Tag Archives: allergy

Friday 12th December 2025 – WELL, THAT WAS …

… a waste of my afternoon. As if I don’t already have enough to do without being sent on fools’ errands halfway across Normandy.

At least, there was an upside to it all, so I can take some consolation from that. My favourite taxi driver, the chatty girl with a houseful of cats, was assigned to take me so I had the undisputed and undivided pleasure of her company. But even so …

It was bad enough last night, and that didn’t contribute much to my goodwill. I was en route to finish my notes quite early (for once) when I fell asleep … "yet again" – ed … on my chair in here. As a result, it was much closer to 23:30 than it should have been when I finally crawled into bed.

Mind you, I was asleep quite quickly and there I lay, without moving (as far as I know) until … errr … 06:03 this morning when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I lay around in bed vegetating for a while and then with a desperate effort, hauled myself out of bed.

When the alarm went off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor so that counts as an early start. Nevertheless, it wasn’t such an early start by the time that I finally made it into the bathroom

In the kitchen afterwards, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent, a former girlfriend of mine and one of his friends. We’d been out somewhere wandering around and had come across a motorcycle shop. There were lots of motorcycles in there of all ages and all sizes. We were looking around them, and there was a 350cc two-stroke twin there of some description and several smaller bikes. I was beginning to think that maybe I could buy myself a motorbike, but the more I sat and the more I thought about it, it turned out to be lightweight motorcycles that were the ones. I didn’t think that I had the strength these days to have a big one. I was thinking that I started off with a 50cc motorbike and this is probably how I’m going to finish. It was all very depressing. When we came out, we climbed into my van and set off down the motorway. I wasn’t driving for some reason. We were driving along when someone overtook us on the inside. It was at that point that the driver pulled onto the hard shoulder and reversed. It turned out that there was a large van on the side of the road by an emergency telephone, with a couple of people by it. One of them was wearing a bright yellow fleece. My friend said something like “we saw this bright yellow fleece and wondered who it was”. Of course, it wasn’t me because I was in the van with them. It turned out that the radiator had burst on this van and there was water everywhere all over the road. These people with the van were arguing about it. They had a small child with them, and that small child was looking very sunburnt. Someone said something about it, but the child’s mother obviously thought that it was OK. My friend who had said something about it carried on, but I told him that he had no room to talk because he was quite sunburnt too. In the end, we left them to wait for a breakdown truck and climbed into the van. We began to talk about motorbikes, and he said that I should be moving that 350 from his garage sometime. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but then it suddenly hit me that it was my Honda 125, the Benly. I replied “yes, I’ll have to think about it”. We carried on driving until we came near his house. I was thinking that I had hardly spoken to my girlfriend, and I would like the opportunity to chat to her and hang out with her, and when we drop off my friend and his friend, I could have a chat to this girl and try to arrange some kind of appointment to have some kind of time with her. Instead, they pulled up at the kerb not too far away from my friend’s house, and said “well, we’ll leave you here, Eric, and see you again some time”. They made it quite clear that I had to climb out of the van. I climbed out of the van and they drove away, and that was even more depressing and disappointing. I set off to walk home, but for some reason, there was a woman hitchhiking at the side of the road and a Royal Mail van pulled up and offered her a lift. But I was still there being terribly depressed and disappointed about everything that had gone on. Nothing had gone right, nothing had gone the way that I had wanted it to go and I was just really depressed about it all.

Phew! That was some marathon last night! But it’s usually the case that in certain circumstances I was often sidetracked out of the way by more than just one person. So much so at one time that it became something of a habit.

Anyway, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I do have a couple of bright yellow fleeces that I keep for special occasions. I haven’t worn them for quite a while, but they are here. And my first motorbike was indeed a 50cc motorbike, a Suzuki M12. However, it was something of a disaster because it kept on stretching the gearbox return spring. I was always replacing it until in the end I lost interest. I should have saved my money and bought something more interesting, like an old C11 or C12 BSA 250. It would have been just as powerful as the Suzuki and probably a lot more reliable.

There is also the Honda Benly, but I mentioned that the other day. The rest of the dream is unclear, but the disappointment and the depression certainly weren’t, probably even more so in that Zero never put in an appearance last night.

Isabelle the Nurse put in her usual appearance. We discussed my ‘flu vaccination. I told her that the doctors had agreed that I could have it, so she’s programmed it in for tomorrow morning. Still no news on the Covid injection though.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’ve finally arrived in Devon but the search for Roman remains has proved to be “inconclusive”. He’s made several assumptions about different likely sites for Roman camps and seaports, but not one has been borne out by modern research. We’re now heading back up another Roman road towards Birmingham but the chances of finding a site on an aerial map are “remote”, due to the massive urban sprawl in the West Midlands.

Back here, I had my shopping order to send off. Not having ordered anything for five weeks, it’s the most expensive order that I have ever made, but I’ll now be stocked up until the New Year, which is good news. I reckon that I’ll have everything that I’ll need in the way of food and I can keep out of mischief.

There was then another footfest. I’d forgotten that Stranraer had been playing in the League Cup on Tuesday night and I stumbled by accident this morning across a recording of the match.

Whatever Stranraer’s manager has put in the team’s half-time cuppa, I wish that he would send some to me. If we were to turn the clock back a couple of months, Stranraer were languishing at the foot of the table and couldn’t even buy a goal. But in their last three matches, they have scored eleven. From the last five league games, they have earned eleven out of fifteen points and advanced in two cup competitions as well.

So having beaten second-placed Spartans 4-0 in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, on Tuesday they were away in the League Cup to league leaders East Kilbride. And having twice lost easily to East Kilbride earlier in the season, on Tuesday night they swept them aside quite comfortably to win 4-1 away. I wish I knew what was going on there and I hope that they can keep it up.

Once the football was over, I began to write the notes for the next radio programme but, as usual, I was sidetracked. We had the disgusting drink break, of course, and then my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff, followed shortly afterwards by the taxi driver.

When I was a baby, I was hospitalised for several months because of some kind of infection, and ever since then, I have always been told that I have an allergy to penicillin. At the dialysis centre, they weren’t convinced. They believe that many babies show signs of an allergy to penicillin, but it’s some kind of infantile thing that passes as kids grow older, and so they had arranged an appointment for me at this allergy specialist in Avranches.

His clinic was in some kind of smelly apartment building and access was extremely difficult. I had to cross a main road, climb up a step and then wander around in a labyrinth before I found his clinic, which was on the first floor (it’s a good job that there was a lift).

When he finally saw me, he put three different drops of solutions on my arm and pierced the skin. After a couple of minutes, one of them began to burn like Hades and went bright red.

He immediately wrote out for me a certificate of allergy to penicillin and gave me a note to give to the dialysis centre suggesting two other alternatives. Then we had the repeat journey back to the taxi.

There was another passenger to bring back from the hospital, but she wasn’t ready so I had the pleasure of the company of my driver all to myself.

My cleaner helped me back in here and gave me another disgusting drink, and then, regrettably, I crashed out. And there I stayed until about 19:20. All that walking had worn me out.

While I was asleep, I was away with the fairies. I was at school and one of the girls from a couple of years below me was chatting to me. Suddenly she asked if I’d like to go with her to the swimming baths. It was early morning so I said something about going after breakfast. She was surprised and said “but we could have something to eat at the breaktime” so, seeing as she was really keen to go, I agreed to go right now. I went into my locker for my towel but I could not see my swimming trunks so I picked up the towel and we set off. We found outselves with our arms around each other walking into town past the hordes of pupils whom we knew heading towards school to start the day. I suddenly realised that without my swimming trunks, I couldn’t go swimming, so I was stuck in this difficulty about being with this girl but not being able to do anything about it.

This is one of these typical dreams, full of doubt and indecision. Here I am, with the bird on my plate, and not able to get my fork stuck in it, as Frankie Howerd once famously said. That’s something else that seems to be the story of my life.

Tea tonight was sausage, chips and baked beans, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And now, I’m off to bed, ready to enjoy another Saturday off. I have to make the most of it when I can.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about allergies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m relieved to know that I’m not alone in having an allergy.
Later on this evening, I was discussing my allergies with a friend, and she said that I was in very good company
"How do you mean?" I asked
"Well, take Thomas Gray for example" she said. "Didn’t he write a poem saying how he had an allergy to a country churchyard?"

0

Friday 6th May 2016 – NOW, I WONDER …

… about the allergy tests that I did at Montlucon just before I came away.

They gave me the tests, apparently, to see whether I was allergic to a new medication that they were proposing for me, but the tests came up with reactions so they didn’t proceed. After chemotherapy they started me off on a course of antibiotics – 2 huge pills that look like torpedoes – and that more-or-less coincided with my violent attacks of nausea and … err … other stuff. However they took the decision yesterday to suspend the antibiotics and strangely enough, I haven’t been to the bathroom once after an early-morning session.

Furthermore, during the course of the day, I managed to nibble down about 10 dry biscuits, one apple and two bottles of lemonade and, to date, they have not yet upped sticks and left. I would have had a couple of slices of spicy cake stuff too but for some unaccountable reason I seem to have left that behind in Caliburn.

Of course there’s a long way to go but it’s a rather optimistic sign, and I’m wondering if I had maybe an allergy to this antibiotic treatment that has caused all of this. It could also be that, given the shape of the things, I’ve been taking them the wrong way, of course.

And that does remind me of the story about the doctor visiting his patient and asked him “did those suppositories I gave you ease your piles any?”
To which the patient replied “to be honest, doctor, for all the good that they did me, I may as well have shoved them up my a**e”.
Mind you, with my face of course, it’s a mistake easily made.

I was really looking forward to last night having a room to myself but as you might have been expecting, it didn’t work out quite like that at all for I was still unable to go to sleep. And when I did, it was full of fits and starts and tossing and turning.

But it did mean that I was up early. And when I went for a little walk I noticed the sun streaming in through the window of the common room so I grabbed the laptop and settled down in the window to enjoy it. It didn’t last long though but nevertheless, with the heat pouring in down the back of my neck it left me feeling a new man, which is just as well because I’m fed up of this one.

The doctor came to see me and we had a very lengthy chat. And she’s clearly concerned because she went off and came back with the Professor. They were honest and admitted that they had never seen a chemotherapy reaction quite like mine but they seemed honestly to believe that I would triumph over it in the long term. They’ve prescribed a course of steroids for me to help me control my body mass, with my weight drifting away even as I speak.

They said that they are intending to keep me in until Monday at least which I suppose isn’t such bad news, for it means that I can go straight from here back to Sint Pieters which is more convenient for me and in any case it all saves me €20 per night while I’m here. We must focus on the positives.

Another thing that was mentioned was the subject of my dreams. Being curious about things of this nature, I asked whether or not there was any combination of medicines that would provoke such wild wanderings. She confirmed that it is not unknown, but no-one has ever done a study into it. So maybe there’s an opening for me here – I’m certainly being a pace setter, if not a trend-setter … "or an Irish Setter" – ed .

It came to prominence where apart from appearing personally in two episodes of the Clitheroe Kid, I went off on two of the most astonishing and vivid voyages that I have ever had. And true to form, when I awoke – bolt-upright – at 07:00, every last vestige of them vanished for ever. You’ve no idea just how disappointed I was about that.

So now, I’ll settle down for the night and hope that my little improvement will finally give me a really good night. I deserve one, and need one too, especially as I’m once more on my own tonight.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and see what happens, hey?

0

Thursday 17th March 2016 – IT’S DAY FOUR …

…of my hospital marathon – the day that I had a marathon session in the allergy clinic, just by way of a change. And just by way of a change I was up a long while before the alarm went off too

And that surprised me immensely because I hadn’t ‘arf been on my travels during the night too.

I started off at the allergy clinic (I can’t keep away from here, can I?) and we were making up a soundtrack tape – don’t ask me why – and we found a record featuring someone singing but there were also loads and loads of background noises of all kinds of things that represented actions and items that were taking place in the song. We were listening to it. Liz was only listening with half an ear to it and all of a sudden she pricked up her ears – “did I hear a fox?”. “I think that it’s something on this record” I replied. We played the record back two or three times and, sure enough, there was some kind of reference in it to a fox, and the fox is barking away in the background.
Liz made a subsequent appearance too, in reference to a school trip that she was organising. In fact, she wasn’t really organising it because it was now September and the kids had been back at school for three or four weeks. The aim of this trip was that it was some kind of field trip which involved the children being away for a few days and this was to take place at the end of December. So much time and trouble had gone into the organisation of all of this but people had forgotten to tell the parents about it and it was only now that people at the school were discussing the presentation of the event to the parents. But Liz’s school was in such a poor, deprived area that it was obvious that not many of the families – Group B families was how she described them – would be able to afford the trip and wouldn’t have the possibility to save up between now and the date that payment needed to be made so that their children could go. So rather than be an exclusive trip and not allow some of the poorer kids to go, they were talking about postponing this trip to another year and maybe a few months later in the year so that everyone would have a chance to save up for it.
Next stop was back in Crewe, where I was going for a walk. and I’d been for a walk down Market Street, passing underneath the Cumberland Bridge at the bottom and into Middlewich Street (where we were a few weeks ago, as you might recall). As I was crossing the road I had to start to run as a car came around the corner under the bridge from Market Street at something of a speed on the wrong side of the road, which is actually the right side of the road because we are talking about the UK, although for some reason I wasn’t aware of this. So I had to make a run for the pavement. I had the idea that the road under the bridge was a one-way street, which it wasn’t as vehicles were coming from both directions. Anyway, I was around the corner by now and walking up Middlewich Street and a bus was coming down the street, travelling quite quickly. he reached the bottom and swung round to the right to go underneath the bridge but a car came hurtling out from somewhere under the bridge, shot off up the side of the railway line where there is no road, causing the bus to jam on his brakes. He only just missed this car. I carried on with my walk and it was dark by now. I’d been chatting to a couple of people whom I’d met on my travels but by now I had arrived at a place that was a bank. It had a cash-point which was in the basement, and there were people in there using it. It occurred to me to go and check my English bank account so went downstairs. I pulled out my card ready to use and while I was waiting my turn I noticed that there was something like a shop counter down here, with money all over the place, but no-one had taken any notice at all of this money. I already had a fair bit of money in my wallet, by the way. While I was sorting myself out, another person came down the steps behind me so I told him to go ahead – I’ll be a minute or two yet. he looked at me strangely and said “do you always carry that enormous amount of money around with you?”. I said “no” and carried on doing what I was already doing. But he stood there watching me. I told him again to go ahead and use the machine but he just stood there. I was starting to sense that we were going to have some kind of confrontation but just then, one of my friends from Brussels came in and came downstairs to use the cash point. He (my friend) asked me “what’s 212 plus 212?” as if this was the key to his PIN. I was having to be very vague in my reply because of this other person lurking around in the vicinity. But now of course there were two of us in there, both of whom were likely to be potential victims for this guy loitering around on the stairs.
We haven’t finished yet either, for there was some other part of the dream going on about my youngest sister. She was with a friend and they both drifted in and out somewhere along the way. But in the meantime there was a man who had come from the UK and was now in the USA who had travelled all around the USA on something of an extended holiday. He’d retired from work and there was a great deal of confusion about his pension arrangements, what employment pensions he was entitled to and what he was going to receive. In the end, after a great deal of argument and discussion, he’d been to his former employer who had promised to look into everything. This was an oil company, and the people there decided to make a presentation to him. They gave him an old oil drum which, while not sounding as it it was very much, was actually quite symbolic because it had fallen off a ship somewhere off the coast of New England and washed all the way down along the eastern coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds, tides and ocean currents), round Cape Horn and the Tierra del Fuego and then back up the western coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds etc) and had been recovered again near Seattle. They presented it to him as a symbol of his own voyage all around the USA. Eventually, it worked out that they had found three pension entitlements for him and so he could live happily ever after.

And so you can see why I was astonished by my early night.

On the way to Montlucon through the snow, which dramatically cleared by the time that we reached Pionsat, and then it was quite straightforward as far as the hospital, although I did stop for some cash at the bank on the edge of the town, seeing how the nurse will probably want paying this weekend before I go. And being nice and early at the allergy clinic, that meant of course that they were all late.

But I did happen to notice the first E-plate on the car park. It was a, EA — KK registration so I reckon that it’s about three weeks since they first came out. They now seem to be slowing down to well over two years a letter.

At the allergy clinic, first thing that they did when they arrived was ask me to take off my upper clothes and to check my body. Then they sat me down in a comfortable chair (or what passes for a comfortable chair around there), gave me a couple of injections and then started to squirt something out of a syringe into my mouth – something quite minty and also quite bitter. Then they told me to take a drink of water.

This was how we went on for much of the day. I’ve no idea what it was that they had given me but they ought to have given something to the room and the chair to stop them spinning around while I was trying to sit there quietly and do some work on my Canada notes.

They brought up some food too, but it was, as I expected, some meat (there seems no point in going to an allergy clinic and telling them about your allergies if they are going to totally ignore them, is there?). I was prepared for this however, and had brought along some vegan cheese and tomato butties. But we did have coffee too and that wasn’t too bad.

When I’d finished and the room had stopped spinning, I went off to find Caliburn and then I headed back to my place for an hour or so to gather up some of my possessions, or such that I could remember of them.

And the snow had gone, much to my surprise and pleasure. It was in fact quite warm and I felt a little better once I had warmed up.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, I had another early night. I need to build up my strength prior to leaving because it’s a long way to Brussels, even if I am going to do it in a couple of steps. The days when I could do a full day’s work and then drive the 800kms between Brussels and my Farm through the night – they seem to be long-gone now.

0

Wednesday 16th March 2016 – HOW WE LAUGHED …

… when the nurse said something last night about it going to snow today. And so would you have done, given the glorious day we had yesterday.

But coming back from Montlucon, and passing through Villebret where you start to climb up into the Combrailles, I saw a few suspicious-looking white flakes being blown about in the sky. By the time I climbed up over the Font Nanaud and down the other side towards St Gervais, the sky was clear again but about half an hour after arriving back here, we got the lot. There’s now about 10mm of snow outside and it’s still falling.

Yes, and I have to go back (GRRRRR!) to Montlucon and the hospital tomorrow too. I arrived there nice and early but had to wait for almost three quarters of an hour before I was seen properly by the nurse. She examined where I’d been injected and where I’d been patched, and told me that there is some reaction so I need to return for further tests.

You don’t need me to tell you what I think of that.

But anyway, off up to the day hospital and the blood transfusion. My favourite nurse and my second-favourite student were there and once more there was a decent and convivial crowd in the room. We all had quite a laugh and a good time, which made us all feel better and helped the time pass by.

Lunch was the usual disgusting muck but at least it was something, I suppose. And although I was finished by 14:30 I told them that I wasn’t leaving until I had had my mid-afternoon coffee.

On the way back from Montlucon I got myself lost in the back streets trying to find the short cut to LIDL. I needed some of my vitamin B12 juice and some sparkling water, and I also bought a couple of big packets of crisps and some packets of sweets to nibble on while I’m driving to Leuven. And they sell 1-litre bottles of orange juice in there and they are just the thing to drink in the van while I’m driving but as usual, Bane of Britain forgot to buy any.

I was going to go back home for a couple of hours afterwards too but it was rather cold and that made me think for a moment, and then with the white stuff, I decided that being back in the warmth and off the road was a much better plan.

And here I am and there I’ll be in a moment – in bed. I’m not going for a walk tonight as I’ve walked far enough today (as well as going all around the hospital I had to go off to find the Records Department to pick up a copy of my file to take to Leuven).

And while I’m on the subject of files and records, I did ask the doctor there to prepare his file and records ready for me to pick up. And so I went to see his secretary and it will come as no surprise to you all to learn that he hasn’t done so. I told her “Friday at the latest” (well, actually vendredi au plus tard, but you get the idea).

So I hope that I have a more interesting and exciting sleep than I did last night. I was out like a light in a very deep sleep and the only recollection of what happened was what was on the dictaphone. And we were dealing with football issues yet again.

We were talking about the Controle Technique in football (well, exactly!) and one of the issues in this is that the player concerned has to take a penalty kick. Now it doesn’t matter whether the player scores or misses, or whether it’s saved by the keeper – it’s all down to whether the player is capable of kicking the ball in that situation. One player having his Controle Technique came out onto the field. He was wearing a red football shirt with his name on the back – a really long name that ended with Platini. He was preparing to take the kick but we noticed that underneath his shirt he was wearing a Father Christmas outfit complete with hood trimmed in white and with a white bobble – and his hood is up on his head. He runs in to take the penalty as soon as the whistle is blown, but almost immediately the whistle is blown again to stop the kick being taken, in order to order him to put his hood down so that the controller could see his head and face. And so he does, and then he runs in and takes the kick again. However the keeper is really quick off his line and manages to block the ball with his knees. The ball thus ricochets off his knees up into the air. Now the goal that they are using for this is actually an over-bridge, so it’s clearly the correct dimensions for a goal underneath it. The ball balloons up and over the bridge past the people who are crossing the bridge and then back down the other side and goes quite a way away. The man who has taken the penalty now needs another ball to do something different and so he climbs up the side of the cutting which this bridge crosses, and plucks another ball that was in a bush that was growing on the top of the cutting, so they can continue this Controle Technique.

After all of that, I was down here early yet again, breakfasted and off on the road at 07:30 with the coffee in my Tim Hortons thermal mug. The drive was pretty uneventful with no-one in my way and even though I stopped at the bank to add to the fighting fund, I was at the hospital for 08:20.

I spent most of the day dealing with my Canada 2014 voyage for the month of September. I’ve now arrived back on Nova Scotia (travelling backwards of course) but then I had to start from the other end at Montreal and reach as far as the Sorel – St Ignace ferry across the St Lawrence because there’s a gap in my notes. I know that they are there because I remember transcribing them and I’m sure that I’ve seen them, but they are probably out of order so I’ll need to find them – and the easiest way to find them is to start at the other and and file the stuff from there, and eventually I’ll come across them.

That’s a nice job for me tomorrow then, seeing as how I have to spend all blasted day in that perishing mausoleum.

0

Tuesday 15th March 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… for a walk after lunch this afternoon.

gorge de la sioule toureix sauret besserve puy de dome franceAnd quite right too, because it really was a beautiful day.

I took my time and slowly walked to the end of the lane and then up the main road for 400 metres or so to the turning to Toureix, enjoying the warm temperature of the sunny spring afternoon. From here, you can look down the hill to the turning to Le Fournial and further on over the Gorge de la Sioule.

And I learnt something new today too, which is always a good thing. There’s a huge steel mill about 10 miles from here, right out the other side of Les Ancizes in the countryside. It’s the most surprising thing to find in the countryside and I’ve always wondered why. And now I know the answer.

It turns out that when the built the Viaduc des Fades at the turn of the 20th Century, they correctly identified the potential of the water in the Gorge de la Sioule as a source for hydro-electric generation.

They weren’t wrong either. Today, there’s a big modern dam right across the valley but back in those days 100 years ago they installed a basic, simple hydro-electric turbine which produced its first electricity in 1917.

And then they discovered something important. The generator was a success but they had overlooked to find a market for the electricity. No-one around here had electricity in those days and the transmission of electrical energy was in its infancy and there was nothing like a National Grid to distribute the power.

And so if they couldn’t send the electricity out to clients, they needed to bring in a client from elsewhere. And hence the arrival of Duval’s.

As you know, I had an early night last night. It took me ages to drop off to sleep and once I’d gone off, I remembered almost nothing. I really must have been exhausted. There are just snippets of this and that on the dictaphone that don’t mean much, but then I suppose that after the marathon epics of the last couple of nights, you would welcome the rest.

We started off at the football again during one of my nocturnal rambles and strangely enough, when I awoke in the middle of the night I could name the entire Sheffield United starting line-up but in the time that it took me to reach for the dictaphone, the whole lot had disappeared completely. There was a small guy leading the attack and another small guy in the team and he had been whingeing at me about something or other that had actually started off this particular dream. And I couldn’t recall that either.
But not to worry. I was soon back to sleep, going off somewhere with Liz in her Volkswagen and all of a sudden she came over really, really ill and I had to help her back to the car. I called Terry and he appeared too, so we both helped her back. He was really upset and panicking abut how ill she was and being really nice to her, encouraging her back to the car even though she was in agony. Back home, I was making this salad with rice and chick peas, all kinds of things. I was having to boil up these ingredients separately to go into this rice and someone else was helping me. Liz was there supervising and giving directions. We had boiled up something for quite some time and stuck it in this salad but there was something else on the boil, which I thought was something quick and so I tipped that into the salad as well. It turned out to be dried chick peas so I asked Liz how long they needed to be cooked, as I imagined that it was quite some time. She said that they needed just 2 minutes, and so seeing as they had been on the boil for longer than that, that was OK. I then was curious to know why, if they only needed two minutes, we hadn’t cooked them with the rest of the food. All of this, by the way, was going on in the really cramped kitchen that we had in Davenport Avenue when we were kids.

That was basically it, I suppose. But then I was awake early and downstairs before the alarm went off. I’ve not done too much though because I’m still not in the mood for very much, but I’ve finished off all of the notes for 2015 and done the dictaphone notes for October 2014 and part of them for September 2014 too. But my heart wasn’t in it really – I could do with a change of scenery right now but I’m in no fit condition to do anything about it.

I’m on the move tomorrow anyway because I have the hospital. The allergy clinic followed by the blood transfusion service. Neither of these would have been necessary had the removal of my spleen done its job, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk now.

And so I suppose that I’d better have an early night.

And you can all have an early night too. Only 903 words tonight – I’m clearly losing my grip.

And quote of the week must be that from Terry, listening with only half an ear to the football on TV –
“Manchester City have SEX OFFENDERS in the team tonight???”
“No, Terry” I replied. “He said ‘six defenders'”.

0

Monday 14th March 2016 – WELL THAT’S ME TOTALLY P155ED OFF!

I had my blood test at the hospital this morning, and the blood count has gone down yet again to 8.1. And that’s despite having a blood transfusion the other day. The operation that I had to go through 6 or 7 weeks ago has clearly done no good whatever and I might just as well have saved myself the agony.

The thing that gets me though is that no-one in the hospital seems to care. Here they are, messing about with allergy tests for a different medication to deal with the immunity issues following the removal of the spleen, and on Friday I’m in hospital for a scan on my lung to see where this blood clot (the one in my lung that I picked up in hospital) has got to.

But as to my underlying illness and the causes of it, and any potential solution – not a word!

What made me even more depressed about all of this is that while I was sitting in the allergy clinic with all of these patches and injections and so on, I was editing all of the photos that I took in Montreal and sorting out all of the notes that relate thereto. And then I got to thinking about just how much I enjoyed the city and how much I felt at home there. And then I reached a conclusion.

And that is that seeing as how no-one cares, then I don’t either. if nothing definite comes out of my visit to Leuven next week and they can’t sort something out, then I’m on the next plane to Montreal. I’ll find a quiet room in a house somewhere around the Cote des Neiges, which really is my favourite part of Montreal, and let nature take its course.

I can’t go on like this. it’s nothing short of purgatory for me to have to go through all of what I’m going through and for no good purpose either. I may as well not be here and be somewhere else instead, whether in this world, the New World or even the next world.

What didn’t help matters very much was that I had another one of those comfortable, reassuring dreams where everything went according to plan, our hero got the girl and we both walked off together into the sunset and all of that – something that never ever happened to me in real life and how I wished that it had.

I was back playing in my rock group from the 1970s again and we were totally unrehearsed – we hadn’t played together for years and we were featuring in a venue somewhere. This was downstairs in a basement somewhere, rather like Enoch’s in Crewe used to be, and we weren’t even sure what numbers we were going to play, never mind how we were going to play them. This went on and we didn’t have all that much idea about what we were going to do. We spent so much time discussing and debating it that we weren’t actually getting anything done. There were quite a few of our friends there, including one particular girl whom I fancied and who I was trying to impress, who were coming to see us and so we HAD to be organised. Came the afternoon of the gig and we decided that we would have a rehearsal. I headed off towards the rehearsal room, carrying my bass guitar and there was some girl, whom I had seen vaguely back in the past but I hadn’t particularly noticed very much, came over to me and asked me if my guitar was a Gibson SG. I told her to count the strings, which she did, and agreed that there were just four of them. And so I told her that it was in fact a Gibson EB3. We started to talk about bass guitars and musical instruments, and she said that she had a mandolin with four strings on it. Of course – a mandolin – that brings back Lindisfarne and “Road to Kingdom Come” and “No Time to Lose”, all of that kind of thing. We ended up having quite a chat about this kind of thing, and she said that she could actually play some Lindisfarne music on the mandolin. It’s always been my ambition to play in a folk-rock group like Lindisfarne so I egged her on to go and fetch her mandolin,which she did and we had a brief jam session. After that, we wandered off together hand in hand. As I said earlier, this was another one of these comfortable situations and I wish that I could remember who she was, or even what she looked like – rather different from the Girl from Worleston the other night whose face is still vividly fixed in my mind. Anyway, off we went, hand in hand and there were a few people loitering in the vicinity who noticed the pair of us together like that and gave a little smile to each other. We walked to a rocky wall where there were a few seating areas set into it at various levels – just flat, grassy areas. I invited her to sit down with me but she said that she had other things to do and didn’t have the time. I continued to encourage her to sit down, she continued to be doubtful and it was at this moment that I woke up rather dramatically and shattered the illusion, much to my dismay.
After the usual crawl down the corridor I ended up at the football – Nantwich Town in fact. And while Nantwich Town might have a new ground, down on Kingsley Fields, this match wasn’t being played there. And neither was it being played on their old ground at Jackson Avenue either, but in the street in London Road right more-or-less outside Churche’s Mansions. I was watching the game, with about 4 or 5 others (huge crowds they have in Nantwich), a couple of girls and a couple of kids, having a kick-around with the balls.There was a really strong, swirling wind blowing that was creating havoc and on one occasion, much to my surprise, I actually caught the match ball one-handed, swerving around in the wind as it went out of play and that was really impressive. For the rest of it, the conditions were really difficult and catching the ball, even a simple catch, was really difficult if not impossible. We were actually watching this at the back of a river and the house rear yards backed right onto it. One small boy was climbing over the back wall and the wooden fence on top and lost his footing, sliding straight down into the river and emerging all covered in green slime. That certainly looked unhealthy! All of these houses had basements that were well below the level of the water but were somehow really dry. I wouldn’t have liked to have lived down in there, although there were people quite happily doing so. There were two teenage girls watching this football match and they lived in one of the houses. At half-time they went back to their house where the mother was cleaning the room of one of these girls, and one of the girsl asked the other what she would like for breakfast. The other replied that she would like one round of cheese on toast with half a packet of crisps and a coffee. I said “breakfast? It’s getting on for 10:30 and most of us had eaten breakfast long before this match kicked off”. But anyway, the first girl dragged a big metal wood-stove out from a corner into the middle of her little basement room ready to fill it and light it to make the toast and put the kettle on. They asked me what I would like to which I replied that I’d had my breakfast a long time ago, but I’ll have a cup of coffee with them. They next asked me what coffee I wanted and what mug I wanted and I thought that they weren’t half making life complicated when all that I wanted was a simple cup of coffee.

But anyway, enough of this. I was up early enough, breakfasted and on the road by 07:40. And what a beautiful morning it was too. I was in Montlucon at the hospital by 08:30 and in the comfy chair by the power point at 08:40 too.

I had the blood test, as I mentioned, and then had the drain fitted, and then injected and patched with all kinds of things. My companion from the other day was there too and we had quite a chat. And while I might have won the “mine’s bigger than yours” competition by having the largest lump on my arm, I felt really sorry for her with all of the tests that she was going through and the mess that they had made of her arm. In consolation, I let her have my mid-morning cake to cheer her up.

We had quite a few moments of humour too, including when one of the others asked if she could leave the room to use the bathroom.
“You’re supposed to raise your hand” I retorted.
“Just like school” said someone else.
At least, despite everything else, there’s a good feeling of cameraderie there in that clinic and the nurse is a really good sport too, which is good.

But the bad side of this is that I’ve had a few adverse reactions so I need to come in again. I explained my situation, all of my hospital appointments and my visit to Belgium and as a result, exceptionally, they can fit me in provisionally at 09:00 on Thursday.

I mentioned that at this rate I ought to be looking for an apartment here in the vicinity of the hospital and asked the young girl here with me whether she had a spare bed in her room. She said she did, but her mother wouldn’t like it. I asked “who cares about your mother?” which made everyone smile, but didn’t have the desired effect.

Not that I expected it to either, but there you go.

As for the blood test though, it’s on the limit of the blood transfusion level, but that’s not good enough for me. I’m off to Leuven next week – 800-odd kilometres by road – and I need to be on my best form for the journey. So what I’ve done is to change my little one-hour appointment back at the allergy clinic from tomorrow to Wednesday at 09:00 seeing as how there was a space, and then went up to the day-hospital and persuaded them to take me in straight afterwards for a blood transfusion. That way, then at least I’ll be in something-like reasonable health to undertake the journey. Coming back won’t be too much of a problem as I don’t have a time-limit for that so if I’m tiring out, I can take a good rest and carry on later.

But as I also said earlier, I’m thoroughly depressed by the way that all of this is panning out. I’m thoroughly hating the past, hating the present and hating the future too.

To cheer myself up, I went to Carrefour and the Flunch to have a plate of chips and vegetables but that was a waste of time as they were stone-cold. Liz had given me a little shopping list that involved going to Grande Frais and the Carrefour so I bought the necessary and looked for something else to cheer me up but there wan’t anything there that took my fancy. That’s always the case when you’re in the middle of a black depression – nothing will pull you out of the pit.

Back home – for only an hour as Liz wanted the shopping by 16:00 – I still couldn’t find my copy of Paint Shop Pro or anything else that I needed. But there was a little issue that the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater was off the temperature scale. I had to drain off 5 litres of the water and put 5 litres of cold water into it. I’ve also plugged the fridge into the main circuit so that it’ll now be working 24 hours per day. I’ll have to do something because with no-one there drawing any current, there’s tons of surplus electricity and it’s all dumped into the hot water.

Yes, 41 amps of surplus energy was being generated when I arrived and the cables to the immersion heater element were stone-cold – a far cry from 6 months ago when they overheated at half of that and I had to rewire everything. All of this, the temperature in the water and the amps that the cables are currently … "ohh! Very good!" – ed … handling just goes to show how much current was being lost by the rubbishy cables that I had been using. Decent cables, even half the diameter, properly crimped and soldered, is definitely the way to go and I wish that my soldering techniques would improve.

However, if things continue like this, my soldering techniques won’t be an issue.

I stopped for diesel on the way back and also to the pharmacie at Pionsat for the next lot of anti-biotic prescriptions (which wouldn’t have been necessary except for this spenectomie, and what a waste … "you’ve done that already" – ed … and then back to Liz and Terry’s.

After tea, which was a stir-fry with the stuff that I had bought earlier, I said “sod it!” and went to bed. I’ve had enough disappointments for one day. I’d already crashed out for half an hour on the sofa and it was beyond me to keep on going – not when I wasn’t in the mood to go on fighting.

Tomorrow is another day. Let’s see how we get on with that. Not any better, I bet.

I’ll leave you all to sit and read this rubbish – all 2322 words of it.

And serve you all right too!

0

Friday 11th March 2016 – JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING …

… what happened last night with me not posting my blog, the answer was that by the time 20:15 came around, I was already tucked up in bed and out like a light. Crashing out was certainly the word – I had gone completely.

But then again, I’d had a hectic day – and one that had started not long after I had gone to sleep. And furthermore, it all started with yet another appearance by a girl who has been described on these pages as “the one that got away”. But for the second time in succession, she didn’t get away from my evil clutches last night.

Ohh no she didn’t!

I’d been out yet again in Nantwich, having been for a really good wander all around the Crewe Road End – Millstone Lane area of the town, having a good look at all of the houses and so on. And all of the area behind the houses on Millstone Lane, between there and The Crofts, had been cleared away, flattened and rolled out ready for a new housing estate to be built there. Even Flash Meakin’s hovel had gone. I wandered over there to make a brief inspection but the builders tried to chase me away. However, it was common land and so I had every right to be there, and I made sure that they knew it. And there I stayed. Having made my inspection, I wandered off to continue my travels and this is where I bumped into the aforementioned young lady. She was living on The Crescent apparently and so she invited me in for a coffee. We had a really good chat about old times and then she invited me to stay for dinner. So I prepared all of the vegetables and she cooked the food – a risotto it was. I was given a choice about what I wanted for dessert – beans on toast was mentioned (this is why I enjoy so much going on these nocturnal rambles – they are totally surreal) but of course I had some completely different ideas about what I wanted to have for afters. But I settled on a banana, which I suppose is rather symbolic. But then her young daughter came in and was telling us about how she had been threatened by some young boy who had somehow found his way into the house. She had been in the attic and had gone out onto the roof to see what was making a noise, and he had sneaked in behind her. When she came downstairs he surprised her. She was shocked and so the police were called and he was carted off, even though he insisted that he’d only done it for a dare. He ended up with 30 days inside and was ostracised by all of his friends. In the meantime, the two of us were carrying on chatting and the conversation came round to what was happening in the evening. I invited her to the cinema and her daughter thought that this was a really good idea. But her elder boy looked rather worried as if he was afraid of having his mum taken away from him. But there was no doubt that she was really keen to go to the cinema with me and I was of course just as keen to take her.

Yes, it’s a shame that things like this don’t happen to me in real life.

The alarm went off before I’d reached the exciting bit and it left me wondering about what would have happened had I been able to sleep in until the usual time of 07:45 instead of this wretchedly-early time of 07:00. I was feeling as if I’d been cheated out of 45 minutes of wishful thinking, but there we are, I suppose.

I was on the road by 07:40 and at the hospital at 08:35, managing to pinch the next-to-last parking space on the car park. The allergy clinic is weird, with just a half-dozen or so of comfortable seats, and with le being the first arrival, I had the pick of the chairs – right by the door by the power point. I had some kind of pattern drawn in biro on my arm, with initials and numbers, and then injected and some kind of fluid rubbed in. One or two of them flared up quite dramatically and the nurse measured them with some kind of hole gauge.

The nurse then found a sheet of something that resembled an aluminium-backed piece of bubble-wrap, peeled off the sticky front of it, stuck it to my back and then burst the bubbles so that, presumably, the product in each bubble would interact with my skin. I have to leave this on until Monday.

But if I think that I’m hard done-to, what happened to me was nothing to what happened to the young girl next to me. They drew some kind of chess-board on her arm and she had a huge number of injections, a couple of which flared up like nothing that I have ever seen before. One of them was starting to look like something out of Quatermass’s Experiment.

I felt so sorry for her that I let her have my cake that came with our mid-morning coffee. And then I invited her for a game of draughts on her arm.

One thing though that surprised me was that each one of us, on entering the room, had a drain put in our arms. Not that that was surprising, the surprising bit was that they didn’t use it for anything. Rather a waste of effort to me. But at least the nurse who did it had “the touch”. I hardly felt a thing.

But my results were such that I have to come back for a full morning on Monday, and an hour or so on Tuesday. And as for my Monday-morning blood test, the nurse will do it then and there as long as I remember to take my prescription with me.

We were thrown out at 12:00 and I went down to the Amaranthe. I bought some more vegan cheese and some mixed seeds, as well as a couple of hundred grams of muesli biscuits. I think that I deserved a little treat. But the Amaranthe is now selling Mozzarella-like vegan cheese (and this is progress, considering that even 18 months ago they didn’t stock any at all), although I didn’t buy any to try as it looked to be tainted. I’ll pick some up next time maybe.

Lunch was a plate of chips and vegetables at the Flunch, and then I went around the Carrefour and the Auchan for some shopping. There were no loose porridge oats, but the Auchan “own-brand” packaged oats were a reasonable price so I bought a few packets of those. I can’t be without my muesli now, can I?

I went home afterwards for a relax and to look for some more stuff that I forgot the other day. I still can’t find my Paint-Shop Pro disk but I did manage to find my dash-cam. I’ve also copied all of the dictaphone notes onto a rewritable DVD and onto a back-up drive, one thing that I’ve been meaning to do ever since I finished transcribing them.

I went to the pharmacie in St Gervais on the ay back here. I needed to pick up the medication that I ordered. The good news about this is that a month’s supply of the new injections only cost half of the price of the current lot, and then of course it’s only going to be once a day too. So that’s something like progress anyway. I shan’t be struggling quite as much for finances.

But the bad news about it is that the other injection that I need to take with me to the hospital next Friday – it’s more like an injection for a cow or a horse, judging by the size of the box. I don’t like the idea of that.

I also forgot to ask for some more boxes for my empty needles, and then I also realised that I hadn’t been to pick up my paperwork from the Archives at the hospital either. It clearly wasn’t my day. And on leaving the town, someone in a small silver saloon of which the registration number began CZ flashed his lights and waved at me. I wish that I know who it was.

Chips were on the menu back here, so that’s twice today. Not that I am complaining of course, because we have real malt vinegar here. And then I crawled off to bed – I didn’t even go out for my walk, but then that’s no big deal because I’d walked enough (at least, for my present state of health) today.

And with this patch-thing on my back, I’m glad that I had a shower yesterday.

And so are we” said terry.

0