at the nearest railway station and walking several miles to the town and then back again later. These people were obviously made of sterner stuff than people today.

It’s also interesting that, in the days before preservation and museums, many of the householders who had uncovered mosaic floors in their gardens were quite happily exhibiting them, “price sixpence” but, as he says, "as all these inscriptions have followed each other within a few paces , we shall become alarmed at the expensive character which a visit to it is likely soon to assume , if an additional sixpence is to be levied on every fragment of building that turns up . The remains indicated by these inscriptions are so far , however, of sufficient interest to repay the visitor for the small sum demanded for showing them ."

Back in here I attacked the outstanding notes for the radio programme that I was preparing yesterday and now these are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That meant a stop for lunch – a slice of flapjack and some fruit. The supplies of fruit are running low so tomorrow I’ll have to think about preparing a supermarket order for Friday afternoon

This afternoon, having completed the day’s work already, I was planning on relaxing but instead I had a fit of enthusiasm again and carried on working.

Sometime next year, the International Day of Refugees falls on a day that my programme will be broadcast, and you’d be surprised just how many refugees there are in rock music

Edgar Froese and Johannes Krauledat fled from the Russians in Tilsit in the same column of refugees as my friend Lorna’s mother. Holger Czukay was expelled from Danzig, the parents of Gary Weinrib and Chaim Witz were survivors of Auschwitz and Belsen, Cait O’Riordan fled from Nigeria, and that’s just a handful of names.

It seems to me that a programme of music recorded by refugees would be a good idea for a programme. So accordingly I’ve been tracking down music recorded by refugees or their offspring and I’m now at the stage where I’m pairing it off and segueing it

That was tomorrow’s task but I’ll finish it off and start to write the notes. If I can finish early on Friday I’ll have a couple of hours off which will be nice.

During the proceedings my cleaner arrived and she helped me have a shower. I had a good idea too – if one wooden box on the chair made things easier, two boxes would make it easier still. And so it was too. I could swing into the bath with a lot fewer problems.

You have no idea just how wonderful it is to be under a shower after all this time. I really do feel so much better and so much happier with having had a good soak. Just wait until I’m downstairs and I have my walk-in shower

There was an interruption for the hot chocolate and coconut cake of course, after which I made a batch of dough for the garlic naan.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry of course, with rice, veg and a naan bread, delicious as usual. In fact it was one of the best that I’ve mad. The naan was cooked to perfection, for once in my life. The rest of the dough is rolled up into individual balls and stuck in the freezer for the future.

So now I’m off to bed for some beauty sleep before my trip to the Dialysis Centre tomorrow

But the story of the admission fees reminds me of the time that the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station were built. There was an official inspection followed by a guided tour for the public.
The leaflet that was prepared to announce the showing proudly advertise the price "two shillings and sixpence – or two shillings and sevenpence if you want to see all of it"